by Nadia Bozak
Headwinds blistered, and they came now so often. They were the worst. Those headwinds were our enemy and they drove the lakes crazy with froth and whitecaps, making waves lurch and pull, hitting the garbagy old canoe broadsides and making us ship water. Water felt thick, paddling was turned to slow motion, the winds lusty. Knelt low, knees spread, paddles gripped high on the shaft. We leaned broad and dug out deep into the water. Lowered heads, slogging, bailing, scrambling, and scraping, and all the time thinking about the tape and staples and brown glue just barely keeping us alive and in the goddamn race. It was all wind, the world was wind. And our boots were wet and so were our pants and totally beaten were our bodies. Fell down so shipwrecked on so many granite shores, on our backs, eyes closed against the sun that was always by then so high and warm. We drank lake water and ate spring berries and forest mushrooms and some bits of jerky Dave had found in his pack. And that wasn’t much, hardly anything at all, so we had coffee or more water just to feel full, and always we smoked, though soon enough those smokes we rolled got as thin and slender as we were getting to be.
And Dave and me, we got used to having the other one always around. He got used to me going at my fingernails, and he stopped trying to tell me there were no mud stains there. And Dave went on with practising the bastardized karate moves in the morning, out on the shore when he thought I wasn’t looking, and went on with climbing the trees to scout ahead for a clear route, looking behind for his father, and every day he’d have to set something on fire. Sometimes it was trees, and sometimes it was our garbage, anything that would give away that we’d been there. After we ran out of food scraps, he’d burn the boughs and the ground where we’d been sleeping.
Dave, he really had a thing for fires. He said it calmed his nerves, that if he had more pot to smoke, acid to drop, whisky to sip, well, he wouldn’t need to smooth his mind and soothe his eyes with the hot lick of flame. But they only made it worse, I thought, because they were like open invitations for his dad to come and find us. Those fires he made out there those nights, well, Dave said he didn’t give a flying fuck if his dad saw those. Thought maybe instead they’d warned him away like a goddamn animal. And better than that, the fires Dave built, they soared and roared like something inside them really was alive. Feeding those fires, they made us feel less hungry. And they made noise out of silence, heat out of cold, and they devoured themselves and if you listened close, you could hear their tongues of wicked whisper.
Then after some days we broke through to a lake Dave called Sweet Leaf.
Hit a patch of thick rain and with a wind so breathtaking we had to stop. Huddled up inside a lean-to Dave made out of tarps and the felled trunks of skinny old trees. The knees of his army pants gone thin and grey, stained with Muskol, dirt, and blood. His fingernails were dirty as a mechanic’s, orange nicotine stains on the fingers, his hands brown in their calloused skin. Dave was staring down the rain.
“I’d have none of this if I could. None, nothing, no one.”
And what he said I knew and understood.
We smelled the sour smell of the day, the rotting tarps, each other. And though the rain kept on, the sun came out orange, slung low in a dirty sky. We were always and forever taking in the state of the breaking-glowing-setting sun.
We rolled bony cigarettes.
“There’s a settlement on the other side of the lake,” Dave said. “I remember now. Some place with dirty kids running all over and all their dirty goddamn dogs.”
Dave pulled up his hood and I hung my head and we were silent, slumped up together, falling into bouts of sleep and waiting for the rain to go away and leave the world alone. The alcohol was all long gone, and soon too would be Dave’s pot. We had to get some more booze, for it was hard to keep going all day without a drink or a toke to look forward to, to make all those nights seem shorter.
“Got to get there soon, else we’ll be smoking straight paper.”
Dave went on measuring out distances on the map, bitching about provisions, cursing that neither of us had thought to bring along a lousy fishing rod.
“This here is trading territory,” Dave said, passing back the map, now torn and shitty and wrinkled up from constant wet. “Land of poor Whites. Fucked up and forgotten.”
“Sounds like Black Dew Seat.”
