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Come Back Page 5

by Rudy Wiebe


  “It’s their land. All Edmonton.”

  “Okay. But just sad White stuff in here.”

  The glass food display counter they both knew, guitar/sax jazz quietly muttering; Breakfast Bagel Bacon Egg Gouda; Cheese Croissant; Breakfast Sandwich. The corner armchairs were empty and they sat down opposite each other, Hal making certain he faced the street intersection but then Owl never seemed to care, saw whatever he wanted to see no matter which way his chair faced; like the square-circle raven yesterday. Watching.

  The endless drift of passing walkers, always there, going somewhere—or coming? What if none of them, every different shape and movement and skin and age and hair colour in the sunlight, were not going? What if everyone was coming back to somewhere? That slight teen with his quick, awkward steps, both hands thrust deep in his jean pockets, bleached in splotches, the waist as always belted below his buttocks and the crotch twitching almost between his knees … how … perhaps if he took out his hands the jeans would drop to his ankles. No one would care. He could be coming home.

  The “Walk” light flicked green and a slender woman in a brief blue dress turned there; glancing around the intersection as the Whyte cars roared off. But she did not walk. She held a phone up to her perfect face with her right hand, talking, and with her left balanced two large Le Café coffee cups, one on top the other, upright against her talking chin. What a woman to have poised on a street corner, waiting for you. Her skirt hugged snug under her buttocks as she turned looking north up 104th Street, the black tights on her thighs flickered so beautifully with muscle. She shoved the phone into her hip pocket and plucked the top cup from under her chin: stir sticks protruded from both lids and she contemplated them one by one like a sudden mystery. Then she glanced up again and immediately ran across the bus lane so long-legged in heels, ran to the boulevard and a low black car easing to the curb, she ran in front of it into the traffic toward its opening door, the driver was leaning across and she ducked in and the car leaped ahead—the driver’s profile strained forward, his blonde hair and shoulders black—nothing orange … gone.

  He realized Owl had watched her run too, though he said nothing. He was tilted back and looking out, chewing a mouthful of Breakfast Egg-and-Bagel in serene Dene concentration.

  Through the coffee shop window, the car window, the profile of the driver, every vehicle streaming past driven by someone, who could comprehend all the drivers in all the cars crossing here, crossing in Edmonton, all the near, the actual, accidents—no no—only one man walking, after twenty-five years … exactly fifty years after his conception, perhaps to the day … walking through the eulogy words Hal was finally unable to utter aloud last night but now not even numb-drugged sleep and morning sunlight could prevent them. When he broke down alone in their unchangeable bed he had glanced ahead, skimmed over those words forever unchangeably there and waiting, and now at the very thought he saw slivers of eulogy as if reading a book—have mercy on my visual mind—words he had written all night Monday, September 9, 1985, and long into Tuesday, read them word by malevolent word on the window shadows of Owl and himself shifting over Le Café glass:

  … Such music and film made impossible demands on Gabriel’s neophyte skill, tied to such a sensibility …

  … filled scribblers with listed definitions quoted everyone from Heraclitus to Rilke …

  … August 1985 he writes in despair: Why do I try to scribble words? I have nothing to say, no courage for honesty … edited, lost somewhere between thought and hand …

  … he is devastated by his growing inability to show love: he sees beauty in a glance, the touch of a finger, and yet he cannot …

  … prayers lie scattered in his papers: I’m so selfish, I can never think of others … O God yes I’m sorry, I’m sorry, extremely sorry …

  And then. Sometime between August 12 and 13: It’s not that I don’t want to live. It’s that somehow I’ve lost the means. Has there ever been—

  Owl’s voice, across Hal’s obsessive recall: “You’re lucky. That’s not who you’re looking for.”

  “Lucky?” Hal could not comprehend the word.

  “No chance, blond guy like that, a BMW.”

  Hal bit into his cheese croissant—“somehow I’ve lost the means …”—ahhh, the taste was salt and warm, almost as good as the memory of bake-over. But when he swallowed, bile thudded in his gut.

  “That’s not a joke, at my age.”

