When it finally tore between Greg’s fingers, the bill split down its length. The bottom half of its face fluttered to the floor. Greg watched it slide under a magazine rack decorated with wide blue-white smiles and horrible headlines about cellulite and murder and lesbian divorces. He could not pick it up now. The smaller, limp half of his ten-dollar bill stared back at him. The face was just eyes and the top of a nose now. It looked upset. Greg stuttered as the cashier gestured toward him. The yellow walls of the grocery store were pressed up tightly against him. The line of customers behind him seemed to stretch down all the aisles until all he saw was faces, sighing, angry faces gesturing for him to place his fucking Sun Chips on the belt so they could go home to warm beds and warm wives and all their whining children. The cashier rang his Sun Chips through and then stared at Greg’s bent and twisted hands. The lesions hid under his long sleeves like the virus hiding inside his bloodstream. He held out what was left of Sir John A. Macdonald toward the cashier. She only shook her head. The man behind Greg coughed into his hand.
“We can’t take that, sir. We can take debit and MasterCard. Do you have any change?”
Greg shook his head. He pulled the torn pink and purple bill back against his chest and walked toward the exit. The Sun Chips remained on the conveyor belt. No one followed him.
Winnipeg. Napanee. Hamilton. Fort McMurray. Nelson. All the named lesions and track marks on his arm hummed in the cold, but he was used to their bite. Greg the Golden Goose couldn’t blame it all on Winnipeg. There had been the whorehouse in Saskatoon filled with American bush pilots and hunters. He had lost two teeth there, but they were molars, so it wasn’t so bad. He had kept them in a jar until someone lifted his bag at a bus station in Oshawa. Another hole, another impression of an impression of Windsor, the hole of all holes, the hole eating through your arm and looking for light on the other side. Greg was never going back to Windsor either. There were also the Lebanese brothers in Hull who thought Greg could get them cheap E. They had held him in the back of a stretch Hummer until he bit one of them on the cheek. The man had tasted like Aqua Velva and had chased him for two hours before giving up. It wasn’t all Winnipeg’s fault. This whole country was letting him down on a daily basis.
Greg was the screaming man at the shelter now. He was the one who woke everyone up in the middle of the night, the one who got threatened with knives and bottles and a thick heavy hand shoved right up his ass if he didn’t shut the fuck up. Greg wanted none of those things. He had worked very hard to avoid those things for the last five years on the road. So he was outside now and it was December, but still warm for December. December in Sioux Lookout was a different story—that was a place to go and die. Greg thought about doing that sometimes, just walking out into the snow and never coming back. Leaving behind all the Greyhound buses and the stupid CP trains. Letting nature run its course before whatever was inside his arms decided to make its final move. Sometimes Greg woke up and all he saw was light, but it was usually just a cop with a flashlight telling him to move along. All Greg did these days was fucking move, officer, but he complied. He was good at moving. He was getting better at complying.
The torn bill tried to escape from Greg’s hand, but he clutched it tight against the wind. The Sun Chips probably wouldn’t have stayed down anyway. They were related to Doritos in one way or another and the Doritos had been a disaster. The bathroom at Union Station had learned this the hard way, just like Greg usually did. He had determined this somewhere between Lethbridge and Regina after the frostbite took part of his thumb. He hadn’t given that wound a name yet, but they were all connected anyway. You could follow the lines across his skin and they always connected with some gash, some hole, some new and spreading scab. Maybe he would keep fleeing until he hit Newfoundland and just skip New Brunswick altogether. He’d once bummed smokes off a Newfie who insisted on being called a Newfoundlander. The man even let him keep the lighter. If you held it right, the lady on it appeared naked. It couldn’t be all that bad out there. Ontario had been a bust. Even the money here couldn’t hold it together.
Sitting down on a bench in the park, Greg the Golden Goose held his damaged cash up to his eyes. The eyes of the former prime minister gazed back at him. They were asking a lot of questions. Why hadn’t he shaved? Where was his hat? Did he know how cold it could get out here in December? Did he remember Confederation? Was he ever part of something from the beginning or had he always been one of those to bottom out on the end, to arrive just when everything was beginning to collapse?
