There was a commotion, that’s what sent Johnny back to the bunk. They were parked in the lineup outside the ferry terminal and suddenly there they were, the fuzz. Johnny scrambled into the back and buried himself in Saul’s bunk, hauled a greasy duffle bag up in front of his face and went about settling his heart down. Routine check, what have you got on board and what kinda load are you lugging tonight and what’s your destination and can I see your papers and is there any alcohol on board? Flashlight beaming across the dashboard, lingering on the passenger seat where Johnny was planked not ten seconds before. Johnny so dead tired, peeking out through the crack in the curtains at the outline of the cop, the tip of his RCMP cap barely rising above Saul’s foot. Nice boot in the face, if it was Johnny in the driver’s seat. Cop handing Saul back his papers, making like he was finished up and then, almost as an afterthought, asking Saul did he pass anybody hitchhiking or did anyone approach him for a ride anywhere? And then the moment of truth hovering in the air and Saul shaking his head in a nice laid-back way, no way of knowing how tight the grip Johnny had on the neck of the old-fashioned Coke bottle he pulled out of Saul’s duffle bag. Johnny figuring, well, if it comes down to it I’ll have to bag me a hostage, sort it all out as we goes along. What difference?
A thick, dry heat with a faint bilge stink sets Johnny’s stomach churning as he makes his way up the yellow iron steps leading to Deck 7 where the signs say there should be a restaurant and gift shop and the like. Johnny cant remember ever setting foot aboard anything bigger than a trap skiff his whole life and here this boat claims to have a fucken movie theatre on board! Jesus. He stumbles out into a right clusterfuck of strung-out travelling families and screamin youngsters and burly truckers and old fucks with white hats and big oversized sunglasses seated around squat bolted-down tables sharing sandwiches and sipping Pepsi from straws gawking out at the windows into the black night and pointing at Christ knows what. The eyes on Johnny when he stumbles past.
He has a look around for old Saul but no dice. Johnny sees another sign and figures it’s for the bar and so straightens his tie and tucks in his shirt and smoothens his trousers and feels the wad of bills in his coat pocket. Free man, Newfoundland somewhere out there far across the water behind him. There’s fiddle music a-blastin from a big-ass set of speakers. The place is only half full. Saul is there, leant up against the far corner of the bar making the grand big gestures at this young barmaid. Like he’s tellin this elaborate story. He shouts something towards the ceiling that Johnny cant make out and the barmaid laughs and blushes a bit and looks around like she’s afraid to be caught laughing. Johnny starts to walk over and join Saul but decides against it. Dont wanna go gettin drunk and running his mouth up and shagging up his ride off the boat. Johnny nods to the barman and orders up a double shot of rye. He asks for a certain kind, but no dice, no dice. Just as well. He spins on his heels, sippin his drink and feeling like the Man, feeling like a free man at last. Without looking in Saul’s direction, he scours the bar, hoping to latch on to any sweet gals who might be looking for trouble, or not. Cant write em off just cause they’re not out looking for trouble, hey Johnny. They’re the ones turns out to be the most trouble anyhow, the ones who aint out looking for it. Mostly because of the added details to the game you gotta play. Good girls. Underneath though, Johnny knows he’s got the edge on the lot of em, cause they’re all, underneath it all, looking for a fella like Johnny every once in a while. They likes that false bottom notion that they can always say they were tricked into it when it all goes south. Cause it always goes south, that’s one rule. He seemed so sweet. Yeah yeah, he seemed so sweet when he was tellin me how he’d as soon crawl under the table right here and now and suck my lungs out through my pussy. He seemed so sweet. God, what came over me? I never do anything like that. No, never, hey Johnny. Dont try and say you dont know what a fella like Johnny got on his mind, little mama. What do any of us got on our minds ninety percent of the time for fuck sakes? The house the car the job the new policy the drinks the drugs the money the face in the paper the music the new gadget the clothes—you name it and it all comes down to the prospect of a decent fuck. Or somebody’s idea of a good fuck. Or the satisfaction in the notion that someone wants to fuck you. No need to go pointing no fingers at our Johnny just cause he’s got a handle on what’s behind the smokescreen. Good girls and bad, no big difference. Take