  “She don’t mind us looking,” Owl was still trying to grin, “running around like that.”

  “You know what I’m looking for.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Orange Downfill.”

  “That jacket, yeah. Good for spring snow. I was on that southeast corner, I saw that orange crossing Whyte from the Double Cu—”

  “You saw it—yes!”

  “Yes. Going for that opposite corner, it went through them others fast, there.”

  “But where did it go, after it crossed Whyte?”

  “I never noticed nothing orange after, or on 104.”

  “Okay, but were you looking for it?”

  Owl’s black eyes, almost hidden in the folds of his brown face, were contemplating the air above him. The shop lights glinted in them like stars fixed in night sky.

  “No,” he said. “But I’d know if it come toward me.”

  “So it did go south?”

  “Maybe … or maybe west, on that south sidewalk.”

  Hal stared at his friend. The Orange Downfill had gone wherever, in every direction the city lay around them in mazes of repetition. And then with a lurch he realized that the long-legged heel woman could be Ailsa, now! The classic black hair and narrow nose, that perfect chin holding one cup on the other in the ultimate elegance of balanced coffees, it could be Ailsa … where was she? Whatever Yo and his implacable memories had been, they hadn’t seen Ailsa to remind them of anything since Grant—within two years after Gabriel—accepted that chair at the University of Victoria and silent distance could dry their tortured friendship into dust, none of them need ever meet to think about it. And Ailsa, she had married, years ago, wasn’t she at one time living in Vancouver, or was it Montreal? So long gone, so long to forget; but Joan did remember. Obviously: she had sent a beautiful card for Yo’s funeral. One of her brilliant abstract painting cards; there must have been an address on the envelope, if he could find it he could write Joan and locate Ailsa, wherever she was, perhaps she lived here in Edmonton again! And finally have the guts to ask her what, what had she … What would he ask? The letter?

  Owl said, “Maybe look different today.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe too warm today for downfill.”

  “Okay …” Hal’s thoughts broke slowly, “okay okay, but, you’re around all winter, you see everything here, all the time, you ever see that jacket before?”

  Owl looked into his eyes; the way no northern Dene Hal had ever met looked at anyone.

  “No,” Owl said. “Not in fall, never in winter.” His glance shifted to the window. “But the way he moves, thin, strong, head high, the turns …” he grinned slightly. “Hunters have to know that stuff.”

  “You’d know him?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You’ve seen him before?”

  “Only yesterday.”

  “All the thousands of people on Whyte …?”

  “I think, yeah. I saw that orange crossing Whyte, with all them others, to the old bank corner, and I never … but then you run out there and I don’t notice it just then, it was you and all that—”

  Hal followed Owl’s abrupt look out. The Double Cup sign was scrawled high and long across 104th Street and through the traffic streaming below it the warning blinkers of a white and imperial blue Edmonton Police car flickered. Parked already. One, two figures, official hats, bending down, still inside. His eyesight was too sharp, he could read the small words along the seam of their front fender: “Dedicated to Protect—Proud to Serve.”

&nb
sp; He clutched the arms of the chair and hauled himself up on his feet.

  Owl did not move. He said flatly, “Always lots of people at The Coffee Shack, west on Whyte late afternoon. After four.”

  Hal nodded as he turned. He got himself between the crowded Le Café chairs, hardly stumbling, not bumping into anyone too badly, then he was out the door and turning left toward 103rd, Gateway Boulevard. The air was brilliant, barely warm but tanged with melting snow and intermittent people strolled on the sidewalk, men in tight T-shirts, teenagers anchored arm in arm, two women pushing baby strollers side by side and everyone talking, talking. A swirl of pigeons—could they be doves?—whipped a bluish-grey arabesque over the street and up the face of the Strathcona Hotel—the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove—Hal walked as nonchalantly as he could, as fast.

