Clifford

by Harold R. Johnson

  In the end I paid for the meal. Not because he had proven that I was a racist. I still had trouble accepting that. I paid because I couldn’t prove that I wasn’t.

  * * *

  I am story, Dad was story. Clifford…

  The night is very late, the darkest part of the dark and the coldest. I lie back down and pull up the sleeping bag. The earth beneath me is comforting, warm and soft. I feel cuddled by the tree roots on either side. The air is absolutely still. The only sound is of my own breathing, my own heartbeat. If Clifford was right, that I am just the story that I tell myself…

  But he’s wrong. Isn’t he? I am also all the stories he told me. And why did he tell me all those stories? What was he trying to make me into?

  I can smell the pine needles mixed with the scent of soil. I feel the tension draining away, and sleep draws me into the darkness. Just before I fall away, my arm reaches out, my hand finds the hoop, and I bring it close. I realize that I have done it without thinking, that my arm and my hand seem to have acted of their own accord. I’m too tired to think about it anymore, and anyway, it feels right.

  Parallel Truths

  I am not finished.

  I awaken in the darkest part of the night and know that I am not going to get away that easily. There is still something that needs to be done; something I should have taken care of a long time ago. I had fallen asleep thinking I had reconciled everything. I was wrong.

  No sense lying here. I am not going to sleep.

  I get up. The fire has burned down and there are only coals remaining. I stir them with a long stick and add two small pieces of wood that I had cut and set aside. They smoulder. They’ll take a minute before they light.

  The stars tell me it’s about 3:00 a.m., maybe 3:30.

  The night is silent: no birds, no squirrels, not even mice scurrying in the dry pine needles. The air is still and feels thick. I stand, listening intently. It’s as though the darkness has smothered any sound. All I hear is my own slow breathing and my heartbeat, and even they are muted.

  I need to apologize.

  Or do I?

  He knew.

  Knew all along.

  He knew before I told him.

  We had been at Mom’s house, probably both of us home at the same time, maybe it was Christmas. I don’t remember. I do remember the kitchen table, chrome and plastic-covered chairs, and as always a cup of coffee in front of each of us.

  I was telling him about a fight. Our nephew Paulie and I, in a truck, drunk, driving across the prairie in the night at the end of some celebration. Clarence had been in the middle. I was driving and Paul had the passenger side. Paulie was being an asshole. He pulled the truck out of gear. Just reached over in front of Clarence and knocked the shifter into neutral. For no good reason other than we were all drunk and he was trying to annoy me. It worked. I put the truck back into gear and told him to smarten the fuck up. He didn’t wait very long before he did it again. Maybe he thought it was funny.

  I didn’t.

  This time when I put the truck back into gear, I reached across and backhanded him across the face. “Fuck around some more, asshole.” Then we were fighting. I was driving with one hand. Clarence was dodging fists coming from both sides as Paulie and I punched at each other. I hit the brakes hard. Skidded the truck sideways down the road and off into some farmer’s field. Paulie was going to fucken get it this time. I’d had enough of him.

  As soon as the truck stopped, I was out the door and coming around to his side to get him. In any fight speed matters. The quickest way to the passenger side was through the box of the truck. I jumped over the side, was halfway across when I saw the shovel.

  Paulie and Donny, our youngest brother, are the same age, only a few days between their birthdays. He and Paul have had many fist fights. I should have listened to Donny. He said, “Don’t ever waste your time hitting that fucker in the head. It doesn’t do any good. May as well punch a rock.”

  When Paulie came out that passenger door, I hit him with the shovel, over the head. There was good steel in that spade. The ding it made sounded like a bell. I hit him again, harder. DING.

  And the fucker didn’t go down.

  Now I was in trouble. He was four inches taller with longer arms and he had forty pounds on me.

  I dropped the useless shovel and grabbed him by the Adam’s apple and squeezed hard. That didn’t work either. He just grabbed me by the throat the same way.

  The fight ended in a draw, with both of us standing in the middle of the road, squeezing each other’s Adam’s apples, both of us enduring the pain but refusing to give up.

  When we dropped Paulie off outside his apartment in Saskatoon, the last thing he said was, “Fuck, Uncle, I can’t believe you hit me with a shovel.”

  Clifford and I are sitting at Mom’s kitchen table and I am telling him about the fight. “I don’t know, there’s something about Paulie. He’s never done me any wrong. I have no reason to be pissed at him, but somehow he always manages to piss me off. It’s like I’m permanently annoyed with him.”

  Clifford doesn’t say anything.

  I keep talking, probably repeating myself. “I don’t know why I’m so pissed at him all the time. He tries to be a good guy around me, always anxious to lend a hand. I know if I ask him, he’ll rush right over and help me out with whatever I need help with. But it’s like I’m permanently upset with him, and it’s not his fault.”

  Clifford looks up, looks directly at me. His voice is soft yet serious. “Maybe you did something to him that you can’t forgive yourself for.”

  All of a sudden we are not talking about Paulie anymore.

