Shelby

by McCormack, Pete;

  “A left hook,” he said with a laugh. “So what do you say, man? Monday. The Cruel Elephant.”

  “Guitar?”

  “You said you would, man.”

  “Eric, I hardly know any chords.”

  ’“Do you know E?”

  “Major?”

  “Cool. Most o’ the tunes are a droning E thing. How ’bout G?”

  “I know it, but my pinky—”

  “A?”

  “The one on the second fret?”

  “You got it. D?”

  I grinned. “Anyone can do D.”

  “Great. You’re in.” He thrust out his hand. “Welcome to SMEGMA BOMB!”

  My stomach flipped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I feel queasy. I think I overdid it last night.”

  “Oh yeah. That homemade shit’ll kick anybody’s ass, man.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Brutal, eh?” he said, smiling.

  “Oh sweet Jesus, no.”

  “Are you gonna throw up?”

  “What time is it?”

  Eric pulled a watch from his pocket. “Ten to eleven.”

  I sprinted out of the apartment and down a creaky set of stairs before stopping at the bottom, my body twitching, my eyes rimmed with tears of disbelief. It was too late. I sobbed several times before rearranging the keys in my front pocket which were digging into my groin. A piece of paper flicked out and floated to the ground. I picked it up and through blurry eyes read: LUCY 734–7138. I staggered back up the stairs. The door was still open. Eric hadn’t moved.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  For fear of breaking down I didn’t face him. “I’ve missed my Zoology final,” I said shaking, “the infrastructure of my existence is crumbling before my eyes.” I felt a numbness in my fingertips. My head dropped.

  “Take a deep breath.”

  “I fear the blood-dimmed tide. Alcohol has ravaged my dreams. Innocence is lost.”

  “Say what?”

  I couldn’t respond.

  He tilted his head over my shoulder to read the note in my hand. “Who’s Lucy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said feebly.

  “Yeah, right,” he said, slapping me in the arm, “and I got a dick the size of a mutant zucchini.” I looked up. He had a wide, goofy grin on his face.

  “What?”

  “Who is she?”

  “Who?”

  He shook his head, smiling like a proud father. “You dog,” he said.

  II

  For there is no real education that does not respond to

  felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.

  —Allan Bloom

  “All you gotta do is lie, man,” Eric said over coffee at Joe’s Cafe that afternoon.

  “I’m not going to lie.”

  “Then it can’t be that important, man.”

  “Education is everything, Eric; my calling, my friend—social justice incarnate is what it is.”

  “Well tell ’em you … you … were saving seal pups and you broke a snowshoe or somethin’.”

  “I can’t lie.”

  “Everybody lies! You’re twenty years old.”

  “Age is no excuse. Life awaits us all at every moment. Am I up to the task? Are you? That is the question, my friend. For whom does the bell toll? The bell tolls for thee.”

  “Look, you missed the test. You tell ’em a lie. You take it again. You get into med school. End of story.”

  I stood up, pulled a two dollar bill from my pocket and threw it on the table. “I must go study.”

  “So you’re just gonna scrap it?”

  I shrugged. “It’s one test.”

  “This mornin’ you were ballin’ your brains out.”

  “Please forgive that outburst. It was utterly inappropriate.”

  “So missing the test is no big deal?”

  “All my interviews were favourable. My grades far exceed that required. All that remains is the MCAT.”

  “Okay.”

  “Moreover, I truly believe honour to be vital in times of social duress.”

  “It’s your call.”

  “After all, is a man his marks?”

  He raised his eye-brows and smiled. “You ain’t, that’s for sure.”

  “What have I done?”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. One stupid test. So what?”

  There was an ache in my chest. “What the hell have I done?”

  “Nothin’, man. You—”

  “What in God’s name have I done?” My head flew back and crunched against the wall. I staggered.

  Eric grabbed my arm. “Easy.”

  “Academic suicide!” I cried. “That’s what I’ve committed. I feel like Oppenheimer!”

  “Hey, it’s just a test. Remember? So what?”

