Shelby (24 page)

Thunder awoke me with a start. I was shivering and shrouded in darkness. Fumbling through my pack I managed to find matches, but every attempted strike was met with a far stronger gust of wind. Shivering burst into trembling. Scrambling up the hill on all fours I played braille in the dirt in an unsuccessful search for my gloves and tuque. Despair joined my battle for light. Dragging my pack and sleeping bag onto more level ground, I pulled the tent from its covering and spread it out by feel and, shortly thereafter, was able to join two metal rods together—presumably the centre pole. Confidence increased accordingly and then collapsed completely upon awareness that I had failed to pack pegs. Panic seized my chest and I scrambled towards where I thought the large tree was, in hopes that I could break off branches and make suitable alternatives. I did so until out of the night a branch skewered me in the eye with such abruptness, I fell to the frozen ground, writhing in pain, screaming and fearing death by over-exposure.

Then came the rain—hail-like drops that stung on contact. Clutching my face, I eased down to the creek and pulled from the freezing water a large stone to be used as a makeshift hammer for pounding the pegs. I crawled back up and, numb hands dripping wet, caked with mud, draped the tarpaulin over me. From there I slipped the ties around the pegs and hummed soothing Gregorian chants to the mindset of the voyageur while my eye poured fluid. It was, in fact, in this meditative trance that I, after six or seven successful hits on the peg, pulverised my left thumb with an errant strike. Never had I been so instantly terrorised; flat out and writhing like an epilectic salamander in a mud pit undergoing shock treatment, one eye wide open in the endless darkness, the light pressure of rain drops landing upon my face via a tarpaulin that took on the feel of a body bag, I realised my days—nay, my hours—could well be numbered. Slowly the cold crept in, my screams turning to dull moans and finally silence, my body motionless as though carved from wood.

Sometime into the night, after I'd slithered my battered body into the canvas tent for additional cover, the rain turned torrential. I could actually hear the rising streams of water forming beneath me. My toes and backside were without sensation. I cradled the hand of my crushed thumb into my genitals for extra warmth and wound up erect. All was black. All was silent. I pictured myself frozen, skin as translucent as skim milk, body as stiff and cold as marble, eyes like ice cubes in a blue tray.

Morning arrived after several terrifying and freezing wakeups in the night. The light cast hues of orange through the tarp. My thumb throbbed and was functionless; my eye ached and had all but swollen shut. Scratching my head I discovered sap in my hair. I rolled out from underneath the covering and a chilled stream of water poured onto my leg as if it had been waiting all night for the opportunity. My blistered feet yearned for nonuse. Oddly, I didn't cry. I didn't even react. I lay staring at a sky so blurry and white I wondered if it existed at all.

A stomach growl snapped me from my daze. I dug into my pack and pulled out the last apple and Dad's
Wilderness Survival
handbook. It said:
So you're lost. Don't panic. Survival is a state of mind
. I screamed. Scanning further I read:
When you are lost and confused, a fire will give you a psychological boost, help you relax and provide company on a lonely night. Caution: Improperly set, a small one can spread quickly and soon a forest fire is burning out of control, causing additional problems to the person lost in the bush
. No kidding!

I collapsed onto the tent only to have icy, muddy water gush all over the front of my pants. It was France, 1917, trench warfare, the enemy unsighted yet ever present, dead horses and maggots and lice, rats in their glory—and fear like a coat of red paint across the face of a pimply, young Canadian soldier …

Then back, thinking of Gran, I sobbed, aware that my only hope was to find a way home before my organs froze. And so I packed up, prayed for strength, and followed the sun. By early afternoon I was emotionally, physically, and hopelessly lost, delirious, seeing myself as part of the food chain; being first ransacked by a pack of migrating wolves, flesh torn from my feet, shins, and then higher, my defenseless body devoured while I looked on in terror. Calming myself slightly, the new image was more gentle as through brown eyes I gazed into an empty sky as the majority ingredient of a wolf bowel movement. Too weak to know better, my feet kept moving until a vision of Gran found me howling into the echoey abyss. My link to life was broken. Lucy was all that remained. Accepting that, I refused to die. But how could I know what lay ahead?

