by D. D. Miller
I shrug. “Hear what?”
“A bear,” he says and motions toward the woods with the barrel of his gun.
“A bear?”
“Right! You weren’t home last night. Well . . .” With his free hand he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. “Last night, we were sitting in the living room eating dinner and we hear this scream.” Tom comes right up to my back steps and rests the gun against the rail (barrel up). He leans on it, inhales deeply, squinting slightly for the smoke. “So we get up and rush to the window and I see Mrs. Dahl standing in her front yard with a lawn chair in her hand, just screaming, and her son is there on the ground – what’s his name?” He stops. There are beads of sweat and little bits of dirt up on his hairline. “What’s his name? The boy?”
I shake my head.
“Hmm. Feel like I should know that.” He takes a drag, scratches his gut with his other hand and looks back at the woods. I can see the yellowing under the arms of his undershirt. There is a big U-shaped sweat stain on the front. I can smell the odour of beer coming off of him. Or maybe that’s me. “Anyway,” he continues, “I look up to where she’s shaking that chair, and there’s a fucking black bear running down the middle of the street! Cars are stopped, people are all coming out to see and this bear is running in circles totally confused.”
“Are you serious?”
“Fuckin’ right I am.” He’s breathing heavily and staring. “It’s absolute chaos, right? Mrs. Dahl standing with a chair in her hands like it’s the fucking circus; the Dahl boy – Shithead or Dingus or whatever his name is – lying on the ground, all torn up. Then the sirens.” There is a wild look about his eyes that I haven’t seen before. He takes a gulp of air to steady his breathing. “The bear gets right up on its back legs, right there in the middle of the street.” He points toward the street out front. “Then it drops and runs between those two houses next to us and off into the woods.”
“Is the boy ok?”
“I guess so,” Tom nods. “Got a couple swipes but no bites. I imagine they had to sew him up.”
“Holy shit.”
“Holy shit is right, my friend.” Tom reaches for the gun and clutches the barrel. “That’s where the gun comes in.”
“Shouldn’t you . . . or . . . someone have called someone?”
“Someone did call someone. They showed up with the ambulance and police cars and all that. Couple guys poking around the woods. One had a dart gun. Said they’d be back today and told us all to call them if we saw the bear. Useless.” Tom’s pupils are dilated: big black saucers in his eyes that give him a wild look.
“Why today?” I rub my temples.
“You look a little like shit,” he says.
“Joey’s coming today,” I tell him. Joey, my son, and Jen, my ex, started driving from New Brunswick yesterday. They called last night from outside of Montreal and said they were going to leave as early as possible this morning, hoping to be here by early afternoon.
“For the summer?” he asks.
I nod.
“All the more reason . . .” He pulls the gun close to him, and I can’t help but picture him in a bed, spooning it. “Better get yours loaded,” he says. “‘Be Prepared,’ eh? Like back in the Boy Scouts.”
“I don’t have a gun, Tom. And I was never a Boy Scout.”
“You don’t have a gun? Huh. Well, you can borrow one of mine if you want.”
The idea of telling Jen that I’m borrowing a gun to protect our son from a marauding bear makes my temples throb even more than they already were. I’m hoping that Jen’s been irresponsible and they got off late. But Jen is never irresponsible and is never late. She says it’s because of her “impeccable upbringing.” Like the suburban, Saturday-night-hockey, perfect-little-house kind of impeccable. The watch your father work, drink and smoke himself to death by fifty-five while your mother struggles to keep her shit together kind of impeccable.
“Well thanks, Tom, but I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s not really your responsibility.”
“You wanna wait for the useless bastards from the city to do something?” he snorts.
I sit and slump over. My back steps are uneven, and it’s uncomfortable. I wish Jen had just flown Joey out like she did during March Break.
“This must be something, on top of you being out so late last night, eh?” Tom shakes his head.
“How do you even know that?”
“Oh, I haven’t slept. Heard the cab drop you off.”
I look over his shoulder and imagine the bear bounding through the woods, crashing through those trees, gathering speed as it nears. “You have any Aspirin, Tom? I’ve got a bit of a hangover.”
