Right Away Monday, page 18
—Want me to get rid of it then girl?
—By all means.
I grabbed the painting and walked through to me bedroom, opened up the window and slung the fuckin thing down onto Water Street. It landed with a deafening smash, right on the bonnet of a brand-spankin-new Dodge Ram 2500 parked in front of the doors at the Hatchet. Fuckin forty-thousand-dollar vehicle, easily. I ran and shut the light off in me bedroom and slid the window back down. Isadora came in and we peeked down onto the street. Me heart was racin. Sure enough, Mike Quinn comes outta the bar and takes the painting off the truck. He brushes the glass off the bonnet and then looks up at me window and points. No way he could see me, but he knew where the fuckin thing came from. He shakes his head and walks back into the bar with the painting. Iz looked at me then and said:
—You’re a wild one Clayton Reid.
I laid her down on the bed then and had her, so it wasnt all for nothing I s’pose.
I was half shitbaked to go down to the bar later cause I thought it mighta been Mike’s new truck or something, but it turned out to be Silas Lawlor’s, thank fuck. Monica was bartending and she said everyone heard the smash, but when Mike came back with the painting he fed Silas some story about how someone musta been drivin by and tossed it out their car window, went on about how people got no value for good art no more. Silas looked the painting over and took a shine to it, asked Mike if he could keep it. Then a minute later he signed the contract to take over the bar. Fuckin moron.
The contract gave Mike sixty days to clear up his ties with the place. There was some kinda hefty down payment involved too, so says that Clyde Whelan cunt, and that Silas had so much time to come up with the rest of the money before the bar landed back in Mike’s hands. So it’s a win-win situation for Mike, when you think about it.
Mike still laughin to hisself, tossin a piece of a crib into the inferno behind us. And I says:
—Karma’s bullshit. We’re all just shat out from somewhere and fendin for ourselves. Dont matter if we’re good or bad.
Mike stops then. He stares at me, the bottom end of a Mickey Mouse lamp in his hand, held by the neck, the bulb busted and jagged. He looks me up and down.
—Bullshit hey? Well how now would you explain your situation? If you were to take a good look?
—And what’s my situation?
—Always fucked up over that young one, what’s her name, Isabelle. Always beating your head off the bar or showing up with blood on your face, destroying property and shit like that? How do you suppose you wound up like that? The underdog?
—I aint no fuckin underdog.
—It’s karma. You crucified that Donna one when she was dying about you. You wouldnt give an inch. All you did was fuck her and drink her booze. Crucified her. And now it’s all come back around.
—I aint crucified.
—Well you’d never say by the look of you most nights. I mean, think about what you have. You got brains to burn and you’re doing your goddamn best to burn ’em too. You got a roof over your head, a good job that pays the rent, women around, someone told me the other day you were writing stuff. You’re young, and at least halfways handsome. So stop for a minute and appreciate it, cause if you dont, I guarantee you it’s all gonna blow up in your face someday soon. And that’s karma.
Preachin at me again the old fucker. Halfways handsome. Fuck’s he mean by that? Gone queer now too is he? He reaches into the back of the truck and pulls the rest of the broken picture frame out. As he flings it, Frisbee style, into the pit, he curses hard under his breath and brings his own bloody finger to his mouth. I tries me goddamn best not to smile. He sucks his finger for a bit and then carries on like it didnt happen. He says:
—You do good by people and good things come back at you. Screw people over, start fucking around with people’s hearts and heads, and it’ll come right back on you. That’s the way I see it.
—Well then you’re fucked.
—What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
—Nothing…
—What about your buddy Brent there? Think he did nothing to warrant that knife in the back?
—Well he certainly never stabbed no one…
—Everything comes back to haunt you Clayton. Everything.
We heaves the rest of the junk outta the back of the truck in silence. From the looks of the stuff we’re tossing out, I’m wondering if Mike’s after evicting some welfare mom and her youngster, fuckin ’em out on their holes. But that’s none of my business, karma should take care of that.