Madonna, hey Johnny . . . Johnny suddenly looks down to the hand that’s not holding the drink and realizes the urn is not in it. He bolts from the bar and back out through the doors and down the stairs the way he came. He shoulders open the heavy iron door leading out to the car deck and almost flattens a young couple carrying a scrap of a dog, little black-and-white wiry thing, in some sort of bag with air holes. The man of the two looks about to say something in defence of his dolly and beast but then gets a good look at Johnny’s face, maybe sees the scars and the teardrops and decides against it. Johnny is out running mad down towards the back of the deck in between cars and SUVs and pickups and minivans, but no sign of Saul’s truck, no sign of any big-rigs atall. He darts back to the stairway and down another greasy flight of steps and out onto the deck below, but again there’s no big-rigs in sight. He spins and screams a torrent of bloody oaths in the thick diesel air and then there’s a worker in an orange vest with his hand on Johnny’s shoulder tellin Johnny that passengers are not allowed to return to their vehicles! And Johnny squaring off with him, tryna convey, trying to fucken . . . impart, to make this motherfucker understand that Madonna is . . . that her ashes are . . . Fuck, Johnny wails. Fuck. Two more fellas in orange vests poke their heads out through another chunky steel doorway and Johnny realizes he’s got no ticket and no ID or nothing and there’s a warrant and it prolly wouldnt be such a smart move to burn the fucken boat to the gunnels. Best he can do is sigh and shrug in mock-defeat before disappearing back up the stairs into the stale chaos, determined to keep a low profile and track down old Saul and stay close to his good side and wait this one out.
7
Roadblock on the outskirts of Truro. Johnny with a Molson Canadian cap pulled down to shadow the teardrops as best can be. Baby-faced RCMP with his shit-brown middling eyes skimming through Saul’s papers and asking Johnny his name and Johnny casually offering the first words that comes to his head: Mikey. Mikey Puddester. This morning. Yes officer. Meetin my brother in Halifax. Work lined up in Fort Mac. All my papers are gone ahead with me brother’s girlfriend. I ahhh . . . I got drunk on the boat and they sorta dumped me. Details Johnny, details. Toss in that little confessional tone, make yourself look stupid, make the fucker feel superior. Baby-face holding his gaze on Johnny with those dead churched-out eyes. Johnny smiling back, neutral, blameless, hands on his lap, not a twitch, not a sniffle, delivering every word to the cop’s eyebrows, feeling the teardrops on his own cheeks practically glowing.
Big-rig rumbling on down the highway and Saul sayin how in five years he aint been pulled over and now twice since he picked Johnny up. And the implications of such happenstance thick and rigid in the air between the two and Johnny suddenly surly and allowing that he’d as soon jump ship if his presence is a hindrance. Saul shrugging, humming through the morning’s anxiety and looking to diffuse the tension with the last of the bottle of Beefeater. Johnny with the urn back tucked safely between his thighs as he drains the final three ounces of gin, brazenly handing the empty bottle back to Saul.
Well I’m headed down towards Saint John in a bit. The road forks off. Gotta cross into the States, so . . .
Johnny bats drowsily at the beaded dream catcher strung from Saul’s redundant rear-view, hums a dreary melody that’s been spiralling through his head for years and years and years.
Birch. Maple. Ash, maybe. Trees Johnny dont know the names of. An endless ocean of blood and fire the likes of which he’s never laid eyes on. Cause where’s Johnny been? Almost as far west as Clarenville that time. No farther. Until now.
Rickety truck stops and greying family d
iners, rust-streaked gas pumps and ramshackle vegetable stalls and crumbling miniature golf courses, deserted campgrounds and boarded-up information booths and desolate little wooden churches. A brilliant white billboard screamin for miles in six-foot black lettering: John 15:23. Johnny with his head slumped against the foggy window, hears Saul announce theatrically:
He who hates me hates my Father also.
What?
That’s what the sign says. New Testament. I looked it up last year.
Johnny’s poisoned now, fed up, resentful, wanting to cut loose on his own, struggling to suppress something in him that wants to fucken . . . smash everything. He looks across at Saul, who’s supping one of them meal-replacement drinks that smells to Johnny like meat-flavoured milkshake.
Dont tell me youre one of them fucken God freaks are ya?
What? No, no. I was just curious. I pass by it so often that . . .
Cause I aint got no time for fuckers like that, man.
