The Crash Palace

by Andrew Wedderburn

  ‘We could pull over …’

  ‘Just a little wind.’

  They dropped underneath the storm ceiling on the last highway turnout into the Fraser Canyon, plunging into stillness like a child doing a cannonball into a lake. She took the exit into Hope and pulled into a supermarket parking lot. Parked and dropped out of the van. The Lever Men had cigarettes and Dick Move got in the driver’s seat. Audrey curled up in the back and tried to sleep with her head rested on the cold glass, but the bouncing van kept her awake.

  §

  In Nanaimo, there was already a band on the stage at the end of the long, narrow, red-walled pub. Thin young men in tight-fitting black jean jackets over pressed black-collared shirts, with keys and wallet chains hung on the outside of their tight black denim pants. All of them with salon-fresh black haircuts, the slightly different angles of which presumably made them distinct from each other. They ran through a long sound check, testing the echo length of their digital delay pedals and the reverb depth of their vocal microphones, and then eventually full songs, pausing every few bars to complain about the monitor mix to the increasingly bored sound man at the back.

  When they were finished, they made a show of placing their expensive guitars in stands and leaving them on the stage. They stood looking around the room, deep in concentration, then selected a bar table near the front, which they angled a bit toward the stage, and then unpacked a suitcase full of T-shirts, compact discs, and stickers. They set up a framed sign, surrounded with white Christmas lights, listing the prices of all the merchandise.

  ‘Do you have stuff for sale? I could sell it,’ said Audrey.

  ‘Dick forgot the merch box in Regina,’ said Wrists.

  ‘Kid,’ said Dick, ‘in my own defence, all that was left in the merch box were the same twelve copies of Most Records Are Too Long by the Lever Men that no one was interested in buying the last time we came through here, or in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, or Altona, Manitoba, for that matter.’

  ‘No T-shirts?’

  ‘Wrists, she’s right, we should make some new T-shirts,’ said Hector. ‘We should dip into the old bank account and get some made. Find someone in Victoria with a silkscreen set-up in their garage. Get a new income stream.’

  ‘We should remember to make girls’ sizes this time. Diversify our fan base.’

  ‘Move beyond the men’s double-extra-large demographic.’

  ‘Hey, what’s the beer situation, Wrists?’ asked Dick.

  Wrists dug into a pocket and pulled out a reel of paper tickets. Handed two each to Dick and Hector.

  ‘Two beers apiece? Wrists, this is bad news. We’ve got to sit through the local trust-fund rock act and play a set of our own on just two beers apiece?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Hector, slapping him on the shoulder, ‘we’ll break into the emergency supply.’

  ‘Good thinking, Heck. Come on, kid,’ Dick said to Audrey.

  In the parking lot Hector opened up the back doors of the van. Rummaged through the suitcases and sleeping bags until he uncovered a camping cooler. Pulled off the plastic lid and produced a six-pack of wet beer cans. He cracked a couple for himself and Dick and held another out for Audrey, but she shook her head. They sat down on the concrete parking blocks.

  ‘Expecting a better crowd tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘The haircut band looks like they might draw,’ said Dick.

  ‘Young people like haircuts,’ agreed Hector.

  ‘What about your fans?’

  They looked at each other and laughed. They knocked their beer cans together.

  ‘Here’s to our fans!’ said Dick.

  ‘Our dozens of fans, spread across the country,’ said Hector.

  ‘Dozens with an S might be a stretch,’ said Dick.

  Hector raised his beer up above his head. ‘To our nearly one dozen fans!’

  They laughed and drank and Dick got up to get two more cans of beer out of the cooler.

  Audrey felt a hot surge of irritation rise up, which she choked down. Eventually she just asked, ‘So if you’re that popular, why drive all the way out to Nanaimo? Aren’t any of your dozen fans easier to get to than this?’

  Dick had a long sip of beer, only to have the can foam up and overflow when he stopped. He slurped up the foam and wiped his face with the back of his forearm. He caught his breath and then furrowed his brow and pointed toward the building.

  ‘Kid,’ he said seriously, ‘that is Rodney Levermann in there.’

  ‘The Rodney Levermann,’ said Hector.

  ‘When I was a kid, like a fifteen-year-old kid in middle-of-nowhere suburban Calgary, the first real rock’n’roll band I ever saw was Onion Bomb. This’d be 1983. No, 1984. What year is it now?’

