I waited him out and he just lay there, and that’s when I got on my hands and knees and told him to breathe. I reminded him to breathe because he wasn’t. I couldn’t hear it. I was like, “Holy fuck, Lester! Breathe. Breathe. Come on, buddy. You can do it. I swear to God, Lester. If you make it I will never beat you up again. Come on, buddy,” I was lookin’ around. “You can do it. Lester, I am so fucking sorry. I swear to God that I will defend you until your dying day. I will kill anyone who crosses you, buddy. I swear – Lester!”
Well, he made it. He came to and I held him, man. I held him like a fuckin’ meat puppet. I was rocking him and telling him to breathe. I took my sock off and wiped his spit and guck from his boiling mouth away, and I held him. And I prayed. Let me tell you, I fucking prayed for the first time in my life. I made a deal with God to make him okay, to not kill him. I prayed, boy, until I meant it.
But, you know, God double-crossed me again: Lester never really did come back. Soon after, Lester started to have the boiling mouth and seizures. All the time. He’d drop in the hallway, or downtown, or even when we were writing our finals, and I kicked the shit out of every kid who made fun of him. Lord knows that’s where I learned to down the toughest kids in school. I tracked down every one of them and I fought them all. Pretty soon, every time Lester dropped, kids would run for help or move everything out of his way or turn Lester on his side – even get the muck out of his mouth – because we’d all done our homework.
But all the while, I felt like shit. I had done this to him. I had ruined him for life. It was my fault. Little Lester with the shiny hair every day because he had good shampoo from the drug store, little Lester who had ColecoVision while I had only fuckin’ CBC, Little Lester who had all the Star Wars figures while I got slapped for bawling on Christmas when I asked how come we didn’t even have a tree.
“Leave him alone,” Sfen would tell me. “He didn’t do anything to you.”
“Fuck you,” I snapped. “He’s laughing at me.” But the truth was Lester smiled all the time because he was a happy person, and I wasn’t. God had a plan for him while he’d forgotten me.
And the horror show didn’t end there. Lester had to be moved to the Special Program where he had a specialized tutor. He never got his matriculation diploma; he only got his general – and that was basically a freebie because everyone knew he was fucked for life. Ah shit, no one knows how many years I grieved for what I’d done. I felt so bad. I’d go out of my way to be super nice to him. I dug his mom out of the ditch one winter and refused payment. One time I gave him a lift home in a snowstorm and we didn’t say a word all the way home.
I looked at him and said, “I didn’t think you heard me.”
“I heard you,” he smiled. “It’s not your fault.”
I looked at my hands. “I gave you seizures.”
He shook his head once. “I had epilepsy before you ever did that to me.”
I sat up. “What?”
“I had a few seizures before you ever did that.”
“Come on,” I said. “I couldn’t have helped.”
“No,” he smiled. “That couldn’t have helped.”
I said. “Lester, I want you to know I never beat on anyone who didn’t deserve it after that.”
“Why?” he asked. “I always wanted to know why you were so mean to me.” I thought about it. My natural urge was to lie, but I figured: why lie to the dying? Why not let ’em know the truth? Snowbird once said that sometimes people die because they can do more as a spirit than they ever could alive.
I bit the bullet and told the truth: “Because you had it all, man. You got everything I ever wanted. You had it made.”
He nodded. “It’s not your fault.”
I hung my head and confessed, “I was always worried I killed the best part of you.”
He reached out and touched my arm. I flinched. I don’t like to be touched. “You never wrecked me,” he said and rested his hand on my arm. “I promise you never did.”
I relaxed my arm and let him rest his hand there. I thought about his request and thought, Ah fuck it. I’m broke but not broken. I may have had TB in my blood but I could do this. “Okay.” I took a big breath. “I’ll do ’er. I’ll tell the folks to not move there.”
He nodded and squeezed my hand. “One more thing.”
