by JN Lenz
This coming from a town chalk full of small c conservative and red neck inhabitants with little in the way of higher education. To stand starkly against this crowd of mainly uneducated blue collar workers required a special kind of idiot. Skip Drexler was certainly special, just not in too many good ways. He beat Clyde’s mother on several occasions. The beatings usually the result of her many sexual partners, which became the worst kept secret in town. In all fairness Clyde’s mother was a whore and a drug addict.
Flo realized early in her marriage to Skip, that his alcoholism would seriously hinder his sexual capabilities. Not to mention the cost of his addiction seriously affected her ability to purchase cocaine for herself. To counter this lack of funds, Flo Drexler began earning additional monies to quench her own addictions. Flo Drexler accomplished this feat on her back, knees, feet, or toes, word was any sex act her paying customers requested of her was doable. Invariably, these extra marital sexual encounters by Flo perpetually became a hotly contested topic almost every time Skip was drunk and Flo was high, which was normally more days than not.
Flo’s indiscretions were hardly a secret, amongst the fifteen thousand residents of small town Parsons. Had it not been for the continuous influx of miners and loggers being flown out of the local airport to the far northern reaches of the Province, Flo’s business plan may never have hit the sheets. In town for a couple of days between work assignments which often lasted weeks in isolated work camps, these horny drunk workers became her life line to the Cocaine she craved.
The towns male residents would not dare to get caught in the perilous clutch of one Flo Drexler, either in their car or near one of the local motels, for fear of serving as instant fodder for the local gossip mill. As frequent a visitor to the local watering holes as her alcoholic husband Skip, more than once Flo was leaving through the back door with a new “client”. All the while her whiskey starved husband was entering the bar at the front. If Skip had ever seen her leaving as he entered you would never have known, Skip Drexler had only one thing on his mind when he entered a bar and Flo Drexler was never it.
From the outside my family and house portrayed a starkly different view to the town of Parsons than that of the Drexler’s. To a casual passerby or to the residents of Parsons our house appeared as a typical middle class residence found across Canada or America. Our house sat on the west side of Wessinger Avenue in what would be considered the better side of town by most. The Schysmitt’s lived in a well-kept house where the grass was always cut and the gardens remained manicured at all times, the exterior of the two story colonial style design finished in stone and brick.
The old man always made sure I kept the lawn cut and ensured the shrubs were always trimmed, Otto owned a small steel fabrication business on the main street of town. Known throughout town as a hard worker, he generally kept to himself; in fact Otto and his wife Greta were rarely seen in social circles or community functions. That was aside from the Catholic Sunday Mass every week, which they never missed. Keeping the residents of town at an arm’s length distance, Otto feared intrusive questions about his past may arise, should he become too close to any of the local towns people.
The steel fabrication business allowed Otto to be cordial to the locals, without the need to disclose personal questions concerning his past life in Germany. The life Otto had lived before coming to Canada, the one that he intended to keep secret. To the town and the government, Otto Schysmitt was nothing more than a German immigrant, one of the thousands that arrived on the shores of North America in the year 1949.
To the world the real Herr Wurst had died in the final days of the war, he had never arrived on the docks of Halifax July24, 1949. Instead it would be Otto Schysmitt and his wife that arrived on the shores of Canada, with a trunk full of stolen jewelry and silver, in search of a fresh start. The precious metals, stolen bounty acquired from the front line, during the blitz kreig on Holland and France. The valuables stashed away amongst the trunks of cloths, the sale of this stolen bounty providing a new home and a new life in the small town of Parsons.
During the Second World War Otto had been an active member for the SS, as a member of one of the much feared death squads. The discovery of Herr Wurst’s true identity would have resulted in his immediate deportation back to Germany. Once convicted, there would be years of imprisonment in his native land. Otto would escape from the American military investigators, who had searched out the Nazi’s at the wars end. The escape made possible by his murder of a young private in the army; the man possessed a striking physical resemblance to my father, Herr Wurst.
It was the murder of the private had allowed Herr Wurst to remain free of scrutiny, free from the new world order and that of The Hague war trails following the end of the war. This young private’s name was Otto Schysmitt, a guard at the death camps of Belize. The young private would receive a single bullet to the back of the head, compliments of Herr Wurst’s Lugar. This would be the young man’s reward for his contribution to the war effort for the Fatherland; his body was discarded inside the death camp wearing the officer’s uniform, medals and identification papers of Herr Wurst.
Private Otto Schysmitt would flee the camp along with several of the recently enlisted; there was the secret loft he had rented in the city Munich. It would be here that he would wait with Greta for the final days of the war to end. Since they had yet to be married, Greta believed there was nothing to fear from her connection with Herr Wurst. Having always used her maiden name, there had been no official connection to her soon to be Nazi husband’s real name.
Otto would work for a local Siemens factory, within a few years my old man was able to secure a visa for the voyage across the Atlantic to Canada. Not wanting to draw attention to the couple, Otto dare not attempt to cash in any of the stolen bounty while residing in Europe. This had been one of many resources the American investigators who sought out the Nazi’s had used to track war criminals following the end of the war. On this side of the Atlantic, the sale of heirlooms by European immigrants was less scrutinized.
