The Motorcyclist

by George Elliott Clarke

  So, shift done, Carl shunts uptown. He wades through whiffs of chocolate, the smells of diesel fumes, coal, and oil, and, wafting over all, the recalcitrant smell of fish—bleeding, dying, briny, and rotting—plus, in the auditory realm, the steady braying of ship horns and seagulls. He ends up moving with (occasionally contra) loyal thousands strolling to the Garrison Grounds to see Her Royal Majesty (the transfiguration of “The Black Dahlia”) and His Royal Highness (the complexion of a crab, pinkish white, partly devoured). Carl pushes the cumbersome BMW through the crowd because he prays the real-life Liz II will admire the motorized Liz II—and her black-leather operator. He’s mounted proudly on the big bike—just as Mounties jounce smartly erect on their steeds.

  Upon arrival, Carl sees that the Garrison Grounds allot little marching space. He is so distant from Their Majesties that they look like toy trophies, borne aloft by prancing, high-stepping horses. (Carl thinks suddenly of Edward VIII—his unhorsed excellence when not mounted upon Mrs. Simpson, a woman who could pass for a divorcée in a True Confessions photo spread, with rectangles blacking out her eyes.)

  Despite steamy fog, the event blazes rainbow colours. Togged out in royal purple, Canadian scarlet, and Anglican white, the royal couple disperses the fog and fades in and out of it—like the ephemeral brilliance of fireworks. The Queen’s gems glitter victoriously, shaming the levelling, populist mist. Her equestrian cape fans around and about her tunic and about her horse’s spine. Here’s equine, no-shit Dignity.

  The temporarily royal audience shouts, “Hip, hip, hooray,” with raucous, Yank enthusiasm, especially when Elizabeth II furnishes any sustained smile. Her voice is like pebbles and glass—a tinkling, gravelly sound. Cheers volley up when Her Majesty ends one dainty sentence with an arch pronunciation of the Canuck, questioning “eh.”

  The pretty brunette Queen charms all. Her melancholy whiteness offsets the Prince’s dreary whiteness. Disregarding, even disrespecting, the monarchical presence, pigeons squabble and dive among the crowd, mobbing any person nibbling bread or cookies. Carl hears doleful seagulls squawk. Some disrespectful gulls—likely republican partisans—drop guano willy-nilly.

  The premier of Nova Scotia, the Hon. Robert Stanfield, heir to an underpants-manufacture fortune, appears in a black suit and overcoat, a black top hat, and a white silk scarf. His official speech sounds noble, but he fails to note that Nova Scotia, this spit of Great Britain, imports more liquor than it does teachers.

  The Queen greets an elderly N.S. woman whose deceased father had saved the long-deceased George V from drowning on a fishing expedition near Sable Island. (This salvaging allows the royal granddaughter to grace Canuck stamps, coins, and cash.)

  Then, after the obligatory salute—blank cannon discharging, their echoes thudding in every ear and chest—the crowd roars lustily, “God Save the Queen,” while Union Jacks and lovely, primary-colour Nova Scotian flags fan the fog. The royal couple dismounts and strolls amid elms and maples to greet their Canadian subjects, but steers clear of the droppings of the police cavalry, though a healthy stench hovers.

  Suddenly, springing from the fog, one riderless horse starts—bolts with maverick speed, like a cross bull—toward the prince. A sharpshooter acts. The horsey cranium cracks. A second bullet through the belly renders the stallion a tangle of guts. The creature splinters; it pancakes down, its four legs splaying flat. Blood lurches from the instant carcass. Some blood splatters the prince, but 90 per cent of the mess strikes scattered, falling citizens.

  Carl can’t help but recall the accident a year before that had seen a motorcycle couple with a horse, while his good buddy Mack had fucked his noggin with the hard-core roof of a car. The imperialism of the internal combustion engine had brought horses only ill will and bad luck. Today’s attack was clear Vengeance. However, this observation is a metaphysical reflex. The reality is, Carl is, once again, face to face, so to speak, with ill-affixed bones and unfixable wounds, not only as when he had witnessed Mack’s horrific demise last year, but also, only days ago, Muriel’s abortive pregnancy, unnerving him to the quick. Life seems a movement of inescapable and insistent corrosion or collapse.

