Savage

by Nathaniel G. Moore

  "No," I answered. "Gonna take a shower."

  *

  This is how I pieced it together in my head in a tableau of near memory:

  As Dad smoked outside of Old City Hall’s large unfriendly doors, the image of his own father, (Grandfather) and his candle-illumined face moving towards him is inescapable. Grandfather slapped Dad hard in the chest with the ceremonial oil. "Remember David," Grandfather began, "those who receive unworthily do not actually receive Christ but rather their own condemnation," he said, pulling his shirt completely off...

  It’s the morning of the inquest: Dad feels the nicotine and sincere toxins on his lips.

  Two nights earlier, the group had circled Katie’s body at the morgue, a prayer and a chant and her body on the slab, no motion from her closed eyes. The stillness of her cold brown hair and tiny mischief nose. Dad stared at her form, blurring his eyes. Beauty and love and Katie extinguished. He felt militant in the morning, not refreshed. He combed his hair a hundred times. The calls from her parents and from Allan, her older brother. He downed his orange juice and in the bathroom, wiped his mouth on a facecloth.

  The communal belief, equally digested, was that Katie had let the Devil inside her, so cult members spanked her to force her to push the devil out.

  Satanic midwives.

  Inside, Rachel Weir, a cheaply dressed, chirpy, gum-chewing twenty-year-old with bright eyes, scanned the entire courtroom, never settling on anyone, and took the stand at quarter-past nine. She rose when her name was called, and whispers scratched the courtroom floor. Rachel claimed the real leader of the group was Marilyn Williams. "She was the real leader. Whenever something went off in the dynamic of the group, like with one of the priests or something, they’d run to her … the weirdest thing was, or troubling, that is, was the more sad you were, the more attention you got, like it was a badge of honour to come from a broken home or to have been abused somehow."

  At five past ten, Dad (Katie’s fiancé, twenty-six years old), who the press said could possibly be a clergyman himself someday, took the stand. Dour and strait-laced, Dad stated the facts with an icy speech. Some snickered and snapped their tongues in teeth sockets. Shocked at what can only be called a callous recollection of Katie’s final days.

  "On Tuesday, I paddled her a couple of times."

  "Why?"

  "It was childish behaviour." Gasps in the audience. His narrow face, wolf-eyes were a mask.

  "Did you see Katie the morning of her death?"

  "I cannot recall if I had gone into her [Katie’s] room and spoke with her that morning."

  He spoke in cold, formal language. Facial posturing and breath were carefully expressed, exacting, as if meticulously extracted from a guarded vault.

  The doctors began to testify at 11:15 a.m. Katie Flint died in brutal pain. An abscess in the brain stemming from a recurring ear infection broke, swelling into meningitis—killing her. The abscess was caused by inflammation and collection of infected material coming from the ear infection.

  The newspapers all had the same chilling vibe: a cult horror in a church rectory...Grandfather using bizarre rituals and brainwashing to control parishioners was no joke. Katie Flint died an agonizing death and was not given proper medical attention when she needed it. When the paramedics found her, Katie was naked except for underpants. The Anglican Church continued to see exorcism as legitimate practice.

  Early the next morning the inquest continued with Grandfather walking boldly to the stand, his hair raven black, his voice chalky, boomed in parts, adding hmmms? to the ends of speeches. His answers were slow, puzzling and evasive, while his mouth remained at half-mast, false, never veering off into the jubilant or souring to droopy, faithless frown. He denied spanking Katie. Two days before her death, Katie complained of stomach aches and did not eat anything after breakfast Monday. She had a plate of crackers later that night and did not join the group for evening prayers. Tuesday was more shrieking and moaning. The day of Katie’s death (Wednesday), Grandfather described her beaming smile as he entered her bedroom, how she was full of life, trying to get better from whatever was ailing her.

  "She wanted to beat this," he said. "She threw her arms around me, and I prayed for her with all my heart with all I had. And she went quiet and sobbed a little." He denied virtually all allegations, scanned the courtroom to lock eyes with Rachel. As he got off the stand, she hissed at him, "You’re supposed to be a Christian, not a damned liar!"

