Monday, June 16, 2008

Drinking Buds

I was at a pal's apartment drinking margaritas, and we were have a great time. He was getting pissed with me for throwing limes off the balcony, but other than that it was great.

Margaritas are civilized. They're not like tequila puffs. Do you know tequila puffs? You mix tequila and 7-up in equal parts in a plastic cup. Then you slam the cup down on a picnic table and shotgun it. It's like inhaling sweet foam. We got into them and then walked barefoot into the desert, down a gravel road where rattlesnakes warm themselves at night. Then the indian wouldn't let us ride his horse. But that's another story.

We ran out of tequila, but my pal happened to live across the street from a liquor store. Call me impulsive. Maybe I'm adventurous. Whatever character flaw you want to blame, I scored a bottle of mescal.

Back at his place we cranked up the tunes. We were feeling good, singing, laughing and checking out the moms around the swimming pool. I didn't even care that we ran out of limes - I was drinking mescal straight out of the bottle. Mescal is like Cracker Jacks, they put in a prize. When you finish the bottle you get a worm, which I ate.

Even a bottle of mescal, which probably tastes like turpentine if you ain't hammered (I wouldn't know), doesn't last forever. We were out of booze again, so we went to the bar.

Drinking mescal makes you ask the deep, philosophical questions. Like, did the mescal make me to it, or deep-down am I really that much of an asshole? For whatever reason, for no reason, as we were walking down the street, I swung around and punched my buddy's nose.

"Enough of this bullshit," he said, and stomped away. Who could blame him?

I went to the bar and had a couple of beers. But it was a country and western bar, and I got bored. I hopped on the bus back to his place.

No matter how much I pounded on his door, my buddy wouldn't answer. I walked downstairs, out onto the lawn, stepped over the limes, climbed onto a fence and then reached up and pulled myself onto his balcony. I went inside but didn't see him around. I found a pizza. I ate it. Then I stretched out on the couch and fell asleep.

The next morning, he walked through the living room, and muttered something like, "What the hell are you doing here?"

I took that as my cue to leave.

But then a funny thing happened. A couple of days later, he phoned and asked if I wanted to come over for a few beers. Who the hell would want me coming over? I wouldn't want me coming over.

I went, of course. We didn't drink beer. We drank martinis until his wife kicked us out. We went to "The Princeton" on the waterfront, but they kicked us out for being too drunk. I remember being insulted - it's not a high class place. Then we went to "The Marr," a stripper bar, and then "The Drake," where I ran the pool table. And then we went to "The Coach House" where my buddy got up on stage with the band, playing air guitar. That was okay until he fell off the stage and rolled across the dance floor.

The bouncers rushed out from behind the bar. They grabbed him and ran him like a battering ram, his feet barely touching the carpet, and threw him through the swinging doors. The next day he accused me of deserting him. I was in survival mode.

About that time, I started thinking. Sure, I like to drink. But the only time I went on truly marathon drunks, it was with my buddy. I thought about my bad behavior - the limes, punching him, eating his pizza. And was doing exactly what he wanted me to do: acting worse than him.

He liked to drink, and he had his reasons. But he liked having someone around behaving worse than him. Then he could always say, "I'm not as bad as that guy." I was giving him carte blanche.

To my way of thinking I was killing my liver for his reasons. It would be bad enough if I was doing it for my own reasons. But his reasons? No way. I cut back and probably pulled myself out of a downward spiral. I even tried to get him to stop, which failed.

Since I stopped drinking and started nagging him, we don't see each other that much. He occasionally phones and complains about the drunks who come around.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Be Prepared for the Unexpected

Years ago - I forget the reason why - I went into the wilderness. I drove to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Then I walked thirty kilometers through a bog, out to Cape Scott.

Cape Scott is a lonely place. The bog is forbidding. It can only be passed during summer months. Horseflies, lots of them, circled me the whole way. There were so many I had to stop and let them land, swat as many as I could, and then run.

When I arrived at the beach the wind blew the flies away. I saw breakers far out to sea. You wouldn't want to come to the Cape from the sea either.

Danes settled the Cape a hundred years ago. They were tough. They built a dike so they could farm the tidal flats, but a storm blew the dike away. The Danes didn't give up, they built another one. It's still there.
The Cape's a place for tough things. The wind twists the trees. Cougars haunt the forest. But even the Danes failed. The isolation was too much for them. They abandoned their homesteads, leaving their dike, broken-down cabins, and a pink granite headstone for a boy, William.

I thought I would live on food from the sea. I brought no food with me, except for a half loaf of bread. I brought cigarettes. I brought a mask and snorkel so I could dive for shellfish. I didn't know the cold of the north Pacific. I stuck my toe into that water and my toe burned. I was a bigger dreamer than the Danes. And I was alone.

I gave up my diving ambitions and went sight seeing. I hiked along the beach, thinking that it would take me to the Cape. But the beach ended and I began to scramble over the black rock. Pink snails filled the tide pools and other beautiful things lived there.

The rock became steeper and soon I was scrambling over cliffs. I thought the cliffs would level out but they got steeper. I looked back and seeing the steepness of what I had crossed I became afraid. I kept going. I couldn't see any way off the rock. Ahead it looked too steep. I couldn't turn back. The freezing sea water crashed against the rocks below. Thick salal and brush formed a barrier along the cliff top.

