We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night

by Joel Thomas Hynes

  9

  Couple of lads from Halifax, Gavin and Trevor, round about Johnny’s age, one half of a reggae-type band. Ska, Trevor calls it, but more like World says Gavin. They been blasting their latest demo for the past half hour, looking back to Johnny and shouting and nodding, fishing for his approval, but Johnny cant decipher one song from the next, cant tell which is the verse which is the chorus where one song ends or another begins, cant make out the lyrics, and the ones he does make out dont sound like they’re sayin all that much of anything. Scratchy muffled nonsense drone. But Johnny, having spent the previous eight or nine hours limping and scuffing and cursing and bitching his way along a dismal and desolate stretch of highway with all hope for a ride, and subsequently all hope of that west coast beach, all hope in humanity crushed and mulched and dashed to hell and back, grateful to be in off that fucken road, Johnny nods his enthusiasm from the back seat of the swank Ford Explorer that must belong to one of their daddies because no way in fuck could either of them be making a buck off their shoddy music, or their looks, or their fashion sense. Frazzled dreadlocks and filthy Mexican-style ponchos and rainbow bandanas and the sour stench of garlic enough to knock up a dead nun. And hey Johnny, you could be the band manager! Johnny in his shabby and shithauled ragged old suit with the cuff of the left leg stained almost to the knee from some mystery fluid he stood in near a gas station outside Edmundston, and the elbow with the gaping hole from where it hooked on the broken door handle of a prehistoric Volkswagen driven by that wild-eyed old trapper type who couldnt or wouldnt speak a word of English. Johnny’s face and hair is that greasy he’s half afraid to light a cigarette. Cant even remember what colour his shirt was. No amount of scratching to appease the itch. Incessant grungy damp in his boots. Manage these hippie Rasta fuckers right into the ground, Johnny would.

  All the way to Kingston though, so say the lads. Meeting the other half of the band somewhere outside Montreal and then motoring on to Kingston. That’s a good potent run, hippie stink or no. Scraggly Trevor, the one with the dreadlocks, from the front passenger seat passes Johnny a huge joint as thick as Johnny’s middle finger and Johnny sucks it back and coughs and hacks and shouts over the blaring drone that his father lives in Kingston, perfect, perfect. Johnny nods drowsily when he’s asks what he thinks of the weed and the two lads start laughing, laughing.

  Dude, there’s lots more where that came from, lots more.

  Trevor produces a small black canvas bag and holds it up and thumps the side of it, supposedly to show how packed full of weed it is. Johnny’s fuzzy nod of approval. The lads start giggling again. The evening sun sinking leisurely behind the distant treeline. Gavin flicks on his driving lights, turns the music down. The weed hits Johnny like that pink milky hospital anaesthetic shit and he feels harmless and cocooned, dog-tired and stunned, buckles his seatbelt and huddles deep into the soft leather upholstery, taps the urn jutting bulky and cumbersome from his left side pocket, saltwater smell, a cavern out there, a cave, ghostly heart throbbing from some great vast distance within . . .

  . . . north side of the harbour. Me and Mikey and my dog Scrapper, shaggy little terrier, fucken savage. We’re hopping the coves. There’s one scanty inlet we can never get to, one spot we can never get past. The bank around it is all loose shale and rotted roots and moss, so’s you gotta hug the cliff good and tight and sidestep with your back to the harbour. Past that there’s a narrow, slimy landing where you can turn around. Lookin down from the ledge there’s about a ten-foot drop, straight down to a little rocky beach. Wave comes in and the beach is gone. Draws back out and the beach is there again. Wave crashes in and the beach is gone.

  Timing, Mikey, that’s all’s to it.

  We can see across to the other side and there’s a cave. A real cave. Had our eyes on it for the past two summers. Old stories and treasure and all that foolishness. This day we meant business, brought a length of rope, a hatchet, pocketknives, matches. Mikey got half a dozen Rothmans he swiped from his nan’s cupboard. I got us nearly a pound of bologna, two bags of Hostess plain, two Big Turks, only one can of Pepsi. Marked it down at the shop in Tanya’s name. This is all jammed into a green army knapsack I found down by the twine shed last summer. We’re going for it, we’re making it over to that cave and hunkering down and having a feast and trying out them cigarettes.

  This is the day.