Greg didn’t have a lot of answers for the half-face staring back at him. He was too sober, too aware, too twisted by some strange pain in his spine, but yes, he had a beginning once. He didn’t know where his hat was and he wasn’t sure how cold it would get tonight, but Greg did know where all of this had started and it wasn’t fucking Winnipeg, no matter how much he hated the smell of that place and the taste of its beer. It wasn’t Saskatoon and it wasn’t Hamilton either.
Splayed out on the park bench, Greg the Golden Goose remembered the pharmacy where they had hired him on after two years of college. It was just outside Surrey. It was quiet and it was mainly old folks with diet pills and cholesterol medication who came by on a weekly basis. They had a kid who rode around and dropped off medications. They had two women who ran the cash up front and a whole list of patients who kept dying off in their sleep. And then there was Jeremiah and his stupid hair and his stupid deal. It was easy enough at first, just slipping cold medication out during inventory, over ordering and underreporting. Most of the stuff wasn’t even prescription. There was a new car and Jeremiah was always there for him. He was the one who called him the Golden Goose. Greg was the supplier. He was laying all these perfect eggs, and no one else had noticed.
So yes, half-face, he had been there for beginnings, for the great rise when everything looks like it makes sense, when all the pieces fit and everything is fresh and new and perfect. He had gathered hundreds of that face and so many others just like it and stacked them up in bank accounts and crammed them into a wallet too fat for his back pocket. He had to carry it in his jacket instead, had to swagger with the weight of all those full, fat faces in his pocket. Greg closed his eyes and blew a cold cloud out at the torn ten-dollar bill. He had been there for the fall too, been there to see how everything can fall apart just as fast. He was there from the start.
It was the kid with his bike who caught them slipping all those boxes out the back, the same kid some cops found in a river two weeks later with a Kmart shopping bag pulled over his head. And then suddenly the eggs were no longer golden and there was no more Jeremiah. There was just Greg the Golden Goose scurrying from place to place. Bank accounts were closed, cars were seized and property was claimed. Deals were made, and so Greg found himself fleeing from BC with a duffel bag and five hundred dollars. He found needles in Edmonton and flophouses on the border of Saskatchewan. He spent three days picking rocks before sunstroke took him out. He tumbled from place to place with eyes following him everywhere, asking about Jeremiah and the kid in the river, but he had no idea. He never asked for that. He just wanted to lay his fucking eggs filled with codeine and joy and fucking money. Jeremiah ended all of that.
Winnipeg throbbed on his forearm. He tried not to scratch the wound, but it was hard to keep his dirty fingers from probing the busted flesh. Everywhere he went, a new line was formed, hardening his arteries and weakening his veins until he had to poke at holes in his feet and armpits. London. Churchill. Kitchener. Thompson. Each one like another railway stop stretched across his body, whittling its way through his flesh until nothing else remained. Niagara Falls was right above his junk, a yellow pulsing thing he had been hesitant to name at first. The name fit now though—it was tacky and sticky and never seemed to stop leaking pus.
“I know all about beginnings, you asshole,” Greg said aloud. He tossed the busted bill up into the air and waited for the wind to carry it away. The bill would end up in a sewe
r somewhere or in some bird’s nest, covered in baby bird shit. Greg really wanted those Sun Chips when he thought about it. He needed something with some salt. The bill refused to disappear though and fluttered back down toward his feet. The eyes stared back up at him and did not blink.
“Alright, fine.”
He tucked the bill back into his pocket and pulled a hood over his head. Greg still had no idea where his hat was—the half-faced bill was right about that one. Some asshole probably took it back at the shelter during all the screaming chaos the night before. He could feel the wind in his ears, carrying laughter from down the street. The bench was going to have to do for now. Winnipeg continued to throb on his forearm, but Greg the Golden Goose pushed away the pain. His veins would collapse eventually, but it didn’t have to happen here.