  After a break for lunch, more witnesses took the stand. The city’s coroner was called to make testimony. Dad felt his temple pulsing. Katie’s older brother, Allan, wrung his hands over his knees. When asked the cause of death, the coroner stated, "Improper, well, non-existent medical care, actually."

  Later in the day, when Grandmother took the stand, she dodged nothing, replying in negatives to the question. No, it didn’t occur to her to run a bath, call the doctor, check for fever, or take Katie’s temperature. Yes, she knew Katie had vomited, one of the girls on her floor mentioned it, and there had been buckets deployed and mops and the girls taking turns checking on her. No, she had no knowledge of Katie’s meals that week—if she had missed meals, consumed them, kept them down. No, she had definitely not slapped Katie, and that noise was probably Katie hitting herself, something, Grandmother said, she was known to do. The intensified cries continued into the next morning (Wednesday). Katie’s health had changed. Piercing shrieks, softened by walls. As they washed dishes, as they set the table as they folded bed sheets. Yes, they all could hear agonizing octaves. Not constant. Sometimes she would sleep.

  By noon the day of Katie’s death, Grandmother was fed up with the girl’s tantrums, and called Mrs. Williams’s home, where she asked her to get Grandfather to the rectory to visit Katie immediately and perform an exorcism to rid her of the devil once and for all. Two hours later, Katie was dead.

  One ex-member testified, saying they were not faith healing. "They were unsettling to be around. Something felt wrong. I couldn’t enjoy even the simplest Moment of a day without having to listen to some protect-me-from-the-devil speech."

  The last day of testimonies dragged on until Ms. Julia McCullough came forward, ending the queue. "I was at St. Joseph’s Hospital about a year ago. I was awaiting surgery for cancer, when a friend told me about this faith-healing group and thought I should like to meet with them [Grandfather]. I agreed and immediately regretted it. After only minutes, he insisted my lifestyle was seducing Satan." Grandfather visited Julia the night before her operation, reciting an odd prayer he told her was designed to chase out the devil from her insides. "Something about how hell’s atmosphere had been breached, and I must have faith to seal and repel it, that I had to repair the hole I had left open for Satan to find me...that I was possessed and had I come to see him earlier in the year, I wouldn’t have cancer, intimating my disease was caused by my false way of living, and when I told him to please leave, he looked at me, gripping my leg, and said, ‘You will one day need me still,’ and told me he’d pray for that day each morning until I came to him."

  After ninety minutes, the jury agreed my grandparents were negligent in Katie’s death. Dad’s grey eyes in a small newspaper photograph, the caption underneath read: "Planned to Marry Dead Girl."

  Dad’s hollow-looking face, caught in the flashbulb, was part of a mysterious family tableau, one he would never walk away from completely. Less than two years later, he married Mom. Two years after that, Holly was born.

  *

  The exactly named No Frills items, labelled in yellow, were all over the trailer like a bomb-shelter exhibit. Dad dwelled over the kitchen counter, no method to his pattern as he tweaked the heat levels on the elements, perhaps deciphering, dreaming part of his life was no longer numb, that he could access a reality chamber devoted to certain periods, certain individuals or entities.

  He was a real-life spectre. Dad took plates down from the cupboard and placed the four potatoes on them, salting each one heavily. He mo
ved like paper in the kitchen, tightly belted pants and a black skull-and-cross-bones T-shirt I had given him for Christmas, his cigarette smoke a shadow tailing him in a blend of fuzz and dust, while his antique runaway dog, Jazz, scratched and itched away, never walked, never groomed, but loved. Still attached to the chain from outside, it followed her wherever she walked.

  A large swarm of birds fluttered past the trailer’s main window. It looked like a school of fish in some well-timed aquatic outtake. "Want to go outside?" Dad opened the screen door, letting Jazz and the chain ramble in the winter blitz.

  "Your reception is out. I’ll go look at the antenna, might be a branch in the way, the wind maybe."

  The screen door banged open with a ruckus, and Jazz walked in, crooked, snorting like a filthy stray horse. As she shook and her metallic collar and tags clobbered into one another, David looked down at her quizzically. She snorted at his feet.