I hung on, thinking about my family. How sad my mother would be if I disappeared into the wilderness. I began to pray. I asked God to save me. I promised Him all kinds of things... I don't remember all the things.

But when I looked up I noticed a hole in the brush on the cliff top. I was sure it wasn't there before. I saw I could squeeze into the hole. The rock was black and hard and smooth, but I found a way up to the hole. And then I grabbed onto the brush and pulled myself in.

I found myself in a tunnel under the salal. It was an animal trail, I thought. I didn't care. The tunnel twisted and wound up the slope from the cliff. I crawled up through dirt and leaves. But I felt safe. I couldn't fall.

And then the ground leveled out a little more. I came out of the tunnel and into the salal. I walked through it, up the slope, and I found a trail. This is where I should have been all along, I thought. This path was here for me, to take me out to the Cape.

So you see. I prayed, and I was saved. Even though I didn't go to church - and I still don't. And I've never prayed a lot, unless I really need something. And still - I think - God helped me out of that bad spot I was in. And I'm not making any of this up. It's exactly how I remember it.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

What's So Fresh About Green?

We live on the edge of a rain forest in the North Vancouver. Friends visiting from the city have commented on how fresh the air smells here. I know what they're talking about. I have noticed a crispness in the air at our place that is lacking on city streets, and even city backyards. I'm wondering if this perception is based on the air's make up.

It could be that all the green around just makes you think the air smells better. We have a lavender bush in the yard so perhaps we're experiencing a pleasant smell. Trees consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Could the trees be pumping out enough oxygen to makes the air around our house oxygen rich, creating a natural hyperbolic chamber? Are we receiving a health benefit from that? The thought is tantalizing.

I'd like to talk about the "freshness." Advertisers call everything from laundry to fruit juice "fresh", so the word has become almost meaningless.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

The Hill

When I was in high school the really cool thing was I owned a big, old Chrysler with a 383. I had bought it with money I had earned helping out in my dad's machine shop. One summer, a friend of mine and I decided we'd go on a road trip. His parents had a cabin up in Willams Lake, 550 Km (340 mi) from our home in Vancouver.

When we got to his parent's cabin, he asked me if I wanted to drive out to Bella Coola. Bella Coola's on the coast about 450 km (280 mi) west of Williams Lake. I said sure. Before starting out, we stopped by the liquor store and talked someone into buying us a jug of wine and a couple of cases of beer.

We had a blast driving across the Chilcotin, drinking and looking at amazing scenery. The rolling grasslands and distant mountain ranges made us think we were traveling in Africa. We played with the electric windows and laughed and sang. We saw almost no one except an old guy with Fedora in a black Cadillac. He looked like "The Godfather" of the wilderness. We laughed a lot about that.

But we hadn’t counted on "The Hill." Where the Chilcotin plateau ends and the Coast Mountains begin, the road goes from three lanes of gravel down to one. It snakes through mountain passes and plunges from its height at 5000 feet down to sea level. Some cat–skinners built it on their own because the government said it couldn't be done. They put up signs telling drivers not to get out of their cars.

The other thing we didn't count on was the effect of two hundred miles of steady drinking. At the beginning it was all laughing and singing, but when we hit "The Hill" we were getting... emotional. I was driving and crying and slugging my buddy over stuff going on in high school, and he was slugging me.

After a mile or so, we realized how horribly we would die if I drove us off the road. We forgot about high school. The only thing we talked about was getting down "The Hill." I eased off the gas, and took the switch–back turns like I was threading the Chrysler through a needle. By the time we reached the bottom of "The Hill" we were acting sober, even if we weren't.

We pulled into Bella Coola and stopped at the cafe for pie and coffee. When we came out, I noticed all the Chrysler's tires were flat. I didn't care much, I was just glad to be alive.

I didn't drink behind the wheel after that.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Green Mystery

You tell me of all the trouble in the world
But when I look out my window
all I see
is a
green mystery




Light in the Shining Heavens

Submitted to 5 publishers yesterday:
  • Anvil
  • Ekstasis
  • Harbour
  • New Start
  • Thistledown

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Lightning's Mystery Revealed

I was driving to Selene with my buddy Shortcut. It was a long drive through the middle of nowhere, and he had been injured at work and didn't look too enthusiastic about anything. Then he sat up.

“Want to hear a story?" he asked. "A story my uncle told me when I was a little shaver.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll tell you if you’re interested.”

“Yeah, why not?”

He eased back in his seat. “They say my uncle was a lonely kid who grew up set in his lonely ways. Not only that but he smelled bad. It wasn’t only that he didn’t like taking baths, but he had his own odour. He smelled like moose shit, if you ask me.

“But he liked to hunt. He’d go out with the other hunters then he’d set off alone, talking to himself, because he used to talk to himself when alone into the woods. Every time he went he’d get something. He’d find the guys again, and take them back to whatever he’d killed, and they’d cut it up and pack it out of the woods, and we’d have meat.

“One day he never came back. They looked for him, but nobody found him, nobody knew where he could be. We missed him because all us kids liked Uncle Jake; we used to follow him around and stuff. We got hungrier too, ’cause we never had that meat he was getting. But we got by. Then a couple of months later, just about when it was starting to snow, he showed up in the village with a hell of a story to tell.

