Milosz

by Cordelia Strube

  ‘Years pass. The son grows up and the father grows old. They rarely speak due to the weight of the tragedy between them. The father despises the son for his weakness, his easy life; “You never had to work for anything,” he tells him. “It’s all been handed to you.” Tensions grow, they hurl accusations, until one night the old man walks into a storm and does not return. The son searches for him for months without success. Then one day – you’ll never guess – the old man shows up on a reality show. He isn’t dead! The son, overcome with joy, reunites with his father, who has been hiding in shame, believing that he failed not only the sister he let drown, or the parents he deserted, or the wife he fucked to death, but his son. He believes he has failed his only son and cannot face him. But his son, now a mature man able to recognize life’s complexities, forgives his father. Tears gush down their cheeks as they embrace.’

  ‘Curtain,’Bertie says.

  Gary wakes them in the dead of night and tells them to look for notes tagged to trees lit by candlelight. Aruthy spots the first note, which reads: Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety. Below this in big block letters it says, GALLOP.

  ‘He wants us to bloody gallop?’ Bertie demands but Gary has disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘I’m not used to this kind of dark,’ Sungwon admits. ‘This is, like, really dark.’ Unless they stand by the candle, they can’t even see each other.

  ‘Quelle blague,’ Etienne mutters, squinting at the note. He is not wearing his sailor cap and his stringy hair hangs over his face.

  ‘I don’t mind galloping,’ Milo says. ‘Maybe it’s a kind of warm-up.’ He tries to gallop but even the opioids can’t block the pain. ‘At least, if we keep moving, the bugs can’t catch us.’ He shuffles into the inky woods in search of another note.

  ‘We should stick together, mate,’ Bertie calls after him.

  The next note reads: Man’s feet have grown so big that he forgets his littleness. The block letters say, SKIP. Milo skips, completely ignorant of what is underfoot. Heading full tilt into the unknown heightens his already drug-induced hyper-awareness. He is one with the darkness, the woodsy sounds and smells. The others stumble behind him, cursing and swatting at bugs. The next note reads: Strange how few, after all is said and done, the things that are of moment. ‘Of moment,’ Milo enthuses, ‘of course!’ RUN.

  ‘Milo ... ?’ they all call after him.

  A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil. Good or evil, accept it. So what if you murder a defenceless boy. HOP. Adrenalin fuels Milo’s wounded body as he hops to the next note.

  It is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.

  Unimportant in the sum of things, of course! CARTWHEEL. It is during the cartwheel that he jams his hands into nettles and lands on his head. The others, hopping and running and galloping, catch up with him. ‘You all right, mate?’

  ‘What’s that one say?’ Milo asks, pointing to the next note.

  Aruthy reads: ‘Trifles make the sum of human things, and half our misery from our foibles springs.’

  ‘Oh, that is so true,’ Milo howls. ‘It’s all so true!’

  ‘It says STRIP,’ Aruthy adds. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Can you get up, mate?’

  Milo’s hands throb, as do his ribs, but up above the clouds have parted and the stars are singing to him.

  ‘I hear water,’ Etienne says. They all listen.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Milo commands, astonished by his new role as leader. He doesn’t even have to act it, he is the leader.

  Closer to the river, another note shimmers against a tree. The dis­place­ment of a little sand can change occasionally the course of deep rivers. SWIM.

  ‘Someone’s blowing out the candles,’ Aruthy observes. ‘How are we supposed to find our way back?’

  ‘We’re not,’ Milo explains. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  ‘Merde,’ Etienne mutters.

  Milo starts to remove his clothes, believing this to be his chance for absolution. ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘You can’t see the edge,’ Sungwon warns. ‘Like, how are you supposed to know where to climb in?’

  ‘Do we always have to see the edge before we move forward?’ Milo asks, certain that he and Geon are of like minds. The man is a genius! Milo has no doubt that working with Geon will help him reconnect with his inner actor. Finally someone understands his talent. He was pulling at invisible restraints in Godot. He sees that now. He was afraid because he didn’t really understand the play. Must we always really understand? Must we always fear what we can’t really understand?

  ‘Milo?’ they call after him.

  Let them remain onshore, timid and afraid. Naked, exposed to nature, without thinking – of moment – he clambers over rocks and pebbles that pinch his feet. The sound of rushing water beckons and the stars sing.

  ou all right, worm turd?’ Gary and two identical First Nations persons, wearing Fidel Castro hats, sit in lawn chairs. Kerosene lamps illuminate their faces. The river rushes metres away.