XVII

Though in my fear of hell I had condemned myself to the prison house where my only companions were scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself surrounded by bands of dancing girls
.

—
St. Jerome

“So then what happened?” Lucy asked, finishing the bandaging of my thumb.

“Well, I calmed a little and saw myself as wolf defecation. After that the hallucinations started.”

“Weird.”

“Lucy, there was a moment I truly believed my legs had turned to compost.”

“Wow.” Lucy rinsed my eye-lid. “Why'd you run from the gargoyles?”

“Wouldn't you?”

Lucy glanced up and smiled. “You should get this looked at,” she said, referring to my eye, cigarette dangling from her lip.

“They were huge.”

Lucy smiled. “So then what happened?”

“So I ran until … well, twilight. Suddenly everything looked exactly as it had hours earlier, and I feared I'd travelled in a massive ellipse. About to give up, I collapsed on the frozen ground. Suddenly, and from not so afar, I heard a rumbling in the distance. With all the courage I could muster I dragged myself up and onwards. Minutes later, there it was.”

“Another gargoyle?”

“Hardly! The Columbia River in all its roaring glory! Next thing I know I'm walking along the Number One highway, hitchhiking for the first time in my life. It's eleven-thirty at night. I'm fluish, frozen, insane with fatigue. The
first
car picks me up and this strange character out of some old movie drives me directly to the depot! So there I am, out of funds. What happens? For no reason, after a short conversation with the clerk he offers me a
free
ticket! The bus travelling to Vancouver arrives, I place my belongings underneath; eight hours later, here I am.”

“Wow,” she said, taking the cigarette from her mouth, tipping the ashes in the sink.

“I tell you, Lucy, I was looked after. I was meant to come back here.”

“Are those tights all right?”

“Quite snug,” I said, biting my piece of toast.

“The pink is you,” she said, “sets off your skinny legs.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to talk or anything?”

“Must you keep asking in that weepy way? I'm not two years old. I told you, I know Gran is
fine
. And so what if my seeking the source was temporarily halted by faulty gear? Alas, it appears the source was with me anyway.”

“I could've told you that.”

“I had a revelation on the bus trip home.”

“I really think you should get your eye checked.”

“Just as the chains of abuse are perpetuated through time, beyond genetic barriers, I now realise so it goes for love.”

“Feel what you have to feel, Shel. You and Gran were
so
close.”

“Would you stop! Anyway, this is about Gran. Listen: In short, there are bits of Gran's love in me, and now, subconsciously, I'll pass them on just by interaction with others. Isn't that wondrous? A meets B, and B, now with a little of A, becomes C. Then C, say C is me and A was Gran, meets you, D, and D, with a little of C, becomes E, and so on for eternity.”

“Have you slept?”

“We are products and results of the other.”

Lucy smiled. “I am you as you are me and you are he and we are altogether.”

“In a sense, yes. And understanding that,” I said, “how sad could I be?”

“I don't know,” she said, ripping a piece of toilet paper off the roll and blowing her nose, “but just don't get into one of your self-bullshitting trips.”

“How can you say that?”

Lucy flipped the toilet paper into the bin beneath the towel rack and shrugged. “I know you.”

“Well, I'll tell you. I've never been stronger; aware for the first time that we are all equals, our destiny the waste product of another organism.”

“Oh, by the way, I'm going on the road tomorrow.”

“What?”

“I'm going on the road.”

“What for?”

“Work.”

“What?”

“
What
?”

“You can't. Not tomorrow.”

“What do you mean I can't?”

“I mean why? Why would you do it?”

“It's my job, Shel. Rent.
Food
…”

“It's the money I owe you, isn't it?”

“Shel, I've been on the road a million times.”

“It's Frank, isn't it?”

“What's Frank?”

