The Ambassador of What

by Adrian Michael Kelly

  Dad, I can’t do this.

  Can too. Hands. Right, check your blindspot.

  Indicate?

  Always. Foot on the brake?

  Yes.

  Yank her into Drive, then, and that’s us away.

  I had not been inside a church since nine years of age. It had felt like drama club, fake and rickety. Now I closed my eyes a tic, and said GOD to myself, then gaped at the expanse of hood, big as aircraft carriers.

  Give her a bit of gas, said Dad. Easy does it. Merge.

  Onto the road?

  No, the ditch. Easy, easy, fucksakes. He batted my hands from the wheel. Grabbed it. Brake, he said, brake!

  I stomped on the pedal like a head, and the car slid to a slanty stop—in the middle of the road.

  That’s you failed your Learner’s, boy. Right then and there.

  Three sixty-five.

  Eh?

  They call it a three sixty-five here.

  Watch yourself.

  Sorry.

  Sorry isn’t much good if you’ve fucking killed someone, is it?

  No.

  No. Now. Give your fucking head a shake, and get this thing pointed straight. You control the car. It does not control you. Sit up. Take command.

  I stepped on the gas like a stair in the night, and the road cracked its knuckles underneath the rolling wheels.

  That’s the way, Dad said. Now, bump it up a bit.

  Twenty?

  Twenty-five. Go on. Now, remember. The brake is your best friend, right? If nothing else, use your brake. Minimize the impact. Take her up to thirty.

  Mirage eighteen-wheelers thundered straight toward us, grilles gleaming. I wasn’t cold anymore. Total opposite. Shiny-wet and slippy, the seat beneath my legs.

  Not bad, kid. Thirty-five.

  Thirty okay for now?

  Nothing but open road up there. You’re all right. Take it up.

  Thirty-five felt not too bad. I gave it a little more.

  Cocky now?

  Back off?

  More if you like.

  I went forty-five.

  What’s that you see up ahead?

  Stop sign.

  Right. Start slowin up now.

  I took my foot off the gas.

  Brake, he said.

  It’s way up there.

  Slow, steady pressure. Let’s feel it, boy. More. More, I said. More.

  The stop sign and the crossroads grew big in the windscreen.

  Dad made a fist—BRAKE I SAID—and hammered me in the quads.

  We leaned hard into our belts, and the car stopped just shy of the intersecting road, where a man with a beard in a Ford flatbed swerved to his left, and flipped us the bird.

  Fuckin jerk.

  Dad was gritting his freaky teeth.

  When I say fucking brake, boy, I mean fucking BRAKE! He gave my leg another one. Hear me?

  Sorry.

  Listen. You control the car.

  Okay.

  Better brake too early than too bloody late. Get T-boned by that thing. He pointed at the flatbed dwindling on our right. My quad throbbed. Back up, he said.

  Reverse?

  We’ll try it again. Wait. Check your mirrors. Okay, now. Reverse.

  How far?

  I’ll tell you when.

  Holstein cows in the field on my left had come to the fence for a look. I hated the living sight of them and craned my neck the opposite way, started backing up. A black ratsnake dragged its length from the ditch into the cornfield.

  Correct, said Dad. You’re drifting. Left-left-left. Brake!

  We sat there and he held his face.

  You flabbergast me, honestly.

  Saw a snake.

  Eh?

  In the ditch.

  Concentrate. He tapped his skull. Mind on what you’re doin. We’ll save reverse for later. On you go, and stop again. Six feet back o’ the sign.

  I put the car in Drive, and sped up to thirty.

  Brake, said Dad. Let’s feel it.

  My whole leg and my foot twitched—to punch the gas, blow past the sign, get T-boned, be comatose—but he thumped my quad and I pressed the brake, stopped with barely a lean.

  Okay, he said, and pointed left. On you go.

  Main line?

  Aye.

  It goes to Ayrton.

  So?

  People will see.

  Sunday afternoon? Fire a cannon down Main Street. Go on. Tallyho.

