by Daryl Sneath
Rayn takes five steps toward the tracks and I take them with her. I count them even as I try to stop them: one, two, three, four, five. She’s wearing the blue Nike Frees from the last ad she did. Light as air. Blue as sky. Like walking barefoot. Like walking on clouds. Shoes that don’t make a sound. The slogan: freedom starts here.
I don’t know why I watched her feet. Maybe I didn’t but that’s what I see now. That’s what I remember. Dr. Carl said it’s because her feet symbolize the potential for escape. But as I’ve already said, Dr. Carl’s an idiot. There’s no potential in something that’s finished. She can’t escape and I can’t escape her not escaping. Etymologically, the notion of potential has to do with strength but not real strength, only possible strength, which isn’t strength at all, and when you think about it, no one wants to rely on the possible. I suppose even the existence of God is possible but what good is that to me now? What good was it to her then?
The sessions with Dr. Carl were mandatory, although they didn’t phrase it that way. They said ‘highly recommended’ and then appointed someone from CAS to pick me up and accompany me to Dr. Carl’s once a week. They figured I’d become suicidal or irreparably repressed or psychologically damaged by the incident if I didn’t see someone professional. Incident. Fuck them. It was no incident. Besides, who they should’ve been worried about was Max. All they had to do was look at him.
I went to the sessions because the men in ties and the women with sad faces told me they had my best interests at heart. I believed them. They seemed earnest and I knew it would make them feel better, like they’d done their jobs, like they’d saved the child. And really, I had nothing left to lose. Rayn was gone and Max, though still in shock and yet to show obvious signs of his destruction, was irreversibly on his way. The life went out of him the moment the pusher’s hands made contact. When I pause the reel in my head and do a panoramic sweep of the station I can see Max reaching out for her, the distance between them insurmountable—he’s falling—like he tripped or lunged forward in a futile attempt to catch her, the vender dog he’d gone to get suspended stupidly in the air. He looks like a cartoon. Like he’s been shot from behind. Dead before he hits the ground. Zoom in and you can see there is no life left in his eyes. He knows even as he reaches he cannot save her. The blessing, as though there were such a thing, is that he can’t see her on the tracks from where he is. The angles won’t allow it. He can’t see her getting to her knees. He can’t see her smiling at me as the train comes screeching in. If he knew the truth I’m certain he would’ve closed his mighty hands around my neck long ago and squeezed the life right out of me. Of that—and of nothing else—I have absolutely no doubt.
From the Journal of Vector Sorn
Looking at my fourteen-year-old self now it’s easy to see I was suffering from shock, which is a real and dangerous state to be in. Even Dr. Carl knew that. What I find truly mystifying is the seemingly natural inability to recognize the condition we’re in when we’re in it. If only we knew danger without doubt. Or wrongheadedness. Or love. Or happiness. If only we knew these things instantly. Why should we have to think about them? How can we not recognize these conditions as they happen? Where’s the evolution in doubt and reflection? Why do we need to confirm what we know? What good are our brains when they get in the way of instinct? Thought will be our end. Man will take his last breath while teetering on the brink, finger to his chin, thinking about it.
I’ve read that it’s exactly our ability to reflect and think deeply that makes us human and so it is that very ability which will continue to save us.
At times I disagree. At times I know, without thinking, it will be the thing that buries us.
Back to the point in the reel I cannot stop. The old-fashioned projector in my head clicking away. The shadows and light of those final moments. Her feet—the blue Nike Frees—stepping toward the tracks. Five steps. I count them slowly: one, two, three, four. I try to stop the last one from coming. I slow it right down but no matter how slow I make it I cannot stop her foot from touching down and as it does I sense the presence of the pusher upon us. His shadow. His ugly weight. His breathing. His stench. The irreversible instant. I turn as his hands—his filthy, contemptible hands, those nail-bitten bestial paws—make contact. There is the breath that leaves her and that is all. I try to force my hand. I try to make my body do something. But the truth of my inaction is too powerful to overcome. I can’t even pretend to change it. I just stand there.