When we’re done and headed back across the wasteland towards the entrance, I has a glance around for Jim, but he’s nowhere. There’s this fuckin huge machine bulldozing piles of garbage towards the cliff. It’s got these thick metal wheels with twelve-inch spikes for diggin into the limp ground, for climbin the piles of rubbish and shit. What a rig. If anything ever goes down, like when the apocalypse comes to town, I knows what I’ll be driving. Up and down Water Street in that thing, crushin everything and everyone in sight, that’ll be me. Naw, bad karma.
I says to Mike:
—So what then, we’re here and so long as we’re good, then good things’ll happen back to us? Simple as that?
—Well no, I wouldnt go that far. The big guy plays a part I suppose. I dont think we’re as random as you says, just shat out like that, like a fluke, like just slopped into existence by mistake. I dont really know. But I do think you can make your time here a whole lot easier on yourself Clayton. You gotta be grateful for the good things and stop wallowing in what’s wrong. And that’s karma.
—And what’s the big guy, fuckin God, got to do with anything anymore? Look at the state we’re in. Just look in the rearview…
—Well Clayton, I know it’d be some lonesome and hollow down here, for me anyway, if I didnt have something like that to cling to. Holy fuck—
Mike veers to his left just in time. The truck narrowly misses this huge gaping hole in the ground in front of us. I’m talkin gaping too, like about ten feet wide. Mike puts the truck in park and puts his head down on the steering wheel. I jumps outta the truck. We’re not even on the road we came down on the way in, but it’s like we were pulled, drawn, sucked across the wasteland here, right to the mouth of this hole. I looks down into it. It’s about fifteen feet deep, layers and layers of green garbage bags and juts of scrap metal and flickering glass of all colours. The whole way down to the bottom, no solid ground whatsoever, just a black puddle of sludge down there. I s’pose that’s why they calls it a landfill. Cause the land is absolutely full, stuffed.
Mike’s still got his head on the wheel when I jumps back in the truck. I gives him a playful tap on the shoulder.
—Now is that karma or God at work Mike? Or fate? Or is it just fucked up? S’pose we hadda go right down in that—
—Well we didnt.
—No but, just, what if we had…
—Fuck off Clayton. Just fuck off.
And of course that’s just what I does. Mike pulls the truck back to the main path and we’re off again, flyin. As we’re nearin the entrance we meets another garbage truck, Mike doin about sixty clicks in this twenty zone. The garbage truck slows down and swerves a bit to avoid us, honks the huge horn at us. Mike gives ’em the finger. I looks into the passenger seat of the passing garbage truck and there’s lanky Jim McNaughton, not lookin at Mike’s truck, leaned as far back into his seat as he can get, his eyes to the floor. Yeah, could be worse I s’pose, could be fuckin worse.
19. Shards
A thousand more years before Clayton goes:
—Yes please. A coma. Yes please. That’d suit me just fine.
I got to piss so bad my teeth are dancing in my gums. Could always go in my pants again. Might have to. Cant think in sentences, not full ones, sensible ones. Not what’s here in my head. Clayton got a beer, he’s been ranting about a table. This apartment is like a tomb, a bottomless black hole. Daylight poking through the blanket that’s tacked up where the upper door should be. If I let my mind wander I can convince myself that it’s really coming on dark. The floor doesnt look stable. Just a reminder that we can always sink a little further down. The linoleum is warped and sort of heaving, like lookin out over the salt water just before a storm comes on. All is calm on the surface, but you can see the swell underneath and you know some powerful, unstoppable force is just waiting to do its dirty work.
