After, when Richard and I were loading gear into the back of his pick-up, I looked up and he was standing next to the table that held the cheese trays and the juice cooler, waiting to talk to me.
He rushed toward me and picked me right up off the ground in a cigar-scented hug. When he let me back down to the ground, he still held both of my hands in his baseball glove-sized hands, squeezing them until it almost hurt.
“I just had to thank you. Just had to tell you how much that story you told meant to me.” He pulled me up close to him, and lowered his voice a couple of decibels. “My baby brother James died from AIDS, ten years ago tomorrow. My only brother. I loved him like crazy when we were kids, but my dad … well … let’s just say the old man wasn’t very flexible in his beliefs about certain things. He never understood Jamie, right from the get-go, and Christ, he was hard on the kid. Beat the living shit out of him one time when he caught him wearing my sister Donna’s lipstick. Finally kicked him out when Jamie was fifteen. Nobody knew, back then, and by the time we did, it was too late. I never stuck up for him, never said a word, and to this day I have never forgiven myself for it. My baby brother, out on the street. How else was he going to get by? He was only a kid.”
He looked me right in the eyes. By this time, both of us were crying.
“He was the sweetest fucking kid in the world. Your little friend in that story reminded me of James. There were five of us kids, but he was always my mom’s favourite. The old man blamed her, said she babied him, but we all knew he was just born like that. That was just who he always was.” He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes on the hair on the back of his hands. Looked a bit sheepish all of a sudden. “Anyways, just wanted to thank you for that. Good stuff.”
Then he shook my hand and was gone. I’ve never forgotten him, and I imagine him standing behind me whenever I find myself scared of the next story I am about to tell, or afraid of the people I’m about to tell it to.
Last week I walked into a classroom at the college in Powell River, to tell stories to a bunch of Adult Education students. Working-class town, working-class guys all lined up in the back row. I found myself wishing with my whole heart I had not chosen to wear a paisley dress shirt that morning. What was I thinking?
Then I took a deep breath and told them a story. I started with the one about my dad. The one where I had almost given up wishing he would quit drinking, but then one day he did. Afterward, this guy with biceps the size of my thighs came up and thanked me. He had sleeve tattoos and could barely squeeze his muscles into his white Stanfield crewneck.
“I really liked the one about your dad,” he explained. “I could totally relate to him. I used to be a welder, too.”
Six: Wisdom I Found, Learned, or Was Given
My Dad Told Me
IT WAS A FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SUNNY AND LAZY. I ran into my friend Sir coming out of her apartment building, and we went for a coffee. She grabbed a table outside on the deck in the warm sun and I went inside for two Americanos.
I squeezed past the lady in the hippie dress and sat beside Sir and her cowboy hat, across from two biker types and their overfilled ashtray. Sir passed me a piece of the newspaper.
“Business section?” I asked her. “What am I gonna do with this? Check my stocks?” She passed me the New Homes, smiling. “Smart ass,” I said. “At least give me the Lower Mainland bit. Don’t make me roll up Fashion and pummel you with it.”
She passes me the front page. A true friend, indeed.
“It’s not the same as inside,” the bigger of the two bikers laments. “Inside there is a code, you know, a way of being that makes sense … then when you get out …”
“It’s an adjustment,” his buddy nods. “Took me over a year to be able to sleep past six a.m. Ate pork chops every Tuesday for a while, until I got used to Tuesday isn’t pork chop night for the whole planet. You’ve only been out a coupla weeks. It gets better. When’s your kid gonna be here?”
“Ten after.”
The second guy stands, extends his hand. Slaps the other guy on the shoulder. They half-hug, awkward. “So I’ll make a move, leave you to it. Take care, buddy. Same time, next week?”
My face is hidden behind pictures of Iraqi prisoners. I can’t face the news; instead I am eavesdropping on a rare bonding moment between these two men. I sneak a peek at Sir. She is watching the second man disappear around the corner; his wallet is wearing through the denim of his right back pocket, the chain swinging, smokes, cell phone, and truck keys in hand. The sound of his boots on pavement fades with him. She smiles at me. We were both witness.
