He glanced at the rolled-up sheets in my hand. “Mine is important. A very weighty project.”
“What it is about?”
“That is a good question. A better question would be ‘What it’s not about’? You understand? What I am saying, is that it is about everything. A complete history of the last six hundred years. From 1492 to the present date, to be precise.”
“That will take a real long time to finish.”
“Three months, at least.”
“Only that?”
“Pruning is a real art. You have to know what to leave out.” He took the bun and held it before him, turning and examining it carefully. “Take a man life, for example. He born, he go to school, he dropout. He move from place to place trying to inspire others. Then he die.” He bit into the bun. “End of his history.”
“You think anybody will want to read this sort of project?”
“If they are smart, they will lap it up.”
I told him, “I mentioned you to my father.” He seemed a little worried until I mentioned my father’s name.
“Danny. Yes, yes. Left the village a few years before me. Always wondered what happened to him. Smart man.” I wanted to tell Sporty he didn’t have to mamaguy me just because I bought him a bun when he added, “Was developing a special method for making teeth.”
“Really?”
“From plastic. Common household items. Cups and such. Melted them in a big ball. Brilliant.” He mentioned all of this in little snaps as he crossed out words in his form. I wanted him to talk more of my father but he opened a flap on his briefcase, fiddled around a bit and brought out a jar of whiteout. First, he blanked out a few words then he moved across the form rapidly, until in about a minute or so the entire form was white. “It seems as if I will have to start over. Perhaps I can borrow yours.”
“These are for school.”
“Of course. It wouldn’t work. What course are you taking? May I suggest a course on insects? It was the most interesting programme I taught at Ryerson. Do you know there are ten million species? My favourite was the slinky fly.”
“I never heard of them.”
“Not surprising. Very hard to track. Other insects wait until the slinky flies build their nest before they chase them away. Always on the move.” He pointed his nose in the air and added, “My second favourite is the damsel bug.” I was wondering if he might be able to help me with my admission forms when he said, “Sadly I was let go after discussing just fifty-five species. Terrible business. I had more than nine million left.” When I left, he was making calculations on his sheet, perhaps checking the exact number of insects remaining in his course.
While I was walking home, I knew I couldn’t ask my father once more to sign the form so I decided I would leave it in a spot where he couldn’t miss it. I considered the fridge door and the kitchen table before I settled on the television where it would not get lost in the shuffle of free newspapers I sometimes brought to the apartment. Each night when I got home, I checked for a signature, waiting till my father went into the washroom or his bedroom. Though he did not quarrel as before—mostly staring at the blank screen—the form remained unsigned.
I wished I could ask Sporty for some advice or get him talking of my father but he always seemed too busy. One night, about a month after our first meeting, he was in a real bad mood. “They rejected my project,” he told me. “They didn’t approve the gr-grant.” He got up, pushed the bun into his briefcase and walked up the step. Just like that!
I believe this rejection must have hit him hard because he seemed real frazzled for the next week or so. He walked up the stairs with his buns after just a couple minute and I wondered whether this was all he had been waiting for. Then one night I saw him busy once more, scribbling into his form.
“A new project?”
“This world does not wait for those who don’t get in line. They are left behind, as a rule.” He smiled. “If you pay attention, you will see that every disappointment comes equipped with a loophole. The trick is finding the loophole.” He was right about these loopholes: although I needed my father’s signature on the college forms, if I was just a couple months older I would have been on my own. I wanted to tell Sporty of the benefits of being a minor but he was busily crossing out lines on his own form. “The loophole could be anywhere,” he was saying. “In this particular case, it came in the form of a dream.” He looked up, his head held now in its normal position. “Vision would be a better word, actually. Yes, yes, vision.” He seemed to be studying some of the bars on the ceiling. “I had this vision of people, plenty people moving. You know what a caravan is?”
“A sorta van or carriage.”
“Well, there were thousands of family packed in these caravans. Moving and moving.”
“Just like in Union?’
He fetched out a pen from his briefcase and scribbled Union before he continued, “These people were all running away. To somewhere better where they could start over and watch their grandchildren running through the fields collecting damsel bugs and slinky flies.” I was about to tell him this project seemed more promising than the previous, when he added, “This journey began thousands of years ago. It started in a jungle and that was the easiest part because these travellers bounced up deserts and plains and mountains and oceans and junks of ice bigger than Canada.”
I just had to ask him, “How long this project going to take?’
“This is the problem. You see, this project involve all sort of regions and languages. It not as straightforward as the last one.” He glanced down at the form on his briefcase and scratched out some number. “I would say three months, at the very least.”
Two weeks later, he took the bun I had bought and told me his outline had been rejected because he could not fulfil some requirement. He was in a real sour mood but by the time he had finished the bun he began to talk once more of his loopholes. Soon he hit on another project. A compilation of all the unknown plants and animals on earth. He mentioned the slinky fly and a couple beetles. “Ignored species, suffering in silence.”
