 
# LOOSE MOVEMENT Part 2

Steve Wheeler

Copyright Steve Wheeler 2012

Published at smashwords

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LOOSE MOVEMENT
PART 2

Cover Image by lijjccoo from nl wikimedia

# BENEATH THE MATALA MOON

Matala is a small fishing village on the very southern coast of Crete, between Africa and Greece. It is famous among travellers like the route from Australia to Europe is famous. By the time it is listed in the travellers' books, it is old and well known.

I was staying with Rob, a friend from Canada, who lived in Finsbury Park, worked at the London zoo. He mentioned that "beneath the Matala moon" was in the lyrics of 'Carey', that he'd had a good time there when he'd gone in the past. This was all the direction I needed. I had always liked Joni Mitchell's songs.

My first memory of Matala was waking up, hung over, a dog barking near the fence. I felt around my sleeping bag, couldn't find my passport or traveller's cheques. There was a guy cowering by the fence. He had them. His name was George.

George was frozen to the spot, quaking in fear, confronted by a big, hostile German Shepherd named Cello. Harry was Cello's owner. He was a big Dutchman with a mullet, a FREE SONNY BARGER sleeveless t-shirt, big muscles. He liked to push people around.

Harry had seen Cello trap George as he ripped off my stuff. He was up early, making a coffee in his trailer, just outside the wire fence of the camp grounds. He lived there for the summer before travelling with Cello, his two boys and wife, back to Holland, for the winter. He knew Manoli who had, by this time, responded to the barking. He stood, sleepy, beside George, smiling resignedly. I tried to look serious and angry, thrashing around in my sleeping bag.

We had a meeting in Manoli's office, where he had a cot and some coffee making utensils. Everybody in the campground left their valuables there when they went to the beach. I slapped George once, settled for my passport and Traveller's cheques back. I found out later that George could have killed me in a fight, nothing short of a gun was going to stop him.

As we talked, George quiet because of Cello's presence at the door, Harry and Manoli believed that what I said was true: I wasn't a rich tourist, I dug ditches at home. All I wanted was a coffee, some boiled eggs at the taverna. I told them to tell George not to do it again, to let him go. There was no harm done, no cops for miles.

Harry gave me a tarp, to put up between two trees, for a tent. I joined the other tourists at the taverna. We sat, guys from three or four countries, rock and Marley turned up loud, at the taverna across the road from the campground. We'd welcome, with quarts of German beer, the buses which showed up from Iraklion, four or five times a day. They would stop, disgorge passengers in front of the taverna, refill themselves, before heading back to Iraklion with their load of tourists.

The departing tourists had done their time in Greece, were moving on. The visitors in the summer months were two or three weekers. Some, were on package excursions from Australia, some, on two week vacations from their jobs in England or Germany or Norway. They were all replaceable to the Greeks. They were all replaced.

I didn't notice the Greeks at that time. I had the same attitude toward the locals as most of the tourists. They were there for my needs, but they weren't important. The other tourists and travellers were interesting to me, the Cretans, who I call Greeks, were in the background.

Matala was crawling with women. Every bus disgorged more who only stayed around for a few weeks. I didn't see the Greeks, but they were there. Sipping quietly on a Coke or coffee, they were, like us, watching the girls.

There were caves in the cliffs at Matala. Some said the early Christians used them to hide from the Romans. Someone in Joni's crowd discovered them. Probably hippies looking for a Journey to the East. But they shat in them. They were, according to tourists and Greeks, too gross to be worth looking at. I saw the Matala moon many nights, but I passed on the caves.

The Greeks approached me after I stuck up for a Greek, in a fight with some Germans, over a woman in the disco. They had been watching me since the incident with George. They knew, through the staff at the taverna, that I would be out of money soon.

My first job was with Janni's crew of woodcutters. He owned a dump truck and a few chain saws. He employed some older Greek guys and an Austrian also named Janni. The Austrian Janni spoke only Greek, lived with his wife, in a quiet village, away from tourists. I accepted him as he accepted me, neither of us asked the other why they were there.

They were all amused by me. I was as blond as they were dark but I could work like them, withstand the heat and bugs, put up with the cuts and scratches I received on the job without complaining. I was satisfied, if not happy, with the wages they paid me.

I felt better getting home to the campground, having a shower, getting drunk, eating in the taverna at night, than just crawling off the beach, drunk by three in the afternoon. After roughnecking in the bush of Alberta, there wasn't much one couldn't make one's self do. Every year the Greeks took some tourists or young locals to work with them, every year most quit.

Austrian Janni was a hard worker. He and Greek Janni, a large, jolly man with curly brown hair and a bushy moustache, kept three of us busy picking up the old branches, throwing them into the dump truck. At the end of each tree, we combined to throw the bigger logs into the truck.

They were old olive trees, eighty to one hundred years, which didn't produce any more. So every day with Janni's crew was, for the most part, in an olive grove.

By tradition and custom, the boss supplied the food for lunch. Sometimes we'd all clamber into the dump truck, Janni would head for the nearest restaurant. It wasn't a tourist place, more for Greeks like these woodcutters. There was nothing fancy out front, just a couple of tables and chairs where the old men could drink their coffee.

I rubbed a cold quart of Henninger over my forehead in the shady back of one of these places, watched Greek Janni bargain with the owner over our lunch. He inspected the carcasses of freshly killed rabbits, they reached an agreement.

The parts were fried, in a pan, there in front of us. I started to understand, a little, the Greek, the communication between the men. I stuck to the large parts of the rabbit, those that looked familiar. The Greeks and Janni the Austrian popped the lemon shaped rabbit skulls into their mouths, crushed them with their teeth, devoured the contents. They laughed at my look.

I took two buses, to meet Janni, in the morning. I changed buses on a hill where students in uniform waited, buses and cars full of people went to work. There was a cement plaque by the side of the road which I couldn't read. People had been waiting in that spot for thousands of years. The cliffs fell to the Mediterranean Sea, beside the road. Before the heat of the day descended, the sea breeze blew across Crete.

When we were on the job, in the olive groves, we had the best lunch. The two Jannis shut down their screaming chain saws, the crew made itself comfortable in the shade of a big olive tree. The Greek Janni supplied the wine and feta from his house. The tomatoes, onions and cucumbers were cut into the big bowl with a generous slug of olive oil, to soak them. The bread, from the bakery, that morning, and an occasional can of mackerel pieces were bought. The rest of the meal was grown at home.

The best of the olive oil was kept for the family, the rest, sold. Janni's olive oil was smooth, golden. You could eat it with just a piece of bread from the loaf. All of the Greeks seemed to have another side, a hidden side, which you could only see if they trusted you.

My next job was for Georgio who called me "Stefanos". He had a farm in the mountains, drove a little Toyota pickup. He showed up one day at the taverna, offered me a job. I agreed, he picked me up every morning until the job finished. He and his compadres squeezed me into the cab of the pickup, talked to me all the way to the job. They wanted me to hear their illegal Partisan songs on the cassette tape.

Georgio owned a huge field, maybe many fields. All I knew was that he needed wire to be strung across hundreds of the concrete posts which we had planted, so that his usual crop of tomatoes would climb, avoiding spoilage on the ground.

Costa had seen me in action, by now, with the tourists, the travellers and the Greeks. He knew I was ok. He checked me out in the campground, taverna and disco and knew I was no threat to his position as godfather of the surrounding valley. He knew that I could do the Greeks a lot of good. He gave me a job working with his crews on construction and, then, in the new disco he was building, in Matala.

Costa picked me up each morning at six am on his Yamaha 750, at the campground. We roared off into the hills to one of the many construction jobs he had going. Sometimes he walked through the campground to survey the sleeping women. If I slept in, he approached my tent, moved my sleeping bag, with a toe, to see if it was empty. If it wasn't, he looked over the woman I had slept with. He turned up his nose or gave me an approving smile, depending on what he saw.

One hot day, the tourist police showed up on a job. The guy, with a uniform, gun and a belt that went over his shoulder, talked to someone on the other side of the site. Costa left the forming he was doing beside me, touched my shoulder as he passed, confronted the policeman. His brother George, a big guy who spoke no English and wore a carpenter's belt, like everybody else, stopped work, stood beside the policeman. The other guys told me that George was a champion boxer. He was built like a weight lifter.

They looked over at me a few times but the outcome never was in doubt: Costa had a job to do, there were houses standing half finished all over Crete. If a man was willing to work and he was productive, why stop him? Because the young locals won't do it for the wages? Bah! The policeman walked away, smiling at George. Costa gave me a wink and a smile when he returned to our forming.

At Costa's mother's, we sat beneath the grape vine filled pergola, drank iced tea, his mother bringing us glasses. He said that he'd been to London, checked it out. His sour look was tempered by understanding, but I had no inclination to defend London while I sat there with Costa and his mother on their family farm.

I was sleeping half at the campground, half at the new disco, when Rob came to visit me from London. He brought a forty ouncer of Johnny Walker Black which he called "mother's milk". Thomas was a German who made friends with Rob the second he saw the Johnny Walker. I was working, only saw George and a band of young guys from the area heading up the hill. George, who I met when I first arrived, liked ultraviolence. He had a determined frown, a long, lethal looking flashlight in his fist, as he started up the hill.

The young men of the village took care of business. They had recently kicked a whole tent of Frenchmen out for attacking the other guests, especially the females ones. They had, just last week, shot an Italian dead on a nearby beach, for selling heroin to the kids. The legal inquiry had just finished. Nobody knew anything, therefore, no one was guilty. There were no cops in Matala. Rob had, long ago, given Thomas the bottle to drink. The German was getting violent, challenging the whole campground and the Greeks, to knock him off the hill. Rob was protecting himself as well as getting away from Thomas' aggravating bleating. He had to see a Swedish girl, anyway. Why hang around Thomas?

Thomas, I saw the next morning, as I waited for a lift, suffered a lot of cuts from some bats around the head. He was unceremoniously trundled onto the first bus leaving Matala in a near catatonic state. He had big clumps of hair missing beneath the bandage on his head.

As the season went on, the disco neared completion. I was living day to day, Costa holding back some of my week's drachma so I'd have something to leave with.

There were women from all over the world there. Some women were there for the weather, some because Greece was Greece, but these Greeks believed, and it seemed to be so, that women were there, to be with them. One girl told me that a Greek propositioned her on the beach, saying, "Maybe you're with Stevie, but he's not a Greek"

The Greek men had a heart sworn assumption that the tourist women should pay for everything. If I, in my goofy, chivalrous way, paid for the drinks or the snack for myself and a woman, I was the butt of a lot of jokes the next day or considered a sad case, to be pitied. They spoke of a man as "poly mafia" when he was seen night after night with a tourist girl but didn't pay for anything. The "Papa" (Pope) was the greatest Godfather of them all, the Catholic church was the greatest mafia body.

I was constantly getting called from the disco or my tent to come settle disputes. An Australian or Dutch girl would be trying to explain to Manoli, in a headlit scene, that just because she danced with a Greek guy or let him buy her a drink, that she wasn't giving herself for the night or marriage. The Greeks loved the drama of it. Manoli would console the Greek guy, I would shoo the tourists to their tent. The guy would look mad for a while, then, after making sure that the girl wasn't with anyone else, go back to the disco to see if he had time to pick out another. I don't know what the married Greek guys told their wives. All of the tourist women agreed that the Italians were worse than the Greeks at aggressive come ons. The women said that if they slapped a rude man in Italy, they got slapped back.

I stuffed myself at the snail feast. The snails grew on everything below a foot. I saw women and children out gathering them off of rocks and plants in the fields. We gathered in a shack near Matala, ate our way through many pounds of the little shelled creatures. They were served by the men, to the other men, from a big, boiling pot. More were boiled while we ate. We sucked the little critters out of their shells by windpower alone. Until I got the hang of it, I had to use the fork on the table to loosen that last little piece of flesh stuck to the shell. After a while, I could get the last piece by using, as the Greeks did, the shell from the one before. We ate them for hours.

One morning, on Costa's bike, we stopped at a crossroads, in a sleepy village, where an old man with a net hat, baggy jodhpur pants, big, black, leather boots, stood under a tree. He had a grey, bushy moustache. The dappled sunlight glistened on his knife. Costa and he exchanged greetings and information. He had hanging, in front of him, the carcass of a goat, half skinned. He told Costa something, looked over for confirmation to two young boys who were sitting in the shade of a neighbouring tree. Above them, two goats, which had grazed on the lower branches of the tree, were standing on the thick, lower limbs to get at the leaves above them.

Tourist season was ending, regulars who had been there all summer, were thinning out. Some of us got drunk on the raki they made from the dregs of the wine harvest. We finished the disco. Prospects for the winter narrowed. I could leave Matala to work at a tomato canning factory, in Crete, or hitch north. It was time to go.

Costa paid me off, one night, at the disco.

He told me,

"To work in Greece, Stevie, takes some grease" and pocketed a percentage of my savings.

I hitched back to London where Rob and I found a pub with 'Carey' on the jukebox.

eclectica.org

# HITCHING TO LONDON

I was leaving Matala with Anne and Thomas, the dedicated communist German from Ulm, who owned the French Peugot which elevated and lowered its suspension at the flick of a switch. He and I had argued about communism and democracy for a week every night in the taverna. My strongest argument, the one which he couldn't answer, was to ask him where all the communist travellers were? Why was he the only one from a communist country who was free to travel where he liked, do what he wanted?

Thomas' idealism was admirable. We agreed, at least, that the rich, communist or capitalist, were still screwing the poor. He owned a car and offered me a free ride to Iraklion when he learned I was leaving.

Anne was leaving Greece, too. She was from England, I was heading for London. She had seen me around Matala, decided to accompany me.

I collected the drachma which were saved for me by my boss, Costa, the young, local godfather in Matala. He gave me an allowance each week, kept back a portion of my pay. I worked on various construction jobs he had, was hardened, tanned and strong when he paid me off.

He held back a bit for himself, just to make sure everyone knew who was the boss. If he hadn't saved some of my pay for me, we both knew I would have blown it all.

The ferry from Iraklion to Piraeus was boring and uneventful. Just as well. After living for six months in Matala, on the southern coast of Crete, never leaving, it was a slow emergence into the outside world.

One of the most embarrassing occasions in my life occurred just then. I had the crabs. I got them in Matala and was at the stage of exterminating them which required sexual abstinence. There was to be no carnal contact, not even snuggling, in case of infection of another and a rebirth of the cursed bugs. But I was ashamed. I was too embarrassed to tell Anne.

God knows what she thought.

Anne had lived in Matala long enough to know that I wasn't gay. She was attractive enough, the ex girlfriend of a guy who was the grandson of Robert Graves, the poet.

But I passed up perfect opportunities and situations which thrust us together. You don't get much closer together than when you hitchike together. I had recently been through hell, living in my makeshift tent in the campground, scratching at myself. I wouldn't have wished it on anyone. But I couldn't bring myself to tell her.

It was bad enough telling Costas and the boys in Matala. They all took a step away from me.

Costas wrinkled his nose when he asked why I didn't tell him sooner. Later, he admitted that when he got them, he separated himself from his family home and friends until he got rid of them.

After a few smog filled days in Athens during which we were treated as fair game, ripped off everywhere we turned, we concluded that the air fare to Britain was too costly. There was an election on in Greece, something catastrophic was happening in Northern Europe, living in Athens, even on our skimpy budget, was too expensive. Reaching London could be done, cheaper, by hitching most of the way.

Anne was fighting with her parents, proving her independence. She could easily get the required air fare home but refused to make the call, thereby signalling to her family that she was dependent upon them.

I thought she was crazy.

A guy seemed to meet us in Brindisi, when we landed in Italy. He appeared, smiling like a long lost brother, gave us pizza and a room for the night, ostensibly, for free. He finally demanded payment in sexual favours, from Anne, but too late. By the time he sneaked away from his wife, it was morning and we fled.

On the motorway, heading north, it was easy to see why veteran travellers advised always to hitch with a woman in Europe. Even eighteen wheelers with full loads stopped for women.

The first big rig which came by, skidded to a fishtailing halt, up the highway. The driver didn't care about the truck, the load or the other high speed traffic.

We had travelled most of the day when he caught me dozing, told me to climb into the bed behind us. Everything looked fine. I gratefully passed out in the bunk after Anne and I oohed and ahhed over the pictures of the driver's family.

I wasn't expecting to be awoken by Anne's kicks as she scrunched herself up against the passenger door and yelled at the driver. We were shocked that the friendly family man was so intent on groping Anne that he nearly ran the big Volvo off the road.

We got him to pull over and let us out.

The next driver who picked us up in a big rig on the freeway which runs up the spine of Italy, showed us his automatic revolver which he pulled from under his seat.

We were thinking furiously, Anne prodding me in the side, our eyes glued to the weapon as he casually handled the pistol while driving. He explained, near the turnoff to Milan, that every truck driver who stopped in Milan carried a weapon to defend against hijackers.

He smiled, checked out Anne's body openly, when he let us off at a truck stop. We clambered down from the cab, grateful for the lift, glad to be getting away from his aura of danger.

Anne and I finally separated in a train station in Switzerland. By this time we were barely speaking. I was irritated at her stubborness. She was frustrated at our slow progress.

I didn't have anything to prove to anyone so she seemed, to me, to be involved in a frivolous game. I had given up hope that she'd call home for money enough for two flights back to England. The Greek bread had hardened in our packs. We could barely afford coffee and chocolate bars.

The tension between us grew every hour.

We stopped, at night, in the little station where we got some sleep on benches, warm and dry When we awoke, we were greeted by backpackers with English accents who got along famously with Anne and onto whom she latched. She went their way and I went mine. We were glad to part.

I headed for Shaffhausen, on the German border. In Matala, some of the German visitors had given me addresses and phone numbers for places to stay and jobs. If I could get into Germany, it seemed worth checking out. My resolve to reach London didn't waver, but I took a detour. It seemed logical that I should see a little of Germany while I was so close. Some of the jobs were even on Canadian bases.

The Alps were truly breathtaking. Some of the rides were with young, Swiss natives who pointed out that the idyllic scenes in the postcard mountains contained, in reality, many poor people struggling to get by. The underside of Switzerland was obvious to them, never explained to the tourists.

When I arrived, I called the number I had in Shaffhausen, knocked on the door of the address I was given, but there was no response. I stayed around for two more days but never found anyone.

I couldn't find a youth hostel in Shaffhausen and I couldn't afford a room so I used the only shelter I could find, a public toilet, in a park. The place was clean. If I laid in a certain position I could manage a few hours of sleep in the glare of the all night lights.

I waited, for two days and nights, walking around, looking at windows full of displays of Swiss chocolate for the tourists, living in the public restroom, eating my loaf of bread with the last of the jam I had carried from Greece.

Finally, I couldn't wait any longer. I approached the border crossing between Switzerland and Germany. The early morning traffic was travelling slowly, I got a lift with a young businessman who lived in Shaffhausen, crossed the border, every day, for work, in Germany.

The German border guards ordered me out of the car, searched my pack, studied my passport, ordered me to take off my cowboy boots. They studiously examined the Greek sand which fell out, presumably for drugs, counted my little wad of American bills, rejected me.

I had to shoulder my pack and walk back across the border beside the line of cars going to Germany.

The Swiss guards shrugged and laughed when they saw me.

"Germans" they said with a gesture that was meant to explain that they were as baffled as I.

I consulted a map, took the rest of the day to hitch to Basel.

On the side of the highway, at an intersection, I talked to a hippie looking couple who were hitching in another direction. They said they had slept in a park last night, had awoken to find food and coffee in the grass beside their sleeping bags.

Through Basel I would get to France, then England. If I had stuck to my original plan, with good luck, I'd probably be there by now.

The day was ending, darkness approaching, the sky spit rain. I stood on the side of the freeway outside of Basel, watched the lights of the comfortable houses, wondered how many cities I'd stood outside of, how many hours I'd spent waiting for lifts on freeways.

Then Bernt stopped.

At first, I thought he was gay, picking up a hitchiker in the dark. But his simple reason for helping me out was that once, on a motorcycle trip around Germany, someone had helped him out. He asked only that I do the same for some other stranger when the opportunity presented itself.

Bernt took me home to his comfortable, modern apartment, let me use his shower and phone.

I called Canada to borrow a little money. It was sent by American Express. It meant nothing in Canada, the world to me.

Bernt and a friend wined and dined me. We ate and drank in the tavern which Hermann Hesse frequented while he wrote Steppenwolf. We ate Swiss rosti, drank wine, tried to remember which parts of the tavern Hesse described in his book. Perhaps from outside the window.

They took off for a weekend, left me with the house after Bernt showed me his copious wine cellar.

I used the Basel trams to get my money from the American express office, left Bernt a thank you note and hitched to France.

From Basel I was lucky to get a lift all the way to Strasbourg where I stood on the freeway with my thumb out until a funky looking, old, walk-in van pulled over and picked me up.

The driver was French, returning from Poland where he worked with Solidarity to press for democracy. The paintings and slogans which decorated the van were encouragement to Solidarity and its cause. He had installed a finely tuned, powerful engine in the old van. He laughed at the system the Poles were overthrowing as we sped toward Paris.

When he let me off at the suburban metro station, I consulted my address book and called Frank.

He had given me his number when he visited Matala, insisted that I call him if I ever got to Paris.

I spent the next few days in Frank's family's expensive apartment.

Frank, a handsome blond Frenchman, was an expert in judo. He had trained for most of his life, had awards, could truthfully say that it saved him once when he was attacked by a gang in a metro station. He was about to join the French army. Frank had lots of girlfriends.

We sped around Paris in someone's car, visited expensive restaurants and cafes. Of course, I started out nearly broke and that finished it. I thanked Frank and hitched to Calais.

One way of avoiding the fare from Calais to Dover and London was to get a lift with a trucker. I canvassed the truckers I saw waiting for the ferry. There were dozens of big rigs heading to London. Most of the drivers wouldn't risk picking up a hitchhiker because of the travelling insurance inspectors. I was looking as desperate as I felt.

Finally, a driver with an English accent told me to wait by the dock, then to get into his truck, quick, while he was loading. That way, he passed the custom inspections before picking me up.

Once we rolled onto the motorway, he checked the mirrors, installed me in the cab so that I couldn't be seen from outside. He told me of his life driving regularly all over Europe. He worked shifts which allowed him some time with his young family in the north of England. He let me off with a cheery "Good luck" at the southernmost tube station in London.

By the time I reached Rob's co-op flat in Finsbury Park, I was exhausted. I had been thoroughly shaken out of the dream I had lived beneath the Matala moon.

We sat around his kitchen, drinking tea, reading newspapers, one drizzly morning. That was when I found the article on the shortage of rig workers in Scotland.

kenagain.freeservers.com

# THE PIPER

My first offshore rig job was on the Piper Alpha. I didn't know it at the time but the Piper was one of the biggest, oldest, most profitable production platforms in the British sector of the North Sea. I emerged onto the helideck from my first chopper ride with the wide-eyed feeling you tried to hide on your first trip offshore.

I had time to dump my duffel bag in the cabin they assigned me, get some pairs of coveralls, a bag of gloves. It wasn't a normal crew change. I was replacing a guy who got hurt and medivacced off the night before. I started a twelve-hour shift with a crew of three other roustabouts and the crane driver, Kenny.

