Falling Backwards: A Memoir (32 page)

Norm had so many amazing stories to tell about his youth and all the adventures he’d been on. He’d lived a good life but a hard one. He didn’t know how many millions of fish he’d caught over the years but he said he often dreamed about them. He was humbled by nature and the beauty it provided. I loved listening to Norm. He was one of the most interesting people I’d ever met.

For the most part it was smooth sailing: clear skies and calm water. But somewhere in the middle of the fourth week we found ourselves in the middle of a pretty bad storm. I knew things were going sideways when Norman pulled up the lines and told me to put a life jacket on. He yelled it, in fact.

Within minutes the rain was pelting down so hard that it hurt the top of my head. The waves doubled and then tripled in size, throwing the boat around like it was nothing more than a wine cork. Norm pulled up the stabilizers, which were like wings that dragged through the water to keep the boat steady. They were so heavy he barely got them aboard. The wind was now blowing a million miles an hour and it sounded like hell was literally upon us.

I wanted to call my parents. But I wasn’t scared, for some reason. Norm knew what to do. He told me not to worry. “Just hang onto something!” he yelled. He got behind the wooden steering wheel and said he was going to try to get us to a place called Bull Harbour to wait out the storm. We smashed our little boat through the fifteen-foot swells and the pelting rain and outrageously strong winds, but we did make it to Bull Harbour. I felt completely invigorated and totally alive. While Norman was busy steering us to safety and the waves were pounding on us, I was singing at the top of my lungs.

We spent the rest of that night tucked into the sheltering rocks of the harbour. We listened as we lay there while the wind ripped the sky apart above our heads. It was soothing and comforting. I can’t explain it. All I knew was that at that moment I felt there was nothing I could do. I fell asleep as the boat rocked me side to side. “Goodnight, God,” I whispered into the air.

The next morning, Norm rowed us ashore in the little dinghy he kept tied to the side of his boat, and let me wander around for a few hours on the rocky beach. It was so nice to have a break from gutting fish all day. We walked along the shoreline of Bull Harbour and talked about his family and my family. I realized that age wasn’t such a big deal. Norm and I were more alike than I could have imagined. He told me he was really proud of the job I’d done and that he’d hire me back anytime. I was proud of myself too, actually. I had worked on a real live fishing boat and not killed myself by being eaten by a sixty-pound salmon or by falling overboard. I had weathered a huge storm and not cried once.

We fished for a few more days and then we headed back to Vancouver to unload our catch. It wasn’t a huge amount, according to Norm. He didn’t want me to be disappointed with the money I had earned. It was, after all, the last run of the season and the salmon stocks had begun to dwindle.

I helped to unload the fish and get them ashore. We hauled thousands of frozen-solid salmon out of the belly of Norm’s boat and onto the docks. I couldn’t believe that the two of us had done all that work. When it was all counted and weighed, I was paid fairly, just as Norm had promised me. Three percent of the gross catch. He wrote me a cheque for $390. I didn’t care that it was so little. I would have paid to go on that trip. I knew in my heart that it had saved me. Norm the fisherman saved me.

B
ack on dry land in Vancouver, it took me three days to stop feeling like I was walking on water. (No Jesus reference here at all.) I felt like I was drunk and, believe it or not, for a change I wasn’t! Even when I slept I felt like I was rocking on the ever-swaying waves. I slept for almost twenty hours when I got back to my crappy little apartment. Then I sat in front of my ironing board/table and contemplated what I was going to do next. I remember counting cracks in the ceiling of my bedroom. I got up to 371 and had to quit counting. I had salt in my blood and hope in my heart, and I had already made up my mind. I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t me. I was bigger than all of this. It felt so good to have a giant ball of faith in my body for a change.

I thought about my grandma Richards and her telling me that God could see me no matter what I did. Well, for the first time that didn’t bother me. I was starting to see what God himself saw every day, all day long.

