Nothing but Life
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NOTHING BUT LIFE
NOTHING BUT LIFE
BRENT VAN STAALDUINEN
Copyright © Brent van Staalduinen, 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Rachel Spence | Editor: Susan Fitzgerald
Cover desiger: Sophie Paas-Lang
Cover image: utility knife: istock.com/DeadDuck; textures: unsplash.com/BernardHermant and istock.com/sbayram
Printer: Marquis Book Printing Inc.
Lines from “26” © Rachel Eliza Griffiths, 2013. Used with permission.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Nothing but life / Brent van Staalduinen.
Names: Van Staalduinen, Brent, 1973- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200155555 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200155563 | ISBN 9781459746183 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459746190 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459746206 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8643.A598 N68 2020 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
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For Nora and Alida, who love stories.
How quiet the bells of heaven must be, cold with stars who cannot rhyme their brilliance to our weapons. What rouses our lives each moment? Nothing but life dares dying.
— Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “26”
CONTENTS
PART I: HERE
GRADUATION
BIG BROTHER’S BEST
LISTEN
BABY
S&C
HEARING JESSE
DEPENDENT
MIA
COLD CARROTS
CALL ME DILLS
METALLIC
SCARS
BELIEVED
DETAILS
SURPLUS
EXILED
CLEAR
DEADLINES
INBOX
SO GROWN-UP
DEFIANT
DIGGING
COMPLICATED
TERMINAL
LIKE NORMAL
HELD UP
PART II: THERE
GO
INVOLVED
COOLING GLASS
JUST FINE
NO ACCESS
GOODBYE
ARRANGED
TOLD
LOVELY
RECOGNITION
SIEGE
DIG
NO APOLOGY
ON YOUR TERMS
FAR FROM PERFECT
YOUR STORY
GOODBYE, PART II
PART III: EVERYWHERE
POTENTIAL
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PART I
HERE
GRADUATION
I plead guilty, of course. It’s the only option. No one else used a box cutter on Patrick Scheltz ten days ago. In math class. During the last regular period before our end-of-year exams. Now, I’m not that great at math, but these numbers are easy. Eight stitches. Twenty-seven witnesses. Seven days before summer freedom. One thousand times I’ve told myself how dumb it was to lose my cool.
The youth-court judge, a stern-looking woman no one in their right mind would mess with, asks me if I understand the consequences of pleading guilty. I nod, but she makes me say it out loud.
“I understand, Your Honour.”
Then she clears the courtroom of everyone but me, Mom, the lawyers, the court reporter, my youth worker, and the bailiff, who sits in the chair at the end of my table. Even Gramma Jan and Aunt Viv have to go. The prosecution lawyer starts to object — he thinks Patrick and his parents should be allowed to stay — but the judge silences him with a look over her reading glasses.
“I’ll bring them back for sentencing, but there’s something I need to talk to Wendell and his mother about first.”
First time she’s called me Wendell. Until now, I’ve been “the defendant.” I think about what that could mean as I watch everyone file out of the courtroom. Patrick — who everyone calls Pat, which he hates — glares at me as he leaves. A single person remains in the gallery, a woman who’s been scribbling madly in her notebook the entire time.
“You too, Ms. Walters,” the judge says.
“Judge, I —”
“Especially you.”
The woman frowns but gets up without another word and leaves. The judge sighs and nods at the bailiff. “Watch the door, please. I don’t want anyone ‘accidentally’ bursting back in.”
I can tell the judge is talking about Walters, a reporter from the local paper — which my mom calls “that right-wing rag” — who lives in my neighbourhood. The bailiff gives a small smile and heads to the door. He shares the judge’s opinion.
The judge removes her reading glasses, looks down, and takes a long, deep breath. Her eyes are softer when she looks up and over at the table where I’m sitting. I’ve seen that kind of look before. It’s how people who weren’t there look when they talk about it. All helplessness and sadness. She’s going to talk about Windsor. My lawyer brought it up in my defence, but I was hoping it would stay locked up in the court records. But no. Now the judge will say my full name again and want me to talk about it.
But I won’t. I won’t tell anyone. Not in a way they want, anyway. I have memories that live inside my head that are just for me. I was in the Windsor High library when the shooter walked in and opened fire. I didn’t see much while it was happening. I was behind a table with my eyes closed. I heard the angry sounds of the bullets destroying everything around me. And the other noises I can’t talk about. We all did.
