Some Great Thing

by Colin McAdam

  “Who’s she?”

  “What?”

  “Stupid question, sure, but things are not as they seem, Schutz, you know, Jesus, if someone’s got to you, if you’re hiding Jerry, if you guys are trying to scare Jerry to get to me, you know, pick on someone your own size. Where’s my son, Schutz?”

  IT WAS TIME to force their hand, get an answer, because I couldn’t concentrate on things, I couldn’t focus, I could not, quite honestly, muster the right clear-headedness you need to build a plaster city, to build your necessary dreams, and the angel demons were asking questions about the man they invested in, me, and questions are no replacement for scaffolding.

  Dear Mr. Struthers,

  Re File: fuck

  While fully aware that your office requests that applicants not make inquiries regarding the progress of their files, I am writing to ask your office kindly to consider the fact that there are many parties interested in this application, that the various impact studies have cost money, and that the longer a decision takes, the more money private citizens are putting into a gamble arranged by the Government.

  I write with all due respect to your office’s limited resources, the sensitive nature of such decisions, etc. Spending money and delaying for land we do not own is unacceptable to my business partners and me, and we would like a decision on whether we can, at least, purchase the land.

  I am sure your office is aware that our purchase of the land would benefit the public purse more than the prolonged engagement of your office in further deliberation.

  Never threaten a bureaucrat, my friend; their skin is as thin as yours.

  “YOU SEEN Kathleen, Edgar? You can be honest.”

  “In the hospital?”

  “She’s in the hospital?”

  “That’s what you told me.”

  “She’s not in the hospital. You can be honest with me.”

  “I haven’t seen her, Jer. Seriously. I wouldn’t do that. I thought she was in the hospital.”

  “We had a little fight.”

  “Do you want to talk about anything, Jer?”

  “I’m not a fag, Edgar. Don’t talk to me like I’m a fag.”

  “No, man, it’s just, you come in swinging at me, and you’re asking where your son is, where your wife is, and you know, I hear things, you know.”

  “What?”

  “I hear things, you know, some of your projects, some of your men. You know, if you need help, if you need time off, I’m your friend, Jerry, shit. You’ve got a lot on.”

  “That’s real sweet, Edgar.”

  “Augh, you know . . . up yours, Jerry I’m trying to help.”

  “YOU SEEN Jerry, Cooper?”

  “You see this blowtorch, McGuinty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suck it.”

  “Do you want your job, Cooper?”

  “No.”

  “You’re fired.”

  I THREATENED a bureaucrat. I got what I deserved: no response. I gathered my strength. I gathered a group of angel demons. We bought golf clubs, we rented a bus, we drove downtown to Parliament, I stood in front of the angel demons in their matching suits and we took our clubs and we smashed all the ground-floor windows of Parliament House.

  Also in that dream I bench-pressed a cow and Kathleen worshipped me on her knees. I felt good waking up, strong, and then the day progressed with no news from anyone and night came again like an emptying glass.

  THE PEOPLE need a king. They need a leader. The ladies in the office, the boys on the sites, Mario, Tony, more than a hundred people, they need their figurehead, Jerry.

  “I have 114 messages for you here, Jerry,” said a Lady of the Office to the King. “What do you want me to do with them?”

  “Any from the Government, Schutz, Struthers?”

  “No.”

  “File them, leave them, toss them.”

  And when they think their leader is not himself, is not there for them, is not his best, they will betray him. Mario Calzone, the filthy fighting pig, went to work with Edgar.

  “It looks like he’s got more work,” he said.

  I had to lay off a couple of crews and I forgot to do it civilly. One of the laid-off guys was married to one of the office ladies. She says to me in tears one day, “I have to go, Jerry, it’s just not the same here any more,” as though her leaving was going to help it stay the same. “You should see someone,” she said.

  “You’re goddamn right,” I said.

  “You can’t just let it all fall to pieces,” she said. She straightened her skirt like it was all that easy, like all I had to do was straighten my skirt. “Everyone needs you, Jerry They need some, like, guidance around here.”

