Loose End

by Ivan Coyote

  Now a person could say at this point, fair is fair. I mean it was, after all, the shit of the cat owned by the mother of the woman Tony had married, and so you could say it belonged more on Tony’s lawn than in Maria’s lilac bushes, but I guess Tony didn’t see it that way. He retaliated immediately, furiously raking up the leaves from Manuel’s pear tree that had blown over the fence and dumping them back into enemy territory. Manuel seemed not to notice this act of aggression, so, unsatisfied, Tony went and bought a can of brown paint, which he slathered on his side of the white fence that separated the two yards.

  Tony’s side looked great, but not so on Manuel’s side. Manuel’s fence was still sun-worn white, but now with chocolate-brown drips running down every board. Manuel painted his side white again, chewing on his bottom lip the whole time, making sure to drip as much as Tony had. Luckily, Tony had enough brown paint left over for touch-ups, or things might have gotten ugly.

  Last summer, Manuel took his family to visit their grandma in the Philippines. Tony barely waited until the exhaust from their minivan had cleared before he brought out the ladder. I caught him with two handfuls of pine needles and dead leaves, stuffing them into Manuel’s eavestroughing. Tony looked sheepish, but not guilty.

  “Fucker poisoned my beans,” he explained. “Never had any trouble with beans before this. Only the ones close to his fence got it. What kind of a sicko kills a helpless plant?” Tony shook his head sadly and continued stuffing, like he had no choice.

  It goes on this way with Tony and Manuel to this day. Tony has walled in his front porch so he doesn’t have to look at Manuel’s place at all when he sits outside on summer nights, which means he also can’t see his nephew playing with Manuel’s kids, or his wife laughing with Maria as they both pull weeds in their backyards.

  Manuel picks the dandelions from his lawn, blows the fluffy seeds over the fence when he thinks no one is looking. Tony sneaks up Manuel’s stairs at the crack of dawn on Saturdays and pulls Manuel’s newspaper down two stairs with one bare foot, to where the rain can just get to it. Manuel shoots Tony’s Christmas lights out with his son’s wristrocket slingshot.

  A couple of nights ago, I drove home to see flashing lights and a fire truck in the middle of the street. Two firemen in dirty yellow coveralls were dragging a red hose up Tony’s front porch and in his front door. Neighbours from all sides were out on the sidewalk, blowing into cupped hands to keep warm and peering into Tony’s house. You could see right into his living room, still filled with the same furniture and cushions he grew up playing fort with.

  Tony stood outside next to the fire chief, gesturing with his hands as the chief wrote into his notebook and talked into his radio.

  I get the scoop from the neighbours, as always. Chimney fire. Tony was too cheap to hire someone to clean it, according to the mother-in-law, who is currently keeping warm and drinking tea at the house of the man who needs the new power steering pump. Everyone’s okay, no one is hurt, but the cat took off when the sirens came.

  Manuel is out on his porch, smoking a cigarette and rocking back on the heels of his slippers. I glance up at him as I let the dogs out of the back of my car.

  His face is partly lit up by the lights from the fire truck, and he looks a little crazy. He meets my eyes for a second, then shakes his head, both palms up in front of him. “Hey, hey, don’t look at me.” He takes one step back towards his own front door. “I had nothing to do with this one. Chimney fire. A chimney fire is an act of God.”

  Funny thing is, I happen to know Manuel doesn’t believe in God. That’s why he doesn’t put up Christmas lights. He’s an atheist. At least that’s what his wife told the neighbours.

  The Ides of March

  Let’s face it, nobody is ever sorry to say goodbye to the month of March. March is the armpit month of the year, the uphill battle at the end of the tunnel time. April brings daffodils and daylight savings time, and then pretty soon summer is upon us and it turns out everything’s going to be fine after all. But first, you have to make it through March.

  This year’s was torturous. We had that one beautiful day early on, but the handkerchief of spring was waved under our noses, and then blown into. It turned out to be the third coldest March on record, and oh, the snow. What was up with that? If things weren’t bad enough already, what with it being March and all, I also hurt a disc in my lower lumbar region and spent almost two weeks flat on my back. There was plenty of time for being introspective, something you shouldn’t be when deep in dirty snow during the armpit month of the year.