“He told everyone he met a woman who lived in a hut up in the mountains with all kinds of children and no man. She invited him into her hut and he was surprised to find that she had beer, cases of it, and she offered him some and he began to drink with her. When he got to this part of the story, everyone laughed about my uncle finding a woman in the woods who was not only friendly but had beer!

“By and by, my uncle got drunk and the woman looked more and more beautiful, and he wanted to play jiggy jig with her. But when he got into her bed, he got tired from all that beer and fell asleep.

“And as he slept he had a dream that all the animals came out of their hiding places in the forest to be with her, and she knew them all by name, even the fiercest ones. He said he saw a grizzly bear walk up to her like a big dumb dog, lick her face, and let her scratch him behind the ears.

“When he woke up in the morning he said goodbye to the woman, came back down the mountainside, and started out on his way home. He was surprised when after walking all day he found himself back at the woman’s hut. This dumbfounded my uncle who figured he knew his way around in the woods better than anyone. But she offered him more beer, so he spent another night with her, and just like the night before he fell asleep in her bed.

“Except this time he got woken up at dawn by one of her kids crying. My uncle got the story from the kid that an animal had killed one of her brothers the night before. My uncle went to find the woman.

“He found her in a meadow on the mountainside. Her hair was all white and stuck out of her head like a storm cloud. Her eyes burned like fire. Her hands looked like claws as she reached to the sky. Dark clouds swirled above her and though dawn had broke the sky was black as night. She let out a howl and lightning flashed from the clouds, splitting into forks, each fork smashing into a tree, which exploded in fire. She howled again and more lightning flashed, setting more trees on fire, so that soon the whole forest was burnin’. My uncle ran, and he didn’t stop running until he reached a lake, and when he got to that lake he dived into the water.

“He stayed in the water a whole day. When he came out again, numb from cold, all that was left of the forest was black stumps, charred and smoldering, and not even the sound of a bird.

“Uncle Jake said he cried then. It was terrible.

“He had no rifle, not even a knife, so he had nothing to hunt with, and nothing to hunt anyway, so things didn’t look good for him. He managed to find a stream running out of the lake and threw rocks at little trout in that stream for something to eat, and then followed the stream to a river, and then followed the river to the coast. He followed the coast back up to our village.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s my uncle’s story.”

“So he’s still hunting?”

“I don’t know. He disappeared a couple of years after that. Nobody knows what happened to him.”

“Maybe he went back to her. She could of put a spell on him.”

“You think maybe it’s true?” he asked.

By now were were driving through a clear-cut. The road cut across a side hill stripped by rain to clay and gravel, clumps of brush growing here and there among branches tangled like torn cable, tombstone stumps standing above it all.

“Sometimes in these mountains make you feel there’s stuff going on we can’t explain,” I said.

“You think maybe that witch’s got something in for my family?”

I smiled. “It’s a good story, anyway.”

“He just probably wanted to scare us kids.”

“I wonder where all her kids came from.”

“I don’t know. I was wondering where all the beer came from,” he said.

We laughed.

The Godfather of the Wilderness

When I was nineteen I lived in a dive behind the Pay & Save gas station in North Van. But the cool thing about my life at that time was I owned a big Chrysler with a 383.

A friend of mine showed up and said he had broken up with his girlfriend and needed to go up to Williams Lake to pick up his stuff. The Chrysler was the car for the trip. When we got to Willams Lake, he cleaned out his place and then said let's drive out to Bella Coola. Bella Coola's a couple hundred miles from Williams Lake, on a dirt road over the Chilcotin Plateau and through a mountain range in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. Before starting out, we stopped by the liquor store to pick up a jug of wine and two-four of beer.

We had a blast driving across the Chilcotin, drinking and looking at the scenery which looked like Africa to us. We played with the electric windows and laughed and sang. We saw almost no one except an old guy with Fedora in a black Cadillac. He looked like "The Godfather" of the wilderness. We laughed a lot about that.

Once you leave the Chilcoltin and start heading through the Tweedsmuir, the road goes from being flat and wide down to something just wide enough for one vehicle. It takes you down about three thousand feet to the coast. Some catskinners built it on their own because the goverment said it couldn't be done. They call it "The Hill." And I was getting drunk. We had gone through some stuff in high school and we were getting emotional about that. I was driving and crying and slugging him, and he was slugging me.

After a mile or so, we figured out what would happen if I drove us off the road. By the time we reached the bottom of "The Hill" we were sober.

In Bella Coola, we dragged ourselves into the cafe for pie and coffee and when we came out I noticed all the Chrysler's tires were flat. I guess I hadn't noticed how rough the road was.

That should have been the end of my drinking behind the wheel. But I was nineteen. And it wasn't.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Mates forever, forever drinking

I was at a pal's house drinking Margaritas, and we were have a great time, even though he was getting pissed with me for throwing limes off the balcony.

"The limes are green, the lawn's green, what's the problem?" I asked.

We ran out of tequila, but luckily he happened to live across the street from a liquor store. You could call me impulsive, but I like to think of myself as adventurous, always ready to try something new. So, I scored a bottle of mescal.