  ‘It’s 2003,’ said Hector.

  ‘No, it’s 2005,’ said Audrey.

  ‘Holy shit, 2005, no kidding,’ said Dick. He put his tongue into the side of his cheek and concentrated for a while, counting on his fingers. ‘Right, so 1984. How old were you in 1984, kid?’

  ‘I was born in 1985.’

  ‘I was fifteen and I went to a community hall to see a rock’n’roll show. This being the early eighties, you had a bunch of hardcore punk rock and skateboarder thrash metal. I remember SNFU was the headliner. But before they went on, there was this band, Onion Bomb. Heck, get me another beer. You want a beer, Audrey?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘In 1984, before you were born, you went to see rock’n’roll at community halls in the suburbs and it was hardcore punk rock. It was a lot of dumb young men with shaved heads missing teeth running around in circles crashing into each other. A gugga a gugga gack gack gack KRAANG and the singer who was the angriest, dumbest young man yelled something about Margaret Thatcher at you.’

  ‘Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan,’ said Hector, handing Dick a beer. ‘It was very important that you were properly angry at Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan all the time.’

  ‘All the time. We were there to see SNFU,’ said Dick, ‘which is a punk rock acronym for Society’s No Fucking Use.’

  ‘No,’ said Hector, ‘it’s an old military acronym for Situation Needs Further Unfucking.’

  ‘It’s an acroynm with a curse word in it which is what mattered at the time. And then this band Onion Bomb came on. And they were all wearing scuba masks with snorkels and they wore water wings and those big plastic flippers on their feet. Kid, you have to understand, this was not done at this time.’

  ‘It was not done,’ agreed Hector. ‘People would have thought you weren’t sufficiently angry at Margaret Thatcher if you did that kind of thing.’

  ‘And so between angry hardcore punk rock this band gets up wearing scuba masks and flippers like a bunch of clowns. And then they started playing …’

  He had a long drink of beer and then set the can down carefully on the gravel beside the block. Folded his arms and stared up at the street light.

  ‘There were all these other feelings,’ he said eventually. ‘Feelings outside the what-do-you-call-it. Previously allowed range. Complicated feelings, you know? Like complicated feelings that you wouldn’t expect from clowns in scuba gear opening for SNFU. Not clown feelings, not angry feelings.’ He had a long drink and sighed. ‘It’s hard to explain, kid. You were fifteen once.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Audrey, ‘more recently than 1984.’

  ‘Those fifteen-year-old feelings are important, and they’re hard to express properly, which is what Onion Bomb on a good night did better than any other band. They instantly became my favourite ever band, and their guitar player was this older guy named Rod Levers, and I found out reading a photocopied fanzine that before that he’d been in one of the first punk rock bands in Edmonton, Sue Father’s band the Fathers. You ever hear of Sue Father, kid?’

  Audrey shook her head.

  ‘That’s a whole other story. Anyway, I was a big fan, for a long time. Just a big, big fan, for years and years. And then one day, Wrists phones me. Thi
s was back when I was playing in the Hidden Fees.’

  ‘What did the Hidden Fees play?’ asked Audrey.

  ‘Hardcore punk rock about Ronald Reagan,’ said Hector.

  Dick nodded in agreement. ‘Yep. A gugga a gugga gack gack gack KRAANG. We were pretty good. Toured all over the ski resorts, playing for snowboarders whose older siblings were SNFU fans. Anyway, Wrists phones me up. “Hey, Dick,” he says, “you still in that Hidden Fees group?” And I said, “Yep, sure am.” “They pay you all right?” he asked me. And I said, “All right, Wrists. We’ve got a good thing with these snowboard towns. It’s worth a few hundred bucks a week.” And he said, “Dick, you want to quit that and be in Rodney Levermann’s band? It won’t pay a few hundred bucks a week. It won’t pay much of anything and we won’t play that often.” And I said, “You got it, Wrists.” Didn’t even think about it. No need. Quit the Hidden Fees that day. “Rodney Levermann,” I told them. Which was sufficient reason.’

  They drank their beer and then stood up and stretched and belched. Hector lined up the empty beer cans and crushed each with a single stomp of his boot heel.

  ‘You feeling better?’ Dick asked Hector.

  ‘Better enough.’