  "Who hath dared to wound thee?" Dad said, looking at his weary dog. "Hmmm? You have a burr on the side of your paw? Let me get some tweezers," he said, returning the dog’s paw to its bashful state where the two burrs clung.

  "I think she has them on her back legs too, Dad," I said.

  Dad moved hastily through from the washroom with tweezers and ointment, "Here you go, my darling," he said, down on his knees. As he repaired the wounds and extracted the burrs, the adjacent roads were filled with a chorus of car honks and well-wishers. Car lights went on and off as blobs of coat collars went from one vehicle to another.

  "There you go," Dad said, rubbing Jazz’s head.

  "Some birds," Dad said, adjusting his footing, "have been attacking my roof the past week or so."

  "I think I saw some activity on the roof when I took Jazz for her swamp run," I said, moving towards the door. "I’ll grab a saw just in case we have to cut down the antennae."

  Dad shook his head as if admitting he understood I was joking, and even possibly found the line entertaining. It was harsh and bright outside in the afternoon with the day-old snow and ancient sun collaborating away.

  He sauntered after me, head lowered, focusing on the ground’s imperfections, the soft spots. I climbed the tree until I could peek over the roof.

  "So?" Dad asked.

  "The wind has blown the branch into the antenna a bit," I said, looking down at Dad.

  I began to saw the branch. Dad walked towards Jazz, nodded at her and looked up at the activity in the tree.

  "Watch out," I said, "it’s going to come down." I pulled the saw from the cut. The branch hung on, about to snap clean off. I climbed down, watching clumps of snow fall first from the tips of the cold green buds. The branch was heavier than expected and was hell-bent on hitting Dad.

  On the ground, I moved towards him. "Watch it!" I said, and pulled him back several steps gently, the top of the fallen branch brushing his feet.

  "Perfect," I said. "We can eat that branch for lunch."

  Dad laughed. "I’ll fix us a tuna fish sandweedge," he said. I looked at Dad’s dog with the dangling testicle on her chin, and the fallen branch, dragging both towards the trailer. Leaving the branch by the woodpile and ax, I took Jazz towards the small dirt road surrounding the lot of trailers. "Let’s go for a walk, dog mutant." She galloped, pulling me in quizzical directions.

  When I entered the shack I saw two sandwiches were made and sitting on plates, beside which an open bag of potato chips glistened in the light.

  Wreaths of smoke and steam rose from another pot and the dusty sheen of the trailer’s innards greeted me in a daytime constellation. I found my father lying asleep under a fraying blanket covered in a pattern of white blossoms.

  After dinner (roast beef and potatoes with thick gravy, turnip and green beans), we polished off a bottle of red wine while watching an old Bruce Willis film.

  "See you in the morning," Dad said, turning into a blur of soot and grey sweater down the hallway to his bedroom.

  24 )

  Sooner Than You Think

  Friday, May 20th, 2011

  The morning was bright yellow and loud with traffic on Lansdowne and started out with a rental van, tons of empty garbage bags and Holly ordering herself a large tea and me a regular coffee from the Tim Hortons.

  "Sure you don’t want anything else?"

  "I’m good."

  At her rental property, we dealt with flood damage, cleaning and wiping up along the floorboards, replacing them in some cases, as we repainted and stain guarded, moved clumps of wet and dead drywall into plastic bags, then into the truck.

  The heat from the sun outside began to fill the basement. There was a bad, heavy stink.

  "The city will be here in an hour," Holly said. "They think it’s because the pipe is clay, or part of it is clay, anyway, so they have to rebuild it from scratch or something. We also need to go to the apartment where I moved the tenants and move some stuff out to make room for them."

  "Sounds like an adventure."

  "How’s whatshername?" Holly asked, while we cleaned and sprayed, re-painted, and garbage-bagged the flood mucus.

  "Who? Oh, Sherri?" I said, taping a wall we were about to paint. "She’s good. She told me about this time at a convention last week when this old man tried to pick her up who was, like, sixty, and it turned out to be Ted DiBiase, who was there signing autographs!"

  "Who was he again?"

  "The Million Dollar Man. She said he was old and he insisted he was important, and asked her up to his hotel room."

  "Gross," Holly said.

  "Yeah and he’s like a born-again Christian or something, like a minister."