Back at his place we had the tunes cranked, and we were feeling good, singing and having a good time. I didn't even care that we ran out of limes - I was drinking the stuff right out of the bottle. And being the up-for-a-challenge guy that I am, I ate the worm. (They put a prize in the bottom of each bottle of mescal.)

Even a bottle of mescal, which probably tastes like turpentine if you're not hammered, won't last forever. With all the booze gone, we decided to go to the bar.

Drinking mescal makes you ask the deep, philosophical questions. Like, did the mescal make me to it, or deep-down am I an asshole? Anyway, for whatever reason, for no apparent reason really, as we were walking down the street, I swung around and punched him in the nose.

"Enough of this bullshit," he said, and stomped away.

I went to the bar and had a couple of beers. But it was a country and western bar, and really, incredibly boring, so I hopped on a bus and rode back up to his place.

I pounded on the door, but he wouldn't answer. I walked down the stairs, out onto the lawn and climbed up onto a fence and then reached up and pulled myself onto his balcony. I went inside but he wasn't around, all I found was a pizza on the coffee table. It had one piece missing. Right then, I realized how hungry I was, so I sat down and ate the rest of the pizza. Then I stretched out on the couch and fell asleep.

The next morning, he walked through the living room, and muttered something like, "What the hell are you doing here?"

I kind of took that as my cue that maybe I should take off.

But just to show you what great mates you make while drinking, despite all that crap I did, punching him in the nose, eating his pizza, and even throwing limes all over his lawn, we're still pals. Yeah, he even phoned me the next day to see if I wanted to go for a few beers.

I think we'll be mates forever, as long as we're still pounding them back. And with friends like him, why would a guy ever quit?

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A witch remembers

The cabin seemed awfully empty with him gone. But he’d be back. She wondered if he realized how much she liked him. They think they’re so smart, she thought, but they never get it, even if you paint a picture for them. He looked a bit old with his grey speckled hair, but a man could get away with looking older; as soon as a woman showed a touch of grey she got left on the curb with the old newspapers. She remembered her grey-haired father, a lieutenant in the army, talking with Captain Forest at the table by the window, the sunset shining in their tumblers of whiskey. Captain Forest loved to talk when fuelled by a few whiskies. The drunken old devil would often tell stories of old battles while dad’s dinner went cold, and then dad would send her out of the room when they wanted to share a dirty joke. She liked those army days with their pretend battles and regiments passing in review. She loved the red and black of the Royal Canadians’ kilts and tartans. The military had romance in those days. She would like to have a man, now, to kiss her so long and hard it would burn down into her soul and paralyze all her feelings, and what would be the harm in that? A woman needs to be hugged twenty times a day to look young.

She sat down on her cot.

All romance had gone out of the military. The picture of the naked Vietnamese girl came to mind. Then she thought about her son, who died of pneumonia when he was just three. She wondered how old he would be if he had lived. For many years she cried through every birthday, April 11. She shouldn’t have buried him in his good, wool suit, she thought, she should have given it to another boy – so many needy little ones. And did the boy’s father come to the funeral? He didn’t even know. It served her right for having it off with a trampoline salesman. She remembered the summer when he, the first non–military man she ever talked to, came to the base to set up his trampolines. He let her jump on a trampoline in the sun and then gave her lemon gin in a paper cup. They made love in the grass. Oh, he caused her so much trouble and boy did it hurt when she found out he hadn’t told her his real name.

After her boy’s death she rode the train out to the coast, where she stayed in a rooming house until she blew up the kitchen while brewing potions from grandmother’s old recipe book. The night of the accident she slipped out quietly before the house burned down, and then acquired a house in a Vancouver suburb. She grew cold as she remembered that house. Heavy cedars sheltered it and filled the eaves with leaves. She always left the radio on in the kitchen so she would not feel alone. It was the summer of love but it rained. She collected hundreds of little blue bottles, row on row like soldiers.

All the fellas she knew then were mad, going mad, or maddening. None of them noticed her power growing. They willingly took the potions she gave them, because she told them they would get high. But she really wanted to make one of them as powerful as her, and hoped that he would stay with her, and love her. She wanted a husband, but all she did was prove that men are animals. They wolfed down her potions and their animal natures grew stronger until they turned into beasts and didn’t want to turn back into men. Each one of them ran away to the forests as a dog or wolf, bear or crow, cat or coyote.

She looked around the cabin and her gaze fell on her red backpack leaning against the wall, where she had set it down many years before.

“No where left to go,” she said.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Work Sucks

On Saturday morning, puddles lay on the steel and it shone with rain that fell during the night. Clouds packed the sky. After emerging from the shack, the crew trudged up the stairs to work, occasionally stopping to peer at the jostling, grey tiles overhead.

“Get your asses in gear!” Lou shouted at them. He turned to Joe and Garth, waiting for the headache ball. “You guys. Trucks came in last night.” He jabbed his thumb behind him, toward two flatbed trucks loaded with steel and parked on the gravel behind the shack.

Perfect, thought Joe, the easiest job on the claim and a double–time day too.

“Charlie and Andy will land the iron for you,” Lou said.

The morning’s work slipped into a relaxed pace, except Joe felt a little uneasy when he looked up at the prowling clouds and the crane’s boom, sticking up like a lightning rod.