This patch of bog behind our elementary school. We werent allowed playing on it. We called it the bouncy ground. If you stood in one place too long the bog water would soak through your sneakers. When you jumped on it you could hear it sloshing underneath your weight and the bog would rise up all around you. My foot broke through it once and my leg went down, past my knee, before someone grabbed me and pulled me up. The leg of my pants was soaked black. Clayton picked me up once and body-slammed me on it, right in the centre. I didnt know who he was. I landed flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me and I couldnt move. I started to sink. Clayton helped me up. The cold black muck soaked my uniform from the collar of my shirt to the cuffs of my pants. Teacher was watching and we were both sent to the office. The nun had a little box on her desk labelled “consequence cards.” We each had to pick one at random and then write a paragraph in response to whatever was on the card. Mine was a question, religious, something about God having shaped us in his own image. I cant remember it exactly. I didnt know what to write. Me and Clayton were left in the office on our own and he was going through the nun’s desk. I read my consequence card out to him and asked him what I should write. He slipped something into his pocket and shrugged and said It’s all bullshit anyhow. Think God gives a fuck? Just write a few Hail Marys. And then Sorry about your uniform, by the way. I never did ask him what was on his card.
I’d kill for a drink, but not beer. Water. Another few hours until the bars are open again. I hope I’m asleep by then. Thick, ugly smell off this couch, deep-fried something. Clayton looks to be holding on to something more than a beer. His girlfriend’s gone again. Isadora. She’s a doll and a half. He needs to clear that up. But she’s wild too. I dont know. She showed up last night right after she said she wouldnt. So me and Clay were already after going ahead and dropping some acid. I wasnt really up for it to tell the truth. I came back east to clean myself out more than anything else. But he seems to want to go, go, go every night of the week, and that’s just not me anymore. Anyhow, Clayton, thinking he was in the clear for the night, was just after dropping the acid when his girl’s all of a sudden standing in the main room, hands on her hips and looking like she’d been listening in on the whole thing, whatever kind of retarded dirt we were getting on with. She smiled at me so gorgeous, but there was no play in it, just pity. I took the hint to give them a bit of privacy. I jumped in the shower. I got lost in the shower. I shaved and I thought I heard Clayton crying, high and childish and loud. Must be how he is with her, unguarded and dramatic.
I found vodka under the sink in the bathroom. I downed it. I dont know why. I had a shave. Made me feel false, like I was trying too hard. I looked at my face in the mirror. I cant be this same old bag of scum. Same old sad waster. I ground my teeth and smoked and stuffed twisted cones of toilet paper up my nose to clean it. Same old ugly beast.
The bathroom here is like a grubby, long-abandoned cocoon. Cant imagine it’s launched that many butterflies. Moths maybe. A crack running down the left-hand side of the mirror. I read somewhere about that, a bad omen, a constant reminder that your life is not whole. My reflection is split down the middle, the crack running a jagged line between my two eyes. One half of my face deformed and childish.
An explosion of glass in the main room behind me, Isadora shouting at Clayton to grow up and get on with it.
Missed a spot shaving. I brought the sticky razor hot and dry across my neck. Blood. The sight of it. First time seeing my own blood since that night in Edmonton. I watched the tiny bead trickle down my neck beneath the collar of my shirt. Nothing like Edmonton.
Isadora skipping back down the stairs. She said goodnight to me, but I never answered. I walked into the main room. Clayton looked fine, never say he was bawling at all. He had a bottle of generic codeine that he wanted me to snort. I showed him something better, the results of my education in western Canada. Drop six or seven tablets in a cup of boiling water, stir and let it settle. The milk that floats to the top, that’s almost pure codeine. Let it cool and drink it down. Avoid the sludge at the bottom. Instant. Clayton loves anything instant. I had a tiny sip, at his insistence.