  ‘Well, let’s go show those kids the real thing,’ said Dick.

  ‘You’re in Nanaimo now,’ Wrists said to her later, after they had finished their set and the last of the the crowd left, the few of them that hadn’t left right away once the younger band had finally cleared off the stage, after the bartender finished paying them out in not very many five- and ten-dollar bills. ‘You said you weren’t going to Edmonton, so now you’re in Nanaimo.’

  ‘She’s not going to Nanaimo,’ said Rodney.

  ‘I’m not going to Nanaimo,’ said Audrey. ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘Vancouver,’ said Rodney. Wrists shrugged. The Lever Men all downed their whisky and went back to the bar.

  She found a motel near the ferry terminal and backed the van in as tight as she could against the back wall, easing on and off the gas until the rear bumper nudged the faded cedar siding wall, tight enough that no one would be able to open the back doors. They piled into the lobby and Wrists pulled cash out of an envelope in his jacket.

  ‘Give us something with two double beds and a cot.’

  ‘I’ll get my own room,’ said Audrey.’

  ‘I’m not paying for you to have your own room,’

  ‘No, I’m paying for me to have my room,’ she said.

  Later she stood in the shower, stretching. Tried to work out the new knots that had found their way under her shoulder blade. Too-far-to-shoulder-check-properly knots. She stood on one wobbly leg and pulled her knee up into her chest to stretch a tight knot in her hip flexor joint, stiff as a lacrosse ball from twisting her foot between the gas and brake. She shaved under her arms and brushed her teeth. Cut her toenails.

  She took her little portable CD player out of the bottom of the backpack. It didn’t seem worse for wear from being thrown out of the truck window back in Fort Saskatchewan, and the Dick Dale CD spun up when she pressed play. Dick Dale’s guitar sprang to life and she flopped back on the bed. Biggest bed since the Four Eagles Motel. Flapped her arms and legs like she was making a snow angel on the sheets.

  ‘We are still hungry,’ said Tommi Mäkinen to the magazine interviewer. ‘We are proud but we are hungry to continue. We want to go faster and faster. We know we can have better times. So we are proud but know we can go further. Faster and faster.’

  She lay back and did her best to sleep.

  §

  Wrists sat beside her with a map of British Columbia, back-folded to just the four panels of Greater Vancouver, and they slowly made their way through gridlocked traffic to a three-storey hundred-year-old hotel a few blocks up Hastings Street from Chinatown. A bare-chested man with a flannel sleeping bag slung over his shoulders wandered around on the sidewalk in front of the bar murmuring to himself, lit up blue and red by a neon-tubed Molson Canadian sign in the window. Up and down the sidewalk, knots of men and women shuffled slowly back and forth, wandering out into the street or stopping to light cigarettes. The crowds thickened farther west, down the hill. Audrey parked and Wrists rolled down the window. A thick-armed bouncer in a black T-shirt, oblivious to the damp cold, sat on a folding chair reading a newspaper.

  ‘Hey, where’s the best place to park?’ asked Wrists.

  ‘That’s the best place to park,’ said the bouncer without looking up from his newspaper.

  Inside there were twenty tables on a cigarette-burned carpet, a single man at each nursing a beer. Along the walls, a few women in checkered shirts with dark eyes under dark mascara plugged loonies into video lottery terminals, taking their time to press the buttons and watch the digital displays spin, not in any particular hurry for the outcome.

  ‘I thought Vancouver was …’

  ‘Was what?’ Hector asked her.

  ‘Exciting?’

  ‘Wrists, what is it. Tuesday night?’

  ‘Monday night,’ said Wrists.

  ‘Kid,’ said Hector, ‘nowhere is exciting on a Monday night.’

  That night she noticed the mistakes.

  Rodney kicked a skinny leg, grinned, then stepped on his instrument cable and slipped, yanking it out of the switch box. The guitar chopped out with a painful pop. He knelt and scrambled to plug himself back in. Wrists and Hector rolled on, but Dick faltered, then picked it back up on the wrong count, a few bars out of time.

  They started another song and the organ chords were an awkward half-tone wrong. ‘D-minor!’ Dick shouted. Hector looked up and stopped playing, hands frozen above the keys, confused. ‘D-minor!’ Wrists and Dick both shouted.