I was bunking in with Kenny for an unknown reason. Normally, the four roustabouts, alternating twelve hour shifts, shared cabins with their opposite numbers. Mine was a bottom bunk in a room of crane drivers. Kenny was the boss of the crane drivers. I was replacing a guy on his crew, so we slept and worked at the same time.

My first job, on my first shift as a roustabout, was dumping fifty-five gallon drums of radioactive shale into the sea. I watched the roughnecks shovel the shale into a drum on the drill floor. In addition to their usual coveralls, they wore outer suits which looked like rubber. It was supposed to be protection against the radioactivity in the rock that was coming out of the hole. Because of the work on the drill floor, the protective suits were shredded and torn, hanging off the roughnecks in strips. There was an engineer running up and down the catwalk with a crackling Geiger counter. Roughnecks, in the smoke room, joked about watching their appendages fall off.

The smoke room provided breaks in the twelve hour shifts, scenes of laughter, boredom and rage. When you were new, they tested you. They tried to scare you, probe you, disturb you, wind you up. Then they sat back, chuckled at your reaction. The Scots were masters at this. It seemed to be a racially imbedded talent. All done in good humour, anything for a laugh.

During one of those breaks, soaked in mud and oil from relieving the roughnecks, I listened to one the veterans talk. He looked around the steel room, at the walls.

"You could put your fist through the legs of this old piece of shit. If there's ever gonna be a disaster in the North Sea, it'll be on this old piece of shit"

I didn't think much about it at the time. I laughed like everyone else.

There were moments in the next years when I did think about it, though. His words came back to me on other rigs, as I was getting cozy in a bunk. Exhaustion, food, a hot shower, warm inside; outside, a gale blowing between the Shetlands and Norway. Nights like that, I remembered, had a shiver, as sleep descended. Was it just another trick to scare a green hand? The old guy who said it, didn't laugh.

By the time the crane brought the first drum down from the drill floor, I had been told what to do by the man I relieved. When the crane driver lowered the drum, I gave him a signal to stop at the right spot so I could tip it over the rail, while he held the weight.

As I tipped the first few drums of shale over the side, I was thinking about the wisdom of dumping radioactive rocks into the North Sea. Who would believe me onshore, who would care? There was no point in complaining. This was the job I'd tried so hard to get. What choice did I have? Pack my bags and wait for the next flight on the helideck?

So when the drums of radioactive shale descended from the sky, seawater pouring out of holes in the sides, I dumped the grey, flat pieces, hoping they wouldn't poison anything.

The Piper Alpha, like most platforms, had big cranes on opposite sides of the deck. The deck held all the pipe and equipment needed on the drill floor. Almost everything brought on board was moved by container. Supply ships filled the deck with steel containers which had to be stacked on top of each other, for lack of space.

The roustabouts, one with a radio on the same the frequency as the crane driver, landed the containers and pipe.

The crane driver moved back and forth between the cranes, depending upon the load, where he had to pick it up, where he had to land it.

A night shift, on deck, in a North Sea gale, wasn't a good time to discover that Kenny was near sighted. The remarks weren't made by the other roustabouts, as I suspected, to try to scare me. In the black and white shadows of the big, swaying lights, in the horizontal rain, it was an unwelcome revelation.

Kenny's cranes lifted tons of steel from the decks of bobbing sea going tugs, up over the sides of the platform, across containers of different heights. They said that it was his perspective which was bad. On those stormy nights, when it was hard to see and he was tired, the best tactics were to find the spot the container was supposed to go, do your best to signal him and get out of the way. You always looked around for an escape route, in case he didn't see you. Your greasy rain suit and slipping boots didn't help when you were being chased across the container tops by steel boxes, in high winds.

What could you do about a crane driver with bad eye sight? Everyone knew about it, but no one seemed to care. Kenny was Kenny. He was a fixture, no one had been killed or crushed yet.

During my time offshore with Kenny and the boys I did little except eat, sleep and shower when we weren't working. On occasion, I lay half asleep in my bunk, while Kenny did business with visitors from all parts of the rig.

I had long ago given up trying to sort out the dialects of the British Isles. Many of the thousands of offshore workers were from Northern England and Scotland. The money to be made on the rigs, for fishermen who were risking much more, for no guaranteed income, drew the coastal Scots like flies. Since they were sailors to begin with, they knew about ropes, knots, shackles, hard graft in the rottenest weather. It was understood that they would prefer to fish rather than this, but their fishery was in trouble, they had families. The oil business, like the British military, was happy to recruit there, because they knew the value of the workers.

The industrial cities of Britain all sent men to work offshore. There were men from the islands and from small farm villages. There were ex military men as well as merchant mariners driven off their decks by containers. When you mixed in some Aussies and Kiwis, you came close to Babylon when they all spoke fast, at once.

Many of Kenny's conversations took place while I was in the cabin but were unintelligible to me, though I heard them. The language was impossible to understand.

Kenny, was a partner with another crane driver in a pornographic video scam. He got videos for the rig. Probably he was selling them to individuals, as well.

I laid in my bunk, reading, when a conversation about videos took place. It was business talk with a group of guys, about a week after I arrived. By then, Kenny judged me to be safe to have around. He knew that I was only there till the end of the hitch, I'd probably never be back.

On this old rig, the crews were pretty well set. The company had a seniority list they'd use if the injured man didn't return.

As they left the cabin, one guy told me to keep my mouth shut by zipping his lip. I nodded. He left with a smile.

What was I going to say about it? I had enough problems surviving the twelve hour shifts. We were a hundred ninety kilometres northeast of Aberdeen in the North Sea. Like dumping the shale into the ocean, it seemed a necessary compromise. I did the job, kept my mouth shut, in return for good money and experience offshore.

The first step in working offshore was to get experience. It was the first thing they asked when you applied for a job. When you had worked offshore once, you were ahead of the game. There were piles of applications for the jobs on each company's desk. It was the classic catch - 22.

The Piper had two theatres. There was a regular theatre, with comfortable movie type seating, where they showed contemporary movies. They even had a guy outside the theatre with a request sheet on a clipboard. If you wanted to request a movie, they'd try to get it.

The other theatre, with the same interior, was strictly for porn. Kenny had a connection, through the supply ships, to Denmark, where they manufacture a lot of porn. He got every kind of porn.

I tried the porn theatre one night. I didn't like it. There were forty or fifty guys sitting together with their hands in the pockets of their accommodation coveralls, watching endless sex videos. Living for two weeks with two hundred men was bad enough. That just made it worse. I went to bed.

Kenny and his boys were busy. To supplement the porn enterprise, they were stealing from the containers. Word was, there were cartons of cigarettes and booze stashed all over the rig.

As the roustabouts and crane driver landed containers on the deck, they tried to place the ones for the galley as close to the accommodation as possible. There was even a small deck outside the back door of the galley where some containers could be landed. That was supposed to be the end of the roustabouts' and crane drivers' dealings with those containers.

Certain sealed containers were locked by Customs and Excise. They were opened only by the galley boss, emptied into the galley by the stewards. There was no drinking allowed offshore but at Christmas each man was allowed one beer and a cigar. It varied from company to company, rig to rig. Who knew what the bosses got shipped in? Teetotallers became very popular around Christmas time, offshore.

The Christmas I was there, Kenny's gang, the other crane driver and some roustabouts, managed to land the special containers at night, break into them, steal the booze and cigarettes. They had a system of ripping off the containers, stashing the goods, blaming it on the cooks and stewards.

I didn't know anything about it at the time. It could have happened on a shift when I was working. There were jobs all over the rig to which Kenny could have assigned me to get me out of the way.

There were no fire drills when I was there. No one knew if the evacuation procedures would work. The platform kept pumping oil, one hundred twenty thousand barrels a day, everybody made good money, the company was happy. The British government collected five hundred million pounds a year, in revenues, from the Piper Alpha.

When my hitch ended on the Piper, I took the taxi from the heliport to the warm Aberdeen pubs to have a drink with the boys, say our goodbyes.

I met one of them, a few years later, in Aberdeen. He had left the Piper, was working on another rig, like myself. He told me that the police had finally raided the platform, searched lockers and the rest of the rig from top to bottom, found all kinds of contraband including a working homebrew still. Some guys lost their jobs, some were charged.

I assumed Kenny would have been fired. But, sometimes, guys like him never get caught. Even if he did get run off of the Piper, it might have saved his life.

A few years later, I was in Ottawa, trying to deal with my mother's Alzheimer's. It was a major change after what I'd been doing for the past twenty years. I picked up the paper outside of the apartment we shared. The headline read, '153 missing in rig disaster'.

Two hundred, twenty-seven men, including construction workers, were working the night shift or in their bunks. The ones inside the accommodation, near the centre of the platform, were killed immediately by the explosion and shaft of fire, which sucked up all the oxygen. The ones working their shift up on deck, were lucky. One survivor said, "It was a case of over the side or die there". They jumped seventy metres into the heaving, black North Sea. Some were rescued. The emergency procedures didn't work, nor did the lifeboats. As for the spark which ignited the leaking gas, a welder's torch was suggested, but it could just as easily have been a guy having a smoke where he wasn't supposed to.

Some of the men I worked with were on the Piper, that night. There were stewards, cooks, office workers, even a few roustabouts, who were lifers on the platforms. They said goodbye to families and friends, went off to work for two weeks at a time, for their whole working lives. Two weeks off every month beat a nine to five. The money was good, there were no expenses at work except tobacco and toothpaste. Your bed was made, your laundry done, there was good food, all you could eat every day, prepared by professional chefs. Many guys got addicted to it. They couldn't work any other way. The longer you did it, the harder it was to leave. Those crews packed their bags for that two week trip in the summer of 1988, said their goodbyes, never came back.

The final count was 164 dead.

laurahird.com

# THE NORTH CORMORANT

It was the fall when I first flew out to the North Cormorant. It was one of those flights which you caught in Aberdeen, took a fixed wing to the Shetlands, did the rest of it by helicopter. The platform was halfway between Norway and the Shetland Islands in the North Sea. I had no idea that I would spend six of my next twelve months there.

There weren't many who survived falling into the North Sea. There was one on the opposite shift from us. He was a roustabout named Neil from Barra, an ex fisherman. The circling survival ship got him, two miles from the rig, in a gale, at night. You might say he was very lucky. He was supposed to be dead after ten minutes from hypothermia, but when they picked him up after twenty minutes, all he said was, "Gee, thought I was a goner".

The companies screwed Neil around for years after that. I used to see him in the Aberdeen pubs. He hit his leg on the way down that night, wasn't fit to work. He had been walking along, hit a spot where someone had left the grilling off the deck. The companies didn't want to pay for his time off.

There were stories that some companies had tried to charge guys for their issued rig wear when they were in a chopper crash at Sumburgh, in the Shetlands.

Graham was a roustabout on my shift. The roustabouts could work their way up to the drill floor to work as a roughneck or they could work their way up to boss of the roustabouts on the deck. Some got their crane operator papers. They were guaranteed jobs as bosses of the roustabout crews.

Graham wanted to work as a roughneck on the drill floor. He came up from the deck, relieved all the roughnecks to get the experience. He took the taunts, jokes and insults on the drill floor until his bafflement subsided. He learned the names of the tools and the procedures we used.

He was a young guy who lived in Oban. We became friends, planned the next trip for a visit to the west coast. We piled into a borrowed Volkswagen bug, drove to Oban.

Oban was a tourist centre in the nineteenth century for the English and rich Scottish. It still welcomed tourists and was the home of a fishing fleet which specialized in shrimp.

Graham's friends were shrimp fishermen who arrived onshore soon after we landed there. We drank with them for days. They were doing a more dangerous job than we were. They went out in the treacherous waters, for ten days at a time, in small boats, with no safety. They made good money, but they were thankful to return in one piece.

Chingy, Graham's best friend, was up on charges of assault. One night, in Ullapool, the Russian fleet sat offshore. Chingy heard that one of the local girls had been attacked by a Russian trawler man. After enough drinks in the bar, Chingy found a Russian, kicked his eye out. It was more of a local tradition than an international incident. Chingy would be prosecuted some time in the future. He said he could handle jail time.

The fishermen gave me a running commentary on the females as we sat in one of the bars on the local circuit. They pointed out the ones they had "rode".

Graham's phone calls were taken at the Oban Hotel. His own flat was bought and paid for by money he made poaching from a fish farm. He said his ancestors had been hunted by the English and often dodged "mantraps". I had no idea what he was talking about until I read the books Brodie lent me.

Brodie was big Bob. He was, like Graham, a Highlander. He had a mechanical engineering degree, but came to learn the hard way. He was earmarked by the drilling company to follow the usual sequence of roughneck, derrick hand, assistant driller and driller. From there he could become a toolpusher and a company man. At that level, the money and perks were very good. It was a long, hard road, but he wanted to do it honestly.

The problem in the oil patch is that a university education only equips a person with the theoretical side of drilling. The old veterans with little education and a lot of experience were being replaced. Their wisdom was being lost.

Brodie and I pulled slips, threw tongs, took our turns riding up and down on the riding belt in all kinds of weather. He lent me The Highland Clearances and Culloden by John Prebble upon hearing that my father's mother was a Ross.

I found out, talking on the drill floor or reading the books, that the Scottish suffered as much as the Irish in the nineteenth century. I learned that a man trap was exactly that, a trap for a man. They were a kind of leg hold trap designed by the English and rich Scottish landlords to kill or cripple poachers like Graham's ancestors.

Brodie took a trip, by train, across Canada in the middle of our time on the North Cormorant. He visited my mother in Ottawa, stayed at the youth hostel which used to be the jail. All he had to say to me, when I saw him again, was that I was a "bad bastard" My mom figured I went wrong right after I started to play rugby.

Davey was the derrick man I shared a bathroom with. He lived on the island of Mull, tied his own lobster traps. He said his kids used to call him "the lodger" because they saw so little of him. His wife ran a B&B in their house.

Construction workers, guys from way across the rig, nothing to do with us, used to show up at the cabin just to see Davey's forearms. At first, to me, he looked like Popeye. His forearms were extra well developed.

When it was my turn to "go up the stick", Davey was my teacher. I had done a little in Alberta. I was scared up there, ninety feet above the steel floor. Davey came out on the monkey board to help me as I struggled to haul in the ninety foot collars and lengths of drill pipe.

I had the security of the thick, leather belt, tied to the derrick by four ropes, the belly buster: he had nothing. My leg trembled uncontrollably when I waited for the block, dog bones and elevators to rise to my level.

I was concerned for Davey's safety because he was always laughing so hard. He would do a Groucho Marx imitation of me in the smoke room later, illustrating to the boys how I looked handling pipe on the monkey board. His rear end stuck out, he put a hand like Groucho's out, flicking ash off a cigar.

Davey's other duties consisted of keeping the pumps running and the drilling mud to a certain viscosity. He, and no one above him, ever missed the chance to tell you how great it was not to have to put up with the abuse which the roughnecks did. They crowed and preened about it until the guy above them rubbed their noses in it.

Davey was Bob, the rig electrician's, brother in law. They would see me covered in diesel based drill mud or soaked from the weather or paint. Bob would say, "Stevie yer a midden". He and Davey would laugh as Davey did his silent Groucho impression for Bob.

Alan was the assistant driller, from Dundee. He was everything you wouldn't expect in a rig worker. He was short, had a pot belly and a partially bald head. He would tell me I had no manners when I looked at the paper over his shoulder in the change room before the shift started, crack the filthiest joke, in the same breath. He was a little crazy. You came to see, after a while, that he was given a wide berth by his bosses on the rig.

Alan had the easiest job on the drill crew. He bossed everyone around, except the driller and the toolpusher. He did little, himself. He was at the point where his knowledge became more important than his physical effort. He loved it.

Our crew sometimes stopped work because we were laughing so hard at the antics Alan got up to on the drill floor. He could imitate Rick, a Canadian toolpusher who relieved sometimes, in such a hilarious parody of confusion, that everyone would be doubled over laughing.

When there was slow drilling or some other delay, Alan wandered around talking to everyone. The motto on the North Sea rigs is, "If it moves, grease it, if it don't, paint it", so Alan often found the roughnecks scrubbing, painting or greasing. He would give a few unnecessary orders, just hang around. He could tell you about the gangs of Dundee settling their differences with shotguns and then sing the lyrics of every one of Paul Macartney's songs. Alan threw a couple of the bigger roughnecks around the change room when they challenged his authority.

Alan was the only guy on the crew who didn't take the time to call or visit me in the Aberdeen Hospital. I almost lost my eye, scrubbing down the drill floor walls, had to be medivacced to Aberdeen.

The Kiwis, whose couch I was using at the time, snuck a couple of pints into my room. Most of the North Cormorant crew visited. Alan, I was told, shook his head,

"I never go"

It wasn't because we weren't friends.

On one of the visits by the Kiwis, we asked a nurse what all the kids were doing outside the window. She explained that, for some reason, psylopscybin mushrooms grew in great profusion on the lawns."We 're always chasing them away" she said.

Ronnie was the boss of the roustabout crew. He was from the old part of Aberdeen. He could translate for Bill from Buckie, up the coast. The man sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles, when he spoke. It took me the whole trip, when I returned, to figure out what he meant when he asked, "How's yer een, Stevie?" I later found that "een" meant eyes. He was asking about my eyes.

Ronnie worked on deck directing the cranes, foreman of the roustabout crew. He began relieving the roughnecks, eventually worked his way up the derrick. We met when he took me up to the blocks on a riding belt, him on the air tugger which controls it.

I had still not gotten used to the damn riding belts. There was no such thing in Alberta. Roughnecks weren't expected to go up every time a derrick man threw a pipe across the derrick. In the North Sea it was standard practice.

Ronnie was just getting used to the drill floor. Whether it was because he had a plan with Alan and Chris, the driller, or because he wasn't used to it, he gave a fast jerk on the air tugger handle, sent me thirty feet upward by the belt.

I wore the belt around my waist, under my rump. It was attached to a quarter inch cable which ran through a shiv at the top of the hundred and twenty foot derrick, back to the drum.

The worst thing you can do in a riding belt, is to hang onto anything. It still keeps going up. Nothing slows its progress. You turn upside down, with your hands grasping something, while your bottom half rises above you.

Ronnie caught me by surprise. I stood adjusting the belt and the grease gun. I was ascending to grease the blocks. I lost my hard hat, panicked when I shot up in the air. Ronnie mouthed an apology as he lowered me to get my hat. Later, he said he hoped we weren't going to have words over the incident. I looked at his big arms and open smile, laughed it off.

Chris was the driller from Newcastle Upon Tyne who was often bent over the brake handle, helpless with laughter at the jokes on the drill floor. On a trip onshore, a dentist told him he was getting "a little long in the tooth" when he looked at his receding gums. Chris tried to cut down on the snuff and chewing tobacco after that, but we were all addicted to it, he never quit.

Chris had worked his way up the ladder. He could do any of our jobs, if he had to. He wasn't as cruel as other drillers and toolpushers. They often popped the pipe, full of mud, on the roughnecks or made green hands crawl into filthy spots to clean, during down time.

In Alberta, there are certifiable sadists running brakes, working as drillers. There are (unshared) bottles of whiskey awarded to drillers whose crews make hole the fastest. To these drillers, men are expendable.

The last I heard of Chris was in a pub. Somebody said that he went home unexpectedly, caught his girlfriend in bed with his best friend. The guys on the North Cormorant never saw him again. They tried Chinook flights from Aberdeen to the North Cormorant and the surrounding rigs, but the helicopters were too big, the headwinds too strong. The smaller, one bladed choppers, which they went back to, were not staffed by the smiling British Airlines hostesses which the Chinooks had. They were less safe and comfortable, but faster.

In a wet phone booth in London with a Scottish girl and tickets to Paris, I made the phone call which ended my year on the North Cormorant.

laurahird.com

# EPIPHANY IN AMSTERDAM

I was in Amsterdam because if you work on a rig in Dutch waters for an agency not based in Holland, you don't pay any taxes. It worked out ok for me because it meant I could do a roustabout job for the same wages as for roughnecking in the UK. Roustabouting is easier than roughnecking. I got a job through the agency, caught a flight to Amsterdam, was at the heliport at the right time. I got to the rig, worked there a few trips before my knee went.

It was something I just knew. Sometimes you get pains in your legs during twelve hour shifts on steel decks. Sometimes you get them and accept them as part of the job. But this was different. This one wouldn't go away.

I got through the shift, but when I woke up for the next one, my knee had swollen up to twice its normal size. It looked like a bag of fluid. I went to the medic, confirmed that it was a real injury, made arrangements to catch the next flight off.

I said goodbye to the boys, was helicoptered on a regular flight to Amsterdam. I saw the skaters on the canals from the chopper window. Ironic when you come from Ottawa and the mother of all skating canals and they haven't had a cold enough winter in Amsterdam for years to enable skating on their canals. And I couldn't skate because of my knee.

There had been enough cold, windswept shifts, big pieces of steel swinging my way on that job. It was time for a break. What better place to do it than in Amsterdam, on an oil company's tab?

I got in touch with the proper doctor who was a chiropractor and physiotherapist. I had to go to him once a week, then to an orthopaedic surgeon.

I got a room on Huiderkoperstraat near Rembrandtplein. There was a sink, enough room for a bed and a chair. It was fine. I lived in that closet for months, drank large amounts of Courvoisier and beer. The smoke was legal.

I bought an electric guitar, a small amp, some earphones. I blew up the cheap earphones the same day.

It was a lonely time of freedom. I could lay in bed with my radio and guitar, read all the second hand books I wanted. I could make the rounds of the drinking bars or the stoner cafes or just wander around streets which were busy before North America was invaded by white men. I only had to show up at the doctor's, once a week. I bandaged my knee in an elastic to walk around.

The red light district got old very fast. There were some bars there that stayed open around the clock, places with good, cheap, live music, but the streets themselves were depressing. It all made sense, having the prostitution and soft drugs legalized, but it was commodifying some things which were sacred, in a way. The authorities could keep an eye on it, control it a little. It was so sensible that it was impossible to imagine the whole system moved to Ontario.

The red light district was a nice place to visit when there was a special band or special dope or to play pool at the end of a drunk. There were so many blonde girls driving bicycles around Amsterdam that it was difficult to get enthusiastic about walking along canals after dark, seeing the groups of drunken men shopping in the windows. Some of the girls even had a rear view mirror reflecting their images out to the street when their windows faced the wrong way.

I spent many hours, many days on that bed in that room near Rembrandsplein. The BBC World Service at night reminded me of England and Scotland. I thought of my old friends, wondered where they were. I thought of my recent months in Crete.

There was an old theatre where I saw an African band. At the bar, a government approved house dealer worked out of a window on the second floor instead of coming around to tables. You could stand in the balcony, look down on the stage, drink beer and roll joints.

The African guy had fifteen people in the band, not counting the chorus line of white girls. He, himself, played a big, gourd stringed instrument. He rocked, played the blues. I saw Eric Burdon there. He admitted to the audience that Amsterdam "freaked him out". He yelled at a guy who was wired, climbing his speaker columns,

"Hey man, do I show up on your work site and take bread out of your mouth?" The crowd was behind him, his band cooked, a good bass player.

