by Ron Charach
gideon’s boys have a hoot over this, and one of them slaps his boss and says —Shucks, john, you’re just worried that if you can’t lord it over the women then none of them are gonna sleep with you. And all four of the guys take to laughin’ and gideon with them and the three women come pretty close to joinin’ on that one.
—Well, I’m feelin’ a might weak, says Henry. —What say we adjourn for now; you, gideon, let Claire and Arlene stay with me, and escort Rose home—I’m sure you’re still willin’ to make our new friend mister gideon his evenin’ meal, aren’t you Rose? By tomorrow you can decide on the changes I’m proposin’.
—Tell you what, Morgan. We start afresh, and we do things right. Just like old times, in good old GOP America. But if we set up a republic here then you become its first prisoner. I’ll hose down that little tin room where galloway ex-pired.
—No! from Claire and Arlene.
—You and Rose Seeton. We’ll pardon the pretty young thing and the pretty not-so-young thing. Oh...and you oldsters will make do with separate cells, he grins.
Just then Morgan has an image—of a kid from his past who regularly showed up in his nightmares, a squat muscular bully named Darren “Gator” Gates. Darren used to love pickin’ out another kid, selectin’ him, then informin’ him that he was goin’ to really cause him pain. The kid, picked for no reason, would sometimes try to wriggle off the hook—maybe say to Darren: —Aren’t you related to Micah Gates, down the street? I know him… But Darren would smile and say —That all depends why you’re askin’. If it’s to try and get me to give up my plan, then I ain’t gonna answer you... If you’re just tryin’ to make conversation even though you accept my punishment, then I’ll say —Sure, he’s my cousin... At that point the victim would spot in Gates’s eyes the pure unmitigated delight of the bully.
Which is what Henry figures he spots in gideon’s glistenin’ irises. The little smilin’ crow’s feet aroun’ his eyes. Henry looks to Rose, who looks to gideon and his four heavily armed stalwarts and returns a What’s the use look. Henry nods his acceptance.
—But all safeguards have to be in place before I give up any of what I know. Besides, the power could fail at any time…
gideon waxes magnanimous: —I shall commute ma’s sentence and have her do Alternate Measures in the form of the cleanin’ and culinary arts she’s so good at. But you Morgan—you’re gonna do time as the next-to-last survivin’ member of the eight, not just as a museum piece but as bait for to lure the shark we still have circlin’ us.
Henry flinches at gideon’s take on the big eight accent. But bites his lip.
—Okay, says Henry, but do I have your word—in front of these four men—on a free vote, with the women takin’ part?
—My word in the eyes of God and in the eyes of my men. So long as we’re left with enough firepower to deal with cabana and we get the run of galloway’s defense network and you’re willing to pay a rightful price for your complicity in the Old Way of doing things, then we can have a fair election.
—An election where both men and women vote?
gideon looks at his men. They just shrug. The search me... sign.
gideon nods.
Henry recalls that gideon was one of the dozen tradesmen, guys with only high school education at best, that galloway risked taking into the new arrangement. Maybe they would develop an interest in a little civics, given enough time.
—Who do you want to rep-resent you on the committee to draw all this up, while you’re in the slammer? How ’bout Doc Halverson?
—Henry’s eyes dart towards Rose, Arlene…Claire.
—Halverson, yes—Sheila Gordon too.
john gideon smiles as his men, with tips of their Stetson hats, file out. Exeunt.
—There are still a couple items, says gideon, afore he leaves the frame.
—First: we need a chronicler of these End Times. I found a thick pile of notes left behind by galloway’s lawyer, that “Slim” guy, Reggie Canuck. Smart-ass Canadjyun—real smart-ass David Frum type.
—Isn’t that his to keep writin’?
—He got caught in a crossfire, two weeks past.
—God. So, what polio couldn’t do…
—Yup. I even have his guitar, and yo’re welcome to it. But how about you take it on? You’ll have plenty o’ down time ahead o’ you, solitary time, and you always were one for writin’ things.
Stunned by the news about Reggie, Henry asks —What do you want me to call it, gideon’s bible?
