No Signature

by William Bell

  I asked her why they didn’t live together permanently.

  “He hasn’t been able to settle down, Wick, and I’m not going to force him. Used to be, he just wanted to be on the move. But now he’s an established artist. Not famous, but he’s becoming known in certain places. So now he has to do a certain amount of travelling. But he isn’t gone for very long, and he always comes back here. Besides, I have an idea that he’ll find it easier to settle down now.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “I do too. Because when—or if—he does, I’m going to take another whack at getting him to go back to school.”

  I pictured my father in a classroom slouching in his chair with his moccasined feet stuck out in the aisle, puffing on his pipe and mumbling comments to himself while the teacher rambled on about verbs and nouns.

  “That would be great,” I said, “but do you think he’d go?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried to get him to sign up with one of those literacy programs you see advertised in the paper every now and then. But so far he’s resisted. Says he’s too busy, but that’s only part of it. He still has a lot of anger inside about his experiences in school. And before he goes back to school he has to admit to other people that he has a problem. Your dad’s an awfully proud man, Wick.”

  “Sharon, do you mind if I ask you something else?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How did you find out?”

  She shrugged. “Well, after we discovered we loved each other, he told me there was something I should know before we got real serious. Said he’d made a big mistake once and he wasn’t going to make it again. I was expecting him to say he had a drug problem or that he’d been in jail, anything but the fact that he couldn’t read or write. I was the first person he’d ever admitted it to.” She smiled. “You’re the second, Wick.”

  “But … don’t take this wrong, but didn’t it change the way you thought of him?”

  “I was shocked, naturally—I mean, he hid it so well. But, no, it didn’t change anything between us. He’s the same man I fell in love with.”

  To keep in shape I did my exercises and went for a run every morning. I was getting nervous again about the meet and didn’t want to lose my training edge. The problem was, the exercises made me think of Hawk, since we almost always did them together at school, and the runs gave me too much time to think. Running is great if you want to get away from everyone and think about something, maybe thrash out a problem, but when you don’t want to think, running is a drag.

  A dozen times I picked up the phone to call Hawk, and a dozen times I put it down again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  EARLY MONDAY MORNING we said goodbye to Sharon and left for Thunder Bay. Dad had got the van tuned up—he sold a lot of sculptures over the weekend and had a few bucks to spend—and replaced the muffler himself. I told him if he was going to play opera on the stereo it might be better to have the muffler the way it was.

  The Trans-Canada Highway took us up the east shore of Lake Superior. The mountains and the lake combined to produce some terrific scenery, with sweeping deep blue bays and mountainous peninsulas. My father seemed to know where he was going. I asked him if he had been this way before and he said yes.

  “But what about the first time?” I asked. “I mean, how do you find your way around?” Another thought struck me. “And how did you find your way around in all the travelling you did?”

  He didn’t say anything at first and I began to wonder if I had embarrassed him. “Do you mind me asking you?”

  “I guess if you’d asked me a couple weeks ago I’d’ve said yes, but now it’s kind of a relief, bein’ able to talk about it. Hidin’ stuff is high pressure, you know?

  “If you can’t read, you’ve gotta get by with word of mouth, you’ve gotta ask directions all the time. People naturally tell me street names, thinkin’ I’ll find the signs, so I ask them about landmarks—you know, a gas station or a big grey building, whatever. I can read numbers, as long as they’re not too long, so I can follow a map because all the highways are numbered. If I’m goin’ somewhere, I count the towns I’ll pass through on the way. Then when I think I’m where I want to be, I stop at a gas station or a restaurant and shoot the breeze for a few minutes and then say, ‘What town is this, anyway? I missed the sign.’ ” He smiled around the stem of his pipe. “You get to meet a lot of people that way.

  “If somebody gives me somethin’ to read,” he went on, “I tell them I forgot my glasses. I usually carry an empty glasses case in my pocket. That works most of the time. At the show, there, back in the Soo, I did the glasses routine quite a bit, told the gallery people Sharon was my business manager and acted the part of the harebrained artist who doesn’t understand worldly things like bills or money or commissions.”