With a permanent address, I was able to get some mail from home. In my little room on Huiderkoppestraat, I received the news of my uncle Earl's death. He was "the sheriff" to us as kids, retired to Sand Bay from Northern Electric in Montreal. He was the last of the Wheeler boys, the four brothers. Now, he was gone.

In a few months, my leg was better, the doctors couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't go back to work. I played my guitar, drank, smoked and listened to BBC World Service.

One night, I was drawn into a bar by the music. It turned out to be Salsa, but at that time, I had no idea what it was. I knew it had some Caribbean influences, but the centre of it seemed to be Spanish. It was an occasion which all the expats from the Caribbean celebrated. I drank my beer, stood at the bar, watched the band. A black guy, older, danced in the crowd near the band. He was surrounded by beautiful women, Dutch and otherwise, all night. In the men's room I asked him what it was he was doing on the dance floor.

"It's Salsa, man. I'm not from there, but I lived in Cuba for years. I love it, man"

It was a good enough explanation for me. He knew what I meant. I remembered the way he shook so freely, like a matador, took it all so seriously and enjoyed it.

Above the sink in my room was a mirror. I shared the toilet and shower with some other people on that floor, took my clothes with me to wash in the shower. I stared into the mirror for a day before I decided to shave off my moustache. After that, I looked at myself without a moustache many times. I felt female when I saw the white slash of flesh above my mouth which had been covered for years. I felt naked.

It was time to go back to the rig. I owed the doctors, I owed some rent on my room and I owed Fritz, a Dutchman who lived in England, a mechanic on the rig. I packed my bag, stowed my guitar and amp in my room, took a bus to Schipol Airport. The chopper was leaving for the rig in another hour.

I watched people heading for their destinations in the sunny, cold morning. Holiday vacations, business trips, young, old, they were all going somewhere. I sat in a cafe in the main terminal, ate a Danish, drank coffee. There was no way I was going back to the rig. I changed that to include the North Sea on the bus back into Amsterdam.

Amsterdam was even better in the next few days. I could only afford a ticket to London so I spent what I had left over in Amsterdam. I bought a Gibson in a second hand music store for the price of my amp and guitar, squandered what little money I had left. London was in the near future but my time in Europe was up. I knew I was going home.

# CAMPING IN ENGLAND

I was driving around England on sulphate. Everyone was doing it. Housewives, carpenters, people who worked in the London Zoo and the parks. Everyone I knew. Everyone was into it. My other major concern was the horses. Yes, I was hooked on the ponies.

One Scottish woman made a pointed remark about her friend, "the bookie's boy" when she obliquely criticized my obvious weakness for gambling on the races.

To me there was nothing like going down to Ladbroke's on Saturday mornings and placing a few small wagers on combinations and parlays then walking home to eat breakfast while watching the races on tv. Leisurely gratification. Not many winners but many hangovers were nursed that way. I know it happened in England and Scotland and I suspect it's still the same in Ireland and Wales as well.

To be able to afford the life I was living on my two weeks onshore and in preparation for the upcoming two weeks offshore on a drilling rig, I started sleeping in the white Ford van I bought. Not a big van, a small one. An Escort I think.

With Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and Bruce Cockburn's Lovers in a Dangerous Time on my tape deck, I drove around to different races.

The sound of horse's hooves on cobblestones as I parked and the sight of the sleek hind end of a thoroughbred disappearing around a corner as I ducked into a pub in Newbury or Cheltenham stuck in my memory. It didn't help much with the feelings of disappointment as I tore up the last of my losing bets at the end of another day, but as I followed the stoic bookies into the parking lot while they carried their signs and platforms and bulging briefcases. I realized that I was certainly doing something different. If I was at home I wouldn't be doing this.

Sulphate was called "the poor man's coke". It had a energetic buzz and, like coke, it enabled you to drink all night without getting sleepy.

It was probably crushed up speed of some kind. It came in aluminum paper and everyone was doing it.

Two guys in Aberdeen, a Dutchman and a South African, quit their roustabout jobs on a drilling rig because they could make much more money selling sulphate to the welders who worked long shifts for big money on pipe laying barges. They had a connection in Amsterdam and captive customers.

For North Americans in England learning how to drive on the opposite side of the road than the side you're used to is easy once you've negotiated the first stop sign and then the first stoplight then the first roundabout. After that it's easy. Once you begin to drive in England or Scotland, you are convinced that Monty Python is alive and well and exists every day, all around you and it is like a weight lifted off your shoulders. There is less pressure to be perfect.

It was probably a race which drew me to the south of England but it could have been an escape from the urge to spend uncontrollably when I got to London from Aberdeen and the North Sea.

Robert, a Swedish derrickman I had worked with, lived somewhere in the south. He wasn't home when I called so I gave the tip I had for him to the woman I talked to and he later got a job out of it.

I was savvy enough by this time to find a campground near the Newton Abbott track and set up my one man tent before I found the nearest pub.

I had entered Scrumpyland.

That part of the country was known for its Scrumpy Cider and I vaguely remember one pub which had seatbelts on the barstools for the customers' safety.

Naturally I overindulged in the Scrumpy and when I was too drunk to care, asked a few of the shadier looking characters if they knew where I could score some sulphate even though I still had some. I was lucky: everyone ignored me.

I later heard the saying "Beer on cider makes a good rider but cider on beer will make you feel queer'. It's true. Queer meaning ill.

Somehow I drove to the campsite when the pub closed and prepared to read Aleister Crowley's Moonchild by the light of several candles in my pup tent.

I woke up with a headache and burped up the smell of Scrumpy cider. It had defeated the sulphate in my system and knocked me out.

When I opened my eyes I was looking at the sky. Then the bent aluminum tent pole appeared. I looked upward down by my feet. Another tent pole arching over me. The skeleton of my tent.

I sat up when I realized that only charred pieces of fabric hung from the poles. The candles were pools of wax. Somehow the candles had lighted the tent around me, burnt it up and died out as I slept. There was not even a burn on my sleeping bag.

I staggered to the Escort and drove away silently in the dawn.

I drove North, glad of a hangover for a change. If I didn't see it for myself, I wouldn't believe it. This wasn't what camping in England was supposed to be like.

Forget the races. I knew a sign when I saw one.

The image of the tent skeleton and the perfect pile of ashes circling the spot where my sleeping bag had lain kept recurring as Dancing in the Dark and If I Had A Rocket Launcher played on my tape deck and I headed for Scotland.

litupmagazine.wordpress.com

# SPINNERS

He felt like a father figure when they talked on the morning bus from Kanata. They usually got a seat together because they were first at the park n ride which took them downtown, he to the headquarters of National Defence, she to the waitress job at the hotel.

They were actually close in age, he, the married father of two, almost bursting his uniform buttons from the desk job, she, the single mother of three, a kind of speed freak, the kind of person who couldn't gain a pound if she tried. Lady Madonna.

His was an understated importance in the military. He got used to deflecting direct questions about it. The odd time it required a quiet "secret" to a persistent questioner, but mostly "bureaucratic stuff" or "paperwork" covered it.

She diplomatically changed the subject when she felt they had entered forbidden territory in their morning conversations. Her son, Chris, was the usual topic of conversation anyway. He had just joined the army. The other kids were still in school and she was glad to see Chris do something. The dead end jobs and bleak prospects were too much. Even if it seemed crazy once, now it made more sense for him to join the army.

He highly recommended it though he was privately glad that Danny, his eldest son, had avoided the army and gone on to play football for the university.

She felt better when he praised the discipline and character the military instilled in young men. And she did see a difference in Chris when he came home on his first leave. In fact, he looked better than he had in years. She still couldn't imagine anyone getting him up at 5 AM never mind all the other stuff they made them do.

Some mornings, especially in winter when the outside world was still dark, they lapsed into long silences, each contemplating the day ahead as the bus carried them into the city. When spring turned to summer, the sun rose every morning over the fields on either side of the six lane highway and they chatted about Chris's latest adventure in the army.

One day that summer he had endured a hard shift at his computer, fielding access to information requests, filling in for annual vacations being taken, when she saw him on the same express bus going home to Kanata. They stood all the way, hanging on, the bus packed with people.

She told him that Chris's unit was going to Afghanistan next month. In herself, she wasn't sure about Chris's gung ho attitude and she definitely didn't trust the government mouthpieces. The more they praised it, the less confidence she had. But Chris said when you sign up, that's it, no more choice, you have to do what you're told. So he was going.

She allowed herself a little touch of pride when she told him, grateful to see that he was impressed.

He made a mental note to see which units were about to be rotated to Afghanistan as he walked across the lobby of DND. Captain Rogers, that little bastard from RMC. will be there this afternoon. Everyone will think the superior officer is monitoring his new crew but the jumped up little bastard will really be there to learn something. He knew nothing about public relations and the information wars. And they had put him in command of the whole bunch of them, the information warriors. Not a clue, hadn't ever worked behind the scenes where the real fights were fought. Someone had enough drag to promote him fresh out of university, young and confident, but lacking the one thing necessary in this business, experience. You had to know the law to a point, but it was mostly experience. Almost a gut instinct. What the public will swallow, what it won't. What to hide and what to offer. Only learned by experience.

He could see the little bastard at the back of the room, watching while he led the classroom full of future intelligence officers through the basics of the trade. It was policy now to immerse the new ones in as much of the machinery as possible before they were sent out into the world.

"Embedded reporters are no problem" he crossed out the words on the blackboard.

"A one way ticket home will not be questioned by headquarters if it is necessary. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, they get out there and go a little crazy. Not sure if it's too much of that Afghani hash or what" It brought the usual chuckle.

"Anyway, 'operational security' is a good enough reason if they get out of line. If we see bad news here, news that hasn't been approved, they'll be on their way home and somebody over there will be in deep shit"

He enjoyed using the word because it always brought a further chuckle from his audience. It also drew a silent, disapproving frown from the little bastard at the back.

He was good at what he did so he was given free reign in these sessions with intelligence officers, diplomats and spin doctors of the future. The younger people related to his intelligent but homey style. They loved his forays into irreverence.

"This" he held the paper up between two fingers, at arm's length, with a distasteful expression "is an access to information request form. There is a standing order, unspoken and unwritten, of course, that the first one gets shitcanned. Maybe even the second one. If they're persistent and keep after the information, there are a whole bunch of lawyers who you'll probably meet later, who'll take over. They have lots of ways to delay it. But if they're that persistent, hey, my personal advice to you is, cover your ass first. Get your commanding officer or somebody above you to contact the lawyers. Believe me, when they're really persistent, really determined, it's best to get away from it"

An appreciative grunt came from the audience as if they'd suspected that all along. The little bastard's frown deepened at the back. He got up and slipped out.

She sat with him on the express downtown on the Friday before Labour Day. They chatted mostly about her job, some of the crazy tourists she saw, how glad she was that the busy season was almost over, the restaurant was always so hectic. She had to work through the weekend. The busiest time, the most tips. The tips paid for the sitter and more.

He admired her pluckiness and inexhaustible energy. He had Billy to register in his hockey league, his wife had Becky. He also had the shopping to do and the lawn to cut. And maybe a little time for some beer and CFL football.

They said goodbye when he stood up so she could get out on Laurier Ave, one stop before his.

He awoke with adrenalin coursing through him, his heart beating fast. The phone.

His wife interrupted her snoring with a complaining grunt. He picked up the receiver.

"Hello"

"Deaver?"

"Yes, who's this?"

"It's Briggs, Deaver"

General Briggs. What the hell did he want?

"Sorry to wake you, Deaver, but we've got a problem"

"No, no, it's okay, sir. What problem?"

"There's been some soldiers killed and wounded in Kandahar. We don't have all the details but it's bad. We need someone senior in the office. Now. Tonight"

A pause.

"The press has some of the story, Deaver. They don't have all of it and we need time"

"Ok, sir. I'll go down in my car. It'll take me about an hour"

"Good man, Deaver. Everyone's on vacation. We can't have the press talking to that crew that's there now. They're all recruits or temps. Call me at home when you're there. You might have to write a press release but use operational security as much as you like. Talk to you soon"

"What about Captain Rogers, sir?"

"I've already talked to him. I know you guys were pissed off that he got made up to your commanding officer right after graduation. He'll stay out of your hair. I made it clear that you'll be in charge for this crisis. We'll probably have to give details by Tuesday, after we tell the families. You know what to do. Don't give em a thing till you hear from me. I've got to go, Deaver, call me"

He showed his id to the soldier at the entrance to the underground parking where a burly sergeant with a sidearm met him. Another soldier parked his car and he was escorted by the sergeant up to the ninth floor office. If the man had heard anything, he showed no emotion, said nothing.

Mayotte, Ryan and Dupuis, three raw recruits who were manning the office for the long weekend, looked up as he walked in. He wasn't in uniform and they didn't have their hats on but they stood up as he entered.

"As you were, gentlemen,"

They sat down and watched him as he turned on the screen on his desk and read.

When he twirled around he spoke directly to Dupuis in a low, steady voice,

"I want the numbers on how many allied forces have been killed by the American Air Force in Afghanistan. Injured too, if you can get it."

Dupuis looked up from writing on a pad. His stubble cut was growing in. He spoke with earnest young eyes,

"It's not the kind of information the US military is likely to give up, sir"

His mind was racing as he called General Briggs.

"No, you probably won't get anything out of them, try NATO, try the armies, try the governments, see what you can find. We may not need it right now, but I want it, in case"

"Briggs"

"Hello sir, I'm here. It looks bad. Two killed, a couple seriously wounded and some walking wounded. They'll be out of commission for a while. The report says friendly fire"

"Shit. Americans?"

"It looks like it, sir"

"What the hell are they doing? Something's wrong there. This is ridiculous"

"Some good news though, sir, no reporters"

"Good, that's a relief. There are some press reports but they're vague. Ok, Deaver, I'll be in touch. You know what to do. I'll get back to you when I hear how they want to handle this. Good luck"

"Thanks, bye sir"

He turned to address the others.

"Ok. We've got a few hours. Then the phones are going to start ringing. It'll be the media. I'm going to write down five talking points. Make a copy and as you answer the calls, stick strictly to the script"

Mayotte and Ryan watched him with expressions like Danny's, wide eyed, almost innocent, respectful. They were Danny's age or younger, Ryan still with a bad case of acne.

He wrote out the points he wanted them to follow when dealing with the media...basically, tell them nothing. He gave them a lecture on the importance of shitcanning the first access to information requests about this incident and told them to pass it on to whoever relieved them. Who knew how long this would go on? The first few days of vagueness and saying nothing were necessary in order to give them time. It looked bad but maybe it could be massaged, manipulated, fed to the public slowly so it didn't look so bad.

He spent the rest of the night answering nervous phone calls from General Briggs and drafting a press release which showed the military was on top of the situation.

When the day shift, such as it was, arrived, called in from cottages and parties celebrating the end of summer, he ate breakfast alone in the food court across in the Rideau Centre and called home to rearrange his schedule. His wife was angry but she would cope. He might be home in the afternoon.

He and his counterpart, Captain Shields, were constantly busy talking to officers who called or showed up when they heard. Their computer reports didn't really communicate the tragedy like talking to another person did. Especially someone like him, someone right in the heart of the crisis.

Finally, after innumerable conversations which he couldn't avoid and two meetings with the staff at which he emphasized the importance of secrecy, General Briggs ordered him to go home, get a shit, shower and shave, and return to the office, in uniform, for however long it took. So far there were no big problems but a situation like this could turn volatile at any time.

He resigned himself to a lost weekend as he pulled out of the parking garage and adjusted the radio.

When he stopped for the light at Laurier and Elgin, there she was. She was looking straight at him from the bus stop.

He pulled over when he was through the light and waited until she ran to the car and jumped into the passenger seat.

She was surprised to see him downtown on a weekend but glad for the lift. The shift had been exhausting and she was ready for a rest. She chatted on as they approached the Queensway, quieted down while he negotiated the ramp and speeding traffic.

When they were safely traveling in the middle lane, she told him that she had just gotten an email from Chris, that he had been made a corporal.

"Corporal Chris Defalco" she said with a laugh.

"Defalco? That's not your name. Isn't it Mackenzie?" he said with s glance at her. He could feel it burn through his breast pocket. His hand involuntarily rubbed it. He felt sick.

She stared at the line of cars ahead, said that Chris had kept his father's name and that she had gone back to her own. She looked over at him.

"Your eye. Something in it?" she watched the tear run down his face.

"Yeah, yeah" he reached blindly for a tissue below the dash.

She handed him a tissue.

He wiped his eye.

"Something blew in the window..." he rolled up his window a few inches. They drove in silence as the Queensway climbed the hill to the Kanata park n ride.

"Thanks for the lift, Captain Deaver, see you Tuesday morning" she shut the door and walked to her car.

"See you Mrs Mackenzie"

He pretended to look into his eye in the mirror as her car passed behind him. They waved goodbye.

He turned the key. The car stopped, the radio played.

Lady Madonna.

He fished the list out of his breast pocket, unfolded it slowly.

At the bottom. Names of the dead.

Corporal Chris Defalco.

He leaned his forehead on the steering wheel and wept.

unpublished

# THE HOCKEY GAME

It started up around Fort Coulonge. We were ice fishing down past Quyon, when it got to us. It was a heated affair by then. Somehow, the boys in Portage du Fort had trained a moose to wear a bridle. He liked the hay and oats that the Walkers fed their horse, wanted some too.

There was Big Herbie Walker and his brother, Silas. They were thrown out of the logging camps for drinking and fighting enough times, nobody would hire them. They tried their hands at farming, but it was too hard, so they did odd jobs around town. When they weren't working, they spent half their time in the Campbell's Bay lockup, the other half, drunk.

The Walkers acquired a whole sled full of hockey sticks, probably stole them, said they were payment of a debt. They used the horse balls produced by Ned, their old sleigh pulling nag, as pucks. They tied the moose, named Gerald, to the rear of the sled, started a game.

It might have been the wind that pushed them downriver, maybe they just yearned for freedom, we'll never know.

There were some farmers who weren't logging and some ne'er do wells, who could skate, from Sand Bay, who joined the game where the river widened there.

Baad Fred, from Shawville, happened to be hauling ice from the river when he saw them. It was said that he had an unnatural affinity for sheep. He always wore rubber boots.
Whenever Baad Fred entered a bar or a pool hall, the imitations of bleating of sheep began. He never noticed, never caught on.

It could just be a rural legend. The boys from Quyon would believe it of a Shawville native and vice versa, but that was just because they didn't like each other.

Fred became the number one goalie for the team going downriver. When the wind was against him, he'd play goal for the team going upriver, but moving backwards.

They reached us the first night. The score had long been forgotten, initial fights were over, the group of them seemed content to skate down the river, some forward, some backward, passing jugs as they went. The boys were playing on teams which nobody could identify except the players.

Silas Walker drove the sled, Big Herbie played defence. Gerald walked behind.

They had Billy Aye on the right wing. Billy's nickname was "Swoop'' because of his patented style, bearing down on goal. If you hit his stick with the horse ball at exactly the right time, he was sure to score. If you didn't, he still swooped, made an impressive display, but never scored.

One night, soon after we joined the game, Billy swooped, missed, disappeared. No one stopped to see where he went. It wasn't till the next morning, we noticed Billy wasn't around. The glass half full consensus was that he got bored, went back to robbing banks. The glass half empty held that he swooped into open water. We' ll never know.

By the time they got to us at Quyon, the game had picked up a life of it's own. That night, the laziest man among us would rather play hockey than sit still. It was in our blood

A whole gang joined the game around Arnprior, ice fishermen there on the river. The Boar from North Gower was there, in the pack of them from the Ontario side. They were like dogs, once the hockey fever seized them. The ones from Carp were crazed.

There was a lot of blood spilled when the game arrived in a new town. Things eventually cooled down, but boys will be boys.

The McGraws were known as the type of men who'd rather fight than eat. They were employed as bouncers, to clean up unruly bars. They could skate because they were from Quyon. They could fight because they were McGraws. It was always a help to us, to have them out in front when we approached the fishing shacks outside the next town.

The St. Pierre brothers joined the game around Eardley, on the Quebec side of the river. They were known as the "crash line" because they kept crashing into each other. There was Rainy, Rene and Renny. Whenever you passed them a horse ball and yelled "Rainy", they'd all hear their own name and go for it at once. It saved a lot of high speed collisions to pass it to someone else. They were fine when they didn't have the puck (real pucks entered the game and disappeared regularly) but they were a danger to themselves and others when they got a pass.

By the time we got past Aylmer, on the river between Ottawa and Hull, hundreds had joined the game. The Gatineau River contributed hordes from the towns on the Quebec side.

Men in Hull and Ottawa looked south and north, respectively, saw the game, took days off to join. There was a lot of carousing and fighting when the game passed the Parliament Buildings.

Taverns sent their staffs down to the river to take care of their customers, catering companies were run off their feet.

Three days and nights passed before the game moved east on the river. The teams from upriver took the side of Quebecers in the large brawls.

Some of the fast, little Frenchmen were big scorers. The Quebecers always came up with a good goalie.

The boys slept, ate, drank, in shifts. Many from upriver, thought nothing of collapsing for a few hours on the Walkers' sled.

Gerald the moose enjoyed the attention of city folks who watched him eat the Walkers' hay and oats, fed him sugar lumps and carrots.

Teams grew and shrunk, one side dominated the other. There were open ice hits which everyone admired except for the man who got hit. If he had an appreciation of the game, he often admired it himself in the retelling. The fact that he was knocked unconscious, couldn't have witnessed most of what he recounted, in no way diminished the awe in which he was held. Reputations grew over the years. Some men from the Pontiac drank on the stories for lifetimes, for free. Others, like Lyle Stiles, didn't drink, went into denial.

As the game moved down the river, teams and individuals came and went. Just past Thurso, Cy McBunn joined the game. He was accompanied by a bunch from Alfred. They wore striped uniforms, didn't play long, disappeared.

Cy's specialty was skating backwards. He could skate rings around most of his opponents when they were skating forward. But his inability to skate forward was a major contributor to his lack of scoring prowess. He didn't make it to the opposition net very often, skating backwards.

Cy had a tendency to blow up, frustrated, not being able to score. He'd inevitably take a good, solid hit in the back, go sprawling toward his own goal. His outbursts took the form of powerful slapshots in front of him. Goalies hated playing for Cy's team. He scored too much on his own goalie.

The snow blew, the wind howled. The game moved downriver.

They said Gros Pierre La Barge was from around Montebello. He showed up one snowy night when Ned got constipated and stopped producing horse balls. We'd lost the real pucks upriver.

Gros Pierre felt like fighting since the game was grinding to a halt. Most men on both sides were sitting in snowbanks, resting, passing a jug. Gros Pierre swung his stick viciously at anyone who looked English. He terrorized teams too tired to fight. Someone directed him at the Pontiac boys. We were forced to wake the McGraws. They were passed out on the back of the Walkers' sled, surrounded by restless men waiting for Ned to have a movement. Gros Pierre roared in the background while he chased another "maudit Anglais" around the river.

The McGraws and Gros Pierre met at centre ice. They were still fighting when they disappeared the wrong way, upriver. It seemed safer for all concerned to let them go. We heard, years later, that someone saw the three of them drinking quarts in the Wolf Lake bar. We'll never know.