I hung my head. Shit. He was dying right in front of me. “What?”
“I got a secret.”
I looked at him. Hadn’t this just been one?
“Son?” a voice called behind me. It was his mom. I don’t know how long she’d been there. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, Mom. Just about finished. Is there any more ice?”
And that’s when he started talking. He told me a story that blew me away. With tubes breathing for him and keeping him alive, he told me his biggest secret and woke me up to his secret life. As he spoke, he filled me with his inkwo, his medicine, his hope, and I felt strong. For the first time in weeks, I felt strong. We were only interrupted once and that was by his uncle. I guess by the look in my eyes, he knew I was being called into service and he left us alone. When he was done and as he drifted off, I rose quietly and left without saying a word to anyone. I knew what I had to do.
I walked into that meeting at town hall and there was a sea of local and tourist faces all sweating away. The mayor had pulled the same trick his father pulled and his father before him: they cranked the heat up an hour before the meeting so people would either fall asleep or want things over fast. It was no surprise that the Bullfrog was there without his men. How pathetic. He probably didn’t want them learning that they could all die like Lester by handling the uranium.
Jeremiah wasn’t too happy I was there and shook his head when he saw me walk in. I could tell by his eyes that he knew I knew about the little subdivision cover up. He knew that Lester had told me everything, and that’s probably why he was at the hospital. It wasn’t to say goodbye to his best worker; it was to see who Lester ’fessed up to.
It was then that I had a little flashback to when we were kids. Jeremiah used to own the only gas station in town. One day, me, Mom and Sfen were on the way to Hay River for a road trip with her boyfriend. Sfen and I needed to use the bathroom before we hit the highway.
The town had already targeted Sfen as being gay, so I never let Sfen go anywhere without me. When we asked for the keys to the bathroom, the Bullfrog gave Sfen the key to the women’s room. I saw Sfen’s cheeks burn in shame.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Other one’s broken,” Jeremiah grinned.
I looked at the men’s room and there was no sign on it saying it was broken. “Bullshit,” I said. I remember this was the one week when Sfen and I were considering being priests. I remember in catechism the nun would ask, “Who made you?”
“God!” we’d cheer.
“Why?”
“To make us better Christians!”
“Why?”
“To bear the name of Jesus!”
I felt so good around the nuns and priests. There were no questions, no judgment. I felt clean. Sfen did, too. It was our secret and we’d only told one nun about our wish and she was delighted. But it was shit like this that took us back to the real world, and I wasn’t letting anyone pick on Sfen.
“You don’t like it you can go outside,” the Bullfrog grinned. “Plenty of pansies to piss on, you know?” He gritted his teeth when he said this and there was an edge to his voice that ignited the fury gene.
Sfen hung his head and started to walk towards the exit. I saw his eyes and they were just brimming with tears. Fuck this, I thought. There was no one around so I whipped out my unit and started peeing in the store. Jeremiah was astonished. He started fumbling with his canes going, “Hey! Hey!” When he came around the counter to get me I started peeing in that direction, and all the while I h
eard laughter coming from Sfen.
My piss was running out and I could tell Jeremiah was going to charge with his canes, so I let him know in no uncertain terms that if he fucked with us we’d burn his house down, and he seen my snake eyes so he knew it was true.
“If you ever pull that shit again with my brother,” I said, “you’ll lose more than your house and you know it.”
We’d already burnt down the old residential school but we were too young to go to jail. Young Offenders, hey.
“Get the fuck out of my store,” he spat.
I nodded. “Let’s go, brother.”
And we strolled back to the car smiling.
“How’s your father, Torchy?” Jeremiah called from behind me.
I froze. Turning around, I could see him leaning outside the door. “Father’s Day is coming up. You gonna call him or get him a present?”
My blood turned to gasoline. What did he know that I didn’t?
“Torchy,” Sfen called. “What is it?”
I didn’t know, but something felt wrong.