  “I feel possessed by foreign beings!”

  “Take a deep breath, man. Your eyes look funny.”

  “Why?… Why?”

  Eric put his arm around me. It was soothing. “Hey,” he said softly, “it’s okay. Take it easy. It’s just one day.”

  I could barely stand.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I did; and began talking—a startling confession that rolled us out of the afternoon, through dinner and into the early evening. I found myself requestioning my own ambitions, my raison d’etre, God’s hopes for humanity. Moreover, I responded to these questions with answers I was theretofore unaware of feeling. Even the true value of post-secondary education and the motives of my parents’ involvement—and in this way their aptitude—came under scrutiny. Only my destiny-filled dreams of contributing to an ailing world remained constant.

  Eric chuckled. “You got some sort o’ plan?” he asked, snuffing out his cigarette in an ashtray filled with a half dozen stubs.

  “Medicine can open up a lot of windows.”

  “What can’t?” he said, standing up, zipping his leather jacket and tossing a crumpled ten dollar bill on the table.

  “But, Eric, medicine is the only scientific study of the human being that can be taken to all the world. A gift for the masses that makes some order of this seemingly wacky wonder.”

  Eric stopped smoking in mid-inhale. “Wacky wonder?” he said, laughing uproariously. “You sound like Bruce Cock-burn.”

  “Laugh all you want. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for penicillin or any number of medical innovations. And that’s where I come in.” I stood up. “I may be unsure of many things, Eric, but I know that academia—or, if you will, thirst for knowledge—is what I do; what I am—a yearning I believe to be God-sent.”

  “Shel,” he said, “I hate to be a party-pooper but the big boom is over, man—all the romantic discoveries like insulin and all that are done. AIDS is out o’ control. The Renaissance is finito. Syphilis is such a mild disease nowadays we hope we get it. Big business is it, man. There’s too much cash in the death trade. Politicians have sold us out. We’re born too late. The ozone is a piece of Swiss cheese. A degree won’t get you a job making toilet seats.”

  “Eric, that is ludicrous … and the only reason I don’t just get up and walk away is because I, too, have lately felt fleeting moments of impotence and … uncertainty.”

  He chuckled. “Hey, I didn’t say that. I’m happy. I just think we’ve blown it, that’s all.”

  I shook my head. “How can you believe that and still say you’re happy?”

  “That’s the kind o’ guy I am.”

  “That kind of happiness can’t last. You have to know why.”

  “Jesus, man, loosen that tie before your head blows off. Slide a little.”

  “To what end? Further spiritual decay?”

  “Hey, man,” he said, “it’s you serious types who make the atom bombs, not some loser kid popping qualudes. I have yet to see a fun lovin’ politician anywhere, anyhow.”

  “Well, naturally, it’s a difficult job.”

  He grinned. “M
an, I can’t wait to see you on stage tomorrow night. Rock ’n roll’s gonna kick your ass!”

  “Oh … uh … about the concert, Eric, I don’t think—”

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said, “it’s just a few power chords. Anyway, you can’t say no, Mr. Worldsaver. You owe me for today.”

  “I can hardly play.”

  “Oh I get it. You’re only into helpin’ out the Third World.”

  “It’s not that. I just … I’m extremely busy right now.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “You’d play if I was some starvin’ Biafran and you know it.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “I don’t think you walk your talk, man.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know if I’m buyin’ what you’re sellin’,”

  “I’m not selling anything.”

  “It means I think you’re full o’ crap.”

  “Okay, I’ll play.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it all back. You’re a man o’ your word. Cigarette?”

  “Um … no thank you. I don’t smoke.”