There was what only could be described as an epiphany, at L'Orignal. In the brawling and drinking of the hockey game, a native of the town saw Gerald. He was struck dumb by the sight of the moose munching hay from the Walkers' sled. The French speakers told us that they were glad he was struck dumb, the man talked too much, anyway.

The word "l'orignal", in French, meant "moose", in English. They had named a whole town after the beast. There seemed to be a much deeper meaning for the native of the town. He jumped onto Gerald's back, headed east, toward the St Lawrence. The look in his eye told us he was going somewhere, only he could see. The French speakers told us that he'd lost his other eye fighting with the wife.

The Walkers followed toward Montreal, Big Herbie on defence, Silas on the wing. Ned pretty well found his own way. He was back to producing horse balls for their games. The silent native of L'Orignal rode Gerald toward the dawn.

We turned back upriver. It had been an enjoyable week, but there was still ice fishing left to do this season. The hockey fever had diminished. It was no mean task to skate upriver with the winds against us.

It's a good source of talk on windy nights. Slumbering by the woodstove in the fishing shack, a quart near to hand. It's a fine memory to ponder, that hockey game.

theequity.ca, canadianstories.net

# BULL

On a pleasant autumn day, Mitch Reynolds stepped out of the Department of Agriculture, his briefcase packed with papers. He attempted to take a deep breath of fresh air, search his jacket for his bicycle clip, descend the stairs, all at the same time. He heard the door open behind him, a voice call his name. He turned and backed into a young woman coming up the stairs.

Suddenly, Mitch was stumbling, falling. The girl retained her balance but scattered her files, all over the steps.

"Oh...oh...sorry..." Mitch crawled around, helped her pick up the files. The woman stuck her silent nose in the air, resumed her climb.

Bob Fagan joined him at the bottom of the stairs, laughing at Mitch's misfortune. They turned to watch the young woman's behind.

"Ooh, look at that. Hey nice move, buddy. I'm tellin you Mitch, never get married"

They turned to walk toward the parking lot.

"Hey, how come you're out early?"

"New job. I finally got an outside assignment. How about you?" Mitch had found his bicycle clip again. Bob watched as Mitch gathered his trousers to apply the clip.

"Beth's preggers again, I've got to take three of the kids to the dentist while she's at the doctor's" Bob waited for Mitch to unlock his bike. They walked through the parking lot.

Bob was a big man with five children. Beth was very fertile. Their brood seemed ever expanding. They parted at Bob's van, Mitch mounted his bicycle. He took his time pedalling on the bike path, admiring the green fields in the autumn sunlight, giant trees blowing in the breeze. The path led him through the Experimental farm to the barn of The Beef Cattle Exposition.

The barn was surrounded by pens of cattle of different breeds, the office inside it. The walls of the small room were covered with posters about cattle. There was a rack on one wall which contained pamphlets, brochures and magazines about cattle.

A small desk, covered with more cattle information, stood, with two chairs, at one end of the room. There was no one around.

Mitch saw a door behind the desk which led further into the barn. He stepped through it. A stronger smell of cattle hit him.

Mitch looked down the length of the barn. He saw that most of the stalls were occupied by cattle, one, halfway down, also contained a person. Mitch made his way to it.

The sign on the open stall door read, VENUS.

Walter James, the facility manager, stood leaning on one wall of the stall, beside a cow. He was a pleasant looking, balding man, much larger than Mitch, dressed in jeans and a work shirt, holding a brown, paper bag in one hand. He smiled, held out his hand.

"Mr. James?" Mitch, extending his hand.

"Walter. You must be Mitch Reynolds. Good to finally see who I've been talking about for the past few months" Walter James shook Mitch's hand with his empty one. He was referring to the many conversations he he'd had with Mitch's superiors concerning this new project.

"This here's the star of your show" Walter indicated the cow.

"Venus"

Mitch stared at the rear end of the cow. He followed Walter toward the front of her, jumping into a cow pie, when she turned her head toward him.

Walter laughed. Mitch shook his foot in the air.

"Ha. You'll have to watch out for that. Just scrape your shoe on some straw. Pistachio?"

Walter smiled at Mitch, offered the bag.

"Huh? No, no thanks" Mitch scraped his loafer on some straw, leaned against one wall.

"She won't bite, but she might kick, so I wouldn't stand behind her" Walter munched a pistachio.

"I take it you're not really an expert on cattle" Walter watched Venus chew her cud.

"No" Mitch admitted. He was wondering at Venus' big boned body.

"No, I could tell on the phone. I went along with all of them. Figured they'd send some poor junior clerk they wanted to get rid of, but this experiment is really dumb"

"Dumb? Is it? Why?" Mitch studied Venus chewing her cud.

"Why? Simple. We've already got a perfectly good breeding programme. No need for this" "Why didn't someone mention that in all these talks we've had, then?"

"Ha, we all went along with it. It's somebody's plan to spend all the money in the budget. You know how it is. Government. If you don't spend it, you'll lose it. Ce sera, sera"

They walked out of the stall, single file, Mitch following Walter, watching his step.

"Importing foreign bulls to breed ole Venus there, that's just plain dumb. Everything's artificial these days. She's a grand champion, mother of five other champions. She could get hurt with this fool experiment" Walter spoke over his shoulder. He turned to let Mitch get by, shut the door to Venus' stall.

"Hurt? You mean physically?" Mitch stopped. Walter turned to him.

"Yeah. Physically. Sometimes cows get hurt, sometimes bulls, sometimes people"

"Jeez. This sounded like such a ... safe job, back at the office" Mitch didn't want anyone, even the cows and bulls, to get hurt.

"Don't worry about it. I won't let them hurt her. If it gets out of hand, I'll call it off and they can do it artificially" Walter was reassuring.

"That Texas longhorn they found in some rodeo? He'll be here any day now. I'll have to keep a close eye on him"

Walter answered the ringing phone on his desk. He got into a discussion about cattle.

Mitch opened his brief case, put some of the papers on Walter's desk. Walter sat down when he'd finished on the phone. He motioned, with the bag, for Mitch to take the other chair, pulled the papers toward himself.

Mitch waited while Walter read through the papers.

"Hm. Yeah" Walter nodded his head with a knowing smile.

Mitch watched him. He didn't look normal with the flimsy papers in his big hands. The granny glasses made him look even bigger.

"So, what we have to do is make sure that Venus gets bred by these foreign bulls"

"That's it" Mitch was happy with this job, away from the office politics.

"So you just take my results and make a report" Walter dug into the bag of pistachios. "Pistachio? Wife made me quit smokin. Now I can't stop eatin"

Walter opened a shell with his teeth.

"And when she gets pregnant, we'll wait and get another bull, when it's time" Mitch could see this job lasting for years.

Walter gathered the papers together, opened a drawer in his desk, placed them in it. Mitch stood up to go.

"Don't you worry. We've seen 'em all here. Every crazy experiment they think of, it usually ends up here. Lots of 'em end here too. Don't worry about it. Keep in touch"

Mitch pedalled home with the satisfaction of knowing that his project was in good hands. Entering his house, on a west end street, he could hear the sounds of The Dating Game reruns. Mandy, Mitch's fellow lodger, watched from the couch.

"Ok, now, Willie, the audience has met our three eligible bachelor girls. Now it's your turn...go ahead with your first question..." the tv dominated the living room.

"Hi" Mitch passed through to the kitchen. He noticed that Mandy had an empty pizza box open on the couch beside her. He didn't hear a reply, opened the refrigerator door.

"If I were the last man on earth and we were marooned on a desert island with just a little food left, would you give it to me so that I would make mad, passionate love to you or would you keep it for yourself and do without sex forever?" Sounds drifted into the kitchen.

Mitch searched through the fridge. He opened cupboards, looked in drawers. The tv audience applauded.

"I'd eat it and then take advantage of you, when you were weak"

Mitch gave up searching, entered the living room.

"Where's all the bread?"

"Duane made sandwiches" Mandy stared at the screen.

"Sandwiches. That was my bread. Where is he?" Mitch, outraged.

"I'd give it to you and then murder you in your sleep. That way, you'd be fatter and I could live off you longer"

"Toronto. He's gone for two weeks"

"Great. Why didn't he buy his own bread? Did he pay his third of the rent?" Mitch was fed up with Duane. This was the last straw.

"Oh, yeah. This came today, too. The hydro bill"

Mandy held up an envelope.

"I'd just ask you to sleep with me, first. I'm sure that you'd beg me to share your food, after that" "There's nothing to eat. We share the house, we split the rent. Why can't he understand that we're supposed to buy our own food?"

Mandy wrinkled her forehead, sipped her soft drink through a plastic straw. She leaned over to pick up the tv remote.

Mitch was on a mission. He headed into the shopping mall to buy some groceries and a lock. If necessary, when he had his talk with Duane, he would give him an ultimatum. One more chance, that was all. If Duane didn't buy his own food and keep his hands off of Mitch's, he'd lock it up. A lock, a simple hasp and a few nails would get the message across.

Mitch pulled over to pick up two female hitch hikers. They giggled in his passenger seat until they alighted outside of The Haybale, a country bar. Mitch pulled away, their heady mix of perfume lingering in his car. They were young and cute, with tight jeans.

Mitch saw another female hitchhiker going his way. He pulled over to pick her up. She was Jasmine, a small, delicate yoga instructor who recommended yoga to him, gave Mitch her card. She said that yoga was good for everything, that she read in his aura that he was troubled. Mitch thought about Jasmine all the way home.

Mandy was sitting on the couch with a cigarette and a Coke when Mitch got home. He had a book in the grocery bag, in one hand, the lock, hasp and screws, in a bag, in the other.

The book was about success with women. It recommended the go - getter attitude to men who really wanted to score.

"I don't see how you can just lay around all day" Mitch passed through the living room.

"Bite me. You don't do anything besides work and drive in your car and whatever it is that you do in your bedroom" Mandy removed her eyes from the t.v. screen long enough to give Mitch a disdainful glance.

"You just don't know. I'm out there making things happen, don't worry"

Mitch got the call from the barn, packed his briefcase, mounted his bike. Nearing the Beef Cattle Exposition, he passed a truck going the other way. It had a stars and stripes logo on the door, a big bovine passenger in the back.

Walter sat at his desk, talking on the phone. He had a red welt below one eye and a bandage on top of his head. Walter gingerly extracted jellybeans from a bag which he offered to Mitch.

"Yeah, ok, tell him I'll talk to him when he wakes up"

Mitch shook his head to the jellybeans. He looked at Walter's eye.

"What happened, Walter?"

"Well, like I said on the phone, that Texas longhorn arrived, but he nearly killed my best hand. He's ok, but he's in the hospital. Had to save Venus from the damn thing. Big, ole Texas driver just laughed and loaded him back on the truck. We couldn't control him" Walter pointed to his wounds. There was dirt on his shirt, scrapes on his forearms.

Mitch made sympathetic sounds, consulted a paper from his briefcase.

"So, the next one is Spanish? Yeah, he's being shipped from Spain to Mexico and stopping on the way"

"Whatever " Walter snorted.

"If he don't behave properly, like we want him to, I'll send him packin too"

Mitch stared at Walter's closing eye.

Mitch glanced at the date on the Playboy calendar beside his bed, finished reading about success with women. Getting off the bed, looking into his mirror, he smiled a winning smile. He got a box from his closet from which he extracted a new pair of cowboy boots. They matched his new western shirt and jeans. He slapped some Lariat shaving lotion on his cheeks.

The Haybale was quiet when Mitch arrived. He asked for a Blue, at the bar, while he surveyed the scene. A girl was singing a country song on the stage with a guitar. She was surrounded by band equipment, sang to an empty room.

Mitch climbed onto a stool at the bar, a few away seats from a single woman. He assumed the same position as the woman, back to the bar, facing the stage. He intertwined his new cowboy boots with the stool's legs and spokes.

The woman finished her drink, put her glass on the bar, applauded the singer. Mitch applauded too, though he really didn't like country music. He leaned over to the woman.

"Howdy, want a refill?"

The young woman switched her attention to Mitch. She gave him an appraising look, nodded, with a smile.

"Sure, two Black Russians, please"

Mitch relayed the request to the bartender who gave him a funny nod. When he turned back to the girl, she was standing, locked in a passionate embrace, with the singer. They accepted Mitch's gift, toasted him, moved to their own table.

Mitch finished his beer, worried that he was in a gay bar. As he rose to leave, his cowboy boot heels caught in the legs of the stool and he fell. He rolled in front of the bar as he fought to get free.

Mitch approached the barn on his bike, the next day. He saw a truck leaving the barn with a Spanish name on it's side. He could hear Mariachi music coming from the cab. The back of the truck held a large, dark occupant.

"Oh, he's such an angel"

"He's so knowledgeable about breeding." he heard two female voices.

Mitch locking his bicycle, saw two good looking girls load a camera and a tape recorder into a small car.

Walter sat at the desk in his office. He had a black eye, a cast on one arm. Mitch sat down, shocked.

"Walter, what happened?"

Walter offered a brown bag. Mitch declined.

"Peanut? They sent that Spanish bull. He was a fighter all right. He was trying to climb into Venus's stall, so I waved my jacket at him. It was a red jacket, he busted my arm. Damn fightin bull. Just shipped him outta here"

"Who were those girls who just left?"

Walter picked up a paper, read aloud.

"Semi formal gala. Radisson Hotel. 8 PM Saturday, if you want to go. They're makin a film about breeding cattle or something. Cute little things. I don't go to stuff like that. Me and the missus watch hockey or wrestling on Saturday nights"

Mitch took the paper from Walter. He looked at it, put it in his briefcase.

"So the French bull's next, the Charolais?"

Walter extracted a peanut from the bag. He cracked the shell with his cast.

"Hm. She better be gettin a visit soon, she won't be in season forever"

"Season? What?"

Walter got up from behind his desk. He moved to the wall where he looked through some brochures in the rack. He selected one, gave it to Mitch.

Mitch looked at the brochure, followed Walter through the door, into the barn. They stopped at a stall with HENRY painted on the door.

"See, that describes the basic process. Venus is in season like a dog or cat gets in heat. You know?" Walter pointed at the diagrams in the brochure.

"See, what they need to do, is breed her with a nice bull like Henry, here. Not get all starstruck with these foreign bulls. Henry's a grand champion himself, a real gentleman. He's local. An Ottawa Valley Hereford. Good natured, as bulls go. Hmph. All these foreign bulls are no good for Venus. She's local too"

Mitch laid on his bed reading about success with women. He reread the pamphlet Walter had given him about the reproduction of cattle. When it was time, he picked out a tie and jacket to go with his trousers.

A group of people hid the sign beside the door in the hotel which announced the Gala for the National Film Board, but Mitch was certain he was in the right place. He had just seen the girls from Walter's office enter before him. They looked even better dressed up.

The people Mitch followed in, were dressed like him, talking about the National Film Board. He didn't see many farmers but he thought anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of cattle reproduction would be welcome here. They might even be a celebrity.

Mitch took a glass of champagne from a waiter. He made for the group which contained the two attractive girls from Walter's. He joined the circle who were listening to a distinguished gentleman hold forth. There were two older, expensively tailored women in the group as well as Mitch and the girls.

"I mean we need to get rid of this old process. We know the fertility's there. All we need is the seed..." the distinguished looking chap spoke with fervour.

Mitch interrupted him.

"Yes, I was just thinking about this the other day. It's all in the testicles, of course. We all agree on that" Mitch paused for his pronouncement to have the desired effect. He couldn't decipher the looks on everyone's faces, but was sure he had got their attention, especially that of the two girls. "Hormones from the pituitary give you those nice, big, full sized testicles" Mitch spoke with emphasis, remembering the tips in his book on women.

The older women looked shocked and amused. The distinguished looking gentleman's jaw seemed to be dropping. The girls looked surprised. Mitch figured he'd keep going.

"We know that with one ejaculation of five cc.'s we can preserve six hundred doses of semen." Mitch addressed the group with a modest smile. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the distinguished chap's upper plate fall out of his mouth, into his drink.

"Now, in the female, it's the anterior lobe of the pituitary, of course. Gives you that good, healthy mammary gland and that nice tone in the reproductive tract"

Mitch finished, rubbed his hands together, looked up. The group had scattered. The girls were giggling, walking away.

Mitch had been at lunch when the office got the call from Walter. He sat with a black eye, a bandage on his head, a cast on his arm and a pair of crutches leaning on his desk. He offered a brown bag to Mitch.

"Walter. You ok? What happened?" Mitch, eyeing the crutches. He shook his head to refuse the peppermints.

"Peppermint? French bull, Charolais got here in the middle of the night. Had to try him out with Venus right away, so I put them together. Damn French bull wasn't interested. Couldn't get him to mount her at all. Tried everything. Finally, I sat down for a rest. The damn bull looked like his mind was on other things. Wasn't Venus' fault. In fact, that's how I got this." Walter placed his cast covered lower leg on the desk.

"The French bull?"

"No. Venus got sleepy. She laid down on me. I couldn't get out of her way. Broke my leg." Walter sucked a peppermint.

"What'll we do now?" This job didn't look so long lasting to Mitch, anymore.

"Dunno. No doubt, the powers that be'll have another brainwave"

"So, this is it?"

"Probably. Venus was up for it, this last time. She'll be out of season any time now, though. Probably go back to the artificial programme. I guess you'll be goin back to the office. We'll kinda miss you around here. I think Venus liked all that attention. Me? I'd like to see you stick around, no offence meant, but I'd probably be a little safer, you know, if we did some other kind of experiment"

Mitch walked down the stairs from his room, through the living room to the front door. He wore a t shirt and loose fitting pants. He paused at the door.

"How can you just sit there all the time?"

Mandy was sitting on the couch, watching tv with an open bag of cookies.

"Bite me" Mandy stared at the screen.

Mitch wiped a towel across his red face, limped along beside Jasmine. They had just finished a yoga class. Everyone else seemed to gain something as the class went along. Mitch got a cramp at the very beginning. He struggled to concentrate on the exercises with all the female flesh stretching around him. He wasn't sure that yoga was his thing, but Jasmine was cute. She had given him her card, said to drop in. He had.

"...and because the cause of all suffering is desire, we meditate to free ourselves of desire..."

Jasmine was explaining some of the intricacies of yoga to Mitch. Her eyes were bright blue.

"I seem to get distracted easily when we meditate"

"I know. It was hard not to be distracted when I was in Poona"

"Poona?"

"Mmhm, kundalini yoga" Jasmine wore a serene smile.

"Kundalini?" Mitch was absorbed in Jasmine. They walked down the sidewalk together.

"Mm, sexual yoga. It's hard to ignore desire when you have some of the unions you can get in kundalini." Jasmine looked over at Mitch who walked into a street sign.

Jasmine helped Mitch up, brushed him off. A motorcycle stopped behind her. She turned, waved. When the driver of the bike held out a helmet to Jasmine, Mitch saw skull rings on his fingers, tattoos on his arms. A bearded face smiled at him, Jasmine climbed on, they were gone.

On the way home from Jasmine's class, Mitch parked his car at the Beef Cattle Exposition. He entered the barn from the back. He opened Venus' stall first, then approached Henry's.

"There you go, Henry, remember to be a gentleman, now"

He opened the door to Henry's stall, made for his car.

Mandy sat watching tv with a Coke. Mitch entered the house with a large brown bag.

"Grasshopper, what have you seen?" the tv spoke.

"What's that, Chinese food?"

"Yeah, want some?" Mitch looked at the screen, sat on the couch, placed the bag on the coffee table.

"Sure, whatcha got?" Mandy, sitting up, eyes locked on the screen.

"Master, I have seen desire"

Mandy opened the bag. She placed the containers around the coffee table while Mitch retrieved plates and cutlery from the kitchen. She watched him walk across the living room.

"And what did you learn of desire, Grasshopper?"

"Duane always tries to get me to go to bed with him. Why don't you, Mitch?" Mandy filled a plate with fried rice.

Mitch hadn't realized. He took some sweet and sour chicken balls from a container.

"Master, I have learned that desire is blind"

"I guess I never thought about it" Mitch glanced in her direction.

"Well, are you thinking about it now?" Mandy stared at the tv.

"Ok, after Kung Fu, then?"

"Sounds good, it's a date"

"Pass the rice, please"

unpublished

# OPEN LETTER TO A NEPHEW

Dear Nephew,

Unaccustomed as I am to giving advice to anybody these days, I must do this: lay down some guidelines for the younger generation. It feels like an inescapable weight on one's shoulders, a duty and obligation. Whoever said that youth was wasted on the young must have known about the principles.

The three principles which I will list and attempt to elucidate. These principles will ensure survival and success in today's and tomorrow's world.

From a lifetime of observation and other sources, I have gathered this wisdom and will now impart it to you, my nephew and all who know you. Even those who don't.

1 Borrow as much as possible from family and friends. They're usually the last ones who'll turn on you, giving you the benefit of the doubt, holding off their fury because you're related or know someone who knows someone.

An unfortunate corollary to this type of activity is the necessity for a packed bag and alternate identities, with pictures, if possible. In case of partners' unfounded accusations of overspending or, God forbid, fraud.

It's getting harder to manage in these days of everybody killing each other for various reasons, but it was always thus. The killing was just cruder. There is always a way. Always a means of obtaining a false identity.

Of course, families and friends should also be involved with you in as many business ventures as possible. This stimulates, among other things, their careful observance of your health and well being.

Once you have wormed your way in, ingratiated yourself, made yourself indispensable to them, with the least amount of work, you are an asset, a part of the company.

The corollary can also come in handy in these enterprises, if things don't go well.

When one shakes off the impetuous dreams of youth for a moment, one can clearly see upon which side one's bread is buttered. Business relationships with family and friends should be encouraged and manipulated with care.

2 Don't fall for that security versus creativity stuff. Go for the security, of course. You can look like you don't care, act like it, say it, especially when women think you're romantic because of it, but nobody wants to starve, so, keep a back door, a way out. You won't have time for shame when you've bailed out on the co-op and you're trying to survive.

Accumulate as many toys as possible. Gather all and sundry and lock them up. Collect things, the more valuable, the better. Never too many of the valuable ones. There'll always be a place to put them.

The creative urge is sneaky and devious. It is more seductive than the security side, but you don't want to grow old without being surrounded by as much security as possible.

The creativity side may look attractive when you're young. All that freedom etc., but the odds against anyone producing security out of creativity are huge. It is a foolish longshot, not worthy of a man who is serious about security.

Let the starving artists drink beer in their roach infested garrets after you've accumulated their creations. Exceptions are made for long legged beauties in black tights. Temporary cohabitation is permissible there.

3Honesty is not always the best policy. In most cases it's downright foolish. All of the great wealth has been accumulated by dishonesty of one sort or another. Things change. Perceptions of certain activities change.

Cunning, guile and deviousness have their place in the ready arsenal of a young man trying to make his way in this world. Lying hypocrites are survivors. Politicians in any age are shining examples.

Machiavelli's wisdom is always good bedtime reading.

There can be few more refreshing pleasures, when one wakes up in the morning, than a good bullying session. A suitably inferior person can be fooled into thinking they must take the abuse which you hurl their way, thus proving that dishonesty is most often triumphant and replacing the need for a brisk walk to start one's day.

