by Clem Martini
I hear a soft whir, turn and see lights like tiny eyes appear at the farthest end of the valley. The dim headlights approach and I stick out my thumb. A pickup slows, then stops. Two older guys in a rusty green half-ton. The driver’s window is cranked down and I meet Dusty and—can you believe it?—another Gary. Seems like the whole world can’t get enough of Garys.
I open the rear door and squeeze into the crew cab. It’s a tight fit because there’s blankets and equipment and two cases of beer on the floor. The cab’s warm and smells a little of something. I figure it must have something to do with the plastic sandwich pack of hash lying on the seat in front. Dusty glances back at me and asks, “You on the run from something?” I say, a little. Dusty nods and says, “Been there.” And just by looking at him I can see that he has. Guys like us are like those magnetized metal pieces in science class, somehow we find and cling to each other.
“Crank up the tunes,” Gary says, and Dusty does. “Knock the caps off some beer. You got work on the coast?” Dusty asks me. I tell him not yet. “Anything in particular you looking for?” “Whatever,” I say, “so long as it pays.” “Might know something,” he says. He tells me he’s heard where there’s a kick-ass bush party. I’ll meet people there. We drink to it, drain our cans, open fresh ones. Drive up a winding back road. Park at the far end of some rocky nowhere. We stand outside, wait, kill the beers, holler, toss the empties high, whistling into the darkness, turn up the tunes as far as they’ll go. Everything’s good.
One of them, Dusty maybe, fires up a blowtorch they keep in the back of the truck and we crush the hash between two red-hot caulking knives, suck the explosion of smoke in through an oily metal funnel. I think how easy this do-over has been. How I’ve left the cottages, the programs, and the disposable me behind and am halfway to becoming the new me. The new me that has nothing to do with anxiety attacks or writing letters or sitting in group sessions remembering bad times. I reach into the truck, open and drain another can.
Then I notice Gary’s leaning against me, pushing—to get another beer, I guess. I shift over, but he’s grinding up against me again, pushing up against me and I’m pushing back, telling him, “Wait a minute, get off!” but I’m too wasted to do much good. He knocks me backward into the cab, yanks up my shirt, and starts groping. I can’t get him to stop and he’s too heavy to move. My jeans come down. I head-butt him but it’s like head-butting bubble wrap. I try again. He bites me over the eye, then presses on my arms and shifts his weight onto me. I pull one hand free, grab a fold of flab, and bite. While he’s shouting, I squirm out from under him but Dusty has crowded the doorway like a goalie minding the net. He thumps me on the side of the neck, and when I drop to my knees thumps me again on the back of my head with the broken end of a hockey stick. I must have still been moving because he gets agitated and whacks me a couple more times and I check out.
I wake what must be only a couple moments later and realize I’m bleeding hard enough that it scares them. They shovel me into the back of the cab, cover me with a dirty blanket, fire up the motor, and take off. We’re bumping back down the road. I don’t know where they’re going. I don’t know if I’m going to live. I can feel the blood pooling under my head. When we get back on the highway I figure it’s now or never and I kick the door open and roll out. I hit the gravel by the side of the road and bounce like a beer can tossed from the window. Bang, bang, bang, clunk.
I scramble to my feet and run for the trees off the highway. I didn’t have to worry, though, they’re done. The truck keeps right on motoring. I must have snapped the little finger on my right hand in the roll-out or in the earlier wrestle. There’s a lump on the back of my head and a deep gash that won’t close, it just keeps oozing blood. I watch for someone to flag down, but no dice. I’m freezing and can’t figure out where else to go. Everything I touch is dust, everything I touch crumbles, everything I do goes wrong. I limp along the highway until I come to a side road that leads down into the valley.
I follow it, stumble into a shabby mountain town in my muddy, bloody underwear, turn myself in to the police. They enter my name in their electronic registry, run me over to the local clinic where I get my hand taped, my nose taped—it got busted at some point—stitches to the back of my head and where Gary bit off the end of my right eyebrow. The cops give me some stiff, scratchy inmate stuff to wear. Put me in a holding cell back at the station. The next day, the city cops arrive to pick me up. The door to my unit opens, and a tall uniform says let’s go, and repeats it when I don’t stand fast enough.
I crawl into the back of the car and we drive. Everything I passed on my way out, I pass again. Everything I thought about before, I think about again, only even more edged in acid this time. I watch the landscape: trees then rocks then trees then rocks. I remember an argument I had with my psych when I first entered the program. She said if I let them, my peers could help me deal with my problems. I told her they’re not my peers. I’m not the same as them. I had a deal with the court. I agreed to take treatment. Charges were dropped.