  Soon as I could stand up straight, I did, and took a peek around. It was still March. Rain and grey and mildew as far as the eye could stand to look. I needed to get out of town. My ex-neighbour, the accountant, does the books for this bed & breakfast on the island. So I called them up and booked me and my sweet thing in for a night in the room with the view of the bay and the hot tub. For the sore back, of course.

  We could take long walks on the beach, I imagined, and read, and maybe I would get a little work done on my book, because we would feel inspired by our peaceful and natural surroundings. We could kick back, take our mind off things. What a great idea. Cat feeders and dog sitters were arranged. Calls were made. Bags were packed and plans were had. We were going to go away, we were going to have fun, and it was going to be relaxing.

  The stressful thing about holidays is all that pressure you’re under to relax because you’ve supposedly left all your responsibilities behind. And then there’s all that pressure to get along and have a good time and feel great because you managed to get away from it all.

  When travelling with a vegan, a little menu foresight is generally in order, to fend off starvation. A girl can only subsist on French fries for so long. We decided to stop at a local health food grocery store on our way to the ferry for a few snacks. We had the salad and the vegetarian shepherd’s pie, because they are so damn good for you.

  We managed to have a pretty good time on the island, despite the rain and my being born without the holiday chromosome, and the fact that they now charge you eight dollars to park and take a walk on the beach. It wasn’t until we were driving home three days later that we heard the news: anyone who had recently eaten from the deli or the salad bar at the grocery store we had stopped at had potentially been exposed to hepatitis A, and needed to come in for a big ol’ needle, just in case.

  I was having a good laugh at the irony of all those bike-riding, grain-fed yuppies possibly ingesting harmful germs with their tofu wraps when I remembered that I, too, was due for a shot in the ass. I tried to talk my way out of it. “What are the odds?” I argued. “How could salad be dangerous? Hepatitis A goes away, doesn’t it?”

  My girlfriend, like most vegans, took it all very seriously. I was informed that although I would probably live through a bout of hep A, I could pass it on without knowing to vulnerable children or elderly folks, causing serious illness, or perhaps death. “Is that what you want to do, then?” she asked me accusingly. “Kill children and old people? Because you’re afraid of a little needle?”

  There was a two-hour line-up at the West End community centre, and an almost festive air prevailed. Sheepish grocery store workers passed out free mandarin soda and organic cheezies, and there were all kinds of people there we knew. “Hey, long time no see. What are you in for? We had the salad dressing.” I polled the people around me.

  “Vegetable panini,” shrugged the guy in the Lycra bike shorts.

  “Beet salad,” quipped the couple with the matching nose rings.

  It was better than a night out on the town. It was shame-free vaccination, something that is getting harder to come by. We weren’t here because we shared needles or were promiscuous or had pubic lice. We were here for trying to eat organic; we were here because we were allergic to wheat or lactose-intolerant. We were salad eaters who cared about children and the elderly, coming forward in the interests of public health.

  I was bent over a chair wi
th my pants pulled halfway down and a kindly nurse behind me when I saw them. Pink cherry blossoms on the trees outside the window. A sharp sting in my right ass cheek, the smell of rubbing alcohol cool in my nostrils, and suddenly it was all over.

  March, that is.

  Dear Mom

  I asked you on the phone what you wanted for Mother’s Day, and you told me you wanted a card, some tea tree oil soap, and daffodil bulbs. This will be your thirty-third Mother’s Day.

  It is no longer a secret that I wasn’t a planned baby. On this day in 1969, you were nineteen years old, six months pregnant, and two months a bride. Family legend has it that Dad had been scrambling to borrow the money for an abortion, but you refused on account of being a Catholic. This story is probably as true as any other of our tales, that is, it could be bullshit, but maybe it’s not. Those who remember whispered it then but only raise their eyebrows if you ask them about it now. I guess it doesn’t really matter, because here I sit, with a card, some bulbs, a bar of soap, and a half-written letter.

