Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  “That’s the United States which has founding fathers.”

  “I am speaking about the Fathers of Confederation,” said Wallace without dropping a beat, “ who founded Canada. I’m not an idiot, Ben,” he added, looking at him steadily.

  “Of course not,” said Ben. “I didn’t mean to suggest you were.”

  “Well watch it, then,” said Wallace. If I hadn’t known he wouldn’t hurt a flea, I would’ve been alarmed.

  “Sorry.”

  Wallace resumed, all forgiven, “No, Ben, in terms of the democratic process, the only difference between me and the other candidates is that on the morning after the election, the people who vote for me will be five dollars richer.” He lifted the five dollar bill he was holding and snapped it in front of the camera.

  “But, Wallace, because it’s a private ballot, what is preventing the voter from only saying that he or she has voted for you, and then just taking your five dollars?”

  “The natural honour of Islanders,” said Wallace, shocked that it was even being called into question. Steely accusation crept into his gaze. “And if you are impugning Islanders by suggesting that we have no honour, then you’ll have to fight me first.” His steady gaze was now an open challenge.

  “I’m not,” said Ben. “I’m saying that some people might say that.”

  “Yeah? Well, give me their names, and I’ll fight them too.”

  “OK then. But, look….”

  Wallace dropped the accusatory tone again. “Ben, it’s like those serve-yourself potato stands you see around the Island. There is absolutely nothing to stop people from just taking the produce, but do they? No. There has never been one reported case of theft…until just this week where this honour system has been breached for the first time in our history, by an employee of the proposed park no less, someone already sucking on the government teat, excuse my French again, and who must have performed this heinous deed just for the fun of it, as he clearly has enough money, being a salaried employee as he is, paid by the government in power, that is, by us, the taxpayer.”

  “I see…”

  “His name is Barry Rattray, and he works at the Park Station…”

  Oh Jesus, I thought.

  “…He’s a longtime Conservative supporter, and a nephew of, well, I won’t even mention his name, the Conservative Candidate, which probably explains how he got the park job in the first place, an obvious patronage appointment where he pulls down a tidy little salary for doing precious little, and whose behaviour in this case is sadly typical of the arrogance of office, and is yet another reason why you should vote for me and receive your five dollars.”

  “I have ten seconds to wrap up.”

  “More than enough time to say that this brings us to the real problem with big projects like the park. They are simply using your money to hire more people to keep them in power, and whoever doesn’t believe that is probably on their payroll too. Who are you voting for, Ben?”

  “I…haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Well, vote for me, then. Remember, there’s five bucks in it for you.” He snapped the five dollar bill in front of the camera again and looked directly into the lens for his final statement. “At least you’ll be getting something back.”

  “Ben Malone, CBC News, Barrisway, Prince Edward Island. Back to you Keith.”

  “And…we’re…out,” said the cameraman.

  Wallace invited the cameraman and Ben Malone for a cup of tea but they said they had to go and cover a housefire in Georgetown. Wallace said, “But it’s Saturday,” and the cameraman said with a glint in his eye that that meant time-and-a-half, and started packing up.

  “Good job, everybody,” said Bailey. “And Ben, I’m impressed! You really know how to ask the tough questions.”

  “Just doing my job,” said Ben Malone, but you could see he was pleased at the compliment.

  “Sure you don’t want the five bucks?” said Wallace. “All you got to do is vote for me.”

  “Better not.”

  “Well, take these anyway.” And Wallace handed them each a bottle of scotch. They departed amid more thanks, and everybody moved up onto the porch and into the kitchen.

  “Nice work, Wallace,” said Bailey. “I liked your jab at that Rattray guy. It shows you’ve got the killer instinct.”

  “I only said I saw him lurking around the stand is all,” I said.

  “Oh, it was Rattray all right who stole the potatoes,” said Wallace. “Who else?”

  “No question,” said Robbie.

  So I told myself that I had made my protest and was therefore absolved from blame. I didn’t feel good about what I had done, but I did feel empowered. Real things actually happen, for real reasons, and if you look at them honestly you can sometimes find real answers, but I found it liberating, this idea that you can change the way reality is perceived and actually win, not just observe and record. Mere truth seemed like an impediment on the way to affecting the world. Part of me suspected that I was taking a step down a dangerous path, but even that danger made me feel more alive and alert.

  And anyhow, Rattray may not have deserved this precise injustice, but he certainly deserved something. It was his fault if he behaved in a manner which caused people to spread false rumours about him.

  “When did they say it’d be broadcast?” said Melissa.

  “Tonight at six o’clock,” said Bailey. “Now, pep talk, everybody. Gather around.” We did. “I think we can say that the campaign is now officially under way, and a most auspicious beginning it has been indeed.” His shaved head oddly complimented his perfectly-pressed suit. “Our job now is to continue to get the news out. And how are we to get the news out, team?”

  “By any means available,” said Melissa as if she was being examined for a test.