This whole country had failed him, broken him slowly, but surely, into smaller and smaller pieces. His blood helped push the rot around, discovering new nerves to twist and muscles to paralyze. Greg would catch a train for Newfoundland tomorrow, until it ran out of track and he had to swim. He would find a bus or a car or whatever it took and then he would dive into the water. He would go to the very edge of this fucking country, and he would find an ocean there without any kids floating in its waves, their heads covered in plastic shopping bags.
He would just find water there.
The torn bill disagreed, but it was too late. It didn’t have much say from deep inside Greg’s pocket. The man from Newfoundland had said he’d wanted to secede, to escape all of this bullshit in Canada. That sounded alright with Greg. He bet they had cheap Sun Chips there too.
Wrestling With Jacob
“You gave birth to my country and my people. You know this? Birthed them into this world, Rebecca. All of them.”
The microwave read 2:45 am. Five minutes fast. The man from the store sat at the kitchen table, his back facing the bedroom. The apartment door was bent and twisted behind him.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, Rebecca. I’m sorry. I just could not sleep. There are so many words in my dreams. So cluttered. You know this word? Cluttered?”
Becca Crawford was familiar with this word. Her apartment was strewn with Darla’s toys and clothing. Unfolded laundry and empty detergent bottles filled the living room. Her husband Terry had left all his baseball stuff behind jammed into the closets. All his old clothes smelled like dust and chalk. The shower drain was still clogged with his hair.
“What are you doing here Michael? You should—”
“Go home?” Michael said. His voice was wet. “Home where? Russia? Israel? No place.”
Becca noticed the broken phone before him on the table. Moonlight caught the frayed wires, the empty plastic sheath and number keys scattered across a placemat.
“I don’t go home, Becca. There is no home. That is a stupid word. I have a room, yes. Apartment, whatever. Not a home. You make a home though. You always have.”
Becca had told the others at the bakery that Michael just needed a friend. He had no driver’s license, no personal I.D. Just a flimsy passport from Russia, filled with half-completed travels. Always leaving, he had told her while trying to select a loaf of bread. Never returning. He had shown her the passport, filled with exit stamps, but no entries. His teeth were false and they clacked when he spoke. No returns.
“You were the mother of Jacob, did you know that Rebecca? All of us with these names, names from the Bible. You were the one who birthed Jacob and Esau. You know Jacob? Father of all the tribes? The one the angel renamed Israel after their fight. They wrestled for an entire night, Jacob and the angel battling with one another. Neither side could gain the upper hand. Always in the struggle. I should have been named Jacob, no? I should have been one.”
Each morning he arrived with new purchases to display. Jim and Alicia tried to avoid the young man with the false teeth. He stared at your eyes when he spoke to you; he stared until you looked away and then he laughed. He brought all his purchases to the bakery to show them to Rebecca. New shoes and cellphones and TVs and the tattoo riding across the ridges of his back.
“Michael. You can’t be here. You need to leave. We can talk about this later. Darla is still asleep and she has school tomorrow and I have to work. Don’t you have to get up early?”
Becca didn’t know what Michael did exactly. He never explained it very well. He paid in cash. His pockets were always filled with ticket stubs and receipts. He kept track of everything.
“For what? To see the sun? It will be the same as before. It is the one thing that does not change. Even the moon changes sometimes. Even the stars do. I should have been named Jacob.”
Michael bought something from the bakery every day. Sometimes Becca saw him toss his sweet purchases in the trash as soon as he stepped outside the store. Jim told her it wasn’t healthy, this fixation the man had. He looked young, still had pimples on his cheeks, but what was with the teeth? What was with that tattoo on his back, the dragons and the whores stamped onto his skin? Becca told Jim to mind his own goddamn business and stop touching her arm.
“Names can change. They aren’t like the sun. You should not change yours though. We should all keep our Biblical names. Even in Israel, in the army, I kept mine. Rebecca, you should promise me you won’t change your name. You should do this. Tell me you will not change.”