  He chuckled, and held the steering wheel tightly while a huge transport truck loaded with logs roared past, shaking the van like a paper box, but his laugh had a bitter edge to it.

  “In school I failed grade one and two. ’Course, they didn’t hold me back. I went on to the next grade. I knew I’d failed, and all the other kids knew, and the teacher pretended I hadn’t, but I had.

  “So, you know, I felt kind of bad about myself. I didn’t have no confidence. No matter how hard I tried, nothin’ seemed to work. One of my teachers used to get on my case, tellin’ me I had a lazy mind. I guess I don’t blame her now. It must’ve been awful frustratin’, tryin to get me to read and write.

  “Anyway, feelin’ bad about myself like that, I got into a lot of trouble. Fights, talkin back to the teachers, not doin any work because I couldn’t write. The usual. Things didn’t change too much when they finally pushed me into high school. I earned some credits in the couple of years I was there—arts, phys ed, a few shops. But I spent most of my time skippin’ classes, and when I turned sixteen I was gone.

  “See, even though school was failure after failure, inside I knew I was better than that. I knew I could draw—it was the only time I ever got good marks in elementary school—and I knew I wasn’t stupid. But most of the time I felt lonely. I felt like I was standin’ on the outside of a high chain-link fence, and I could see all the other kids, all the other adults, playin’, workin’, gettin’ along with a normal life, but I couldn’t get in. I still can’t. It isn’t like the gate’s locked. It’s like there isn’t a gate at all.”

  He struck a match on the underside of the steering column and lit his pipe, then stuffed the match into the pile of other matches in the ashtray.

  “So anyways,” he said through a cloud of smoke, “what the hell. After I quit school I got along. I found jobs. If I had to fill out an application I’d take it home and get my mom to help me with it. Or I’d go after jobs where they’d just as soon pay you under the table, so there was no application. Thing is, though, all those jobs were the same—lousy pay and no benefits. And every day you’re thinkin’, is this the day they’re goin’ to find out about me and fire me?

  “After I left you and your mother and I was on the road, I picked up enough work to pay for food and gas and I kept on the move. Did a little stealin’, too, when I had to. I knew by then that I wanted to really work on my carvin’ and I started to offer some pieces for sale at tourist shops and places like that. They’d buy them from me and mark up the price. I never stayed around long enough to know what happened to them, but I made sure my mark was carved onto the base of every damn one of them.”

  We drove along for a while. My mind was going a million miles a minute, swirling with questions, but I didn’t want to fire a barrage of How-did-you-do-thats at him. Instead I watched the scenery crawl past and let my mind run.

  It amazed me that my mother never found out until that night at her office party. I guessed she would have handled all their money—writing the cheques, going to the bank, all that stuff—because, knowing her, she would have wanted to anyway. And when you think of it, how often do parents write each other notes?

  But w
hat about the million other things in life that required the ability to read and write? I had never thought about it—who does?—but everything in my life assumed reading and writing. How do you look up the baseball and hockey scores in the newspaper? How do you check out the TV guide to see what’s on when you feel like crashing in front of the tube at night? How do you find your favourite group in the record store, and make sure you don’t buy the same CD you bought last time? For that matter, how do you find the record store? Suppose you meet a great-looking girl and you want to look up her number in the phone book. You’d be out of luck.

  I remembered one day in English when Ms. Cake gave us a journal topic, something like “How would your life be different if you were illiterate?” We sat there looking mystified and most of us wrote dumb stuff like “I wouldn’t be able to read Stephen King novels” or smartass things like “I wouldn’t be able to do my English homework.” In the discussion that followed, Cake was very earnest, but we just joked around. Now it didn’t seem so funny. And now the word illiterate, which I always thought meant you were stupid, didn’t sound so scientific.

