Max's Folly

by Bill Turpin

  “The truth is you’re failures, every one of you. You haven’t got the brains or determination to make something of yourselves, so instead you spend your days barking and nipping at the heels of those who have.”

  It occurs to Max that the man of God may have hit on something.

  “You may have a point there,” Max says. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

  “What?”

  “I said, you may have a point.”

  Max waits again. And waits. He waits still longer. He can sense a fresh round of rage building at the other end of the line.

  “His Excellency wants a word with you,” the Assistant finally croaks.

  Max hears the sound of a speakerphone being slid across a desk.

  “Eat shit,” says the Archbishop. “You sheepfucker.”

  “Thank you, your Excellency. Will you be having my wife fired?”

  “Not today, asshole. But there’ll be another time soon.”

  Max is feeling shaky but relieved as he strolls out of his office. Five of his beloved “miscreants” are hanging around City Desk. They are visibly worried.

  The City Editor looks at him: “The betting back in Montreal is that you’ll survive this because whether or not to tell the Cobra in advance was a judgment call. But the Owner says your judgment was extremely poor. You should have told him. The consensus is you should keep your nose clean for a while.”

  Max ponders. “Okay. I’ll go see the Cobra, then.”

  Eyes widen in alarm. They know it’s bad timing. If Max shows up in the Cobra’s office now the publisher will redouble his efforts to fire their editor and might succeed. The former crime reporter and now Political Reporter finally speaks up.

  “Great job, Max. You deserve a nice lunch,” he says.

  “But I just got in.”

  “Let’s have lunch anyway, a long one. I’ll smother you with fulsome praise for your courage. You always like that.”

  “Come on, Max, he’s right. You know you love that,” the City Editor says. “Get out of here until things cool down a bit.”

  Max nods and starts for the door. The Political Reporter starts right away: “There are lots of big talkers in this business, Max, but you’re the real thing . . .”

  “Oh, please.”

  1973

  Cat Shack Routine Ignored

  —What's Going on Here?

  THE CAT SHACK is the opposite of trendy. Everything about it is either cheap or beaten up. If you sit too close to the washrooms, you have to endure the rotting-pine smell of urinal cakes. It enjoys a loyal clientele.

  Max gets there around eleven. But somehow, even though the Copy Editor had to stay behind to edit Max’s stories, he’s managed to get to the bar first and order a round — six glasses of draft. He’s got his pipe going, sipping draft and looking contentedly around the bar. He’s technically retired but it’s obvious he enjoys his Saturday nights working at the craft he loves and then drinking hard with his two young friends.

  Max is pulling out a chair when the Copy Editor utters a name and motions toward a middle-aged man buying drinks at the bar. “If you ever commit a crime and everybody knows you’re guilty, that’s the man who’ll get you acquitted. I can introduce you.”

  “No thanks, I don’t plan on committing any crimes.”

  The Copy Editor chuckles and puts a wooden match to his pipe, something Max thinks he does so often that he inhales more sulphur fumes than tobacco smoke. He is a caricature of a kindly old professor, thinning gray hair combed straight back, a grey moustache and heavy-framed glasses. He wears a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. Max pegs his age at somewhere between 60 and 80.

  “Look around,” he says. “And tell me what you see.”

  Max sees four women, including the Veteran Reporter (how did SHE get here so fast?), dancing in a circle in front of the DJ. He accurately relays this to the Copy Editor, who says “hah!” thereby creating a fragrant cloud of smoke that lingers around his head. His voice is a vintage wine for the ear: warm, avuncular, with a hint of fondness and a strong note of nostalgia.

  “Well, given sufficient time, and if you keep looking, you’ll eventually see about six gentlemen at various tables staring at the dance floor. This is their technique for picking up strange women at a bar. Hah! As our esteemed Editor would say, they are sitting around with their dicks in their hands. Metaphorically, that is, though I venture to say it’s an accurate prediction of how their evenings will end.”

  Max thinks it over. “You’re saying he’s right about my reporting?”

  The Copy Editor looks over his glasses at Max. “I had the pursuit of the fair sex in mind but, yes, your reporting would improve if you looked around a bit instead of just showing up and taking notes. I have high hopes for you, and you’re a good writer, but your reporting, not to mention your powers of observation, remains mediocre.”

  The word mediocre stings. Worse than being called an asshole.

  Max’s attention returns to the dance floor. The Veteran Reporter, like many women journalists, is wearing a shapeless skirt and boxy blouse. Both seem designed to hide interesting curves and or anything else that might garner attention. Max approves. Using sexual attraction to get stories would be unprofessional.

  The skirt, however, does appear a little tighter than he’s used to seeing, and so does her blouse, and he’s never seen her dance before. Her exertions appear to have caused the second button on her shirt to pop open. Max wonders how old she really is.

  He turns back to the Copy Editor and discovers that another round of beer has arrived. Max gestures toward the Veteran Reporter and asks: “How old do you think she is?”

  “Hah!” comes the reply, this time creating a puff of smoke worthy of a locomotive. “Precisely my point about observation.” Mysteriously, the pipe goes out. The Copy Editor fishes a wooden match out of his jacket pocket, strikes it against the metal rim of the table and inhales a lungful of sulphur. He leans back, apparently satisfied about something. “You should take a look,” he says.