Saul thieves a timid glance across at our Johnny, as if he’s only now considering the real risk of Johnny’s capacity for chaos and carnage. But what’s to be said now, clipping through the Maritimes doing a hundred twenty? You knew Johnny for an armed robber not five minutes after you picked him up.
Seen me fair share of fuckers like that, says Johnny, God freaks spewing Jesus and forgiveness and turning the other cheek and all that shit. We had this prick come in and give us a talk one time, this big old fat fuck whose daughter was run down by a drunk driver or some such bullshit. This is me doing a five-month bit for possession of a prohibited weapon, ya know. I was what, twenty, twenty-one? Prohibited fucken weapon they said! Christ. Hardly two inches sawn off the tip and they calls it prohibited. Anyhow, we’re all called into the multi-purpose room this day to hear this prick go on about how fucken full of, ya know, rage and hate and stuff he was for so many years. How this drunk ran down his daughter when she was on her way home from school, last day of grade five, skipping home with her report card, ya know. Gettin ready to go on the family vacation and shit. Buddy on his fourth drunk driving offence and got himself ten years for vehicular manslaughter. And he comes up for parole after five years anyhow, and this fella whose daughter it was, he kicked up the big fuss with the media and everything. Anyhow, there was some sorta meeting arranged between the two of em, him and the fella up for parole. By this time his wife is after packing her bags and he’s after losing his job and all that cause where he’s so consumed with hating this drunk driver and putting all his time into that MADD shit and letting the rest of his life fall apart. And he goes in to this meeting with the parole board and the drunk driver with the intent of spitting in buddy’s face. He got this big statement drawn up about the state of his life and the insult to his daughter’s life that this fella should walk early, ya know. But anyhow, he says he walks in and he sees the scrawny little fuck with these blasted-out eyes and they gets talkin. And buddy, the drunk driver, tries to say he’s sorry but the little girl’s father, big tubby fucker, he wont hear it. He starts firing these questions at the old drunk, about what he remembers and all that cause he figured where he was so drunk and all. Turns out the drunk fella remembered everything in the most minuscule detail, the kinda haircut the little girl had, whatever kinda cartoon thing was on her school bag, the colour of her lunch tin. Said every night he closes his eyes and every morning he wakes up, for five years, that’s the last and the first face he sees, the little girl’s. And I guess when the father saw that this drunk fella was just some guy, ya know, some guy who fucked up, however bad, well he said he let it all go. He forgave him, so goes the tale. Gave his consent for him to have an early parole. And they’re even friends nowadays, if you can believe that. Anyhow, the father, he comes in and he tells this big dramatic story to all of us lads on a Sunday morning who are mostly just there for the free donuts, and next thing he’s going on about God and penance and that, and how we’re who we are, not what we done. Tryna say how us crowd, inmates, how we’re all the same, dont matter what we done. And after a time we all realizes that he’s tryna get us to take pity on the fucken skinners, is all he’s at. Fucken diddlers. I looked at him and I asked him straight out, I said, Are you tryna tell me that I’m no better, me in here on a prohibited weapons rap, that I’m no better than some pederass who sticks his tongue up little boy’s holes? Is that what youre tryna say? And he started to get a bit tongue-tied then I think cause he was used to talkin in the high schools and the church groups and shit. He tries to stay on course though, like he’s got this spiel that he usually gets out because no one ever calls him on nothing, he goes on about how forgiveness of them that wronged you, even if they dont want to be forgiven, is the way to fucken Christ and all that slop! Can you imagine? That’s the way for us all to overcome everything like addictions and self-destructive behaviour and what have ya. But I aint fucken listening to that shit, I says, Hey, lookit here prick, youre here tellin us to share our smokes with the fucken skinners when half of us are after being diddled ourselves? Tellin us we’ll stop using dope and shit and there you are and your legs can barely hold you up, half a fucken honey cruller jammed into the folds in your chin and bacon grease brimming up under your eyelids and you says all’s forgiven? That youre healthy and happy and carried on? Bullshit, I said. Bull-fucken-shit.
Saul gears down at the bottom of a long winding hill on the outskirts of a town called Fort Lawrence, rubs his eyes and checks his watch, glances nervously at this fresh menacing version of his passenger.
Sounds to me like he was trying to . . .
