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.

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

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

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.”