I've imparted some hard truths here. I wouldn't have bothered except that you're my sister's kid and my own children haven't spoken to me for twenty years. The divorce was between their mother and me, none of their business.

After all, one must consider one's office staff. (A specific tip here: refuse point blank, in no uncertain terms, any job offered you without a suitable office staff. Secretaries and receptionists should be young, attractive, ambitious and immoral. Attention to these details will ensure an enjoyable workplace when one has to attend)

The males of our clan always passed down the three principles before they died from the effects of their short, brutal lives.

I know what kind of a family you must survive in and what kind of world you face, so I feel compelled to tell you, though it's bad news: they get the last laugh.

Women in this family, in general, outlive men.

After all the fussing is over, at the end, you die and they keep going.

It doesn't seem fair, but it was always thus. There are many years to come before you'll have to worry about it.

In the meantime, think of your old uncle and remember, cannibalism isn't a notion which should be lightly dismissed on long flights.

Regards,

Uncle Steve

savagemanners.wordpress.com,clockwisecat.com

# runnin with dexedrine

Jimmy Mcfarlane lit another cigarette and shivered in the phone booth. His jean jacket wasn't made for this cold.

The truck stop was busy at 3 am. Rigs parked all over the place, some refueling, some arriving and some leaving for the border a few miles north.

A big highway ran all the way from Montreal to Florida. Warmth and sunshine.

The phone rang.

Jimmy fumbled the receiver with cold fingers.

"Yeah?"

"Ok. He should be getting there now. He'll park at back of the lot, as far away from the buildings as possible. Got everything?"

"Yeah" Jimmy's eyes fell to the hockey bag at his feet. Dexedrine, plates, cards.

"OK. Call me from Florida"

"Ok ... in a few days"

Jimmy was already looking into the phosphorescent glare. The rigs glistened under the freezing light of the parking lot. Exhaust fumes rose straight up in white clouds.

He picked up his bag, flicked his smoke into the night, walked down the middle of the parked 18 wheelers. He kept walking past the line of idling trucks to the one parked at the other end of the lot. Lots of drivers do it. Park away from the noise to sleep.

He wasn't supposed to see the other driver.

A shadow moving in the other direction flashed by. The guy only had to drive it from the border. They didn't trust him to do the checks. Second nature a year ago. But they got him out of the county slam and asked him to drive a truck to Florida so maybe wanting complete trust was a little too much to expect.

He used the key in his jeans pocket to unlock the door to the Tri Star, climbed into the welcome warmth. Country music playing soft in the background, he threw his bag on the passenger seat and looked over the dash in front of him.

The coloured lights were a relief from the bright illumination of the parking lot.

After a minute of enjoying the comfort he jumped out to do a quick circle check on the truck. The other guy wasn't driving it to Florida. The rig was probably fine but it never hurt to do a quick visual circle check.

He settled into the driver's seat after he had adjusted it to lean back further than it was. The last driver must have been a hunchback if he sat like that.

Everything seemed to be good according to the gauges in front of him. He smiled, flipped off the brakes, shifted into low and pulled away.

Staying to the outside of the lot, close to the fence, he checked his mirrors and got his first feel for the rig. It had been eight months, six of it in the county jail.

He stopped to adjust each wing mirror carefully. The mirrors were his eyes.

He pulled into the exit and shifted up till he was moving into the freeway, space given to him by two other trucks whose drivers pulled out to let him in.

Steve Earle sang about drivin down the Eastern seabord as he stopped his signal and settled in.

He was singing along, just at the part that went "you think I'm happy, you're right, six days on the road and..." when he felt the steel of the gun on his neck.

The scariest time came just then as she moved from the bunk to the passenger seat, landed on the hockey bag and threw it on the floor. The gun in her hand waved wildly the whole time and she grunted as she spoke.

"Just keep 'er steady, man. I know your story. You're an excon and this load is illegal"

He kept it steady and didn't show any emotion outwardly but he felt the adrenalin rush which made him sneeze.

A big, clear snot bubble expanded from his nose. It caught them both by surprise.

She pointed the revolver upward as her eyes searched the dash.

Below it she saw a roll of paper towels and some window cleaner in a rack.

She handed him the roll and suppressed a grin.

"Thanks, uh" he wiped his nose and glanced at the revolver which was pointing at him again.

She didn't look suicidal. Just petite and cool. Except for that little hysterical edge to her voice. That could be irritating.

"If you shoot me, you'll probably die too" he looked over into her eyes. She didn't seem fucked up on dope.

A long silence during which the revolver pointed steadily at him.

"I just want a lift to Florida. You're going to Daytona"

She shrugged as if it made perfect sense.

It did, but this was supposed to be a secret trip, an elaborate deception so that this truck could deliver its load of Canadian beer to a specific warehouse in Daytona Beach. Very hush hush.

A sudden jolt reminded him. The plates.

He looked around for a rest stop but there was nothing in sight. Just the tail lights ahead of him and the headlights in the mirror.

"Look, I don't know how you know that, but there's one thing: I have to stop and change plates"

She looked away from him, out the windshield,

"Here?"

"No. At the next rest stop"

"Ok. Are you cool taking me to Daytona? Do I have to threaten you?"

He smiled, looked over at her.

"Ha. It's ok with me but you gotta stay outta sight. There's inspectors, cops, other drivers. You can't be seen in here. Ok?"

"No problem. Just get me there. This is better than a bike any time"

"A bike?"

"A hog. My ole man's a biker"

He looked at her again.

"Your ole man's a biker?"

She nodded with a sort of resigned expression

"Mmhm. He's president of our chapter"

He showed little on the outside but his mind was racing. A biker president's ole lady. Not an ideal situation. But since they got him out, he had just gone with the flow and so far so good. And she had a gun. Go with the flow.

He put on his signal as they approached a rest stop. Lights glowed on the bare trees lining the exit ramp.

He put the brakes on beneath a light. No one else used the washroom, the parking lot was empty.

He led her into the washroom. She still had the revolver.

She waited outside the door until he had pissed and splashed water on his face. He took the opportunity to pop more dexedrine tablets. Then she showed him the ignition keys before she entered the women's washroom.

In the phosphorescent light outside the washrooms of the rest stop he saw that she was a short, good looking woman with dark brown hair and dark eyes. She wore the same jean jacket and jeans as he did. She wore some kind of heavy shitkickers on her feet, he wore cowboy boots.

She sat in the idling rig while he changed plates. She knew that this truck was supposed to go to Florida and had been hijacked.

Her father, the boss at the top of the heap, the one who had organized it all, would never allow her to hitch a ride in a truck involved in one of his jobs. But what he didn't know wouldn't hurt anyone

She knew Jimmy Macfarlane was only a one time employee of her father, expendable, but a good driver.

She had learned what she knew by eavesdropping on Wolf, her husband, and Vince, her father. She realized the plan when she added it to the information her mother gave her about the truck and its destination. She used her father's name on the last driver and secured a hiding place in the cab.

When he climbed into the cab, adjusted the radio, switched it to a screaming rock station, moved the shifter into first and flipped off the brakes, his movements were smooth but his expression was hungry. He breathed rapidly through his nose as they pulled out onto I87.

"You're speeding, aren't you?" she watched his face, turned down the radio. The gun was out of sight.

That's one good thing, he thought.

"A little" he watched the tail lights ahead and chewed his lip.

" Bennies?" she asked, turning to face the front.

"Ha. No. Couldn't get any. They didn't want me around drivers and truck stops. They told me where I could get dexedrine. It's just as good. It'll do the trick. It's only a couple of days to Florida"

"Dexedrine. Hey, might as well give me a couple. I'm gonna keep you company"

He decided she was right, handed her the last two in his shirt pocket. The rest were in the hockey bag.

"My name's Theresa and you're Jimmy. So that's what they're into now. My father's a real fucker you know. I just realised what a fucker he is. He freaks if he sees us smoking a joint but he's pushing dexedrine. I wonder what else"

"Who's your father?"

"Vincent Medaglia"

"Big Vin?"

"Fraid so"

He looked over at her.

"You're Big Vin's daughter?"

She swallowed the pills with some water from a bottle she had produced.

He shook his head.

"Big Vin doesn't push drugs"

"He may not push it, but he's in there some way. Probably backing deals and lending money". Her voice was angry.

He read the overhead signs as they passed, found the one he wanted.

"I need you to get that book on that shelf down there. It's maps and paperwork and stuff. The guy who gave me this job told me there'd be a book with the trip all laid out and all the papers I need if I do get stopped"

She looked at him.

"You mean you don't know where you're going?"

"Ha. I used to drive here a lot. It's the construction and detours and scales they've got marked out."

She found the thick binder in the rack below the dash, opened it on her lap.

He looked over, ran over the map with his forefinger.

"See, when we get past Washington, it'll be clear sailing. We've gotta take the route that's marked out. It's probably all the ring roads around the cities and the scales. It'll be the fastest. They checked it out. Or they were supposed to"

She found the marked map.

"If they've got money riding on it, for sure they checked it out. Yeah, here. Yeah it's all marked out"

They drove in silence except for the low blues she had found on the radio. The sky lightened, sunrise began.

She verified his choice of exits and on ramps as they passed the big cities on the coast, pointed out detours marked on the map which enabled them to avoid construction slow downs, weigh scales and id checks. Finally they saw a turnoff to Washington DC and knew they had passed the confusion.

By the time they were moving south on 195, it was late afternoon and they were both feeling the effects of the speed wearing off and fatigue setting in.

"We've got to fill 'er up soon" he said.

"We should eat something too"

"We can't go in anywhere together. I'll get a takeout"

"Yeah. Anything. A pizza"

"Yeah. A pizza. I like everything except anchovies"

"No anchovies? What's a pizza without anchovies? Although, maybe they wouldn't be fresh here. Ok. No anchovies"

From the maps and signs they found a truck stop which took his card with a pizzeria a block away. She called from a payphone across the street, he retrieved the pizza when it was ready.

He drove to a rest stop outside of Richmond, applied the brakes to the rig.

The speed had almost worn off and the thought of eating was nauseating but each had had enough experience that they knew they needed food.

When they were settled with the steaming pizza box between them, she handed him a plastic pop bottle and toasted him with her own.

"So far, so good"

He touched his plastic bottle to hers, smiled, spoke at the same moment she did.

"So..."

"Go ahead" he said to her.

She concentrated on chewing for a while, took a long drink of pop.

"So, why'd you do it? You don't seem too violent to me"

He stopped a pizza slice halfway to his mouth.

"Do what?"

She reached for the next piece.

"Why'd you beat those guys up? I know you did six months for assault and one of my father's lawyers bailed you out. So why'd you do it? You don't seem real crazy"

He chewed slowly, remembering.

"I had just broken up with my wife. I was drinking alone. I was just defending myself"

He didn't seem to be overly anxious for her to believe him. Pretty casual about it.

"What happened?"

"Like I said, I was drinking alone, nothing too serious, as in locked into the bottle forever or anything like that, and they came in with two women. One was totalled, really drunk or high or something and she came onto me"

He took a swig of pop, stared out the window before he took another piece and bit into it.

"I was just minding my own business and she draped herself all over me. I looked around for the guy but I couldn't see any of them. She was doing it to piss the guy off"

"No. She was?" She frowned in mock disapproval.

"Yeah. She was" He laughed.

"Anyway it worked. The guy started pushing me around and we ended up rolling around the floor till the bouncers threw us out. The guy stared swinging outside and I decked him"

"Wow"

He laughed,

"No, it was really a lucky shot. I was an ok boxer when I was a kid but I was never that good. Anyway, coldcocked him, knocked him out. But by this time I have the other guy on my back trying to claw my eyes out. I freaked. I ran backwards into a wall and started kicking him till I couldn't kick anymore'

She nodded as she realized.

"So that's what happened to Thatch. I thought one of his women cracked him a good one. Hah. Good for you. I hate Thatch"

He stared at her.

"You know these guys?"

"I know Thatch, he's one of my Dad's lawyers. He's an asshole"

"One of your Dad's lawyers? The other guy was a prosecutor. That's why I got time and they walked. It wasn't what I did, it was who I did it to"

"Well, good for you" she patted him on the shoulder "couldn't happen to a nicer asshole"

She laughed.

"I saw him at my Dad's office. He had a black eye and a cast on one foot. I really thought a woman did it. He's a real prick. That's why he's such a good lawyer"

They both laughed.

They gathered the garbage from their feast, dropped it into a garbage can, used the washrooms, this time she hurried in ahead of him, the rig idling in the background.

When they were back on the road again they calculated that they'd probably arrive in Daytona near supper time the next day.

Miles rolled by, she tuned in different stations as they drove from Virginia through North Carolina.

He told her where the dexedrine was and they took two more tabs each. They figured that was all they'd need.

She started talking fast when the speed came on. He had been about to ask her about her unusual family when they stopped to eat, but he never got a chance.

"Yeah, I'm Vincent Medaglia's daughter all right. No expense spared getting me the best education money could buy" she laughed.

"You shoulda seen the looks on their faces when they met Wolf. They didn't know what to say. I kept him on his best behaviour that time. But my father doesn't like him. I can control my mother and she controls Dad, so we got married. And Wolf has the kind of money my father respects. That fuckin hypocrite"

She found an old Allman Brothers instrumental that soared as they rolled along. She kicked off her boots and sat with her feet on the dash.

He checked the mirrors again for inspectors, made her move her seat even further back so she couldn't be seen from outside.

"My oldest brother, he's playing football. My father's so proud of him. His eyes mist up when he talks about him. It's disgusting. And my other brother's back in the old country. I think he wants to be a writer"

"A writer?" his mind was racing.

"Yeah, like novels, fiction"

"Really. That's what I'm gonna do when I deliver this truck"

"What? Be a writer?" she turned to look at him.

He flashed a grin and a look.

"Yeah. I'm going to Hollywood. California"

"Hollywood, you're kidding. You want to be a screenwriter. What makes you think you can be a screenwriter?"

"I read a lot in jail. I started writing. I visualized stories and wrote them down. I never showed anyone"

Silence.

"And that's it? You're going out to Hollywood because of that?" She wrinkled her forehead, looked worried.

He suddenly felt foolish but there was nothing to do but brazen it out.

"Yep. I'm gonna go out there and sell a script. You just gotta get a foot in the door" He glanced at her. She was about to launch into another speedy verbal torrent.

"Wolf and me. We met in an auto mechanics class. I took one at night when I first started university. He was the instructor. We fell in love and got married. No kids"

Her voice and manner seemed flat and depressed.

"We've had a few problems lately, Wolf and me"

He was curious but cautious. Did he really want a biker's wife telling him about her marriage problems?

"We were fine at first" Her voice started out in a whisper but hardened and rose in volume.

"But I really got sick of the bikes. I mean, he'd have one in the living room if I let him. He's got a three car garage full. The drinking and drugs is way down and the violence just now and then. He's really more like my father than either of them realize. We might see him somewhere along here"

"Here. Why here?" Jimmy looked in the mirror and saw only trucks and cars behind him. No bikes.

He put on his signal. Turned into a rest stop. He parked at the far end of the lot and walked with her to the restrooms.

"Buzzin?" she asked.

"Feelin no pain" he answered.

They stood for a moment when they had used the washrooms. The temperature was balmy, the humidity noticeably higher, a refreshing breeze cooled them in the hot sun.

Jimmy lit a smoke and smiled. He turned in a complete circle, surveyed the surrounding fields of yellow and green, smelled the spring.

She closed her eyes and faced the sun, the breeze ruffling her hair.

They felt free for that moment. The absence of cold was like an inhalation, a relaxation.

Neither spoke as they walked back to the truck.

They started listening to the cb just as one trucker said to another,

"Yeah, here they come. Must be hundreds of em. Some good lookin women. Ugly guys"

He saw what they were talking about when he looked in the mirror. At first just black dots in the distance. Then the freeway curved and he saw how many there were. That's why they might see Wolf. Of course, he hadn't made the connection before: Harley week in Daytona.

"It's them" he heard her say.

The first chopper with forks so long the guy was almost laid flat driving it passed with a stripped down hog beside him. Flames on the teardrop gas tanks were the only paint. Everything else was chrome. He had to admit that the line of them did look impressive. Politicians and soccer moms weren't welcome in this parade.

She leaned close to watch in the mirror and inspect each bike as it passed by.

"There. There he is. The one with...the sidecar" Her voice lowered at the end.

He looked in the mirror, found the bike with the sidecar. It was occupied. He could hear her heavy breathing as the cavalcade passed.

He heard the horn and struggled with her. The line above his visor controlled the loud air horn.

Finally she let go and fell back to her seat. Then she was leaning up toward the windshield with her finger extended.

He saw the heads of the bikers turn at the blast of the horn. He could see the driver of the bike with the sidecar look around and back toward his truck.

"Yeah! It's you, you asshole! Fuck off, Wolf, just fuck right off!" she yelled and saw the look of recognition in his eyes. He stayed in the pack and passed into the horizon.

They rode in silence as the procession passed.

He admired the exotic choppers speeding by. Everyone was going to Daytona for Harley week. That was where this special cargo of beer was destined.

When they had passed there was silence in the cab. He switched off the cb, she switched on the radio and played with the stations.

"Why'd you do that?" he asked staring ahead.

"He's an asshole. Only he would think he could get away with this. Did you see her? Sitting back, enjoying the ride. He always thinks with his dick. She's a slut"

It seemed to be the only explanation she was going to offer until they stood outside of another restroom in another rest stop.

They could hear the pop pop of the chopper exhaust far away in the distance over the sound of the idling rig beside them. They listened as it grew louder.

When the chopper pulled into the parking lot with an empty sidecar she adopted a defiant stance with her hands on her hips.

Jimmy lit a smoke and leaned on the rig as the bike stopped in front of them

The driver turned off the ignition and slowly removed his German helmet.

"Treesa. Fancy meetin you here" Wolf smiled, fluffed his moustaches, made sure his tight body and big biceps were on display.

Theresa shook her head.

"Where is she ,Wolf? I saw her. It's Nicki, don't deny it"

"What? In the sidecar" Naw, I'm just givin her a lift. She's with Rollie. She'll be with him when we get there"

"Bullshit"

Wolf tried to change the subject.

"So, who's this?"

"This is Jimmy. I told you I could party in Florida without all the bike shit. I'll be there and I want my share"

Wolf stared at her, looked at the rig and Jimmy.

"So this is the shipment" He paused

"Don't suppose..?"

"No, forget it, Wolf. It's all tied down right. No kegs or cases till they go through the warehouse"

Wolf wasn't too disappointed. He ran appraising eyes over Jimmy.

"Got any speed?"

Her eyes blazed when she spoke, her words came fast,

"We'll be there tomorrow night. If she's there, I'm gone. This is it. You know what we talked about before. This looks like it"

Wolf looked sorry as he replaced his helmet and kicked the Harley Davidson into life. He nodded to Jimmy, gave Theresa a sober stare and drove off.

They stood listening to the exhaust sound change as he shifted into higher gears on the empty highway.

They listened to Midnight Train to Georgia as they drove through the Georgia night. She said they had to stop somewhere for a pecan pie and some treats. He bought her what she wanted at a tourist restaurant across from a huge truck stop where he refeulled.

The last leg went smoothly. They did one more dexedrine tablet each and drank large takeout coffees with unhealthy but tasty pastries.

Thousands of Harleys were already in a slow procession down the main drag where they turned onto the beach which they used to return and do it all over again. Beer and smoke fuelled the crowds, cops sat in vans on side streets and walked in pairs among the crowd. Fortunately, the warehouse was in the north end of town, the delivery unaffected by the party.

He let her off at a restaurant at the entrance to the business park, agreed to meet her there later.

The warehouse was easy to find, the man with big, tattooed arms fast and accurate unloading the skids with a loud forklift.

Jimmy counted the bills in the envelope handed to him by a short, stocky man with a goatee and a bandana on his head. He was dressed like a biker, t-shirt, cutoff sleeves, vest, blue jeans and boots.

He smiled, slapped Jimmy on the back and started to break open a skid.

Jimmy walked from the warehouse to the restaurant where they wolfed down burgers and fries.

The tiredness hit them at the same time. He felt his eyelids flicker.

"So, where you goin , now?" She watched him from sleepy eyes.

"My uncle's. I said I'd stop in"

"Oh"

"Where you goin?" He drank from a glass of Coke.

"Um. I dunno. I could go there, but right now I don't know"

"You want to come to my uncle's, go there in the morning?"

She brightened.

"I was hoping. Just for tonight. I'll see Wolf tomorrow" Her voice regained some determination.

They walked because calling a cab wasn't any use in Daytona Beach when the party was on.

He only had his hockey bag and she a small backpack. They struggled through drunken crowds for a few blocks then turned down a side street.

The noise diminished as they moved further from the beach. He turned into a laneway with an arch over it.

The sign on the illuminated arch said HOME AWAY FROM HOME.

She walked beside him looking into trailer windows which shone in the warm night, the kitchens and living rooms they revealed seemed welcoming.

The doublewide with the porch light on stood at the corner of two streets.

He knocked on the door, listened. He bent over, pulled a key from under the mat, opened the front door and waved her in.

"He's out somewhere. He might be back tonight. You never know with Uncle Albert"

"Uncle Albert" she struggled out of her back pack.

"Uncle Albert" He dropped his hockey bag, walked down the hall to the kitchen,

"Beer?"

"Yeah. Yes please"

She walked into the living room, looked around.

The room was neat and uncluttered with a big, flat tv screen on one wall, an easy chair and couch facing it. A coffee table made from a log stood in front of the couch. She sat down in the chair with a thankful sigh.

Jimmy handed her a bottle of beer, settled on the couch.

They drank in silence, lost in their own thoughts for a moment.

"Is Uncle Albert married?"

"Uncle Albert. Naw. Never. That's the big joke. All the boys who gave him a hard time when they were young, they're all dead now. And there's a million rich old ladies here in Florida"

She looked offended.

"You're kidding"

He looked at her as he drank.

"Hey. Nothing wrong with this place" He smiled and spread his hands to indicate all around him.

"Uncle Albert was a house painter, kept himself in shape till he was over forty. Eventually he had his own company and he retired pretty rich. He always said there'd be unlimited women if a guy kept himself in shape till he was forty. Uncle Albert's having a great time. I think he still gloats over the ones who were meanest to him now that he's outlived them all and he's dating some of their widows"

She took off her boots and settled with her feet tucked under her.

He felt a heaviness in his vision, fatigue settled in fast. He made a quick phone call to the man up north assuring him that the job was done and that he was paid.

They passed out where they sat in Uncle Albert's living room.

She watched with one eye as Uncle Albert wrestled his golf clubs into the hall closet.

Jimmy woke up sprawled out on the couch. After a moment of confusion, he rose to embrace his uncle.

Jimmy knew that his own father and his other uncles called their youngest brother a "ladies man" and "womanizer". They said it derisively when they were young, but, like most of the males of Albert's generation, they were long gone. The word "dapper" seemed to fit Uncle Albert. He had an old fashioned charm and he was always impeccably turned out. His blonde curls had turned white but they were still thick.

On this night he was a little drunk, having spent too much time with the ladies at the 19th hole.