“Nope. Swore off them a while back. I smoke medicinal marijuana now.”
“Really?” I’ve never figured out the details of Tom’s workers’ comp and I suspect it’s a scam, or has become one anyway. He worked in one of the production factories over in the industrial park. Depending on the number of beers he’s drunk, the position varies from floor supervisor to machinist. He’s never said how he injured himself.
He leans the gun back against my steps and jams his hand in his pocket. He pulls out a poorly rolled joint. It’s bulbous and cocoon-like. Lumpy. “Wanna puff? Cure yer hangover.” He pulls out a lighter and sparks it. “I’d ask if you mind, but doctor’s orders.”
I know it’s one more thing that’ll piss Jen off, but everything pisses Jen off, so I accept the joint when he passes it to me. It’s been a while and it tastes great. We pass the joint back and forth while he tells me about the complicated application process to get his smoking “license.” It’s too much for me to follow. Eventually he crushes the roach under his slipper.
“I’ll be right back.” He shifts over to his steps and grabs the rail. “I’ll leave my gun, just in case.” He pulls himself up and toward his backdoor, and I eye the gun knowing that even if the bear came into the yard I wouldn’t be able to shoot it. I’ve never shot a gun before.
There’s just a small wooden wall separating my place from Tom’s, which is a mirror image of my house. There’s a whole strip of places like ours on this side of the street. It’s quiet, I’ll give it that, but the only reason I live here is because Jen said my apartment downtown wasn’t appropriate for our son. She had a whole list: Joey’s bedroom was too small and had no windows. The place was too old. It was mouldy. There was a problem with the water pressure. The floors were creaky and splintered in parts and it got too hot in the summer, not enough natural light, young neighbours, busy downtown artery. Art spaces. Pawn shops. It went on. Now I’m here, and I know I’ll never really fit in. I’ll never be a Tom Fisher, and I’ll certainly never be one of those guys with a garden who buzzes around on a riding mower, sipping hard lemonades and waving to the neighbours.
“If the pot hasn’t cured your hangover, have one a these.” Tom lets his screen door fall shut behind him and shambles down his steps. He’s carrying two bottles of beer. I can see the drops of condensation on the outside of them. They look cold. They look delicious.
“Little early?”
He shrugs. “It’s actually pretty late if you’ve been up all night.” He hands me the bottle and plops down beside me. “So, Joey’s coming, eh?”
“Yup.” I crack the beer. The smell hits me. It’s good. I’ll have one, and then head back in to finish tidying the place. I remember I still need to set up the spare room too.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did someone so young come to be divorced and the father of a twelve-year-old?”
“High school,” I say as though that’s enough. I’ve never had a real conversation with Tom before and wonder how much he’ll remember. “She was hot, but like, mature. Smart, you know?” I don’t know what else to say because I never really felt like I understood her. “We just got together at a party one night, drunk, and . . .” I try to think back and find some kind of logic to things, but there wasn’t any. “She got
pregnant and I guess we decided to give it a go.” I take a drink. Jen’s still hot. She stays in shape. Dresses well. I take a bigger gulp of the beer. It’s cold. Ice cold. At this moment, it could be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
“You were both pretty young,” he says, staring off into the woods, the beer bottle dangling between his spread knees.
“And what’s your story, Tom? Why aren’t you divorced? Isn’t that the way it works these days?”
He doesn’t look at me. There is actually quite a pause, and I don’t think he’s even heard me. Perhaps it’s better this way. I’m not interested in Tom’s marital advice, and certainly not in his marital life. So I follow his gaze back toward the woods, drink steadily and stare. There’s movement every so often, a swinging branch, rustling leaves. I think about the Dahl boy, but the only image that comes to mind is one of gaping wounds and a small body doused in blood.
I imagine the bear bursting through the brush and lunging into my yard.
“I don’t know,” he says suddenly.
“Sorry?”
