by Tony Burgess
THE DOG
My car is spinning. I know it’s going to hit something soon. My blood is coming out — ready to splash across me. It seems to take a year for this goddamn car to spin even once. Shit — I’m going to die — I knew that this morning. I felt it. I think I even said it: “Today you’re going to die.” Or was that yesterday? There’s hair on the windshield at the centre of a shattered dip. When did the car stop?
★
When the car stopped, Owen Lamb’s head met the windshield and split open across the hairline. There was no braking when the car left the road, its driver was slumped over peacefully moments before the thick hide of a tree, drowsy and frozen, chopped the car open. In the minutes that Owen stayed under, his body finished relaxing, unaware of its own split and bashed parts, vague even about its reluctance to awaken. Gasoline dropped into the snow. The single most important feature of the crash was the bottle of rye which quietly emptied itself along the narrow grooves in the mat under Owen’s tossed feet. The whisky drove ice and salt up to the top of the rubber edge, then it plunged into the hard carpet. Again and again it washed up under the rhythm of fluid chasing itself back from a bottle neck. There was no waiting mouth and jumping tongue. It is tragic to lose alcohol this way.
The first thing Owen felt caused him to throw up. Why does the first thing you feel have to be a stab? What the fuck is it? It’s a stab. Owen enjoyed the reprieve of vomiting. The power of his body convulsing exhilarated him. It made him shout. It made him howl. His head bounced off the dash, lifting pellets of glass up into his face. Then in silence he leaned into his own white breath and searched around the stabbing for himself. His stomach squinted to examine if someone in him — near him — could respond to bleeding and drooling. Owen turned his palms upward and brought them, with melodramatic urgency, close to his face. He was preparing a massive crying jag when a darkness pulled around his car. He didn’t recognize his voice when he spoke, and he was relieved not to have to refer to himself as I.
“Oh God dammit. Oh shit. Little bit of juice. Hee-hee. Up in the world. Fuck. Dead.”
Owen Lamb, sitting in this fantastic landscape, surrounded by roiling black imagination, was groping between his legs in a confused effort to reach for a drink and tear off his cock. He didn’t realize that his body was being scattered across the very real opening that lead to remembrance.
When Owen opened the car door and tumbled into the snow he interrupted an important phone call. An annoyed and frightened Owen Lamb put his hand over the receiver and glared with uncertain anger at the woman standing in the snow. Her hand flew nervously over her mouth when she spotted the helpless, four-legged Owen spitting blood near the wreck. Owen appeared shocked for a fleeting second as he recognized himself at the side of the road, near death, but he fought against it and covered his face and resumed the phone call.
“I think we can afford to wait.”
Owen cupped his hand over the receiver. “Listen, baby, I think he wants this shit to go down … uh yessir, I guess I just wanted to know if you people were thinking about alternatives. Personally, I see Bentham Response as your necessary good foot, you know what I mean … Good foot, good foot … good foot, bad foot. I’m your good foot and your … your … Listen, I just think if you leave your last legit operation blowing in the breeze you’re gonna run totally out of viable places to plant things.”
As Owen listened he shifted in his chair until his body matched the abjection he felt. Jolene turned away, frightened that he might start yelling.
“I don’t give a shit about Buffalo or Aunock, all I know is I’m now in the black up here AND there’s a bona fide love fucking relationship between the public and Bentham that you are ignoring … Hello? Hello?” Owen dropped the phone into the cradle so that it bounced back out, sending him cursing under his desk to retrieve it. When he held it, it held him. Owen screamed and pulled his wrist out of the cold hand that held it.
A roar filled his ears, like machines grinding, and it made his eyes water so that he could barely see the woman in the middle of the road, walking backwards through white eddies of snow. A figure beyond her was running wildly towards a distance that Owen could not see. Owen swung his head between his shoulders and spit.
“I’m a scary fucker. That’s what I am, scary. Hee-hee.”
Owen noticed the empty bottle of rye in the car and he regarded it with a single, unemotional certainty: “Better fix that.” He rose, and with an upright crawl, moved out onto the highway that would drop suddenly into the town of Bewdley.