  ‘You swallowed enough of that river to kill you,’ Gary says.

  ‘It’s polluted,’ one of the twins explains.

  ‘Want a Hostess cupcake?’ the other asks through missing teeth.

  After the initial fight for life, Milo surrendered to the currents. This felt right and true. The stars told him so.

  ‘Why’d you jump in the river?’ the toothless twin inquires.

  ‘I was told to.’

  ‘You always do what you’re told?’ Gary throws the clothes Milo left behind in the woods at him.

  ‘Why are you wearing a girdle?’ the other twin asks.

  ‘It’s a chest wrap. I got kicked by a deer.’

  ‘Cool story, bro,’ the toothless twin says. ‘You’d better get up before a snake bites your balls.’

  ‘Brush the sand out of your crack or you’ll be sorry,’ the other advises.

  The stars are no longer singing but pressing down on Milo. Pain ricochets inside his ribs. ‘I need my drugs,’ he says.

  Gary tosses them at him. ‘Give him some Mountain Dew.’

  The toothless twin hands Milo a can of pop. ‘I’m Elvis and this is my brother, Elton.’

  Milo swallows pills and pulls on his clothes. ‘Don’t you have native names?’

  ‘Oh, you mean like Little Red Cedar Canoe Man?’

  ‘Or Little Eat Shit Suck Dick Man?’ adds Elton.

  ‘You don’t get to call us “native,”’ Gary says. ‘We get to call each other native but to you white-asses we’re the People of the First Nations.’

  ‘Because we were here first,’ Elvis says. ‘You play poker?’

  ‘Not for a long time.’

  ‘Ever play for money?’

  ‘I don’t have my wallet on me.’

  Gary tosses it to him.

  ‘I’ve only got twenty bucks or something.’

  ‘If you got a bank account,’ Elton says, ‘you got money.’ He unfolds a card table.

  ‘I should probably get back to camp.’

  ‘Good luck finding it,’ Gary says.

  ‘Can’t you take me?’

  ‘I’m not saving your life again, worm turd. Play cards.’

  Elton pulls up a lawn chair for Milo. Elvis hands him a cupcake and deals.

  As dawn creeps above the pines, Milo is down one hundred and fifty bucks and has eaten six Hostess cupcakes, mainly to delay card plays. ‘I really should get back to camp.’

  In a crate of an SUV blaring country music they drive to an isolated convenience store/gas station that has an ATM. The First Nations people surround Milo as he withdraws the cash. When he hands it over, they pat his shoulders. ‘Good job, bro.’

  ‘Now can you take me back to the camp? I should probably put something on my hands. They’ve been stung by nettles.’

  ‘What’re you going to put on them?’ Elvis asks.

  ‘I thought maybe you c
ould suggest something.’

  ‘Marshmallow root tonic,’ Gary mutters.

  ‘Compress of deer shit works good,’ Elton adds.

  ‘Bear piss lotion,’ Elvis says.

  In the SUV nothing can be heard above the yowling of country singers. Gary is not going back the way they came and Milo comes to the numbing realization that he is a hostage. Even if he made a run for it he wouldn’t get far with the cracked rib. He doesn’t even know where he is.

  ‘You ever go to the casino?’ Elvis shouts over the racket.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Last city dude we had up here, he lost bad.’

  ‘Blew his head off,’ Elton adds.

  ‘Is that where we’re going?’ Milo asks, but both brothers start wailing along with the radio. Will the First Nations people force him to gamble and steal his winnings until the ATM runs dry? Will they offer him a gun with which to blow his head off? At the junction of two highways, the SUV pulls into a Tim Hortons. Elvis opens the car door for him. ‘Double double?’

  ‘I’ll wait in the car.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ Garry says, grabbing him by his collar and pulling him out of the car.

  ‘You want some Timbits?’ Elvis asks.

  ‘I don’t want anything.’

  ‘You on a diet?’

  While they order, Milo heads towards the washroom then walks briskly out the glass doors. Hitchhiking is the only option. An overcast sky offers no indication as to which highway heads south. He plods on, waving his thumb at the occasional vehicle, the pain returning despite the pills. The SUV, blaring about cheatin’ hearts, pulls up alongside him. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘You live in Timmins?’