An eye for a fucken eye, that’s what I said to him. Cause that’s about as much religion and God as I can suffer, man. A tooth for a fucken tooth. Look here, I said, if some fucker slaughtered my daughter or my son, or my little nephew or my cousin or brother or something, and you put me in a room with him to help weigh in on his fate? Fucken hell man, I’d weigh in alright. I’d suck his goddamn eyeballs out and fuck the sockets with the leg of a chair. That’s what I told him. Anyhow, what’s the good of him to be going around and not gettin called on nothing he has to say, never met with a challenge? How’s he gonna learn anything? Fuck that. Anyhow, he went home grumbling and nearly bawling and he musta said something to someone cause I got sent down to special handling for a week. Prick.
Gruff, dense silence in the cab for the next half hour and Johnny chain-smokes from Saul’s package even though they both know Johnny’s got a full pack in his jacket. At some point Saul makes to reconcile, asks Johnny if everything’s okay. Johnny glowers across the cab at Saul, smiles forebodingly.
Is everything okay? Yes sir. Everything has never been better.
Just outside of Sackville. Saul needs to gas up. He pulls into an Irving and Johnny slips inside for a leak and a Coke and when he moseys back out to the parking lot Saul’s rig is nowhere to be seen. Johnny whirls around in pending panic, smashes the Coke into an empty garbage bin, notes the coming roar bubbling in his guts, thick heady impotent outrage pulsing in his forehead, throws his claws into the air and raises his throat to the heavens . . . and then he sees it, the urn. Madonna. What’s left. Abandoned perilously on the lip of the diesel pumps at the far end of the lot. Madonna, out here in a ceramic bottle in the Maritimes, scorched down to a litre of grit and ash and her only hope for a proper send-off hinging on the crazed impulses of the hot-blooded creature that is Johnny Keough.
Not a clue, not a clue how far he’s come, how far he’s yet to go. How big is it Johnny, out here? Dont know do ya?
This is Johnny, hours down the road, having hoofed the most of it except for a couple of lame-arsed rides. First one was with some fella coming back from visiting his father somewhere in Nova Scotia. Told Johnny all about how his father is nearly dead and all his brothers and sisters are gone to war over who’s gonna get the money. He got a bit emotional and everything and Johnny was starting to feel a bit bad for him. Then he bucks up and gets ahold of himself and tries to do the small talk thing. He wants to
know where Johnny is from, and when Johnny tells him he roars laughing and thinks it’s great and right away says how he heard a wicked Newfie joke not long ago and starts tellin it to Johnny. As if Johnny looks like the type who’s gonna laugh at a fucken Newfie joke. Johnny cuts him off though, wont let him tell the joke, but instead asks him if he heard the one about the fella who picked up a hitchhiker and got his face smashed in for tryna tell a Newfie joke.
Do you know that one? Stop me if youve heard it already.
That ride didnt last too fucken long.
Next one was with a deathly gaunt sales rep for a garden supply shop who would not shut the fuck up about a new attachment for trimming hedges that was gonna change everyone’s lives overnight. Like he was tryna talk Johnny into running out and buying one or something. Likely chance of hookin a ride then, hey Johnny, on the side of the road revving up a hedge trimmer in Pius’s old suit. Could hide it up your hole I spose. Imagine though Johnny, there’s folks out there whose lives would change overnight if only they had the right kinda attachment to trim their bushes. That’s the world we’re livin in. Big wonder the jails and mental hospitals are bustin at the seams.
Could not let it slide, could ya fucker? Hadda go gettin all power-trippy and psycho with yon Saul after he pretty much saved your ingrate hide and got you off that sinking rock back there. Nothing to do with him. Old burnt-out hippie trucker who dont give a fuck for much else aside from some puckbunny named Sass. Some little thing, little twitch in the jawline, maybe when he rubbed salve into his hands, that showy biblical namesake, or them sickening menthols he was smoking, women’s cigarettes, or the way he carried on with that barmaid on the ferry. Something, something struck a nerve with me, with our John-John, something as petty as all that. Something always does.
Hunkered on a guardrail outside a Best Western and Johnny’s in mind of the last time he sat on a guardrail cursing the weather and done in for a ride. Made the papers that time. Not your name, but the deed, the deed, the great escape—Resident Escapes Whitbourne Youth Correctional Facility. Ha! Fucken resident they called me, the papers. Resident. End of March it musta been. This is the stint for theft over five thousand and arson, all that nonsense.
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