—Call it whatever you want. Call it The Book of cabana, for all I care. But we have a final item o’ business: I got me a piece of meat at home in the ice box. Kind of a leg o’ lamb. Sacrificial lamb. I went back to fetch it from a rooftop—lost sleep over it, you might say. I expect you to eat it once it thaws. I’ll cook it up real nice fo’ you—Hannibal Lecter-style—now there’s a godless book I bet you read.
gideon grows more peaceful. Yet he can’t pass up a partin’ shot: —And when you’re finally dead, Morganstern, and have one last chance to rise again, the angel Gabriel’s gonna shake his golden locks and ask —You looked at HOW MANY sets of genitals?
The moment gideon and his men leave with Rose Seeton followin’ in tow—sulkin’ along after them—Arlene and Claire give Henry a kiss, each too exhausted to debate with him the wisdom of makin’ any sort o’ deal with the likes of john gideon.
Henry knows whose leg he’ll be pickin’ at. A voice inside whispers Just desserts.
Henry folds the sheet around himself, which still reeks of ketchup, lies back down on his side and sinks into the deepest sleep he’s had since he first came in under the dome of harold galloway and associates.
The End
Acknowledgements
Thanks to close friends and cousins for early, frank discussions about the largely unexplored relationship between guns and male adequacy. The late Eugene “Gene” Hluschak and Paul Teskey helped me understand these relationships, and I first heard the amusing taunt, “Excuse me, sir, but is that your gun?” from Paul. That was more than forty-five years ago.
Thanks to the Canadian authors of Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent, Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce, and to American social activist Geoffrey Canada for his revelatory, autobiographical book, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, which helped me consolidate early conceptions of the role guns play in shoring up male adequacy. Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer, taught me about the influence of two groups of English immigrants to the United States, groups that settled Virginia and Appalachia, whose folkways contributed to a culture of great music, but also to patriarchy, misogyny, the adulation of weapons and the corporal punishment of children. These “borderer” Southern accents are used by Slim Reggie, especially when he speaks in an outrageously frank voice.
Many thanks for the encouragement received by friends and editors who poured or plodded through earlier versions of the manuscript and offered constructive criticism at various stages of the book’s development, including Len Leven, Mike McCabe for putting in some early sweat equity, and my longtime associate Wayde. Alana Wilcox was the first female reader to praise the book, at a critical juncture. Thanks to Jon Ennis, who put up with me endlessly referring to a book that he is finally getting to read.
Special thanks to Deanna Janovski for helping me stay true to my new linguistic rules while recommending I break them, now and then, to keep the reader on board, to David Jang for his evocative book design, and to Heather Wood and Jeff Kirby for their work at the managerial and promotional ends of the enterprise.
The cover photo is by the inimitable iPhone photographer DraMan, aka Roger Guetta. Author photo by Rebecca Gilgan.
All poems in the book, with the exception of “A Correct Compassion” by James Kirkup, were written by the author in his other identity. The f
ive stanzas of the long poem “A Correct Compassion” are quoted with permission from The James Kirkup Collection. Sophie Glazer first alerted me to the poem.
On page 135, the quote “I didn’t take the goddamn fish out of the ocean” evokes the words of former Canadian federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John Crosbie of Newfoundland.
On page 151 there is a paragraph laced with a number of invented words by Anthony Burgess, from his visionary dystopian novel, A Clockwork Orange.
I borrow some descriptions from Canadian physician poet Vincent Hanlon’s poem “Sleep Deprivation,” which appeared in my poetry anthology, The Naked Physician.
This is a work of fiction. While the author uses the self in disparate ways and several of the poems are written in a confessional mode, it is not autobiographical. No character is identical to any person, living or dead.
Special thanks to author Terry Fallis for providing back cover commentary that helped me appreciate the complexity of my narrator, and to Jim Nason and the team at Tightrope for having the guts to publish this book and not fret over any untoward reactions.
As always, I thank my wonderful wife and children for respecting my need for a free-range imagination.
Other Books by Ron Charach
POETRY
The Big Life Painting
The Naked Physician
Someone Else’s Memoirs
Past Wildflowers
Petrushkin!
Dungenessque
Elephant Street
Selected Portraits
Forgetting the Holocaust
ESSAYS
Cowboys and Bleeding Hearts
About the Author
Ron Charach is a Toronto psychiatrist and the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently Selected Portraits (2007) and Forgetting the Holocaust (2011). His poems and essays have appeared in most Canadian literary and medical/psychiatric journals.
PHOTO: Becca Gilgan