The Motorcyclist

by George Elliott Clarke

  (In one week from now, none of the above will interest the Clutter clan of Holcomb, Kansas. In cold blood, their murders will seep into black ink.)

  Carl’s popular aesthetic conjoins Norman Rockwell and the po’ boy illustrator of Montmartre, Francisque Poulbot. He plies an illuminated, folkish pictorialism. He limns trees, churches, pets, bullfights, and coastal scenes (lighthouses, sailboats): his art is for bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, and offices, not art galleries, at least not necessarily.

  Anyhow, he prefers technique to theory, and talent to mere technique. So, a war scene features metal scraps like agitated garbage, heightened corpses (grimaces, leering skulls), unforgettable black horses loosing dense floods of scarlet, and tragic gestures of limbs nettled—crucified—in barbed wire. Always, also, there are archaic trees, denuded of leaves, even branches, mimicking stakes. The sun is outlined in charcoal and coloured a bastard mustard. Or Carl drafts an agricultural drama, a set of compound fields, or orchards, wherein matadors appear with spontaneous blades and bleeding bulls.

  Let critics condemn him as campy: Fine, thinks Carl, so long as he’s not homeless. Carl figures, Most people are willing to pay ten dollars for my eleven-by-fourteen pix. But how can I churn them out faster? His answer? A one-man factory. Organized properly, I can produce two small paintings and one large one per day, and still have time, at night, to scout for orders.

  Here, innocently, Carl mimics the Florida Highwaymen, those U.S. Negroes who, tired of slaving for peanuts in cotton fields and orange groves, now paint and sell Florida seascapes—thereby escaping cracker bosses, redneck overseers, and KKK cops. Like them, Carl paints for personal-pleasure-and-private-profit. He adopts the aesthetic of Stag, whose ads tout a “Famous Writers School” that pledges commissions because “11,000 U.S. publications pay for fresh material.” Indeed, he wants to market—like a butcher his cuts. While he paints, he auditions Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra’s Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music. This version of Sibelius’s “Finlandia” conjures up rugged, stony, forested, and ocean-carved Nova Scotia: a theme for his Art.

  As for the Bluenoses who buy his paintings, they see therein their own world suddenly beautified. The Atlantic Ocean now churns, burgeons, charges, with gold and white streaks startling the indigo and the purple; their churches look wilderness chapels, steepled versions of Christ’s manger; their pets are symbols of fraternity; their lighthouses are transfigured, haloed crucifixes. They see in Carl’s art the proof of their own experiences.

  Thus, Carl now heeds Iago’s Polonius-style advice: “Put money in thy purse.” The sovereign looks sweet when her face folds, in Warhol-like multiples, into Carl’s wallet.

  Better yet, it’s likely easier to date a lady: Who don’t wanna be a model?

  Carl is happy with Liz. But, now that he’s marketing his work—and making a mark—he’s beginning to imagine himself an honest heir to beatnik poets and cubist painters, and to regard the endlessly reproducing tribe of women as wandering Illuminati of the Eternal, or as soft, Pre-Raphaelite diamonds, all diaphanous undress and clear complexions, and comfortingly available.

  Now, quite out of the blue, Carl receives a letter from “Blue Roses,” asking that he visit her in Truro. She says she’s ill. But Carl shrugs, figuring it can’t be too serious, or she’d have said so. He ignores the letter. Too busy. Another time. Another life.

  Sunday, November 22

  Victoria summons Carl to a fresh feed of venison. He’s glad to go, for he detects a new evaluation of himself—her single legitimate son—by her, thanks to his nascent reputation as a Negro Artist of Nova Scotia.

  He scoots over to her parlour, and she sets down the steaming, spicy bowl for his nourishment and enjoyment. This is what she has meant to do—tried to do—for all her sons: to provide for their enhancement and advancement despite the humiliation of beginning so poorly and so anonymously in a barn. She congratulates Carl on his profitable concern but also tells him that, should he fail to keep the business going, she’ll ensure that Mr. Beardsley finds Carl a fresh railway position. Carl protests, but his mother insists, “It’s my duty to my son.”