He listened attentively when Jack told him his plan to go out west and chivalrously kissed Theresa's outstretched hand when they were introduced. The hand kiss woke her up.

He showed them the shower and their individual bedrooms before retiring himself.

Jimmy woke up groggy in the bed. He pulled on his jeans, staggered to the toilet, pissed, splashed some water on his face and returned to his room.

He dug through the hockey bag to find a clean t-shirt and some deodorant.

He accepted a cup of coffee from Uncle Albert in the kitchen, sat down in the living room.

The television, sound turned down, played weather maps and commercials.

"She's gone" Uncle Albert watched him.

"Theresa? She's gone already? Oh yeah, she was going back to her husband today"

They sat sipping their coffee in silence.

"She your woman?" Uncle Albert asked.

Jimmy laughed.

"No. I just gave her a lift"

Jimmy called the number he had been given in jail. Sure enough, there was a car to be delivered to San Francisco. Jimmy arranged to pick it up the next morning. Not LA, but closer to Hollywood.

Uncle Albert started their day with breakfast at Joe's, a local fixture, combination restaurant-bar.

Jimmy ordered a steak with his eggs. Uncle Albert ordered poached eggs and brown toast.

"See those guys in the corner?" Uncle Albert asked as they fixed their mugs of coffee.

Jimmy looked across the room.

Four men sat at the only table in the corner. All wore shorts, flipflops and t-shirts. They ranged from young looking to middle aged and all looked like they were suffering. They passed newspapers from one to another as they finished reading them. The waitress didn't have to ask what they wanted. She knew who wanted what as she plopped coffee cups and breakfast plates down in front of them.

"They spend most days in here. Reporters. Well, not really reporters, tabloid writers. They eat to help with the hangovers then they start drinking and making up stories. The more outrageous, the better. And when they get one published, they're bought a round by the others"

Jimmy noticed that none of the men had a tan. Everyone else who lived here was dark brown, How couldn't you be?

They walked from Joe's to a taxi stand which Uncle Albert knew would be working. There was the beginning of Harley traffic on the beach but the town was not yet fully awake.

The gypsy cab was a clean little Toyota driven by a Spanish speaker with whom Uncle Albert communicated passably. They headed north up I95 to Flageler's Beach.

"I saw a sex therapist on tv last week. She was telling everyone that seniors should hold back, wait to fall in love"

He held up a plastic prescription bottle full of little blue pills and laughed.

"I'm seventy five. Wait till she's seventy five. Sixty year olds are young chicks to me. We're going up to Edna's for lunch. Very nice. A very nice lady"

Jimmy watched Uncle Albert as he spoke. They looked out the windows at the rolling surf and the beach.

The cab let them off at the entrance to a gated three story condo complex. The guard at the gate checked his list for Uncle Albert's name and waved them in.

The dark, glass elevator wall faced the beach giving them a view for miles as they rode up to the third floor.

When the elevator doors opened, they were greeted by a pretty black maid who obviously knew Uncle Albert. They were shown into the kitchen and seated at the table which had been set for three. Beyond, the kitchen wall was glass looking out on the beach.

Edna entered the kitchen with a burst of energy. She stopped at Uncle Albert, pecked him on the cheek, stood in front of Jimmy with her hand extended.

Jimmy rose and shook hands, bowing a little.

"Edna Robertson. You're Jimmy, Al's nephew"

Jimmy smiled back at her.

She was a tall, slim, short haired lady with a pretty, wrinkled face. She sat down in the chair the maid pushed in and sipped her coffee.

Jimmy could see the flush through her tan. There was a look of love between Edna and Uncle Albert.

"We'll have the melon now, please, Imelda. I just had a run and a shower. There's no use in even trying to keep the class open when the bikers are in town"

She spoke at first to Uncle Albert then switched to Jimmy.

"I teach a Pilates class for women in Daytona. It's impossible for a few weeks in the spring"

Jimmy followed her lead and cut into the green melon with his spoon which produced an explosion of flavour in his mouth.

They chatted, mostly listened, as Edna detailed the faults, blemishes and good points of the celebrity women who had hired her from time to time. She was a good raconteur with perfect comic timing.

Jimmy was as enthralled (though he hoped he didn't have the same goofy look) as Uncle Albert.

They listened while Imelda replaced the melon rinds with heaping bowls of granola accompanied by an assortment of fresh fruit and a large bowl of creamy yogurt.

When they had eaten their fill and the dishes were cleared away, Edna led them out to her comfortable balcony where they could watch passersby on the beach.

Jimmy was surprised to see Edna open a small silver case which Imelda had brought her. She extracted a brown cigarette and a lighter.

The sweet smell of burning marijuana reached Jimmy when Edna lit the joint and passed it to Uncle Albert.

Imelda must have turned something on: suddenly the sound of an old Eagles song welled up and surrounded them.

Jimmy felt very stoned after his first toke of the perfectly constructed joint in its tiger skin paper. Thoughts came fast and furious and left at the same speed. Uncle Albert and Edna were obviously in love. Shouts of beach volleyball players rose and fell in the distance. The sun burned down on the umbrella above the table.

Imelda chuckled to herself as she refilled their glasses with cold fruit juice. The joint (Maui Wowie) was finished and the trio had fallen silent. She knew they would come alive again but right now they were fascinated by the beach traffic below and the volleyball game.

After Imelda had given them three home made popsicles, Jimmy told Edna about his dreams of screenwriting. She took it as seriously as Uncle Albert had, got Imelda to find her address book and wrote out some friends' names and numbers for Jimmy. They lived in LA and worked in the movie business. Maybe it would help.

Uncle Albert maintained a posture of attentive astonishment. He said little, smiled and nodded a lot. Jimmy wasn't sure if it was the powerful weed or love.

They left in a taxi, Uncle Albert promising to meet Edna tomorrow after Jimmy left.

The gypsy cab driver, long dreadlocks and loud reggae on the radio, watched them in the mirror, sniffed the air, laughed.

"High, mon?"

She was sitting on the front porch when they got back to the trailer.

Uncle Albert hugged her which surprised Jimmy until he saw her eye. It was closed.

Her lip was split and knuckles skinned. There was blood on her shitkickers.

She looked so small and beat up when she stared at Jimmy with one good eye and a triumphant smile on her swollen features. He felt her body heat when she hugged him.

Uncle Albert sat her in a kitchen chair and made sure there was nothing in her eye, gave her some ice in a towel to hold on it. Then he cleaned her lip with bottled water and gave her a face cloth to dab it.

When they had moved into the living room, Theresa with the ice- towel bandage tied around her head, Uncle Albert broke out the rum.

They sat in front of the silent tv which was showing NBA replays while Uncle Albert put Modern Times on the cd player.

Theresa said that she had walked to the motel where Wolf was staying. He was still in the attached bar which the bikers had taken over. Actually, it was an acquaintance of hers, a member from up north who owned it and was in on the deal.

Part of the profits from selling the hijacked Canadian beer through the bar were supposed to be hers.

Uncle Albert and Jimmy looked at each other. Both were thinking that she was small but certainly didn't lack guts.

She got her money from Wolf who was drunk and came onto her. He peeled hundreds off a roll. He hadn't made his profit yet but there was no doubt he'd make a bundle by the end of the week. He was drunk but together enough to realize that she was pissed, too angry to reason with. It was easier to pay her off and let her cool down.

She was about to lead him on by sticking out her breasts provocatively and rubbing up against him (the way to most men's hearts is through their dicks) then shutting him down, devastating him, embarrassing him publicly, striking one last blow in their conflict, when Nicki appeared.

She wore only one of Wolf's t-shirts and looked sleepy when she wandered into the bar.

Of course, Theresa lost it then and the fight was on.

The bikers and their women circled the combatants as they punched, kicked, bit and scratched each other in a manic tangle on the floor.

Theresa said she finally won because her hair was too short for Nicki to grab but Nicki's was just the right length to get a hold of. She relished her victory proudly.

Jimmy and Uncle Albert shuddered to think what Nicki must look like if Theresa won.

Needless to say, Theresa concluded, Wolf took off on his bike. He never could handle anyone else's real emotion.

Theresa daubed her lip and watched Jimmy as Uncle Albert refilled their glasses with rum and Coke.

"I want to go West with you. As far as Vegas, I've got an aunt there"

Jimmy sipped his drink, thought about it.

Uncle Albert answered his phone, left to take the call in the bedroom.

They heard the door close.

"You're big Vin's daughter, Theresa. You can't just come with me. It would be a death sentence for me. Especially after what they did for me"

"No, no, Jimmy" Theresa smiled and grimaced as her split lip started bleeding again.

"I can call my father. He'll be glad I split with Wolf anyway. As long as I got my share. He'll figure I'm better off with you. He knows I'll be safe with you. When I call him from Vegas, you'll be long gone by then, on your way to Hollywood"

Jimmy could see that she was serious. He shrugged.

"If it's ok with him, it's ok with me. But I want to talk to him if you call"

"You got a way?" Theresa squinted at him.

Jimmy nodded.

"A car tomorrow morning going out to San Francisco. It'll be nice. They wouldn't send a junker out there"

"Got some dexies?"

Jimmy sipped his drink. He leaned over to raise the volume of the slide notes opening Rollin and Tumblin.

"Yeah"

"My aunt out there's kind of the black sheep of my mother's family. She was a showgirl for years. She used to buy me a scratch ticket or a lottery ticket every birthday. She was the only adult who did it. She took me to my first bingo. Most of both families hated her, but we kept in touch. She won big a few times at the casinos. She loves it there. I need to get away. But Daddy's going to shit all over her, so be warned"

Jimmy watched her. Things kept looking better and better. Go with the flow.

"Ok"

"Hand me the phone"

authortrek.com

# THE MAN WITH TWO HATS

Randy Hornsby arrived at the country club in his Rolls Royce. He parked beside his wife, Gwen=s, found his way to the dining room. This was the weekend they traditionally celebrated his birthday. It was tomorrow. This morning was a little brunch to say hello to his sons, Chris and Steven. They'd got into town late last night. Steven had his family, Pat and the kids. Chris had a good looker hanging on his arm as usual.

Randy was accorded respect from the staff as he made his way to the Hornsby table. He gave Gwen a peck on the cheek, hugged Pat and each of their little kids, Ross and Emma. He listened to Pat talk to them to catch their names. He shook hands with Chris's date, Stephanie, then embraced his sons.

Becky Chisholm stopped by the table, said hello to everyone, made the usual flighty cackles when she heard he was a year older. She and Gwen were trustees at the prep school which the boys had attended. They got into a discussion about the school, Randy focused on his sons.

Steven always had been the more serious of the two. Now here he was, an officer. Thank God he's finished with Iraq. He was needed here more.

Pat was a perfect military wife for him. Never complained, a God fearing Baptist girl and plenty fertile with it.

Steven had confided, in one of those father and son talks on the golf course, that they'd decided to stop at two. The kids were cute as buttons, but she'd have one a year with no trouble if they kept it up. So, by mutual agreement, Pat had her tubes tied.

Chris was the athletic one. No more than Steven when they were young, but Chris had dedicated himself to it. He was about to graduate from university, get drafted by the NFL for sure and make it in football.

Randy was confident that Chris= good looks, charm and outgoing personality would provide a good life for him whatever it turned out to be. He always had girls hanging off of him, now he would have an even wider field to choose from.

He seemed determined to remain a bachelor, Gwen complained, but Randy thought they should step back, let Chris live his own life.

Gwen took Stephanie, Pat and the kids to see the garden. It was out in the back, a gift from Randy to Gwen. He gave it to her on their last anniversary.

It was a lavish affair and the staff took great pains to keep the secret hidden until it was announced. The crowd was impressed. A beautiful garden donated to the club in Gwen's name. In perpetuity. For generations to come.

Randy's only regret was that they were too old to really celebrate. They had long since taken to separate beds. Not that he did it for a reward. It was given out of love.

The men talked about work, football, the current war. Randy felt comfortable sitting with his sons. They were good conservatives like him.

The remains of the Eggs Benedict were whisked away, more coffee provided.

Randy felt that he had made the right decision each time that the political powers had begged him to run. No, he decided to stay in business. It was better to be out of sight. Better to be the puppeteer than the puppet.

Randy caught himself thinking ahead to the girls. Their names slipped his mind too at times. He brought himself back to the table when Spanky Reynolds stopped by. She oohed and aahed over Steven and Chris, how handsome they were and asked after Pat, Gwen and the kids. She would call Gwen later to chat about the philanthropic work they did together. She had laughed the loudest when Gwen told the joke about Alzheimer's at that dinner party.

Gwen was at her effervescent best that night. She told them that a person's memory was the first thing to go. The whole table went silent. Gwen paid attention to her plate. Finally, someone asked,

"Well, what's the second?"

Gwen kept eating, cutting her meat carefully.

"Can't remember"

Gwen kept on eating.

There was another moment of silence before the table exploded in laughter. Effervescent and a superb actress. Gwen was admired, envied even, by many in the community.

Randy had to get Gwen to explain the joke to him later. He didn't think it was funny to make a joke out of memory loss. He was forgetful at times himself. They all were.

When brunch was over they went their separate ways. The kids had friends to see, Gwen had a charity auction to attend.

Randy returned to his six thousand square foot home on the manicured forty acres of their gated estate.

He cooled off with some laps in the indoor pool, showered, changed into comfortable driving clothes and set out in the Rolls for the hour long drive north. His birthday would be celebrated at the club tomorrow. Gwen never questioned his schedule anymore, he would be there tomorrow. He knew that she had arrangements to make for the party.

Tonight there was another celebration.

Tommy Ryder pulled his Rolls into the four car garage, noting Sharon's sports car in the lane. He looked over the two tarp covered cars in the middle of the garage to Kim's Rolls Royce. It needed a good cleaning.

As he walked from the garage to the house, Tommy admired the lines of the sprawling mansion. It impressed him every time he looked at it. His first construction project was well thought out, well constructed. So well made that it began his construction company. Word of mouth carried news of the house to the wealthy residents of the county. Soon Tommy had more work than he could handle.

Good delegation and Kim=s help had made it a flourishing company. Tommy didn't have to do much anymore. It was taken care of for him.

Kim was out in the back with the horses, Sharon with her. The horse breeding and show jumping was time consuming, but they liked it.

Sharon always was the daughter who shared Kim's passion for horses. She had wanted to be a vet when she was a little girl and still, now, in her freshman year in university, she was sticking with it. Big, rosy cheeked, always cheerful, Sharon was their best daughter. Not that the others were loved less, but she was more normal. Kim was glad she wanted to be a vet but Tommy wished she could be a doctor.

Tommy grabbed a beer from the fridge in the glistening kitchen, wandered to the games room. He sat in the recliner and flicked on the huge tv screen. He grazed the stations for the latest word on the NFL odds. His account in Vegas was aching to splash out on a good parlay. Certain teams were always backed by the public and the bookies knew it.

When Tommy woke up later that afternoon, Sharon was sitting on the floor beside his chair, head leaning against his leg. She watched tv with the remote control in her hand.

"Hi Daddy"

Tommy stretched, sat up, was given a kiss on the cheek and the remote. Sharon uncoiled from her sitting position, kissed him and left for the kitchen.

ASweetheart@ Tommy stood and stretched again.

They went to the golf club together. They got Ronnie, the butler, to drive Kim's Rolls, while they sat in the back and sipped champagne

Kim looked as classy as ever in her black, slinky dress with a lot of glittering jewellery.

Sharon looked sweet in her new pants suit with her hair done up.

Tommy felt as if he was escorted into the club by the most beautiful women in the world. They had a six course meal with a large birthday cake at the end. Everyone applauded as Tommy and Kim took to the dance floor, shook and shimmied with the best of them. The only negative part of the evening was the appearance of Sally and Sonia, their other daughters.

It wasn't really the girls, it was the boys they were with. Both Jason and Travis, or whoever they were, appeared obviously loaded when they arrived. The hugging and kissing of his daughters felt good to Tommy, but he watched the girls' dates out of the corner of his eye. The one who hadn't shaved, his shirt had a wine coloured stain and there were suspicious little burn holes in the other one's sweater.

Tommy remembered taking Sheriff Wayne aside when Sally was dressing like a Goth in prep school. They told him later that it had been done quietly and firmly. A police woman had pulled Sally over when she was driving alone. She warned the rebellious teen about the people she was associating with. That Craigmore kid got a stiff sentence for drug possession soon after. Sally toned it down.

She was an adult now, beyond their reach. She was on her own, responsible for herself.

Tommy didn't like her friends, but she was always loving and polite around him.

That's probably why the girls only stayed for a short time with their dates. They wished him a happy birthday, hung around for a piece of cake and a dance, then left. Probably got their boyfriends out of there before they caused any damage.

Tommy was swept up in the dancing after that and they drank too much champagne.

He woke up in the big bed the next morning with a hangover. Champagne never did agree with his constitution. He was more of a beer man. He should never have had the southern sipping whiskey and the Havana at the end of the night in front of the big screen tv. But it was a tradition on his birthday. A few glasses of bourbon and a good cigar.

He knew that the girls would be gone when he descended the stairs to the kitchen. Kim had arranged her equine duties so that she'd be free to help him in the afternoon. He drank coffee and read the morning paper at the kitchen table.

Tommy could see the barn roof from the kitchen window. In the foreground was the Olympic sized pool, bright blue in the sunny morning. He refused to plunge into doom and gloom about Sally and Sonia. They were young. They would grow out of their questioning. Their finishing schools would cure them of that. If they turned out like their mother, everything would be fine.

He poured himself another cup, wandered out to the pool. A few good laps would help him shake the grogginess. Kim would make good Bloody Marys to go with lunch. He thought with fondness of their younger days together.

It was a classic case of Randy remembering Kim from high school, years before. She was working in the office of his fledgling company. She caught his eye, was available and thrown together with him by chance. The overtime seemed to never end in those days.

He saw more of Kim than he did of Gwen who was already his wife and the mother of his boys. But Randy and Kim and a few others in the little startup company had stayed the course and produced an invaluable microchip for the pork industry. The farmers were able to track each pig from birth to death. Their weight, their diet, who sold them, where they ended up; information contained in the little chip implanted in each pig's ear.

The company made Randy a millionaire many times over and began his relationship with Kim.

They just seemed to click. It was long before the days of Viagra. Oysters were his only ally in surviving sex with both women.

Kim never mentioned the other family at first, but eventually she got used to the idea.

They decided to build their home on an acreage fifty miles out of town. The girls were born, it seemed, instantly. Before Randy knew it, he had two families. They talked and Kim had her tubes tied.

It was easier for him to change his name to Tommy Ryder than to go through the hassle of divorcing Gwen and changing Kim's name. So he adopted her last name and they set up house in their magnificent new home.

Divorce wasn't really a question he'd have considered anyway. He owed Gwen some loyalty and it wouldn't have done the boys any good. Kim was happy with her house and cars and girls. He had provided everything for her that Gwen had. He had donated millions to the hospital for a wing named after her.

She was always the life of the party. The women of the community looked up to her, admired her unlimited cheerfulness. Her only comment on the situation was that if it made him happy, it was ok with her.

Usually, Tommy dressed in the clothes Ron laid out on his bed for him, but Kim had insisted that she would be there when he got ready to go. She fussed over the tie he wore, straightened the knot several times and dragged him in front of the full length mirror in their bedroom. She stood to one side admiring him as he turned in front of his reflection. She even had a special flower for the lapel of his expensive jacket which was placed carefully in the back seat of his Rolls. She wanted things to be just right.

He admired Kim's devotion.

Tommy drove south. He sang along when the country music station played an old Hank Williams tune.

Dusk was a beautiful time of day. It would be good to see the girls tonight. No, it would be the boys. He couldn't remember his sons'names.

There was a shopping mall on the right.

He pulled in, didn't remember the number. The speed dial was set on his cell phone. The familiar number was displayed.

"Hello?"

It was Kim.

"Hello, dear. It's me. I'm...uh...I'm..."

"You're on the way to town, dear. It's your birthday party tonight at the club"

Tommy heard the gentle answer. Kim was always more sympathetic. She understood. After they found the big wad of cash which he had hidden in the dresser drawer and they checked with both companies, they never did find out where those thousands of dollars came from or what they were for. He couldn't dodge that one. He had to admit it and deal with it. Good old Kim.

"Of course, my birthday. Randy Hornsby's birthday party at the club.

Thanks dear. See you"

Tommy pushed the off button on his cell phone and pulled the Rolls out onto the road leading south.

unpublished

# MURPHY'S GHOST

I was not surprised at the shuffling of feet beyond the high wooden fence. It was Halloween night and I was working my first shift as night watchman in the old lumber company where my grandfather had worked for thirty years. They say, at the end, the owner would send a car for old Tom to take him, in comfort, the two miles each way he had walked for so long.

There were children and parents walking the streets outside the yard, sometimes explosions of firecrackers in the distance.

It was an old lumber yard, a throwback to the glory days of Bytown when timber was king. I walked around the perimeter wooden fence, checked that the big doors to the yard and garage were locked, wandered into the little kitchen for a cup of tea. I knew that drinking too much caffeine on graveyard shifts could have disastrous consequences when the lack of sleep eventually caught up to you, but this was my first shift, Halloween night and tea didn't seem as dangerous as coffee.

I wasn't one to be superstitious and all the leprechauns and little people and faeries of Irish folklore weren't foremost in my thoughts except when I remembered my mother who was born in Galway and believed in it all. I had bad dreams about the freezecat but that's another story.

There were three mugs set out in the kitchen at the back of the office. I dropped a tea bag into one, plugged in the kettle and checked that day's Sun girl.

The knocking at the office door sounded normal. Maybe some of the trick or treaters outside had seen the kitchen light. I walked through the dark office.

As I reached for the doorknob I heard the words

"No need for that"

I couldn't believe my eyes when a man walked right through the door and shook my outstretched hand.

"Tom, Tom Wheeler, your grandfather, and you'll know Murphy"

To my astonishment another figure stepped through the closed door and shook the hand which my grandfather had just squeezed. I felt it. I know they both squeezed my hand.

I recognized my grandfather by pictures I'd seen. He had a large head, a bald pate and a perpetual smile. My irreverent friends would have called him "wingnut" because of his large ears, but not to his face.

Murphy's theory was the reason I was here in the first place. His theory of gambling on sporting events hit a few rough spots when I tried it after his death. Or maybe I didn't get the full gist of it. Whatever happened, I lost my shirt over those bets and was forced to take this job. The last time I'd seen Murphy he was sitting up in his casket with my coffee cup in his hands and a brawl going on all around him.

They made their way through the office to the kitchen where my grandfather refilled the kettle and washed out an old teapot. He made tea while Murphy and I sat down at the table.

I wasn't sure what to do about it and the manners of these two ghosts, for that is what they must be, were impeccable.

"I thought we came here to decide" said Murphy, filling his pipe.

"Yes, we can decide tonight, all right. Tonight'll be the night we'll decide" Tom said as he set the pot down on the table to steep and pulled up a chair. He too filled his pipe.

"You didn't follow through on the system I told you about just before I died" Murphy said to me.

"What do you mean?" I piped up.

"A team usually loses at home the first game after a road trip. That's part of it. There were a few more tricks of the trade which you failed to employ when you made those bets. You would have bet the opposite and cleaned up if you had" Murphy lined up the sugar and milk near his cup just behind the spoon.