  Here’s how I got it sorted, how I explains it to Mikey:

  You gotta jump when the wave comes in, when the beach is full of water. Are ya listening to me? Might feel like youre jumping into the water, but by the time you lands the wave should be back out again. Then boot er on up over the rocks to the other side. No dawdling, less you wants to get sucked out the harbour. All about timing, see? Sound decent?

  We flips a nickel for who’s to jump first. Comes up tails. Mikey gapes out over the edge, dread-fuelled excuses dancing in his eyes. But I’m standin right there and he’d have to push his way around me to climb back up the bank. But I aint budging, and he knows it. He wants to flip again, two out of three. I looks at him. He watches the wave below crash in on the thin strip of beach. Four or five feet deep when it’s full. Over either of our heads. And savage, angry, violent, the way it smashes against the rocks. The beach drains and he shifts his weight to his right leg and starts to push off but I grabs him by the arm and holds him back and explains the timing again, how he needs to jump the moment the beach is swamped, no later. We waits and watches, letting the wave do its thing. He makes a couple of false goes, then retreats with his back pressed against the cliff face and I can tell he lost the nerve, if ever he had it in the first place. He wants to go back up, take the cigs and grub down to Murphy’s old smoke shack where he says he heard there was a stash of skin magazines. He’s been obsessed with skin mags ever since we found a bunch of fucked-up ones down in old Wally B’s bus. He’s starting to get that high-pitched whine thing he does when he’s sookin. Says it’s not safe. Says he’s not feeling good. Jesus. He wants me to listen. Listen, hear that? But there’s nothing only the waves on the rocks. Listen Johnny. Sounds like someone . . . But I aint buying that shit this time—people calling out from the woods, weird noises, people laughing out in the meadow in the nighttime. He’s been getting on with that shit all summer, lookin for attention. I gives him a little nudge with my knee. He says he’ll go if I goes first but I knows that to be bullshit. He puts his hand on me shoulder and gives a little shove and I whops him in the guts and grabs his jacket at the same time so’s he dont fall over the ledge. He stands there gawkin out across the bay holding his belly and tryin not to look winded. Shit, he says, shit Johnny. He knows he’s got no choice. He makes another false go. Cant do it. Next time the wave comes in I gives him a bit of help and down he goes, hollering, squealing like a girl, nine feet, six, four feet above the water. But no splash when he lands, the crunch of his feet on the glistening beach rocks, then a mad scramble up the rocks to the other side. Perfect timing. But then I sees he’s turned around, Mikey, searching, dazed, panicked. He’s only got one sneaker on. His left sneaker is slammed in against the mouth of the beach and the wave sucks it halfways out when it draws back. He’s having trouble on his feet. Scrambling, half crawling back down the rocks and leaning out to grab at the sneaker as it passes, and then he’s screamin, rooting at his sock and his gob is like a blood blister, pleading up at me with this agonizing twist to his face and he gags a bit, dry heaves, then falls head first into the swell and he’s under. All’s I can see of him is the pale blue stripe on the shoulder of his windbreaker. His head comes spluttering up and he roars something I cant understand. The wave drives him back in and he stands for a moment and screeches and falls and then he’s snatched up and jerked back under again. I’ve got the rope out now and I wraps an end three or four times around my wrist and hand and aims the heavy coil towards the centre of the beach and drops it, and when Mikey comes back up again his arm by chance snags on to the coil of rope. And dont he fucken cling to it
.