  The heart in me made my T-shirt twitch, but the road was new macadam, and we were the only car. Gliding along at forty-five. Dad rolled down his window, tapped the roof, and whistled, pipes and drums, a marching tune. Wind flipped the side of his hair up and overtop, made him look way younger. Sun filled the car. It was all right, I was in control and took her up to fifty. Ayrton, said the sign. 5 KM. We crested the hill by the old schoolhouse and quickly gained on a silver-blue Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight.

  Dad sat up and thumped my leg. Brake, you’ll be up his arse in no time. Brake, brake, brake.

  The speedometer fell to thirty.

  Dad said, No wonder. Look who it is.

  I saw a cloud of grey-white curls, two bony hands on the wheel.

  What’s-her-name, Dad said. Lives on Booth in Glanisburgh. I picked up her husband last year. Heart attack.

  Haig?

  Aye, that’s it. Silly wee thing. Shouldn’t be drivin that bloody boat. He made a bullhorn of his hands. C’mon, pet. Pick it up. Right, pull out and pass.

  Ayrton isn’t far.

  We’ll be all day behind her. Check your blind spot. Indicate. Pull out and punch the gas.

  I swallowed, and said, Okay.

  Well?

  Making sure it’s clear.

  Fit the Q.E. II in all the room you’ve got.

  I pulled out, and floored it. The power of the car. Thirty, forty yards on, I was still in the passing lane, gripping the wheel in terror.

  Foot off the gas, Dad said, and shoved his hand beneath my leg. Lifted it. Brake!

  In lurching bits I steered the car back into the right lane.

  Fuck was that?

  You said pass.

  Overtake, not blast off.

  The car just went.

  It did what you made it. Jesus H.

  Can you drive now?

  On into town. Right at the lights. Pull in at the IGA.

  We crossed the iron swing bridge, where boat people fished for bass and perch, white buckets at their feet. The light on the other side was green. I sped up.

  Easy.

  The light turned yellow.

  Brake.

  I can make it.

  Brake.

  He hit my leg, and at the light, gave me another above the ear.

  Round the block. Under the limit. At every red, brake.

  Could use a pee.

  Then get it right.

  A bruise had started on my leg. By the time we got back home, it had spread all round my birthmark. In the mirror in my room, I stared at it and thought of lies I could tell my pals about how I had got it. Dad was in the bathroom, gargling with Listermint and giving his teeth a slosh in their light blue plastic cup. Soon he was off to work, and I played Moving Pictures on the stereo. Lay on the rug and pressed my bruise. The harder I pressed, the more it hurt, but if I kept on pressing with my thumb, down and deeper down, it didn’t hurt at all. Except when my thumb got tired, and I had to give it a rest. Then the pain flourished.

  Petty Theft

  The train sped west of urban sprawl, and I remember sunshine, a slanting, warm, and citrus light, falling on the page. I was reading Leavis, an old and forlorn copy of The Great Tradition. Thin, brittle pages came loose as I turned them, and ink
smudged my fingertips. I got up to go and wash, but heard footfalls behind me. High-voltage panic hummed in my chest, and the conductor said, “Excuse me, sir,” on his brisk way by. He was a stout and ruddy Scot, severe and sergeant-major-ish. Spun on his heel at the front of the car and asked for our attention. “On behalf of VIA Rail, I apologize sincerely for the failing ventilation. It will be serviced in Waterloo, during a short delay.” With that, he spun on his heel again and moved through the vestibule with practised surety.

  I had noticed nothing wrong, despite my heavy woolen suit, but a cramp had started in my neck. It happens when I read. As the train began to brake, I stood in the aisle to stretch a bit and stole another look at the attractive older woman. She was on the aisle, one across and down from me, fanning her fine, intelligent face with a folded Globe and Mail. Great skin. Athletic calves. A fancy leather briefcase stood on the seat beside her. Lawyer, I guessed. Or CFO. Possibly a prof. I imagined myself older and having kids with her, a Tudor house and a dog and car. What all that would be like. At which point she looked at me, as if to say, “Do you mind?” I made for the exit, feeling dumb and itchy in my out-of-season tweed.