If only Toronto were Venice and we were standing by the Grand Canal waiting for a boat to take us home instead of a train. If only it were that simple. I imagine us there in that faraway place, a faraway time, Rayn in the stern, smiling. Max standing in the bow with the long pole, pushing us home. Me between them, elbows on the starboard gunwale, eyes closed, face to the Venetian sun.
But we’re not in Venice. We’re in the Toronto underground and there is nowhere to go. She is trapped on the tracks and there is no time. Only the light of the train and the thundering metal bearing down. The final certainty. The utter awareness of the end and the acceptance that nothing can change it. Not even her own son who is right there: staring, stupidly, stepping away. Don’t worry, her eyes say. Everything will be okay. Behind me somewhere is Max. Hands above his head. But it’s too late. There is nothing he can do. There is nothing any of us can do.
CLIPPINGS (16)
(taken from “Speed Kills,” nationalpost.com/thebeat)
‘Like a scene from a Cormac McCarthy novel, Bloomington Sideroad and Warden Avenue, a normally quiet stretch of near-rural driving north of the city, became the site of an inexplicable and terrifying act of violence last night. Because there’s an Elementary School nestled in and easily missed at the bottom of the hill, police often set up a speed trap to help slow traffic through the quarter-mile school zone. Commuters often get caught in the trap and are stung with hefty tickets. But little did Lyle Govern know when veteran officer Max Sorn signalled him over to the shoulder and approached his pickup as the sun was going down that he would be issued far more than a fine for speeding.’
~
Lyle Govern. Not much more than a name in the story to me. If it wasn’t him it would have been someone else. I don’t mean to be callous. I should feel sorry about what happened, but what good is sorry? Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the senselessness of what Max did. I neither condone nor defend it in any way. But to me all the name Lyle Govern does is remind me of the end of Max. The end of my father as I knew him.
Soon after Max approached the truck he discovered that Lyle Govern had no family, that he was a Chartered Accountant, and that he was in therapy. People always opened up to him. It never took him long to discover the essentials. Physically Lyle Govern fit the bill too. Same height, same weight. Same slicked-back blonde hair. The clincher was the date. A year later to the day. Why they had Max scheduled to work that evening I do not know. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe he’d snuck in and taken a cruiser without telling anyone. Maybe he’d planned the whole thing. Whatever the prefacing details, what remains the unfortunate truth for Lyle Govern is that he became in my father’s eyes a surrogate for Michael Norman Boon. The man who pushed Rayn to her death.
Michael Norman Boon. Mike Boon. As a kid, Mikey no doubt. As a teenager, Booner. His beer-league hockey nickname: Mike ‘the Goon’ Boon. A jersey with ‘Goon’ written across the back, double zero beneath. His professional name before the mental illness: Michael N. Boon, CA. Etched on a goldplated nameplate on his desk. On his office door. Michael after his father’s father, Norman after his mother’s. By all accounts a seemingly normal childhood, normal adolescence, normal adulthood. Normal Norman. Nothing to indicate the psychological trouble which lay ahead. Michael the angel. Norman the Norseman. Blue-eyed, blonde, big. According to the police reports, what went wrong remains a mystery. There was the suggestion of schizophrenia but with little evidence. Simply put, and in the vernacular of c
enturies past, he was a man gone mad. An upwardly mobile, highly successful, single man approaching middle age who was astute enough, the records say, to recognize a calamitous shift in his own mental health and so commit himself to hospital before he might cause any damage to himself or to anyone else. The question is, what made him want to escape? Can it even be called ‘escape’ if he was there willingly? Was he allowed to come and go as he pleased? Was there a schedule of ‘out’ time? If so, how did they know it was safe for him to leave during those hours? Who decided? Did someone go with him? Did someone follow him just to make sure? If he did escape, what was it that made him want to leave the security of the very place he had sought out himself? His ‘condition’, whatever that was? Were there voices in his head? Did Hyde finally defeat Jekyll? And why that day? Was there significance in the numbers? Was he a believer in gematria? Did something happen in his past on that day that acted as a trigger? Was it random? Were there warning signs? Did someone fall asleep on duty? Did someone lose him? If so, why no red alert? Why no consequences? Did he have help? Was there a Chief Brombden? If so, why didn’t the Chief (staying true to his character) snuff him out in the middle of the night in an act of mercy? Why did he end up where he did? Why Museum Station? Why not College or Queen’s Park? Why not Union? Did he have a purpose? A plan? Why was he wearing a sweater in the middle of summer and no shoes? Were they even looking for him? If so, how could they not have found him? His appearance made him stand out like a full moon in a clear night sky. Why didn’t Max see him? He was trained to see people like him. Why didn’t I see him? Why didn’t Rayn? Why didn’t anyone? Why did he zero in on her? Did he think she was someone else? Did he pretend she was someone else? Did he intend to kill himself from the outset? If so, why didn’t he just jump? Why did he have to take her with him? Why wasn’t it someone else? Why wasn’t it me?
