by Gerald Lynch
Jack called across the strip of yard between our two houses: “And, Lorne, if there is any more trouble whatsoever, this time I’m calling the police! Veronica agrees with me. I’m fond of you, neighbour, and very sorry for your troubles, but Veronica and me, well, we have some things to work out.”
Veronica and me, spoken by the neighbourhood’s number one asshole, who was drinking heavily in the middle of the day? I ran from my garage into the driveway shaking a rake in Jack’s direction. There was no one there. I must have looked a sight to the crows. It was one of those rakes as big as a trellis!
So of course I went down to the curb and stood watch. The Tanzanian Marathoner approached on the sidewalk and scowled at me as he passed. For years he’s been loping by on his bandaged knee with never so much as a grunt of recognition and now he scowls? But I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!
O, end of summer day of hopeless leaves of grass and desiccated red maples. O, the world is too much with us lately, the world is weary of us. Some of us anyway.
Or not so much scowled as smirked disdainfully. But what had I ever done to the Tanzanian Marathoner? Openly, I mean. Could some new conspirator have told him he’s a running joke in my home repertoire? (There’s a groaner for you, Gary Lewis!) I’d just been standing there with my rake upside down, doin’ nothin’, and he has the bold effrontery, the temerity…well, I never!
Or perhaps the intent Tanzanian Marathoner had simply been disgusted by the incongruous sight of me: in my hospital scrubs, with stethoscope pendant, posed with an upside-down rake like some Healthcare Gothic? That’s a distinct possibility, or a vague one.
Oh, scowl away, my nut-brown familiar, if you will. Or smirk disdainfully, at your peril. Because, my self-deceived Tanzanian, I now see clearly for the very first time that there is more dignity in refusing to enter the stadium when you’re dead last. When you’re beaten so badly and running on empty, there is honour, my aged friend, in quitting. In saying: That’s it, no more, not another excruciatingly painful step, I’m through, all in. Point me to the graveyard and I’ll save you the trouble, do a Marathon of Hop to my final resting place. And just quit. Quit already!
So, I wasn’t just doin’ nothin’ standing down there by the street. I was thinking of literally doing nothing ever again. What really is the point of raking fallen leaves that would only grow again the following spring to die and fall again the following fall? Oh, my dear Tanzanian Marathoner, mon semblable, there is indeed something in dying, repetitive nature that mocks our striving selves, our little lives…big time!
Home life has settled back into its cyclical routine following the near miss of a cruise missile? Comfortable once more, are we, following the wise-daddy handling of the explosive family crisis of a lifetime?
Bang! Boom! Kabloomski!
Why, my dear Tanzanian Marathoner, should I live on running retarded circles to my meaningless grave? If I’m going to die alone anyway, now’s as good a time as any! That order of nuns, the Caesarean Sisters or whatever, the ones who go every day into their convent’s back yard and remove a teaspoonful of dirt from their future graves — those holy Goth chicks have the right idea, let me tell you!
Okay, maybe I’d imagined it. The Tanzanian Marathoner scowling at me, I mean. Maybe — and here’s a thought to conjure with — mayhap the lonely long-distance T-M had intended his ghastly rictus in fraternal sympathy? If so, take your mug away, loser! That be my will. Healthcare Gothic indeed!
And that’s pretty well why I’d leered horribly at him as he approached and passed.
…Dear God, don’t let me be mad.
At the very least…I was resolved to stand there forever, just so. When along came Shawn on her bike, entering the curve at the bottom of our crescent and slowing…stopping to have a long word with the Tanzanian Marathoner. I would have to be on my especial guard.
She arrived breathless in a way that biking never made her. Up to something, all right. For sure.
“Why are you dressed like work, Dad?”
“Your mom’s still not home.”
“What?” She was suddenly alert to the threat of yet more strangeness in her familiar world.
“Your mother is next door with Jake’s father again. Where have you been, young lady? You can’t be out riding if you’re staying home sick from school.”
“Today’s a PD day, didn’t Mom tell you? Duh, like no bus this morning? I was just talking to some kids over at Shoal Park. You should see the playground. It’s all torn up and Bob Browne’s machine is still there. Go look if you don’t believe me!”