  “You just straighten your skirt there.”

  They say they need you and they leave you. Most of them don’t even say they need you. I’m their bread and filling butter, trousers on their legs, payer of their rent, braces and dentures, booze on a Friday, but they never say thanks and all of them leave.

  I forget to order materials. A whole block of phase five has stood still for four months because I’ve forgotten to order things. Procurement. Procurement.

  “You’ve forgotten basic procurement,” says a hard hat to me.

  “That’s a big word for a man in a hard hat,” I says.

  “I’m an engineer,” says he.

  But it’s still a big word, with cure in the middle like it will help me somehow: gathering things, ordering tiles, getting enough nails is going to cure me. Even words are betraying me.

  “You’ve got to sign off on this,” the hard hat says. “Basic infrastructure, Jerry, we’re falling seriously behind. We need you to sign off on this.”

  They need me. They need a king.

  I am not a king.

  12

  THERE ARE CERTAIN beauties about it, quite aside from proving him powerful: a fiery wind in the heart of calm, the sky on land, flight without movement, an epitome of chaos in a clean white tube. Certain beauties don’t appear to people immediately, but the city will cherish his work.

  And it could be gloriously large. Paul has the funds. Paul, Simon’s helpful saint, had the zeal of the converted. He was in Damascus when Simon’s earthly form appeared; he met him on a street called Straight.

  “It could be bigger than anything the Americans have,” Paul said.

  SITUATIONS OCCUR TO HIM. He is walking down a street called Nowhere and he sees Kwyet peering out of a colorless house, burning with ennui. He is her only hope. “Simon!” she cries.

  He will save you. He will save you from this world of middling choices. When he finds her in her room she is glad as the spring. He lies down with her and they both grow hungrier the more they eat.

  Right now she is in class tapping a pen on her lips. A lecturer speaks of the gigantic past, her pen taps more quickly and she resolves to make her world grow big with Simon. Tomorrow, in her favorite café she sits with her best friend, the one who met him by the pool, and shares some intimate thoughts. They talk about him together. They talk about many things but return to him as their theme, he, him, Simon, me, he’s. Think of all the café confidences he has overheard from all the pretty women.

  He wanted to be the he in someone’s sentence. Then he would be big enough. He wanted Kwyet to speak of him.

  NATURALLY, Now that the four weeks had passed he found himself incapacitated with bronchitis. He had her phone number now but he could barely lift his lungs out of bed to travel to the phone.

  He realizes all these things he coughs up are the impurities of his soul, but that is a morbid way of thinking which will not improve his health. What he has to do is rest, swallow the impurities so that perhaps he will be well enough to see her tomorrow. He will have a nap, call her in an hour, tell her he cannot come tonight, but can he please take her to a lovely restaurant in Montreal tomorrow?

  He slept for twelve hours.

  “KWYET, I am so sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  �
��I am hoorwaghff . . . hwarff!”

  “Simon?”

  “Hem.”

  “Did you not want to visit me?”

  “No! Good God! Hwoof, hwoof, hwoof, hwoof, hwoof, hwee! I . . . ”

  “You sound terrible.”

  “Yes, I cuh, cuh, k!”

  “That sounds horrible. I thought you were mad at me or something.”

  “No!”

  “I thought you were trying to get back at me. It didn’t . . . you know . . . Are you all right?”

  AND NATURALLY that was his last chance before her midterm break. Home with Matty and Leonard now, leaving him excluded in his Tomis for several black months.

  “As soon as next term ends you should come. You should. When my exams are . . . after my exams.”

  PERHAPS IT WAS the fever. When he moved from one room to another in his house he felt like the room he left was chasing him, like there was nothing to turn back to. When he entered a new room it was not like he was filling a new space, but like the space he just left was following and trapping him. Loneliness was catching up.

  Perhaps it wasn’t the fever.