  Having dropped Eric at his apartment, I returned to my own hovel feeling dazed. Further reflection convinced me that missing the Zoology final may well have been a sign of my growing dissatisfaction with the current state of higher education. Nonetheless, it was after ten P.M. and I knew that if I was to ever leap beyond Bachelor of Science intellectual psychobabble and be granted a position where I could truly delve into methods of solving general social dysfunction, a fine result on the MCAT was imperative. Moreover, I had been procrastinating and I loathe such practices. I took the guidebook from my desk, picked up a pencil off the floor, turned on my bedside lamp and read:

  SECTION 2: SCIENCE PROBLEMS

  Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

  Directions: In this section, descriptive material precedes a set of four (4) related questions. For each question, use the descriptive material and your knowledge of science to determine the best answer …

  I woke up half a day later, 11:18 A.M., with the sun streaking across my room, the study guide spread open on the floor, my bedside lamp still on and my body fully clothed. My teeth were caked. I was sweaty. The window was dripping with condensation. Pulling the piece of paper with Eric’s phone number out of my front pocket, the piece of paper with Lucy’s number fell out, too. I phoned Eric and got his answering machine message advertising the concert at The Cruel Elephant Monday night. A surge of adrenalin surprised me. I picked up my acoustic guitar and commenced playing, occasionally imagining an ocean of perhaps 70,000 bobbing heads, mostly women, chanting my name in abandoned unison.

  By the time I broke for a dinner of cream crackers and cheese that filled my bed with crumbs, my knowledge of Henle’s Loop remained fragmentary but I’d conquered Gordon Lightfoot’s “Pussywillow Cat-tails” at half speed and A Major had lost some of its muffled sound. From then until slumber deep into the early morning hours, my only interruption was Eric’s phone call confirming band practice at two P.M. Other than that I was lost in a stream of notes assembling in such a way as to resemble familiar pop songs of the past two decades. Most delightfully, I was the one playing them.

  Arrival at the rehearsal space the following afternoon found my enthusiastic mood in contrast with the rain and the warehouse complex that spread out before me like a sepia photograph of some closed-down American factory in the Depression. I was fifteen minutes early, and the main door was locked. Knocking received no response. Stepping back into my Datsun 510, I attempted with electrician’s tape to curb water flow through the sunroof—an endeavour that made matters worse.

  About a half hour later a rusty white mafioso-type Pontiac Parisienne with tinted windows pulled up beside me. Out stepped a wooly mammoth of a man—hold the hair—in a jean jacket, Lycra azure sweat pants and a pair of battered brown penny loafers. He surveyed the surroundings as would a King his castle. He had a crewcut and an earring. Thinking he might be involved with drugs and fearing a random knife wound, I slid down in my seat and remained inconspicuous, visualizing his jiggly buttocks lined up through a rifle scope on some African plain in the middle of a monsoon; one bull’s-eyed tranquilizer dart from 200 yards and down he’d tumble. I even imagined the net he’d be placed in being hoisted up by helicopter and escorted to the nearest zoo in Tanzania. I chuckled and stayed low.

  Finding the door locked, he edged a few feet to his right, pulled down his sweat pants and urinated on the wall. Hearing footsteps I turned to see Eric running up the road with a guitar in each hand, his trench coat flipping in the wind. Instinct beckoned me to warn him of danger but my head froze at the thought of cross-fire.

  “Bryan!” Eric yelled, face grinning, a soggy looking cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  The man, still peeing, turned to Eric. “The door’s locked. It’s raining.”

  Eric broke stride. “I know. Hey, man, thanks for coming on short notice.” I stepped out of my car. Eric turned to me. “Hi, Shel,” he said, out of breath and soaked. “I brought you a guitar. Amps are inside.”

  “The door’s locked!” Bryan cried again, startling me. He pounded his fist against the wall.

  “Bad boy, Bryan,” Eric said with a smile while pulling a key from his pocket. He shook his head like a wet dog and introduced us while turning the lock.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, extending my hand, “I don’t recognise you from the Town Pump.”

  “Bryan wasn’t—”

  “Shelly?” Bryan said. “What kind of name is Shelly?”

  “Shelby.”

  “Leave him alone, Bryan,” Eric said. “The guy’s a genius.”

  “Then why’s he wearing that fag tie?” he said, staring as though daring me to respond. I felt my chin quiver. He laughed in my face. We went in and set up.

