Arctic Smoke

by Randy Nikkel Schroeder

  “Yeah, cripes, had a big-ass plate of fried mushrooms li’l while ago, a breakfast of champignons if you will.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Left my bagel and coffee down by a beaver pond.”

  “Why don’t we go to Humongous Pizza Slice, maybe have a three-cheese brunch, visit Mooch and—”

  “No way.”

  Alistair tapped the pipe. “Yuck Foo’s, for hot-and-sour?”

  Lor paused, felt the old affection in his blood. Unable to squelch it, he nodded. “Okay.” Smiled. “Yeah. Little early for hot-and-sour. But yeah.”

  Alistair grinned, crinkled his eyes, snuffed his pipe. Halfway out the window he said, “But no Slurpees, boy-o. I’ve seen the fucking slime-trail of suburboid effluvium you’ve been leaving lately.”

  Lor dropped to the ground, where Alistair put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Deal?” Alistair said.

  “Deal.”

  † † †

  Lor’s mind drifted for almost four weeks, scattered over snowdrifts and wind-polished ice. He watched the Oldman River steam through the valley, choked with slush. He tried to master the magpie guitar, adjusting for its lack of sustain. He wandered Spookleton streets and alleys; they were remarkably resistant to the Weird, everything Underwood was not.

  He forgot his powder. He was almost happy.

  Every so often he would see Frontenac, puffing, tromping across the street or buying stamps in the 7-Eleven, dressed in an overstuffed parka and a pair of filthy Kodiak boots.

  “Hello,” Frontenac would yell. “Not now. Busy.”

  Alistair was friendly enough, but preoccupied, and always off to meet with shadowy companions for even shadowier purposes, face hidden beneath the brim of that new white hat. He would often climb out the window after dark, then return with heavy parcels in the wee hours. When Lor did manage to hook up with his old friend, they would go for green tea at Yuck Foo’s, to tell old stories and giggle like schoolboys.

  Gradually, the tiny stage in the chapel of the Spookleton Our Lady of Grace Church filled with Alistair’s midnight parcels—a Celtic harp, a weathered bass, a hodgepodge of stomp boxes and percussion—crotales, bongos, temple blocks. A tiny Ludwig drum kit.

  “That Fatty is gonna love this.” Alistair tapped a battered hi-hat.

  Lor frowned at the gear. “All hot, right?”

  “Fucking-A.”

  Fatty was an endless source of amusement for Lor, who especially liked the way the kid’s voice would squirrel up to soprano.

  “What kind of drums do you like?” Lor would ask.

  “You!”

  Sometimes Lor and Fatty would go to the Silver Fox Pub. Fatty would guzzle a bottle of white wine in the alley, then enter the bar to drain infinite gins with soda, and flirt with every man and woman who crossed his path. In the bathroom, he would pee standing at the urinal with pants and boxers down around his ankles, wiggling his bare ass and humming the theme from a children’s show called Mr. Dressup. Lor, having no idea who Mr. Dressup was, just laughed and took Fatty’s word for it.

  One moonless night, while they navigated icy streets in Fatty’s four-by-four, a few seconds of symphonic static and eerie vocals washed from the radio. Fatty stopped the truck and fell silent, fingers twitching on the wheel, eyes closed.

  “Did you catch it?” he whispered.

  “Catch what?” Lor shook his head.

  “The kid’s manic-depressive,” Alistair said, later, sipping green tea from a tiny china cup. “One minute he’s off his nut, the next he’s down in his mouth, bummed, sucking the life out of me—like, totally zap-o.”

  Lor bit an egg roll. “And that guitar case he lugs around and never opens. He’s wigged, for sure.”

  “Wigged? Fuck, he’s madcapped to the nuts, bro, a nuciferous zonkoid, looking for something, all of us are, but different, hear? The kid’s driven by some kooky inner demons, f ’sure, bet my life on it. He’s lost. Irredeemable.”

  But the kid would redeem himself every time they jammed. He was that good. Sometimes both Lor and Alistair would stop playing and watch, mouths open, as Fatty filled the spaces with syncopations or thundering quads, always dynamic and tasteful.