  Hard for me to keep good footing on the slimy ledge and I slips at first and the rope goes slack but then it tightens again and I’m almost pulled over myself. Scrapper is pacing back and forth underneath me too, whining and shit. I makes a roar at him and he cowers off around the corner. I digs my heels in and leans back against the cliff face and starts heaving and hauling on that rope for all I’m worth. And Mikey aint light neither, soaking wet as he is and thrashing and twisting about and crying and moaning and still pleading and begging me to help, C’mon Johnny, c’mon, help me Johnny, help me. And I roars back at him that I am fucken well helping, that’s he’s gotta help me! Corner of me eye, I can see his sneaker is well out into the open water. Me hands are numb and my arms and shoulders are flaming, burning tired, but Mikey’s only about three feet away from me now, dangling above the swell. He manages to get his hand up and I reaches for it but both of our hands are too slippery. Next thing I got a good grip on his hair and he’s shrieking and yelping and I hauls him up like that, by the hair, onto the ledge and out of danger. But he still wont stop with the bawling and yelping and I’m shouting at him to shut up, Shut up Mikey. Youre up now, I got ya, shut the fuck up! He peels his sock off then and we sees his shattered foot, the bone splintered out through the side of a massive gash running from his ankle to the tip of his little toe. Blood. Mikey howling. His arm around me shoulder as I hoists him around the tight landing and drags him up across the snarly bank of trees. Sour, vinegary smell, something goopy and hot runnin down me back and I turns to see he’s hurled into me collar and I wanna choke him so bad. His head is lobbing forward and his eyes are half closed so I slap him hard across the face and he comes to and moans, cries out like a youngster, wailing, It hurts, it hurts Johnny. Oh my God, oh shit, it hurts Johnny. I smacks him again and pulls more of his weight onto me shoulders and there’s grass under my feet now, solid ground, and I tries to set him down but he clings to me neck and so I got no choice but to trudge and slog on up across the Reddigans’ steep boggy meadow with Mikey across my back like some scene from a war movie. Scrapper yipping and yowling up ahead of us. At some point I slips and falls and we both tumbles to the ground and Mikey is howling in me ear how much it hurts. I cant take it, the grating noise of Mikey’s snotting and Scrapper lickin at the barf on me coat and the panic in Mikey’s eyes. My fist jabs out three or four times square into his lips and now they’re bloodied and Mikey is worse and then someone’s coming running down across the meadow shouting for us to break it up b’ys, break it up!

  Sitting on the Reddigans’ porch when Mikey’s father, Uncle Austin, Pius’s brother, pulls up in his old brown Chevy and he dont so much as glance in Mikey’s direction but marches right towards me, his hands clamped around me throat.

  Little bastard. That’s all you are. Little blood of a bitch. Bastard, they shoulda tossed you out with the goddamn afterbirth.

  Reddigan sayin C’mon Aus, save it, pulling Austin off Johnny. Mikey is moaning and howling as he climbs into the cab of the truck. Austin tellin Johnny not to dare show his face across their yard for the rest of the summer.

  Youre trouble, nothing only fucken trouble.

  Johnny tryna make eye contact with Mikey as the truck burns down the gravel road, anxiously willing him to come to his senses and relay the heroic tale of how Johnny fished and lugged him from the water with a goddamn rope and then carried him on his back all the way up the cliff! Johnny turns to old Reddigan, who’s wadding a hefty chew of tobacco into his cheek, and young Johnny, sobbing now, young Johnny says I saved him, I did. It wasnt my fault. Reddigan spits ominously across the dirt yard and shakes his head and nods in the direction of another approaching vehicle. Johnny looks up to see a dark churning cloud of dust sprawling behind Pius’s pickup as it fishtails onto the lower road. Johnny stares dumbly as he catches Pius’s savage blazing eye through the filthy windshield. The pickup grinding to a gritty halt outside Reddigan’s fence and then Johnny scuttling, scurrying over the porch railing, Scrapper hot on his heels, pounding the sod for all hell back down across the meadow beneath the hastily darkened skyline, damp gloomy gust of wind blustering under the waistline of his putrid coat.

  More anguished groans, shouting. The sensation of being tased. Big Turks. No need to wonder if Johnny knows what a taser gun feels like. Like feeling more awake than youve ever felt in your life while youre crazed to stay awake. Every muscle in your body. Pounding. Searing. Useless. It’s fucked, We’re fucked, ahhh dude, we’re so fucked . . . Rothmans kings. A bristly thing, thick and warm, earthy, kicking and twitching next to Johnny’s cheek. Sweet, thick grassy stench of shit. More shouting. The edge of hysteria. Check and see if he’s dead. Hostess plain. You check. Dude, you were fucken driving! Dark figure silhouetted on the road, limping, holding a rag to its head, hobbled. Am I bleeding? Am I? Chalky white film dusting these leather seats. Old Scrapper. Pius on Reddigan’s porch waving some sorta tool, a mallet maybe. Sliver of glass gouged into Johnny’s palm, the thumb dead and useless. No pain, never any pain. Antlers? Airbags. Fur.