“I don’t know why we aren’t divorced.” He puts a hand down beside his leg and pushes off to stand. “Finish ’er up. Time for round two.” I’m not even half done my first, but part of me wonders if he’ll even come back, or if, somehow, I’ve offended him.
About midway through the third beer there’s a lull in the conversation. I’ve grown thoughtful. Tom, I notice, has simply fallen asleep. His head is leaning against the railing on his steps, his mouth slightly agape, a little spittle forming at the side. He’s breathing heavily, erratically even. I glance up at the sun. It’s moved directly overhead. I listen to the sounds of the burbs: the rat-a-tat-tat of a sprinkler, two dogs barking at one another across fenced-in yards, cars gliding slowly down the street and, finally, the sound of a car pulling into my driveway. The sound of one, and then two doors closing.
They’re here.
Dropping my bottle at the bottom of my steps, I stand. I’ve got to hope that Jen doesn’t come out here. I’ve also got to hope that Tom doesn’t suddenly wake up and come stumbling into my house, gun in hand, rambling on about bears. I rush into the house and through the kitchen. I take a quick scan around the living room. There are albums, magazines, video games, dishes, takeout containers and a few changes of clothes lying around. There’s a garden hose under the coffee table.
I open the front door and see them standing in the driveway, stretching off the long drive, yawning and staring up into the sun. Joey has grown visibly larger in only a few months. His arms look awkwardly long; his legs have thickened. His hair is shaggy and hangs in his eyes. When he sees me standing on the steps, he hesitates, but then he strolls over toward the house. He’s developing the kind of swagger that I see other teens affect at the mall. He looks good. He looks like a normal kid. My normal kid. I grab him and hear a “Hey, Dad” from my chest. I kiss the top of his head and smell generic, hotel shampoo. Jen is standing with her arms folded over her chest. She does look hot. I imagine she does herself up for me. She probably wants to look her best. Isn’t that something chicks do to their exes?
I would love to just wave and have her be on her way, take Joey in and get some records on. Find out what he’s listening to these days. “Hey Jen, you look great,” I say, and try to keep my voice steady. Joey pulls away and walks behind me.
“You look awful,” she says and leans in for a brief hug.
“How was the drive?” I ask as she pulls away, but I can see that something has changed. That resigned look is gone. She looks over my shoulder at our son.
“Joey, can you go to the car for a few minutes.”
“Why’s the hose in the living room?” He’s already half in the front door.
“Now, Joey,” she says.
Head down, he turns and walks toward the car.
“Have you been drinking?” She doesn’t separate her teeth when she speaks; it’s like a hiss.
“No, no . . . Listen, last night, I . . .”
“Have you been drinking today? This morning?” There’s a certain finality in her tone this time.
“Jen, look . . . Yes. Yes, I have. Just one with Tom, the neighbour. He’s having a rough time.”
“Your son is coming to stay with you for the summer, and you couldn’t stop drinking for one morning?” Her eyes are huge, bulging on her face, and I can see the strain on her lips from trying to keep her voice down. We’ve promised not to fight in front of him anymore.
“Jen, you don’t understand,” I begin, but I can feel it now, the beer. It’s hitting me hard now that I am standing in the sun, dehydrated and exhausted. “It was nothing.” I have to try not to sway, to keep my voice even.
“You look like shit. Like absolute shit. You look like you were you out all night. Have you slept at all?” She’s bursting. “Do you know how much he’s been looking forward to this?”
I look over her shoulder and see Joey standing by her car. He won’t look up at us. He’s got his hands crammed into the pockets of his shorts and he’s kicking the side of the tire. Over and over again he kicks it. Why couldn’t she have just flown him out like on March Break?
I don’t even notice that she’s begun to walk away.
“Hey . . .” I begin, but she just glares back at me quickly. Joey watches his mother. She’s telling him something. His face contorts, and he says something back. I can see their mouths move. I can hear the sound of their voices, but it’s only noise to me. They get in the car and begin to drive up the street. I feel like I should say something; that I should yell. But I don’t. I just stand there and stare at them, first imagining and then wishing for the bear to come back. Willing it to rush out from behind the house and throw me to the ground, maul me with its massive claws and then drag me back into the forest.