  “It ain’t punk,” Lor said.

  “Really, kid, you don’t belong with this band,” Alistair said.

  “Least I got one.” A sophisticated pitapat on the bongos.

  Rusty, if possible, got worse with practice. His timing was atrocious. He missed entire notes. His frets bustled, his pickups buzzed, his amp barked. His tone would have sucked in the sixties; it was unbearable now.

  “Yes,” Dawn Cherry told Alistair. “My brother is going with you or the tour is off. Understand?”

  “Fuck you,” said Alistair.

  They built an eccentric repertoire of songs, culled by Alistair from every nook and crack of pop culture: Iggy Pop, Killing Joke, Loverboy. Some Underwood Dolls, MC5, The Slits, entirely too much punk for Lor’s liking.

  It all sounded like shit.

  “No way,” Lor said, a week before Christmas. “I draw the line at Van Halen.”

  “Come on, amigo, you have no sense of irony. Lighten up for once.”

  “Forget it. Ancient stuff. Shit. Total non-punk. You surprise me, Al.”

  On the morning of Christmas Eve, Dawn Cherry had a surprise for the whole crew.

  “Happy Hanukkah,” she said, holding out a fan of papers.

  “Whatsis?” Ballooni said.

  Dawn Cherry smiled. Sweetly, Lor thought.

  “Your whole tour booked.” She put an arm around Rusty’s shoulders.

  “When are you guys going?” Lor said.

  Dawn Cherry dimpled her cheek with a forefinger. “Aren’t you going to thank me? Alistair? Any graciousness in you at all?”

  “Yeah, fuck, thanks. How do we get there?”

  “You,” said Fatty.

  Dawn Cherry cuffed him. “Fatty’ll drive. As for the gear, some of my clients are driving a van to Yellowknife,” she said. “Tonight, actually, right after the cabaret, ’round midnight. We can load most of your stuff in there.”

  “When are you guys going?” Lor said.

  “Clients.” Alistair glared at Dawn Cherry, eyes crowfeeting. “Some of your clients. Like, peelers?”

  “Oh for god’s sake,” Dawn Cherry said. “Spare me your predictable moralizing. Live the life first. Enter the quiddity.”

  Lor smashed his hand against the neck of the magpie guitar. “When?” he demanded.

  Everyone turned to stare at him. The guitar jangled.

  “Lordy,” Dawn Cherry said. “What does it matter? February fifteenth. Alistair, don’t you start with—”

  “No.” Lor’s face flushed.

  “No?” Dawn Cherry and Alistair, simultaneously.

  “Al, you fuckin’ told me Christmas at the latest.”

  Alistair shrugged.

  Lor felt a cuticle snag inside his fist. “And you have a plan, right? For the court date?”

  Alistair stroked his chin.

  “Alistair?” Dawn Cherry said.

  “Oh, hell yeah, dig me ’migos, shit yeah. ’Course.”

  Dawn Cherry sighed.

  “Listen Lor,” she said. “If it’s that important for you to get out of here, you can ride with my clients tonight, right after we load out. You can meet up later in Yellowknife with the rest of these assholes you call your band.”

  “No!” Lor’s lower lip numbed against his teeth. He squeezed his shirt pocket, felt the reassuring squish of his dust-pouch. “I’m not riding anywhere. Christ, I’m not going at all. Don’t you know this?”

  Dawn Cherry stared mutely, then looked at Alistair.

  Alistair shrugged. “Lor’s shedding friends.” He looked suddenly sad. “Just not his gig any more. Maybe never was.”

  † † †

  Five o’clock, Christmas Eve. An early moon, buoyant in a bowl of aqua-blue. Winding alleyways paved with ne
w snow. Christmas lights a-twinkle, strung across gingerbread suburbs. Neighbourhood pubs pouring steam and chatter and the smell of hot cinnamon into the streets.

  Across from Galt Gardens, a flock of kids sang “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” on the steps of a stone mansion. They grinned and waved—crabapple cheeks and knitted mittens, clear high voices in the evening air. A white Scottish terrier barked steam as the front door opened, and a jolly old man emerged with a tray of overfilled mugs. He spilled hot chocolate and marshmallow onto the steps, where it hissed and puffed to the delight of the carollers.