Once again, his outline was rejected. This was the pattern for the entire month and although he seemed to recover with each new project, I felt that every rejection had damaged him in some small way. His stammering, though not as bad as before, returned. I tried to help him. “What about refugees?”
He looked at me suspiciously before he began to calculate on a sheet. “There are exactly three hundred and forty-six species of refugees on this planet.” He glanced around at the benches opposite and adjusted his figures. “Three hundred and forty-nine.”
The next night he said he had to abandon the project as it was too dangerous. He snapped and unsnapped his briefcase’s clasps before he asked, “Would you be in-interested in a loan? Just a sm-small sum. I will pay you back as soon as possible.”
I thought of his previous scam as I reached into my pocket. “All I have is a ten.”
He took the bill and folded it into a tiny nugget. “You may not believe it, but this ten dollars might have sa-saved my life.”
He shook his head sorrowfully. I felt a little ashamed for not trusting him. I remembered his question about boarders. “So where you living?”
“Wherever I am when night falls.”
“You don’t have a regular place?”
“This station isn’t that bad. I have all the heat and water and lights that I need.” He cheered up. “And in the nights, when it’s very quiet, I tap into my visions. The only problem is the men toilets. Filthy. The ladies’ is much better. I have learned to pee sitting down. An art in itself.”
Maybe it was his worries about not having a regular place to stay or perhaps it was just all the disappointment but the following night Sporty told me, “The plug got pulled.” I thought at first that he had been evicted from the station, maybe for going to the ladies’ toilets. “The visions have dried up like an old cucumber vine.”
This comparison sounded sort of
funny but Sporty was not laughing. “What about the loopholes?” I asked him.
“Traps! Nothing more than traps.” He patted his briefcase. “This bag have more traps than a crab-catcher van. Tonight when everybody sleeping I going to take it and pelt it ass down the Don-Don Valley.”
“What about your documents in there?”
“Traps. Traps!” He almost sounded like my father.
I told him, “I feel the same way too.”
“Then you are a fo-fool.” He glanced at my hands. “Where is my bun?”
“I ran out of money.”
He dusted his briefcase as if there were breadcrumbs there. “Yes, pardnah. That is the way li-life is.”
I felt sorry for him. “Maybe you could write something simpler.”
“This is the problem with the world today. Everybody want something simple and break down in small pieces. Bu-but I not design that way. That is not my route.” He seemed so offended that I was not prepared for his question soon after. “What you have in mind?”
“Maybe something about these Indians that get killed in the round house.”
I didn’t expect him to take me seriously but he told me immediately, “I see what you getting at. A complete history of what happened to the Indians after the Spanish arrived. I could move from Mayaro to Cuba and Hispaniola.” By the end of that conversation, Sporty had extended his project to include Mexico and Venezuela and several other South American countries. And the next time I met him, he told me, “I don’t see why I have to limit myself with these jungle Indians. I could move across the plains of America too. Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse. Geronimo.” I was sure he got these names from his westerns but he added, “It had a lot of these fellas roaming about in Canada too, you know.”
During the next two weeks, he filled me in on the state of his project. “These Indians had a real tough life, you know. They get outsmarted time after time. Chased away from their homes just like the slinky flies. I believe I discover something important, Pardnah. Real important. These people had no idea of trickery. That wasn’t part of their package. They lived a straightforward life so when they bounce up anybody dishonest, they goose get cooked. Sitting Duck, not Sitting Bull.” As he talked, I felt he was describing his own life. “Now I going to do something honourable. Please, don’t protest.”
“I not protesting.”
He held up a hand as if I was putting up a big argument. “I going to also put your name on the application. After all, it was you who put the idea in my head. When I get the grant, you will be entitled to half.”
“Is you who doing all the work.”
“Quite true but is still the right thing to do.”
“Is up to you,” I told him finally.
“So it’s settled then. As the co-applicant, you will have to split half of the hundred dollar application fee. Just fi-fifty dollars. A small sum for a big investment.”
“I really don’t—”
“Please. Is the le-least I could do. I know you thinking that I giving away this mm-money but I am a man like that. Honest and straightforward. Just like these Indians. In fact, I think I might have some Carib blood in me. Not much, mark you, but enough to make me a straightforward man.”
“I don’t have that much money on me.”
“How mu-much you have?”
“A little more than thirty.”
He crossed his legs and leaned forward with his elbows on his briefcase. I heard him mumbling, “One hundred divide by thirty one equal to …”
His calculations were talking a while so I told him once more, “You really don’t have to include me in any application, you know.”
He straightened. “You will get qu-quarter. That sound fair?”
I was sure he was scamming me and I couldn’t understand why he was putting up this big show. I was giving him the money because I felt sorry for him, living in Union, waiting for the buns, working on all these proposals, getting turned down time after time. And also because he mentioned Mayaro every now and again. After I handed over the money, he told me, “The universe always ba-ba-balance itself. So far I have identified eight hundred and sixty-six ways.” He took out a form from his briefcase and wrote: Co applicant. “This is the nice thing about these forms. You don’t have to include everybody na-name.”
