The Journey Prize Stories 23

by Alexander Macleod; Alison Pick; Sarah Selecky

  Those nights in our basement Rick didn’t talk, which was weird because before he was always putting different complicated plans together like a football coach. He didn’t even want to play cards, and usually he hated it when he didn’t have any beers to drink but now he didn’t seem to care. He did lots of push-ups and went to bed early.

  Then one day right after lunch the important fat guy with the hat who I found out was the Assisting Director came into our waiting room and told us finally that they needed us. This was how the movie people talked, they always said they needed something when, from as far as I could tell, they more just wanted it. He said they were going to need to have this big explosion in the middle of a street that they had closed down. Then he said he was going to need some people to lead our charge and he started looking around the room. Rick made himself taller and put on his helmet. You, the Assisting Director said to Rick, and you and you, to some other people. Come with me, he said, and they went to the other side of the room. I was happy he didn’t pick me because I was worried about tripping over my rags and ruining the movie, but then I was scared I would do something even more stupid without Rick there to tell me it was stupid.

  Then the Halifax guy came to the rest of us and told us our motivator, which is like our reason for living. He said we were these hungry, starving people who were trying to get into where some space stuff was so we could take over the spaceships and get back to our planet where there was lots of food and it was also the place where our families lived. It made no sense to me but I looked over at Rick and now that he was one of the leaders he was taking it really serious. I need you to think starving, Halifax guy said to my group and I saw a lady suck in her cheeks. I’d been hungry lots of times in the past, like the time when Rick lost all our money on the way home from the bar or when we had to send money to Rick’s dying sister in Halifax, or when we had to buy extra things like our bikes, which Rick got off this guy he knew and were really expensive because they are some of the best racing bikes you can buy. So I just tried to focus on those times but it was hard to believe in my motivator and think starving right after three plates from the lunch truck.

  After somebody came to make sure our costumes looked good enough, they took us through some hallways then out side to a street that they’d made to look all burned and wrecked like something really, really bad had happened. There were trucks and movie stuff everywhere. I could see five different cameras and there were tons of people standing around like on the edges of a football field.

  They had us wait around more. Then the Director started talking into one of those loud-talking horns. Okay everybody we are only going to do this one time, he said. He was sitting up high on a crane. Someone came and told me to stand in a place. There were lots of us and everybody got their own place. I tried to see Rick but I couldn’t see him.

  Then all of a sudden I heard Action! and we were all running in a big pack and someone was yelling GoGoGoGo. I was trying not to fall down and my heart was beating like one of those loud things that breaks up the pavement and I started to get a cramp from all of the food that was bouncing around in my belly. A woman ahead of me screamed and tripped over her big stick that had a bird skull at the top and I had to jump over her because if I helped her up I thought I would ruin the movie. Then there was this loud boom behind us and I felt heat go on my ears. I turned and saw the whole front of a building go on fire and there was little bits of stufff lying everywhere and all I could think was that I hoped Rick was okay.

  It was the farthest I ever ran and I was almost passing out because my cramp hurt so bad when the Director said cut and they brought us back to the waiting room. Then they got us to take off our costumes and said thanks very much for your time and told us they didn’t need us anymore. My legs were still shaking while I went looking for Rick. I walked around for an hour until I saw him still wearing his costume talking with the Halifax guy and the fat Assisting Director over by the trailers.

  You can’t go in there, a guy with a clipboard said.

  In where? I said.

  Over there, he said.

  So I just biked home.

  It had been a few days and I was waiting for the sound of the back gate when Baldev came down the stairs followed by the smell of his country’s kind of food that Rick hates but as far as I can tell smells really good, like the lunch truck.

  This has come for you, he said, holding out a letter with the government’s picture on it. I opened it but I didn’t understand what it said because my disabled brain makes it so that I can’t read.

  Is this from girlfriend? Baldev said, making his big boobs. Let me tell you, Baldev loves big boobs. He puts his hands out in front of his chest to show just how big of boobs he means, which is really, really big. Then he looks down at the boobs and squeezes them. He admires them like he would even settle for having big boobs himself if he ever got the chance. This is maybe the one thing him and Rick agree about.

  No, I said, but louder so that he could understand. Baldev, can you read this for me?

  Baldev dropped his boobs and took the letter. He saw the government picture at the top and said, No, no, this is not near to my business. Then he went back upstairs.

  I sat on a chair trying to make myself read. Once I got a letter from them saying they were going to send somebody to check out whether I was still disabled and see if I could work. After Rick read it out loud, he ripped it up and said there was no way in hell me or my brain was ever going to get better and that they were the ones who needed their heads checked. Then he said something like he always says about how mean the whole world is. Then we sat down and drank beers and felt better. But nobody from welfare ever came, which was good because we didn’t want them to see the beers or that the basement was a basement. Now I was worried this letter was another one of those and that maybe this time they really were going to come. I stayed up all night listening to the furnace.

