Festival Man

by Geoff Berner

  This stranger walked into the kitchen, took off his hat, and sat down.

  He calmly informed the wife and twelve children that he had won them and the farm in a poker game, and that their father and husband would not be returning.

  He went outside and hitched the good white horses to the family wagon. The storyteller said that his grandfather emphasized the fact that the stranger chose the fancy white horses, which the original farmer had never used for the family wagon, because the farmer had always firmly maintained that the fancy horses were “too good to waste” on such things.

  The stranger told the wife and twelve children to get in the wagon. They obeyed, and the gambler drove his new family into town for Sunday church services.

  The stranger stayed with his new family, and before long, according to the boy who grew up to be the storyteller’s grandfather, everyone, everyone agreed that the stranger was a better father, farmer, and husband than the original. He lived there happily, to the end of his long life.

  The original great-grandfather was never seen again. And no one thought to look for him.

  TIRED

  GOD, I’M SO AWFULLY TIRED. My body’s tired. Brain won’t go to sleep. Need to move.

  BACK

  I JUST WENT FOR A WALK out into the fields and have now returned. And I have received a sign. Here’s how it happened:

  Big summer moon out, lighting the neglected, bruised prairie like a film set, day for night. I leapt from the remnants of the front porch like a swimmer jumping off the dock into a vast, golden, fucked-up ocean.

  The light breeze touched me, making me feel physically connected to the whole endless sky. I wasn’t tired anymore. I moved without feeling my legs. Headed down the short driveway, turned left onto the dirt road, unfenced dried-out canola and scrub on either side of me glowing in the moonlight.

  Alberta prairie is flat in the general sense, but there’s contours to it. Little rolling depressions and low bunkers that make shadows and hide things. I trekked on, my arms out for balance, embracing the stars.

  I don’t worry about bats. Bats eat bugs, which get up people’s noses sometimes. When I saw one or two of their black flickering shapes in the sky, I felt no disquiet.

  AND WHEN I HEARD THE COYOTE, rather than disquiet, I felt kinship of course. Who doesn’t love Coyote, the survivor with the rueful grin? Only evil bastards who want the world to be boring.

  I thought I saw him move through some scrub, far, far off to the right, out of the corner of my eye. I walked on.

  The sky seemed to be breathing at me, heavily, as I pushed farther into the field. I heard howling again, but closer. I could feel the warm blood pumping in my body, specifically in my hands, down in the fingertips.

  I saw movement again.

  I pressed on, but I have to admit that the great beautiful dome of the sky was starting to recede in my mind, as I began to suspect that the coyote might in fact be following me.

  At first I welcomed it. Let Brother Trickster Coyote approach. I had nothing to fear. Wasn’t it right that we should commune on this strange, perfect night? Besides, they’re actually quite small animals, and I’m a pretty big man, if I do say so myself.

  But then I caught a dark snicker of movement in the tall grass to the right of me. And a few moments later, to the left again. And then was there something just ahead? You know how they move — they bounce, they lope. They don’t run or walk like a mere man-dependant dog.

  It suddenly occurred to me that there was more than one of them. People think of the coyote as a loner, and to be sure, his ability to work solo is what’s enabled him to adapt and triumph in places where the wolf, who needs the sociability of a pack, finds only futility.

  But that doesn’t mean that coyotes don’t ever work together in packs, like they used to before they became stalkers of garbage and suburban neighbourhood cats.

  And when they worked in packs, they could take down a buffalo, you know.

  I was very aware of this.

  I turned and faced the house. It was smaller than I’d remembered it, and there was a big cloud of dust in the field of view. I must have been travelling faster and more vigorously than I’d realized.

  As I walked back, it was like I’d entered into a different world than the one I’d walked out into. It was a split-in-half world, part of which held a future where I ran back into the farmhouse and bolted the door, and in the other future, I offered myself up as prey, to be torn apart into oblivion. They say that at the moment of ultimate defeat, the hunted animal feels no pain. It goes into a trance after it drops to its knees, exhausted, and gives up the chase to the hunter.

  I didn’t run, but I marched with purpose. It only crept up on my consciousness gradually that in fact I did want to escape.

  I kept seeing flicks of dark movement here and there, pursuing me, subtly, trickily, inevitably.

  OKAY, NOW I KNOW THIS next part you’re just not going to believe. Not only because at this point in my “career” I guess everybody thinks I lie about everything. Also because the obvious implications are so clear. And of course I didn’t have anybody else with me, or a camera, so you’re just going to have to take my word on it, which you probably won’t, but this definitely happened — I did not make it up, nor was it some kind of speed-jag comedown hallucination:

  A white horse. A real, breathing, dusty-legged horse cantered toward me out of the field to my left. A mare. Not entirely white; there was some grey dappling on her flanks and her neck. The unkempt mane was a darker grey, but that could have been the dust again. She was skinny, like maybe she hadn’t been eating so well, but her legs looked strong. No saddle, no halter.

  I know you won’t believe this part, either, but she came right up to me. She slowed as she approached, till she was just tentatively walking by the time she was, say, fifteen yards away.

  I thought unthreatening thoughts and relaxed my body, and she continued her approach. I reached out to her gently, and she sniffed my hand. I stroked her nose, then her face, then her neck.

  The horse looked around, and I looked around. The farmhouse wasn’t so small now, and there was no sign of the coyotes as we walked up the road.

  We were about ten yards from the driveway when the horse just seemed to decide it was time to go. She turned and started walking off. I thought of trying to bring her back to the farmhouse, maybe get her to jump up onto the porch, where I could protect her, but I had no halter anywhere about and besides, since she seemed to have magically dispelled the coyote pack, I figured she would be okay out there.

  After I climbed up the porch steps I turned to look for her, but she had disappeared into the landscape.