  ‘We got Timbits,’ Elvis says.

  ‘He’s on a diet,’ Elton advises.

  The SUV pulls ahead, cutting Milo off. ‘Get in the car, worm turd. I’ll take you back to camp.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not lying?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Gary says. ‘Get him in the truck.’

  Within seconds Elvis has him in a neck lock and pushes him into the truck.

  At the camp Milo receives a hero’s welcome. ‘I bet Geon’s impressed,’ Aruthy says. ‘I bet he’s going to give you the lead.’

  The People of the First Nations climb back into the SUV and screech off. A white-ass squats in the clearing with a stick the length of his arm and some twine, a spindle and a board for the spindle to grind into.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Milo asks.

  ‘He’s making fire,’ Aruthy explains. ‘He’s a survivalist.’

  The survivalist wears a Tilley hat and has three different knives hanging from a belt slung around his torso. A paunch bulging over his khakis makes him look more like a golfer than a survivalist. He continues to drill the stick into the board. In minutes they can smell scorched wood and a tiny ember lights up the grass. ‘Now you try it,’ Reggie instructs. They take turns, struggling to get even the smallest spark. The procedure takes two hours, during which Reggie describes in detail his year living alone in a remote northern cabin a ten-day canoe trip from civilization. He learned about wild edible plants and tanning animal hides. Milo, sweaty and exhausted, is the only one to fail to create some kind of flame.

  Next they are to build debris huts for shelter.

  ‘But we have teepees,’ Milo protests.

  ‘You won’t have teepees come the Apocalypse,’ Reggie points out. ‘I slept in a debris hut for three months one winter.’ Milo would like to ask why but feels this might diminish his chances for the lead. He swallows more pills and joins the others in the woods hunting for fallen tree limbs. Finding a location for his debris hut proves challenging. He clambers farther into the woods until he spots a perfect Y-shaped nook in a tree for a ridgepole. Finding a suitable ridgepole takes time as most of the fallen branches aren’t long or thick enough to support much weight. Finally he uncovers a fallen aspen bough, which fits perfectly into the nook. Next he sets out to gather more branches to rest against it. Losing all sense of time and his associates, without thinking or acting badly, he moves farther into the woods to gather smaller branches and armloads of dead leaves for insulation. Endorphins produced by these exertions flood his system, blocking any sensation of pain. A clear-headedness, a sense of purpose, a euphoria engulf him.

  Rain patters relentlessly on his debris shelter. A series of tiny black worms crawl along the ridgepole that sits inches above Milo’s face. Leeches? Maggots? Will they slither up his nostrils and into his ears? Mrs. Cauldershot always told him not to lie on the grass because ants would crawl into his ears and tunnel through the wax into his brain. Occasionally he would disobey her and lie on the grass, waiting for the ant invasion, for certain death – a freedom of sorts. But then a tickle would begin on an arm or a leg and he’d jump up, shaking imagined ants out of his ears. Milo cannot jump up and escape the leeches and maggots. If he tries to sit up or roll over, twigs prod him from all sides. He hears pawing outside. Do coyotes eat humans? His feet extend beyond the entry to the hut. He waits for the clamping of a canine jaw while he fumbles for his painkillers. He is able to pull the plastic container from his pocket but removing the childproof lid without extending his elbows to the side proves a struggle. After several tries, twisting his body for leverage, he is able to pop open the lid and chew several tablets. Exhausted, he flops back and stares at the leeches or maggots.

  Reggie lived alone in the woods for an entire year and advised them that the most important quality in a survival situation is feeling that you deserve to survive. ‘Survivors,’ he said, ‘never give up. It’s well-documented that the quitters fail.’ Gus repeatedly called Milo a quitter. In retaliation Milo started a Quitters Only club when he was getting his bullshit of arts degree. While the achievers developed ulcers and migraines, the quitters read Camus and smoked doobies.

  What made Gus think he deserved to survive when his wife, sister, parents, Jakob and millions of other people did not? Milo has never felt that he deserves to survive. As associates have succumbed to fatal illness, demanding of fate why me? Milo has wondered why not me? Marlene Temple, who played his mother in Death of a Salesman, died after ‘a long battle with cancer.’ Marlene had seemed indomitable. While her co-star, a veteran of American eighties sitcoms, hammed his way through the role of Willy Loman, Marlene remained unfazed. Night after night Milo fumed about the complete lack of professionalism of the American sitcom star. Marlene calmly played solitaire on her laptop. Now she’s dead. Didn’t she feel she deserved to survive? And what about Tanis’s nephew, studying IT at community college? He killed himself with a sleeping pill/narcotic/vodka cocktail. Did he give up and consequently fail?