“I don’t know.” No more lies.
“What’s Mom doing at the Kilborns’ again? She’s there all the time now.”
“I don’t know.” You tell me.
But she wouldn’t.
“What were you and the Tanzanian Marathoner talking about just now, young lady?”
“That’s not his name, Dad. It’s Mr. Singh Cahir.”
It was his name only days ago, my little Judas.
She may have sniffled, she drew her bare forearm across her nose. “Why are you dressed in your doctor clothes and holding the rake upside down? Is that blood on your face?”
“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t it be? Have you taken your allergy meds?”
“Yes, first thing when I got…back, re-mem-ber?”
That was said a bit too brokenly for my liking. I pressed my advantage. “I thought so. Where did you go with the man and the dog? You had a severe allergic reaction. Was it to a trailer in a field somewhere outside the city? Was it to a farm? A barn with hay for kids to jump in? I’ll bet that was fun!”
Then her eyes really got big. “Huh? Da-ad, I told you about all that. Nothing happened! It’s just a…a game we’re playing.” Her brow furrowed: “Did Jake tell you something? That stupid re… But we didn’t go anywhere far away like that. Are you imitating a zombie now, Dad? Stop that with your eyes. You’re scaring me!”
I love you.
She turned away in disgust, walked her bike up the driveway and alongside the garage. The sound of the back door slamming snapped me out of it.
She was sitting in the lotus position with the TV remote in her hand. She had recorded Wy Knots in order to keep a secret appointment in the playground. The tinkling bells and there was Wy coming down the Eightfold Path with his goat…with Wei, to open the show. Danger, danger: bells had tinkled just before Lu-Ping died. Wy keeps on coming, alarmingly so, right up close to the camera, and mimes opening a small door with pinching thumb and forefinger, smiles in at us in our family rooms. He looks down: “Wei, when is door not door?” Tight shot of Wei’s goat face, which shows why a goat’s strange mug — those perfectly symmetrical horns, those vertical pupils — has often inspired representations of the devil. A deep echoing voiceover gives Wei’s thoughts: “Don’t be dumb-dumb, ask again.” Cut to close-up of wise Wy, whose forefinger comes up alongside his nose: “When is open crack! Ha-ha!” Shawn feigned a chuckle but didn’t get it. How could she have? Wy, who did his shows live and often had comical trouble with the English language, had murdered the stupid old joke: When is a door not a door? When it’s a-jar. I remembered it from an ancient Bazooka Joe bubblegum cartoon.
I went and stood by the patio doors, fingered a leaf of the jade tree that wouldn’t thrive anywhere in that house. Or…wise Wy knew of Honourable Dad’s hundred-fold troubles and was sending a coded message. I mean: When is open crack?… Dear God, don’t let me be…
I spoke as if to our suffocating cedar hedge, “Where’s Owen?”
“I dunno,” she snapped. “Still sleeping probably, sh-sh.”
“He didn’t go for a tattoo, did he?” I didn’t know why I sang it conspiratorially like that.
I went and stood close behind her. “You talked to a man in a white van beside the library, didn’t you?”
“What?” She g
iggled. “Oh, he means a-jar! I know that riddle. A door can be ajar! Silly Wy. When is open crack, ha-ha!”
It was like a sledge to the back of my head. “A man in a white van with a dog. He pulled over and you went and talked with him. The dog may not have been feeling well, dehydration or perhaps something dyspeptic. So you already knew that man and his sick dog at the museum, didn’t you? Who was it? One of the Lewis brothers? Frank Baumhauser? Tell me!”
I leaned over her, saw her thumb move to increase the volume. She was definitely hiding something from me. More bad things were going to happen imminently, worse things. Kevin said so. She’d been returned unharmed this time. She could be taken from me again in the wink of an eye if I wasn’t vigilant as a harem eunuch. Wy knew. She would be taken away from me. It was inevitable. But why was she lying to me? All I’d ever done was love her.
