Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  Eventually I got the sides down, and the top more or less under control. There were patches of hair that sprang out like parts of a forest after a gale, but who cared? I went for a swim to wash the hair off my shoulders, taking no joy in the ocean. The Society For the Prevention of Fun had teamed up with the Ministry of Emptiness to form a task force whose mandate was Happiness Intervention. I stood on the beach and looked out to sea.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” I said.

  Back at my tent I kicked the pathway of shells, stirring them with my feet back into the sand until I was panting heavily, then I caught my breath, paused, and nearly burst into tears. I swore instead, and started to fantasize a scene where I was the one who had rejected her. “Sorry babe,” I said out loud. “I’m a solo act. I’ll always be a loner.”

  This was better. It wasn’t my fault, it was the world that sucked. I flipped up my collar against the wind and felt a few drops of cold rain from way up as a keen wind blew from the northeast. Good again. I liked it that way. Cold and pain were the only things that made me feel alive. I spat and wished I’d been smoking a cigarette, not to impress what’s-her-name, just another sour addiction, momentary compensation on my way to the grave.

  I crossed the dune to the road, picked up a stick and lopped off the head of a wild carrot. Don’t mess with me, I’m trouble. I hunched my shoulders and thrust my fists in my pockets.

  But it was no good being a loner if there was nobody around to see it, so I slumped down towards MacAkerns’, barely containing my sneer, peering through my wounded youth at the hypocrisy of the world. My world-weary eye would see through other peoples’ shams. I would show up their phoniness with the real wounds of the martyrdom I bore in silence. My presence at any gathering would shame them all and I would grow old a tragic figure whom they would avoid like the Truth. Flipping up my collar against the wind, I turned my head and squinted over the chip on my shoulder.

  I walked into the MacAkerns’ yard with the high tide bucking up and down on the bay, waiting for a channel to flow out. When I climbed the stairs onto their porch I could hear arguing in the kitchen and I stopped just outside the door. It was like when I had overheard Rattray and Fergie, but this time I didn’t feel badly about it. So what if I really was a sneaky bastard?

  “Best book I ever read,” Wallace was saying.

  “The only book you ever read,” said Robbie.

  “Take it for what it’s worth,” said Bailey. “I just picked it up at the library for some background about your political system. Most of the actual ideas in it are cribbed from Machiavelli.”

  “Who?” said Wallace.

  “Renaissance philosopher from Italy.”

  “Don’t tell Robbie that,” said Wallace. “She’ll probably drag out some book to say he’s from Scotland.”

  There was a pause in the conversation and I heard a chair squeak.

  “Is somebody there?” said Bailey. And I came right in and nodded hello as though I had just arrived. I think Bailey was about to ask me what I’d been doing standing outside, but Wallace spoke first.

  “Oh my fuck. What did you do to your hair?”

  “I cut it.”

  “It looks like shit.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I liked your hair,” said Melissa.

  “Me too,” said Robbie.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Well,” said Wallace, in consolation. “Nobody’s gonna be looking at your face now, anyway.”

  I didn’t care. I leant against the wall inside the door and put one foot behind me on the wainscoting in a pose I’d seen on the cover of The Mighty Spear of Jah tape.

  They resumed their discussion. I stayed silent, but leant forward and picked up the book from the table and looked at it with disdain.

  It was entitled So You Want To Be An MP? the front cover showing a cartoon character slinking away from the House of Parliament with a suitcase crammed to overflowing with dollar bills, while in the distance a Mountie was impotently shaking his fist to make him to stop. On the back the publisher wrote that “Ward Morris”, the author, was “a pseudonym for a high-powered Ottawa insider who spills his guts on how to succeed in the bare-knuckle world of Federal politics.” Below was a blurb from somebody I’d never heard of: “This is the real scoop on attaining and maintaining power in Canada”.

  I flipped it open. “…when they find out you’ve lied, lie some more. When the lies start to backfire, blame anybody in your way. Don’t give me any of that goody two-shoes Pollyanna crap. There are no saints. They’re just better liars than the rest of us. Learn how they do it and use it against them. Wipe that saintly smile off their faces. Everybody does it. Don’t be a sap.”

  I could see his point. This burden of always trying to do the right thing, where’d it get you? Alone, that’s where.

  Brucie came in to the kitchen. “Did you hear?” he said. “Somebody stole some food from B-B-Blake’s last night!”

  “What?” said Wallace.

  “B-Blake’s vegetable stand. Stuff was stolen.”

  “Jesus! Some people!” Robbie shook her head in disbelief.

  “The nerve! Probably somebody from Charlottetown.”

  “Or a Mainlander. No offense, Christian.”

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “He even l-l-left an IOU!”

  “Cocky prick!”

  “All high and m-m-mighty. Sarcastic-like.”

  “I…um…” I said.

  “What is it, Christian? You know anything about this?”

  “Yeah, well. It may be nothing…”

  “Go on.”

  The tide-bouncing water found a channel, the weight of it poured through the sand wall and flowed. “It’s just that I saw Rattray around there last night,” I said. Immediately I wanted to take it back, but Robbie, Wallace and Brucie instantly weighed in.