  The rehearsal was nerve-racking. I’d never used an electric guitar before and its heaviness made it cumbersome. Ironically, the strings were more easily pressed down than on my acoustic. Nonetheless, my back ached. Amidst a ruckus that sounded more like a mob of Arabs burning an American flag on the evening news than music, I became plagued with apprehension. Is civility possible in an uncivilized world? How had I allowed myself to be manipulated into playing the music that I loathed? Moreover, was my weakness any different from that seen in many Germans during the late 1930s? Finally, beyond Gran, Mom, Dad and my brother Derek, was it true that I had no friends?

  My questioning ended upon hearing a song called “Sally Jean Won’t Eat Meat”—in my opinion Eric’s only melodic creation. It began with a rambling slur of angry words that burst into bloom with Eric at the apex of his range singing, Sally Jean Won’t Eat Meat to which Bryan and I replied chant-like, Oh wo, no she won’t. Eric would then bookend the chorus with, But she’s got legs up to her hips and red and ready lips, and so on. Humiliating as it is to admit, I found the jaunty, infectious feel libidinous—and demanded we play it again.

  Back at the dorm later that evening, with my ears ringing and my head deep into my MCAT study guide, it occurred to me that I’d be returning home to Revelstoke after the MCAT and the Monday concert; back home to await the acceptance response from my medical school application, back home for long talks with Gran and Mom and hours of indulgent, reflective reading, back home for a four-month stint as ditch-digger for Uncle Larry, a man who hates everything but God.

  Larry’s perception of the universe revealed itself some fifteen years ago, shortly after his wife ran off with his business partner. My Dad, being Larry’s brother, invited Larry to move in with us to get support during his time of crisis. We were of little help. Larry, being Christian, had views that clashed with my family’s, also Christian. Almost from the day he arrived he started having religious visions by night and come breakfast he’d insist on sharing them with the family. As a six-year-old, I was enthralled. His most frequent caller was Ma
ry Magdelene, and with her visits came short parables loosely based on her salvation from harlotry. At the outset Mom and Dad were tolerant, but with the arrival of Matthew, Mark, Luke and a fourth apostle named Edward Longshanks (who turned out to be a 13th century British King), support diminished.

  “It’s not healthy, Ed,” Mom said, nodding her head towards my older brother Derek and me after Uncle Larry had removed himself from the breakfast table for his ritual half-hour morning movement that would leave the bathroom inaccessible for another thirty minutes thereafter. “And he’s getting more and more like your father—and what’s he doing in the bathroom that takes so long? Waiting for the second coming?”

  “Don’t joke about that, Peg. Obviously he’s blocked up—and don’t bring my old man into this! He’s dead, isn’t that enough?”

  “Larry has no business saying you’re on a one-way train ride to hell for reading out the morning horoscope—especially in front of the kids. You’ve given him a roof to live under, for crying out loud!”

  Dad became defensive (guilt-riddled, according to Mom, over having battled with his own father a year earlier only to have him meet his demise before amends had been made). “He’s my brother, Peg. He’s harmless. You think I’d let him hang around the kids if he wasn’t?”

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and see …”

  Sometime thereafter came the command from God.

  To this day I’m unclear on the details, but I do know a nude Uncle Larry ransacked Mom and Dad’s bedroom one night, standing between their separate beds bellowing about redemption and the sins of our household while throwing paintings, photographs, top drawers and, finally, a lit match into a pile on the floor. Dad, so legend has it, after getting out of bed and putting out the fire, stunned Larry with three or four slaps to the head and physically tossed him from the house with a sarcastic promise to write. My recollection is one of terror, partly from the screaming but moreso from the possibility of losing both parents to the hell-fires. I was discovered the following morning, asleep in my closet.

  It was two years before we heard another word about Uncle Larry. Late one summer evening we got a call from the Edmonton City Police saying Larry’s landlord had found him huddled naked in the corner of his apartment, sweating, the blinds down, gnawing on his own arm.