The next week Sporty tried to chisel out some more money from me but I had made up my mind. He mentioned that these arts council people liked proposals about Indian history and that his project was sure to be approved. He told me that he would use his portion of the grant money to rent a small apartment by the Beaches. An old house with gables and two steps leading to a small porch. With a couple flowers in the yard which he would look over as he worked on his project on the front step. He seemed to be describing his house behind Mrs. Bango’s parlour. “The most important thing in a man life is property. A piece of the earth. A place he could leave his mark so a hun-hundred years later a passerby will say, ‘That is house where Sp-sporty used to live.’”
The next week, the bench he always occupied was empty. I waited for a while. A thin young woman with a ring on her left eyebrow unslung her knapsack and sat next to me. She left after five minutes or so. A Sri Lankan couple with their bags of fries came and began chatting in their language. I felt a little annoyed because they were talking so loudly, as if I wasn’t right next to them but after a while, their words seemed small and neatly arranged in straight rows. I thought of a cob of corn.
That same night I realized why my father had been so distracted during the last couple weeks. As I was entering our building, I saw the Creole woman who had given me the form about refugees. She was chatting with a small group and when she spotted me she said, “Samuel, take this sheet and give it to you mother. Tell her we having a meeting this weekend.”
I read the sheet in the elevator. It seemed that Regent Park was going to be demolished and its residents placed elsewhere. All of a sudden, I felt real happy. Maybe me and my father would move to a place similar to that described by Sporty, and there we would start over and get to know each other as father and son. He might even resume his inventions. And perhaps years later a passerby would glance at our house and say, “That is where Sam and his father used to live. Father was an inventor and the son was a college student.”
When I got into our apartment, my father was not there. I switched on the television. A woman with big juicy breasts was talking about the healing power of special cubes and pyramids. She seemed too pretty for this nonsense but just before I changed channels, I wondered whether the troll-lady mumbo jumbo in our apartment was connected with this Regent Park eviction business. I checked the forms on the set and went to the kitchen. Two minutes later, I returned to look at the forms once more. I felt suddenly that I should not be eating Kraft Dinner that night, maybe something that fancy Canadians ate. Steak or salmon fillet. Several times that night I rechecked the admission form just to make sure that I had not imagined my father’s signature at the bottom.
Chapter Twelve
CALL OF THE MOUNTAIN
The next day at Union I looked for Sporty to give him my good news but he was nowhere in sight. I wanted to tell him that my form too had led to success and maybe mention that I forgave his scamming because all he desired was a place of his own; I wanted to say that he should add another number to his figure about the universe balancing out itself. For the next two weeks, I searched up and down for him. One evening I spotted a boy crouched over a comic. He had really spiky hair like the Sham-Wow fella on television and the way he was turning the pages carefully made me feel that he was a comic book collector or something. When I sat next to him, he held the book tightly as if I might pull it away. Still I asked him, “Is the comic interesting?”
“It’s a graphic novel,” he told me stiffly. “Comics are for kids.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Graphic novels are not.”
He wasn’t being helpful but I asked him, “Where did you get it?�
��
“At an antique shop on Queen Street West.” He stated the directions quickly as if he hoped I might leave him alone and go there. And that was exactly what I did. It was close to six when I got there and a stocky man who looked as if he might have been drawn by Jack Kirby was straightening some lamps on a table. The back of the store was packed with old furniture—the kind that people in Mayaro would never give away or sell but keep until they fell apart—and there were rusty tools strung on nails on the wall. At one end of the shop were crates stuffed with books and in one of these I found a pile of comics. Most were familiar, old Marvel and Charlton and even a couple Turok Son of Stone but there were also thick glossy comics which I guessed were graphic novels. I pulled out a Rawhide Kid and began reading.
“The library is at Bloor.”
It was the Jack Kirby man. He had a mean swollen forehead that made him look a little dangerous. “How much is this?”
“Two for a dollar.”
“So cheap?”
“Okay, one for a dollar?”
I had no intention of buying the comic so I told him, “It’s a first edition. Worth at least twenty-five. These old Tarzan and Submariner are just as expensive.”
He began tapping some sort of old compass against his palm and by the tenth or so tap, he had offered me a job. Seriously. This is how it went.
First, he introduced himself as Billy Bilkim Barbarossa then he asked me, “What is your name, boy?”
Because he looked like a Mexican bandit, I told him, “Roti Ramirez.”
He scratched his beard and I saw a big mole peeping out. He noticed my gaze and hurriedly packed down and smoothened over the hair. “I have never heard of such a name.”
“I was born in Trinidad,” I told him. “The capital is Port of Spain and the main town is San Fernando. I lived close to Rio Claro.”
I tried to think of other Spanish names but he cut me off, “I am not interested in all that. What is your education?”
“I just signed up to finish my high school. The course is at the Centennial College campus.” I felt important just to be saying this.
The Amazing Absorbing Boy Page 16