  “Of course!”

  “Rattray!”

  “Who else?”

  “T-Typical!”

  “But I didn’t see him actually steal anything,” I said.

  “Oh it was R-Rattray all right…”

  “Exactly the sort of thing he would do.”

  “When I catch him I’m gonna kick his teeth in,” said Wallace.

  “Yeah. One by one,” said Robbie.

  “S-Slowly.”

  “Stopping only to enjoy his cries of pain mingled with his pleas for mercy.”

  “And when he’s lying there weeping and moaning, I can act like I’m taking pity on him, all ‘oh I’m so sorry, have a nice glass of water,’ and when he drinks it he finds out it’s battery acid.”

  “Then I could come back and start kicking his teeth out some more.”

  “Yeah, it probably was Rattray,” I said.

  ***

  A warm sickly breeze was blowing from the south and it was almost dark when I got back to the beach and saw him. He couldn’t have known what I’d been up to, so it must have been for some other reason that he was standing outside my tent.

  “Hi Rattray. What’s up?”

  The reason I could be so casual was that, having made up that story about him, I felt in control. I’d been having twinges of conscience about that, but now, seeing him here in the flesh, I didn’t feel badly at all, in fact I was almost thrilled at the power I was wielding.

  “I hear you’ve got a new friend,” he said.

  “I’ve got lots of new friends,” I said, but, close to him now, my cockiness was holding only by a thread. He looked a bit scary, to tell the truth, and although I did feel a bit afraid, I still hated him like poison and saw no reason why I should give him the pleasure of seeing me that way.

  “Like Monroe, for instance?” he said.

  “I guess so. Why?”

  “He’s getting you to delive
r mail for him, I see.”

  “What are you talking about, Rattray?”

  “The letter. To MacAkerns’. I know about it.”

  Why shouldn’t he know about it? And who cared whether he knew about it or not? “And so..?” I said.

  “And so I was wondering why he gave it to you.”

  Seeking me out like this long after work for something which was clearly so insignificant only confirmed that he was an idiot. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, and moved to go past him and into the tent.

  But he blocked my way and faced me directly. I smelled liquor on his breath. “What are you?” he said between clenched teeth. “Gay?” It seemed to hiss out of him like steam off acid. “Is that what you are? A kissy little gay boy queer? You’re a pansy, and Monroe’s your faggy friend?”

  I supposed it was because he had seen me in makeup and riding a girl’s bike, and it explained that look in his eyes when we faced each other at the washroom door. But he was mistaken, and this made me feel on top again. “Rattray…” I started.

  “…I know Monroe’s a drunk. But is he a faggot too? Eh? Does he like to kiss boys?” And he stepped even closer.

  What was wrong with him, anyway? He didn’t make any sense. Why, for instance, was he not attracted to the most lovely woman in the world? And since I was so plainly attracted to her, how could he think I was not straight? And what was that look in his eyes now, and this ignorant rant..?

  And then the obvious answer occurred to me.

  Rattray himself was gay, and furthermore, unable to admit it, maybe even to himself, he took the pain of it out on the world around him.

  It all seemed very clear, and also meant that Claire would not therefore consummate with him, which was excellent news. Unless Rattray was bisexual, goddamn it, which was just the nasty two-faced sneaky bastard thing he would be…

  I looked at him again and what I saw drove this out of my mind. He was looking back at me unblinking with his eyebrows scowling down and the whites of his eyes showing under his pupils.

  I was the object of his desire.

  I wondered if I could stoop down quickly enough to pick up a rock for a weapon. Instead, I took a deep breath, and because legal babble had worked before, I tried it again, not from memory this time, but completely improvised.

  “Rattray,” I said, “although this is not my personal property, I do have permission from the owners to be here, which you don’t. And since that tent is my lawful domicile, under the Canadian Bill of Rights section four (c) I am entitled to not be interfered with or prevented from entering or leaving said domicile, or having its contents, my possessions, disrupted or removed. So I am hereby formally putting you on notice to vacate the premises, or I will be forced to inform the authorities.”

  “Who’s gonna make me?”

  “The uttering of a threat is an illegal act as well.”

  “Who’s gonna know?” By which I guess he meant to say that if he killed me and hid the body, nobody would be the wiser.

  “Wallace MacAkern. Robbie MacAkern. Bailey Hendershott…” I started to count off…“Aiden, Melissa, Brucie…”

  He blinked.

  “I only came back here to pick up some food,” I continued. “I’m supposed to be back there in a few minutes and if I’m not, they’ll come looking. I already told them that I saw your footprints on the beach here last night, and Fergie knows what you think of me, so you’d be the first suspect.” I think I preserved a placid face, but I could feel my heart thumping. “You’re right about one thing though,” I added, “I do have a lot of friends.”