She paused the show and looked up at me backwards, the face as inhuman as Wei’s with its upside-down green eyes. “Da-ad, that white van story’s a suburban legend, everybody knows that! Whoever told you that stupid story is a retarded liar.” She frowned: “It wasn’t Jake, was it? If he ruins it …”
She returned to the TV, her swirled dandelion hair sparking the air. Wy squeezed himself a small glass of red from a wineskin, smiled at it: “All God’s gifts good in moderation.” He stopped himself with the glass at his mouth, frowned at the camera: “Wine only for grown-up!” He exaggerated his frown, his Fu Manchu menacing: “Never drugs!” Cut to the goat, who nodded, his vertical pupils dead serious.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, young lady!”
She turned her head to the left and looked up, her lower lip already protruding.
“Where did you go with that man and dog in the white van from the museum? Who was it? What are you hiding?”
“I can’t tell or she won’t — Wy won’t …” She clamped her trembling mouth. Her lips made a dry parting sound when she spoke: “Don’t be dumb-dumb, ask —”
It was no more than a singular instant out of time, stepping round her, dipping at the knees and cracking her across the face, stopping that dandelion clock dead. Then slow motion, the nimbus of hair whipping dreamily, throwing off a spray of light, lashing my shins on the recoil, her green eyes shocked, beautiful face contorting. Pain. Caused by me. The man who loved her most in all the world.
She was up and out the side door. I ran after. She went left — I froze — then went right. I had nowhere to go.
I hid among the trees, leaning against a trunk and spying on the few kids in Shoal Park. They were excited over the destruction of the playground. As the day waned, fathers and mothers came to fetch them. The parents took in the wasted playground — the toppled equipment, the smashed jungle gym, the gouged ground — in bewilderment, turned and hurried away as if shirking someone else’s trouble.
I wrapped my arms around a trunk, pressed my cheek to the bark and inhaled its musty cork. And just held on for dear life for I didn’t know how long.
Someone walking a dog somewhere behind me said my name: “Dr. Thorpe? Is that you…Lorne Thorpe?” I didn’t turn, but it eventually brought me round from my reverse crucifixion.
Touching other trunks for support — stumbling, I guess, maybe even careening — I made my way to the rubble of what had been the jungle gym. I sat staring at the playground’s only remaining recognizable feature: the small hill where once Owen, and for a while Owen and Shawn, had run up and tumbled down, Shawn in a hurry to catch up with her big brother. I’d regularly taken them to this playground after supper to give Veronica a break (after she’d cleaned up). I was always exhausted myself and milked the favour for all it was worth. But the truth was, I’d looked forward to the walk and play more than Veronica knew, because I never told her, and probably more than the children did. Too late now. Words to die by.
But really now, pondering the distinction more closely: what is the difference between a hit and a slap? Because I didn’t hit her, I slapped her. That much we can establish incontrovertibly. Granted, slap would be a subcategory of hit. And backhand a subcategory of slap? And so on in descending order of severity to gentle backhand at the bottom?
The very bottom. That’s where I was and where I belonged.
The nimbus of hair whipping dreamily, throwing off a spray of light, lashing my shins on the recoil, her green eyes popping, beautiful face contorting. Shock and pain.
I needed to lie down, just for a spell. I tripped onward. Where was my white rag?
Is suicide a subcategory of murder? Or of death? They say a suicide murders the world.
But does any of that shit even matter anymore? Am I simply finished? Not worth anyone’s attention anymore?
I think so.
Chapter 17
It was seeing the groundhog gave me the idea. Maybe because my mind was as blank as that of a newborn chick looking to imprint on whatever’s going: a moving finger, a dwarf trickster, a detective…a groundhog. Not the groundhog emerging from the mound in the playground, impressive as that was: the sudden brown head in dry grass, the ratty snout sniffing the wind, the surprisingly plump emergence (consider the rodents of the fields: one’s entranceway should be as small as possible in the event big trouble comes calling), a circuit of his territory, the scurrying return at the alarm of some sixth sense (falling leaves? rapid shadows? destroyed world?).
No, it wasn’t the emergence but the return that put the idea in my head, the beat retreat — the arse-end wiggling into the earth, the groundhog’s going back to ground. That melted my muscles, softened my bones, made me want so to snuggle into earthy depression myself.