  It had to be done: face Gabriel’s writing. After years the complete diary again, 1984 words in blue pen forever unchangeable and waiting. And those heavy spiral notebooks with their practicing sentences, lists, letters juggled and edited and re-arranged and belaboured and never sent. Try and find the chronology—Yo would have placed it all in some order. The urtexts of that summer encounter in Europe of their two families—all of them except Miriam preparing to trek her life into Spanish in South America that fall—intended as simply a few days of convivial travel together, it’s what friends do: enjoy a few days of Europe together if places and dates can coincide. Yo and Dennis and Hal after two weeks in a rented VW beyond the Iron Curtain Wall in East Germany, as the world was divided in 1984, grey East Berlin and Buchenwald and architecturally ruined Dresden and Prague and Tabór and Deo gratias out to stucco-restored Vienna; drive autobahns to join Gabe in Frankfurt just arrived to start his months, however many, of Europe travel and maybe North Africa; and meet Grant and Joan and their two kids there at the same time—why? Whose idea was that? It seemed so easy, a three-day West Germany intersection of Edmonton friends on holiday, foreign enjoyment with a share of home, it’s what friends do; it’s obvious with Dennis and Colin such great buddies born within two months of each other, fifteen, and Ailsa always tagging along … just turned thirteen.

  Face that all again, after twenty-five years. A girl two months a teen. Unimaginably dangerous.

  GABRIEL, BOX #2

  The bundle—bless you, Yo—of two daily planners, 1984 burgundy, 1985 black, and three tan spiral notebooks labelled by her pen 1, 2, 3. Hal held them tight, warm, such a heavy handful and his memory flickered into the night he first—no—nothing of that, just Gabriel writing, then—face it. He tugged the string open.

  Everything was there in chronological order, as only Yo could arrange it: diaries and notebooks dated perfectly. All he had to do was lay them side by side, turn pages; dare to read.

  UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA DAILY PLANNER 1984

  QUAECUMQUE VERA

  What an irony: the university motto: “Whatsoever things are true”—so, finish Saint Paul’s sentence: “think on these things.” Yes. Today he would.

  NAME: Gabriel Wiens

  ADDRESS / TELEPHONE / SOCIAL INSURANCE NO.: (all blank)

  BLOOD TYPE: Red

  IN CASE OF ACCIDENT PLEASE NOTIFY: (blank)

  Blank. Week 49, November Monday 28, 1983 to Week 29, July Monday 16, 1984: every date was blank. Then:

  July Sunday 22

  ‘why would I want to phone you’

  July Tuesday 24

  Leave Edmonton 3:30 p.m. In a.m. drop off book borrowed from Joan. Ailsa in shorts sitting on back steps, says they leave tomorrow for Frankfurt. Why am I flying to Holland alone, today?

  July Wednesday 25

  (Holland–W. Germany) Arrived Amsterdam 7:30 a.m. went direct to train station, then bullet train to “Terror in Frankfurt”

  And there it was. On pages obviously torn out of a spiral notebook but kept doubled in the diary. Gabriel kept everything so close, always like Yo of blessed memory in his innate order; even when he threw it away in “File of Discards.” But here two pages, four sides of words clawed, as seemed, off the ribs of Rilke’s First Elegy days before Gabriel ever glimpsed Duino Castle brooding grey and cornered on a kink of the Adriatic: “For beauty is nothing but terror’s beginning …” Tiny blue ballpoint letters gradually twisting themselves indecipherable: as he had lived them.

  Terror in Frankfurt

  I am about to stay up 40 hours straight. Warum? Because I am so shy. However, I won’t be the truly shy one unless I do not tell anyone. Then, and only then would I be a member of the truly shyest group of human beings. Human beings so shy they hide their shyness. A shynik.

  Only blank paper

  I’m sitting outside the Central RR Station at Frankfurt train immediately and direct from Amsterdam, why? what would I want here? No one’s here yet

  again the mind moved into other ideas for a period of time

  because I have been up 15 hours already

  no, no, I have been up 29 hours already, waiting this out will change the grand total to approximately 50 hours. 50 hours I have to stay awake before I can go to sleep in a reserved and paid-for hotel. A whole day early

  why did I fly a day early—to walk around Amsterdam—so why didn’t I?