  After two more songs the Veteran Reporter shows up at the table. She grabs a brimming glass of draft and takes a long drink. Max notices that the glass looks big in her hand. He has always thought of the Veteran Reporter as a large woman.

  “Gawd,” she says to the Copy Editor. “I’m gone for 10 minutes and you order two rounds. I’ll never get through this.”

  “I believe the record indicates otherwise,” he replies. “Besides, it’s watered down.”

  “Yeah,” says Max. “That’s what they mean when they say ‘two-for-one’ here. It takes two beers to get the effect of one.”

  Max braces for the comeback. The Veteran Reporter, in addition to knowing everything there is to know about news, is smart, and her words can pack a punch. She’s the only staffer who can get away with standing up to the Editor. Much of the time, come to think of it, it’s in defence of Max.

  Not always, though. So Max tries to focus, prepare himself for a verbal tussle.

  But instead the Veteran Reporter guffaws. Then she looks him straight in the eye and allows her features to soften for a moment. Something’s different, Max thinks.

  “So,” she says, “did you really almost trip over that guy?”

  “What guy?”

  She fires off a look of disbelief. “The suicide, you clod. You tripped over a dead body two hours ago and you have to be reminded? You stoned or something?”

  “Oh, him. Yeah, one more step and I’d have kicked him in the shin.”

  The Copy Editor re-lights his pipe yet again: “Good thing you didn’t. Cops notice that stuff. It would be a long time before you got near a crime scene again.” Then he does an odd thing: he glances at the Veteran Reporter’s chest and nods to himself.

  “Why don’t we cover suicides?” Max asks.

  “The theory
is . . .” He pauses while wreathing himself in smoke, a prerequisite for any serious pronouncement. “The theory is that it encourages other people to follow suit.”

  “You mean kill themselves.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t if they saw what I saw,” Max says, noticing what could be a look of approval on the Veteran Reporter’s face.

  The conversation moves on to a selection of the usual topics: The Editor, the mayor, journalistic ethics, Mao, official corruption, the Mob, David Bowie and, of course, crappy reporting in other papers — always a high-priority topic.

  The Copy Editor lumbers toward the can. Max figures there must be an intercom in the pissoir because the bartender shows up from the other end of the room with four more beers.

  “How does he do that?”

  “Beats me,” the Veteran Reporter says. “He gets the Nobel Prize for Surreptitious Beer Ordering.”

  The Copy Editor returns with a bombshell announcement: he’s going home to his girlfriend.

  Girlfriend?

  “Say hi for me,” the Veteran Reporter says, unconcerned.

  Max is speechless. Never — never — have the three of them failed to close the Cat Shack on a Saturday night. Never—never — had it occurred to him that the Copy Editor would have a girlfriend.

  The Copy Editor reaches awkwardly for his raincoat. The Veteran Reporter makes room by moving her chair. As she does so, Max again notices the open expanse above the buttons of her blouse and the curve of what could well be a breast. It has never occurred to Max that the Veteran Reporter might have detectable breasts as if that, too, would violate some professional code. He notices a small silver pendant at the base of her throat. As if to reinforce the point, it’s the gender symbol for female.

  The Copy Editor slips on his coat and drops his pipe into a pocket. He puts on a serious expression.

  “Remember. If you want to sell newspapers,” he says, “don’t fuck with the crossword.” He chugs his last glass of beer and slams the glass on the table. “And?” he asks expectantly.

  The other two chime in, raising their glasses: “And don’t fuck with the comics.”

  This is the benediction that signals the end of a Saturday night, except this time the Copy Editor is alone as he weaves his way toward the parking lot. Max is still shocked. The Veteran Reporter doesn’t seem to mind the change in routine.

  “He has a girlfriend?” Max says.

  “What? You think Copy Editors don’t mate?”

  But Max doesn’t really hear. This is the first time he’s ever been alone with the Veteran Reporter and he’s not sure how to handle it.

  NOW

  Visit to a Holy Place

  MAX, THE GURU and his two-and-a-half ton Town Car rolled confidently across the harbour bridge. The Guru was on the phone, explaining to the Beacon Arms that he and Max were going for a drive.

  “A fire? At the supermarket?” he said. “Really? Well, there was some commotion when I picked Max up, but he was outside. Of course they can talk to him but his memory isn’t what it was. I’ll call after we finish our ride. Bye for now.”

  “Who wants to talk to me?” Max asked.

  “The cops. There was some kind of fire at the supermarket.”

  “I have a vague recollection of something like that,” Max said. “When did it happen?”

  “About the time I picked you up,” the Guru said.

  “Did you know you can buy a beer and a lunch in that store, but you can’t drink the beer?”

  They left the bridge behind and headed for the highway to the Annapolis Valley.

  The car’s enormous engine took to the divided highway like a stallion that’s escaped the barn and spotted a willing mare on the horizon. Cars in the slow lane fell behind them like Tim Hortons cups in the wind.

  “Max, old chum, what are you going to do?” the Guru asked.