  Rick didn’t come back the next day or the next. I got hungry and couldn’t stop my brain from thinking about the food truck. I wondered if it was still there, because if I could dress up in some old rags and furs again and sneak back, just once, I knew I could eat enough to last me at least a week. Or how maybe they moved the trucks to some other movie somewhere else, and I thought about riding my bike all the way up to Broadway to where Rick said the rich people lived, looking for movie stuff like cranes and things blowing up. But I was too tired. I could have got some emergency money from my worker, Linda, but the letter made me afraid they’d found out I was working as an extra person and they would kick me off like Rick or stick me in jail. I didn’t even know where the good dumpster with the donuts in it was because I always just followed Rick.

  Then early one morning I woke up to a noise I thought was rats. I turned the light on and saw Rick going through his boxes of stuff.

  Oh, hi, he said.

  Where you been? I said.

  He sat in a chair and leaned his head way back like somebody was washing his hair, and it sounded like he had a cold because he was sniffing lots. I saw he was wearing different shoes and a different coat. They looked new.

  Then all of a sudden Rick started talking, not excited like he usually did but still staring up at the boards that I guess were actually holding up Baldev’s floor, and even with my bad smell I noticed Rick smelled like lots of beers. He said that after they picked him to be a leader of the future, they gave him a laser rifle that he was sup posed to fire at the star. What if you hit him? I asked, and he shut his eyes, blew air out his nose, and said they were going to add the laser beam later. Then Rick said when the Director yelled action and he started running, his helmet slipped over his eyes and he accidentally turned and crashed into the big star right before the huge explosion. He said he was in the only camera angle that they really needed so they had no choice, they had to give him a bigger part in the movie so it didn’t seem weird that he was there.

  Does that mean our cheques will be bigger? I said.

&n
bsp; He said he guessed it did.

  Then I asked when we’d get them because I was hungry.

  Not yet, he said.

  Oh, I said.

  It’s just like stew, he said. You have to wait. You get impatient.

  I asked him if he had any money for us to go get burgers or make something on the hotplate.

  No, he said, but there was food and beers at the wrap party. He took a half a sandwich out of his pocket and gave it to me. Is that where you got those clothes? Were they presents from the wrap party? I asked. I was eating the sandwich as slow as I could, picking pocket fluff from my mouth. Yeah, he said. Then he got up and said he would go right then and find out where our cheques were.

  I asked him if he could read my letter first.

  He grabbed it out of my hand and read it really fast.

  It’s fine, he said, doesn’t mean anything.

  There’s more on the back, I said.

  He flipped it and read the back. It’s still fine, he said.

  Does it mean they know? I said. That I’m not disabled anymore?

  No, he said, and started throwing his things into some grocery bags, but none of his important stuff. And you are still goddamn disabled, he said. It just means they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.

  Good, I said.

  Then he dropped the bags and put his hands on his face.

  You don’t have to work anymore, it ain’t right for you to, he said.

  Especially if it’s shit work, I said. Like being extra.

  He stood there covering his face for a little bit, breathing weird, and I knew he was really angry because when he took his hands away his face was red and there were veins in it like a bunch of blue candy worms. But then he just gave me a long hug that squeezed my breath and left.

  The good part about living with someone is you can sit there and look at their stuff and know they have to come back sometime to get it. He’d left the hot plate and his steeled-toe boots. Sure, he’d taken the pictures of the rotten witch, but he’d left most of his clothes and his favorite baseball cap. I checked outside and he’d left his racing bike, which made me feel even better.

  After cleaning the place up a bit I sat for a while on my hunk of foam. I already forgave Rick for getting mad at me because I called his new extra job shit work. He liked to get mad sometimes for bad reasons, so I decided I’d just have to not talk about it ever again and it would be okay. Then I folded up the disabled letter as small as it would go and tried to throw it in the garbage but I missed. I was thinking about how, after working as an extra person from the future for so long, it was like I was becoming a professional waiter, and how that now I could wait for pretty well anything as long as I knew it was coming. I thought about how long it would take for my belly to eat the sandwich Rick gave me, and about how long it would be before my disabled brain wouldn’t be able to stop me from following the smell of Baldev’s wife’s food up the stairs and knocking on their door. I didn’t know how long that would be.

  MIRANDA HILL

  PETITIONS TO SAINT CHRONIC

  Twenty-four storeys straight down and what else to call it but miracle? Twenty-four storeys and not a scratch on him: that would be a miracle for sure. But twenty-four storeys and massive internal hemorrhage, broken spine, complete loss of consciousness, and drugs to sedate him if he ever does come out of it – that’s Gibson.

  Carlos tells me not to quibble. Says everyone receives God’s gifts – some of us just don’t recognize them. But Gibson will believe.

  Micheline is planning on making Gibson a better man. She tells us he will look fine in a well-cut suit, silk tie, polished shoes. Micheline calls Gibson “pure potential.”

  Carlos says that’s denying what Gibson is already. “He doesn’t need to ascend. The last shall be first. He is the least of us, and he is loved.”

