by Anne Degrace
IT WAS DARK outside, while the inside of Myra’s Scollard Street apartment was illuminated with candles. James had begun to come down a half-hour ago, but the effects still lingered: noises were sharp, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable, edgy.
“I know,” Myra said, looking at him. She had made tea, and they sat on her couch, which was soft and springless and tipped them both into its middle. There was a stack of records leaning against the stereo, and James flipped through them absently: on an album simply called The Doors, Jim Morrison looked out, face bathed in darkness. He paused at the haunting image.
“I just got this,” Myra said. “Listen.”
Myra put the album on the turntable and set the needle. The strains of guitar and vocals seeped, dirge-like, from the speakers, then escalated into frenetic chaos. When Morrison began to sing kill, kill, kill, “Stop it,” James said, willing the panic from his voice. He thought he might be sick.
Myra lifted the needle and slipped the record into its cover, leaning it back against the stereo, where Morrison glowered at James. “It’s a good song. What he’s really saying, I mean. Maybe later.” She flipped through the record stack. In a moment James heard the lighter sounds of “Eight Miles High” and closed his eyes.
“I always feel sort of like an alien or something when I come down,” Myra offered. She brushed his temple with a gentle finger. “Sad, like I don’t belong anywhere.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” James said, smiling slightly. “An alien for sure.”
“Far out. From what planet?”
“Planet Delaware.” He grinned, trying to relate Myra’s apartment to his parents’ rec room. Relief flooded in with the shift in music, and he felt as if he had touched down, like the song said. He felt unbearably sad, and he found himself fighting tears. It must just be the effects of the LSD, he thought.
He started to get up. “My stuff’s at Fig’s,” he said.
“Why don’t I run you a bath?” Myra asked.
It sounded to James like the kindest thing anyone had ever said to him.
LOUNGING IN THE clawfoot tub surrounded by candles, James felt, keenly, the surreality of displacement. Two weeks ago he’d sat down to a chicken dinner at the family table, his little sister chatting about something. He hadn’t been listening; he’d been thinking about what he was going to say. He found himself looking around the house he’d grown up in, seeing each room in a different light. He caught himself watching his mother as she passed potatoes, caught the slight down on the edge of her jawline, and felt as if he was really seeing her for the first time. His sister Brenda laughed, and it sounded at once both achingly familiar and startlingly new, as if he’d never before heard it properly. The secret of his decision lay across his shoulders like something leaden: he would not be showing up for his pre-induction physical next week.
When he finally told them, the result was volcanic, his father apoplectic.
“No son of mine — !”
James tried to mollify his father. “Dad, you told me you fought in the last war so there wouldn’t be any more.” His voice was pleading; he felt like a little kid, and resisted the urge to cower.
“Don’t tell me what I said —”
“Bob — .” His mother, eyes wide.
His father continued, voice raised. “You have to stand up for something. What about democracy? What about freedom?”
“Dad, I am —”
“What am I going to tell the boys at the club? At work?”
“Is that what — ?” James was almost speechless.
“How am I going to face Jim, for God sake?!”
“You’d sacrifice me to save face with the neighbours?” James said, and yet his father’s last words jarred. Jim was Billy’s father, and Billy had come back paralyzed.
“James, it’s not that —” his mother began, but her words were cut short as his father left the room, door slamming behind him.
Brenda, who’d been looking at her plate, touched James’s arm. James shook her off. “I’m going for a walk,” he said.
Two days later, his mother and sister dropped him at the bus depot; his father was notably absent. His mother took his face in both hands. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” she said. “You won’t be able to come home.”
Although James knew this, the weight of it sunk in then. “Mom, if I went to ’Nam, I might come home in a box,” he said through a thick throat. He had held her, feeling like a small boy, then turned to embrace his sister.
“You’re doing the right thing, Big Brudder,” she whispered.
Feeling impossibly small, he watched the car recede from view until it rounded a corner and was gone.
“It’ll be easy,” Paul, the Quaker, told him in Buffalo. “We’ve done this a hundred times. Okay, maybe not a hundred, but a lot.” And so James and Stephanie had driven in a borrowed van from Buffalo to the border in happy parody of a young couple off to wish some friends well who were getting married, that most respectable of institutions.
“How are your folks taking it?” Stephanie asked him as she loaded her stuff in the back, hanging up the borrowed dress and suit. “Mine threw me out when I told them.” She spoke casually, but James detected a tremor beneath the words.
“Not too great,” James said. “Why did your parents throw you out?”
“Because Alex is a deserter. And because we’re not getting married. Who gets married these days?” She looked at the dress and gave a lopsided grin. “Except our friends in Toronto, of course. What are their names again?”
Most border guards were sympathetic, and in any case, evading the draft was no reason to be refused entry, James had been assured. Paul’s group knew the best times to go, who was on shift when. So what went wrong? Maybe someone had called in sick. Maybe it wasn’t the usual shift for the officer who took them into separate rooms and grilled them. James had felt himself falter — “we’ve known each other two — no, three years. We met at Penn State, she’s taking, uh — teaching?”