  Protocol sees the Queen applaud the shooter, a parchment-bland face blacked by a moustache. Knight-like, but as pacific as a chess-piece pawn, he kneels to receive her public commendation. A gift of nominal Affection. The naval cadet band strikes up music sounding like foghorns. Cheerless, if blameless, the Royals appear.

  To study Elizabeth II from the perspective of Malcolm X—if Carl could do so—he’d see that Her Royal Majesty’s family is not unlike his own, housing Adultery, Bastardy, Concupiscence, Divorce, Exhibitionism, Fetishism—the full alphabet of peccadilloes, if airbushed by photo ops. But, first, one sees a circle of sweet children.

  As he inches his machine painstakingly through the fracturing masses, Carl spies, in charged luminosity, Liz Publicover, his junior-high crush. He recognizes her instantly: she is, like Her Majesty (her image), of partial German Palatine descent. Then a pretty teen, now L.P. is beautiful. Carl eyes the brunette, her hair curled severely, her lips crimsoned. Forget the passage of nine years: Carl feels a surge—or shock—of Affection for L.P. well up deep within, electrifying his pulse and crackling his voice. He’d like to know—to sound—her thoroughly. Years, if off and on, he’s thought of her—a giggly, happy girl in memory, who somehow smelled of milk and April grass.

  Sighting her ringless, pale left hand, Carl has faith that Liz remains a Miss. He’s ecstatic. Slender but busty, Liz sports a spring suit of pink skirt and jacket, a white blouse and cream pumps, but no nylons. No need. Her coal-black hair gleams; her sky-blue eyes ignite light itself; her lips are rubies. Cold sweat—the condensation of shyness—almost paralyzes Carl. But she calls his name.

  “Carlyle Black—I’m so happy to see you! What’ve you been up to? Is that handsome motorbike yours?”

  L.P. means to say that Carl is handsome. The motorbike is a diversion.

  Liz’s smile is royal, as is her being, which is as lyrical in movement as it is ethereal in presence. Carl blurts Truth: “I’ve thought of you often and hoped to see you again.”

  “I’m flattered. Why think of me? School was a long time ago.”

  “We were both Head Boy and Head Girl.”

  “A proud moment. Can’t say I’ve headed anything since!”

  “Whatcha doin now?”

  As they talk, flirting (she unconsciously, he self-consciously), the Royal Visit fans disperse about them, thronging past each side of them like a stream parting before a rock and closing up again after. The conversation begins to attain the calm of collegiality, amiability, the hallmark of Amity. But Carl’s heartbeat is urgent.

  “I keep the books for a lumber company back down by Lunenburg. For the summer. I’m here today to see the Queen and prince.”

  “Got anyone expecting you?”

  Liz smiles mischievously. “You mean a fellow?”

  Carl must find out: “As good as you look, I’d not be surprised if someone were waiting for you somewhere.”

  “You’re flattering, Carl, but I face facts. I was a secretary in Montreal, but was too Lutheran for the Catholics and too liberal for the Protestants. Then, I went back to school, studied bookkeeping. I got ignored more than I got courted.” A wistful look. “Now, I’m here to study shelving and retrieving books: to become a librarian.”

  Carl gambles: “I’m at the train station. Lemme get us both away from here.”

  “Love to.” Unspoken is the real hankering.

  Without being beckoned to do so, Liz swings herself aboard Liz II, behind Carl, her ready response surprising him most delightfully, and then he noses the BMW through the depleting crowd, vanishing like fresh snow at spring thaw. Carl wants to replenish lost time. The year that each ruled as Head Boy and Head Girl was less fun than official; they didn’t socialize beyond school ceremonies.

  Now, Carl would like to take L.P. down by water, to Point Pleasant Park (a
s Allowishus did with Muriel last December), to sit and talk. He wants to treat the Lunenburg cutie to boiled lobster and butter and generous mixes of rye and ginger ale.

  Carl drops Liz off at the Hotel Nova Scotian, the railway hotel beside the train station. Liz has the weekend off. They schedule a sortie the next day.