  The cleaner mopping the floor past our orange vinyl chairs out by the elevator bank, down the hall from the ICU, says, “Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed. If this guy doesn’t die I’ll lose my faith in Darwin.”

  A nurse in green scrubs comes around the corner, down the long hall, and past the sign that says, “ICU. Visitors must be signed in.” She nods to another nurse at the reception desk and presses the down button beside the elevator. Her eyes are all apology. “Only next of kin,” she says. We’ve heard that for days, but no family is coming for Gibson. It’s just Carlos, Micheline, and me. Twenty-four storeys, and we three strangers are all he’s got.

  Each of us saw Gibson on the all-day news. The reporter had hair that was blowing in the mild summer breeze. He tried to hold our attention. Even before we turned the sound up, his face said, “The world is full of peril, but I will lead you through in my pressed linen shirt.” But the camera wanted to follow Gibson, small like a bug in the corner of the screen. It loved him as we loved him. It was hard to tell what the crowd was chanting, but the volume seemed to rise as Gibson stretched his arms out like a conductor. Then he stepped into the air and fell.

  The day that Gibson was brought in, a reporter outside Emergency asked Micheline how long she had known Gibson. “I am not his past,” she said. “I am his future.” She spelled her name, but the reporter didn’t write it down. I asked her to spell it again. “It’s French,” she said. “One l.”

  By the time Carlos got there, most of Emergency was empty. Just a broken arm and chest pains and a couple of reporters using the pay phones because the nurses wouldn’t let them use their cells. But by then the shifts had changed and Micheline and I weren’t making any trouble. We could have been waiting there for anyone.

  Carlos must have come straight from the garage because he was still in coveralls with a Ford insignia and oil down the front, but he was wearing a thick gold cross and carrying a Bible. He burst through the swinging doors, then stood in the middle of the waiting room as if he had suddenly lost his way.

  “Where can I find the man who fell?” he called out, and the nurse closed the little glass partition between her and the rest of us.

  “Hey, Father Ford!” said the Floor Guy.

  “I am not a priest. I am a supplicant.”

  “Yeah? Well you’re standing in my pile.”

  Micheline waved her hand in Carlos’s direction as if she were wafting away someone else’s cigarette smoke. But I lifted up my bag and made a spot for him on the seat beside me.

  The doctors give their reports to the media. The media relay them. We arrange our morning meeting place – on the bench outside, where the families of the patients go to smoke – and read the reports. The photographs show Gibson to be dark haired with skin like wax paper over veins of sea weed sprawl. We hold the papers on our knees as we drink coffee that I have brought from the all-night diner one block away. It is too early for the cafeteria to be open.

  We turn the pages back. Carlos says Gibson is pale so that the light can shine through him. Micheline says he needs a little more sun. She will take him to Florida, she says, when he is well enough to stand the drive. To me, he looks as vulnerable as those girls in high school whose hips jutted up against the pocket rivets of their jeans. The ones everyone always tiptoed around: a fracture waiting to happen. The world pressed in closer on those among us who were cushioned by flesh, as if that offered sufficient protection. Despite the skin and the veins, Gibson has hands that look big and capable. They look like hands that could have hung on. But there are things you can’t know from looking.

  The first time my husband hit me, we were in the bathroom, so it was hard to tell whether the darker bruise was from Cy’s hand or from the edge of the sink I hit going down. I felt across the floor to see if I would find blood, but the tiles were dry. When I pulled myself up, I held onto the vanity and stood in front of the mirror as long as I could. The red was spreading under my skin, my cheek and my forehead swelling. It looked like it should hurt. I couldn’t even remember Cy’s fist on me. It was as if something had pushed its way out from the inside like a latent ca
ncer. “This is how I look as a beaten woman,” I said. I tried it on like a uniform, and felt it settle on me like something I was always meant to wear.

  Micheline says it must have been a woman that crushed Gibson’s spirit. Carlos says, “Why does everyone always think that only women hold such power? There are other things that can destroy a man.”

  Carlos is worried about what will happen if he is at work when Gib son comes to, when they finally allow him a visitor. “Will you tell him God is love?” he asks me. “Will you tell him for me?”

  Micheline says that when he wakes up we will give him the choice of the two of us, confident that he will select her. I could play along, tell her I want a man who is already dismantled, so I don’t have to do the job myself or stand by and watch it happen. That I plan to buy us matching T-shirts that will announce our condition: Damaged. That when we walk, people will hear what is left of us rattle.

  But to each of them I let my smile answer for me. Let them believe what they will. I am not interested in his recovery. You can sew a body up again, but that doesn’t make it whole.

  Outside Ultrasound no one asks any questions and they have a good TV. While we wait for the press conference to begin, Micheline and I flip through celebrity magazines and she passes on old gossip about washed-up stars. Micheline tells me she has been a child actress, a cartoon voice, a hit songwriter. She makes enough from her songs to never work again, except for licensing the rights to ad agencies for commercials. She tells me I would know these songs if she hummed them, but she doesn’t take requests. Now she is more of a scout, she says.