  “You little prick…” he said, but he took a step back and looked around shiftily. I watched as he backed away, then walked away down the beach, turning to look back over his shoulder at intervals, the whole way to the point of land to the east, which he disappeared behind, following the path he had made the night before. When he was out of sight and I was sure he really had gone, I crawled into the tent and lay down. But I couldn’t get to sleep for a long time.

  6

  The next day I woke up thinking that since I was being threatened, I should at least be armed, so I went to the field of driftwood for some sort of club to have by my side if he came back. I found a nicely-weighted five-foot pole, thinking that by standing away and using it to lay into him with wide swings, I could keep him at arm’s length. And in case he broke through, I found a handy little piece like a shillelagh for close-up work. For good measure, I also picked up a hatchet-shaped tickler like an Iroquois war-club with which I could soften up his skull in a clinch or throw at him to bring him down from a distance. By God he would rue the day he’d messed with me, The Bruised Avenger.

  I practiced with all three weapons, swinging them around and bashing at the air, imagining him falling under my carefully placed blows. Then I propped up on its end a log, and attacked it, administering a flurry of stabs, swings and one-two combinations. I was particularly effective with the long club, which I wielded like Little John’s long-staff, using both ends in a rat-a-tat attack, then taking three steps back, running forward and pole vaulting into the target with both feet, knocking it over. I tried the move again, but this time I hit myself on my nose with the other end of the staff, right on a bruise. I swore loudly and took out the rest of my anger on the log in an unprecedented hail of destruction. When it was lying wounded and unconscious, I finished it off with a deadly thrust to the solar plexus and then walked away down the beach, the movie camera in my imagination tracking me, cold-hearted but finally avenged, as credits rolled.

  I took the back way to the MacAkerns’, which was friendly territory, so I placed my weapons behind the dune to retrieve on the way back. I walked into their yard to find the place hopping with energy: Campaign Mode.

  A television van was parked down by the shore, a camera set up on a tripod in front of two chairs, and a cameraman was strapping a battery belt around his waist. Bailey, in his three-piece campaign suit, was talking to the interviewer, Wallace was sitting in one of the chairs, and Melissa and Robbie were standing with Brucie out of the camera’s line of sight.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “They’ve come to interview Wallace,” said Robbie. “They were down at the Barrisway wharf for that big tuna that was supposed to be coming in this morning, but apparently that was all bullshit, so anyhow, Bailey was there and he saw them and convinced them to hop over here. Turns out Bailey’s a pretty good campaign organizer.”

  “He is,” said Melissa. “And he needed this.”

  “It’s nice you’re looking out for him,” said Robbie.

  “What else can I do? He’s my brother.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  The interviewer was picking over himself now, grooming like a nervous monkey, then I heard him starting in on a vocal exercise, practicing his professional accent. I wondered whether all the people in the news media adopt this voice because there is one person, their hero, whom they all imitate, or if perhaps that by agreeing on an accent which was not found anywhere in the world except in the news media, they reduced the risk of slanting their viewpoint and damaging their journalistic objectivity. I stepped back and tried the accent a few times myself, saying, “The Jah voice come, the mighty run, like salmon always upstream, but down they go, one to and fro and shine the light eternal.” I found that by stressing some arbitrary syllable it imposed the illusion of meaning on anything I said and whatever I uttered would come out sounding considered, evenly-weighed and truthful. It was an interesting sensation, as if I had cut off the wiring between my brain and my tongue. I went over to Brucie. “Can you do his accent?”

  Brucie considered, then took a breath. “Well, let’s see. Why yes, I find that I can, in fact,” he said, without stammering.

  “Cool.”

  “Are you suggesting that if I wish to speak without a s
tammer, Christian, I simply have to talk like this?” He cocked his eyebrow down at the end of the sentence, just like a newscaster.

  “Seems to work.”

  “Why yes, it does. The only problem, though, is that it would mean I would have to go through life sounding like a complete horse’s ass.”

  “True.”

  “I’d rather s-s-stammer,” said Brucie in his own voice. He was a talented little guy.

  The interviewer took a seat beside Wallace, who coughed once into his hand and looked into the camera. The cameraman said, “in five…four…” then counted down the rest with his fingers in silence while the reporter looked into the lens of a box full of wires and transistors as though he was addressing a real human being.

  “Thank you, Keith,” he said. “It’s a beautiful North Shore day up here in Barrisway riding where there has been an interesting development on the electoral front. With the entire country plunged into an election, the choice seems to be narrowing down to between the two leading parties…” He paused. “…Or is it? Wallace MacAkern, well-known to Island residents for his steadfast refusal to move from his home in response to a government expropriation order, has thrown his hat into the ring as the independent candidate for Barrisway riding, and we’re here to ask him about his controversial platform, ‘Vote for me. Get five bucks.’” He turned to Wallace. “What do you say to people who may claim that you are corrupting the practice of democracy, Wallace?”

  “I’m sure some would say that,” said Wallace, “and some others would say that it is the other candidates, whose names I will not even mention, who are doing the corrupting, and that whoever gets in, it’ll be the same old horse…crap, excuse my French, and that my campaign is providing a much needed service to the democratic process as laid down by the founding fathers.”