  ~

  The suit was three years old now. I had worn it twice, the first time at my high school grad, then in court in Peterborough, when I was convicted. That was seven months ago, and though I still made Dean’s List, not a day went by without suffering in my head the bite-and-grip of handcuffs, the ritual diminishment of mugshots and prints, then the dreary theatre of entering a plea. “I am contemplating Law, Your Honour.” That’s what I told the judge. Crying like a kid. One of the townie troglodytes waiting his turn behind me sniggered with a friend. The judge threw him a look, and I bleated on. “No one knows more than I how foolish this was.” That sort of thing. I had stolen acne cream: Benzagel, high-end stuff, seven bucks a tube. “I can only hope, Your Honour, my actions will not ruin me.” He scratched his beard and stared at me over his bifocals, then bestowed a conditional discharge.

  My criminal record would be erased after six months’ probation and twenty-four hours’ community service—painting fire hydrants, I thought, or picking up litter in city parks. But, for half a dozen weekends, I reported to the Peterborough Y and played dodge ball with latchkey kids. There were field trips, too, singalongs on school buses to and from the Science Centre, Queen’s Park, and the ROM. I had never been to places like those, and I saw how happy the kids could be.

  Still, you don’t feel discharged. You feel conditional. Perpetually detected.

  ~

  Inside the station, I passed a bank of payphones and ogled the concession stand: ham and cheese, turkey-swiss, egg salad, hot dogs. The smell made me nuts, and I felt in my breast pocket the obscene redundancy of a brand new leather billfold. I had bought it yesterday at Cunningham and Smythe. The owner even remembered me. Soon as I walked in, he said, “Donegal tweed, charcoal grey.” I grinned. “How is your dad?”

  “Fine,” I said, “fine.”

  “What can I help you with today?”

  I told him I was thinking of a spring/summer suit, which was more or less true, ’til I saw how much. “Sorry,” was all I had to say, “think I’ve changed my mind,” but I let the owner shadow me. “Italian linen, sir.” He slipped jacket after jacket over my sloped shoulders. I pretended none of them were quite what I was looking for and finally bought a shirt. Even had him steam it. “Certainly, sir. No problem, sir.” At the checkout counter, thumbing through the last of my little bursary, I tapped the glass and said, “I’ll take the billfold, there.” He asked me was I sure. I nodded aristocratically. Twenty ham and cheese was what that fucker cost, even more egg salad, as though cordovan leather would prove to my sister I was doing ticketyboo.

  She was nine years older and had gone with Mum to Calgary back in ’75 or so. In ’79, she married Tim, a tier-two defenceman who never made pro, but his father owned a PetroCan, and Janice did the books. For most of the eighties, business was bad, but picking up now, and they needed help. I wasn’t big on pumping gas, but couldn’t face another year of drop sheets and my dad. He and his last girlfriend had gone south pretty ugly. Bottles of British Navy Rum heaped in his bin. He spent most of every night yelling at the news, declaiming sundry hatreds. To suburban housewives who changed their minds about the trim, he said, “Yes, of course, ma’am.” Called them cunts when they had gone. Charged twelve an hour like it was just deserts. Tim and Janice were paying me nine. Dad would understand that, is what I told myself, staring at those payphones. I promised I would write him, then spent all my pocket change on a day-old bagel. Wolfed both halves.

  ~

  A big-bellied man with curly white hair was sitting beside the older woman, chomping a wad of purple gum and reading The Bourne Identity. I thought, What a dick, and opened The Great Tradition. A few minutes later, when the train had achieved full speed, someone behind me belched and said, “Beg your pardon.” Then he all but fell into the seat beside me. The left sleeve of his Argos coat was torn cuff to shoulder. He took off his tinted glasses and held them in front of his weathered face, blinking, wobbly-headed. I tried to keep on reading, but felt him looking at the page.

  “Fuck,” he said, “is that?”

  I showed him the cover.

  He shook his head. “Christ.” Then said, “No offence,” and offered his hand. “Bob.”

  His grip was limp and clammy. I tried to read again.