  Only now does Carl recognize—with a spoonful of venison en route to his mouth—that it was his mother’s bargain with Leo Fennel that got him his first art lessons, anyway. Victoria has sacrificed herself, always, even by arranging the railway job via Grantley Beardsley. Moreover, his brothers are proceeding, even succeeding: Granville has enlisted in the army and is stationed on the Suez Canal as part of the United Nations Expeditionary Force to help keep the peace between Egypt and Israel; Premiere is a music teacher in Edmonton, and Encore is a teacher at a school for the deaf in Calgary; Huckabuck has joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and is based presently in Goose Bay. Surely Victoria’s labours and emphases on elocution and education have contributed to the “Black boys” becoming more than “black boys,” as is true for Carl himself.

  Carl feels in his gut that he’s been unfair to Victoria, as he has been to Muriel (in particular)—that both his mother and his (once) lover have had to settle for dreadful arrangements to accord him maternal love in the first instance and erotic love in the second.

  He tells himself, To be sanctimonious is to be insane. If Understanding is one charity, Forgiveness is the perfect kindness.

  Saturday, November 28

  Marina phones Carl to come sup with her at the Armview Restaurant. She’d like to buy a painting “that I’ve heard so much about,” and Carl’s bemused by the sale. He’s also curious about this woman, to see if she still hoodoos him.

  Now a dirty evening—pallid, bleaching, drenching precipitation—swamps this dirty day. There’s nothing to do but to do what must be done.

  Nigh eight p.m., Carl grabs a few pictures and cabs over to the restaurant. Warm-hearted, Cape Breton fiddles throb from the jukebox. Santa and his bread-coloured beard abound—like a propaganda icon. (Santa’s the capitalist version of Satan.)

  Mar charms Carl. It’s winter but she’s wearing a V-neck, sapphire cotton sweater that lets him imagine the deeper V of her cleavage; and her bra could be from Frederick’s of Hollywood, for her Sunday-school-teacher breasts now look like in-your-face tits—as if flowering from a corset. Hard it be for Carl to concentrate on a business pitch—his emancipating proclamation (about which he feels a tad guilty). But the samples delight Mar: she asks for two Lighthouse paintings. Personal Enlightenment.

  Carl feels good: that she, the university-educated nurse, is purchasing art from him, a high-school dropout and ex–railway hand, seems to equalize the two. Moreover, he thinks, my wallet has expanded so substantially, in a single month, that I can afford to be lavish—even more than usual when it comes to her. Carl doubts that Leicester could offer anything but a boorish, bourgeois life: Naugahyde furniture, formaldehyde fornication, and Jekyll-and-Hyde duplicity—joker at Gynecology, jerk at husbandry.

  Then, over cheeseburgers and fries (and ginger ale for Carl, Coke for her), plus the diabolically insipid tune “Jingle Bells,” Mar shocks Carl: “I’m expecting.”

  Carl is flabbergasted. “Whaddya mean?”

  “I’m going to be a mother—in seven months.”

  “You said that you’d wait; that I’d have to wait.”

  “I’m sorry to let you down.”

  “You let yourself down . . .” Carl is harsh. “What about all that crap about setting an example, about staying a virgin unto marriage, about finishing your studies?”

  His anger is vomit—acid—in his lungs. Mar refuses to meet his eyes. He notices that his fragrant Xmas gift to her of Chanel No. 5 mixes with the odour of fried onions to raise a delirious, stomach-churning stench. Carl recalls Muriel’s odoriferous quarters. Mar’s clothes seem now just as sordid. The two women become a picante, sickening jumble in his mind. Carl’s leather jacket feels tight, hot. The woman who personified Virtue is unworthy the deification. She was as compliant with Leicester’s flexible postures as is her
bottom to sitting. Carl wonders whether Leicester had to pry apart her jaws—like a horse’s—or split her legs—like a hook does a fish’s jaws—to use her sex. Or was it just real, real, fuckin easy?

  “I’ll be respectable. Leicester’s betrothed to me.”

  “Well, show me the ring! How many carats? When’s the wedding date?”

  “We’ll be married in Jamaica—at Ocho Rios.”

  “Where’s your ring?”

  Mar flashes anger now: “True Love doesn’t need trinkets.”

  “Oh yeah? The Government of Canada will want to see all those trinkets if he tries to stay in the country as your ‘husband.’”

  “I don’t like your insinuations.”

  “I’m insinuating nothing! I’ll believe this news about your marriage when I read it in the newspaper.” (Carl almost said funny papers.)

  Mar begins to tear up. But an Arctic avalanche weights and chills Carl’s heart.

