Jeremy Stone (12 page)

Fred the Janitor

School seemed different somehow after that.

And Thomas said hi to me when we passed in the halls.

I said hi back. (It wasn't like we were good buddies, but we weren't enemies. We were neutral.)

No Jimmy, no Jenson, not even Old Man.

When it came time for a pop quiz on French verbs, I had squat.

If I was going to pass the year at all, I'd have to start getting serious about school.

I know,

I know.

Do you hear what this sounds like?

And then Caitlan.

Caitlan still looked pale and unhealthy.

She walked fast everywhere she went

and when I tried to talk to her, she seemed embarrassed.

Can we talk? I'd ask.

Not yet.

Two days went by.

Not yet. I'm still not ready.

Soon.

So I hung back.

Waited.

It was a rainy day.

Buckets of rain.

I arrived at the school soaked.

Caitlan grabbed me

when I walked into the school.

Now, she said.

Fred was in his closet emptying a bucket of rain water.

This place has more leaks

than the
Titanic,
he said

when Caitlan opened the door.

Hi Fred, she said, can we

use my office? Sure. I was

just leaving. Got to save this

sinking ship.

Fred rolled his bucket and mop noisily

out the door and closed it.

Caitlan locked it from the inside.

We were alone with

the sound of rain on the roof.

We were both wet

and shivering.

Sorry about avoiding you.

S'okay.

I needed to get it all sorted out.

You okay now?

I'm better, but still working on it.

I showed my mom my arms and hands

and she took me to a counselor.

I'm working things through.

But you've stopped

Cutting myself?

Yes. How stupid was that?

Why did you?

I wanted to feel the pain.

It somehow felt good.

Yeah. I know how that sounds.

(There was a long pause.

We both shivered some more

and then laughed a nervous duet.)

Now what?

You and me. Can we start over?

Of course.

No Jenson this time.

(Didn't know what to say to that.)

He was real.

To me.

You know?

To me, too.

I don't really know

how that could be.

I think that what is real to us

is what we believe is real.

Maybe that's how everything works.

After we were up on that hill,

I didn't know what to think.

You seemed pretty mixed up.

Who wouldn't be?

I guess.

I wasn't sure about you,

if you were who

you appeared to be.

I wasn't even sure

you were real.

I guess that makes sense.

(I tried to say something

more but no words came out.

My mind was frozen,

empty.)

What?

I was having a hard time breathing.

I'm here, I said, and then gulped for air.

I'm as real as it gets.

I know that now.

I looked deep into her dark eyes now. I suddenly lost my own nervousness and uncertainty. I could see that she was still confused, still hurting, still unsteady.

But I saw more than that.

What do you see?

I see Caitlan. I see someone who has been hurt.

Someone who is getting stronger.

Someone who will survive.

I think I need your help.

I'm good with that.

But I don't trust myself.

What do you mean?

I can't get too entangled.

Entangled?

Before Jenson, there was someone else

and he hurt me. He said he loved me

but he didn't. It was bad.

And then Jenson.

Yeah, Jenson.

And now you are all I have.

I'll be there for you.

But I need you to just

Just what?

Be my friend.

(Yeah, I'd seen that one coming.)

I'm good

with that,

I lied.

Thank you.

There was an awkward moment of silence

Then

someone was knocking at the door.

Sorry folks, Fred said. I need my office back.

Got another bucketful of rain.

Photo credit: Daniel Abriel

Interview with Lesley Choyce

Where did the story of Jeremy Stone come from for you?

I wanted to move away from prose for a bit and write a novel in verse form. I wanted it to be accessible yet experimental. I didn't have a specific style in mind or a story but I knew it would concern how individual notions about reality shape the way we experience the world.

I had worked with many Aboriginal students and writers and learned from them about alternate ways of perceiving the world we live in. I knew it would be a gamble on my part to write a novel about a young First Nations teen from a first person point of view. So I put off the challenge until, like so many of my characters, Jeremy Stone arrived one day and his voice was loud and clear. I knew that he was unique and unusual and would lead me into unfamiliar territory. That was just the challenge I wanted.

To be honest, I had no idea where Jeremy or the story would take me and heading off into the unknown was exactly what I wanted. It was my own coming-of-age challenge as a writer to follow Jeremy Stone and allow him to send me off into the unknown.

