by D. D. Miller
Up ahead the cloud continued to explode every five minutes with an astonishing display of lightning.
“The ocean is less frightening,” he said.
“How so?” She finally turned her head toward him.
He dropped his right arm from the wheel and shifted his body toward her. “With the ocean,” he began, “you know what you are dealing with. If you walk right in and keep going, you’ll drown.”
She stared at him, and he could feel the space between them in the car.
“If you walk out in this,” he flung his right hand out over the top of dash, “who knows what you’re getting into. You could walk forever and slowly starve or die of exposure. If you’re lost in the Prairies you can guarantee a painful, frightening, slow death. Drowning in a field of wheat.”
“Land, land everywhere and not a place to go,” she said.
This was the most they’d spoken in two days. Even when they’d had sex in an anonymous Edmonton hotel they’d barely spoken, moaned or grunted. It was irrational, but he hated having sex in a hotel. He always felt exposed, that everyone could hear him, perhaps even see him through some peephole in the wall. So it had been very businesslike. Missionary, quiet, without much activity. Simply a deed that needed doing.
“I think this is quite beautiful in its own way. I feel safer here than at the ocean. There’s so much solid ground. It’s so tame,” she said.
“The ocean isn’t?”
“Of course not.”
“But this is all an illusion. It’s all farmland and oil fields. Tamed by humans.” He felt confident with what he was saying for the first time in days. “The ocean is free, alive.”
“I guess so,” she sighed, and he heard her head knock gently against the window.
They were coming up on a small patch of trees that lined the road about twenty feet back from the highway. He knew that this was also an illusion, the illusion of a forest, and could see the lights of a farmhouse tucked away amongst the trees.
“Hey!” Her head shot up and she pointed toward the patch of woods. “A deer.”
He leaned forward to see for himself, and saw a small timid doe standing back by a tree, alert, head and ears up, staring back at them. It was too dark to see, but the animal’s rigid posture made her look concerned. He could picture the look on her deer-face, worry lines creasing a furry forehead.
Then there was a flash of brown directly in front of them as a large buck leapt from the ditch. Her hand went to his thigh and grabbed tight, pinching his flesh there. His foot instinctively hit the brakes. They locked immediately and screeched, and he could see the buck – its antlers seeming to wave with all the motion – turn quickly. He pulled the wheel to the left, brought his foot off the brake and then the buck was alongside them, galloping, as though in a race with the car, confirming its manhood against the metal beast. It stared into the window, its head reared back, its big black eyes opened to such a point that they seemed as though they’d tear. Time slowed in those fleeting moments when the animal’s eyes moved first to her, then over to him. Staring hard at them both before it turned and leapt back into the ditch toward its mate.
Her hand remained glued to his leg. His heart beat hard in his chest, and he could feel sweat dripping into his eyes. He checked his rear-view mirror to see the two animals bound into the trees. There was no traffic in either direction, so he pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. He let go of the wheel and sat back, taking a few quick breaths. She lifted her hand off his leg and let it fall into her lap. And when he opened his eyes he could see she’d begun to cry.
It was almost eleven o’clock and the sun finally hung just below the horizon. It had disappeared about a half an hour before, and since then had seemed to cease all motion. The sky was pink above it, a long thin line of light as though from a crack under a door. The storm cloud had barely shifted.
They’d come upon Valleyview without any warning. One streetlight appeared from behind a small rise in the road, and then to their left they could make out the lights of a small town. The road to their right blazed a straight path through a field and descended into the darkness.
He rolled through the intersection and pulled into the gas station. There was a K-car and an eighteen-wheeler outside a small diner. Through the window they could see a trucker sitting at a stool, hunched over a warm coffee. Standing in front of him, behind the bar, was a waitress decked out in a uniform.
“I’m going to go to the washroom,” she said, opening the door and stepping out into the cool air. She hadn’t spoken much since the incident with the deer.
He watched as she moved into the diner, looking so out of place in her long, loose skirt and sandals, her pale blue tank top barely covering the straps of her bra. She looked thinner out here amongst all this open land, pale and unhealthy. Her shoulder-length brown hair was tussled and uncharacteristically wavy. He watched through the windows as she approached what he guessed was a counter, obscured behind a wall. Then she reappeared and moved through small convenience store racks of potato chips and candy.
She kept her head down, her eyes glued to the dirty tile floor under her feet, stained with mud and fluids. She passed a coffee bar that reeked of old, burnt coffee and pushed through the door of the women’s washroom.