  Wrists stick-counted a quick four and the Lever Men jumped into something fast and rock’n’roll, B flat minor, and Rodney dug into a big ringing tremolo arm chord and snapped three strings off his neck.

  A man near Audrey turned to a woman sitting in front of a VLT. ‘Is there a band on later?’ he shouted at her.

  ‘A what?’ the woman shouted back.

  ‘A band. On later.’

  The woman shrugged and put another dollar into the VLT.

  §

  In the morning she found a gas station with a Tim Horton’s off an exit halfway between Langley and Abbotsford. Wrists pulled the manilla envelope out of his jean jacket. Produced a thin pile of crumpled cash and gave each of the three other men twenty dollars, which they pocketed and stumbled toward the Tim’s. Wrists filled the van with gas, and when he got the receipt he circled the date and total and stuffed it into the envelope. He shuffled through index cards with names and phone numbers and took one over to the pay phone on the side of the building. The other Lever Men came back with coffee and muffins and gave Wrists their receipts.

  ‘Kelowna tonight?’ she asked Wrists.

  ‘Kelowna tonight.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said cautiously, ‘I’d take us up the number 3 from Hope. Instead of all the way up the Coquihalla and then down from Kamloops. It’s a little longer kilometres-wise, but if the weather is still bad up there around Merritt it could end up saving us a bit of time. Get a bit of a different drive. I mean, there might be snow up there too, but –’

  ‘Sure, whatever you want,’ said Wrists.

  Audrey Cole beamed like a sunrise.

  The van chugged up the winding Crowsnest Highway through the mountains and she kept to the right lane while station wagons and pickup trucks ground past her. Dick Move sat beside her, shuffling through a suitcase full of old dubbed cassette tapes. White-labelled tapes with hand-scrawled names, all of which featured hoarse-sounding men yelling over indistinct double-time punk rock, each new cassette somewhat indistinguishable from the last, all of them murky and tinny-sounding, like they’d been recorded inside a galvanized-steel garbage can. Every half-hour or so the music would slow and warp as the van stereo started to eat the tape, and Dick would jerk awake from a half snooze to stab at the ej
ect button in a panic, then carefully spool out the copper-brown tape so that he could wind it back into the cassette, twisting the wheel with the end of a pencil.

  She stopped every few hours so they could smoke. They each smoked a different brand of cigarettes and she got to know the smells. Wrists the thickest and sharpest, green and wet smoke. Dick, something grassy and spongy like damp earth just cut by a shovel blade. Hector’s dry and hot, steam on coals in a cedar room.

  In Princeton, Hector moved into the front seat. He had his own little case of white-labelled cassette tapes. Instead of music though, he played a hiss-heavy recording of an interview – a woman with a German accent interviewing a man with a British accent.

  ‘But this wasn’t the first Soviet expedition to the moon, according to your research,’ said the German woman.

  ‘Precisely,’ said the British man. ‘Since their original lunar visit in 1946, Soviet cosmonauts had established regular traffic back and forth from the moon, thanks to the V2 technology they had captured from the Nazis. But the cosmonauts only encountered the Lemurian civilization of the Mare Vaporum much later, in the 1970s.’

  ‘And it was this Lemurian encounter and influence, you maintain, that contributed directly to the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘We can only speculate. But we have seen, time and time again, the corrosive effect of exposure to Lemurian ontology – of Lemurian language even – on human culture. In Burgundy prior to the Frankish defeat, in sixteenth-century Livonia, in the Carpathians in the 1930s – these societies, upon encountering Lemurians and their alien ideas about non-sequential being, their whole concept of non-contingent identity …’

  ‘Not contingent on …?’

  ‘Not contingent, full stop. This is an epistemological framework built up from a language with forty-seven present-tense conjugations of the verb to be, and an as-of-yet uncounted catalogue of future-tense conjugations.’

  ‘Those previous Lemurian encounters you mentioned had all been terrestrial diasporas.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, exactly. Excellent observation. We can only imagine the alienness of the society the Soviets encountered on the moon. These Lemurian moon-colonists would be scores of centuries removed from their people’s history, left to evolve on their own strange fork in the hostile moon environment. What did the cosmonauts hear and experience, and what did they bring back to the Soviet republics? We see the cognitive strain of this influx of terrifyingly different concepts manifest in convulsive failures throughout the collective industrial economies of the entire Warsaw Pact through the 1980s.’