She said they weren’t dropped, only modified because of my age.
“Whatever,” I said.
She kept going.
“You’re here because you confessed to sexual assault—”
“Assault,” I said. “Not sexual assault, I never agreed to sexual assault.”
“You forced her down.”
“We were fighting.”
“Her shirt was undone.”
“It came open.”
“You were on top of her, she was undressed. What do you think that felt like for her?”
“I’m not a mind reader,” I said.
She stared hard at me, said, “I’m not asking you to be a mind reader. I’m asking you to demonstrate empathy. Your stepsister says you pressed yourself against her. She says you covered her face to keep her from calling, that she felt you were smothering—”
“That’s a lie,” I told her, and I stood up. “That’s a lie.”
She was still seated in her fancy psych chair, still making like she was calm. “You didn’t have your arm over her face?”
“We were fighting!” I shouted. “Do you know what fighting is? I might have tried to keep her from calling out, but that’s all.”
“Were you afraid she would call out?”
“Afraid?” I wasn’t afraid—I knew. Of course Deb was going to call out. Since she and the Step Dud came, two pieces of the same package, that’s all she’s done. She calls, he comes, and I’m the disposable nothing. And all at once the answer to Toyota Man’s question comes to me. Those are my skills, that’s what life has trained me to do. I wanted to punish her the worst way I knew how, and I did. I wanted her to feel bad and small and worthless. I wanted her to feel what I’d felt, to know what I knew. Mission accomplished.
We’re nearing the city, past the city limits, in the city center, at remand. I’m asked for my name though they already have it and my birth date though they must have that too. I breached parole, so I spend three weeks in segregation.
Let me tell you: time on your own bites if you’re the last person you want to spend time with. Minutes drag and the weeks are sandpaper, wearing away a little more with each pass. You’d think I’d be hungry, but I can’t be bothered to eat. Staff make more meetings for me—seems like they can’t make enough—meetings for psychiatric assessment, meetings with a doctor, meetings with Sheila and with Brenda from Cottage C, meetings with a judge and a lawyer and a social worker. Finally they put me back into care and transfer me out of remand over to stabilization for secure treatment. They’re watching me, afraid I’ll run again, but where would I run to?
There’s no place to go.
You wanted the myth of me, Mr. Danner? Here it is.
I was born in the dark, and have lived in the dark every day of my life.
Everything I’ve ever had has been stolen.
I’ll tell you who I am.
I’m those dwarves you talked about,
buried underground, hammering away but never getting anywhere.
And I’m the giants too, and every day I want to knock something over, tear something apart, beat the shit outta someone.
And I’m a ghost, so dead, for so long, I don’t even know what spell or potion you’d use to call me up.
The psych visits. Not sure which day. I’m still in pajamas, and the pajamas hang off me because I’ve lost so much weight.
They’re still afraid I’m going to run again, so they won’t let me have real clothes or shoes or slippers even. I tell her to go away, but psychs don’t speak the same language as the rest of the world. Instead she sits beside me on my bed. Hauls a big photo album onto her lap. Says look at these photos with me.
I look. It’s the family album they had me put together when I first came into the program. All these pictures of my family at the old home. The real family. Dad, my real dad. Buzz cut. Sharp chin, sharp nose. Sharp edges on everything. Mom hovering in the background, out of frame and out of focus. Like a ghost. And me. I come up to the old man’s waist. Skinny neck, skinny body, big ears.
The psych asks me how old I think I was when my dad started in on me. I flip the page back and forth a couple of times. I tell her it was about then, about that age, about when I was five.
I look at it. I look at us.
I’m standing next to him, he’s got his big bony hand draped on my shoulder. It’s like I’m a dwarf in a land of giants. She asks me, “What could you have done?”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“What could you have done to stop him?”
I stare at the grainy photos. I remember the height when he lifted me, the smothering weight when he pressed against me, the sick fear and the days spent looking out the window.
“Nothing,” I tell her.
I could have done nothing.
She stays longer but the rest of the visit goes through and past me. Danner, you said the whole point of telling our stories is to make us think. Don’t you get that I don’t want to think? When I think, I think what the fuck is up with my life? Everything and everyone I know are so completely totally screwed that if I start down that road, it grinds me to nothing. What good does thinking do if all it does is make us nuts?