The morning went by predictably enough and a little before coffee time, as Andy helped Charlie unhook a beam they had just landed, Joe and Garth stood with the last piece of iron to offload from the truck. Joe was gazing up at the tower, thinking about what he needed to do back up there. Flathead and the punk were working near the top of the tower, the punk feeding Flathead air hose as he walked with the impact wrench along a particularly skinny beam. A hose connector caught on cross piece. The punk tried to twist the line and whip it free as Flathead tugged. Then Flathead slung the wrench off his shoulder and let it fall to the beam with a bang. He turned to the punk. Joe couldn’t make out the words but Flathead’s body language said it all, his free arm waving wildly, his beard jutting out. Joe and Garth turned to each other and grinned.

Then as Joe looked back up at Flathead and the punk fighting over the air hose, lightning flashed and a jagged edge of current struck a column behind Flathead, showering him with sparks and causing toxic orange flame and black smoke to erupt into the air. Flathead let go of the air hose and fell to his belly on the beam. The wrench fell, jerked back up when it reached the end of the hose, and dangled. The punk managed to hang on, his gangly arms and legs wrapped around the steel. The column smouldered.

“You see that?” Joe exclaimed.

“Where’d that come from?” Garth asked.

Hollers rang out through the tower. He Man, perched halfway up, gestured frantically to the ground. Joe and Garth looked to the tower’s concrete footing where what looked like a pile of clothes lay near a column. Joe recognized the greasy welder’s jacket. Shortcut.

“Hey!” he shouted, and leapt off the truck, his heavy rigging belt nearly dragging him down.

Lou ran to Shortcut. When he reached him he fell to his knees, grabbed Shortcut’s shoulders, pulled him from the concrete to his lap. Joe saw it happen slowly as he ran, thumbing the clasp on his rigging belt and letting it fall to the gravel. He jumped onto the concrete foundation, and ran toward them.

Shortcut, lay stiff across Lou’s lap, screaming.

“Hey Shortcut,” Lou coaxed. “You’re okay, partner.”

Shortcut’s eyes rolled up and he seemed to recognize Lou, then he began to twitch, and soon his whole body was jerked around, his head wobbling on his shoulders. The men gathered around.

“Christ, he’s doing the funky chicken!”

“He ain’t going to make it!”

“Call first aid!”

“Hang on! Hang on!”

“Christ, take it easy on the guy!” Joe shouted. He smelled smoke and looked down at the smoldering welding glove on Shortcut’s hand, the glove’s fingers blown away, the skin inside crimson. Joe knelt and ripped open the remains of the glove and tossed it aside.

Shortcut’s twitching and thrashing subsided.

“Arrgh. Fuckin’ ‘ell,” he groaned, and reached over with his right hand and grabbed his forearm. “Ahhh!” He gripped his bicep and his face split in awful frown.

“What if it hits again?”

“Get him outta here!”

Charlie and He Man grabbed a leg, Garth and Joe grabbed an arm, and Lou scrambled to his feet pulling up Shortcut’s shoulders. They lifted his sagging bulk a foot or so from the concrete and ran and stumbled with him, groaning in pain, toward the edge of the building.

“Christ, he ain’t missed many hot lunches.”

“What does the fucker eat?”

They carried him to the edge of the building, slid him off the footing, and carried him across the road and lay him on the gravel in front of the shack. They crouched around the groaning, writhing man looking up from him and trying to read the sky, their faces puzzled. A wind whipped across the jobsite and the darkening clouds churned. Fat raindrops began to fall, scattering pock marks in the dust.

Flathead came running up with the punk trailing behind. “Where did that come from?”

“Fucked if I know, I never seen lightning without rain,” Lou said.

“It’s coming now.”

“I can’t feel my arm!”

They all turned to Shortcut.

“You’re going to first aid, partner,” Charlie said.

“I’ll call them,” Lou said, and scrambled up the steps into the shack.

“What happened?”

“Lightning, Shortcut,” Charlie said.

“Oh, fuck. My arm!”

“Don’t worry, you still got the thing,” Charlie said.

“Did he fall?”

“No, he was on the ground.”

“Lucky.”

Shortcut lurched up and looked down at his arm, then rubbed it furiously.

“Take it easy,” Joe said.

Shortcut looked at him. “You ain’t got hit by lightening.”

“Charlie’s bullshitting. You just turned up the heat on your welding machine.” Joe nodded.

Shortcut frowned in confusion.

“Told you he was a good welder,” Olaf said, softly.

“Good welder always welds hot,” Boris said.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Drinking Stories (1)

For some reason, I like reminiscing about dumb things I did before I knew better.

I used to live behind the Pay & Save gas station in a one bedroom apartment, a dive, but the cool thing was I owned a Chrysler 300 with a 383 and electric everything (mostly working). I paid $500 for it.

A friend of mine showed up one day. He said he had broken up with his girlfriend and needed to go up to Williams Lake to pick up his stuff. The Chrysler was the car for the trip. When we got to Willams Lake, he cleaned out his place and then said let's drive out to Bella Coola. Bella Coola's a couple hundred miles from Williams Lake, on a dirt road over the Chilcotin Plateau and through a mountain range in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. Before starting out, we stopped by the liquor store to pick up a jug of wine and two-four of beer.

We had a blast driving across the Chilcotin, drinking and looking at turquoise rivers and grasslands out of an African safari. We played with the electric windows and bombed down the road with no cares. One time we saw an old guy with Fedora in a black Cadillac. He looked like "The Godfather" of the wilderness. We laughed a lot about that.