Not to die, just to lie down, in a hole in the ground, alone, quietly, for an eternal spell. Perhaps to dream a dream of tens of thousands of groundhogs overrunning Troutstream like Pied Piper rats, raiding the fat larders of the middle class, carrying off the excess babies of the Project poor, undermining the very foundations of our lying suburban world!
Was I nuts? Who knew anymore? All I knew was that I was lying in a hole in the devastated Shoal Park playground, still wearing my hospital scrubs and lab coat, still with my silly stethoscope round my stupid neck. More comfortable than I’d been in days. Maybe more than I’d ever been in my whole worried life above ground. So if I wasn’t clinically certifiable, I was playing a pretty good game of Mad Hatter.
The air at ground zero was earth-moist and filled alternately with light and shadows. Way up above, low clouds in smoky clumps scudded a late summer’s indigo sky. As the sun flashed aslant, the semi-translucent leaves seemed actually to increase the green light. Though that’s impossible: obstruction, opacity, cannot increase illumination. Some things still are, you know. Impossible, I mean. Oh, not the destruction of the careful life one has constructed over decades. That is quite possible. That — flash destruction, cosmic mockery — is, in fact, highly probable. In fact, given the second law of thermodynamics, the entropic tendency of organized energy and the inevitable end of existence… Well, a word of warning, a word to the wise: destruction of the well-ordered world of groundhogs and men, instant and otherwise, is to be expected, is the natural and most likely outcome of this thing we call living. What is impossible is continued contentedness (see: Bob Browne above and Lorne Thorpe below).
I slept, or passed out, in a hole in a playground. What more can I say?
I came to more soberly to view close-up a few grains of earth crumbling on the wall of my hole; then more, like the beginning of a minuscule dam collapse. Was I to be buried alive?… No, my hole was too shallow for that. Instead I anticipated the welcome dark head of my brother hole-dweller, the groundhog, come a-calling with some Wind in the Willows notes on living well underground. But it proved to be only a lost earthworm, plumping out sideways as though my earthen hole were evolving a fat lip.
And how do you feel, Brother Worm, having come to the end of your world as you knew it?… Nothing? Put
’er there, pardner!
I sat up and took in the brave new childless world of Shoal Park playground.
It still looked as if some very unfriendly giant had stomped it. And it was pitted hugely, as from a bomb shelling. The litter of play equipment had been ripped out by a backhoe whose mechanical mouth still hung over its last hole like some masticating monster. Only toppled litter and holes now where just yesterday there had been a three-swing set, two slides, a geodesic affair called Rocket to the Moon, and the complex of poisoned cedar called jungle gym. Only yesterday, children and parents had played beneath these sheltering trees, with squeals, laughter, shouts, repeated parental cautions, and with the children unwittingly inhaling toxic levels of arsenic from the treated wood and saturated earth. Now, only this dappled brightness, this silence, this late summer’s afternoon in a ruined playground. Holes, only holes, where once the missing children played.
And I, Lorne Thorpe, MD, alone in my personal hole, right where Bob Browne had lately promised to put me. Forlorn Lorne, as the traitorous Veronica sometimes sympathetically called me, when she’d still loved me. Soon it would be dark, but I couldn’t move, let alone go home. Home? Don’t make me laugh. Ha-ha. I didn’t want to go anywhere anyway. I would sit here — I lay back down — lie here forever in this wasted playground. Don’t bother telling me that the going’s got tough and now the tough must get going. Go to hell. Been tough, done that. For me, it’s game over —
“Fun’s over, Lorne.”
Detective Beldon? Kevin! Why, Kevin, you old mind reader! Was I hallucinating his small ginger head hovering up there like some competing sun? I needlessly shaded my eyes in a salute.
“Ah, a voice from on high! And the voice of the law to boot!”
“Out of that hole now, Lorne. We have work to do.”
He didn’t sound surprised to have found me situated so. He just extended a bony hand at the end of an elongated arm.
“We?” I flailed about till he clasped my hand. “But you’ve heard about Bob Browne?”