by Shilo Jones
“A prison card game,” Reed says. “You with me now? Or do you need to check your feed? Find the perfect emoji? Didn’t understand until it was too late that the world was pissing in my face. This was in the late eighties. Berlin Wall torn down. All these former East Berliners going west. An exodus. Wait! I never killed anyone—let’s make that clear from the get-go. Believe what you want, everyone else does. Anyhow, one of these folks, former Eastern commie type, a wizened old man, shows up in Kent prison. You should’ve seen him. Ancient fellow with nearly see-through skin and watery eyes the colour of driftwood. Had a habit of dragging his fingernails over his skin. Not scratching, just dragging them along. Had scales on his skin. Tiny scales you could only see in perfect bright light, which there never is in prison. I am not insane. You might be, but not me. I’ve wished it, though. So we all saw the old Berliner and his tiny scales and when he dragged his fingernails across them they’d flake off, leave a shimmering trail in his wake. Anyway, he set us on edge.
“We had our theories about him, for sure. Paid a guard to pull his file. Nothing in there. Not even a name. Just something that looked like a serial number stamped on a yellowing index card. Can’t remember what the number was. Doesn’t matter. Point is, no one knew why this guy was in prison. Complete mystery. All we knew is he had scales. Prison, best not to stand out. Scales on your skin? Even tiny, kind of pretty silvery-blue ones? You stand out. This was a man who chilled any room he walked into. A man whose presence ruined appetites. Never spoke, which was maybe his only redeeming quality. We called him the Monk. He had that air about him. Something of the dark sacrament? Remember when the media was all into devil worship? Nineteen-eighties? Kids getting abducted and sacrificed easy as chomping a Cheezie? The Satanic cult next door, cutting out virginal hearts? Heavy metal records played backwards? Pagans in a huff because no one can tell the difference between Pan and the devil, for Chrissake. I’m big into religious cults, you?”
“Not so much. I like Cheezies, though. We done?”
Reed rubs the pig’s belly. “Thing is, I wish I had your will. Trade all my money for a will like yours. Shame you’re a waste. Won’t amount to anything. You aimed too low. Maybe a product of your time. You want to leave?”
I try and say yeah. People are waiting. But something in Carl Reed’s voice doesn’t let me. More than what he’s saying, it’s how. It’s tough, interrupting a man during his last words. That’s how it feels, listening to Reed. So instead I tell him hey, fuck it, we’re here, there’s a high-calibre rifle aimed at my chest, you the boss.
“The Monk didn’t last long. You’re so distasteful you ruin a convict’s appetite…I think he lasted eleven days? That’s a sacred number, understand? He was my cellmate. One night, I’m on the top bunk, I feel the bed rocking back and forth. At first I thought…but it wasn’t that. And a wet grinding sound. Snn-chnnk. Snn-chnnk. You can hear a knife contacting bone when you stab someone, especially if it happens, say, thirty-eight times. The insides of a mammal, humans included, have a particular smell. A ripeness. Maybe you know this?”
“Yeah.”
“You do?”
“Used to road hunt for deer.”
“Oh, gross. That doesn’t count. Anyway, that was it for the Monk. No one said anything to me, and I laid in the top bunk all night, not moving, wide awake, staring at the ceiling, smelling the Monk’s insides as they cooled, waiting for the guards to find him and take him away. Next morning, that’s exactly what happened. Tool came in, carted the Monk off. Searched the cell. Interrogated me, which really meant I sat in a room for six hours drinking coffee because Michael made sure I was taken care of. While later they sent me back to my cell. They’d hosed it down. I’ll never forget the stink of that disinfectant, an institutional fake-floral bleach that didn’t quite mask the smell of the Monk’s punctured insides. The two smells collided, created a reek that was unbearably offensive. I started coughing, choking. Kinda like you just then? When I revealed my true self?
“Anyway, the guard laughed, said you’re better off than the other guy, took a whiff, said no maybe not, locked the cell door. So there’s this vile stink driving me nuts. This was when there were still sinks in prison cells. Stainless steel. You could wash your face, brush your teeth. So I have this lavender-bleach-blood-burst-intestine reek driving me mad, and to get rid of it I smear mint toothpaste under my nostrils. Yeah…toothpaste smeared all over my face and a big gooey wad of it caked in my mustache. That’s funny, huh? Then you’ve never smelled what I smelled. Anyway, I pick up the toothpaste tube and give it another squeeze and there’s something inside, about as big as my pinkie, that the Monk hid in there before they spilled him open.