  All these years later, I feel like every room in this house has breathed out, and won’t breathe in again.

  Someone fell from a window.

  HIS LUNGS CONJURED nightmares every night. Every dol of his pain echoed a pore of Kwyet’s skin. Such an exquisite body of anguish.

  She was only twenty-five minutes away. Eleven stop lights. But it would not be right to appear at Leonard’s door at dawn with a cough, and a tear in his eye. For Matty’s sake.

  He should have devised some means of communicating with her while she was staying with her parents. He was sure she would like a break. Matty was charming but he doubted that Kwyet wanted to spend her whole holiday with her.

  Patience, though, patience. She is pining as much as I am.

  He got better. He got more work done.

  “HERE IS THE PLAN,” says Paul. “A nine-point-one-meter-wide, nine-point-one-meter-high, twenty-two-point-nine-meterlong test section,” he sings, “would make it the largest in the world. The complete structure would be enormous.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, it will be huge.”

  “Largest in the world, you say.”

  “That’s right. And that’s just the beginning. We’ll have other wind tunnels. A vertical one, a Trisonic one. And within these tubular structures, and surrounding them—look at these plans—we’ll have all the other facilities. Have you got things under way, Simon?”

  “End of the week, Paul. I will submit my memo with the approval of my chairman.”

  “Fantastic. I am so pleased you took an interest in this. I have no idea why. It wasn’t . . . you know . . . I don’t know why you have.”

  “What else would go in here?”

  “Have I told you about the model of the city?”

  “Yes. Tell me again.”

  13

  MY PROBLEM WAS I had no patience.

  People leave their jobs all the time. I should have accepted it. My business had grown, now it was shrinking a bit. I should have been patient and kind.

  Instead, I tried firing a lot of the people who didn’t leave. Anyone who said something in the wrong way: “You’re fired.” I never showed up regularly, but when I did show up and someone was late: “You’re fired.” I fired a guy for getting a splinter. “Ow,” he said.

  “You’re fired.”

  It made me feel good for a while. I recommend it. I didn’t always mean it. The people who knew me knew I didn’t mean it. But I fired some of the people who thought they knew me.

  Cooper kept turning up for work after I fired him because he knew I didn’t mean it. I tested him with a look, which, I think, said, “You know you pissed me off.”

  “Get out of my face,” he said. “I’ve got responsibilities.” He looked ashamed for using a long word. I assumed the responsibilities were to his parole officer.

  “You’re a big man, Cooper.”

  I didn’t know.

  I CLEANED THE house a lot. You could have eaten off my bathroom floors if that was to your taste. I figured Jerry would like to come home to a nice clean house. He might have associated the house with chores, so I didn’t want him to see it all dirty when he walked through the door. (He was going to walk through the door any minute. I would have rubber gloves on, and a sponge in my hand, and he would walk in, I wouldn’t be able to shake his hand, he’d say “Dad, you look like a fruitcake,” and we would laugh all the way to the fridge.)

  When I was cleaning I kept finding hidden bottles, empty bottles. That was good for a laugh. I had thought it was a story, a bit of a wives’ tale, that drunks hid their booze in the bathroom, like “all drunks have red noses.” Kathleen had a pretty nose. But there were bottles in the bathrooms, in closets, behind the couch. I didn’t know how she had bought them all.

  I called people sometimes, her doctor, people I thought were her friends. (“You seen Kath?”) I didn’t do it seriously, just occasionally, just as a sort of hobby. I started to realize that she had no friends. I myself have no friends, my friend, but it is somehow more sad to learn that someone you know has no friends than to realize it about yourself

  The obvious way to catch her was through the bank, maybe even at the bank. She was still withdrawing money, you see. At first I told my bank manager to keep that woman out of my accounts. She had money of her own, in accounts I had set up in her name to beat the tax man (better the wife than the Government). But those would run out, and as my mood changed I told the bank manager to let her have access.