  We’re talking about us.

  “You knew?” I ask.

  “I’ve always known,” he says as he gets up, walks over, and puts his cup in the sink.

  My mind is numb. I feel an old hurt welling up: regret, guilt, and shame.

  As he walks by, he drops his left hand on my left shoulder. I can feel it now, standing in the dark, in the silence of the middle of the night. “It’s okay,” he says. Makes a joke of it to ease my hurt: “Mom told us that brothers are supposed to share.”

  The darkness feels even thicker now, suffocating.

  The two sticks in the coals are beginning to smoulder, I can smell the smoke. I feel a sting start behind my eyes, a tightness in my throat, an ache in my core that catches my breath. I turn my back away from the smoke and look out into the black of the forest and speak, softly at first, then with more purpose: “I’m sorry. I am sorry. It should never have happened. I have no reason and no excuse.”

  The night doesn’t answer.

  “I didn’t mean to fuck your wife.”

  It still doesn’t answer.

  * * *

  I had been in a relationship with a woman from up north that didn’t work out. I was too young to be in a relationship, didn’t know how relationships worked. I found my way to Clifford’s at about five in the morning, parked my car behind his house, and let myself in the back door. His wife came downstairs to meet me. Clifford stayed in bed. He had to get up later and go to work.

  I was telling her what my broken heart felt like. We were sitting on the couch, sharing a joint that she had saved for a special occasion, and she leaned over and kissed me, on the mouth.

  I kissed her back.

  She got up, took me by the hand, and led me to the spare downstairs bedroom. And we fucked.

  And I never forgave myself for it.

  A year later. They had moved. Clifford had taken a job in a mining camp, finally making some decent money, but it meant that he had to be away from home for weeks at a time. His wife asked Mom to babysit while she went uptown.

  Mom said, “The bitch probably threw a packsack over the fence before she left, because she never did come home.”

  And I knew it was my
fault. Maybe not entirely, but I had contributed to the breakdown of my brother’s marriage. I was to blame.

  From then on, I had treated him like a bastard.

  Not all the time, but enough.

  There was a distance and a strain between us that I was never able to reconcile. It made me challenge him more often. And I put him down. It wasn’t brothers being tough with each other, that was some of it; there was also an undercurrent of my simply being mean to him.

  He’d asked to borrow a few dollars, needed groceries. I gave him a fifty, knowing I’d never see it again. I pulled out my full wallet, plucked a pink bill from the fold, and handed it to him. As he took it, I said, “Get a fucken job, bum.”

  It could have been a joke, just brotherly bantering, one-upping, verbal rowdiness, but it wasn’t. It was mean and we both knew it. He needed money to feed his kids. I had lots. And I chose to be an asshole about it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again to the dark. “Clifford, I am so fucken sorry.” The snot is beginning to flow and the sting behind my eyes cools itself with a release of tears. The ache in my core swallows my heart and my lungs, and I am so empty inside that my shoulders slump and my spine weakens and curls until I am bowed with my head down. My grief isn’t finished with me yet. It feels all raw and bloody and fresh.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t have anything else to say, and now that he is gone, it seems like a waste of words. If I’d only said it sooner, when it still might have meant something.

  I feel his presence. More than just the sensation of his hand on my shoulder a minute ago. It’s like he’s out there, not far, in the darkness, close enough to hear. I say it again. This time speaking directly to him. “I am sorry. How do I make it right?”

  I hear the answer. I don’t know if I hear it with my ears, if the words pierced the silence, or if I hear it in my head or maybe I might have spoken. I doubt it was me because the words are in his voice. There are only two words: parallel truths.

  There is one more sound: a sniffle as I stop crying, wipe my eyes with my sleeve. I get it. There is no single answer. All answers are equally true.

  * * *

  We had been travelling. We were either going south, or back up north on that stretch of pavement between Prince Albert and La Ronge. I don’t remember direction. I only remember boreal. The forest on both sides of the road, and I am driving and as usual I am driving fast. It’s not that I particularly like speed. It’s in everything I do. I am a logger, miner, sailor man, and I do everything flat out.

  Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead.

  I am young and full of testosterone and I can outwork any man, day or night. I don’t take any shit and I say it the way I see it.

  “You know all that stuff about space being something and gravity and black holes is all just a big crock of shit, don’t you?”

  I’m starting a conversation because there is no radio reception unless we want to listen to the CBC and I am starting the conversation on my terms.

  He’s quiet. Sitting and thinking and hasn’t said a word in the last fifty miles.

  “Really,” I continue. “If you are right about all that stuff, then every scientist on the planet has to be wrong. Space is a field. It’s not made of waves and it isn’t space that gives matter substance. It’s the Higgs boson.”

  He’s quiet, maybe getting his mind into place, letting things settle.

  I wait.

  He looks out at the passing forest.