“Here’s maybe worse. These little posts buried in the bush, getting by on trading like it was a century ago. You’ll see.”
“You really do know this route?”
“Sure, I’ve been out here,” said Dave. “I took off lots of times before. But I always got caught. Like he had me on a leash and I couldn’t even see it. A long leash, but a fucking neck-breaker all the same.”
“It’s different this time,” I said.
“Totally.”
“Like a stray dog now.”
“No. Not yet. He’s coming for me. But he’ll wait. Lets me get a little further every goddamn time, see. Think we might even get to the border, except that he’s mad now. Now he’s got a score to settle.”
Waited for Dave to say what it was, that score, he and me getting better at saying our secrets out loud. But he was quiet.
“And then what? When he catches up?”
“We’ll settle up. Go from there.”
Dave looked up at the sky and he said, “It’s amazing how far you’ll go and how much you’ll get done when you’ve got nothing to go back to.”
“And how much shit you drag along too. That’s what I think. Makes it so you don’t need to go back, right. Feels the same inside. Stays alive, all the shit, all plain as day.”
“So then why leave?” Dave said. “You got to get rid of that shit, kid. Free yourself up. Try forgetting.”
“I did, I do. But what I got to forget, it’s got a mind of its own.”
“Just wait. You’ll kill it off yet.”
Dave got out his Walkman then, and from his case he selected a cassette, something called Virgin’s Egg. “From Norway,” he said. “Ordered it special.” He put it in the machine and passed me an earphone bud. Pressed play. A poisoned white worm of low, grinding guitar came crawling into my ear.
“Remember your first metal tape, Dave? Like the one that popped your goddamn cherry, changed your life forever?”
Dave nodded. “Ride the Lightning.”
“Yeah, that’s a good one. Better than this shit.”
“I heard Lightning one night at a party. Got into this guy’s car to hotbox and he put that on. From then on it was all different.”
“Sure, I know how that is.”
We were talking almost loud over the music. Dave was rubbing his little bit of bone between his fingers.
“That was maybe ’85. I was an asshole before that, and then it all changed. Then I was the biggest asshole in town, and I gave my dad a good reason to beat my ass on a daily goddamn basis. Started to fight back, though. Started to run away, set fires, fuck shit up. I stole a drum set from the high school, and me and my friend we had a drum band out in the woods. We stole microphones from the church, and then all we needed were guitars and we were going to be just like Metallica. We were the shittiest little kids. I was in grade nine, I think it was. I just got more and more into metal, more and more into my own goddamn head.”
Told Dave how it was Bob Crater and the Goddamns I had first heard.
“Slava O’Right played it for you, didn’t he?”
“And I owe him for that. He saved my life with that.”
“If he didn’t do it, someone else would have.”
“No, Black Dew Seat had nothing like that. Slava was my only source. It was pretty crazy to have that shit up there, and I was a freak for getting into it.”
“The style of it? Dressing like that, with your hair and all?”
“I guess it’s a style. But I think it’s more. Means more to me anyway. Like, would you die for a s
tyle? Get beat up for it?”
“I sure wouldn’t. It’s good music, but it’s just music in the end.”
“Well, this sure isn’t music.” Gave Dave back the bud. “It’s too scary,” I said. “Beside, one of us ought to be on guard.”
Thought about all those tapes I had left in my room. Slava had made them for me. Mixed tapes, often with no song titles or band names, a sloppy mess of anonymous music. But that made it better somehow, more of a secret I was now in on, and after being away at school or doing something for Bellyache in town, I always looked forward to getting back to my bed and the portable player I had taken from the art room. Else maybe I’d never go back to that trailer, just stay away and fuck around in the bush, loiter outside the goddamn grocery store with Meats and his shitty friends.