Owen saw a telephone booth on the edge of a gas station parking lot and he headed towards it. He now guarded himself against the wind. When he reached the booth he kicked the door in order to save his hands, but he lost his footing and his body slammed onto the ice. The crack of his elbows attracted the attention of the gas attendant. He’d stopped cleaning the windshield of an old station wagon and was staring at the prone man casting steam up over a vast, unpopulated landscape. The attendant and the entire family within the car kept silly unblinking faces turned towards Owen as he climbed to his feet and hurried into the booth.
Seven hours later, three hours after the sun had gone down, Owen was holding the receiver in his hand.
“You can’t do this without a drink. First things first. Numero uno. El primo. I’m not bored. I’m not bored. I’m not bored. Nope, I’m gonna die, but I’m not bored. Help me.”
When Owen asked for help like this, he was wagering his life that his own voice, when it spoke his own helplessness directly, was more powerful than his actions and that the attendant, who hadn’t appeared in over an hour, would eventually twig to the prayer and come running over with a bottle. Owen sang to himself in a frail voice: “He would come running over with a bottle, little ice man. Come on. Your friend is dying, hurry up.” In the middle of this song, the attendant appeared around a corner of the building waving a bottle high over his head. He moved under a light and held the bottle upside down so that it poured into his mouth. The light caught itself in the hot copper of the fluid and it stayed in each white splash across the boy’s cheek. Owen sang louder into this silhouette, his face reddening and his mouth spraying as his voice rose, drowning out his own words. A strange whine could be heard coming from the phone booth.
When the glass door slammed open the attendant dropped the can of oil and watched the dark blue figure stagger into the falling snow. The man’s arms reached out stiffly in front of him and he stomped towards the skirt of preternatural light that held the boy. The attendant knelt and picked up the oil can and drew his arm long behind him in case he would need to suddenly defend himself against this stranger. The stranger reached the edge of the light and leaned into it, illuminating his swollen burnt cheeks and frozen, open, forehead. Then he dropped his purple lip and a reptilian noise escaped from his lungs.
“Don’t you come any closer, oh I recognize you. I know who you are and I’ll bash in your ugly fuckin’ skull for you.” The attendant seemed overexcited. “Oh you’re some scary now, eh? You’re the ‘ubonible snowman,’ aren’t ya? Go on take a swing, useless.” The attendant pulled off his toque releasing a spring of red hair as he howled into the light. When he stopped he lowered his face, his eyes sank into unlit sockets and he giggled like a little boy killer.
“Oh, I’ve got one, here, don’t I? Goddamn, goddamn, I just figured you’d be more than a fishstick. Well I have my duty to do, fishstick, and I’m afraid it means I gotta … how do I put this. I’m gonna … kill ya.” The boy stepped forward, with a wickedly pleasant expression, and when Owen dropped his arms the boy drew himself up with a grotesquely put on haughtiness. When he spoke it was a screech.
“You son of a bitch! You bastard!” He lunged at Owen and brought the oil can down on an already open wound.
ii
Dan Stewart appeared to be holding his breath with his mouth open, while his son wiped down Owen’s fac
e with an oily rag. When Dan spoke his high-pitched voice belied his six-foot-two, two-hundred-and-sixty-pound frame. “Yer stainin’ him son.”
His son, Jeffrey, dropped the rag on Owen’s chest and put his blackened fingers through the unconscious man’s hair.
“He looks bad. He looks very bad. He smells too.”
Jeffrey brought his face close to Owen’s and inhaled his breath, while Dan rose from the barrel he was sitting on.
“I’ll fetch some J-cloths from the kitchen. Everything in this damn shed of yours is filthy. Son, what in hell are you doin’?”
Jeffrey remained hunched over Owen.
“He smells somethin’ terrible of whisky, Dan.” Jeffrey sat up and drew his hand out from under Owen’s head, letting it bounce back onto the wooden bench.
“Maybe I’ll get him a snort then. That’ll bring him around.” As Dan swung through the door he slapped his hand against the lightswitch, dropping the toolshed into complete darkness.