  What’s giving up anyway? Isn’t one man’s failure another man’s great achievement? The pilot who couldn’t drop the bomb, the soldier who couldn’t shoot the child, the president who refused to go to war? The bad actor who accidentally killed the bully? Was Annie a quitter because she self-medicated with Bailey’s Irish Cream?

  She always told Milo to colour inside the lines. ‘Why?’ he’d ask.

  ‘Because you’re supposed to.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Don’t let your dad see you’re not inside the lines.’

  He’d slap the colouring book shut when he heard Gus’s key in the lock. He only coloured because Annie allowed him to sit with her if he appeared to be doing something. She didn’t like it when he mooned. ‘Don’t moon,’ she’d say. ‘Go play.’

  The pawing outside stops. Only the rustling of leaves and woodland critters remains. The opiate blanket delays Milo’s reaction time as he comes to the alarming conclusion that he is, in fact, alone and abandoned. Increasingly his survivalist heroics seem meaningless. A suffocating despondency con­fines him even more than the twigs and leaves. Quitter thoughts descend upon him; he doesn’t deserve to escape the mud and leeches and maggots. Who gives a shit about his debris-hut building skills anyway? Som
ething cackles in the trees above. Even the animals scorn him. Except he has survived, has he not? Faced with a coyote and God knows what poisonous crawly creatures and plants and snakes and rivers, he has not given up.

  Suddenly the narcotic shifts gears, elevating Milo above the debris hut, among the stars looking down upon his human toil, and he says loudly into the darkness, ‘Wait a minute, now just wait one minute. I do! Yes, damn it, I give a shit!’ All of them, all of them want him to stay inside the lines. The People of the First Nations, Geon Van Der Wyst, his fellow thespians, his fucking useless agent, the dead or alive Gus, Zosia, even Tanis who he’d thought was a kindred spirit, a free-thinker, a fence-opposer. Even Tanis has rules by which he must play. Fuck her, fuck all of them. Bunch of fucking caged thinkers. He’s in the wild now, free in body and soul. He needs nothing and no one. He will make fire, dig up wild edible plants and tan animal hides. He will survive!

  e wakes in unimaginable darkness. Despite repeated blinking, the dense and sooty blackness remains. He tries to sit up, slamming his head into the ridgepole. He rolls onto his stomach, dragging himself out ass-first. Remembering the leeches and maggots, he shakes himself and ruffles his hair, shedding twigs and leaves and creepy-crawlies. He digs his fingers into his nose and ears then shouts, ‘Get me out of here!’ into the thick silence. His mouth is so dry his lips stick to his teeth. What was he thinking? Gus used to say this and Milo tried to appear as though he had been thinking when in truth he had no idea what he’d been thinking. You weren’t thinking, Gus would conclude. You don’t think. Tanis also said this. Thinking has only meant trouble for Milo. All those gnawed thoughts rattling around inside his skull. Who needs that shit? He should be home in bed, thoughtless, preparing for another day of junk removal. Why must he always chase the dream, the big break, the ticket to a life free of cash woes? Although it’s not really about cash, is it? It’s about recognition, approval. You did a good job there, son. Why couldn’t he have said that? Just once. When Milo painted the entire house barf beige as instructed, all his father saw was the drips. ‘Fuck you, old man!’ Milo shouts. Then ‘Get over it!’ to himself. He begins to dance what he imagines to be a First Nation peoples’ dance, hopping on one leg while lifting the opposite knee to his chest. He begins to chant, periodically pounding his chest and uttering war cries. Or just cries. Because he is so utterly and irrefutably alone. ‘Fuck you!’ Milo shouts at the invisible forces pitted against him. His screams comet through the woods, burning themselves out until there is nothing left but the ricocheting pain, which in itself has become company of sorts – a reminder that he is alive, not a quitter, still a fighter, deserving of survival. For what? To do what? Watch TV, eat, shit and Facebook? The stars told him he could pack it in – where are they now, the fuckers? The chickenshit stars are hiding behind clouds. ‘Come out and twinkle fucking twinkle!’ he shouts.