Selling the stolen bounty on this side of the Atlantic would be far less risky for Otto Schysmitt than in his native homeland. Additionally there was far more cash available in North America than in Europe, following the Second World War. Here in Canada these stolen items remained far away from the prying eyes of The Hague and the war crimes tribunals. The old man would use the stolen proceeds of the war to purchase a small shop on the main street of Parsons turning the vacant building into a metal fabrication shop. Metal fabrication being a trade that Otto had developed on the factory floor of Siemens following the end of the war. The metal and machine shop would provide a steady income for my father who the town knew as Otto Schysmitt.
That outside would not know the real Otto Schysmitt, and how his country’s humiliating defeat in the war still dogged him. He vented his anger around the house through his bitterness. His every response always had that twinge of arrogance, that smug response that I just wanted to shove back down his throat.
“If only there had not been two, rather than three fronts” the asshole would muse after a couple of glasses of whiskey. Mumbling about the
“What if’s” and the” if only”.
Yaa “what if”, I always used to think.
“We’d all be living in a fucking concentration camp you crazed asshole!”
I soon gave up on voicing my view, by the way, it’s not true, opposites don’t attract. The three of us were as opposite as could be, and I loathed them.
Otto would argue infinitely on several topics within his vast knowledge, but only inside the confines of his own home. There was no changing this conviction within the man, he ate and shit the propaganda that had been shoveled down his throat in his youth, like a swine to the trough. The man ended up living the very “work makes you free” shit they lied to the world about, he died no more than a common laborer.
Though by no means could you compare the conditions of my upbringing, with
those of Clyde’s. Without question the pair of us loathed our parents, to be fair Clyde had good reason for the way he despised his parents.
I moved out of the “folks” house on June twelfth, nineteen eighty four, following the end of grade twelve, I never went back.
The old man called me once, after my mother died.
I never went.
I couldn’t see the point, I hadn’t talked to her since I moved out, so what the point. Return now for someone that was dead?
To me they both died the day I walked out that door.
Clyde Drexler had been a natural born hunter (or killer as I used to joke) for as long as I could remember. He had a riffle in his hands, whenever we spent time together in the bush, for as long back as I can remember. The fact was, it had been the only thing of any value his piece of shit father ever passed along to his son. That small transfer of knowledge on hunting to his son was incidental at that. With the vast majority of the family’s income being consumed by alcohol and cocaine, funds for food appropriation took a definitive back seat in the Drexler house. Skip’s answer in supplementing the cash required to purchase groceries in the typical fashion (at a grocery store) would be to hunt wild game to provide food for the family.
Take away the liquor and the cigarettes and the Drexler grocery cart would barely contain the basics, bread, milk, crackers, tomato soup and Kraft Mac. Everything else was shot or foraged from the surrounding forests of Parsons. Skip paid little notice of local or federal game and fishery laws, he would hunt and fish year around, with no regard for the wildlife sustainability of the surrounding forests and lakes. If he needed to shoot out of season, he went deep enough into the woods so not to be heard, or he hunted with a bow.
Skip also trapped illegally in the winter months, usually on government owned crown land. During spring and fall fishing spawns he would use nets across the rivers, his boundaries were few. The nets used to snare the trout as they made their way up the rivers to spawn. Skip would bow hunt deer year around to avoid detection, no-one could hear a bow being fired, butchering the animals deep in the bush, often using the darkness of night to remove the dismembered animals from the bush.
There was one occasion when he downed a deer right in the city limits of Parsons. Drunk as shit, he still killed the animal clean with one shot as the doe made its way across a local town park. Skip would make Clyde go and gut the deer, right there in the middle of Hollister Park; he then dragged it back to the house at 3AM in the morning.
“Thank Shit the damn thing was a small doe” snorted a pissed off Clyde. The next morning, his shirt still covered in the deer’s blood, he would explain the previous night’s events to me back in the hidden trailer. It was only during the hunting with his father, would he describe the time he spent with Skip in any kind of likeable manner. Apart from those times, any discussion in which Clyde mentioned either of his parents; it would be in less than a favorable light
As a child, Clyde was always included in Skip’s hunting adventures. Skip would hunt drunk or sober and Clyde would be expected to fetch the fallen birds that had been shot, or gut the deer that Skip would fall. The early exposure and experience in the bush meant that Clyde developed innate hunting and bush skills at a very young age. Where Skip and Clyde differed vastly was in their views and respect of Nature. For Clyde the bush and the earth was akin to a church altar, to be respected and worshipped. For Skip the bush, and the ground below it were there for him to exploit and rape, regardless of his actions or consequences on the land, and wild life contained within it.