Michael Norman Boon. Michael Norman Boon. Michael Norman Boon.
His name is like his face. Permanently there. Inescapable. Whenever I hear even a part of it—a Michael or a Mike or a Norman on the street, at school, online, on TV, the radio, wherever—the whole comes screaming in. Michael Norman Boon. I’ve written his name out a thousand times and burned it. I’ve scratched it into rocks and hurled those rocks into rivers. I’ve built effigies in my head with his name written all over them. I’ve imagined hanging those effigies from trees, beating them, straddling them on the ground, stabbing them and choking them, ripping the stuffing from them. I’ve tied them in my dreams to the back of Stephen and Serra’s truck and dragged them over country roads until the gravel rips the cloth open and I imagine it’s his skin. I imagine it’s his body bouncing back there and I take pleasure in it. I’ve pissed on them. Set them up and shoved them in front of oncoming trains. I’ve sat them in chairs and talked to them. I’ve asked them why and shut my eyes as hard as I can, waiting, waiting for an answer.
Not long before I had my last session with Dr. Carl and moved out west for school I went to visit Max one last time. I didn’t know when I’d see him again. To be honest I didn’t know if I wanted to. He was in one of his storytelling moods. I had never asked him about what happened—I didn’t want to know, really—but for some reason that afternoon he told me about the night he pulled Lyle Govern over for speeding.
Like I said before, I neither defend nor condone what he did. But who am I to judge and what right do I have?
WARDEN & BLOOMINGTON: WHITCHURCH-STOUFFVILLE, ON
Lyle Govern was on his way home. It was past nine. Had he not stopped at the bar he would have missed Max and his life of long hours, money, and casual sexual encounters would have carried on. By all accounts he was a happy man and he would have continued to be so. There was the therapy, but he didn’t really need it. He went mainly for something to do. He looked at it as entertainment. Plus he’d discovered it was a great place to meet women. The trick was to make your appointments in the middle of the day and show up half an hour early. There were two or three shrinks in the same office and so potentially two or three women waiting to tell their life stories. All you had to do was smile and show a little interest and before you knew it you found yourself nodding away, asking questions like the shrink himself. From there it was something like, ‘I’ve got to get back to work after this, but I’d love to hear how that all turned out. My office is just around the corner and I know this great little sushi place. Do you like sushi?’
Max got all this from Lyle Govern in the first couple of minutes. He had a way about him. He put people at ease. They opened up as soon as they met him.
‘So, hey. You seem like a pretty decent guy. You’re not really going to give me a ticket, are you?’
‘Mr. Govern. You said you stopped at the bar after work.’
‘Yeah, for a quick pint. Check the scene, you know?’
‘I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the truck.’
‘Come on. Really? It was one pint, man. I’m sober as a judge.’
‘It’s protocol.’
‘You can make an exception, can’t you? I mean, really, I don’t see why it’s—’
‘Mr. Govern. Please step out of the truck.’
Lyle Govern put his hands on the wheel and stared out the windshield. Whether he was thinking about it or not, it looked like he might drive the pedal to the floor and speed away.
He nodded and undid his seatbelt.