And the psych—she shows me these photos of me and my family and my dad, tells me I’m not responsible for what happened when I was little, and thinks that’s supposed to make me feel good? Yeah? Good how, exactly? Good that I couldn’t do anything to stop him? Good that my life has been poison? I get up. I open my cupboard, pry off the wall at the back, and take out the bottle I jacked earlier in the day. I pop the lid, drink the Javex. The sharp smell of the bleach catches at the back of my throat, and I have to make sure I don’t breathe in as I swallow. It burns as it goes down and I want to throw up but I swallow and swallow and I feel it scalding my throat, scorching my nostrils, killing me from the inside out, just the way I want it to. Staff are knocking at the door but I don’t answer and I’ve jammed it shut. They knock harder and shout, then break down the door. They haul me up, throw me in a car, drive me to the hospital. I puke in the car, and puke again on the pavement outside emergency. The nurses tell me they pumped my stomach, but I don’t know cause I blacked out and didn’t wake up till the next morning, and here I am in the psych ward. My mouth is burnt, my throat is scarred, and all I’m thinking is that except for the details, everything my father said, I said. Everything my father did, I did. We’re exactly the same.
Exactly the same.
The next day, the psych comes by the hospital, asks how I’m feeling. I don’t answer because really, given everything, what kind of question is that? She says what I did the other night was healthy—it’s amazing how psychs can make anything bad seem good and anything good seem bad. She says I arrived at an epiphany. I have her spell it.
She says it means an important realization. She says she doesn’t agree with how I reacted to my epiphany, but says I could never have started healing without it.
Right. And what that means I don’t know.
She says I’ll feel bad for some time but I’ll have to be strong. I don’t know about the strong part, but she’s right about feeling bad. All this time I spent hating my dad, and I am my dad. I’m him, except younger.
I’m sent back to Cottage C for more treatment with Rick, Otis, and the three Garys. On campus, everybody hears everything so they all know about my AWOL, my failed escape, my failed suicide, all my failures.
Turns out I’ve arrived just in time for some big performance based on Mr. Danner’s myths unit. Danner’s been making the guys act, and there’s a lot of running around getting ready. It almost makes me glad I was in solitary all that time.
We sit outside at sunset, on the west lawn between the cottages and admin. The guys are dressed as old-time gods with cloaks and spears and cardboard lighting bolts, only they’re sitting in chairs, just like we do in group, trying to work out their shit, all the mayhem and craziness and bad behavior that gods get up to. And it’s all make-believe, and the acting is totally crappy and there’s nothing real, but I end up crying and don’t know why. I have to grab a napkin from the snack table to get straightened up. If anyone asks I’ll tell them I was trying like hell not to laugh.
By the time the play’s done, stars have started to come out and bugs and dragonflies. Bats zigzag overhead. All the social workers and psychs stand up from their folding chairs to clap, and all of the moms and dads and foster moms, too. They’re all there, with the exception of mine.
The guys get flowers and hugs from Brenda. There are little wrapped presents for each of them, too, chocolates and candies and stuff. I’m just happy to be wearing shoes and real pants again.
I look out across the grounds. There’s the lawn. There are the trees beyond the lawn, and the shadows between the trees. I know I can run again. And part of me is wondering how far and how fast, and another part is thinking as far as I get, as fast as I go, everything catches up and the running is easy, but the getting caught up to is a son of a bitch.
Then the bugs start to bite, and people move inside with their snacks and fruit punch. I decide to wait for a while. I fold and stack the chairs along with Gary F., but really I’m back inside my own head again. I’m watching the bats dart across the night sky. I know bats are nearly blind, I read that somewhere. Still, they get where they have to get with no light, no maps or help. Maybe you don’t need a flashlight. Maybe there’s more than one way to find your way in the dark.
© 2010 Clem Martini
Annick Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without prior written permission of the publisher.
Series editor: Melanie Little
Copyedited by Geri Rowlatt
Proofread by Tanya Trafford
Cover design by David Drummond/Salamander Hill Design
Interior design by Monica Charny
Cover photo (flashlight) by sming / shutterstock.com
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Cataloging in Publication
Lindroth, Malin, 1965-
Train wreck / Malin Lindroth.
(Single voice series)
Title: Train wreck, translation of: När tågen går förbi.
Title on added t.p., inverted: Too late / Clem Martini.
ISBN 978-1-55451-259-1 (bound).—ISBN 978-1-55451-258-4 (pbk.)
I
. Martini, Clem, 1956- II. Martini, Clem, 1956- . Too late.
III. Title. IV. Series: Single voice (Toronto, Ont.)
PZ7.L6596Tr 2010 j839.73'74 C2010-903491-0
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