  “Why’d you invite me here? I can’t believe it was to tell me this fishy story about a phony engagement and a make-believe wedding.”

  Marina begins to bawl: “Maybe he won’t marry me.”

  Carl sits up. “So, Mr. Leicester Jenkins is a cad?”

  “He won’t set a date.”

  She’s sniffling, but Carl is vengeful. “So, the hack doc flees Grenada, comes to Halifax, gads about, natch, cad in a Cadillac, spewin a lot of bunk, and you effin bunk with him, while standing up, Miss Goody Two-Shoes, in church and giving me the cold shoulder—as if I’m the bum. So, what am I supposed to do about your fix? You want me to go and hit Doc Jenkins, Maiden-Deflowerer, so he’ll cough up a wedding date and a ring?”

  “You’ve often said you love . . . me, and I know I’ve been slow to say it. But, Carlyle, honestly, you always were the man for me.” As Marina speaks, her breasts lift up, with deliberate vigour, as she dabs her tears (a genteel form of Sleaze).

  “Whoa, sister! When I wanted you, you wanted nothing to do with Grade-Ten-dropout me . . . I guess your bambino needs a daddy-o . . .”

  “Muriel Dixon almost had a baby for you.”

  “As you say, almost. I’ve no obligation to her—and none to you.”

  “I thought you loved me.”

  “‘Love’ isn’t love when it’s past-tense. Find another patsy. Oh yeah, congrats.”

  “Carl, oh Carl, how can you be so cruel . . . so cold?”

  “Well, Marina, you had the hots for a liar but were solidly ice-cold to me, who did—past-tense—love you.”

  Mar’s refreshed tears splash into her mustard, but vinegar—saltily—her fries. Her sobs steep to blubbering, and so Carl acts. To preserve his samples from teardrop stains, he slides them back into his satchel; then, he motions for the waitress (who’s eager to usher doleful Marina out the restaurant and into the truly tearful night), pays the bill, adds a tip, then takes Marina by the arm to help her rise: “We’re leaving.”

  Marina sops her tears with a napkin: it disintegrates like Leicester’s promises. But she heard We inside Carl’s “We’re.” She wonders where they’re going. Not for long.

  Casino Taxi—the fast one—shows up. Car slides into the back seat beside Marina. Free of the contradicting odour of onions, her perfume, gone back to its Parisian roots, enchants anew. Carl directs the driver to 1½ Belle Aire Terrace.

  Marina is startled and half expects, half fears, that Carl will prostrate her—take her vengefully—no permission sought. Her body feels very nearly a corpse. She considers jumping from the cab at the first red light, but also wonders if, by making love with Carl, she can salvage her situation.

  Carl is contemplating Molestation: to have Marina, naked tits to his naked breast, and thrust into her hard enough to exorcise her lingering spell upon him and, better yet, trigger an instant abortion of Leicester’s papoose. Her confession’s enraged him enough to give her bod a sayonara drilling she’ll never forget.

  Once home, Carl commands Mar brusquely to remove her raincoat, bandana, scarf, and boots, and she does so. Not allowing her to finish, he pulls her roughly against him and kisses her hard. She returns the kiss and begins to moan softly in Carl’s arms.

  But Carl pushes her away; he barks, “I’ve wanted you a long, long time, and I’m mad enough to take you—to just take you. But I won’t. Somewhere along the line, you decided to love Leicester and stop waiting for me.”

  “You never ever waited for me.” Mar has one boot on, one boot off.

  “You’re right, Mar. I’m a natural man. Like Ecclesiastes says. You must be a natural woman?”

  “I fell in love.”

  “Yeah. Too bad. Too bad for me. So, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to call Leicester and tell him that you and I will marry. I’ll take the phone to confirm it. Next, you’ll tell him that I know everything, that your baby is his. Then, I’ll tell him that his child will be put up for adoption—but by some work-home or a circus—and that we’ll stick ads in Grenadian newspapers to say so. His name will be mud everywhere the wind blows.”

  “But I want Leicester to marry me. To raise our child together.”

  “Nothing is guaranteed that isn’t tried. Capiche?”

  Marina nods in acquiescence. Carl sees her as an obedient animal—if contaminated—at last. Carl hands her the phone: “Dial!”

  His scenario plays out as Carl schemes. Leicester protests the threat that Carl and Mar unfold. When Marina hangs up, trembling, sobbing again, Carl holds her, and says, “Now give me his address so that I can go and encourage him further to keep his word to you.”