I grabbed Lucy by the collar. “I'm going to kill that bastard.”

“Ooh,” she said, turning away.

“What? You doubt me?”

“Your breath,” she said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's bad.”

“Always?”

“No. Right now.”

“It's always bad, isn't it?”

“Right now! You've been in the woods for two days. You spent the night on a bus. Anybody would have bad breath after that.”

“I'll still kill him.”

Lucy wiped my chin with her hand.

“Why'd you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Brush my chin.”

“Crumbs.”

“Crumbs?”

“
Crumbs
.”

“What kind of crumbs?”

“I don't know—from the toast, I guess.”

“Crumbs on my chin!” I wailed, falling to my knees.

“What are you doing?”

“Don't go!”

Lucy bent down and hoisted me up, my arm around her shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

Lucy didn't reply, instead dragging me into the bedroom and dropping me on the bed. She took off my shoes, giving both feet a tender squeeze. I tilted my head forward and glanced at her through my only good eye. She smiled warmly. “It's gonna take some time, buddy. Do what you have to do. Feel what you have to feel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let it out,” she said, blowing me a kiss. “I'll be in the other room. Call me if you need me.”

“I don't need anyone!” I cried.

She grinned, and gave my foot a gentle tug as she walked away.

“Don't go! I … I need … I …”

She stayed.

I slept most of the night, waking occasionally to nightmares and bouts of disorientation. Lucy astounded me with her nursing abilities; she not only cleansed my wounds, she lent me her television, cooked up a huge breakfast and actually escorted me to the bus stop in the morning. I was truly touched, and as the bus pulled out and I waved through the window I had to beat down a swell of tears. Arriving home I called out to Eric but received only silence. There was a note on the kitchen table.

December 7 Noon

Hey, man. Not sure when you'll be back but if you are before I am I'm telling you I've gone to hogtown for a week, seeking fame, cash and whatever else is behind door number three. Sorry about your Granma. Hope you're okay. Your pal, Eric, xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Unable to contain myself, I plugged in Lucy's eight-inch black-and-white television, put it on top of the old T.V., fell back on the pull-out couch and wept through
Mr. Dressup
.

Day one passed. Lucy was gone. Eric was gone. Gran was
gone
. I closed the curtains full-time, shrank from personal hygiene, indulged in physical releases and declined into dankness.

Day two was more of the same with the addition of cold cereal and perpetual wonder at how a young man could one week seek God's call via the rough-and-ready Canadian wilderness and the next be victim to cathode rays and fantasies of television personalities.

Day three ushered in genuine mental illness evident in inappropriate physical responses to the following: Kathie Lee Gifford
(Regis and Kathie Lee)
, soap operas
(All My Children, Another World, General Hospital), The Oprah Winfrey Show
(Oprah, of course), portions of
WKRP in Cincinatti, Babar
, snippets of dominatrix cross-dressers on
Geraldo
and one of the contestants on
Wheel Of Fortune
. The
CBC Evening News
blew in shame at my lack of reverence for existence after briefly showing starving Somalians and the plight of the Serbs—as did a documentary on the vanishing habitat of the three toed sloth. Crumbling in despair, spent, smelly, my head rife with Matthew Arnold's
We mortal millions live alone
and the bitter reality that Lucy on the road hadn't bothered to phone, I was comforted only by fits of sadness and anger imploding throughout the night. I feared reasons for carrying on were fading subconsciously.

To my astonishment, the following morning arrived with a bizarre sense of mission manifesting itself in the form of bodily shakes. I could not stop wondering: What was it that made me do what I did? Was it from within? Without? Social constraints or predetermined chaos? Does transcendence truly exist? Was I addicted to sex? To self-loathing? To darkness? And, yes, I did turn on the TV. But all had changed. The seer, it would seem, had become the seen. The new order had arrived. Destiny was a state of choice.

Within two days cable had been hooked up and loose pieces of foolscap ripe with statistics and ideas and questions were scattered to the far reaches of the front room. My working title expressed it all.