  “Hey, Dad,” I burst out, “how did you ever get a driver’s licence?”

  “What makes you think I’ve got one? No, relax,” he added, laughing, “I’m legal. A long time ago I found a nice lady—after I tried this trick at a half dozen Ministry of Transport offices—who believed me when I told her I lost my glasses. I convinced her to read the questions for me and I answered orally. Got all the answers right, too. The road test was easy. See, I can tell what all the signs say by the colour and shape and where they are. You know, a sign with kids on it holding books, something like that. It isn’t hard. And I can write my name and all. I draw it. But it looks like a five-year-old wrote it, so most of the time I try to get away without signin’ things.”

  Yeah, like postcards, I thought. No signature.

  “Sharon’s been after me to take a shot at one of them literacy classes. But, I don’t know.” He geared down as the van struggled up a long hill. “Don’t forget, Steve, humans got along great for thousands of years without bein able to read and write. People like me are like them. We learn to use our ears, and we gotta have a good memory.” He capped his temple with the stem of his pipe. “We gotta store a lot of information up here.” He paused. “Sure is a pain in the butt sometimes, though.”

  I remembered what he had said about being on the wrong side of the fence with no gate. He must have suffered a thousand defeats when he was a kid at school, a million humiliations. He must have lost out on a lot. Including his family.

  “She shouldn’t have done it,” I thought, pounding my fist on my thigh.

  “What’s that, Steve?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking out loud.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  LONG BEFORE WE SAW ANY BUILDINGS the stink from the pulp mills told us we were getting close to Thunder Bay. I had a map on my lap and squinted into the late-afternoon sun that slanted crossways into the van, looking for road signs.

  The university wasn’t very big but it was modern, with attractive buildings done in a sand-coloured brick. The campus was mostly open land with wide lawns, carefully tended shrubs and lots of parking. When we got out of the van and looked behind us we could see the Sleeping Giant across the harbour.

  My father and I went into the main building, the University Centre, and found the registration desk in a large foyer. There were lots of athletes there already, strutting around in track suits with logos of their schools or clubs on them. I didn’t see anyone I knew I hadn’t been too nervous up to now—so much had gone in the last nine days—but the sight of the other wrestlers, the sound of their banter, and the serious looks behind the jokes really wound me up. I registered, was handed a thick folder full of information and a map of the university, and was pointed toward the residence where my room was.

  We skirted Tamblyn Lake, a small pond that the buildings were grouped around, and followed a stone path to the Prettie Residence. After a few minutes walking up and down the halls we found the room.

  It was small, on the second floor, looking over the so-called lake. There were two single beds.

  “Well,” I said to my father, “looks like there’s room for both of us.”

  He was looking around as if he had landed on Mars. “Finally,” he said with a laugh, “I made it to university! Now I can tell people, ‘Yep, I went to Lakehead U.’ I don’t have to tell them it was only for two days.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I GOT UP EARLY TUESDAY and went for an easy run while my father went out for doughnuts and coffee. I came back to the main facility just before eight o’clock for the weigh-in. The place was thronged with wrestlers, some outfitted in the latest threads, some going the other way, wearing worn grey track suits with holes in the knees and cut-off arms. I was hoping they paid less attention to training than their looks.

  After the weigh-in I went into the third double gym to stretch and warm up. It was packed with wrestlers of all sizes, and the racket from their talk and laughter bounced off the walls.

  Keeping to myself, I got to work stretching on the mat, then went to the wall for back-arches, starting easy and building to full arches, then a crab walk. Usually while I’m warming up I also psych up—get my mind in gear, get aggressive. You have to believe you can win, that you can make your opponent pay every time he pulls a move on you. And you’ve got to go to the mat ready to rock ‘n’ roll. You can’t wander into the gym and shake hands with your opponent thinking, Gee, I sure hope I’ll do okay. The guy’ll kill you.