  Zooming from the station, where Mrs. Black may be entertaining Mr. Beardsley in an empty sleeping car, Carl envies yet the porters. They realize distinct benefits. A porter has access to pampered wives, women with time and bankroll to finesse clandestine escapades.

  Carl thinks again about his mother, beginning to guess—perhaps—how lonely she had felt in seeking love, how humiliated she had been by her father, and how she had struggled—as Carl struggles—to establish a life in which there is love in the heart, a roof over the head, food on the table, and money in the bank. The last time he saw Victoria, she’d prepared him lobster—a special treat—and had offered to give him her still-new stereo because her “friend” Grantley had just bought her an even newer one. He remembered how physically bent she’d been—no better off than Muriel now—in having to launder and launder and launder to keep the lights on, the rats at bay, and five boys fed, clothed, and housed. Carl began to feel—finally—a smidgen of Empathy, the germ of Charity. Not only that, he realized, suddenly, that a coloured laundress could very well raise lawyers or artists . . .

  Still, Carl is committed to his bachelorhood and admits to himself that he doesn’t want Muriel as a bride; he lusts for their wondrous Intimacy (as he terms it). An added boon: Muriel’s presence in his life prevents him from becoming overly besotted with Avril. Yeah, he don’t want the M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i Miss imagining that his ’n’ her matching towels will soon hang in his apartment’s bathroom.

  Having secured L.P.—rousingly—for the morrow, Carl decides to stop in at Maynard and Cornwallis, to see how Muriel is doing. Perhaps she’s recovered enough from her hospital stay to favour a spin?

  Round ten p.m., Carl—still clad in motorcycle-vivid black leather, swings by Muriel’s. She’s in; she’s willing to go out. My oh my, Carl thinks, but she’s splendid. Her lost pregnancy has left her a tad pallid, but she’s still chocolate encased in silks. She slides her own black leather jacket over a white blouse and a red skirt; her lipstick glares as fresh as fire. Fabulous! He’s delighted, too, that his portrait of her, framed, hangs regally above the entrance to her bedroom.

  Glad, too, is Carl that sailors no longer plug Muriel’s portals. Only Lola, who still seems upset about her friend’s medical mishap, is lurking (or lounging) about, to scowl at Carl as soon as she glimpses his impish face.

  Carl cuts his eyes at Lola. He remembers last winter, the booze-pudgy lady with her nose in Muriel’s crotch, on his couch. Actually, this memory sickens him: “Muriel, let’s go. Three’s a crowd.”

  Lola laughs harshly: “Ya got that right!”

  Muriel shrugs: “Let’s go.”

  She glides to her door: she’s always had a jiggly yet smooth-moving step, as if she’s pacing a vacuum cleaner. “Lola, I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  What relief! To exit that volcanic, stuffy kitchen, that steamy bedroom, that sweltering bathroom, those three rooms of broke-back bed, unstable table, cigarette-charred night table, spark-jetting hot-plate, shallow sink, warm fridge, grungy toilet, grey-ringed bathtub, and cracked dishes, frayed towels, rusty cutlery, worn sheets, dented pots, stained pillows, and booze and bread and cigarette smoke and cabbage: to take Muriel for a jaunt, to inhale oxygen, to air grievances and salve Discord. Yet, Carl don’t mind smelling the odours specific to Muriel’s rooms behind the Schwartz spice warehouse. He’s missed the unforgettable aromas that saturate her home, even as he now savours the milky, bourgeois aromas that halo Avril.

  Carl plants Muriel on Liz II, and their patented, frank-talk, easygoing alliance seems reborn. There is laughter—hers—percolating as he takes a tight corner or opens up the speed to race down Gottingen, with all the shop window mannequins seeming to turn their heads to watch the couple (strange word, Carl thinks) pass.

  The two clatter loudly bout the sleeping town. By and by, they stop on the natural fortress of Citadel Hill, the teat-round, casual drumlin—that high point favoured by plein-air lovers. From its summit, the downtown lights look like good-natured tears; the harbour—that squalid glamour, coloured red wine and molasses—gleams glumly. At the southeast corner of the slope, the Queen and Il Principe are retiring for the evening. At the southwest corner of the slope, cleaners are scouring the Garrison Grounds of horse carcass and discarded Union Jacks.