  I haven’t even eaten for six/seven hours, perhaps more, that plane breakfast

  Let’s think a bit

  something new and different

  I can’t speak German; I’m already a person that doesn’t even like to go into new entrances of malls he knows very well

  shy compared to all Frankfurt, where I wait smiling with 5 bags of junk (with razors you can’t plug in in Europe, a tent!) a place where you have to pay a quarter to take a shit or beat off in something. I stick out and someone is going to try me, an old guy, actually middle aged, 35, his acne skin don’t I know it

  he is just looking for a standout hick like me. What a WUSS, how can a person be such a travel asshole

  pay a hundred bucks to be a day too early to sleep

  all you want to do is sleep anyway. The man is eyeing me oh crap he moved and pulled off his jacket and sat down next to me. Ready for Think I’ll go get one of my bags I checked. I stand out writing. Just watch his body reactions, he is alone, looking around. Got to find a cool place. It is 6:41

  6:51 p.m. oder 18:51 as the electric clocks run here and I have taken up a new spot. Damn cities there is never any place just to sit always got to move. Sit in the places where men, all the losers of the world seem to coagulate

  my joints ache

  my whole stupid body aches sleep, sleep if only never to wake up and listen to the bullshit

  how the hell am I going to last for a year away—travel!!!

  can’t even stand forty hours. When I am alone I absolutely fall apart

  I don’t even care enough to write—writing takes time

  Writing = time

  thinking I suppose would equal time too but thinking you don’t have, get in part of your body, i.e. outside your mind which, if you are being, experiencing, you don’t have to do anything extra. No work is needed to be yourself, because you just are. What I mean is be in your mind, you just are what is being human

  now to actually do something you have to put out effort, however, isn’t intent effort? Actually physical effort—a day ago I was living in my parents’ perfectly lovely house that I didn’t want to leave all those plans

  but alas, when I wake up to myself I have hauled all my junk and myself directly from the airport through beautiful Amsterdam as fast as I can and I am in grey smelly Frankfurt RR station. Here, I’m already sick of walking around and I haven’t even walked around yet. I’m young, the good years they say ugh if only I could climb into the box I stuffed my junk in

  and jerk the lid down tight. What junk. 7:04 another 13 o yes 14 minutes 7:05 gone, now to the ex pursuer again. I’ve noticed this was a louse, then how he went down the escalator

  if he came back up I’d know

  7:07 Idea—I could have taken my 6–7 thousand sav
ed and just lived somewhere in Canada alone 9 or 10 months easy not a worry. Oh God another lone guy has come along, wants to get eye contact, for all I know I hit the homo pickup place to kill time on. How can anyone be so insane as to sit here—can you kill time? Maybe pass time—time till I can go collapse. I should go to that Burger King to eat something. No sense killing myself through the extremely primitive process of starvation. The man left but will he be back? You got to be rude to him. How could my personality ever get born in my family who of them ever worries?

  there need not be such pain put on people, why the

  7:14 p.m. 16 hours and … 45 minutes left to kill before the reserved hotel across the street by time dragging on. My crossed legs

  driving me insane. I should go to a film to kill time easy only thing is I do not know what the theatres look like and if they say the cost I will not know what it means need marks, and not understand a

  7:20: my shoes are shiny, my parents and everybody thinks I’m in Edmonton till tomorrow but I left yesterday no what day

  in Frankfurt I am going nuts.

  simple as that

  For whatever good it is to him he can have my body odour

  God things are getting sick here 7:27 p.m.

  got to move on. Drink find somebody peace loving guy just give him my bags, here got to get used to getting terror why is the problem 7:29—how much more time to kill, many thanks oh whip a bun out of his bag painfully killed time. There probably are nice people in Frankfurt. But I’m here. They went thanks be to

  things can only get worse. 7:32 p.m. Should head for Burger King. I could just sit here drinking till I die what made me do it, here comes another one bottle in hand off I go. 7:35. Do it. This I can’t order anything in German, this is worse than my shit trip to Toronto. off off off I go. 7:37

  8:00 why does it go on and on, self-inflicted. Dear God where are you Man and alone both sets of parents have cars they must both be somewhere close close only counts in horseshoes XH4U

  5.30 DM fuer a Whopper and coffee

 

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