This is your first verse novel. How does using this form affect the way you approach telling a story?

Once I found the voice, I knew the story would be told sparsely and visually. Every word would have to have an impact and the placement of those words would add texture and meaning. The placement of words dictates a kind of reading rhythm. I had to be aware of how the reader would
see
the words and how they would resonate inside the head.

I think the form made me write more slowly and work with multiple and underlying meanings that don't always present themselves in the faster clip of prose writing. I wanted there to be considerable symbolism but didn't want it to be too heavy-handed. I often didn't realize the emerging patterns of those symbols until I went back to rework the first draft.

Do you think telling this story in verse gives it a more powerful impact than telling it in prose might have done?

I think it presents bigger challenges for readers. My hope was the “poetry” here would not scare readers away. My goal was to weave a complex and challenging tale that would surprise and satisfy true literary readers. But I was also hoping the sparse nature of the text might lure readers who don't like big thick novels but who could be led into the complex, intriguing, paradoxical world of Jeremy Stone's reality.

Jeremy learns a great deal from Old Man, and from the spirits of Jenson Hayes and Jimmy Falcon. The spirit world is very much a part of Jeremy's life. What interested you in a character who is sensitive to such experiences?

Ah, that is at the heart of the story. Most of us feel we are fairly certain as to what is “real” and what is “not real.” If we can see it and hear it, it must be real. We assume thoughts and fantasies are
not
real because they are just inside our minds. Yet we are fully shaped by our beliefs and many of those beliefs are not fully tangible to others. For Jeremy, things of the spirit world are as real as, or more real, than what goes on around him. That is his reality. It is what shapes him and makes him who he is.

Buddhists (and others) would suggest that things on the physical plane of existence are just illusions. The only true reality is experienced when we die and are freed of our bodies so we can perceive the true reality behind the veil of illusions that is our physical world.

Some Mi'kmaq writers I've known speak of the ability to “move between worlds.” That includes living in a Mi'kmaq world but also being able to function in the white world. It also allows them to embrace more than one religion: traditional Mi'kmaq beliefs and Christian beliefs together. Truly spiritual individuals also become adept at the bigger challenge of moving between the physical world and the spiritual world. Jeremy has this ability and is able to bridge both worlds on a daily basis, making his life much more interesting and richer than those which most of us experience.

Old Man is an Aboriginal archetype, but Jenson and Jimmy are contemporary young men who have spiritual dimensions. To Jeremy, they are all as real to him as anyone else. This makes for a fascinating character who must realize that most other people don't have his perceptions and his skills. Maybe we all inhabit a world where we are surrounded by individual spirits. Most of us can't see or hear them, but it doesn't mean they aren't there. We're just not trained to notice them or have conversations with them as Jeremy does.

Strangely, as I was writing this book, Jeremy himself was as real to me as any person I was encountering outside the story. Whatever this book, this collection of thoughts, ideas, images, and dialogue was about, there was a “spirit” of some sort that emerged during the creation of the novel. And that spirit,
Jeremy Stone
, became even more tangible as the book progressed. I'd sit down and wonder,
What will Jeremy do next?
Then his quiet, poetic voice in the back of my head would speak and say, “Just wait and see what I have for you.”

So, does that make me crazy? Could be. But lucky me. I am no great spiritual guru or visionary like my protagonist but I have the license to be a fiction writer spending part of my day making up the company I keep as I go. And
Jeremy Stone
was a great companion to spend my days with.

E.M. Forster put it thus:
In the creative state, a man is taken out of himself. He lets down a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

In writing
Jeremy Stone
, I soon realized I was way out of my depth (in that well) and I loved the process immensely as a result.

The intriguing thing is that, while Old Man is the spirit of Jeremy's grandfather, Jenson and Jimmy are spirits of people who never existed in the “real” world. Yet they give Jeremy guidance in that real world. Can you explain that?