James had no idea what checks and counterchecks might be in place, and whether the Canadian and American border patrols were cooperating. He could feel the sweat running down the back of his neck.
A tap at the door. “Call for you. Urgent,” said another officer who, after the first had left, curtly told James he could go.
“Go?”
“Look,” the officer told James, sitting down across the table from him. He ran his hands through pale hair, then placed them on the table, palms up. “I’m not going to turn you back.”
James felt a shift, a tease of relief, but he remained wary. Was there an implied threat? Could it be some kind of trick? Good cop, bad cop? He peered at the nametag on the chest of the man opposite as he waited for the other shoe to drop. S. Armstrong.
“I fought in the last war,” S. Armstrong told him.
Here we go, thought James.
“We thought if we did our job, there wouldn’t be any more wars.”
James willed his head to nod slightly.
“I was missing in action. Everyone — my father, my friends — thought I was dead. A lot of my friends already were.” The officer paused. “I know why you’re here.”
James said nothing, afraid, even, to breathe. There was a moment in which their eyes met across the vast expanse of table.
“Welcome to Canada,” said the officer.
“I THOUGHT WE’D be turned back,” James said as he shifted into second gear, anxious to put the border behind him, but not wanting to appear too anxious. “And then I’d get arrested going the other way.” It felt so close.
Stephanie exhaled, whistling through her teeth. Then she grinned. “Toronto, here we come,” she said. “We’re home free now.
“Hallelujah,” said James. “Right on.”
The van ba
ckfired, then picked up speed.
In Toronto a fellow named Bruce accepted the return of the van and the money and then peeled off a twenty for each of them, just to help them get where they were going. Stephanie offered to let James stay with her and her AWOL boyfriend, even though James figured it was probably the last thing she wanted to do since they had been apart for two months. James declined; he walked through the dark streets following Bruce’s hand-scribbled map until he found the street and the brick walkup. It was late and the house was dark. Fig greeted James with a grasp of hands and a clap on the back and warmed up some leftover chili. After he had eaten, James had sunk gratefully onto the couch with a lumpy pillow and a scratchy Hudson’s Bay blanket, and when he awoke it was to the smell of coffee and the voices of Fig and his roommates, and it had all seemed so friendly, so laid back, so not uptight, that he lay still for several minutes watching the pale sun make its way across the floor, not wanting to disturb a thing.
THE WATER IN the tub had cooled, and James ran some hot, finding the hot water on the right-hand side, wondering if this was a Canadian thing or just bad plumbing. He wished he had some weed to smoke to take the edge off, but this was a close second. He was stalling, he realized, hoping for an invitation from Myra. He sighed and slipped under, eyes closed.
As he came up, he heard Myra call through the door. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I put a blanket and pillow on the couch.”
THE NEXT DAY they took a bus to the house on Baldwin Street, and Myra told James about the city. James, on the window side, rested his head against the cool glass and watched the Yorkville sidewalks full of people who lounged on porches or sat in groups talking or playing music. There were a few souls braving the spring air, selling jewellery on mats and blankets, all of it a rebellion of colour against a stone and asphalt backdrop.
“They’re mostly weekend hippies,” Myra told him. “They’re not really living the scene. They leave mummy and daddy’s house in the morning and go back at night.”
“Really?”
“Baldwin’s different. Lotta draft dodgers. That scene’s really happening. The Village . . . the Village is changing. More bummed-out people just coming to hang out. They’re not political. You can’t talk to them about anything.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I mean, were you born here? Where did you grow up? What do you do for bread?” It occurred to James that in all of the talk over their long, acid-insomniac night, he’d never asked her about herself. Instead, they’d talked about racism, feminism, socialism, communism, fascism, capitalism, militarism, and social justice, all of it through a surreal post-LSD haze.
“I used to go to U of T,” she told him. “I’m taking a break right now. I’ll go back, though — I needed some time, I guess. So now I work at a print shop. We just finished printing leaflets for TADP. And we do stuff for SUPA all the time.”
James looked at her, a question.
“Toronto Anti-Draft Program. SUPA stands for Student Union for Peace Action. It’s mostly guys, though, not enough women. Anyway, it’s changing. A lot of people have moved over to the CYC.” She took in his look. “Council for Young Canadians. They’ve got government funding.”
It was too much for James to keep straight. He looked out the bus window. Someone had told him there were undercover FBI agents in Canada, ferreting out draft-aged Americans by posing as hippies. Would Canada, with its liberal attitude, allow it?
“Here’s our stop.” Myra rose and pulled the bell. James stood, and let her slip past him. She swung down into the exit in a whirl of beads and feathers as the back door opened.
JAMES MOVED INTO the Baldwin Street house and found a job in a candle shop in the Yorkville area. It was part-time, under-the-table, and a start, at least. The Baldwin Street house offered free lodging for a while, but residents were expected to become self-supporting and move on.
“Wish I could give you more shifts,” Ken, the shop owner, told him. “I got five working here, now, and there’s not really work for five. But I like you, man. It’s just, you maybe better look around for something else, too.”