“Hey! Don’t leave me in the fuckin’ dark with a dead Ransom!” Light splashed back into the room.
“Habit, son. That ain’t a Ransom neither. You made that mistake already. A full Ransom household is in their beds dreamin’ of the Hell you’d have sent this man to and the hell you’ll get to fer tryin’. Now, throw a blanket or …” Dan cast his eyes around with an exasperation that was stiffly theatrical. “Just don’t get him any dirtier. I’ll fetch a snort.”
When Dan left the shed, Jeffrey pulled a clean, white handkerchief from his overalls and lay it softly over Owen’s face. Slowly he drew its edges down each side of Owen’s head, until it was pulled tight. Jeffrey held it there for a moment, until he suddenly snapped it away and turned it over, revealing an impression of stains lifted from Owen’s face. Jeffrey folded the cloth delicately, then leaned to whisper in Owen’s ear.
“I have to bring you back to life now. Don’t worry, I won’t let you die.”
As Jeffrey pinched Owen’s nose a violent blow knocked him to the floor. Dan pointed the bottle at his son, and wagged it admonishingly. When he spoke his voice was a softly contained fury.
“He’s not dead, son. He can see you and when he comes around I’m gonna let him help me straighten you out.”
Dan carefully drizzled whisky into Owen’s mouth, until he began sputtering and shaking. Eventually Owen sat up.
It is hard to tell what this man normally looked like. His eyes seemed cored out, his skin was streaked scarlet and black and his hair pitched back and forth over the bright, pink gulley in his forehead. It was the trembling and shaking that accompanied his first voluntary breath that seemed to bury the man. Owen’s hands fluttered to the bottle that Dan held, and when he brought it up to his lips his teeth clattered against the glass. Jeffrey jumped up and joined his father’s distaste for the spectacle. When Owen spoke, it was in a disarmingly sane and hushed, broken baritone.
“It’s obvious I should thank you, and I apologize for any inconvenience I’ve caused you. Maybe you saved my life, I don’t know, I don’t know. And because I don’t know, you could help me further by answering a few questions for me.” Owen cocked his head and squinted up at the men. “Now I haven’t quite formed these questions, I’m more than a little unsure, here. Alright, what did we do last night?” Owen lifted the bottle again, while Jeffrey and Dan exchanged looks. Owen resumed with a strange animation.
“Ah, yes. Yes, yes. We don’t know each other, do we? There has to be a better question to ask. I’ve got a very fucked up body here. Am I … uh … in legal difficulty?” Owen drank while Jeffrey and Dan looked on, uncomfortably.
“Officers, officers, I can explain everything. Me and these two gentlemen stole your laundry because that’s how we make a living. That’s it!” Owen dropped his voice, suddenly, into sotto voce solemnity. “OK, OK. Where am I and who are you?”
“You’re in Bewdley, friend, and I would say you got here by car and I figure that car is somewhere on the road to town.”
Jeffrey added with exaggerated disgust, “S’probably totalled. You’ll be lucky if you didn’t kill somebody out there. Maybe more than one person.”
Dan turned on his son and drove him out the door with a flurry of slaps. When the door was closed, Dan composed himself and seemed satisfied that he had authority.
“I’m sorry about the boy. These are hard times, friend, and they make hard children, I’m afraid. My name’s Dan. I think you’re in worse shape than you’re aware of. Do you want me to … uh … call a doctor.”
Owen had laid himself back again, and his eyes were upturned horribly and his tongue filled his mouth thickly.
“Oh, Dan. I think I might burn in hell, this time. I don’t know how I got here, Dan. I was in Toronto. I was at work. We had just been contracted to raise money for a really difficult charity. A kid’s disease, I think. Warped their bones like old celery. I saw pictures, yes … I did, I saw photographs of them. Little children, not little, Christ, like dolls, antique dolls without hair, and huge eyes, like a painting. Too rare a disease to raise money for. So I, so I … did I …” Owen closed his eyes and pictured himself at his desk loading a handgun. A teenage girl stood in the doorway. Owen opened his eyes again, and looked tenderly at Dan.