The Bullfrog called out even louder. “You better go to the drugstore and get your daddy something cuz he sure loved your mother, boy. Oh did he ever.”
I glanced and Mom and Rob didn’t hear anything. They had the radio cranked and the windows were closed.
I charged with all I had and he closed the door before I got there. I heard the Bullfrog bolt it and I tried everything I could. “Your dad raped your mom, Torchy,” he said through the barred windows. “You were born a bastard and you’ll die a bastard. You’ll never be anything different.” I was stunned. I froze and looked at him without knowing what to do. It was true that Sfen and I looked different. I was darker than he was. We had different coloured eyes. He looked half white. I looked nothing but Indian.
I swung my head his way and looked for something to destroy. He was lucky I couldn’t get at him that day. His truck was locked. The pumps were locked. There were bars on all the windows. He knew something about my dad and I could tell what he said was true. Jeremiah the Bullfrog had made a fortune by using people’s worst secrets and greatest shames against them.
All he had made me was a sworn enemy.
“It’s okay, Torchy,” Sfen said, patting my shoulders. “It’s okay.”
“What is it?” Mom asked.
“Nothin’,” I shrugged as the hot tears started to flow.
“Think like a wolf,” Sfen whispered and I nodded. I knew not to rock the boat when Rob was around so I decided to bide my time and ask Mom when we were all alone. Who was my dad?
I listened to the mayor and thought, you cocksucker. He had the plans for the new subdivision, but he didn’t mention the circle of death or that we had the highest rate of cancer in the western NWT. He talked about how we had the lowest land taxes in the Northwest Territories, and he talked about what the town had to offer, but he didn’t talk about the cancer or the leukemia or the sickness that stalked the homeowners in the north end of town, and how the cancer that walked there was just aching to meet them, starving to feed on them and their kids.
One man asked why the new subdivision was the only place that was available to build and develop. “What if I find land elsewhere for my family?”
The mayor talked about how the new subdivision was the only place in town you could build because of the land claims that were up in the air with the Cree. There was a land freeze goin’ on, he explained, but that would settle itself over the next few years.
I watched him, really watched his eyes. The mayor was so good at lying you could never tell that he was condemning you to cancer and leukemia. He then opened up the mike to the public and that’s when I walked forward.
It was something seeing those new faces in town. Lord knows we needed some new DNA in the gene pool. We were all starting to look a little too much alike and there was one hot-looking wife who would have spruced things up in town if she and her hubby chose to live here.
As I walked towards that mike, the mayor stopped smiling. He was surprised that I had something to say. He’d tried to have me banished from town when my brother and I were younger, but he’d failed. The sentencing circle had kept me in town and he wasn’t too happy about that.
“Yes, um,” the mayor said, “one of our local, ah, men is going to speak.”
He wouldn’t say my name. I looked around at oh roughly thirty people. There were a few contractors standing by the coffee machine. There was the manager of the drugstore and the manager of the Northern standing by. Anyone who had anything to gain from the new blood that would be moving to town was here and they looked worried that I was getting ready to speak. The rest of the people – the southerners – all looked at me with smiles.
“Oh, what trusting eyes,” I whispered into the mike. “I can’t lie to you today.” I gripped that mike and looked to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Torchy and I am here to tell you that you’re walking into a death trap. You and your families.” The room gasped and everyone sat up. I then turned and pointed at him. “Fuck you, Mister Mayor,” I said. “Fuck you and your lies.” He gave me the dirtiest look and made a move towards me but stopped when he saw the reporter for the newspaper start snapping pictures.
“Many of us here call that part of town where you all are thinking of moving ‘the circle of death’ for a reason. Do not move here if you intend on raising your families there. Do not believe anything this man has just told you. That whole new area is filled with uranium. There’s a young man in town dying right now because of it.”