"Hm" I grunted.

Tom poured tea into our cups and spoke to Murphy as he added his sugar.

"I think three"

Murphy took his time, measured his sugar carefully with his spoon, added milk and stirred the combination vigorously.

"After a lot of thought, I have to conclude that the answer is two"

A long silence broken only by the sounds of tea drinking and the unwrapping of a package of biscuits Tom had produced. Peak Freans.

"Maybe, if they were doing a proper Irish jig. But even then, with the footwork, you'd have to hope they were once Irish in order not to step on each other's toes."

"See, three is the superior number" Tom answered," being half again what your number two is It could be easily done by three angels dancing a Highland fling on the head of a pin"

My grandfather's father was a stonemason from Putney but his wife was a Ross from the Highlands and he defended the northern clan at every opportunity.

"We're not talking about a needle here" Murphy proclaimed.

"The thick end with the eye in it. Only Irish angels could dance on the head of a pin and there'd only be room for two of them"

Tom disappeared for a moment behind a cloud of grey smoke from his pipe. Anger showed on his countenance when he reappeared.

"Three Scottish angels could do it"

Before I knew what was happening they had jumped up and were circling the table, Murphy with a large shillelagh, Tom with a battle axe.

I sat still and watched.

Murphy swung a vicious two hander which caught Tom in the neck. His head was clearly separated from his shoulders but just popped up and landed back in its spot. It was facing the wrong way, but Tom adjusted it and caught Murphy on the side at hip level thereby cutting him in two with the axe.

Murphy separated in the middle but his upper body, after popping up, returned to the bottom half at the waist.

I could hear laboured breathing as they sparred and clashed but no more than the sounds of two old men exerting themselves.

Finally, they put aside their weapons, drank tea, smoked their pipes and resumed the debate.

"Two is a balanced number, equal on both sides of its duality" Murphy declared out loud.

"Well, we could add them together to equal five or put them side by side and come up with thirty two" offered agreeable Tom. One of his brothers had been an accountant.

"Ihirty two would be a little crowded on the head of a pin" Murphy observed.

Both disappeared behind clouds of grey smoke as they contemplated the problem with newly fired pipes.

"The angels would have to step lively all right" Tom observed.

"Thirty two Scottish angels could do a Highland Reel on the head of a pin" he declared.

"Mind you, they'd need eight circles for the teams of four"

"Hm" responded Murphy.

I could see putting them side by side and coming up with twenty three"

I was wondering if they would again arise to resume hostilities but all they did was wash and dry the cups together like an old married couple. I could hear them mumbling to each other as they stood at the sink with their backs to me.

My disbelief was in a suspended state. Except that it wasn't a trick in my head.

They sat down at the table again and looked across the office to the front door.

The knock on the front door came after a long minute of waiting.

I made to rise but Tom put up his hand to stop me and Murphy said

"Shh"

The door never opened but four little men carried a log fire with a bubbling pot slung above it through the office to where we were sitting in the kitchen. Behind them a mad cackle blended with the whooshing sound of a wild wind and a dark figure flew through the wall, did two circuits of the office and landed deftly behind the pot.

My mouth was hanging open when I looked at my grandfather and Murphy.

Both nodded and smiled at the woman in front of us.

"Hello, Zelda" they said.

"Boys" the woman spoke while her appearance changed like fluid before my eyes. First she was an old hag, then a beautiful maiden, then an ancient crone with a wart on her nose and finally she settled on a plump milkmaid who peered curiously into the pot.

"This is Steve, Tom's grandson and an old friend of mine" Murphy spoke up.

"He's on the other side, is he?" she stirred the bubbling broth with great concentration.

"Yes, he's still there" Murphy nodded agreeably

"But not for much longer"

This conversation troubled me.

"And how's tricks and treats tonight then, Zelda?" Tom inquired.

Zelda turned into a smartly dressed businesswoman while she surveyed the pot and the four little men. Were they elves or goblins or gnomes? I didn't know and no one was telling.

"It used to be better in the old days" she said

"You can't scare anybody any more. Then there's all the white witches. Dogooders I call them. I mean you can be spooky without being evil"

She joined Murphy and Tom in puffing on a pipe. With all four of the little men smoking their pipes as well, we disappeared for a moment until the cloud moved on. There was no smoke from the fire under the pot though, I will say that.

As if on a prearranged signal, the little men picked up the fire and pot, waited till Zelda stepped out of the way, carried it through the office and the closed front door.

Zelda watched them go, an ever changing expression on her ever changing face.

"Goodbye, boys. I sensed you were in the neighbourhood and thought I'd drop by to say hello. See you round"

She did a high speed circuit of the darkened office, one second mounting her broom, the next a black blur, the next gone through the wall.

After this display my grandfather produced a pint of single malt Highland whiskey and Murphy found a pint of Black Bush in his pocket.

The tea mugs were used to share the shots.

"Tell you what" said Murphy "We'll meet next Halloween night here and decide for good"

"Agreed" said Tom "Next Halloween night. That long enough for you?"

"Oh yes. By that time there won't be any doubt. I'll know by then"

"Same here" said Tom.

They stood and offered their hands.

Each squeezed my outstretched one.

As I followed them across the office, Tom said

"Halloween night is over here now. But it's just starting west of here"

They waved goodbye and walked through the door.

I opened it and watched them walk to the outer fence. They turned to me.

"I'll say hello to your Dad" Tom spoke in a loud voice.

"And don't bet on anything more than five to one" Murphy shouted

They turned west and walked through the fence.

Up in the sky, silhouetted against the full moon, Zelda flew by on her broomstick.

I walked back to the kitchen to turn out the lights.

I felt that glorious buzz which just the right amount of good whiskey produces.

It was time to do my rounds and make sure nothing strange was happening in the yard that Halloween night.

unpublished

# THE CANADIAN VIEW

We were snowed in as usual. The cabin fever began to grow. There was barely room for all of us and the animals. Nothing could be left out in this cold.

The wind shrieked and howled while the snow buried our houses with us in them.

The digging started right away, of course. Those of us who were nearest the door were given shovels and plows whether we wanted them or not.

Granny sat by the wood stove. She was blind but she was knitting. There would be a long scarf for the children by the time we tunnelled to daylight.

Children howled and shrieked with joy as they buzzed through the crowded residence. Families and extended families with their neighbours and their extended families sheltered in the humble abode.

Gramps saw it once. One time, so they say, before he passed away, Gramps emerged from the snow tunnel the day before the winter snows descended again. He looked upon the homestead that day, without snow on it and never spoke another word.

Caribou jerky hung from the ceiling. Wood stoves kept the stew stewing.

We took it in shifts. We hoped, in our modest way, to make it out before the snows came again. We aimed to see what Gramps saw.

Farmyard beasts mated in the back, among the hanging furs. Birds sat in the rafters and dropped droppings as we dug for many days.

Once, it became lighter and we thought we had reached the end in record time. We were wrong, of course. A cave-in deprived many of consciousness. Lively Irish fiddle music replaced lively Scottish fiddle music which replaced lively French fiddle music. Then they reversed.

Stew and beer awaited those who participated in the digging. It wasn't an occupation which promoted good health, but as our neighbour, Mr Clark said,

"Up, up and away! "

Children were born, old ones passed along, the population's size expanded and shrunk. The digging went on, but it was slow work.

We were sure to reach the end by the return of the snowstorms, but what then? Did we always have to do this? Is this what life was about?

It was in this frame of mind that I'd become separated from the main group. I don't know how it happened.

I wandered through a shiny crystal tunnel. I was lost.

The temperature was all right but I had no food or water. A mysterious tugging kept me walking on without fear.

Then it was over as soon as it had begun. I emerged into a warm field full of sunshine and trees and grass and birds.

A small man dressed in green sat with his back up against a towering oak tree. He was fingering a flute, trying out different notes by covering different holes.

I sat down in front of him and watched.

His bushy grey eyebrows flickered as he stared at his fingers in concentration.

He blew a few notes, wrinkled his nose and placed the flute in an inside jacket pocket. From this he withdrew a deerstalker pipe and tobacco.

When he had lit up and enjoyed the smoke, he smiled and looked at me.

"Well now, how are you and the Canadians you know?"

I wasn't sure what to say. I felt good right then, at that moment.

But how was I really? And the Canadians I knew?

This flashed through my mind in a nanosecond, but the little man's eyes showed that he was waiting for me to catch up.

It seemed that he was reading my mind. I only had to think something and he would chuckle to himself. It made me examine every thought.

"Fine" I said.

"Fine? Fine?" he chuckled, drew a good draught on his pipe.

When I looked into his eyes I could only think of the digging. Stew, beer and digging.

It wasn't a happy fate that awaited Canadians. The reality of it struck me in the face like a cold mackerel.

"Well, you seem to have caught me unawares, so I'll grant you the wish you desire" said the little man dressed in green. He produced a wand and stood at the ready. He rolled his eyes, checked a pocket watch in his vest, tapped his toe, sighed and looked impatient.

I could think only of the digging as I made my wish.

The little man doffed his green fedora, pocketed his pipe and disappeared with a smile and a twinkle of the eye.

I found myself walking along the crystal corridors again, pulled onward by an unknown force.

Sounds of the digging greeted me as I joined the digging assembly line to the envious oohs and ahhs of my coworkers.

They were admiring my brand new shovel.

More stew, beer and digging.

It began to look dubious that we would reach the end of the snow tunnel before the snows returned.

We dug harder and faster to make it through.

Then, just when things were darkest, we began to see a little light.

As we dug toward the surface, there were hoots of jubilation among the grunts of work.

The sun appeared as we emerged a year after the last snowstorm, but a snow cloud quickly hid its warmth and light.

We realized, as we looked upon the homestead, that big lump of snow, that the snowstorms had returned. We were late by a few days.

We resolved to beat the snowstorms next year as we filed back into the tunnel.

notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com

# THE BINGO

We didn't see it as a line drawn in the sand at first.

Roy hired Eldon, Ruth's nephew, just before the bingo started. Aunt Ruth saved him from returning to a life of petty crime and jail with a kitchen helper job.

If Roy hadn't fought with Ruth, his wife, who worked at his diner that night, things might have stayed quiet for a while longer. It was bound to explode, but maybe it could have been a little less volatile. And deadly.

No one could ever figure out why Roy and Ruth were together. It wasn't physical attraction. They fought constantly and enjoyed showing the other up in front of everyone. None of us at the counter could imagine them making love without grimacing.

Roy had let himself go, sampled too many fries, drank too much beer. The diner had taken over his life. He even smelled greasy outside of the diner.

Ruth was putting on the beef as well. She had a shrill voice that grated on everyone's nerves.

We only heard it peak when they were busy.

Eldon hung around the back, chain smoking, when he wasn't scurrying around the kitchen following orders. He had a shaved head and some jailhouse tattoos on skinny, big veined arms. Geordie and I sat at the counter one morning and witnessed the birth of the bingo. We were waiting for Ruth to check the last of her lottery tickets. When she had counted up her losses, to hear her tell it, she served us our second coffees.

There was a gathering of women at the table in the corner. It was unusual to see the female diner regulars sitting anywhere but at the counter next to us. They talked to each other and ignored us. It was the first meeting of their bingo committee. The women must have talked about it before, somewhere else.

Roy brought the morning paper to the counter open at the picture of that day's beauty. She was beautiful all right. Not wearing much either. Neither Geordie nor I had attempted relations with a woman for so long, it was as if we'd forgotten about sex.

Roy had a way of leering at the pictures, every morning, which was probably similar to ours in our younger days. These days, when he did his little act, it was hard for us to watch.

We didn't think he was so attracted to the pictures, he was just doing it to get under Ruth's skin. Geordie rolled his eyes at me and smiled at Roy. The licking of his chops and the quick glance down at his greasy apron were too much for customers who didn't know Roy.

One man, standing at the cash to pay, watched Roy ogle the picture and dirty dance to the kitchen, his big, old belly undulating beneath his apron. The man observed him as if he was watching a lunatic. He was wondering if Roy had cooked his ham and eggs.

Gladys, Caroline and Linda were the three regulars sitting at the table. They had a pile of papers and looked like they knew what they were doing.

Linda had already done most of the paperwork about licences and permits.

Gladys was an old farm wife with a brood of kids, grown up and settled elsewhere. We heard one got into trouble and ended up in jail, but we kept our noses out of other peoples' business. Gladys' husband, Hubert, died a few years ago. She figured she did her part, putting up with him and his farmer ways and the kids were on their own. She was enjoying her freedom, doing her thing.

Caroline's driven the school bus ever since her husband died. She sounded like a rough, old trucker and drank everyone under the table on special occasions at the Legion. We suspected that there was a female part to her, aside from the obvious ones. She hadn't lost a kid from the bus yet though.

Geordie's son, Cliff, a cop, told us that she was really a sweet old thing. He said the kids trusted her more than their parents and teachers.

Linda had retired and moved here from out west. Nobody knew much about her. We couldn't figure out her age.

Roy took a long look at her rear end and legs when she wore shorts in the summer, licked his lips, rolled his eyes and attempted some pelvic thrusts beneath his big, round apron.

We saw Ruth catch Roy in his act. She got that angry glare on her face and wouldn't speak to him for the rest of the morning.

It wasn't as if Ruth was jealous, every sign pointed to her not caring what Roy did. She laughed at him when he made a mistake with the orders and enjoyed telling everyone at the counter, especially Linda, about her husband's latest screw up. It was more like she didn't want competition from Linda. If she only knew: there was no competition, Linda was much better looking and younger.

Some mornings, Linda watched, with a steady stare, Roy do his act with the morning paper. While Geordie and I were cringing with embarrassment, Gladys and Caroline chatted. They had seen Roy do his thing so often, they didn't even notice.

Roy took Linda's stare as a sign of interest.

Ruth saw how foolish Roy looked.

Linda, Gladys and Caroline were like peas in a pod when you gave them a coffee and a place to sit. The bingo really fired them up. They were gung ho to get started.

Ruth got involved in the bingo, too. Anything Linda did, she criticized or tried to do one better. Even though the others had done all the work, she insisted on being consulted about everything. Ruth had been at the diner for years and here was this newcomer organizing a bingo. Everyone knew bingos didn't work around here, there was no support. Ruth figured that everyone around her was poor. But she had no trouble sleeping at night when she took their tips. She thought that the world was doomed.

We couldn't argue with her, there, but she didn't have to be so gloomy about everything, every time she opened her mouth. We had to survive, somehow. Laughter seemed better than complaints nobody listened to.

The regulars at the diner found Linda to be someone new and interesting. She had strong opinions but she was happy just to fit in with the others.

Ruth knew that she, herself, wasn't interesting enough to hold the attention of the regulars without the coffee pot in her hand. She repeated each new piece of gossip so that it was old by the end of the day.

It drove Roy and the regulars crazy.

Geordie and I sensed Ruth's smouldering jealousy over Linda's popularity, but it was none of our business.

We played cards, euchre, on Tuesday nights, at the Legion. There were four tables of four, sometimes five. It was an excuse to drink while we played.

They showed up on a Tuesday night when we were just getting started.

Linda led them straight into the Legion with the bingo machine, sheets of cards, change box and everything.

Geordie and I were about to protest, when Jack appeared. Jack Lawson was the president of the Legion. He approved of the bingo, a potential money maker and told us so. We had to move our card game to the other room.

We were upset by this interruption of our routine and did our share of grousing when we went to pick up our next rounds at the bar. The euchre games lost a little charm when speakers droned,

"Under the B, fifteen" or "under the N, thirty five", in the background.

At first, there were a lot of sudden attacks of deafness at our tables. The players raised their voices to speak over the bingo noise. Gradually, it calmed down. There was less interference once we got used to it.

Jack came to sit down at our table later. He told us that he had refused to cover the bingo losses if they didn't have a good turnout. He'd back them, once they showed a profit. It was business, pure and simple.

We realized, after talking with Jack, that having a money maker around was a good thing.

Ruth was there from the start. From the sound of it, the next morning at the diner, she did everything she could to disrupt the proceedings. Relations were frosty between Ruth and Linda. The bingo had been a modest success in spite of Ruth's interference. She was mad, Linda quietly triumphant.

Roy loved it.

Geordie and I ate our usual breakfasts listening to the women at the counter. They were attacking Ruth that day. She had crossed the line at the bingo. We had an extra cup of coffee and read the paper twice so we could listen to them tear down Ruth. I don't think that there's much doubt anymore, about the notion that women are more vicious than men. After we heard what they had to say about Ruth, there was no doubt for us.

They'd smile and change the subject when Ruth approached with the coffee pot. They made small talk with her while she topped up their cups. When she was out of earshot, they resumed the attack. Sounded to us like Ruth had ruffled a few feathers by being a little too bossy at the bingo.

It was the second Tuesday night bingo at the Legion. There were five tables for our euchre game. The bingo organizers, led by Linda, all carrying sheets of cards, got there early. Ruth was still working with Roy back at the diner.

The games went well for us. Geordie and I were cleaning up.

There was a good crowd for the bingo in the other room. The buzz of their chatter subsided as Linda, the caller, started each new game. When there was a winner, Gladys called back the numbers to Linda and Caroline paid.

We heard the first disturbance after a lot of cheering from the bingo side, figured somebody had won the jackpot. Geordie was returning to our table with the quarts when a loud bang froze everyone. It was the sound of a gun.

The Legion is full of old soldiers and hunters. The old soldiers hit the deck, the hunters jumped to see what was going on.

"Hey, stop right there"

We heard the female voice clearly.

I peeked around Geordie, who was also hiding under the table soaked in beer and saw Linda fire the gun.

We heard the body drop and screams. I saw Linda stand up, put the revolver down on the table and walk toward the body.

Silence at the euchre tables broke into excited whispers.

"Holdup. Robbery"

The words bounced around the room.

"Mask"

Ruth arrived at this point, glanced at us rising from the wet floor and kept going into the bingo room, a worried expression on her face.

There were more than a few legionnaires regurgitating their beer when they saw the mess that Linda had made. She must have hit a blood vessel when she shot him. There was blood on the hysterical women sitting at the table beside the body, a mess on the floor. The guy was still masked.

Jack Lawson pulled the sticky balaclava up far enough on the guy's head to reveal Eldon's face. There was no breath left in him. They tried to revive him while we waited for the ambulance but there was no hope.

Eldon had tried to rob the bingo at gun point. He fired his weapon once into the air. He was leaving with the cash when Linda stood up and told him to stop. She pointed her gun at him, he pointed his at her, and that was it, she fired. It didn't make Linda feel any better when it was discovered that he was using a harmless starter pistol. It looked real enough, one cop who knew Geordie confided.

Ruth blanched when she saw Eldon's face. She stared at Linda, looked at the body on the floor and sat down.

The next morning, the diner was buzzing about the happenings at the Legion.

Linda arrived late. She had been talking to police, reporters and her lawyer. There would be an autopsy and a trial. With so many witnesses to the attempted robbery, she would be cleared of the charges.

Linda entered the diner like a conquering hero. We applauded her.

Eldon didn't have any family, except for Ruth, in the east. She shipped the body to Vancouver. It only took a day of her time. She was back at work that week.

It came out later, through the press, that Linda was a retired cop. She had worked undercover for years and carried a licenced weapon all the time. Nobody knew it, but she went to target practice at the shooting range on the weekends.

She had seen all of their hard work go for naught when that boy scooped up their bingo money. When he pointed his gun at her, it was instinctive to shoot. She didn't think about killing him. It was cut and dried with Linda. She regretted Eldon's death, but he was the bad guy.

Geordie and I were treated to a visit, by Cliff, one night at the Legion. He let it slip, as we watched the hockey game, that Ruth was being investigated. None of the cops thought that even Eldon was dumb enough to risk everything for the small amount of money at the bingo. They figured he was put up to it by his aunt. They didn't know why, what her motivation was, but they thought she was behind it. One thing for sure, Cliff told us, without Ruth's confession, they couldn't prove it.

Ruth paid particular attention to Linda after that bingo. She served her first among the counter people, her coffee cup was always full.

It was impossible for Linda not to know that Ruth was suspected by the cops.

Roy wore a hunted look, like he was confused, not sure where he stood. He checked out the morning paper in the kitchen.

We heard that Ruth had left the diner on the night of the bingo, in a huff, after a big fight with Roy. Maybe it was enough to push her over the line. Maybe her jealousy and anger caused her to put the kid up to it, to make Linda look bad.

Unfortunate for young Eldon, her dead nephew.

Geordie and I watched and listened. We knew that Ruth knew that Linda knew.

Ruth attended the bingos but she didn't boss anyone around any more.

Linda watched Ruth fill our cups at the counter and listened to her repeat tidbits of gossip.

We saw their eyes, Linda's steady gaze, Ruth's furtive glances, meet.

That was when we saw it as a line drawn in the sand.

unpublished

# SCORSESE THEN AND NOW

It's a deceptive title, really, because I'm not a film critic nor a fan of any director.

But Martin Scorsese was the one who had the smarts, the interest and the resources to make two concert films 30 years apart, THE LAST WALTZ (1978) and SHINE A LIGHT (2008).

In 1976, the post Vietnam era in the States, Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson managed to record on film (the first concert movie shot in 35mm) the farewell concert of the Band in the venue where they first appeared as The Band, the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel were leaving the road after sixteen years. In an interview Robbie says he couldn't imagine doing it for twenty years. The Last Waltz was called "the end of an era".

At the time Scorsese was directing New York, New York, a big expensive production, but he had cut his edting teeth in the Woodstock film and learned what not to do there. He took some time off from the New York, New York project and filmed The Last Waltz in a weekend, put it almost all together in a week and a few months later, filmed three songs on a Hollywood sound stage. It grew from Robbie Robertson's idea, a not for profit enterprise with no budget to an important cultural event, done by the seat of its pants, almost an afterthought, and ultimately, the concert movie by which all others are judged.

Thirty years later, after Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Goodfellas and all the awards for No DIRECTION HOME (2005), a documentary on Dylan's early career, Scorsese filmed a Rolling Stones concert.

Shine A Light presents the best of the Stones' Beacon Theater concerts on their A Bigger Bang Tour on Oct 29 and Nov 1, 2006 in New York city mixed with interviews of the band from long ago (mostly in black and white) and in present time The backstage segments were the first time Scorsese used digital cinematography.

Ronnie Wood appears in both films; in out takes of a jam in The Last Waltz, more prominently in Shine a Light.

THIS MOVIE SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD! appears on the screen before The Last Waltz starts. A sign of the times in 1978.

The movie begins with Rick Danko telling Scorsese that the game is "Cutthroat" and a loud cracking of the pool balls as he breaks. Shine a Light nods to that opening as it starts with Ronnie Wood taking a pool shot in a game with Keith Richards.

The Band returns to the stage for an encore. They play "Don't Do It" and Robbie Robertson's lead guitar places the viewer in a beat up neighborhood of San Francisco on the way to the Winterland Ballroom where crowds are lining up and the huge vertical sign above the entrance has half of its lights burnt out.

'The Rolling Stones' appears on a marquee between two rows of lights above the entrance of The Beacon Theater. Scorsese appreciates the balconies and huge space he has to work with and organizes the tracked moving cameras. Shine a Light will be filmed in a beautifully appointed theater.