“I employ people, Dan. Do you know what it’s like to take an unemployed middle-age man with a family or a single mother of three and save their godforsaken lives with a pay cheque? I’m a fuckin’ miracle worker, Dan. And the kicker, Dan, the goddamn kick of it is, I put these people on the phone banks and they interrupt people’s lives long enough to save dying children. How can that not be right? How can that not be right?” Owen’s beatific expression suddenly fell into a deep frown and he closed his eyes again. He saw himself walking slowly between stalled rows of people with headphones absorbed in intense monologues. At the tall window he turned in the sunlight and raised his hands, radiantly. Suddenly, the sunlight overexposed his vision, and the sound of wind rose around him. Owen looked over the top of the car wreck and beyond to the road. Owen saw a woman stepping carefully through the snow in her heels. He turned to make his way around the car and was stopped cold by himself at his desk. His face and eyes were thoroughly yellow and his grin bright brown. “We’re eating shit, Owen.”
He opened his eyes and sat up startled.
“Dan, take me to my car. Here give me a drink first. Bring the bottle. Christ, bring that bottle.”
Dan drove Owen to the car wreck and let him stumble through the snow, light blue in the pre-dawn glow. As he watched Owen stagger around the car in a mysterious preoccupation, two men dragged Dan from his car and beat him unconscious with clubs. Owen looked up submissively when these men surrounded him.
iii
In Bewdley four out of five people were out of work, putting an enormous burden on the church’s outreach program. Outside the small building hung the town’s most read and obeyed sign: FREE MEALS AT 11 A.M. AND 4 P.M., FOLLOWING COMPULSORY SERVICE.
This compulsion has resulted in a considerable number of bible scholars among both the newly unemployed and the advanced alcoholic. It was not uncommon for exegetical arguments to spill out into the streets.
Inside, the church was packed with pastor Fitzhenry’s smouldering faithful. Among them sat a brooding and bruised Dan Stewart. When Fitzhenry strode up the aisle towards his podium he exuded a fierce calm power, and his hungry flock stopped their quiet roaring. Outside in the cemetery Jeffrey looked over his shoulder as he encouraged a young woman with his hand at her back to hurry through the headstones.
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. The law of the Lord. What today is the law of the Lord? The law under which our leaves do not wither and whatsoever we doeth doth prosper. Where is our prosperity under the law of the Lord? Have we
lost the highest legal battle? Have we withered in the hot breath of an ungodly mind? From where does this ripe hell breeze blow? This arsonist meat and plundering animal? Where?”
The pastor propped his elbows on the podium and relaxed his head into his hands, suddenly appearing oddly whimsical. He continued, now with a matter-of-fact intimacy.
“It is no secret friends. There is no sin in this congregation. It rages through our lives, our children’s lives, from a discrete outpost, where surely a fallen angel twists its tongue into men’s ears.”
The congregation, which had been growing increasingly agitated, suddenly leapt up, waving fists and weapons. They gnashed their teeth and howled for food and they howled for blood. Ransom blood.
★
Owen lifted a huge red drumstick in his shaking fist and mashed it into his mouth. The meat fell from the bone into his lap, and he reached between his legs for a bucket, but as his vomit flew from his mouth a rock clanged it from his hands, followed by a sudden terrible burst of laughter.
Two Ransom boys sat at a kitchen table that was parked in the middle of a barn. Owen was positioned in a corner against a wall of hay. From somewhere within the barn, cattle were lowing and stomping in the mud. On the table sat an opened case of beer, and each of the young men appeared to have his own bottle of whisky. When Owen looked at these men, he recognized they were hick devils. In his delirium, Owen surprised himself by laughing.
“Hey, you lame fucker, I married that bird, you better eat her right up.”
“That’s right, Pa’s coming here soon and he wanted us to fatten you up.”
“Know why? Guess. Why do you think the evil Ransom family would want you as big as a porker?”
“We’re gonna eatcha, ol’ boy.”
“Oh, yes. Brother Marvin tells you true. We’re gonna cook your slimy brains and chew them.”