  But I kept thinking about Hawk, and I couldn’t get psyched. I should have called him back, I knew. I had chickened out. I had been afraid, not knowing what to say to the new Hawk, the one I now knew was gay. Try psyching yourself up, telling yourself you’re a mean strong machine on the mat, powerful, crafty and fast—try it when you really know you’re a coward.

  I went to the foyer to check my match time and pool, feeling more like a limp piece of string than a powerhouse. I was on at nine o’clock. Good, I thought, get started early so there’s no time to stand around letting the jitters sap your energy. I went to the change room and put on my red singlet and the new Nikes my mother had bought me to bring good luck. As I double-knotted the stiff white laces I promised myself I’d call Hawk that night and tell him how I did, who I’d face the next day in the medal rounds. If I made it to the second day.

  The first match went okay. My opponent wasn’t in as good shape as he should have been, and when he realized I was a lot stronger than him he got dirty. He cross-faced me a couple of times in the second round, and that got me mad. I paid him back with a painful gut-wrench, then, after we tied up again, I threw him. He landed like a bag of wet sand and I pinned him.

  The ref took us to centre and held my hand in the air. Someone in the stands was stomping his feet and cheering like a retard.

  I’ll bet he never hollered like that at the opera.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MY OPPONENT FOR THE SECOND match was a black kid, strong and fit, and a lot tougher than the first guy. But my concentration began to return and I was able to rack up points using gut-wrenches and ankle locks on him. By the end of the round the score was 8-2. In the middle of the second round the match was stopped because I beat him on technical superiority.

  The third match, after lunch, just about killed me. The opponent was a kid I had fought before in Toronto. He was as strong as Hercules—at least it seemed that way on the mat—but, lucky for me, he wasn’t very fast. That’s where I got it over him. But he made me pay. I beat him by one point and by the time I was finished I was exhausted.

  The last match of the day found me still tired. I hoped my opponent was more tired than me. He was shorter than me, a white guy, very hairy.

  He caught me asleep early on and I was almost pinned. From then on I fought defensively, using the zone a lot, waiting until he moved on me and then trying to score on counter-move
s. The score was even when the final round was almost over.

  Then I tried something I do once in a while. I had been wrestling pretty defensively, like I said, and the guy got too used to it. When we had tied up and worked our way near the zone, pushing and shoving, I wound up all the strength I had left and exploded. I locked my hands behind his head, stepped in deep, pivoted and threw him. Talk about airborne. As he smashed to the mat in the out-of-bounds area I caught a glimpse of the ref holding up three fingers.

  When we tied up again at centre I just kept away for the remaining seconds. I picked up a caution for passivity, but it didn’t matter by then. I was glad to hear the buzzer and see the big yellow sponge sail into the ring to mark the end of the match.

  Four wins! Suddenly I didn’t feel tired any more.

  Back in our room, I came out of the shower to hear my father on the phone. He was just saying goodbye.

  “Love you too,” he said in a low voice, his back to me.

  He cracked open a beer and threw himself into a chair, looking real happy about something. “Man, what a day for the Chandlers! First you win four in a row—that means you’re in the medal rounds tomorrow, right?—and I get an offer on a sculpture that would knock your socks off!”

  “Which one?” I asked, towelling my hair.

  “The one I did for you, the wrestlers.”

  My exhilaration drained away. “Oh, yeah?” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “A good offer?”

  “How’s ten thousand bucks sound? That’s the best offer by far I’ve ever had. Some character who runs a sports equipment outfit in the States wants to buy it. He wants to put it in a case in the lobby of their buildin’.”

  “So it’s gone?” I said.

  “Are you kiddin’? No way I sell that one. That one’s not for sale.”

  Well, I felt pretty good that night. We went out to an Italian restaurant and oinked out on pasta, then caught an early movie, a real dog about some macho types rescuing a beautiful but dumb woman captured by terrorists. I fidgeted all through the flick, knowing what I had to do when we returned to our room.