“I take it out, scrub the toothpaste off, hold it up. Fuck is this? Meanwhile I’m still choking on the horrible death-smell. Wash my discovery in the sink, realize it’s made of extremely shiny metal. Looks like a spaceship coupler of some kind, a high-tech fitting. And I’m holding it and…the death smell vanishes. Poof! Normal, breathable air. Whoa! Funny to say I didn’t think too much of it then. Main thing is I had this polished piece of metal and I thought it might be worth something. Maybe sharpened to make a shank I could trade for drugs? I pocketed it, paid the guards to find me another cell, and the first chance I got I traded the metal thingy for not-excellent drugs. Didn’t think a lick of it. But then, month or so later, a few of us were playing cards out in the yard. Not a proper adult card game, but with hockey cards, like kids. Lining cards along the wall and flinging other cards to try and knock the ones we wanted down? I was lousy at it. Whipping cards all over the place. But a card got lined up against the wall that I really wanted. A Mario Lemieux, eighty-six, the one of him sitting on the bench watching the game, which I liked because of his expression, confident and intense, calm and joyful—even a touch mischievous—all at the same time, while he watches a game he’s about to absolutely dominate, how young he is, clean-shaven, handsome, with that enviable look of a young man who is completely in sync, understand? A man who is completely at one with his surroundings, united in mind, body, world in the way maybe only professional sport can give us now. Maybe we were all like that once. Hunter-gatherers? Living seamless in the world. Who knows? I doubt it. I think we lived in terror, and still do. But imagine how it felt for Lemieux on the Penguins bench in eighty-six. How hard he worked for it. His life whittled to a fine point, sacrificing breadth of experience for depth, all action directed toward a single goal, day after day as a child, a teenager, driven, and now he’s finally there, he made it, he’s there. Imagine that sense of fulfillment. Of belonging and purpose. And all this is coloured, of course, by the fact that the man’s body, what made him, was programmed to betray him in his moment of triumph. That Lemieux card—I think it’s the best hockey card of all time, just for the look on the kid’s face, and this from a man who loathes hockey. What can I say? The Lemieux card struck me. That’s all. I was struck by how disparate two human lives can be. I had never, never even once ever, felt anything like the emotion I saw on that young hockey player’s face. Lemieux might as well have been another species, he was so different from me. And of course I thought he was sexy as hell, very nice to look at, so there was that level as well.”
I pat the pig on the head. “You won the card.”
“Fuckin’ A, I did. Fluke shot. Zipped the Lemieux down fair and square. And the owner of the card reneged. Some batshit biker with face tattoos. Said he wouldn’t give me the Lemieux card, but he’d give me this. And he pulled out the metallic object from the Monk.” Reed shakes his head, like he still can’t believe it. “It happened like that off and on for the next twelve years. I’d get rid of the thing and it always came back. Eventually, as my mind went, I came to believe the object had totemic power. When it was in my possession I schemed ways to be rid of it. And when I didn’t have it I lusted after it, searched for it, plotted to get it back.” Reed laughs. “It helped pass the time. Gave me something to do. Ritual, habit, whatever. Maybe kept me fr
om killing myself.”
“What is it?”
“Ask Troutman—I mean, Michael. I found it stitched into the tongue of my hiking boots when I was released. The boots I wore when I walked into the cop shop, confessed to two killings I didn’t do. Michael saw me pull it out of the stitching. He took it, gave it to some hush-hush tech researchers out of Berkeley. They scratched and poked at it, told us it could be worth something. We sold it to Tesla. It’s in their cars. A crucial piece of electro-tech. Tesla has some godawful marketing-babble name for it. I call it the Nugget. The Monk and his shiny object became the beginning of Green Lead. So fucking strange, when I look back. Nothing happens for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. Michael keeps telling me what the Nugget does. I keep forgetting. Can’t make it stick. It infuriates him.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I think it made me believe in magic. Forces beyond our scope and scale of knowledge. Vastness. A universe with intent. A design we never see in total but might be able to tap into now and then. It made me believe everything is invested with spiritual power. Made me feel small and large at the same time, worthless and valuable. Reconciled opposites, sustained contradictions. A shiny piece of metal stuffed in a toothpaste tube kept me alive. For what, I have no idea. There’s a reckoning on the horizon. For our species?”