  Hey . . . ahh . . . hey buddy . . . are you alright in there? Can you hear me? Hello?

  Moose. Struck a moose Johnny. See that lump of mangled guts and grizzle and fur on the hood? That’s a moose Johnny. On the mainland somewhere. Middle of nowhere. Quebec. Who knows. See the light near that little farmhouse down the road a ways? That means people. That means cops. French ones. Heading this way.

  Hey buddy? Did he say his name? Hey . . . are you alright?

  He’s dead. Dude, he’s dead. We’re so screwed. Dude we’re so fucked.

  I didnt see it. It’s like it appeared there. I didnt see it walking out . . .

  Dude, I said, I screamed at you, I said moose, moose, and you were like . . .

  That guy’s dead in there. Hey!

  You can get sued if you touch someone and they, like . . .

  Sirens Johnny. You know what that means. Johnny chokes off a groan as he unhitches the seatbelt, bats a splintered hoof away from his face. His left hand settles on the urn, intact. Thank Christ. Madonna. No one said it was gonna be a breeze. Johnny lifts his right leg and boots the crumpled passenger door and the door falls open but keeps swinging out and drops from its hinges into the ditch. Sirens. Gavin or Trevor, one of these clowns, helping Johnny out of the doomed and done-for rig.

  Youre alive! He’s alive.

  Johnny pulls the glass from his palm and the blood spurts across Gavin or Trevor’s poncho. The two of them standin there gawp-jawed and stupid while Johnny bends down and scoops up a wallet. Sirens. Two sets. Police and ambulance. He pulls a driver’s licence from a sticky leather folder.

  Hey that’s my wallet . . .

  Gavin Patrick Gallant. 410 Woodland Avenue. Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. January 12th, 1991. Hello Gavin.

  Hey . . . ahhh . . . that’s my . . .

  That’s your full name and address and date of birth . . . How many passengers did you have tonight?

  Wha . . . ?

  Was there anyone else, besides you and your boyfriend, riding in the vehicle tonight Gavin Patrick Gallant of 410 Woodland Avenue in Dartmouth?

  Wha . . . ?

  Was there anyone fucken else . . .

  No! No man. No. Just me and Trev. No.

  Good. That poncho you got on, that’s the same one here on your licence?

  Wha . . . ?

  Give it to me.

  Wha . . . ?

  Give me that fucken shawl or cloak thing youre wearing, now.

  Gavin almost graciously struggling out of the poncho and handing it across to Johnny. Trevor staring blankly out the highway towards the looming sirens.

  Where’s that fucken bag of dope?

  Wha . . . ? It’s ahhh . . . it’s behind that . . . see the white stump . . .

  You fellas took the time to stash your dope and never bothered to check and see if I was alive or dead or dying?

  What? No man . . . no . . .

  Fuck you fucken both.

>   Johnny slips Gavin’s licence into his bloodied handkerchief pocket and claws his way up out of the ditch in the direction of the stump. He rummages around in the dusky light until his hand latches on to a thin canvas strap. He hefts the bag, grins at the lads, nods towards the wreckage and whistles. The crumpled accordion of the front end, stinking black river of blood spilling down over the fender, mammoth garbled creature splayed across the hood with its hind legs and left rack speared through the windshield, broken skull twisted the wrong way around. One bulbous martyred eye failing, failing.

  Thanks for the ride fellas. Hope your daddy’s got good coverage.

  And with that Johnny spins, almost elegantly, on his heels and saunters into the thick black woods and disappears.

  Two Rasta hippie boys left shell-shocked and baffled.

  Spirits broken, weed pilfered, road trip dead in the water.

  Fuck that, hey Johnny. Hang around and let some French coppers drill you for info and then find you got no papers and suss out the teardrops and you knows they’d find some bullshit reason to haul you in and run your prints and then youre fucked altogether. Locked up in some French jail where no one knows how to fucken talk. And youd be weeks or months waiting on an escort back home, then banged up for another few months before youre standing trial for armed robbery and fuck knows what else. Shiner with the whole of HMP turned against you. Right back where you started, only worse. And for all the word about French cops? Fuck that.

  This is Johnny’s rationale and he staggers and stumbles warily, sightless down a haggard meandering old Ski-Doo path in the blackest pitch night deep in the middle of the backwoods of Quebec.