And I spilled the beans. I spilled them hard. I told the folks why they couldn’t move here and I told them about the uranium. I told them that the mayor knew there was probably uranium exactly where they would be building their homes. I did say that Simmer was the best place in the north to live – but not at Uranium Death Trap Central.
The mayor was fuming. I admit I enjoyed seeing him blush, and I dared him to stop me. There were no cops. There was nobody tough in the room that I couldn’t handle. There was just the steady click of a reporter’s camera in town going bananas. I dared either the mayor or the Bullfrog to even come close, but they were petrified into stillness the whole time I spoke.
Needless to say, nobody in that room was smiling when I finished. In fact, in my little five-minute speech, nobody was even looking at me. They were all turned to the mayor. The photographer from the local paper snapped a shot that would make the cover of next week’s paper for sure.
“Thank you for listening,” I said. “Would anyone else like to talk?” I didn’t wait. I walked towards the door.
The Bullfrog’s neck and jowls were actually purple. I wondered if he’d try and cane me, but all he did was crumple his coffee cup and throw it on the floor. “Sonofabitch!” he said. “That was a done deal, Torchy.”
I stopped and looked at him. “Fuck off,” I said. “You coulda killed all those people.” I walked towards him, cocked the hammer and he backed up fast. “How’d you like chewing a fuckin’ T-Bone steak every night for the rest of your life knowing that families were fuckin’ dying because of where you built their homes?”
“You’re dead, Torchy. We’re gonna finish this off later.” He fumed but made no aggressive motion towards me, so I dismissed him and moved on. I had to beeline it to the bar and finish my second task. I looked back once and nobody came after me. They all wanted a piece of the mayor and surrounded him like wolves.
Lester’s second secret was what I had to contend with next, but he told me to call before I proceeded. I went to the phone booth by the four-way stop and fished around for my second-last quarter, found it and dropped ’er in before the switchboard at the hospital picked up and I asked for Lester.
“Can I ask who’s calling?” the lady asked.
“A friend.” I could see Sfen’s logo for the Spirit Bear Sports Store in town. The
logo was of two bears – one black and one brown – smiling and facing forward, as if cheering. They wore headbands and jerseys and were holding hockey sticks. Of course, the jerseys both read “Spruce Kings” after our home team. This was the Disney phase in Sfen’s work and the townies loved it. At the opening, Sfen said that the black and brown bears playing together represented harmony, but he told me that the brown bear was him and the black bear was me. I held my hand up and blocked out the bear that was me.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the receptionist said, “but Lester’s family has asked that only family –”
“Look,” I said and dropped my hand. “I was just in there. Can you please put me through –”
“Is this Torchy?” she asked.
“Look, Lester asked me to –”
“I’m sorry, Torchy.” And I knew….
“Lester just passed away a few minutes ago.” My heart sank and I felt so suddenly tired.
“Fuck sakes,” I said. “No – really?”
“I’m sorry… his mother would like to talk to –”
Fuck! I hung the phone up and walked away. I took a big breath and pictured that candle blowing itself out, and I pictured Lester smiling at me in his sleep as I left him. I’d done the first thing I promised for him, and I knew I had to do the last. Fuck!
For fuck sakes, God. How much innocent blood do you need today? What’s your fuckin’ misery quota?
I made my way towards the bar and it hit me: Did I even tell Lester I was sorry? I thought of his last words to me. “I don’t want to go to hell, Torchy. Promise you’ll help me not go to hell.”
And I thought of my last words to him. “You ain’t going to hell,” I said. “I promise you.”
Ah fuck. I swayed as I walked and thought, “You can trust pain in this life, and that’s about it.” I thought of Lester and his spirit, probably taking a walk beside me to make sure I’d keep my promise. “You ain’t going to hell, Lester. I did what you asked. And I’m sorry about being so mean to you when you were a kid. I’m about to complete the mission you gave me. Hey, if you see Sfen, tell him I love him, okay?”
Godless But Loyal To Heaven Page 11