  He is silent for so long that I begin to think he might not answer. Maybe he’s just ignoring me. I am about to take another verbal shot at him to stir him up when he finally turns back to me and says, “You know about workers’ compensation, don’t you?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Workers’ comp. You’re a union guy. You know about workers’ compensation.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “It’s the same. You know that when a worker gets hurt on the job, he can’t sue the employer; he has to go to workers’ comp. To most people workers’ comp is a good thing. Means the worker doesn’t have to hire a lawyer, doesn’t have to go to court and maybe lose. It’s a good deal, right?”

  “Yeah, workers’ comp is a good deal. But what’s that got to do with anything?” I ask again.

  “Well, there’s the other truth. Workers’ comp injures workers.”

  “Where’s your proof?”

  He smiles. “It comes from you. Remember telling me about the guy who tried to cut through his safety pads with a chainsaw because he was sure that if he did he would get compensation?”

  I remembered. I wasn’t there when it happened. Just a story that went around the logging camps, how the guy had revved up his saw until it was screaming and slammed it down into the safety pad on his leg, but the saw didn’t cut through; it kicked back and caught him in the face.

  Clifford didn’t have to remind me of the other guy working in a fence post–cutting camp who held up a fence post with one hand and, using an axe, deliberately chopped off his thumb.

  “And it’s not just the ones who do it deliberately,” he continues. “It’s also that workers’ comp makes people careless. It doesn’t matter if they get hurt because they’re covered.

  “Two truths. Workers’ comp is a good thing. Workers’ comp is a bad thing. And they are both true at the same time. It’s what I call parallel truths.

  “I’ve talked to you about this before. Placebo — nocebo. They are both sugar pills. If I give you one and tell you it’s medicine and it is good for you, you will probably get better. If I give you the same sugar pill and tell you it’s poison, and you take it and believe the story, you are going to get sick and maybe even die. It’s the same pill. Placebo and nocebo are the same thing with completely different results. They’re parallel stories. Both true at the same time.”

  “Okay,” I reply, “but what’s that got to do with your version of science?”

  “Science is a story. My story about how the universe works is just as true as the dominant story. They’re parallel truths, both true at the same time.”

  “Two things can’t be true at the same time. It’s either one or the other,” I argue back.

  “That’s pretty shallow thinking. Deterministic. You can do better than that. You have a mind that is capable of simultaneous thought at a multitude of levels. You just have to let it do what it is able to do.”

  I had to watch the road, especially at the speed I was driving, so I couldn’t look at his face to read what was behind the words. The tone told me he was being serious, that he was in his teaching mode.

  “There are all kinds of parallel truths,” he continued. “You, for example. You’re an asshole and a good guy. You take pride in your tough-guy, hard-ass way of being. And at the same time you can be very kind to people.”

  “Only people who don’t piss me off.” I must have been upholding the tough guy he was threatening with his talk of kindness.

  He ignored me. “Parallel truths are everywhere. You’re one.”

  He let the words hang there for a moment. Let them sink in before continuing.

  “I recognize that I am multiple truths and don’t confine myself to one way of thinking. It makes it easier to manoeuvre because I am not confined to a single thought pattern.”

  What he is saying strikes me as being wishy-washy. “You’re just taking the easy way out so you don’t have to take a position and defend it.”

  “It’s actually harder to defend multiple truths because most people are programmed to believe there is only one absolute truth. That’s the problem.” He is facing away from me, watching the trees zip past on the side of the highway. “Most of the wars are about interpretation and belief in absolute single truths. Catholicism and Protestantism are parallel stories of the same Christian story
, but try to tell that to the Irish who kill each other because each believes their version of the story is true.

  “Christianity and Islam and Judaism are all parallel stories. Remember Isaac and Ishmael were brothers.”

  “Who?” I don’t know this story.

  “Isaac and Ishmael.” He pauses. “Old Testament. Abraham and Sarah were too old to have children and Sarah told him to take the maid. He did and his first son was Ishmael. Then he knocked up Sarah and their kid was Isaac. Then Sarah got jealous of Ishmael and had Abraham send him and his mother away. The story goes that God promised Ishmael that he would found a great nation and that Isaac would continue Abraham’s line. That’s how we end up with Arabs and Jews. They are the same story. Parallel stories.”

  Either I hadn’t heard that one before, or I hadn’t heard it in a long time. I let it sink in, with all the ramifications — the Middle East conflict, crusades, oil…

  A few thoughts later he says, “Capitalism and socialism are the same industrial stories, and they both have the same purpose: to get workers into the factories. The socialist tells the people that everyone deserves a job and that labour unions are there for their protection. The capitalist tells the people that they have to work hard and lift themselves up by their bootstraps. But it’s the same story. They both want workers to move to the city and work in their factories. Socialism and capitalism are different sides of the same industrial coin. They are the new religions, and they are parallel stories.

  “You’re a trade unionist?”

  I look over at him. He is turned in his seat, facing me. It’s a question. So I answer it. “Damn right.”

  “Labour and management are parallel stories. What you do to one, you do to the other. If you go on strike, you hurt management — but you hurt yourself at the same time. Together the two stories merge and make the story of the corporation.