  After four hours of basement autopsying, recovery and scrubbing out the dirt and funk, my fingers were pruned in a mulch of varying chemicals.

  "I’m going to get a coffee at the corner. You want one?"

  "No. We’ll grab something to eat in an hour. There’s a Portuguese café just down the street."

  As I emerged from the basement, the smell of bleach followed me; I felt baked in a toxic crust and could only imagine what it was doing to my sneaker treads. I grabbed a coffee from the store next door, and as I sipped from the Styrofoam, I spotted a tiny library branch. I sat down at a fifteen-minute express Internet terminal, complete with a crusty mouse and antiquated tower-styled computer, even a slot for floppy discs.

  The floppy-disc slot reminded me of countless wait-times for the slowest loading 8-bit video games with their minimalist music and square-pixel heads, noisy disc-drive stutters and countless hours holding onto the joysticks, praying the program wouldn’t crash and we’d have to reset.

  My face twitched from the coffee and its formaldehyde effects.

  On Yahoo’s homepage a thumbnail photo of Randy Savage appeared with a headline full of doomsday terminologies: "fatal," "accident," "crash" all entered my peripheral like bits of sand and grit in senseless wind. My breathing accelerated.

  Clicking on the link revealed the story of the crash. My heart palpitated and my throat felt dense with interference. The words on the screen structurally were off-putting, false and cruel.

  On edge, I checked Twitter, CNN and CBC to confirm the page’s content was of sound mind:

  A source tells Fox News the ex-wrestler "suffered a heart attack while driving and hit a tree." Florida Highway Patrol said Savage, 58, leapt a concrete median, veered into oncoming traffic and smashed into a tree head-on. He died from his injuries at Largo Medical Center. Savage, whose real name is Randy Poffo, had just celebrated his first wedding anniversary with his wife Lynn. It was his second marriage.

  I logged off and pushed my chair out, leaving the library with mulched socks from the flood repairs and a sting in my chest.

  Savage’s death appeared to you at eleven in the morning at a west-end library Internet terminal, his head swathed in bandanas, cowboy hats or the rare glimpse of him with ratty brown hair strewn in sweat and post-battle honesty. This May afternoon, 2011, just like the day the world came to know the name Randall Poffo (a.k.a
. Randy Macho Man Savage) feels off, corkscrewed, nudged; as if you were targeted to absorb and reflect such late-breaking news. His odd face, hidden in sunglass gimmickry, multiplied by the Internet presses, world newswires, flooded the earth and the whole world to the tiniest mentions, cribbed links, general searches; the world grazed on the news all day and night, his body (in highlight clips with complimentary voice-overs praising his success and lasting impression on a generation of now adult men and women) jumped and leapt and breathed in a series of manicured action-packed Moments, while his body lay in a Florida morgue awaiting autopsy, no longer with Momentum...

  Back at the rental property, my face must have appeared lifeless, perhaps animated with vehement contemplation, because Holly asked me what was wrong right away.

  "Macho Man died. I just read online, at the library...just down the street."

  "What?" Holly’s face was paused, the heat and smoldering mechanics of swamp repair temporarily suspended around her.

  "He crashed his car this morning in Florida."

  The plan was to work through the weekend completing the temporary apartment switch for Holly’s tenants while repairing water damage as the city workers replaced what turned out to be an ancient 1960s clay pipe from inside the house.

  Saturday and Sunday were more shifts teeming with moving and sorting and sanding and patching up. In all of this labour, I hadn’t checked a newspaper for any clippings. I was so beat, and despite the Internet’s boundless fortune of replica and press releases, I wanted the texture only found in newsprint.

  As I approached my apartment, Mom’s ID appeared on my cell. "Yeah, no, I got your message, was just charging my phone for a bit this afternoon, didn’t plug it in, yeah, Macho died, yesterday morning, no, Friday morning, yeah, no, I haven’t really thought about it, you did, you got the paper? What do you mean? It’s a paper, who cares? That would have been so cool from the Dallas Sun you should have kept it. No, I’m not at Holly’s, I’m out...yeah, I think the house is all fixed, you’d have to ask her—yeah, sure, talk to you later."