Michael’s thick fingers flicked a piece of the phone onto the tiles. Becca stood behind him. She could hear her daughter sleeping in the other room. A lonely picture magnet hung on the steel refrigerator with Terry’s face staring out at the two figures in the kitchen. She forgot to take that one down after he moved back to South Carolina. She forgot to burn his clothes as well.
“Your daughter though, maybe you should change that name. What kind of name is Darla? Sounds like a whore’s name, no? Sounds like it came from the Terry man. The baseball man.”
It was Terry’s aunt’s name. The aunt who’d raised him after his mother got lymphoma and went on disability. Becca wanted to name their daughter Rachel, but Terry told her all about his years growing up with Aunt Darla. She drove him to all the tryouts, picked him up during rain delays and always had something to drink in the trunk of her car. At the funeral after her drunk driving accident, Terry had threatened to choke the pastor if he mentioned Darla’s fondness for the bottle. That was a warning sign Becca decided to ignore; she stacked it beside all the others.
“Sometimes I think it was Michael who fought with Jacob. Do you know that story? I think I told you of their battle. Jacob was all alone. His mother Rebecca had died many years before. He was to become the next leader of the chosen people, to return his people to their land. He waited behind with his flocks and sent his family ahead one night. Before he lay down to sleep, he was faced with an unnamed opponent. A man with no name, like in a Western. Like your Eastwood. They wrestled against one another from dusk until the morning came. Each fought for the upper hand; each struggled to gain a foothold. I think of this on nights when I do not sleep. Some people claim it was a demon, of course, and not an angel. And maybe that makes more sense.”
Another piece of the phone was tossed onto the floor. Becca leaned against the table and tried not to shake. Her heart rattled against her lungs. She should have listened to Jim and Alicia. Michael would not look her in the eye. Terry couldn’t either once he told her he had to leave. She didn’t stop him. She was tired of cleaning up his messes, filling out the forms for bail and paying the bar tabs down by the train station. Darla wouldn’t even look him in the face. Terry was a third stringer for a minor league team, a bit of tangled hair circling the drain. He was hospital bills and dust and three beers ahead of everyone else in her life.
When she dropped him off at the bus station, Terry told her he would send money. He would send a cheque when he arrived and finally got settled coaching for some high school team. He had connections back home, people who owed his Aunt Darla a favour. Becca was still waiting for something to arrive in the mail. She still got
his credit card statements. Bulk purchases at liquor warehouses and cigar shops. She ran them through the garbage disposal at the bakery. Becca didn’t want to chance those fragments getting caught in the drains at home.
“And that makes sense, fighting with the demons. I do not sleep because I still see some faces. The ones we saw when they were blowing up roads. The ones who were children with grenades in their hands. I wrestle with their ghosts sometimes. I wrestle with children who have no eyes and who cannot speak. They hold my teeth, the ones their fathers knocked from my mouth in an alley. They hold all the fragments of their brothers that we left to rot in holes and pits and dark places. I wrestle with them because they have no souls. And they want mine.”
Michael showed her his dog tags once. They said his last name was Luppa. He told her he survived the nights in rehab while his face was rebuilt by reading the Bible front to back. It was more exciting than he thought it would be. It was filled with battles and murders and children of children, a lineage stretching back to the beginning of time. It didn’t all make sense of course. Michael did not understand why Samson’s hair was so magical, or how Noah could build a boat so big. Michael said the New Testament was boring. Just the same story told four times and if Jesus could really raise the dead, he could have taken over the world without the Romans’ help.
“But maybe it was an angel instead, yes? A test for Jacob to prove himself. I wish to have such a test, but there are no angels here. And so maybe it was the archangel Michael who wrestled him. The one from Revelations, the one who will lead heaven’s forces against all the whores and dragons we have spawned from our cities and our dreams. I showed you the tattoo, yes? When it is finished, I want to believe all of this will make sense. They sent me here to be alone, to escape. I have done my service, but they still own something in my head, Rebecca.”
All We Want Is Everything Page 8