  “Including?”

  “Letters to the editor, press releases to the media. Television, radio, print.”

  “Don’t forget personal encounters. Wallace? You up for it?”

  “Where do I start?”

  Bailey unfolded a roadmap onto the kitchen table. “This map shows Barrisway riding, which I’ve squared off in a grid. I want you to go door-to-door and complete one square every day. Strictly one-on-one. I’m going to save your public speechifying for the debate.”

  “What debate?”

  “The all-candidates debate at the Barrisway Legion, two weeks from now, to be broadcast live on the radio. The main thing is to concentrate on talking to everybody you run into until then, so when you do go onstage, they’ll be on your side. Let people know you.”

  “But, what do I say?” said Wallace.

  “No hard-sell. Just invite them to our big picnic.”

  “What big picnic?”

  “The one we’re planning.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “When?”

  “Next Saturday. Now, Wallace, how does this riding break down?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How are people divided?”

  “Same as the rest of PEI,” said Wallace. “There’s a line between the Irish, the Scottish and the French, and also between Catholic and Protestant, though that’s less of a problem now. Indians and White, too, I suppose, though the Indians don’t seem to vote a lot.”

  “Can’t imagine why not, having benefited so much from European democracy… Anyhow, what are you?”

  “Scottish Catholic.”

  “So, everything else being equal, can you count on the Scottish Catholic constituency?”

  “Och aye,” said Wallace.

  “Great, but can you count on them.”

  “What? To vote for me?”

  “Not even that yet. Just to hear you out.”

  “That depends on what family.”

  “So the real division
s are along family lines.”

  “I see. Yes, I suppose.”

  “Kind of like New Hampshire, then. Melissa, get the PEI phone book from Robbie, then both of you list the twenty most numerous family names. All right. Who was the next you mentioned? French? How many in our riding?”

  “Not many who actually speak it, but quite a few families claim a connection. Arsenaults, Gallants, Chiassons. Anybody with a name like that.”

  “What about the married-intos?”

  “The who?”

  “If a French woman married, say, an Irishman, she’d take his name.”

  “Oh. Like my grandmother. She was a Taillefer.”

  “Really? Well, you can use that.”

  “How?”

  “Stress it when you’re in a situation where there are any French. Come on, Wallace, catch up.”

  “Sorry. I never really thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it now.”

  “OK then.”

  “Who’s next? Irish?”

  “No Irish in me that I know of.”

  “So how do we make a connection?”

  “Give them free booze?”

  “Which is exactly the type of thing you should refrain from saying in this campaign.”

  “You mean, ‘just the type of low ethnic slur we’ve come to expect from my opponent, and the kind of thing that our Irish brothers and sisters, fellow Celts, have had to endure after having contributed so much to Island culture…’”

  “Exactly.”

  “…Like drinking,” he added.

  “Wallace…”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not stupid.”

  “Since when?” said Robbie.

  “People! Focus!” said Bailey. “So the question is, how do we include the Irish?”

  “How about getting The Barley Boys to perform at the picnic?”

  “Who?”

  “Irish band. Big around here.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “Not really…”

  “OK. I’ll look into it. Make a note, Melissa. And can we get a liquor license for the scotch?”

  “Don’t need a license if you just give it away, do you?”

  “Could always use more funds though. Robbie, can you check on that?”

  “Yep.”

  “Right. So. Picnic. Debate, and door-to-door. Ready?”

  “I guess so,” said Wallace.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Bailey. “Just act natural.”

  But Wallace looked a little more weighted down now, feeling the new burden of his responsibilities, and the speed with which things were happening. “How do you do that?” I heard him say under his breath. “You either are natural, or you’re acting.”

  ***

  “Six o’clock,” said Melissa. We gathered around the TV and Robbie frittered with the tin-foil on the coat hanger that acted as an antenna. “Here we are!”

  And we all watched. At the end of the item everybody applauded and Wallace bowed politely. He looked good on TV, substantial.

  “Nice the way your underwear was crawling up outside your pants,” said Robbie.

  “What can I say?” said Wallace. “I have the common touch.”

  “And maybe you shouldn’t pick your nose on air.”

  “I was scratching my nose.”

  “Looked like you were p-p-picking it.”

  “I’ll pick your nose,” said Wallace, throwing an arm around Brucie’s neck and getting him into a headlock.

  I had been preserving the hope that they might have edited out the Rattray comment, but no chance. In fact, it turned out to be the most effective moment in the interview, Wallace looking directly into the camera with an accusatory glare like a contestant in the World Wide Wrestling Federation issuing a challenge to his sworn enemy. He clearly enunciated Rattray’s name too, unmistakably. The only thing he’d left out was his address and telephone number.

  So it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when later, just as I was leaving for the night, Brucie hung up the phone in the other room, re-entered the kitchen and took centre floor.

  “Rattray’s been b-beaten up!”

  “Who by?”