  He said, “Where you headed?”

  I said, “Out west.”

  “Student?”

  I told him I went to Queen’s, and he said, “Used to teach there.”

  I gaped at him. “English?”

  “Fuck no. Economics. Then I moved. Waterloo.”

  “You teach there now.”

  “Did.”

  “Retired?”

  “No. I told ’em, ‘It’s all a crock a shit.’”

  “What is?”

  “Economics.”

  “You said that?”

  “Yup.”

  “To who?”

  “Fuck you think? My students.”

  I turned in my seat to face him. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope.”

  “You really said that. ‘A crock of shit.’”

  “‘Get out a here. Go live.’”

  “What happened?”

  “Sat there, most of ’em. Stunned fucks. I walked out.”

  “You just left?”

  “Gone.”

  “That’s just . . . it?”

  He checked his watch. “Come have a drink.”

  “Early for me.”

  “Just the one.”

  I glanced at my book and felt the billfold graze my ribs.

  He said, “It’s on me.”

  “Just the one.”

  “Atta boy.”

  The attractive older woman was reading her newspaper and did not look up on our way by. Fuckface with the gum did, signalling his disgust with the likes of Bob, who failed to notice or to care. He had a scab big as a nickel in the middle of his bald spot, and what with his coat and grubby shoes, I thought some pince-nez maître d’ would tut and turn us both away. I had never been in a club car before and was picturing chandeliers. Maybe you get those in first class. This was more like an upstairs lounge in a small-town hockey rink—tin ashtrays and bad teeth, ball caps and back fat. Bob got in line at the bar, and I found a table. Three men beside me drank rye and Coke and talked about a black bear one of them had shot. A kink started in my calf. I was clenching that much. Hated this and wanted out, but Bob sat down with tins of Blue and plastic cups stuck on top. We poured, and his hand shook.

  I said, “So, what’s next for you?”

  “Depends on my divorce.”

  “Sorry.”

  He said, “Don’t be,” and lit a Player’s Light. “Been up to Man
itoulin?”

  “No. Hear it’s nice.”

  “Friend a mine has a cabin there. Think I’ll hole up.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Stay hosed a month. Maybe fish some walleye. Ever fish walleye?”

  “Not really my thing.”

  “You’re twenty-what?”

  “One.”

  “Payin a bunch a peckerheads to tell you what to read.”

  “Maybe I like it.”

  “Why?”

  “Heard Economics was a crock.”

  “Hardy-har. Why.”

  I began a breathless homily. Most of it was stolen straight out of Leavis or what my profs had said. Literature improves the mind, refines the soul, increases human sympathy.

  Bob was staring at me over his tinted glasses. The whites of his eyes made me think of eggs on the fry in a diner. He waved down the barman and said, “Hell of a speech, kid. Shit costs you what these days, three, four grand a year?”

  I shrugged, “’Bout that.”

  “Loans?”

  I told him, “Some.”

  “Well. Hope the tail is good.”

  I said, “I get my share.”

  “Sure, kid. Bet you do.”

  The barman had arrived. He was big and ginger-haired and did not look impressed. I sat up straight, displaying my sobriety and fine, tailored tweed. He set down two more Blue, and Bob tipped him three bucks, then lit another cigarette. I slid my second tin across.

  “What the fuck.”

  “I said just the one.”

  “Loosen up.”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Fuck’s with you young guys today? When did you get so well behaved?”

  I stared out the window.

  “Your age, I was in Africa.”

  “Congrats. I’m not you.”

  “Listen to me a minute.”

  I told him, “Go ahead.”

  He started in on Bobo profs and higher-ed as mind control. Theory of the Leisure Class. Weber and Marcuse. He said I would be thirty and in shitheaps of debt. Half my life paying down my own indoctrination. By now he was on his third beer. Began to slur his words—state apparati, reification. He signalled the barman and gassed on. I hid away inside myself. Had done the same with my old man a hundred, hundred times: Culloden (yet again), Thatcher, JFK, Caribbeans, homosexuals. Whatever it is, let him talk. Eventually, it stops.