We played Nick Cave. Murder Ballads. Dark shit that got us wondering out loud if we’re ever going to kill, if we’re capable. We got talking about high school, about mushrooms and a murder that almost happened. I hadnt thought of it in years, how close we can come sometimes. All the fellas from phys-ed class on a canoe trip into the Butter Pots. Overnight. Mushrooms. Seven of us sitting on a grassy hill away from the campsite while the mushrooms were kicking in. The rest of the group, the nerds and suck-holes and jocks, back collecting firewood and setting up tents. The teacher, Mr. Spurrell, a real cocky jerk from Mount Pearl with a weasel’s accent, the ultimate authority on everything, sooky and viciously competitive and useless. Screwing around with one of the girls in grade eleven. Punched some young grade-niner during a basketball game the year before, and broke his rib. Got off with it too, no apology. Long, hooked snout on him. Two false teeth, souvenirs from back in the days when he had no power over no one. I know that clown too well. Failed me just for showing up. First time I saw him, back in grade nine, I goes:
—What’re ya at b’y?
And he grabs me by the shirt and slams me off the locker, gets right up in my face with his sour coffee breath and says:
—I’m not your boy. Dont forget it.
That’s the kind of arsehole he was. I was only saying hello.
But we had him in the woods now, a four-hour hike from the highway. We were born in the woods. And at some point we decided that he should die in the woods. Madness, like only the mushrooms can serve it up. We’d strike him over the head with a paddle, knock him out and hold him under the water.
We got excited. The sky turned a brilliant red and then was gone again. Nothing for miles. A loon. The night coming on. I pictures Spurrell his cold white face floating just beneath the surface, dead eyes wide open, his curly hair swaying back and forth with the current. Nothing to get away with it. No one would tell. A secret to take to the grave. The grave. We turned quiet, paranoid. Someone could be listening, down there in the shadows of the trees. Spurrell could be listening. Night coming on. The loon further off now. We trudged the path back to the campsite in single file. No one spoke. Clicking their jaws and watching the steam rise from their mouths, stretching their knotted backs. I was in the lead. I stopped. We all stopped. The smell of the fire. I looked at Clayton, who wasnt limping back then, and was even more cracked than he is these days. I couldnt remember if we’d decided anything, if any of it was real.
—So, are we gonna do it?
—What?
—Kill him?
—I dont know.
We sat around the fire all night, listening to Spurrell talk his townie crap, no one making any eye contact, the suck-holes doing just that: sucking hole. Some dunce put a can of soup on the fire without puncturing it first. It blew to bits, like a gunshot. Everyone screamed, even Spurrell. He had a long noodle hanging from his nose. He swore oaths we never knew existed. We all laughed together. He laughed with us, not at us. He told us about a fight he had with his father two weeks before he died. Men. Out in the woods. Living life away from the greyness of our lives.
Saved by a noodle. How close we can come.
Clay freaked out for the first hour last night. Stuck his fingers down his throat as far as it’s humanly possible. Spewed chunks and bile and blood and maybe a bit of codeine onto the floor in the bathroom, trying to get the acid back up. No chance. Once it’s in, it’s in.
A good ten hours now. Well, not all good.
I waited around for him to clean himself up. I tuned up my guitar and played one of his uncle’s songs:
Too much, too fast, too young, too soon.
Not quite ready to shed this skin, Still a minor bit confused.
Seemed to fit. Clayton didnt recognize it. I never let on it wasnt one of my own. I wish. He came out of the bathroom dressed to the nines with his fancy so-called IRA jacket and black pants and them crunchy biker boots shined and polished to a gleam. Bandana around his neck, no fingers in his gloves and his hair slicked back tight to his head like De Niro in Cape Fear. So of course then I had to go change cause I looked like I just crawled out of a dumpster, knees gone out of my jeans, paint and mud splattered on the toes of my boots and a big streak of grease on my shirt.
After I got done up we went downstairs to the Closet. Clayton’s idea, believe me. That’s the bar on the middle floor of the building. My Place, it’s really called. I did not want to go there. We could hear all night that there was some kind of bash on the go down there. The Closet is a strange spot. Ten o’clock in the morning and you’re liable to hear fellas havin sex down there on the floor or the pool tables. Clayton thinks they must be making porno. Clayton dragged me down there once or twice already. Late-night fuckery. Give some old queer the eye and it’s free booze for as long as you can stand it, or stand up. I dont know, passes the time sometimes.