  I planned to go to the bank, hang out there all day to see if I could catch her. I was ready to do it, but the closer I got to doing it I got such a tired feeling. So tired. Aren’t you tired?

  She wouldn’t want to see me anyway.

  Still, I waited near the bank all day just as a hobby. She didn’t show up. I opened the “Kathleen” account and told the manager to help her find her way to it.

  SHE WAS ALIVE. I knew that at least. But Jerry?

  Dead?

  No way.

  The Government was still drugging him. Someone was. I knew that much. Someone was keeping him.

  But the Government—I fought them. I called Schutz every day. I knew people who knew people, union boys who knew politicos who knew how to put pressure on the right people. I told the angel demons, don’t worry, we’ll get it, and when a couple of them pulled out, I took up their shares. “The National Capital Division answers to no one,” one of them said, but for once I ignored their advice.

  I moved the golf-course architect up here full-time and we worked furiously. I hired two new engineers and fired my long-standing trusted one because firing put the blood in my arms. We were going to go all the way, I decided: not nine holes, but eighteen. And I doubled the number of houses. Oh ho ho, yeah. If the Government wanted environmental conservation, the best solution was to double the size of the golf course. All the trees and grass in the world would survive beautifully if we made it all a golf course.

  Thanks to the “vegetation inventories” I had been forced to do, we knew exactly what could grow. We knew the precise depth of ponds, how to keep them level across the seasons. We planned to stock them with fish, and I had a letter prepared for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, explaining the benefits to each species.

  We had been warned of a Wetlands Policy, so we planned the houses and ponds so far away from each other that no matter what the policy was there could be no complaints about disturbing whatever was so precious about a wetland.

  I had fifteen different subcontractors arranged for the building work, all their men next to mine, the best in their respective trades. We planned ten separate house designs, more choice than I had ever offered. Six hundred houses all together.

  A lot of my other projects were winding up, we had all finished the mall. Money was marching in, so I scaled back, took advantage of everyone leaving, fi
red more of the old people, forgot about other possible projects, ducked out of commitments, and put all my energy into the golf course. And I still didn’t own the land.

  Every morning from nine o’clock I had Schutz on the phone. Not Schutz himself, I mean—just his number. Schutz never answered, you see. The Government had become really French, so all the messages were in French and every time I called Schutz I got this message, in French, which I can still repeat the sounds of even though I have yet to learn what it said. It was all part of their ploy to shut me out. I figured there was some secret code in the French that would give me some way in, maybe tell me something about Jerry—but I wasn’t going to stoop to playing their games.

  I kept writing to that Struthers chump. No response from him, either. But I knew that as soon as I caught one of them I would be able to force them into selling me that land, force them because they would be so overwhelmed by the fact that I had every blade of grass accounted for and protected, that I was saving fish and improving the world. We planned to offer executives of the National Capital Division discounted memberships for the course.

  I WAS ALL FIRED up again. I was in the office, jumping around in front of two new office ladies. They liked seeing me fired up. “It’s all happening, ladies.”

  They loved it.

  I was waiting for Cooper. I wanted to fill him in, tell him about the state of my project because ever since I started my company Cooper was the one to tell first. It was like a ritual.

  And I was putting up new Jerry posters. The only picture I had of him was when he was eight or nine. I had these posters made, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?, and I got the printer to make him look older. There was this new batch of him looking even older, but he was starting to look a bit funny.

  “It’s all happening, ladies.”

  “We heard about your son, Jerry.”

  “It’s terrible, Jerry.”

  “Well, these posters should work. He doesn’t look like a freak like that, but I didn’t have, you know, a . . . a nice picture.”

  “He’s gorgeous. He’ll turn up.”

  “You bet.”

  Cooper had walked in.

  “Hey, Cooper. It’s all happening, buddy, you’ve got to see these plans, all the plans are finished, and it’s all in, and everything’s go, so sit down here, there, stand if you want and listen, and I’ll tell you, seriously, listen it’s all bigger than ever, we’ll force their hand, I’ll make you a king . . .”