A young couple waltzes gracefully across the screen against the backdrop of the The Last Waltz logo to the music of The Last Waltz theme song, written by Robbie Robertson, as the names of the guest performers appear: Dr John, Ronnie Hawkins, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Emmy Lou Harris, Muddy Waters, The Staples, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood.

The huge variety of styles to which The Band adapted and the energy they injected into the songs made for a memorable performance. They were a perfect backup band as well as the stars of the show.

The concert itself is a mixture of Band originals beginning with Cripple Creek interwoven with guests who play one song each and interviews of all the members of the Band and some friends. Ronnie Hawkins tells the story of each band member as he was brought into The Hawks, Ronnie's backup band which became Dylan's backup band and then The Band.

The commentaries of the director, musicians and others who were involved in the project which is played over the concert performances in the Special Features section is fascinating. As each person appears, someone talks about them. There is a hilarious description of Van Morrison's sequined outfit as he steals the show with a striking performance of Caravan and an equally funny description of Dylan's preparations for the show.

The actual filming was done for free by world renowned cinematographers who did it as a favour to Scorsese using seven cameras. Ideas like Boris Leven's of filling the Winterland Ballroom with chandeliers had to be cut back because they could only afford three.
Boris Leven, a personal friend of Scorsese and his set designer on New York, New York as well as The Sound of Music and West Side Story, thought of renting the set of La Traviata from the San Francisco opera company to spruce up the old Winterland. He helped design the sets upon which Scorsese shot The Weight, Evangeline and The Last Waltz theme song on a Hollywood sound stage. The songs featured the Band, the Staples and Emmy Lou Harris.

One of the great contrasts of the films is the reference to lighting. An assistant tells Scorsese in Shine a Light that one of the lighting effects will literally cause Mick to burst into flames if he stands near it for more than 18 seconds. Scorsese says firmly "We can't burn Mick Jagger. Very simply. We want the effect but we can't burn Mick"

When Paul Butterfield does his solo in The Last Waltz, there is a general panic among the crew when they lose all power to the lights except the one spot on Butterfield and Levon. The problem is fixed in time for the next song and Robbie comments that it turned out to be a perfect shot for the harp player and the drummer.

Camera shots preoccupy directors obviously but Scorsese didn't seem any more relaxed while discussing them with Mick thirty years after his assistant in The Last Waltz had to negotiate every camera movement with Bill Graham who held the rights to the Winterland stage and insisted that nothing impair the sight lines of the live audience. When Mick mentions the audience inconvenience to Scorsese, the director opts for the swooping in motion cameras anyway. He knows the value of a historical document. He did it thirty years ago.

The Special Features section of The Last Waltz dvd contains a Last Waltz Revisited segment in which Scorsese and others talk about the experience 25 years later.

Perhaps the biggest contrast between the two films is that a connection to the Beats plays prominently in the Last Waltz when Michael McClure, the poet, appears on stage in a spotlight, recites a short piece of The Canterbury Tales in Olde English, smiles and walks off. Lawrence Ferlinghetti appears at the end of the show, just before Dylan, recites a quick, cool poem and exits.

Thirty years later the subjects of Scorsese's concert film are meeting the President of the USA and the ex president of Poland backstage. In fact, as Clinton announces in his brief introduction, he's opening for them.

The Stones concerts benefitted the Clinton Foundation and the band received a visit from The President himself as well as his wife and their entourage. One of the funny parts of Shine a Light is Charlie's response to an assistant reminding him that the meet'n greet is at 6:00. He says "I thought we just done it." To which the assistant replies, "No, you just met the president, he's got thirty guests coming".

The Stones play Jumpin Jack Flash, Shattered, She Was Hot, All Down the Line, Loving Cup with Jack White111, As Tears Go By, Some Girls, Just My Imagination, Far Away Eyes, Champagne and Reefer with Buddy Guy, Tumbling Dice, You Got the Silver, Connection, Sympathy for the Devil, Live With Me with Christina Aguilera, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar. I Can't Get No Satisfaction and Shine a Light. Undercover of the Night, Paint It Black, Little T&A and I'm Free are included as a bonus special.

At first I liked The Last Waltz more because of the in depth interviews and the commentaries and its good natured, humourous attitude. But with a budget of one million dollars and the high pressure atmosphere of recording a Stones concert, it makes you wonder what else could Scorsese do? There was really no room for long interviews with the musicians so he threw in clips of past press conferences and interviews where the early days of scandal and infamy were covered and the question which seemed to obsess everyone was "How long are you going to do this?" A young Mick Jagger says he thinks the Stones will last at least another year when they are two years old and then without hesitation says "Yeah" when Dick Cavett asks him if he could see himself doing it in his sixties.

An old Keith Richard attributes his longevity to coming from good stock and a younger one tells an interviewer his luck hasn't run out when he's questioned about surviving for so long. In The Last Waltz Robbie Robertson contemplates recent deaths of musicians like Janis and Jimi and the high risk lifestyle. He says simply, "You can push your luck".

As Robertson talks over Muddy Water's performance in the commentaries expressing how honoured The Band was to have him in the show, he names some of the musicians influenced by Muddy and mentions The Rolling Stones being named after a Muddy Song.

Scorsese looks like the older, respectable director he is in Shine a Light compared to the hungry young man in The Last Waltz.

In Shine a Light when a lighting effect test stops the group he is in from talking, shocked at the flash, Scorsese remarks "Hmm. That cleared my sinuses" and smiles with the same mischievous sense of fun the viewer sees in The Last Waltz as he follows Rick Danko on a tour of Shangrila, the ex bordello which has been turned into a clubhouse and studio.

It's just the difference in times, part of the 60's and 70's vs the first decade of the new century. But there can only be a difference, a comparison, a contrast, because Martin Scorsese had the vision to see rock music in a historical context.

At the risk of sounding too Canadian, I think that both concert movies are well worth watching.

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# PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN CONSIDERED

Back when Syd Barrett led Pink Floyd , the band recorded its first album at Abbey Road Studio at the same time as The Beatles recorded Sergeant Pepper's there and The Pretty Things were recording S F Sorrow. They called it, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Flash forward to this century and a habit I picked up in Amsterdam and can't seem to shake. The habit is listening to the World Service on the radio all night. It's the CBC All Night Radio here, the BBC World Service there (I think). A lot of countries contribute reports to the World Service. I don't really understand how it works but there's nothing quite like laying snug in your bed, free to fall asleep or listen to Holland, Sweden, Korea or Poland talk about their news. For instance, the other night there was a report from somewhere near Alice Springs, Australia about a race they held between honey bees and homing pigeons. The bees won.

Of course, it you're tired and working and need to get up early in the morning, it's unwise to indulge this habit. You lose too much sleep. At the moment, though, I am indulging this habit and the other night I must have dozed off and awoke to a female voice with an English accent declaring that the seventh chapter of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows proved his hidden but genuine pantheism.

Kenneth Grahame was born in Scotland and spent all of his working life in a bank in London. According to Wikipedia he died in 1932 and The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908.

As I rolled around in the dark, it occurred to me that Van Morrison had included a song on The Healing Game cd called The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The chorus is "The wind in the willows and the piper at the gates of dawn".

And Fred Armstrong out in Newfoundland actually talked on CBC radio about The Wind in the Willows. It was his opinion that the book was not a children's book at all, that it was really written for adults. There was no script for the show but he said he went over the top a little when he called it, "Shakespeare with fur".

It's probably the combination of poetry and music in Van Morrison's song that appeals to me so much. When I actually read chapter seven which is called The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in Grahame's book, I discovered poetic language there too. In fact, Van used several phrases verbatim from the book or almost verbatim. When Grahame uses "the daybreak not so very far off", Morrison uses "the daybreak not so very far away" and when Grahame writes "the light grew steadily stronger", Morrison sings "grew steadily strong".

And Fred, an old friend and veteran reporter (30 years) just published his first fictional novel, Happiness of Fish (Jesperson Publishing., 2007) in St John's. He's a creative soul, one who never gives up on his dreams. If he was interested in the book, there must be something to it.

So I asked him and here's what he said, "Wind in the Willows is a deep little book about a rather Taoist bunch of beasties sitting around writing poems and banqueting between adventures...."

"Opinion seems to be split on the Pan chapter of WIW. People love it or hate it.... I think WIW is a comfortably sentimental look at nature as deity.

I think anyone who has been scared at sea or lost in the woods and come home can handle the balance between a nature that creates us and takes us away or maybe doesn't. There's also something appealing about a deity that performs a Men in Black mind wipe after you trip over him. Ratty and Mole don't remember him when it's all over. They take the little otter off to breakfast rather than sitting down and writing the Book of Revelation."

The words in Van's writing which are taken straight out of chapter seven are:" heavenly music" and "song-dream" though one doesn't have a dash connecting them and the other does.

Graham writes "when the vision had vanished" and Morrison writes "vision vanished" a difference in tense only.

Here is the description of Pan in Wikipedia:

'Pan: in Greek religion and mythology, is the god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. His name originates from the word paein, meaning to pasture. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. He is recognized as the god of fields, groves, and wooded glens; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of Spring.

The wikipedia article goes on to say that "accounts of Pan's geneology are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time." and that "panic" is derived from his name.

The story recounted in Chapter seven of Wind in the Willows is a simple one: Mole and Ratty search for the lost Portly, son of Otter, and find him safe and saved by Pan after they are led there in their rowboat by his magical piping.

Van Morrison uses words like "awe", "wonder", enchanted" and "spellbound" to describe the characters' state as they follow Pan's music to find little Portly.

Grahame emphasizes Pan's insistence that the wild creatures' experience with him will be forgotten when it's over. Like hypnotism, "You will awake and remember nothing"

Wikipedia includes all kinds of interesting facts like, "Pan is famous for his sexual powers and is often depicted with an erect phallus." and "Pan's greatest conquest was that of the moon goddess, Selene." along with references to the symbolism of Satan, Romanticism and Neopaganism and "A modern account of several purported meetings with Pan is given by R. Ogilvie Crombie in the books, The Findhorn Garden (Harper and Rowe, 1975) and The Magic of Findhorn (Harper and Rowe, 1975)."

Pan is not named in the book, just described, but in the song Morrison calls him "the great god, Pan" when he echoes Grahame's insistence that the animals were not afraid of him despite his reputation.

It is the only song on The Healing Game (1997) which has no percussion in it. Just Van's vocals as he plays acoustic guitar with a dobro (which I can't hear probably because of the quality of my sound system), and a piano with Brian Kennedy's vocal backings and Paddy Maloney on Uilleann pipes and whistle.

The Uilleann Pipes, a type of Irish bagpipe, aren't apparently related to the Pan Pipes but their effect in the song is an ethereal, delicate one.

When you see the innocent willow leaves on the cover and the cartoon characters with which it's

illustrated, the same impression is left by the book as when you see Van Morrison's black and white picture on the cover of the cd with a black fedora and shades, a black over coat and white shirt buttoned up to the neck. Neither give any hint of Pan's magic. They bring to mind an old Willie Dixon song, You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover.

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# HOW TO BECOME CLAIRVOYANT CONSIDERED

When I finally got my hands on How to Become Clairvoyant because of the generosity and sensitivity of inlaws at Christmas, I could hardly wait to take it home and play it.

I was scared to be disappointed but I had to hear what Robbie Robertson had created.

I was convinced that anything Robbie Robertson did with Eric Capton would be good.

How to Become Clairvoyant is a guitar player's collection of songs including one called Axman in which he names many of the old blues players as well as Jimi and Stevie Ray in a homage to the tradition of the guitar slinger

The songs are

Straight Down the Line. Where Robertson's New Orleans delta affinity shines through. The man who wrote The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down displays his reverence of the spiritual south, whether it's black magic or Southern Baptist gospel in this song.

Robert Randoph, included in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitar Players, plays a fiery solo on the pedal steel to answer Robertson;'s electric wah wah guitar solo.

When the Night Was Young: My personal favourite, it's got one those hooky choruses that keep popping up in your head long after you heard it.

It goes: 'We had dreams when the night was young.

We were believers when the night was young,

We could change the world, stop the war,

Never seen nothing like this before,

But that was back when the night was young'

Angela Mcclusky, a transplanted Glaswegian in L.A., replaces Richard Manuel's vocals with hers

He Don't Live Here No More. A song about addiction with appropriate wild guitar sounds as Clapton plays a solo on the slide guitar and Robertson surprises the listener, who is expecting a roaring electric guitar, by playing a solo on a gut string guitar which starts with fine Flamenco like picking.

The Right Mistake: Of course Steve Winwood's a part of this project. He plays on three of the songs. He's a multi instrumentalist, named Singer of the Year in 1986 who's been entertaining since before Clapton and Robertson had that visual spark in The Last Waltz in 1972. You can hear his organ clearly on this song which includes solos from Robertson and Clapton and the vocals of Angela Mccluskey.

In the credits Bill Dillon is credited with playing the guitar and the guitorgan. A friend saw Steve Winwood at Bluesfest and was very impressed with his live show.

This Is Where I get Off: Robertson's first musical reference to the painful breakup of The Band wherein he and Clapton do simultaneous electric guitar solos and backup singers,Rocco Deluca, Angelyna Boyd, Daryl Johnson, Michelle John and Sharon White contribute as the song builds up to each chorus beginning, "So just pull over, To the side of the road..."

Fear of Falling: A mellow Clapton riff is what I thought the first time I listened to this. Both Robertson and Clapton are credited with writing this song so only they know. It's an easy going, well crafted blues based song where they both do electric solos and Clapton plays an acoustic guitar. The lyrics are sung back and forth in verses and the two men harmonize on the chorus. The lyrics give it the possibility of being a hit. Steve Winwood's organ in the background is solid but not intrusive. The backup singers, Taylor Goldsmith of The Dawes, Michelle John and Sharon White supplement Robertson and Clapton's harmonies on the chorus. Their blues roots show through here.

She's Not Mine: "Anthemic" is the word which first came to mind when I heard this song. That description sounds a bit grandiose now that I've listened to the song often. It's very impressive with it's thunderous drums, lyrical imagery and musical sound. It's the only song in the collection which credits Jim Keltner ( a mainstay for decades in the rock recording scene) on drums as well as Ian Thomas

The rest use Pino Palladino on bass and Ian Thomas on drums

Pino Palladino who has played bass with everyone from The Who toEric Clapton to Don Henley and Elton John, who has a Fender bass named after him. One of the best in the business.

I became aware of fretless bass in Paul Young's cover of Marvin Gaye's Whever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home). I learn, all these years later, that Pino Palladino (from Cardiff) played the fretless bass on that song.

Madame X: A gentle instrumental Clapton wrote. He plays it on a gut string guitar while Roberston plays electric guitar and Trent Reznor, former front man of Nine Inch Nails, adds "Additional Textures". The bridge in the song evokes Tears In Heaven.

Axman: Doing the guitar solo on a song dedicated to "Brothers of the blade" is an honour given to Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine.

Won't be back: A song by Clapton and Robertson, produced, as all of these songs were, by Marius de Vries, on which he plays keyboard and Eldad Guetta provides the horns.

How to Become Clairvoyant:A song written by Robertson It contains the playing of Robert Randolph on the pedal steel guitar as well as Robertson's electric guitar with Marcus de Vries on piano. Pino Palladino and Ian Thomas provide the beat ,Dana Glover and Natalie Mendoza are the backup voices.

Just when you think you've listened to heavy guitar and it's all very serious, Robbie Robertson speaks at the end of the song,

"Now that would be a revelation

Oh, and I also enjoy levitation"

Tango for Django: It is natural and fitting that a guitar player's recording contains a tribute to one of the greatest guitarists of all, Django Rhinehart. Robertson plays it on a gut string guitar as it leads with violins reminiscent of Stefan Grappelli, into a formal introduction to a slow tango. As he wrote an instrumental, musically correct waltz for The Last Waltz, Robertson has written, with Marcus de Vries, a formally correct (I assume) tango using Frank Morocco on accordian, Anne Marie Calhoun on violin, andTina Guo on cello.

I wonder if Henry Miller heard Django in Paris in the Thirties. I like to think he did.

There is always a texture to Robertson's stuff,something a little wild and weird, usually in his intros. In The Last Waltz he is surrounded by extraordinary musicians so it shouldn't be surprising that he's again surrounded by the same.

Eric Clapton isn't named in Axman but he played on six of Robertson's songs, cowrote two and unveiled his Instrumental, Madame X on How To Become Clairvoyant. His participation is his approval and his tribute.

Even if you are not a rock guitar fan nor a fan ot The Band or Eric Clapton, this collection of rock songs, sung unapologetically in rock language, is worth listening to.

They didn't ave to do it for money. Sometimes it's as simple as two old guitar players having fun.

# HENRY AND ME

I first heard of Henry Miller, perhaps fittingly, when I lived with two other guys in East Vancouver. One of the guys had a friend who was a postman, the other guy was having an affair with the postman's wife. There were a few awkward moments when he snuck her in for a night or an afternoon quickie, but, all in all, things went well and I saw a book which the postman had lent to his buddy, my housemate. It was a compilation of the letters between Henry and Lawrence Durrell.

I became interested and then obsessed with Miller's writing, read everything of his I could get my hands on.

I still have a worn copy of Tropic of Cancer by my bedside along with Flann O'Brien's, The Poor Mouth. For some reason which I don't want to analyze, both books are places of refuge for me when I just want to relax and enjoy the language. At times like that I don't think as much about the content of what I'm reading as much as how the words are strung together.

Finding Henry's writing was like the moment when Shakespeare made sense to me in high school: a light bulb shone.

In all my travels after that I kept a sharp eye open when books by Henry were displayed. Krishnamurti, Durrell, Arthur Rimbaud, Anais Nin and others were introduced to me by Henry's writing and their books were ones I watched for too. Of course, I was watching for cheap versions of their works.

When my friend, Robin, arrived to visit me in Crete he brought a copy of The Colossus of Maroussi, written when Henry visited Lawrence Durrell and his wife in Corfu.

Surviving in a tiny room in Paris on croque monsieurs, cheese, baguettes and red wine, I planned a novel using the Paris metro map as structure. Needless to say, the novel became as confusing and mixed up as my understanding of the Paris subway system and was abandoned.

I made a pilgrimage to the street where Anais Nin lived when she and Henry were having their affair. Their conviction that analysis was necessary and their visits to Otto Rank, a student of Freud, revealed the notion that psychoses are the products of frustrated or blocked creativity. Frustrated writers can take comfort in the idea that writing is at least healthy if not profitable.

By the time I was there, the bars mentioned in his books were too expensive for me to patronize but I lingered outside the Coupole and the Dome.

I walked endlessly around Paris, imagined what it was like then, wondered why Henry was never mentioned in the list of writers who lived in the city in the 30's. There was irony in the thought of him existing from meal to meal as he worked on Tropic in the arts capital of the Western world, poor, reviled and rejected.

I didn't know then that he and Anais Nin wrote pornography for the money of their rich patrons but I knew there had been an overwhelming rejection of him in the States and that he was involved in the debate about pornography and obscenity.

It looks like the descendants of those moral Americans who banned his books for so long have, seventy or eighty years later, taken over the government of the USA.

He described his trip across the states in The Air Conditioned Nightmare. The title pretty well demonstrated Henry's attitude toward the system.

It gave me hope.

Here was a man with great curiosity about the world and other people and sex who ignored all the warnings and temptations which were placed before him and followed a singular path of his own. It led him to another continent, through years of poverty and piles of rejection slips. But he kept going and kept laughing.

"Always cheery and bright" was his motto and the most depressing situations could be changed for the better just by reading his books.

I know that a generation who thinks the 60's is ancient history has a hard time understanding his relevance now, but then he was like a beacon. He personified the rebelliousness and questioning which was rumbling underground.

I often wonder what he would have made of this internet, instant world. I like to think he'd revel in it. It would be so much easier to spread his subversive ideas and plead for sanity. A literary website reminded me of him when they put out a call for submissions on "money". He had written Money and How It Got That Way years ago though I don't know where I saw it.

He would enjoy, as Kurt Vonnegutt Jr put it, "Poisoning them with a little humanity".

Henry believed that the best education it was possible to get was available to anyone with a library card at the same time as he relished the quote ,"When I hear the word Kultur, I pick up my pistol".

Henry wasn't published until he was almost forty and that was always a prod for me when I started feeling sorry for myself.

He's been called racist and misogynist but, in my opinion, almost always by someone with an axe to grind. After all, Anais Nin's lover must have been more than just a male chauvinist pig.

The worst was online when a critic (critics are paid to criticize, we shouldn't forget that) said he was boring. Of course, the critic, who seems to be trying to make a name for himself by attacking famous writers, used much of the language which Henry and others like him forced into literary acceptability. He couldn't express himself without those words but he seemed to have no idea that the very words he used were allowed in the English writing world because of legal battles fought over Henry's books.

I don't know what the penalty was for getting caught with a Tropic or a Rosy Crucifixion book in the 60's but that there was a penalty at all seems ridiculous. As ridiculous as excoriating Elvis, The Beatles and The Dixie Chicks.

Sex was the same then. It hasn't and hadn't changed. He had the audacity to describe the act itself and men and women's bodies without apology and, many times, with great humour. He didn't gloss over the sweaty, intimate details which weren't supposed to be mentioned in polite society.

It's not just that Henry wrote about sex like no one else. He described it in the first person often and didn't avoid branching off into other personal thoughts which occurred to him while he was engaged.

His style of using his own personal experiences for the creation of fiction and nonfiction became the roots of my travel writing. Henry seemed to be painfully honest even when he was making things up.

I was working on the rigs in Alberta, living in Edmonton, when Henry died. I happened to be in town and not in the bush on that occasion and made my way to the nearest hotel.

The bars in Alberta are huge and busy. Others at the table had no idea who Henry was and why I should be there to drink a farewell toast to him on the occasion of his death. I did the same at the same bar when John Lennon was shot. They didn't know, any more than I did, that I would carry around his books and lean on his inspiration for many years.

Here is Henry's description of one of the many jobs he took to survive in France.

"Here was I, supposedly to spread the gospel of Franco-American amity- the emissary of a corpse who, after he had plundered right and left, after he had caused untold suffering and misery, dreamed of establishing universal peace. Ffui! What did they expect me to talk about, I wonder? About LEAVES OF GRASS, about the tariff walls, about the Declaration of Independence, about the latest gang war? What? Just what, I'd like to know. Well, I'll tell you-I never mentioned these things. I started right off the bat with a lesson on the physiology of love. How the elephants make love-that was it! It caught like wildfire. After the first day there were no more empty benches. After that first lesson in English they were standing at the door waiting for me. We got along swell together. They asked all sorts of questions, as though they had never learned a damned thing. I let them fire away. I taught them to ask more ticklish questions. Ask anything!- that was my motto. I'm here as a plenipotentiary from the realm of free spirits. I'm here to create a fever and a ferment. 'In some ways' says an eminent astronomer, 'the universe appears to be passing away like a tale that is told, dissolving into nothingness like a vision'. That seems to be the general feeling underlying the empty breadbasket of learning. Myself, I don't believe it. I don't believe a fucking thing these bastards try to shove down our throats."

Tropic of Cancer