SUBJECT: The Lost Summer
DATE: September 23, 2XXX
FROM: [email protected]
TO:
Hey,
I saw you the other day in the London Drugs on Yates and Quadra. I saw you and followed you around the store. Seeing you there got me to thinking about that summer: the summer just before I arrived in Victoria and we met. I should have told you the truth about it when we were still together. I guess it just became one of those things. I liked the mystery that built up around it. How you called it The Lost Summer and made things up about it.
“Robbing banks across the American Midwest?” you’d ask. “Hefting massive satchels of marijuana through tunnels under the BC–Washington border? Fucking prostitutes in South East Asia?” I remember once, you returned home from work, barged into the living room and without any preamble declared, “You must have been harvesting abalone off the west coast of Australia!” because you’d just read an article about it.
I shook my head. “Nice try, babe,” I said, and you just stood there tapping your toe and giving me that look of yours – eyes squinting, head tilting, lip rising in an almost-sneer – I call it your you-bastard look, and I loved it because it was so cartoonish. You gave it to the cat all the time when he sprayed the apartment or shit outside the litter box. I saw you give it to people in public too, when they cut in front of you or blew cigarette smoke in your face.
Maybe after all of that, I thought you’d be disappointed with the truth. Because maybe the truth is nothing at all happened. Or maybe the truth is so strange that it’s impossible to believe.
You knew the basics:
• I’d just graduated from high school
• I had a thirty-day VIA rail pass
• I had 1500 bucks to my name
I will promise you that I got on the train in Halifax that June with only the vaguest idea of what I would do. I had a hard time seeing more than a week into the future.
You could still smoke in the lounge car of the train back then, so I sat there because that was where all the hippies and bums sat; all the hard-luck middle-aged women; the tough-looking men with massive fingers on leathery hands that were stained black
at every crease and always seemed to tremble a bit. I figured if I just stayed in my assigned seat, I’d never meet anyone. So I sat there even though I didn’t smoke.
Seth Rogen walked into the car as we were cutting across the marshes on the border of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He was in his early twenties, pudgy with reddish hair and splotchy freckles. He had a Scrabble game under his arm and a cigarette behind his ear. He wore cargo shorts and an old worn T-shirt with an image of the Green Hornet on it, and he strutted through that car with confidence, joking with everybody, it didn’t matter who.
Okay, it wasn’t Seth Rogen, no one knew who Seth Rogen was back then. But in my memory that guy’s become Seth Rogen. Perhaps it was the hair or the shirt. I guess you’ve already guessed that this Seth is the reason for my obsession. And it is an obsession: I can admit that now. I’ve made advances though. The Green Hornet sheets wore away to nothing a few years ago. I’ve parted with the comic books.
So Seth Rogen sat down across from me. He opened up his box and declared that he was ready and willing to whoop anyone’s ass at Scrabble! No one else was interested, but I said sure. I’d only played a few times, but I started well, managing C-A-L-U-M-N-Y on my third or fourth turn (for a double word score at that) and Seth’s brow wrinkled. He pulled the cigarette out from behind his ear and lit it.
“Hmm . . .” he mumbled, “not so bad for a kid.” He was only a few years older than me, but I guess he felt much older because he’d just graduated from university. “I know what the problem is!” he declared, and pulled a little bag of weed out of one of the pockets in his shorts. “You wait, kid, we’ll get off in Moncton and have a puff. I play way better when I’m stoned,” he said, and I could tell by the way he said it that he wasn’t lying.
In Moncton, the best we could do for privacy was to walk to the end of the platform. We’d brought with us an Acadian girl who had boarded in Sackville. Younger than me, she had a blond ponytail high up on her head. She was tattooed (a tree running up her neck) and pierced (ears, nose and brow) and intimidating because she was so big-eyed and pretty. She had that particular Acadian look to her, like Alain Leblanc, you remember him? With his dark features and soft lines? She could have been his sister.