  My friend was just by yesterday, as pregnant now as you were on Mother’s Day 1969. She thinks the baby is a girl. Did you think I was going to be a girl? If someone had done the ring-on-a-string trick with you, what would the ring have told them? Did you dream of a pink-frocked prodigy who would love gardening and yoga, like you do? And how soon was it when you started to realize it wasn’t gonna go like that? Gran tells me I learned to walk when I was nine months old. Did I swagger at all, and hook my thumbs in my diaper? Was it that staff Christmas party when I was four and cried when Santa gave me the vanity set and then I bashed the boy next to me over the head with it and took his football? How about the double holster and cap gun set I begged for the summer I turned five? Did that cinch it for you?

  I finally came out when I was eighteen. You blamed yourself, insisting that you should never have let me play hockey in the boy’s league all those years, that you had been warned. Somehow, I truly believe you still managed to be surprised. I was here, and queer, and you couldn’t touch me in airports anymore. You were raised a Catholic girl in a small town, you said. So was I, I retorted.

  Now you knit socks for my girlfriend and exchange recipes with my buddy the drag queen. He/she is one of your favourite people, you tell me. You like his long black wig the best, especially paired with the kilt. You hug him in the airport, tits and all, oblivious to the stares.

  We’ve come a long way, you and me. It took me seven years to get you to send me boxer shorts instead of nightgowns for Christmas. I haven’t got the heart to tell you I switched to briefs. If I could be eighteen and come out to you again, I would be kinder.

  You taught me how to make gravy and cook a turkey, and you always came to my hockey games. You let me wear a brown corduroy pants and vest set over top of a blue and red plaid shirt to Aunt Nora’s wedding when I was eleven. Don’t think I’ve forgotten these little mercies. I never had to be a flower girl after all, and I love you for that.

  When you and Dad split up, we packed up the whole house together. I taught you how to use a cordless drill and what the essential home tool kit contained. You couldn’t stop crying, but still nodded appreciatively when I explained that Robertson screws were designed by a Canadian and don’t strip like Phillips do.

  We like a lot of the same books. I think of you whenever I fold laundry.

  Happy Mother’s Day. I miss you, and when I’m rich I’m gonna pay off your mortgage and take us both to Hawaii. We’ll drink fruity things with umbrellas in them, and go shopping.

  “I feel like the Queen of Sheba,” you’ll tell me.

  “And I’m King Shit of Turd Island,” I’ll say.

  You’ll smack my arm, right where my short sleeve ends. “Watch your language,” you’ll warn. “You sound just like your father.”

  Long Live the Difference

  Ah, a side street in springtime. The scented, blossom-laden branches lazily arching over the road, kids on bikes, girls in shorts. All that pink, all that perfume. I love walking through it, even though I don’t belong. I always feel like I’m digging through my mom’s drawer in the bathroom, or snooping in my sister’s room. I feel like I’m tromping through Grandma’s sitting room in my army boots.

  I was tiptoeing past the neighbour’s magnolias when I heard it: a terrible, gurgling death rattle was emanating from the rhododendron right under the front window of the house on the corner. I was going to be late for rehearsal, but I had to investigate.

  It took me a while to recognize the misshapen figure in the bushes. It was an injured crow, with his little wing bent behind his head in a way it was never meant to. He had probably flown into the window and broken his wing. He was squawking and struggling, his shiny eyes rolled back in his blue-black head. He went still when I got too close, like he was well aware of how vulnerable he was. Poor little fella, I had to do something. Several of his crow friends were eyeing me from branches of the big tree on the boulevard. Worried about their bird buddy, I thought, and popped the trunk of my car.

  There was only one right thing to do. Now, where is that fish club? It was designed for trout and grayling, but the principle would still apply for crows, I reckoned. It was about twelve inches long, and carved from oak. It was a gift from my godson last summer, and I kept it with my casting rod and tackle box. There it was, under my army-issued sleeping mat and spare jerry can. I slipped the rawhide thong handle over my wrist, and turned around.