We sit in silence, watch ducks swim and dive in the green-scum lagoon, days devoted to food security, procreation. Traffic noise filters through the cedars. I’m about to leave when Reed grabs my forearm. The pig hops off Reed’s lap, circles at my feet, roots in the cigarette butts, sunflower-seed shells, gum wrappers.
“You need to find that boy,” Reed says, his voice halting. “Ryan? Find him and get him away. Send him to another planet. Another solar system. He’s going to get sucked in.”
I can’t help myself. I ask who he’s in danger from.
“From you, Mark. From the dark matter you’re becoming.”
Reed releases my arm, tucks the potbellied pig into a sunflower-coloured satchel, asks if we’re done. I say fuck if I know, I was waiting for you, is your boy gonna pop and drop? Reed says follow me and find out. I stay seated on the bench, watch him shuffle away, head bent low, bony shoulders jutting. The creepy mentally slipping feeling lingers; I half expect him to fucking levitate outta here. He’s almost out of earshot when I yell hey what about the video and Reed waves a hand vaguely in my direction, doesn’t turn around, doesn’t say a word and I’m left with an alien voice lodged in my mind, a diesel-burning taste in my mouth and a leg that’s full-on killing me. Reed walks across a rolling lawn toward a parking lot, bumps his head getting into a white limousine. When he’s gone I phone Ryan. Try and leave a message. His inbox is full.
Carl “Blitzo” Reed
A few hours after meeting Mr. Marvellous Mark Ward I charter a floatplane up to Knight Inlet. Clouds mass against the North Shore Mountains, and the city, still wet, gleams like a glacial stone. The Pacific stretches west to Vancouver Island, the forested landmass pale and blue, draped in fog and low cloud, the ends of the earth inscribed on vellum, and to the south Mount Baker’s ominous American bulk rising above rust-brown cornfields in the Fraser Valley. The plane vibrates, its engine drone settling into my teeth. The pilot’s a friendly freckled kid with a knack for minding his business. I resist the urge to tell him to keep flying, not outward but upward, until the plane’s propellers slip through air grown too thin to support our mass. But I say nothing, stare out the window, realize there’s a relationship between skyward fixation and drug addiction, wondering why I’ve stayed sober since they let me out of the slammer, thinking maybe I should be all here for this, whatever it might be. From the air Vancouver appears impossibly fragile. The mountains, rugged crest beginning in the Arctic and ending, with a few hops and skips, in Tierra del Fuego, could shrug and knock her headlong into the ocean. Eventually the city will drown, in water or something less appealing I’m no longer certain.
The pilot brings us down gently, like he’s settling skin-to-skin, on the remote eastern shore of Knight Inlet; guides the plane toward a half-moon beach beside an abandoned BC Hydro powerhouse. I hop off a rocking pontoon, splash into hip-deep water, numb with cold, bare feet on slippery kelp and asshole barnacles, feeling like there’s never enough time. The pilot tosses me a neon-yellow waterproof duffel bag, asks if I’m sure I’m all right, confirms the rendezvous. I stagger ashore. The airplane buzzes off, leaves me with the lapping sound of water against continent, a caress dreamlike and implacable that hovers at the edge of sinister, and with the sound comes the feeling I’ve slipped far away from any recognized bearing.
I strip, feeling strangely exposed, naked in the wilds, unarmed and defenceless. Find a change of clothes in the duffel bag. Caltrop emerges from the woods like a rumour, well within killing distance before I’m aware of him. He’s over sixty but built compact, a body that will remain efficient until his last breath, no slow, nagging decline for this man, hair so grey it’s white, skin furrowed deep around his eyes. The face of an old-time sailor, a farmer stubborning grain from a Manitoban field, the face of a man who spends his waking hours guiltless beneath an open sky. He’s clean-shaven, dressed in jeans, hiking boots, a blue T-shirt, a Gore-Tex jacket tied around his waist. He makes me tight-lipped with envy, something I’ve long hoped to grow out of.