Through it all, Clyde developed into an outstanding hunter with both a rifle and a bow. By the age of twelve Clyde was a master shot, he began to hunt free from his abusive and narcissist father. Not too long after that he would begin to supply the Drexler house, with all the meat they could consume. From rabbit to deer, when Clyde wasn’t hunting he’d be fishing. Normally that would be with me, with Clyde usually catching twice the amount of fish that I ever could. His skills in attracting fish matched by his abilities in the bush, where he could walk, track, and observe animals so carefully he could sneak up on them. Occasionally, Clyde would even sneak into farmer’s coupes and steal chickens, breaking their necks faster than they could cluck away to safety.
That’s no shit either, it’s like he just lulls them in somehow.
By the seventh grade his abilities grew to slicing young pig’s throats, before sliding off silently into the night with their carcass slung over his shoulder.
That was Clyde’s first job I guess, using the old ban saw located in the back corner of the cluttered basement of the family home, cutting the various meats he would bring home. In time, Clyde would sell some of the roasts and ribs to neighbors for pocket money.
I never had a stomach for any of the hunting. Once fifty years ago, he had forced me to kill a goose out past Bass Lake. The pair of us had been out with his twenty two caliber gun, shooting the heads of any yard gnomes people had placed in their back yard gardens. We came across a group of Geese, they were milling around the gentle slope that led to the water’s edge.
“Why the fuck you never shoot anything”
Clyde would chirp at me, this after I had already refused his initial offer of the gun to shoot one of the birds. On that cool fall day, we had both been taking turns blasting road signs, gnomes and anything that looked shot worthy. We spent that morning wandering around with our pockets full of shells, shooting anything that looked interesting. Clyde’s obsession with guns resulted in me also being handy with a rifle and a good shot at a young age.
For me the preferred targets would not include anything that was living. To hang out with Clyde was to always have a gun, knife, bow or fishing rod with you at all times. As a boy he lived and loved the outdoors equally as much as he hated being at home.
“I shot the pecker and the eyes off every one of my mom’s dwarfs”
“Fucking dwarfs, please, you are such a fag, not a dwarf or a fake deer or a wooden bird asshole the real thing this time. Look they are waddling away from you, take the shot before they take off”
“Eat shit you dick. I fish, I don’t need, or want to hunt or shoot anything alive for that matter. Other than you, I should shoot you, you prick” I laughed in response hoping he would drop the whole thing. I should have known better than to expect that to happen.
“No really let’s go see how good a shot you are, take a shot at that big prick right there and we can cook him up for supper tonight?”
“Sure let’s go down and get a little closer”. Hoping the walk through the bush and down towards the gentle slope would make him change his mind, or scare the birds off into the sky far ahead of us.
Unfortunately I was sadly disappointed as we crested the last hill, before we made the descent down to the natural blind. The cover was made up of cedar thickets which would reach to the water’s edge. The blind would shelter our view from the birds; the view from behind the cedars displayed the entire pond and slope to the two of us. The area still brimmed with both ducks and geese.
“Easy pickens today even for a fag like you, here take the gun”
. “With this many birds how hard could it be”
I replied coolly even though my gut began to churn, a killer I was not. Clyde led the way to a small opening on the near side of the pond, closest to the small waterfall. It was from here that he waved me over to the place I should take the shot. The cover was dense, and the sound of the small waterfall that ran into the lake eliminated any sounds as we crept into position.
Clyde, like his father, paid little attention to only firing on fowl when in season. There was also little regard in waiting for the birds to take to the air. Frequently they simply blasted away before the birds had a chance to take flight.
” Go ahead, shoot now; blast away at that big fucker right there before he gets to the water! “
“Piece of cake” I reply.
Taking careful aim, as my stomach churning had developed into
full blown nausea at this point. I knew the gun was likely to hit something, regardless of my aim. With so many birds milling closely together I would likely hit something. Thing was, I needed a very accurate shot, so as to not just injure a fleeing bird, which would end up dying a couple of days later from its wounds.
Leveling the gun against my shoulder I aligned the gun aiming the muzzle towards the center back of a large goose’s head, as I pulled the trigger I watched as the bird slumped over in the water his head blown clear off.
” Nice shot buddy, keep firing there’s more than one out there! Give me that bloody thing” Clyde yelled as he grabbed the gun and blasted three more shots from the pump action riffle into the flock of escaping panic stricken birds.
“Take the fucking thing, fine by me”.
I was glad he had taken the riffle from my hands; I wanted no part in aiming it at the sky to shoot at the escaping flock. For me there was no pleasure to be had in the shooting of any animal. Gut a hundred fish? Not a problem. But this was different for me, different in a gut wrenching, loss of blood pressure kind of way. I didn’t care for it one bit and my body made no attempt to hide that rejection. The loss off blood pressure caused me to sit down, that is before my legs gave up from under me.
“Don’t fucking make me do that again you prick” my eyes were on fire he could clearly see and tell by the tone of my response that I severely was pissed.
” Relax Bambi we won’t make you into the big bad hunter ever again! You pussy” It was one of the few times I wanted to punch Clyde straight in the face he had pissed me off that much.