A tall, pimply boy gets off the bus and crosses the street. He squints into the sun, holds up a knuckly hand across his eyes. He jumps over the guardrail and slumps into the empty chair. He is all right angles and straight lines. His feet seem impossibly big in brand new white runners. One shin is road-rashed and picked.
The biker leans across the table to hug him, the kid moves to meet him and knocks over a half-empty bottle of apple juice. His father catches it before it hits the table.
“Sorry, Dad.”
His dad smiles and surveys the boy. “You look great. I think you’re finally taller than your father.”
“By three-quarters of an inch.” The boy raises his eyebrows and grins.
“Your mom?” Dad is staring at his fingernails.
“She’s good. You staying at Uncle John’s?”
“For a while. I’m looking at a place this weekend. There’s a skatepark a block away. I’m getting a pull-out couch for you.”
They talk like this for a while. I’m smoking and getting involved in the sorry state of the planet, enough so I’m almost not eavesdropping anymore, until I hear the man ask his kid if he’s having any luck with the ladies.
The kid swallows, his oversize Adam’s apple plunging in discomfort. He shakes his head. “There was that one chick from Kelowna, remember? She was staying at her Grandma’s? That was a while ago …”
“That was last summer, little dude. School’s almost out again.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not like you. Girls don’t like me too much, mostly. I don’t have the magic touch like you.”
“It’s not a magic touch. You want to know my secret? My fail-proof method?”
The kid leans forward. Behind my newspaper, I find I have leaned forward too. Sir has cocked her head, too. We are all waiting.
“Let me just grab myself another coffee, and I’ll tell you all about it. Hold that thought. You still drinking iced tea?”
The kid nods. His dad gets up and goes inside. All three of us sit back, impatient. I watch him make his way back to our table. Average height. Over-size biceps. Bleeding tattoos. Not an ugly man by any stretch, but, as my aunts would say, nothing to write home about. He resumes his seat, lights an Export ’A’, and stirs his coffee with a hand that makes the spoon look like it came from an Easy-Bake Oven Set.
“Where were we?”
“You were going to tell me how to meet chicks.”
“Right. I’ll tell you the one thing that women cannot resist in a man. The one thing that will always keep them coming back for more.”
For the love of Christ, spit it out already, man, I’m thinking. We all need to know here.
“Listen to them.”
The kid sits up straight with a sideways glance.
“I mean, really listen. Ask her about how her day went. Be interested. Don’t just act that way, I mean really be interested in her. What she has to say, what she thinks about things.”
“And then …?”
“That’s it, son. That’s all. You’d be surprised how many guys never figure that one out, but that’s it. My big secret. Really listen to her, and then if you’re lucky, when you come home from work, there will be a good woman there. Cooking for her every once in a while never hurt a guy in the long run, either.”
The kid looks at his father. I look at Sir. Sir looks at the biker, then she meets my eyes. Again, we were b
oth witness.
The biker drains his coffee. “C’mon, kiddo, I’ll buy you a slice.”
The two of them stand up and walk together down the block—noisy black Dayton boots and silent white runners, respectively.
Sir is shaking her head, smiling. “That was just about the sweetest thing I ever heard. Did you get all that?” she asks me.
I nod reverently.
For the first time, the lady in the hippie dress lowers her paperback and speaks up, her eyes moist and bright blue. “Now if only someone would have told my husband that, I might still own half of that cabin on Salt Spring Island.”
Spare Change
CORNER OF PENDER AND ABBOTT, JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT. Whose bright idea was it to build a multiplex theatre and high-end mall here? Remember when it was a parking lot? I think I liked it better as a pit filled with water. I knew a guy who was arrested once for canoeing in the flooded hole that gaped where this mall now is.
I light a smoke into cupped palms. Orange glows bright, then dimmer.