But by the time we got to the Tweedsmuir we were hammered. I was driving and crying and slugging him about shit that went on in high school, and he was slugging me. It was not a good time to be doing that because the road through the Tweedsmuir's a narrow, dirt track that takes you down couple or three thousand feet. Some catskinners build it on their own because the goverment said it couldn't be done. They call it "The Hill."


We sobered up by the time we reached the bottom. In Bella Coola, we dragged ourselves into the cafe for pie and coffee and when we came out I noticed all the Chrysler's tires were flat. I guess I was so drunk I didn't notice how rough the road was.

What did I learn? Nothing.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

More Rejection

Another stinkin', #%&**$#@^$! rejection. Oh yeah, pile on the misery, world. What does it take to be a success, like him?

More Rejection

Another stinking rejection. C**ks**ker. What does it take to be a success, like him.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Driving in America

I lost my coat in America
walked around in the state campsite
in what’s left of their
vast wilderness

...The Golden Age

In America, men have jaws of stone
they pulled their few possesions and small children
in handcarts
to the New World
wives walking behind
praying
They sell comic books for religion down there,
have motel beds that massage you for a quarter,
T.V. shows about Hitler’s teeth,
and gossip
in the frozen food section

In a liquor store a black man called a white man
a brother
white man protested showing me the colour of
their skins
I said I thought it was a form of expression
they laughed
someone mentioned a fight
I ducked

Damn coat
always blame someone else for the things I lost
Ma said things will work out in the end
that's when
I was too young for her to know me
That coat’s gone for sure

So many miles in the desert
makes a family want to explode
look at that horizon
you can’t see anything else
makes you forget where you left your coat
looks like rain
hope it won't last long
It's getting dark
I better go find her
I saw a guy today
lives in a bathroom off the Interstate

Hey, we’re tourists
picture taking, stone arches
stepping around the U-Haul
river rafting the Colorado
Santa Fe Chicken
coffee in the pub
driving down from the mountain’s deer and poplar trees
to the red sugar bowl, by the Colorado
feet in the muddy river
off roading
slickrock, lizards, and bats
kids working tables
up to my neck in Navaho jewelry
This lady tells us her grandad’s a medicine man in a teepee
up on a mountain
eating peyote
Sure, we just need a place to sleep

The Grand Canyoon
Ick komme mit Deutschlander
The sight every American should see
Il ne parle Francais, mais il essaye
Cin-cin
tip the water jug back
Morning, dusk, walls like rust
and winnd

It’s a journey, I tell her

East Arizona’s the bottom of a tide pool
barrel cactus and yucca trees
Lake Mead - blue playing field
Have fun!
(they’re driving off to gamble)
Fat man cleans a fish
That’s a good fish!
Baseball hat on the porch says,
Sold three thousand bags of ice!

Wind carries the heat under the curry smelling tree
smell from the what’s-that-flower? rides the heat
Viking woman cradles her baby
rides a fast boat
her husband tows to the lake
We talked to a philospher
Knew he was, he smiled so…
unexpectedly
lives in a camper with his dog

Viva fucking Las Vegas!
Wayne Newton’s down with flu
Three-forty-nine breakfast in the Paradise Buffet
We sneak past the slot machines
to the res-taur-rant
birds sing caa-caa, ooee-ooee
Don Ho: moookie looukie loww
Guitar: twayiianng
An angel: no doggie bags in Paradise

On edge
I watch butterflies
cartwheel over the hood of my new truck
going down into Death Valley

Wind alway blows
In California it blows sand
from the lake drained for L.A.
driving it thirty forty miles an hour down the highway
into my new truck

I snap
get out behind a shack
read a threat in the window
rub the pits in the windshield
listen to country radio
sandblast my legs on the highway
see a hole and go
wind knocks the truck around
like those butterflies

We stop at a drive-in
I consume
coffee, Marlboros, french fries
see her back as she runs away across the parking lot
to call her mother
I go
quietly fetch her

Drive north into June snow
so
Motel 6 ecstasy

Can’t wash a truck in Mammoth
(like to keep ma truck clean)

Over the Sierra
love them snowy streams and rocks and trees
down to drive the Yosemite
500
take pictures of Park Rangers and waterfalls

In the west, grassland lies rumpled like golden fur
Lake Shasta, skirted in red dirt
needs a top-up

I-5 North to home
timberline
home
home green
Jungle!

Vibes

She thought about flagging down a car if one came along. No, Vibes would be her best bet, not much of a bet but the best one she had. She heard the sound of gravel crunching under tires and the Chrysler came into view rolling heavily over the wooden bridge and then tipping as it turned onto the blacktop. She ran over, pulled open the rear door, and dove in.



“Go, go!” she yelled.

Vibes stepped on the gas. After they accelerated up to speed, Marilyn sat up. They sped down the blacktop and she looked out at the lines of blueberry bushes flashing past, avoiding Vibes’s glances in the rear view mirror. The road came to a “T” at a dyke and the Chrysler’s tires chirped around the corner.

“Where are you going?” he asked, grinning.

Her eyes met his in the mirror, for a moment. “To my mother’s, on the north shore.”