They were standing just inside the back door of the shop, keeping out of the spring rain while they shared a joint at the end of the day. “I’m short points to apply for immigration,” he told Ken. “I heard it’s better if I’m willing to relocate, right? To some backwoods place where they need workers.” Ken passed James the joint, and James took it, then continued. “You know, I actually thought this place would be full of igloos and Eskimos and that Canadians were a bunch of poor frozen buggers.”
Ken grinned. “You ain’t been here in January. But yeah, I hear it’s good if you’re willing to move to the boonies.”
“Any suggestions?”
Ken shrugged his shoulders. “Tuktoyaktuk. Kapuskasing. South Porcupine.”
James took a deep toke, held it, exhaled, and handed back the joint. “There’s a place called South Porcupine?”
“Got an aunt who lives there. We call her Aunt Quill.” Ken snorted, laughing through the joint and blowing smoke and spit. He passed it to James. “Sorry, man.” The joint, what was left of it, was a bit damp. “Got a cousin in Moose Factory, too.”
“What do you call him?”
“Poor frozen bugger.”
They were still laughing when the front door jingled. Ken stuck his head around the corner, then turned back to James, eyes wide.
“Cops!” he said.
James ran.
After several blocks James collapsed on a bench, hand against the sharp stitch in his side. “Just don’t get arrested,” Fig had warned him at the TADP office. “That’s the quickest way to get sent home.” He sniffed at his shirtsleeves, wondering if he smelled like weed, wondering if his paranoia was justified, or just an effect of the dope. Walking back along College Street, still buzzing slightly, he ran into Fig and told him about the cops coming to visit the candle shop.
“They just like to have their presence felt, man,” he told James. “They don’t actually do anything. Look, why don’t you come by the office. Or go see Myra at the print shop. Stop hanging around looking nervous. Do something useful.”
THE BELL ON the print shop door jingled when he opened it and Myra looked up from a long table where she was folding leaflets.
“James!” she said, smiling, and she leaned over the table and kissed him on the cheek. Sisterly, he thought, looking away from her low-cut tie-dye tank top.
“Here.” Myra handed him a leaflet. Spring Mobilization to End the War it read. “In New York! We’re going, Fig and me. Actually, I’m heading out in a minute to distribute these. Wanna come?”
As they walked down College towards the university they passed a street cop, and Myra gave him her disarming smile; the cop smiled back. It’s a different country, James thought. Myra seemed to know everybody on the street, stopping to chat with an older Italian lady, then again to a tall black man with an afro. “This is James. He’s from Delaware,” she said more than once. Mrs. Gambini reached up to pat his cheek, telling him, “You get your girlfriend to cook for you, eh? Fatten you up. You’re too skinny.” Myra laughed, but didn’t correct her.
Later, they came back to Scollard Street, and James sat at Myra’s red Arborite table while she cooked pasta. There was an open bottle of Chianti on the table, and he sipped from a coffee mug, enjoying the tang of the wine.
“Mrs. Gambini would be pleased,” he told Myra as she slid a handful of spaghetti into the pot of boiling water on the stove.
The room was full of steam. “Open that, would you?” Myra nodded towards the tall kitchen window, and James, with some difficulty, slid it upwards in its sash. He breathed in the late-spring air as street noises drifted up from below.
“Sometimes, it feels like I’ll always be an outsider.”
He watched her as she moved from fridge to counter to stove with a dancer’s grace. “I’ve been here a month tomorrow.”
“Have you applied for landed? What do you need?”
“More points. First-year philosophy doesn’t count for a college degree or a useful skill, even if I was willing to live in —” what did Ken say? “— South Porcupine.”
“Where?”
“Never mind. I’m still way short.”
“And?”
“And if I go back, it’s Vietnam or jail. My only hope is to marry some nice Canadian girl.”
Turning with two plates of spaghetti, Myra laughed. “Marriage. Now there’s a dead institution,” she said.
AFTER DINNER THEY sat in the living room where they listened to records, a different atmosphere from James’s first visit; he appreciated the normalcy of it, and the easy conversation. “If I ever have kids, it’ll be in a world where they can be free,” Myra said. “Where the most important thing is love.” She had her head on the arm of the couch and she stretched out her legs and put her feet in James’s lap. “This is nice, just hanging out with you.”
The words bolstered James’s confidence. “So what’s the story with Fig?”
“He’s committed to the movement,” she said, and James wasn’t sure if this was a comment of relationship status or admiration, for there was clearly admiration in Myra’s voice. “He’s amazing. He knows more than anyone I’ve ever met. He understands the politics of everything, knows all the players. He can give you statistics on anything, remembers every date. I’ve never met anyone as smart as Fig.”
In the wake of this, James could think of nothing to say. Myra tucked up her feet, and James reached for his wineglass.
“You’re sweet, James,” she told him after several minutes. “But you need to get involved. You can’t hang back. There’s a lot of changing this world needs.”
The streets were empty as James walked back to the Baldwin Street house, but James felt the breadth of the city around him, the country, the world. So much world. He felt small in the face of it all.