The shooter was my stepdad, Jesse. I found that out later, at home, at the same time my mom did. When the police came to interview her. And me. I also found out that Jesse went to my classroom first. I don’t know why. He didn’t leave a note or anything. After the shooting, in the strange quiet of our house, I tried to figure it out. Mom hid the TV remote, but there were dozens of reconstructions on the internet. Hashtags and protests and rage and so many people wanting to fight. So much information but so few answers. Computer-generated animations and diagrams and arrows and dotted lines and red X’s wherever someone had died. Kids and teachers. The horrible math of it. But I can’t say that number. I hope that’s all right.
The judge coughs gently.
“A few things have come to light since you were charged,” she says, “including the fact that you were at Windsor High School on the day of the shooting. When I call everyone back in, I’m going to pass sentence, but I wanted to tell you in private how sorry I am for what you’ve gone through. And how much I respect
your mother for bringing you home to Hamilton for a fresh start. I’ve spoken to your math teacher and principal — who both speak very highly of you — and we talked about your situation. They, of course, had no idea.”
I sneak a look back at Mom. She’s leaning forward on the gallery bench, her arms folded, looking at the judge with narrowed eyes. My lawyer using Windsor is one thing, but Mom won’t like that the principal and my teacher know, too. She made me promise not to say anything to anyone, not that I would. Not that I can. I turn back to the front of the courtroom. The judge is still talking.
“You’ll be relieved to hear that your expulsion has been reversed and you’ll be allowed to graduate from grade ten after all. Quietly, of course. They feel that this one mistake shouldn’t keep you from moving forward. I agree. Your school records will be filed away with full confidentiality, which is important to you and your mother. By law these court records will also be sealed. Wendell, I sincerely hope you and your mom can find some peace here. You’re a strong young man, and I’m lucky to have met you, despite the circumstances.” She leans back and puts her glasses back on. “That said, you broke the law, so what happens next is very, very important.”
And with that the judge nods at the bailiff and he opens the door and everyone comes back in. I force my eyes to stay open to keep them dry. I never cry, but I get close a lot. My eyes fill all the time. I can’t look back at Mom right now because she’ll be a mess. Like me. I can’t hear the word Windsor without my insides twisting themselves into ropes. But she feels it worse. She feels everything.
BIG BROTHER’S BEST
My probation officer’s name is Sean, and he meets me at our house the next morning. He’s dressed in khakis and a black golf shirt. He has a thick leather belt with a phone pouch and a gold badge on one side and a handcuff holster on the other. There’s a thin cylindrical pouch next to the cuffs. Flashlight, maybe. Pepper spray. Or a collapsible baton. For the ones who don’t co-operate.
He opens a map of our neighbourhood on the kitchen table. The boundaries of Churchill Park and Cootes Paradise have been outlined in pink highlighter. We live in an old neighbourhood with the city pressing in on one side and the park and marsh on the other, interrupting Hamilton’s urban sprawl. The city, an old steel town tucked alongside the bay at the end of Lake Ontario, keeps growing. Our neighbourhood has seen better days. The houses are small and worn. “War homes,” Gramma Jan calls them. Lots of senior citizens. Lots of families looking to invest as soon as the older folks die off.
Sean repeats the judge’s instructions. At-home supervision. Weekly meetings with Sean. Two hundred and forty hours of community service. Picking up garbage from the park and marsh trails from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, every week until the first day of grade eleven. Then every day after school until the hours run out.
“Alone?” my mother asks.
“For the most part, yes,” Sean says. “I’ll drop by when I can, but Wendell —”
“Dills,” I say. “Call me Dills.”
I used to prefer Dilly, but at some point Mom started calling me Dills, and I’ve come around to liking it. A growing-up thing, I suppose. I’m fine with it. I guess someday I’ll even think of myself as a Wendell.
He shakes his head. “Sorry, mate, but no. Let’s keep this professional, yeah?”
Sean’s about my mom’s age but British, so everything he says sounds like it’s been stretched out. My name, for instance. Wen-doe, he says. And he drops yeah? in behind so many of his sentences.
“Anyhow, I’ve made an arrangement with Gary, the park manager, for daily check-in. Here.” Sean points to a building on the park’s eastern side. “He says he’ll be there at nine every morning.”
“That’s the old field house,” Mom says. “I always thought it was abandoned.”
Sean shrugs, slides the map over to me, and talks about boundaries and limits. Grassy parkland is my priority, but I’ll clean the trails, too. The marked, official ones. The little scale marker at the top of the map tells me the area is huge. Bigger than I imagined. I looked it up online, but seeing it spread out on paper is different. I start to feel the weight of the summer ahead of me. Sean puts a plastic shopping bag on the table. Out of it comes a blaze-orange safety vest. Blue construction helmet. Work gloves. A box of industrial garbage bags. Bug spray. A huge blue bottle of sunscreen. SPF 45. My mom’s eyebrows rise at that one.