He nodded. They reached the freeway and car’s rear end sank as they accelerated up the onramp. Vibes guided the car into the passing lane and settled back into his seat with a finger crooked around the wheel. She stabbed the window button with her finger, lowering the rear window halfway. She stared out, thinking her own thoughts, as the air blew around strands of her hair.

He looked at her in the mirror. “Why don’t you sit up front?”

“I’m okay.”

He looked ahead. “The speakers are shot. The radio’s only AM anyway.”

“I’m not in the mood for music right now.”

The car hurled down the freeway, coming up behind a sedan with kids jumping around in the back. She looked at the surprised faces of the family as they passed and she frowned, staring at the back of his head. After they passed another car, she asked, “Aren’t you, like, carrying a load of weed in the trunk?”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Don’t take me for an idiot. That’s a mistake, ‘Vibes’.”

He looked in the mirror.

“And keep your eyes on the road!”

“That would be easier if you sat up here. I’m getting a sore neck.” He smiled.

She said nothing for a minute. “I think you should slow down. If the bulls pull you over we’ll both get popped.”

He did a double take, and stared at her in the mirror. She glared back at him. He returned his eyes to the road and slowed down, close to the speed limit.

After another minute or so, he said, “You want to sit up here, now?”

“I don’t like dealers,” she said.

He lifted a hand in the air. “What’re you talking about?”

“You’re a dealer.”

“I’m not.”

“How much grass are you carrying?”

“A couple of hundred kilos I guess.”

“A couple of hundred and you’re not a dealer? Yeah, right.”

That shut him up. The big car ran smooth over the highway, the seat was big and comfortable, and she liked breathing in the cool air coming through the window. She liked sitting quietly, without the need to pretend or be somebody for someone.

“This is just a one time thing,” he said.

“I’ve heard that before.”

He bided his time for bit, and then said, “I got plans to get out of town. Come on, sit up here, and let me tell you about Whistler.”

“I’ve heard it all before, Vibes.”

“Here, read this.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

She opened the paper. She read…

Whistler

The shack has coffee, burning cedar

Spring draws me outside

light, melting snow, water crazy glistening,

puppy pawing a piece of ice

Hear spring breaking on the lake - the ice cracking

sounds as potent as a falling star

gentle as a dream

Windblown clouds, minnows swimming under ice

I love wet ice, touch it's cool water, and drink

I lie, I dream by the lake, I hear snow

fall from the tree branches

I hear the boot crunch

You touch my neck I smell your soap

She frowned. “Where did you get this?”

“I wrote it.”

She looked at the poem. “No way, Vibes.”

“Yeah, I wrote it. See…” He jabbed a finger in the air. “That’s what this is all about.”


Vibes

Saturday, April 12, 2008

The Cellphone's Dead

They ran across the street, he paid for their tickets, and they boarded the train. It sped under the downtown core then shot from a tunnel and ran along fifty feet or so above East Vancouver. Drizzle fell from the grey plastered across the sky, making the concrete and blacktop shine, and they looked down on it as the rails sang underneath the cars.

The train stopped and its doors hissed open. A South Asian woman brought on her little girl, but the girl got away from her mom and tried to escape the car. Joe lifted his foot and she climbed up and clung to him as if he were an uncle, until mom scooped her up. The woman sat down with her child, and then pulled a tiny, silver phone from her pocket, flipped it open, and gazed at its pale, blue screen. Joe stared at the woman using her phone, and Alma nudged his ribs.

“Amazing things,” Joe said. “They used to be the size of a freakin’ brick.”

Alma frowned at him. “You’ve seen a cell phone before.”

“Not before I got back.”

“Come on. You’re kidding, right?”

He tipped his head to the side. “Well…”

“You don’t need to tell me tales, Joe. Right?”

He turned to her. “Sure, I know, Alma.”

“So?”

He took a breath. “I know.”

“Did you tell your dad your story? What did he say?”

“He’s had a hard time, not knowing what happened to me, and mom… dying. He looks a lot older now than he used to, and I think old injuries have caught up with him. He used to be strong, man.”

She sat back in her seat. The train sped eastward. On the slope above the track mills and warehouses stood, fantails of steam rising from their stacks.

“I worked on that building,” Joe said, pointing.

To the south lay a wide plain of warehouses and river tributaries and in the distance, rising in the mist and rain, a pair of giant tuning forks stood by the Fraser River, supporting a span of concrete over the water.

“That bridge, too,” he said, grinning. “It was my first job, straight out of punk school. The foreman was an Indian. He had a label on the back his hardhat saying ‘Custer had it coming’. Fuck. I was scared that first day, walking a greasy beam littered with hose and tools, kegs of bolts, pavement a couple hundred feet down. Stumble on that fucker and you’re dead. But I did good. They put me on the raising gang.”

“The raising gang?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Yeah, the kings of the job.”

“The kings.” She grinned.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “That was a cool job.”

“You did well,” she said.

He stared forlornly at the bridge in the distance she took his hand in hers. “It can’t be as bad as all that,” she said.

They took the train to the end of the line and were the only ones in the car when they got out. They walked down the concrete steps to the pavement; she looked without enthusiasm at drizzle falling on the parking lot. A new glass tower stood there, glistening in the rain. He touched her shoulder and pointed right, to the older houses on the hill gently rising from the station.