But Meats was a good egg, maybe the only one who knew how Slava O’Right had saved me from heavy metal, like me and Slava both always said, but also from the bullshit of Black Dew Seat, Bellyache, being a goddamn Bozak. Showed up at a party one time, out at the abandoned train tracks by Silver Lake. Fall, there was a chill in the air, and the kids knew this might be the last bush bash of the season. So we were all sitting there, some in truck beds, most around a bonfire someone had going. Me, I was by the fire. Had come out there only because Meats, the one person who talked to me at high school, was cousins with about three of the main Black Dew Seat rockers and he said it would be all right. And it was tense that night, not just because I was there, but because of some shit about a girl fucking over one guy for another and later on, Meats would tell me, it ended up in a big fight, the girl getting in on it even. But before that happened, Slava O’Right showed up. Came to deal his drugs, he stayed for a beer when Meats, always everyone’s best pal, invited him to stick around. Sitting next to us by the fire, Slava was saying how the ac/dc tape someone had just put on was total shit. Said to him sure, but it was better than Rush or, worse, Led Zeppelin. Could tell he liked that I’d said that. He asked me my name.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of you,” he’d said.
“You too. You and your brothers.”
“And my dad? Vlad? You know about him?”
Told him no, I’d never heard that name and that was the truth.
Meats went off someplace and me and Slava kept talking. He was going on about that shitty screeching metal and he told me how when he’d left Black Dew Seat maybe ten years before, he’d gone to Vancouver and heard punk rock and it changed his whole life.
“Only thing good I had before that was Sabbath. Punk music’ll never get this far up north. It’s too weird for this crew.”
“So you have to go south for it? Or to Vancouver?”
“Sure. But most of the scenes are dead now. Over and done.”
We took some of Meats’s beer and went and sat in Slava’s truck and listened to all the different kinds of punk he had. And really, it was like losing my goddamn virginity. That night I heard Black Flag and The Perps and snfu, Bob Crater and the Goddamns, my head popping like a girl’s tight, ripe cherry. Hearing voices from the other side, they were sent through Slava to comfort me with their uncooked anger, to soothe me with their broken teeth and pain—a sign of life. Suddenly I was not alone anymore. That music had come from someplace real and that meant there was a world out there, a world not here, a place for me to get to, a star to focus on, a beautiful fuck you to follow along.
Liked Slava a lot that night. And it was our best night together because we just talked and listened to all that music, and he drove me back to town after and that was it. He lent me some of his tapes, and said he’d bring more next month when he came through again.
“But don’t say anything about me to your uncle, to Bellyache,” he said.
Well, he didn’t have to tell me that. Me, I never told Bellyache shit about anything I got up to. But I was too in love with those goddamn tapes to think about why he’d say that, that he’d have a reason for doing so.
Leaned back and then laid down, and then Dave did too. Our bodies stretched out close, I felt Dave’s fingers twitching along with the music. If he’d been one of those rocker kids in Black Dew Seat, Dave and me would have hated each other, I thought. But with those midnight eyes and overbitten smile and long hair like black licorice, and crazy enough to run off into the bush with a condemned canoe and a goddamn suitcase, maybe I’d have crossed over, taking a rocker for a pal and some kind of a friend. But only if he’d cross over too, stepping across that rocker borderline, straying away from thrasher territory, and meet me someplace in the middle.
Woke up in the night and Dave was there beside me, earphones still stuck in his head. Got out our sleeping bags and covered us up. Found bear spray and took out my knife. Sat up for some hours getting eaten by bugs since there was little left of the fire. My nails started itching, but I could only cut at them a little bit. Hard to see, the night being total in its darkness. Listened to the water and the wind, the swish of an animal going by real close. Wolves were crying across the lake, and behind us I heard owl, low and stern, sounding like a father, an ancestor, an old man.
Fell asleep sitting up, woke again just as dawn was setting in.
Found Dave’s axe, got going for wood, but then stopped.