Streetlights leak shifting spilled paint reflections off shining sidewalks and pavement. It is chilly tonight, like this evening belongs in a whole different month than the rest of this week.
I smoke with one hand and run fingertips over the ridged edges of quarters in my pocket with the other.
There’s a woman, she’s just rounded the corner off Carrall onto Pender Street, she’s walking towards me. Her dress has two straps; one has fallen to her elbow and remains there, the other clings to a prominent collarbone. I watch her only because there is nobody else on the street to look at. She shuffles along the sidewalk, fists blossoming into five narrow fingers and then closing again. Repeat. Eyes down, back and forth, she searches the sidewalk and gutter. She scoops up a flat cigarette butt and places it into the shapeless front pocket of her dress. A small baggie is picked up, opened, sniffed, licked, and dropped again. She runs a yellow tongue over peeling lips, passes a sleeveless wrist under her nose. Repeat.
I look down as she starts to get close to me. I can hear the sound of her flip-flops sucking and slapping against the wet pavement. The sound stops in front of me. I don’t look up. Both hands are in my pockets. My half-smoked cigarette is crushed and soggy, an inch away from the toe of my boot. What a waste, I think. Too late to fix it.
“Spare some change, young fella?” Her voice is deeper than her small frame seems capable of.
I shake my head.
She lifts one lip a little, in my direction. “I know you’ve got change in your pockets. I can hear it. Heard it all the way up the street.”
“You asked me if I could spare some change, not if I had any.”
She raises her eyebrows. They have been plucked and then painted back on, but she raises them nonetheless. “We got a wise guy, huh?” She flips then flops back two steps and surveys me closer. “You go to college? Because that, my friend, is lawyer talk.”
I shake my head. “I’m a writer. I tell stories.”
She snorts. “Same diff. Makin’ shit up. Twisting the facts so they end up on your side. I’ll ask you again, counsellor. Can I have some of the change I can hear in your pocket?”
“It’s not change. It’s my car keys.” I jingle them for evidence. Exhibit A.
“Other pocket. Nice try. What, are you afraid I’ll go spend your hard-earned money on drugs?”
I half-shrug, half-nod. “What if I get you something to eat?” I motion over my shoulder to the McDonald’s behind me, which is getting ready to close up.
She snorts again. “That garbage? Now, that stuff will kill you.”
We both laugh. I pull my other hand out of my pocket. Two loonies, a twoonie, three quarters. I hand it over. A nicotine-stained hand shoots out and collects. The change disappears before I can squeeze out a second thought. She doesn’t thank me.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“What? You want me to thank you now? I took your money to make you feel better about having more of it than me. I just did you a favour, if you think about it. Don’t you feel like a better person now, helping out an old woman? I’m the mother of four children. I have three grandchildren. I’m almost sixty-five years old.”
“You don’t look a day over eighty,” I quip.
“Why, thank you.”
We laugh again, she coughs.
“Where are your kids, then?”
“My kids? Where are my kids? You mean why don’t my kids swoop down and rescue their poor old mother from the mean streets of the Downtown Eastside?”
“Well, yeah I guess that’s pretty much what I mean.”
“And argue over whose turn it is to keep me in their basement suite? All the free cable I can watch? I tried that. There’s one catch. There’s always the one catch.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m never allowed to bring my heroin.”
I nod, because there seems to be nothing to say.
“Shit happens, kiddo. Sometimes life gets in the way of all your plans. I’m too old to live under someone else’s roof, someone else’s laws. Had enough of that when I was married to the bastard, may he rest in peace.” She makes the sign of the cross in the air with her right hand and falls silent for a bit.
I nod again and reach into my pocket for my smokes. I offer her one, light both.
She inhales deeply, stares at the red end of her cigarette. “It’s the simple things. Tell you what—how ’bout you spare me a couple more of these for later?”
I look down into my pack. There are two left.
“I’d offer to buy them from you, but you’d probably just go spend the money on more cigarettes.” She smiles, raises one eyebrow, and then winks at me.