  “Toe and G-Gump, I heard.”

  “Bad?”

  “He’s in the hospital, b-b-but nothing permanent.”

  “Well, you can’t say he didn’t deserve it,” said Wallace. “Stealing from their stand!”

  “He k-k-keeps saying he didn’t d-do anything.”

  “Weasel.”

  “Should beat him up again for refusing to admit it.”

  “Serve him right.”

  “The prick.”

  It would have been better if he had actually stolen the potatoes, because now that he had been punished for it unjustly, the moral high ground was shifting disturbingly to his side. Uncontrolled forces were being unleashed, and for the first time in my life I felt the insecurity of power. You lash out with one end of the long-staff and the other end hits you in the nose.

  I started back to my camp, picking up my weapons on the other side of the dune. The moonlight was bright enough to allow me to see if Rattray was lurking somewhere in the woods, but of course he was in the hospital tonight. Good, I thought, he deserved it, then I tried again to unravel exactly how. It went back to when I first saw him, when I suggested he was a pervert, although I hadn’t really…No, before that. When he was mocking Brucie’s stammer, no, even before that, when he told me to get off the dunes… Oh, who cared? Rattray had, after all, threatened me, sort of, on the beach, with what might have been attempted rape.

  And it made me feel better that I had potentially found something that put him in the wrong. As long as that was the case I didn’t have to think about the confusing grey area of the “theft” and the beating I had initiated. It also crossed my mind that I shouldn’t feel good that he was in the wrong because surely something bad should not make me feel good…

  Everything was mixed up. For instance, Robbie and Melissa were gay, but they were nice, while Rattray was gay, but a horse’s ass. Did this mean that all gay men were horse’s asses and gay women nice? It couldn’t be that simple, but if people didn’t fall into recognizable categories it was going to make life a lot more difficult. It should be like The Field Guide To The Birds. If the tail of the swallow is forked, then it is a barn swallow. If it is boxy and square, then it is the cliff swallow. You knew where you stood. With the Things of Man, though, it seemed that good and bad, right and wrong were not as easy to separate.

  And then an even more confusing possibility occurred to me, that everybody had both good and bad in them, and in varying amounts. But that would mean that Rattray was not all bad, which, oddly, I found even more disturbing. Also, the fact that I did find it disturbing made me bad (or partly bad) and how was I to know whether my bad outweighed my good…

  I quickly grew tired of all this moral hair-splitting, and as if I was turning a channel to a crappy show on television, I turned my mind to the movie I was constructing in my imagination where I stood over Rattray’s prone and wounded body and in an unemotional tough-guy voice recited to him the Canadian Bill of Rights. “No person shall detain….” and the camera tracked back and faded out.

  7

  The weather the next morning was like the weather on Jupiter. I lay inside the crazily flapping tent, watching from underneath shadows of raindrops blowing upwards across the stretched vinyl of the roof, like isopods under the microscope.

  The mad weather had gotten into my dreams, only parts of which I could recall fleetingly, flashes of dread where I was looking at the beach from the ocean, unable to stop drifting away from the shore.

  Something else was bothering me too, and this was at least more identifiable. When I thought of that encounter with Rattray on the beach
, it occurred to me that I had never knowingly been the object of desire, and it gave me a sudden sharp insight into what it must be like to be an attractive woman. I had an acute and embarrassing memory-glimpse of what my behaviour towards Claire must have been like from her point of view and I whimpered out loud, then chewed the corner of my knapsack until I stopped thinking about it.

  I stuck my head outside my tent. Contrary winds shook the spruce trees and waves slapped the shore as if they were angry at it. Two crows were blown across a blustery grey sky, feathers ruffled backwards. I rose and ate one raw potato for breakfast and washed it down with water. It occurred to me that if I could describe the contradictions I was feeling, I could stand outside them and see them for what they were, but the rational methods of science no longer seemed able to do the job. The most meaningful line in my beach report yesterday was when I quoted “Deep, Deep in My Heart,” so I should write something like that, and to hell with science. Clearly the pain and confusion that I was feeling had given me a unique insight into the Fall of Man, Innocence and Experience, and Man’s Inhumanity to Man, all of which I would delineate once and for all in a great work of literature, a huge and heavy novel perhaps which any number of publishers would sob with regret for having rejected when it was finally released to unparalleled acclaim.

  But that implied the possibility of future success, so perhaps a long epic poem would be better, arcane and grandiose, comprehensible only to teams of scholars who would dedicate their lives to its study. The mysterious woman in these verses, part Dark Lady of the Sonnets and part Dante’s Beatrice, would never be named, and entire university departments would be set up to crack the almost impenetrable code of my language and discover her identity. By virtue of being read only by the worthy few, this poem would slowly become an undisputed classic, but only long after I was dead. Then she’d be sorry.

  Under a turbulent sky, I walked up the road and into the front yard of the MacAkerns’, mounted the porch and scowled into the kitchen.