  GONE

  IT’S TIME TO GO. My purpose holds.

  POSTSCRIPT

  by Geoff Berner

  ON MY RETURN JOURNEY FROM my research trip in the Maramureş region of Romania last August, I was struck for a second time by a parasite borne of well-water that I had glugged gratefully in a small village near Cluj-Napoca. I know that drinking village well-water isn’t advisable, but I had found myself severely dehydrated by my efforts to be culturally sensitive and match the drinking habits of my Roma hosts.

  I was taken off the airplane at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and spent the next few weeks at St. Joseph’s Hospital, in a stewy fog of pain and terror that dissipated only slowly.

  So I was longer coming home to Vancouver than I had planned, and longer getting out and about. Which is to explain why it was mid autumn before I found out about the disappearance, after the Calgary Folk Festival, of my old friend and manager Campbell Ouiniette.

  As soon as I could muster the necessary strength, I set out for the prairies in search of him. Not to disparage the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but it was relatively easy for me to find Campbell’s route and catch up with the elderly farmer who sold him his farmhouse. The rental-car companies put a satellite tracker in their vehicles nowadays. Maybe Cam was aware of this, becau
se the document which you have just read was sitting on the kitchen table, held down by a rock. It was a much simpler task to find the document than to decipher it, given the furious nature of the man’s handwriting.

  Unfortunately, that’s where the trail ends. No one seems to have seen him, and he seems to have gotten in touch with no one. No one who’s talking, at any rate.

  As much as I hate to entertain the thought, I don’t rule out the possibility that he has drowned, by accident or by design, in one of the many fierce rivers of the Canadian prairie. He always had a penchant for floating down the Bow, North Saskatchewan, and Fraser rivers, naked in an inner tube with a flat of Old Style Pilsner beer bobbing beside him. And this may sound irrational, but when I last saw him, in June, his skin had an odd translucence that reminded me of the last time I saw our mutual friend Morten, who died in the river that runs past Fredrikstad. By accident or design. Bodies that drown in fierce rivers are often never found, and ones that are found are so badly altered that they require DNA tests to identify them.

  The government of Alberta has been on a service-cutting spree lately, so that may be the reason why there has been no great effort made by the Mounties to find Cam, and no effort by the various coroners’ offices to test Cam’s hair sample against the catalogue of unidentified human remains discovered in Alberta and Saskatchewan that summer.

  Or it may have something to do with the fact that when I filled out the “identifying marks” part of Cam’s missing persons form, I listed, along with the pentagrams, the tattoo on his left shoulder that reads “Fuck The Police!” In retrospect, I admit that may have been an error on my part.

  At any rate, my efforts to have this book published were made in the hopes that some of the proceeds from sales may go to fund lab tests that could possibly solve the mystery for us, and bring closure for Campbell’s family, who miss him very much. There’s also the possibility that if Cam is alive, and he sees his name in print somewhere, wherever he is, he’ll come out of the woodwork to try to collect his royalties.

  Many people who were involved with, or know of the events described in the above document may wish to point out the various flaws, inconsistencies, impossibilities, outright fabrications, and unforgivable slanderous lies that appear in the narrative. When I first began typing out the manuscript, it was my sincere intention to mark the text as I went along, in order to include a section of footnotes at the back, correcting each transgression against accuracy and decency. But unfortunately that job soon became so overwhelming that my immune system broke down completely, and I experienced a second relapse of my parasite, which it seems will be with me always.

  This Book As It Is Now Could Never Have Existed Without the Invaluable Help of:

  Wayne Adams, Ralph Allen, Margot Berner, Nancy Berner, Sarge Berner, Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, Dennis E. Bolen, Benny Bratten, Genevieve Buechner, Kerry Clarke, Marek Colek, Jim Cuddy, Diona Davies, Susan de Cartier, Kris Demeanor, Tanya Gillis, Randy Iwata, Heather John, Corb Lund, Carolyn Mark, Justin Newall, C. Noyes, Stuart Parker, Pat Shewchuck, Jeremy Stewart, Angela Teistler, Shannon Whibbs, Shena Yoshida, Karina Zeidler, Maryse Zeidler, Paulette Zeidler, Joseph Zeidler-Berner.

  Thank you for being indispensable.

  A Note to Music Lovers:

  As a special bonus, this novel comes with a downloadable high-quality digital album of great artists covering Geoff Berner’s songs. To access this album, go to geoffberner.com and type in the following password: gsgb91mzib97jphzb03unzb13

  Track listing for Festival Man, the album:

  1. Whiskey Rabbi — Kaizers Orchestra

  2. Liar’s Bridge – ESL

  3. That’s What Keeps the Rent Down — Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans

  4. Prairie Wind — Carolyn Mark and Her New Best Friends

  5. Victory Party Variations — Orchid Ensemble

  6. This Authentic Klezmer Wedding Band Is For Hire — Rot Front

  7. Phoney Drawl — Dave Lang

  8. The Rich Will Move to the High Ground — Kris Demeanor and Cutest Kitten Ever!

  9. Unlistenable Song — Rae Spoon

  10. Light Enough to Travel — Real Ones

  11. Volcano God — Wax Mannequin

  12. Wealthy Poet — Maria in the Shower

  13. Public Relations — The Burnettes

  14. Iron Grey — Mr Johnson’s Grade 5/6 Kittens from École Macphail Memorial in Flesherton, Ontario, directed by Charlie Glasspool

  15. Cherry Blossoms — Kim Barlow and Blue Hibou

  Copyright © Geoff Berner, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Shannon Whibbs

  Design: Courtney Horner

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Berner, Geoff, 1971-

  Festival man [electronic resource] / Geoff Berner.

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0726-9

  I. Title.

  PS8603.E7353F47 2013 C813'.6 C2012-908617-7

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

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