I hand her the rest of the package. Up close, she smells like rose water.
“There now.” The pack disappears. She pats my forearm. “Doesn’t that feel better?”
My Kind of Guy
I AM GOOD AT FINDING MY KIND OF place for breakfast. Especially in small towns. This place had all the right elements: it was embedded in the middle of a mini mall, in between a second-hand furniture store and a laundromat. Lots of new pick-ups parked outside. All you can eat Chinese food buffet on Sunday nights. All-day breakfast for five bucks. Neon open sign flashing in the window. Vinyl booths and chrome-edged tables that have been there since the fifties. I pulled up a stool at the counter, and the owner passed me a newspaper and slopped coffee into my cup without asking.
The old guy sat down right next to me a minute or so later, I had seen him and his hand-carved cane coming up the sidewalk when I was parking. GWG jeans, a white Stanfield V-neck t-shirt under a faded red and blue plaid jacket, work boots with stainless steel starting to show at the toes where the leather was worn through. Clean-shaven. Export ‘A’ cigarette pack peeking out of his breast pocket. I know this kind of man. He has worked hard every day of his life. Paid his bills. Buried his wife. He keeps his garage spotless, draws outlines of hammers in black felt pen on the pegboard above his workbench, repairs the lawnmower of the single lady next door, even though he doesn’t like her noisy kids. My father will be this kind of man one day, sooner than I would like to admit.
The owner smiled hello at the old guy. “Soup of the day and pie with ice cream after?”
The old-timer nodded, and then spun his stool around to address the two older ladies tucked into the first booth by the door. “Bea. Helen. Enjoying the sunshine?”
They smiled, exchanged niceties, and then he turned back to me, squinting at the headlines in the open newspaper in front of me. “No good news in there, I read it this morning.”
We get to talking. He asks me what I am doing in town, as it is painfully obvious to all of us that I am not from there. I tell him I am a writer, in town to teach some creative writing classes at the high school.
“Ah, an educated man then?” He narrows his eyes at me, and then smiles, as if to let me know he will not hold this against me, even though he should.
I shrug. We move
on and talk about other things. As far as I can tell, he continues to think I am a young man. I can tell by his comfortable body language, how he slaps me in the upper arm with the back of a gnarled hand when I crack a joke, the kinds of questions he asks me. The details about his own life he reveals.
Some people would say that I am being dishonest, that I am lying, to not stop him mid-sentence and inform him, even though he has not asked me, that according to what he has been taught to believe about these things, I am female. The people who believe that I am being deceitful have never lived in a skin like mine. I answer his questions with the truth. I mind my pronouns, sure, but I do not lie. Ever. Why? Because I like this old man, and so far, he likes me. Even if I am an educated man.
He tells me that his wife has been dead for ten years. That he is about to turn eighty-one years old. That he hates golf, and doesn’t watch hockey. I ask him how many grandchildren he has. He has to think for a minute, moving his fingers in front of his face to count them. Ten he says. All of them turned out pretty okay, except for the one grandson, the druggie, who is sponging off his only daughter, can’t keep a job.
I ask him what kind of drugs his grandson is on, and talk a little about my friend, the one I haven’t seen in years, and her battles with the meth.
“Does she look hard now?” he asks me, and I think about this for a minute. “You know, older than her years? The drugs, they hit the ladies in the face harder than they do the fellas.” He shakes his head, sadly. “Can make it hard to come back from.” He holds up one finger, to make a point. “The hard stuff, I’m talking about here. Not the pot. I’ll even take a bit of pot myself, now and then, for the arthritis, you know,” he winks at me, “but I don’t seem to get the same kick off the stuff I used to get. Maybe I’m toking it all wrong, who knows? Anyway, point is, I always stayed off the hard stuff, and now here I am, outliving everyone.”
His pie and ice cream comes, and his coffee cup is refilled. We are both quiet for a minute while he eats.
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