‘Okay. What the hell. You’re just doing your job, right?’ He laughed. ‘It’ll make a great story. Hey, you’ll never guess what happened to me last night. I’m driving along, minding my own business, going a little fast through that speed trap on Bloomington, but nothing crazy. Anyway, there I am driving along when all of a sudden the cherries light up and the siren goes and I’m hauled over by that famous Olympic swimmer cop.’ As he pulled the door handle, Lyle Govern stopped and looked straight at Max. ‘Didn’t think I recognized you, eh?’
Max said nothing. He stepped back to allow Lyle Govern space to exit the truck. The door swung open and he hopped down. The truck dinged incessantly. The lights were on and the key was in the ignition. The door remained open.
Lyle continued: ‘Yeah, I follow sports pretty close. When the Olympics roll around, man, I’m glued to the couch. Seoul. Barcelona. Two silvers. That must’ve been something. Bet you were a little bummed though. That close to gold twice.’
Max furrowed his brow but only slightly and only for a moment. ‘Do you mind shutting your lights off and pulling the keys out of the ignition, Mr. Govern.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He reached inside the truck and the dinging stopped. He closed the door.
Lyle Govern turned to face Max. They were the same height, close to the same age. Their features were not entirely dissimilar. In another life they might have been brothers.
‘Say, what about an autograph after you do your thing here?’
‘I’ll need you to face the truck, put your hands on the hood, and spread your feet.’
Lyle Govern laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’
Max didn’t say anything. Lyle Govern shrugged and did what was asked of him.
‘Man, the story’s getting better by the minute. Hey, you should’ve seen him work me over, I’ll say. Christ, I was shaking. Man, I didn’t think I was going to make it out of there alive.’
Max didn’t say anything. He stood behind him. Patted him down from head to foot.
Lyle Govern looked over his shoulder and down. ‘You know, usually someone buys me a drink first.’
Max stood and took a step back. ‘You can turn around now.’
Lyle Govern turned around. ‘So am I clean?’
The sun was low and the day’s light had all but died.
Max held a notebook and a small flashlight in one hand. He was writing in the notebook. ‘Do you ever ride the subway, Mr. Govern?’
Lyle Govern shrugged. ‘Yeah, sure. When I’m in the city I ride it all
the time. Pretty good pool to fish in, to be honest. I’ve done alright on occasion.’
Max continued to write. ‘Have you ever boarded at Museum Station?’
‘Shit, I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.’ Lyle Govern drove his hands into his pockets and lifted his chin at Max. ‘So what are you writing there, Doc? What’s the diagnosis?’
Max looked up from his notebook and closed it. ‘Do you pay attention to the news, Mr. Govern?’
‘Depends how hot the anchor lady is.’ He snickered.
Max didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He waited.
Hands still in his pockets, Lyle Govern shrugged. ‘Yeah, sure. I listen to the news. I like to be, you know, abreast of what’s happening. Heh heh.’
‘Mm-hmn.’
Lyle Govern crossed his arms and shook his head. ‘Man, tough crowd tonight.’
‘There is no crowd here, Mr. Govern. You may have noticed.’
Lyle Govern looked around. It was dark and they were alone. He was nodding when Max turned and walked over to the police car. Max placed the notebook on the dash, retrieved a magazine, and returned to where Lyle Govern was standing beside his truck. He hadn’t moved.
‘Mr. Govern, do you recall what happened a year ago today at Museum Station?’
‘A year ago.’
‘Yes. A year ago. One year ago today.’
Lyle Govern touched the back of his head. ‘Listen, man, I can’t even remember the name of the last chick I banged.’
‘Your sex life is not news, Mr. Govern.’
‘Neither’s what happened a year ago.’ He laughed. His laughter had changed. ‘Am I right?’
Max nodded. ‘Yes. You are right.’ He unrolled the magazine he’d taken from the police car, flipped open to a page, and held it in front of Lyle Govern’s face. ‘Have you ever seen this woman?’
Lyle Govern folded his arms and looked at the picture. ‘Shit, only in my dreams, man.’