  I had one foot in my neighbour’s chain link fence, about to climb over, when I realized I couldn’t do this alone. Even though the bird was obviously in agony, I had never killed anything except fish and bugs before. My dad and I had found a nearly dead deer on the highway once, and he had shot it, but I couldn’t watch and cried all the way back into town. I told the crow I would be right back, and went to find help.

  We rent out our garage to a couple of twenty-something artists; I call them the lesbian life drawing collective. The garage door was open, and one of them was inside, trying to get her compressor started. I raced in, fish club in hand.

  “You gotta come and help me,” I said. “There’s a crow next door, he’s hurt really bad, I think he’s dying and I need to put him out of his misery, but I need you to come with me.”

  “Cool,” she said. “I’m like, working on this video project, and we need some images of a dying raven for the end part. I’ll go get my camera and meet you there. Ravens and crows look pretty much the same.”

  I was horrified. Killing a dying crow was one thing. But doing it for an art project? There were definitely laws against that. “I will not allow you to film me beating a crow to death.”

  “You’re going to kill it?” Her mouth gaped open. “How sick. I was just going to videotape it while it died.”

  I turned and ran.

  When I got back, the crow was gone. A hippie chick and her blond dreadlocked boyfriend stood next to the fence, shading their eyes from the sun with their hands and staring up into the big cherry tree.

  “Did you guys see what happened to the crow that was just dying in the bushes there?”

  “Dude, we were just about to crawl over the fence and get it, when it flapped around and got unstuck or whatever and then flew up into the tree,” the hippie chick said. “The other crows won’t sit with it, but it seems okay. Sounded like he was dying, but he’s alright.”

  I hid the fish bat in the sleeve of my sweater. Some hero, about to bludgeon a bird when he was just a little down in his luck. Good thing I didn’t have it in me the first time.

  A couple of days later, my girlfriend and I were driving down another cherry-blossomed lane when she shrieked, slammed on the brakes, and leaped out of the car. She dropped to her belly and rolled in her brand new jeans right under a parked car. I put my coffee in the handy plastic cup holder and got out to help.

  Two crows were pecking a small starling to death, and the starling had retreated under a Honda Civic. My sweetie scolded off the crows and cradled the ble
eding bird. I grabbed a blanket out of the backseat, and we wrapped him up. “I’ll drop you off at your meeting,” she said. She was talking bullets, like an ER surgeon. “Get the cell phone and call your friend who works at the animal rescue place. Get directions, there’s a pen in my pocket. Keep him in the dark or he’ll go into shock.” She left me on the sidewalk outside my house, and took the corner like an ambulance driver.

  I didn’t know those animal rescue places would fix any kind of injured beast, I thought they were just for fancy fowl like eagles and herons and oil spill victims. I didn’t know you could bring in any old trashy starling or sparrow and the bird surgeons would jump to attention. That is the difference between boys like me and girls like her; I would have thumped the dying bird with the bat with the best of intentions, whereas she would rush it to the proper authorities for qualified medical attention.

  The little bird died in the night. She cried, I made her some tea.

  Last night, I caught a tiny pantry moth in my hand. She eyed me over her magazine. She is the type who shoos flies out of the kitchen with a tea towel. I sighed and opened the window, and released the moth safely outside. “There you go, little guy, be free. Live another day to eat someone else’s rice and cornflakes.”

  What could I do? I am a kinder, gentler tomboy now.

  If I Was a Girl

  Last week, my cousin Dan’s girlfriend, Sarah, mentioned to my girlfriend that they were hiring at the restaurant she worked at on the Drive. “You should come in and apply. We would have too much fun, and the tips are good,” Sarah told her.

  But my girlfriend already has a job. I, on the other hand, have been subsisting on a storyteller’s wage since I abruptly lost my job in the film industry, mostly due to my unapologetic and appalling lack of respect for authority, and my visceral distaste for people who won’t stop talking about Los Angeles.