My face had completely healed up from having been slugged in Gastown. My skin was windburned and full of freckles but I looked
pretty healthy and young and, if I dare say so, relaxed. I recognized somebody I actually liked when I looked in the mirror. And I wanted to take the face that was staring back at me … 
home
! I missed being around my old friends and my family. I packed up all my meagre possessions and called my mom to tell her I was headed back to Alberta.

I can’t even remember how I got home. I don’t know if it was by bus or if I flew or if somebody drove me. I don’t remember—I just got home. I didn’t even stop long enough to say goodbye to my lovely friend Jean. I moved back into my mom and dad’s basement and vowed to find my own place over the next few months. I just wanted to get back on my feet and gather myself up after my two-year voyage to nowhere. I was so relieved to be back home. I felt like I could breathe.

It took me longer than a few months to move out, but my parents didn’t seem to mind me being there; in fact, they were very grateful that I had finally had the good sense to return from the west coast. I knew I was going to keep writing songs and at some point try to figure out what to do with them. In the meantime I needed to find a job again.

I am not sure what possessed my parents, but they decided they were going to buy some sort of small business so that I could work there. They told me they wanted to invest in something but, more than that, I think they just wanted to help me get back on track. I don’t think I truly understood and appreciated that at the time. I certainly do now. They bought a small video store, of all things. I was glad it wasn’t a bottle depot or a vacuum-repair shop. One thing I did like doing was watching movies. The store was aptly named Fairview Video because it was on Fairview Road. That made sense to my mother: she said it would help customers find us.

The store was in a strip mall across the street from a 7-Eleven so I knew where I was going to be eating every day. There was nothing
else around but a bakery and a bowling alley. Our video store was open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and I worked every one of those days. Well, maybe not every one, but quite a few. I was late for work a
lot
, but I always did eventually show up. My mother tells me I was the worst employee they ever hired. I probably was. It was just us: mom and dad and Patrick and me. We ran the entire operation. Maybe mom hired one teenage girl to work a few hours a week but most of the time we were it.

I took my guitar with me every day and wrote songs like a madwoman. Most of them were terrible, but I was figuring out a truly original style. I was starting to sound more like myself than the singers I had admired so much. You start out emulating the artists you love and eventually, by process of elimination, you wind up sounding like your own self. That, at least, is the hope and the goal. I wrote hundreds of songs while I worked behind the desk at our video store. Our customers were very used to seeing me there, propped up on my stool, strumming away on my guitar.

I watched eighteen hundred movies the first year I worked there. I was like Roger Ebert on crack. Whenever I didn’t know what to watch, I’d put on
The Goonies:
best movie of all time as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t my dream job, but I didn’t feel as hopeless as I had. For some reason I saw a very dim light at the end of my tunnel and I was determined to keep marching towards it.

One day my mom handed me a tiny little scrap of paper, maybe an inch long and the ends on it hardly legible. She told me she’d cut it out of the newspaper that morning. It was about a country show band looking for a backup singer.

“I think it would be good for you to get out and sing a little bit,” she said. “You could make some pocket money.” I thought I was already making some pocket money working at the video store. I had
never once told her I wanted a singing job—I was through with all of that nonsense. But secretly I was kind of interested.

I didn’t know if I wanted to sing in a country show band. I had never been a backup singer and I wasn’t sure what backup singers did. My mom told me it that it wouldn’t hurt to try out. She told me the experience would be a good thing to have. “Those things always look good on a resumé,” she said.
A resumé for what?
What the hell, I would go and try out for a country show band. It wouldn’t kill me.

The following weekend I drove to the other side of town, I mean the very
edge
of the other side of town, and, finally, after many wrong turns and missed signs, I managed to find the building where they were holding the auditions. I got lost twice and kept having to stop at a pay phone to call some guy and ask directions. He was getting tired of me bugging him, I could tell. Every time I called him he talked louder and faster.