The smell surprised her. It smelled like cheap room deodorizer: canned strawberries. She had been expecting worse. She went to the sink and stared at herself in the dirty mirror. A large beige flake of paint drooped down over the top of the mirror and hung there. She noticed that the paint all over the wall was peeling. She brushed some strands of hair out of her face. Her cheeks were rosy, and the skin around her eyes was red and slightly raw from being rubbed. She wished she hadn’t cried. She’d been so pent up the whole time, it seemed, trying to keep things together in the face of his inaction. She had to make all the decisions. Had to keep things in line, organize everything, and still they hadn’t made it. He barely seemed to notice, barely seemed to notice anything actually. And not for the first time, she wondered if her husband wasn’t as intelligent as she’d once thought.
She ran some cold water and splashed it over her face, then went toward the stall. On the wall next to it she noticed a small vending machine that contained tampons and three different types of condoms. Gross, she thought. Who would ever need to get a condom from here? Then she remembered the truck outside and how long it had been since they’d seen civilization.
The toilet was stained a deep yellow, and in the stall, closed off from the rest of the washroom, the smell became worse. There was a massive hole in the wall behind the toilet and a pink blanket had been shoved into it. This damp blanket smelt strongly of mildew, and for some reason she imagined a baby wrapped in it. An abandoned baby born in this sad little truck stop washroom in Valleyview. Or born on the side of the highway, then wrapped in the blanket and deposited in the hole. But she dismissed the thought. Even though she’d never smelled it, she knew this was not what death smelled like.
She pulled toilet paper off the roll and rubbed the seat. She then tore off some more and lined it. But balling up her long skirt around her waist, she strained her legs to squat above the seat anyway. She closed her eyes and tried to tell herself that she was somewhere else, that they’d made it over the border and were camped along the river, huddled together in a blanket by a fire, sipping wine, sitting in silence and staring up at the purple sky, marvelling at the midnight sun. And they’d have sex, better sex than the shitty sex they’d had in Edmonton the night before, and finally – finally – she’d get a good night’s sleep.
But when she opened her eyes again, she saw the grimy beige door of the stall and the illusion was broken. She was stuck in this truck stop bathroom, hovering centimetres above its plastic seat. Her eyes moved to some black writing scrawled on the door. In thick, childlike strokes, it declared that “Candace Wood sux dix.” She snorted, surprising herself, then laughed fully. For the first time all day, she actually felt relaxed. Hovering
there above a toilet seat, beginning to laugh uncontrollably while outside, seemingly a world away, she could picture her husband pumping gas from a rusty nozzle into the tank of their rented SUV, a type of vehicle he once declared he would never own.
He replaced the nozzle in the machine and walked into the station. One balding, unshaved man in his mid-forties sat on a stool behind the counter and looked up to grunt an acknowledgement as the bell above the door jingled. He stood slowly, pulling himself from the stool, adjusting his jeans around a heavy belly. It was undoubtedly a beer gut, as the man was, for the most part, quite gaunt. He had thin, sunken cheeks and bony arms that were all elbows. Even his chest seemed to sink back into itself. Underneath this, a solid round gut peeked out of the space between a thin white undershirt and the belt around his jeans.
There was country music playing in the diner, and the voices of the lone trucker and the waitress could be heard.
He gave the man exact change for the gas, and asked for the bathroom. With the shake of his head, the man behind the counter indicated to his right.
He slowly walked through the store and marvelled at the place, with its wood panelling and hunting apparel displayed so casually beside the usual corner store concessions. There was even a rack of cowboy hats against the far wall. He heard the water running in the women’s washroom and wondered if he should knock on the door to see if she was all right, but decided against it. She was probably crying or something, wallowing; she’d been so shaken up by the stupid buck. It was alive for God’s sake. They’d been in more danger than the dumb animal. He couldn’t figure out why the damn thing had chosen that moment, the one moment in probably an hour that a vehicle had actually passed by, to cross the highway.
When he pushed open the bathroom door, the first thing he noticed was the vending machine next to the urinal. It had various condoms, but the last slot in the machine had a picture of a half-naked woman on it. She was lying in a bed, her bleach blond hair splayed out over a satin blanket. One hand was lost in the hair, the other rested on her stockinged thigh. The vending machine sold pocket porno-mags for two bucks. They looked like they could slip perfectly into the back pocket of a pair of jeans, or the chest pocket of an old plaid work shirt. He was shocked; he’d never seen anything like it before.
He walked up to the urinal. There was a bucket under it, placed there to catch the run-off of a leaking pipe. The stench of urine floated up to his nose, and he cringed. He kept his eyes on the vending machine. Two bucks.