“Uh, I threw that in there,” he says. “I’ve done outdoor work before, and the sun’ll burn you quicker than you think.”
“That’s thoughtful of you,” Mom says.
Sean waves away her words, embarrassed. “But stay on this side of the marsh, yeah? South side only.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Which brings me to the last thing.” He digs down to the bottom of the bag and takes out a length of nylon strapping with a black box attached. Unmarked.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mom says.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s a fu—” Mom closes her mouth and stops the word before it comes out. Not a word I hear from her very often. “It’s a LoJack.”
Sean gives her a look. “Let’s call it an ankle monitor, yeah?”
“Big Brother’s best.”
“No need to be dramatic.” He looks at me. “It’s a GPS tracker, Wendell, to make sure you stay where the court says you need to stay.”
“I can’t believe this,” Mom says.
“It’s standard for house arrest.” Sean hands it to me. It’s not heavy.
It’s not light, either. “I have to wear it all summer?”
He nods. “It also makes my job easier if I need to find you while you’re working.”
“What about showering? Exercising?” Mom asks.
“Water- and sweatproof. Just keep the strap clean. They can get pretty ripe.” He takes the monitor back from me, kneels, and looks up at me. “I have to put it on you now. Which ankle?”
I hear myself telling him to put it on the right side. He talks about tampering and alarms and how violating the court’s conditions puts me in a whole different category of youth offender. I’ve seen ankle monitors in movies, of course, so I get it. But it takes a special, wicked-looking tool to lock it tight and activate it, and the electronic tone as it connects to the satellite sounds sinister. Those scare the crap out of me. The sights and sounds of a screwed-up summer. Stretching out ahead of me a long, long way.
LISTEN
The park manager is a little guy, not much taller than me. He has a mess of twisted scars all up his left arm and bursting up the left side of his neck onto his face. His ear is a ruin. You can see it when he isn’t trying to hear anything. When he is, he turns his head to catch the sound with his good ear and the messed-up one disappears. He smells a lot like skunk. The office does, too.
“This is Gary,” Sean says.
“Gal,” the guy says. “Not Gary.”
Sean grunts, takes some folded papers out of his shirt pocket, and squints through all the small lines of text. Frowns. “Thought it was Gary.”
No apology, though, even through the long silence that follows. My mom would be pissed about that. Make it right, right now, she’d say if she was here. I wonder if Sean’s having difficulty with the weed smell. A pot smoker in charge. And if Gal is sensing Sean’s issue with his habits. Both of them tense, me dangling in the middle of all that awkwardness. Nothing to do until Gal speaks.
“So you have instructions for me?”
Sean grunts again and goes through his spiel, most of which I’ve heard before. This time he adds geofencing to the vocabulary, which I want to ask about but can’t because the two guys are busy moving through the rest of the formalities. They both have accents. Sean’s British and flat, Gal’s something else: stiff and kind of nasal, with strange vowels, rolled r’s, and crumbly consonants, like old cement.
Finally, Sean turns to me. “So that’s it, then. Stay busy, yeah?”
“Sure
.”
Sean walks out of the field house, leaving Gal and me to stand there for a few awkward moments. Gal gives me a quick once-over, head to toe, and waves me out.
“You are on your own, young man.”
“Will I see you while I’m —”
“I will not be checking up on you.”
Gal turns back to the tiny desk tucked against the wall and picks up his pen. The ratty office chair creaks a protest. Silence again. I feel forgotten already. Just me and my silly safety vest and a million acres of decaying trash.
“Is it gone?”
He turns his head, right ear exposed. “I am sorry?”
“The hearing. In the ear with the scars.”
“Yes.”
“How does a deaf dude get a job managing a park?”
It’s a rude question. That little voice inside is telling me so as I say it, but I’m annoyed enough at the situation to ignore it. Gal scowls, saying something about a million-dollar question. Then he tells me to fuck off and go pick up my garbage. No, really, he says that to me, like I’m somebody his own age and not a teenager he should watch his mouth around. “Feck off and go peck up yoorr rrruhbesh.”
BABY
I used to swear. A lot. Sharpening my tongue as soon as I left the house, savouring the taste of the perfect F-bomb, blending in with the other guys. Mom didn’t like it. She said it was going to get me in trouble. But after Windsor, those foul words started sounding empty. Puffed up without anything inside. So I stopped. The guys at my new school are just like the guys I left behind. Now that summer’s here, they must be blinding themselves with the swearing they can do. I don’t miss it. Jesse thinks swearing is a weakness. “It means you’ve run out of words — a poor substitute for substance,” he says. Or, he would say. I wonder if he still thinks about things.
“I feel like swearing now,” I say to the trees at the edge of the soccer field.