This is where I was beginning to experiment with boundaries. What if things of the spirit and of the imagination are very much connected ? And I think they are. I don't have any firm belief system here, but then I'm a fiction writer. As in
Living Outside the Lines
, I can experiment with possibilities. Jimmy was very real to Jeremy. Jenson was very real to Caitlan. Both had profound influences on the living, just as my fictional characters have some strange influence me. Jeremy taught me to keep my mind open to various possibilities of what is real and not real and to respect the personal belief system of others. Of course, once the book is published and I unleash my characters on the unsuspecting public, these fictional “spirits” may have an impact on the thoughts, beliefs and actions of “real” people.

Though Jeremy is a teenager, he is dealing with a lot more than most teens face giving emotional support to his mother and to Caitlan, “reeling” his father home, and helping to change the behavior of Paper Clip. What gives Jeremy his strength?

Jeremy's strength comes from a number of things. He has grown up with a base of powerful spiritual and cultural awareness from an early age. Even though he doesn't fit well into the white world of school and community, he has this extra body of belief and knowledge that helps him survive the everyday difficulties of that world.

He is by nature compassionate and his spirit is kind. He may use angry language, as all kids do when growing up, but his actions are not malevolent or unkind.

Jeremy is also not afraid to be himself. He knows he is different and accepts that as an important part of his identity, so he knows what it's like for others who are different too, especially Caitlan. It also seems that he's been treated very much like an equal, as an adult, by both of his parents, since he was quite young. That, too, has given him an inner strength and greater compassion than the average young man.

You like to tell stories in which not every problem is resolved at the end. Yet some readers like to know that a story is completed in the final page. What do you have to say to those readers?

If I've done my job, a character like Jeremy will seem very real to the reader; maybe just as real as he seems to me. So I like to leave the illusion that life goes on for Jeremy after the last page of the book. And maybe it does on some other level of reality. Usually, there are no tidy endings to the chapters of our own lives. We solve one darn thing only to realize we are up to our eyeballs in the next messy, complicated problem. As the book ends, Jeremy has begun to move on to the next challenging phase of his life and so the story continues on some alternate plane of existence.

You are a person with many diverse interests. You are a singer, a surfer, a poet, a publisher, a teacher, a storyteller. How do all those parts of your life contribute to the stories you choose to tell?

From writing songs, I learned about using words as sounds instead of just visual representations on a page. And I started out my writing career as a poet. My first book was a little volume of poetry called
Re-inventing the Wheel
. I have continued to write poetry as well as novels and, in 2013, published
I'm Alive. I Believe in Everything
, a volume of new and selected poetry written over a forty year period. I have always believed in poetry and loved the possibilities of breaking free of the rules and limitations of standard paragraphs and sentences.

I'm not sure how surfing influences me as a writer, but maybe it goes something like this. Surfing is the art of tapping into those invisible energies travelling through deep waters and matching your energy to theirs as they manifest themselves near the shorelines of continents. It has taught me that when you get smashed by those powerful forces of nature, you take the punishment, surface, get back on your board, paddle out, and try again. Writing novels is often like that.

As a publisher, I worked with Mi'kmaq elder Rita Joe when she was alive to create the first
Mi'kmaq Anthology
, and I admired her quiet, deep, and compassionate spirit. She sent me on a couple of spirit quests including a search for a nearly-lost petroglyph in Bedford, Nova Scotia. I'd like to think her spirit was gently guiding me (or Jeremy) in the creation of this book. I also worked with a number of other gifted Mi'kmaq writers for a second anthology published in 2011.

Certainly as a teacher, I learned many things from my students that went into this book. I teach in the Transition Year Program at Dalhousie University, a program for Black and Aboriginal students. Many of my Mi'kmaq students shared experiences, ideas and beliefs from their culture and traditions. So I was a good listener and I learned a lot. (However, if fall rolls around and I discover I have a student named Jeremy Stone on my class roster, I may be a bit freaked out.)

And finally, as a storyteller, I just know I'd be lost if I had to live only in the so-called real world all the time. I don't exactly “escape” into fiction. I immerse myself in it (like the ocean) when I sit down to write, and grieve when a novel is over, leaving me ever anxious to tell the next story and write the next book. Like everyone else, my lifetime is relatively short. I want to live as many lives as I possibly can in this brief tenure here on the planet.

Thank you, Lesley, for the insights you've provided here.

Lesley Choyce can be found on the internet at:

www.lesleychoyce.com