She sighed and slouched in her seat, finally breaking her posture. She seemed much less tense after their stop. There was no traffic on the road ahead of them, nor behind. They hadn’t seen any signs of life after the gas station, not even a deer hidden in the shadows, waiting for the chance to leap up onto the road in front of them. He felt utterly alone.
“I guess we’re going to have to stop somewhere,” she said, the first words spoken since the truck stop. “It’s getting close to midnight.”
“I figure we can get to Peace River.” He thought he should apologise for not making it past the 60th parallel for their anniversary, but he didn’t say anything. He was tired, exhausted actually. He’d planned on telling her about the pocket porn to lighten the situation. But he wasn’t convinced she’d find it funny so kept it tucked away in his back pocket.
“Have you noticed the power lines?” she asked.
He shook his head and looked up to see them. They were strange, not at all like the power lines he’d seen anywhere else. Instead of the cross-like shape he’d seen his whole life, there were three or four “arms” protruding from the top in jagged, almost triangle-like positions. They looked sloppy, as though they’d been thrown together by drunken power company workers as a joke: the asymmetry a tool to battle boredom and the repetitive nature of their work on this repetitive highway, in this repetitive land. But he quickly noticed that all of them were the same, exactly the same.
“Why do you think they’re like that?” she asked.
He thought for a moment, wondering if they were more interesting to look at. And they were, but only for a few moments, and then the novelty wore off and they were like any other power line running along any other highway.
“I think it’s for balance,” she finally said. “All this open land, I bet the winds are fierce in the winter. Spreading the lines out like that probably helps keep them from moving too much.”
He nodded and noticed they were headed into darkness. The sun had finally given up and only the faintest of light could be seen peeking out from the horizon. It reminded him that they were behind schedule. That, while close, they hadn’t made it to the land of the midnight sun. Straight ahead, for as far as he could see, there wasn’t one turn in the road or hill on the horizon, and even in the darkened light of this perpetual dusk he could see for miles. He wondered if the rest of the highway to the North was like this, if you could see it go on forever. It was unnerving somehow, the way it looked as though the road would never end.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A collection so long in the works has debts too numerous to properly repay, but hopefully these thanks will provide a start. First off, thanks to the Toronto Arts Council for financial support during the completion of this collection. Also, versions of many of these stories have appeared elsewhere, and I would like to thank the editors of Monday Magazine, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Eleven Eleven: Journal of Literature and Art and the Dinosaur Porn anthology. Your confidence and editorial insight are much appreciated.
I would like to thank Noelle Allen and everyone at Wolsak and Wynn. A very special thanks has to go to Paul Vermeersch, not only for the editorial guidance, but for trusting this work enough to allow it to help launch Buckrider Books, for which I am incredibly honoured.
I’d like to thank my peers and instructors in the writing departments of the University of Victoria and the University of Guelph. I feel ludicrously lucky to have had some wonderful teachers over the course of my life who have encouraged my writing habit and have had both indirect and direct influences on the writing and shaping of these stories. I would like to specifically thank Angela Griffin, Jill Fredericks, Heather Stephens, Jack Hodgins, Lorna Jackson, Bill Gaston, Michael Winter and Russell Smith.
I would like to thank my friends – from the literary community or otherwise – for the encouragement and for all the life experiences that inform my writing. I’m so grateful for having you all in my life, and I also feel so lucky to have too many to be named here. I would also like to thank my family and especially my mother, Judy Miller, for being so incredibly supportive of this path that I chose at such a young age. Your support and encouragement has meant the world to me and has guided me to this point. And finally, thank you, Jan Dawson, my partner in life and crime (IMTLY!). Thanks for absolutely everything, but most importantly for being so close beside me through it all.
D. D. MILLER is originally from Nova Scotia but has lived, worked and studied all across the country. His work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Eleven Eleven: Journal of Literature and Art and Dinosaur Porn. As the Derby Nerd, Miller is known around North America for his writing and commentary on roller derby, one of the world’s fastest growing sports.
A graduate of Mount Allison University, the University of Victoria and the University of Guelph (where he completed his MFA), Miller currently lives in Toronto where he works as a college English instructor.
David Foster Wallace Ruined My Suicide and Other Stories is his first book.
© D. D. Miller, 2014
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Buckrider Books is an imprint of Wolsak and Wynn Pu
blishers.
Cover image: Jodie Griggs, GettyImages
Cover and print edition interior design: Marijke Friesen
Author photograph: Neil Gunner
Print edition typeset in Sabon
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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Book Fund.
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ISBN 978-1-928088-01-1 (ebook)