  “Carlyle, Carl, whatcha gonna do?”

  Strange to hear the university student lapse into natural speech, Carl thinks.

  “I’m a-gonna do what I shoulda done first time I saw his cretin face.”

  “Carl!”

  “Yes, I will. Put push to shove. Prove misanthropic. You take a taxi home. By tomorrow morning, your engagement will be back on.”

  Carl, I . . .”

  “Mar, Leicester’s insolent, detestable rot. But he’s still lucky to have you—or maybe you deserve each other? Now, go. Leave before I change my mind.” Carl slides a lighthouse painting into Mar’s purse. “A souvenir for you to remember me by.”

  Though Leicester Jenkins is a big man, six-feet-plus tall and weighing several dozen stone, Carl’s first punch catches him unawares, staggering him and knocking free his glasses, as soon as he opens his door, in his silk slippers and silk bathrobe, to answer the call of “pizza delivery.” The pursuant punches aren’t surprises, but still stun and stunt im down, so buddy is on his back, flailing like the human cockroach in Kafka’s tale. It’s a grotesque subjugation. But Carl feels amazingly normal. Punches leap about Leicester’s face. The two men are as detached as toilets but also just as intimate.

  Leicester manages to croak, from a still toothful but bloody mouth, “You’re upset cos I fucked your lil virgin, cos ya warn’t mon enough.” (The last three syllables sounded incongruously like “Rachmaninov,” minus the “Rach.”)

  “Nope! Dope! Ya got my friend pregnant and now you’re not man enough to marry. Well, I’ll marry her and stick your child, girl or boy, in a circus.”

  Each of Carl’s more-or-less Maoist blows conceives Diplomacy as War. His aren’t mock stings; they’re intended to impart scars too stunning for even a doctor to explain. Only when Leicester’s face is a gory shell does Carl leave off.

  It occurs to Carl that his B.W.I. rivals—Leicester Jenkins, Fredrickson Dent, even Grantley Beardsley—are all spectres (psychological brethren)—of his long-gone Carib father. He taxis back home, puts on Mathis, gulps dark rum, sits looking at his fists. Weeps.

  Life is as harrowing as an unexpected pregnancy. In June 1960, Mar will show up, in a Grenadian church, at the altar, in “blasphemous” white, her belly bulging. But as Leicester Jenkins is about to say, “I do,” a tan woman, his other fiancée, shows up, her belly mirroring the frontal balloon that Marina bears . . . No words are
said. Marina breaks from her plausible paralysis, slaps Leicester so hard his head twists upon his neck. She flees from the church.

  To mitigate her Disgrace, to—in fact—undo it substantially, Marina will complete her Nursing degree in Montreal. She elects to become a secular nun—a spinster—dedicating herself to her profession, to have a distinguished career. She will leave Leicester’s baby—her son—with her mother (the baby’s grandmother) in Three Mile Plains, N.S. She will also leave it up to Leicester to determine how responsible a father he will be to his son. But he will become a doctor whose medical licence will be revoked due to criminal interference with a minor. For this same reason, he will be forbidden to see his son.

  Also in June 1960, in Stratford, Ontario, a just-married bride, twenty-one, still in her ivory gown, will have her wedding picture taken in a park along a white-swan-backdrop river: Unbeknownst to her, however, the train of her gown, dipping in the water, will absorb so much of it that the dress becomes heavily sodden enough to pull her into the element—and down. Two men attempt rescue, but the dress is too weighty and the current too strong.

  Carl’s art sales soar. No longer just pitching art to neighbours and his (ex) railway colleagues, he’s beginning to get buyers from the tourist trade, Bluenose souvenir shops. He’s so popular that he’s profiled in The Chronicle Herald, successor to the paper he’d delivered as a lad.

  Carl’s joy thrills Liz, and she is heartened that there is no woman interfering with or interrupting their (and his) pleasures (although she’s ignorant of his dream of potentially seducing his models). Being at Dalhousie University—in that small world—Liz hears of Mar’s pregnancy by a foreign Negro, and then of the man’s mysterious beating, but also of the beatings formerly visited upon Avril by a local man, and so she is relieved that she and Carl have avoided the despair of one woman and the degradation of the other (the abstract nouns being interchangeable). Liz is utterly unaware of Carl’s hand in these violences, direct or indirect. She anticipates, rather, his hand in marriage . . .