“That’s where my Dad lives,” he said.

And now the Cellphone's Dead

Bitches Brew

His mouth felt as dry as a pizza box. A tin of orange juice would go down well, but he’d take coffee and she was spooning the stuff into a percolator. He turned over his hands and looked at the cuts on his knuckles, badges of a good ol’ Saturday night rumble. He watched her bend over and poke sticks into the wood stove. He chuckled, thinking, she carries a wide load but’ll keep a guy warm on winter nights. Oh man, I hope I’m long gone before winter comes. He wondered how she found him after the bar, climbing all over in him in the truck while the sun pried his eyes open with a crowbar. He woke with a tent pole in his jeans, but was sure nothing happened. I would have remembered, he thought, I wasn’t that drunk. She’d been talking like something happened, but the girl seemed strange in the head, which was probably why she lived alone way out in the boondocks. She filled the percolator with water from the tap on the washstand and then flicked water on the stove and watched it bubble and roll away. She slid the percolator onto the hot spot.

He leaned forward, loosened his work boot laces, and then pushed his hand into his jeans and pulled out a sheaf of scratch and wins. He thumbed through the tickets. “Try again.” “Try again.” “Not a winner.” He tossed the pile on the table. He looked up to see her sitting across from him.

She raised an eyebrow. “No luck?”

He laughed.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said.

“Say what?”

e He He h

Then she said, “Every other guy on your crew wants to date me.”

He chuckled. “Date?”

She walked to the cupboard above the wash stand, her curves moving together like clockwork. It would be so easy, he thought. She took out two mugs, brought them over to the table and set them down, then reached over and touched his face. Her brown skin felt smooth and smelled like… coconut. She took her hand away. Her hands were beautiful, not slender but well shaped, her fingernails perfect. He wondered how she got them to look like that.


Bitches Brew

Mazzy Star

Yeah, you better get your harmonica.

Flowers in December

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Correct email Etiquette

Thank you for your email. Your opinion is very important.

Your opinions are also entertaining. My colleagues and I find your emails so entertaining we send them around the department so everyone can have a good laugh. Now they're on the internet, and from what I hear your emails keep thousands laughing. You must be very proud to know you're giving so many people a good laugh, even if you didn't mean to.

Have a nice day.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Rejection

Two more goddam, stinkin' rejections. AND it took them six freakin' months to read the damn things.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Two champagne glasses

Each of Marilyn’s breasts fit perfectly inside a very expensive champagne glass. Her nipples filled the bulge above the stem and the rest of her white skin nestled against the glass with none spilling over. Their perfection was generally accepted in the southwest corner, but her fame often landed her in uncomfortable situations, such as her present one. She sat in front of strangers at the request of a lover she had outgrown, with her blouse in her lap and her tits in the breeze. She glanced at Andrew and then out the front window. In Richmond there must be a few hundred blueberry farms, and the house sat on a farm in the middle of this plain of blueberries and yawning ditches, hidden from a lonesome stretch of blacktop by a tall hedge. It was, she knew, a long walk to an empty crossroads.

Marilyn looked ruefully down at her breasts and then around the room. There were two couples, the men in sports jackets. Marilyn guessed they were teachers or insurance salesmen in their day jobs, and their girlfriends looked square too, in their polyester bell bottoms. Marilyn hated the way they eagerly leaned forward, waiting for the lines of coke Andrew had drawn on the mirror in his lap. Even Andrew’s orange cat had more dignity. She looked away as the squares tittered and waddled like puppies up to the coke. Why do they do that to themselves, she wondered. Are they walking through their lives asleep and need waking up?

She lifted her head. A car was pulling in. She listened as it went around to the back of the house, and then looked at Andrew and the squares, all their attention focused on the coke. She pulled her blouse over her head, smoothed it down, and then slipped out to the kitchen. She opened the door a crack.

The car was wine coloured and weathered, as long as a boat with a wide hood, an ugly beast compared to Andrew's Citroën. As she watched the guy step out, her heart jumped. He had long hair, and wore one of the suede bomber jackets that a lot of the guys wore back on the north shore. And he looked young, not one of the disappointed druggies that Andrew hung out with. She slipped out of the house and past the apple trees on the lawn. He was peering inside a Citroën as she came up to him.

“It’s French,” she said.

He spun around. His face was thin, handsome. She saw the wheels turning behind his brown eyes, and then something strange happened. His face changed before her eyes, as if parts of it loosened from the others and rearranged themselves. She blinked and it was over, and his face looked the same as before.

“I didn’t know the French made cars,” he said.

She studied his face. “No?”

He grinned, good–naturedly. “It makes my Chrysler look like a tank.”

“At least you have a car,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t look sure of himself. “You’re from North Van,” she said.

“How’d you know?” he asked.

She tugged his jacket sleeve. “I’ve seen you guys wearing these.”

He looked down at her hand and then at her. The air flowed out of him like leaving a balloon. He sucked in a breath. “You’re from the north shore?”

“The Cove.”

“I’ve never seen you or I’d have remembered, for sure,” he said.

She grinned, knowingly. “Oh yeah.”

“No, I mean… yeah,” he said.

She glanced at the house. “You come to see Andrew?”

“Uh huh.”

She touched his arm. “You go around the front. I’ll see you inside.”