  Max felt calm and safe, relieved of the burden and confusion caused by having to fact-check his every thought. He slipped gratefully into a soothing oasis of clarity.

  “Well, I’m going to keep looking for the Wife as long as I can still form the intent,” Max said. “I don’t know what the hell is happening to me, but it’s obvious this part of life’s journey is downhill for me. It’s not going to end well.”

  “It’s nothing to be alarmed about,” the Guru said. “And I doubt it will end badly.”

  Max looked at him as if he were crazy and said as much. “However, you now have my attention which, no doubt, was your purpose.”

  “You are transitioning out of this life, just as you transitioned into it. If you can hang onto that idea, it may help you into the next one.”

  “So, have I lived this life well enough that I can expect the circumstances of the next one to be more difficult, at least according to you?” he asked.

  “Yep,” the Guru said. “But you’ll suffer less, and so will those you’re able to help.”

  This idea is one of the few that Max has been able to hang on to through his ordeal, which he thinks is ironic given that he has never understood it.

  “So I should give up looking for her?” he asked, speaking of suffering.

  “No. The main thing is to allow yourself to be anywhere you turn up. I think you’ve been fighting it. That will just cause suffering.”

  Max sighed. “I can’t recall the details of where I’ve been, but I’m awfully tired. I’ll admit to that. What if I find the Wife?”

  “You’ll know what to do,” his friend said.

  As the Guru knew well, Max was a firm believer that his existence would end six feet under. Period. And that he definitely preferred that fate to the Guru’s notion of afterlife.

  “There’s nothing to transition into,” Max said.

  “I don’t think you mean that.”

  The Guru reached ’way over to his right and popped open a glove compartment big enough for a large loaf of bread. Inside was a collection of 8-track tape cartridges.

  “They came with the car,” he explained as he steered back into his lane. “Getting pretty rare.”

  Max slid a cartridge into the stereo and heard Gary Puckett singing Woman, Woman. He popped it back out immediately. “Reminds me of her,” he said. “This isn’t a good time for that.”

  His next try was Steppenwolf cranking out Born to Be Wild.

  The Guru rolled down all four motorized windows. Max played rhythm on the dashboard. Both accompanied the band on vocals. The engine took the speed up a notch or two.

  Get your motor ru-nnin’ . . . lookin’ for adventure

  They crested the hill that offered their first view of the valley and Minas Basin. They could see part of the quilted farmland, framed by copper cliffs and the sea. The water tugged at Max.

  “There are places in the world where the energy of the universe is more concentrated,” the Guru said as they took it in. “This is one of them.”

  They drove on toward the energy, across the valley floor and up the North Mountain where, on this day anyway, everything changed. The sky darkened and below to the south they could see the shadows of clouds slipping over the fields.

  A light mist rolled in during their descent to the far shore, where the wind was whipping whitecaps from gunmetal waves and driving them hard into the rocks. They continued until the road ended in a small parking lot. They had been here together many times before. The Guru led the way to the trailhead and started into the woods. The ground was wet and the tall trees were dripping.

  The trail was rough in spots and featured some steep grades, so there were muttered profanities and some puffing. But otherwise they were quiet, content to experience their surroundings. Max called it “forest bathing” and regarded it as a spiritual pursuit, nothing less.

  They neared the end of the trail two hours later, half an hour longer than it used to
take. Max was completely free of the internal stresses of his predicaments and his head was clearer than it had been for a long time. The vegetation overhead began to thin out and the ground beneath was dappled with sunlight.

  They had walked the shaft of an arrow that jutted far into the Bay of Fundy. They emerged from the woods onto a three-sided meadow that narrowed almost to a point. The sea was on all three sides, hundreds of feet straight down. Below, currents merged and parted randomly, angrily tearing at the rocks in their paths. They were restless, powerful and hungry.

  The sky ahead was dominated by a squall line a few degrees below the sun. The water changed from grey at the horizon to sparkling blue nearer the cape. The wind, as always, threatened to pick them up and toss them into the currents.

  They walked ahead to see the Split: what at first appeared as a single meadow revealed itself to be the tops of two sandstone formations. The second was a pillar, seemingly close enough to jump to until your mind recalibrates and you realize that it’s really half a city block away.

  The Guru said: “This was the place where Glooscap, the first human being and protector of the Mi’kmaq, smashed a massive beaver dam separating the waters of the basin and the Bay of Fundy. Cape Split is one of the remnants of that feat. For my money, it’s one of the holiest places in the world, right in our back yard.”

  They found a spot out of the wind and the Guru produced a bottle of wine from his knapsack.

  “The doctor says I’m not supposed to drink this,” Max said accepting a plastic cup brimming with Beaujolais.

  “I heard,” the Guru said. “Can you feel the energy here?”

  “We’re radios,” Max said, earning a quizzical look from his friend.

  “We’re all tuned to the energy around us. No one disputes the existence of that energy, but we’re all tuned to it differently, so we express it differently. That’s the difference between you, me, and a salamander or a tomato. That’s why I can travel in time. It’s just a matter of tuning.”

  “Max. A radio? Really?”