Picked up the bloody, crusty tongue of cotton from where it was laid out on the red belly of Dave’s boat. Nice and obvious, where we’d be sure to see it. Me, I picked it up, tossed it in the fire pit. Went for a piss and also to cut wood and when I got the fire going tough and high, I burned that sock. Choking on the smell of it, Dave woke up, but I wouldn’t tell him what was in there burning. That menstrual sock, I kept it for a secret.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Long Haul was along the southernmost shore of Sweet Leaf. Dave and me saw it coming from far off, a few scabby buildings built in the bushes that lined the thinned-out shore. Landed the canoe about a kilometre up and hauled both it and the gear into the bushes and out of sight.
Crouched low in the bush, looking down at the ground, conspiring.
“Now,” Dave said, “you go for supplies.”
“Alone?”
“All alone. You can take the canoe. Just make sure you say nothing and—most important—that you come the fuck back.”
“What the fuck do you want to stay here for, Dave?”
“Listen,” said Dave. “I said I was here before, right?”
Nodded.
“Well, I ought not to go back, see? Something happened. I had no money, but I needed food real bad. The guy there was a total dick, wouldn’t trade or anything, not even for a Voivod tape. I was a bit aggressive. That’s all. No harm done.”
Stared hard at Dave. “You’re full of shit, Dave. You just want to stay here and smoke pot and listen to Metallica while I go do all the work.”
“Look, kid,” said Dave. “You can believe me or not believe me, you can go or not go, but I’m not showing my red fucking skin in Long Haul. If we eat, it’s up to you. We drink and we smoke, it’s up to you.”
“So this time you have money?”
“You mean you don’t?”
“Sure, I got money. I just want to know where yours is at.”
Dave stood up, grabbed his pack and went with it into the bushes. He came back and stood above me, pushed a fistful of paper money into my face.
“This’ll cover it. Just make sure the booze is not homemade and the tobacco’s the strongest they got.”
Took the stuff from him and shoved it into my jacket pocket without giving it a look.
“Zig-Zags, Muskol, a shitload of duct tape, glue—”
“Staples.”
“Staples. Yeah. And lots of goddamn batteries—don’t forget the batteries. Double-As for the Walkman.”
“Double-Ds for the flashlight.”
“Bread, peanut butter, jerky, but only good stuff or else we’ll both be blowing ’rhea from here
to the border.”
“Look, I know what we need and I’ll get it.”
“I’ll be waiting on you, so be quick about it.”
We got the boat back down onto the water.
“You had a different canoe then, right?” I said. “They won’t recognize this one and kick my ass?”
Dave said, no, that he had a real nice craft back then, sleek and slender, brand new from someone’s garage back in the fancy part of his hometown. Not this garbage-picked bastard. Then he took up a big rock and stacked it on another, saying that way I’d remember the right spot to pull over.
“And if it’s dark?”
“Don’t take that long.”
Then Dave pushed me off from the shore, and I paddled away without him.
* * *
Closing in on Long Haul, I saw smoke rising above the treetops and rowboats beached on the shore. Grubber country, poor here. Long-lost and forgotten, just like Dave had said. A dozen or so wood buildings were set back in the grim-looking bush. There were men and their boys on the shore with their boats, keeping their heads low and pretending not to watch me paddle in. Wild dogs started barking and ran out of the bush and right down into the water. When I got close enough, I yelled out that I was just in for supplies and so to call off their animals.
A bunch of boys beat them off behind the cabins. Paddled forth. Saw that of the boys who had gone off with their dogs, one was still there. This one wore these big old glasses and clothes that were giant for him, the clothes of a man, so I had at first mistaken him for an adult. He stood apart from the men on shore, as he had stood apart from the boys. Lenses glinted white in the lowering sun, blanking out his eyes. Two men put down their tools and stood at the water’s edge waiting to help me. They were shy and would not dare to look at my face, so new and so strange and female. They waded in past their boot tops, grabbed the bow, careful of the dirty old boots stapled there, and without saying a word, they pulled me to shore.