Now, as in most things, I’ve become resigned.
The abandoned power station looms behind him, wires fallen from towers and snarled around the concrete foundation, windows broken out, a chain-link fence crushed beneath windblown hemlock. It’s easy, given my current timbre, to glimpse a skull, memento mori, lurking in the shape of that forgotten building. I make the effort to remind myself the world does not exist solely to reflect the moods of humanity, toe the duffel bag, tell my friend there’s a quarter million lurking inside. The same amount he’s received for decades. Every year I deliver the cash and expect my man-at-arms to mention inflation, declining purchasing power, expect him to shake me down, prove who’s really in charge, show that despite my money I remain the weaker man, but he never does, which leaves me feeling crass and even more unworthy.
Clouds drift up inland fjords. “It’s magnificent out here. I hate it.”
Caltrop inhales, studies me much too directly.
“You were in town. That was somethin’. Kid nearly peed himself. We could’ve met at—”
“Less distraction in the bush,” Caltrop says. “Easier to think.”
“Waaay too easy.”
“You afraid, Carl?”
“And freezing. Nature? Totally over it.”
“Forgot what it’s all about.”
“I’ve sure been trying. You weren’t at the lagoon today just for me.”
“It was never for you.”
“You’ve been watching the Ward kid for how long?”
Caltrop opens the duffel bag, looks at the cash like it’s a worthless pile of laundry, zips the bag closed. “Since the night he flew in. Was keeping an eye on the older brother. Followed him to YVR, then to a house in North Vancouver. The lawyer Michael sent to sniff around Marigold? Didn’t deserve what he got. Neither did his wife and son. Working for you sure costs plenty, hey Carl? I watched the Ward brothers come out of the house in high spirits.”
“And yet you didn’t stop them.”
Caltrop’s lips twist. “Stop them? How? Kill them? You think it’s easy only because you’ve never done it.”
“And now?”
Caltrop stares at me like I’m a big rock he has to move. “Now I’m glad I didn’t shoot first. The Ward brother, the younger one—”
“He’s what we’ve been looking for. Reminds me of you, at your best.”
“If only we could all be remembered at our best.” Caltrop kneels, runs a hand through beach pebbles. There are a few spots on his skin, but otherwise his hand looks young, unaffected by swelling, wrinkles. “Sorry about Heather.”
I sit on the duffel bag, nest my hands
between my legs to warm them. “Me as well. Looks like it’s a done deal. Been a long time coming. So that’s a life. Open and shut. I was lucky. Not everyone falls in love even once. Not everyone is permitted happiness, even once, even for a moment. It happened to me twice. I’m trying to feel grateful. Hannah won’t answer my calls.”
“I’ve removed her from the line of fire.”
Relief and regret and resentment all at once. I slump further into myself, don’t bother asking how Caltrop found my daughter, how he took care of her when I couldn’t. “You have an idea of the kind of man you want to be. The kind of husband and father. Then your kid grows up and you realize how far off the mark you’ve been.”
“Kids are an opportunity to think about someone besides yourself. You never took that opportunity.”
“You were smart not to have any.”
Caltrop hurls a flat stone into the waves. We watch it skip, sink. “It wasn’t a conscious decision. How it worked out.”
“Ladies not keen to shack up with a man who lives in an abandoned powerhouse?”
“Hannah will pull through. She has her mother.”
I sit cross-legged, feel the ocean beckon. “I used to lie in her bed. When I got released? I used to lie in Hannah’s bed when she was at school. She must’ve been seven or eight. It sounds pervy and gross but it wasn’t. I missed her so bad in prison. We were strangers. I used to lie face down in her pillow and craft the word LOVE in my mind, over and over, LOVELOVELOVE, hoping she’d go to sleep at night and feel the message, my love for her, as if I could invest the pillow with some kind of emotional resonance, some frequency or aura she could tune to in her dream world, LOVE, and I would lie there knowing it wasn’t enough, not even close, but maybe she would feel it and forgive me. And this is tough to admit, even to you…lying in my daughter’s bed felt safe, sheltered…it healed me…with her Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase and the blinds closed and the world way far away outside…it made me feel young, guiltless.”