When I finally arrived, there were about twenty girls lined up against the wall, all waiting for their turn. I brought my guitar and thought I would just sing something by the Carpenters. They were about as country as I got. Of course, I had been the last person to show up so I was going to be the last to audition. I didn’t think I had any hope of making the cut, but I was there so I didn’t see what harm it would do. When my name was finally called out, I grabbed my guitar and walked into a room that looked like the gymnasium of a Mormon church. (You’d have to have seen one to know what I mean.) It was very well lit; in fact, it was more or less blindingly lit. Maybe it was all part of a psychological game they were playing, but perhaps not … It took me a few seconds to see just what I had wandered into.

There was a big fat guy with a beard sitting in a chair whose name, I found out, was Larry. Perfect. He looked like a Larry. Larry was the band’s lead singer and namesake. I was soon to find out that I was auditioning for the Larry Michaels Country Show Band. I had
never heard of them or him but I was told by one of the other girls in the waiting room that he was a big deal and this was a very important job I was trying out for. Larry, so I was told, played the A circuit, which included casinos, country fairs and large weddings. Larry also played the Calgary Stampede every year. I guess I was supposed to be in awe, but I wasn’t.

Larry’s brother was there in the very well-lit, Mormon-looking gymnasium too. He was apparently the band’s sound man and was operating the mics and getting all the girls set up. He looked like Elvis with his oily, jet-black hair, only this Elvis had eaten a Buick. I thought the whole audition thing was odd, but it had a car accident type quality to it that was really addicting to be around.

I went up to the mic and waited for instructions from fat Larry. I assumed he was the guy running the show. He didn’t instruct me to do anything, though; he just looked me over like I was a sandwich. Larry’s piano player asked me if I had any sheet music and I said that, no, I didn’t and was that going to be a problem? I told him I was planning to play a song on my guitar.

The piano player, whose name turned out to be David Hart, looked at me for a long time and then casually told me that it wasn’t going to be a problem. I felt relieved. David was the band leader and Big Elvis told me that he was the guy who was going to be doing all the hiring. Thank God, because Larry seemed to be lacking the sense Jesus gave a fish. I wanted to sing my song and get it over with. All this looking me over was making me anxious. I wondered if Larry could sing a note himself. I hoped in my heart that he could at least do a decent rendition of “Islands in the Stream.” I could picture it as plain as toast: if I got the job he would be Kenny and I would be Dolly and we’d be on stage at the Calgary Stampede with thousands of people cheering us on … What a scary thought. I had to snap myself back into the present moment. Part of me hoped I wouldn’t
get the job. Maybe I thought that way so the rejection wouldn’t hurt quite as much when they sent me packing.

“How did you hear about us?” David inquired.

“My mom cut an ad out of the paper.”

“Oh,” David replied, “I see.” He rolled his eyes at fat Larry. Meanwhile Elvis was saying “check, check, check” into the mic.

I thought telling him about my mother cutting the ad out of the paper might have been a mistake. It probably wasn’t the coolest thing I could have come up with. I thought by this point they must have already picked one of the cute girls I had seen in the hallway for the job.

I stood there for another few minutes while the three of them whispered among themselves. I felt my face burning. Finally David said, “You don’t need to sing for us today.” I was so disappointed and hurt. I immediately thought that I must not have looked the part.

“I’m good, I’ve got what I need,” he said, very matter-of-factly. My heart sank. I swallowed hard and stood there like an idiot, looking out at everybody looking at me.

Nobody said a word. Not Larry, not his Elvis impersonator brother, not even David. They all sat there staring at me like my hair was on fire. It was really weird. Larry said something to David under his breath, and David whispered “Later” to him and sort of waved him off.

I asked them if they were sure I couldn’t at least sing a little something, and David said he didn’t think he needed to hear a single note.

“Don’t worry, I’ve heard you before,” David said, as I packed up my guitar. I didn’t really think about what that implied, I just wanted to get out of there. “Thanks for coming out today, Jann, is it?” Larry looked over the brim of his thick reading glasses as he said my name.

“Yes. Jann Richards.”

“Well, we’ll get back to you in the next few days, Jann Richards.”
I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be getting a call from Larry Michaels or David Hart. I threw my guitar into the back seat of my car and headed home.