  Carl hopes for a serious talk about our situation: he doesn’t want to be coupled, but he does want Muriel to be his lover exclusively. Instead, the conversation turns to—of all things (Carl ponders)—“L.’s” and “F.’s,” Muriel’s preferred euphemisms. She asks, “Do you think I’m an ‘L.’?”

  “Honestly, Muriel, I don’t know.”

  Muriel, decisive: “I like girls.”

  “But you and I’ve been—um—friends too.”

  “Say a girl stinks like a horse, I’ll still ride her. I like girls.”

  “You’ve always got guys around you.”

  “Maybe I’ve just been slow, learnin how to discriminate.”

  “What about Mr. Dent? ‘Ready’ Freddy? What about him? What’s that all about?”

  “You vroom in, vroom out; he steamed in, steamed out. Lola lolls—and lollygags—and laughs and loves.”

  Carl’s bitter disappointment borders on Repugnance. He’d had plans this night. Now, dejected, he ferries Muriel back to her pungent, murky rooms.

  Yet, Muriel’s sworn Lesbo predilection has both iced his desire and stoked it: he recalls last February when an almost ménage à trois almost transfigured his bachelorhood.

  Muriel bades him wait. He sniffs the pepper of her rundown premises while still craving the peppermint of her kiss. One impulse is to retch; the other is to fetch her tight.

  She trips lightly—Holly Golightly–style—upstairs, then glides back down with a novel: Gale Wilhelm’s We Too Are Drifting (1935). “Tell me what you think bout this story bout ‘L.’ girls.”

  “Yeah, sure.” His answer is noncommittal, but Carl kisses Muriel hard, intensely, to remind his ex-lover that she needs a man: himself, who also likely almost made her a mother.

  Muriel feels Carl’s tongue hard against her teeth, steely against her mouth. She senses his insistence on penetration, as if that had ever been enough. It’s not.

  “Carl, I’m interested in girls.” She kisses him.

  He feels kissed off. He shakes his head. His heart’s volatile. He quits, goes, while Lola leers at him knowingly. His step on the stairs is a stampede.

  Carl can conjure only one remedy to tonight’s insidious upset. It’s not to tuck into a book, and especially not one about “L.’s.”

  The lily-white, Stravinsky notes of Chanel perfume are more his style than is the black pepper and licorice of Schwartz. Or so he’s convinced.

  Saturday, August 1

  Buddy Sun cometh up Belle Aire Terrace this morn to deposit, again, the milk bottles on Carl’s doorstep and all the other stoops awaiting the milkman’s sure trudge. The milk is so white, it’s an avalanche in a bottle. It slaps whitewash gainst each decrepit house (twist of smoke out a crumbly chimney), making each hovel less grim, less grimy. Sunlight, lopin through glass, makes the milk look as sweet and inviting as ice cream.

  Now, Buddy be a black man Carl helloes cause he likes his name. Some folks say he’s Huckabuck’s papa. Maybe. Anyway, he’s a Buddha shape, a Zen hum. His shade is so deep dark in the flesh that he’s the Sun come right down to earth, shoes kicked off (weather permitting), and buddy-buddy as Christ. All that molasses and butter that Buddy wolfs down grants him gyrations of fat, so he’s a sight to see, trundling along, trilling, shakin in his one-horse cart, bringin the neighbourhood all that white light, liquid ivory, each dawn. His face shines even when he’s moody
, so most folks guess he’s happy. He’s not sad. All that nice sweetness in the bottle reminds him of white ladies he’s glimpsin as they dash to doors in skimpy whatnots, to get their own breakfasts and coffee happenin. He can whistle; he’s got a right. Don’t matter what them Ruskies are up to, or who’s black self be fryin in a Mississippi hot seat.

  Carl thinks of Bud now, as brother sun be blushin the sky with licks of rouge, as if night’s some dark-blue bruise needin healin. Come the sound of Bud Sun’s step upon the stoop, the delicate chink and clang as the clean nourishment is set down as carefully as money gettin deposited in a bank.