  “Shitheads,” said Alistair.

  Lor saw a young woman stop briefly to watch, her honey hair streaked with moonlight. She seemed to sing along against some chaos or self-doubt. She had the most delightful cheeks.

  Fatty turned the truck with a jerk, parked at the Galt Gardens meter lot. The headlights lit a stand of aspen before blinking out.

  “Shit,” Lor said. “There are still leaves in there.”

  “Yeah.” Alistair’s face was hidden beneath the brim of his hat.

  Aspen leaves trembled in the breeze, tips lit with frost and blue twilight. Beyond the aspens, a dense weave of thicker, blacker trees.

  “Jesus,” Alistair whispered.

  Lor nodded. “Yeah.”

  Fatty snorted Slurpee from a jumbo wax cup, then leaned over Lor’s lap.

  “’Scuse me while I get my nuts out of the glovebox,” he said.

  He pulled out a ball of tinfoil and grinned.

  “What’s in the foil?” Lor said.

  “You. Come on.”

  Fatty opened the door and reached into the back to get his never-opened guitar case, then sucked more Slurpee.

  Lor opened the passenger door. “What’s in that case anyway, Fats?”

  “Yeeo!” Fatty dropped the case and bent over, holding his temples. “Slurpee head, wo.”

  Alistair sat, face dark beneath the brim.

  “Al. What the hell? Let’s go. Soundcheck.”

  Alistair nodded, slowly, and removed his hat.

  Lor shut the door and peered into the gloom at the back of the truck. “What is it, man?”

  Alistair pointed at the woods. “That’s where he fucking lost it, bro, in there, ten years ago, right? I’m, like, suddenly creeped out to the eyeholes. Look at the trees.”

  Lor sighed. “This was your idea, Al. Your expedition.”

  “No, man. His. His.”

  They stared at each other in silence. Fatty clunked outside the four-by-four, kicking back Slurpee and jiggling his guitar case.

  “It’ll be fine,” Lor said.

  “How do you know?”

  Lor paused. “I don’t.”

  Alistair grabbed the headrest and leaned forward. “What do you think happened to him? Did he die?”

  “Franklin?” Lor shrugged.

  “Jesus. He had no right to disappear, without a word to anyone, without so much as a forwarding address, without . . . .”

  Outside Fatty dropped his case. “Whoopsie daisy,” they heard him say.

  “And his little brother, here,” Alistair continued. “With the guitar case full of flies and the small ice and . . . what’n the fuck are we doing, Lor?”

  Lor sighed again.

  “Yeeow!” Outside the truck Fatty doubled over, fell to the snow and began to roll. “Wo, wo, wo.”

  Lor lit up a smoke, match flashing the gloom. He put his hand on Alistair’s. It was warm.

  “Come on,” he said. “Brother.”

  Alistair nodded. “Brother.”

  Lor hoisted his guitar and opened the door. Just before he climbed out he double-checked his shirt pocket. He suddenly didn’t feel anything like a brother.

  Good.

  The bag of dust was still there, plump with glitter, nestled at his heart.

  † † †

  They followed a winding path through the trees.

  “This place is dark.” Ballooni eyed the trees, mixing board hoisted over his shoulder.

  Lor felt a slow crush in his lungs, like the air was turning to slush. This place was dark. And somehow old—old poplars sick of moonlight, old ice jammed in barky gashes, leaves that refused to die.

  “The whole path is strung with lanterns, fool,” Dawn Cherry said. “Cheery and bright.”

  “Yeah,” Ballooni nodded. “But it’s so . . . dark.”

  Dawn Cherry sighed more deeply than usual. “Dazed, doltish, puerile, cretinous.”

  “Where’s the union hall?” Lor watched lanterns twinkle and sway in light breezes. He wished so badly to be alone.

  “At the end of the path,” Dawn Cherry said.

  They followed her through the trees, under waterfalls of silver light. Fatty whistled, shaking his guitar case and flipping the bellboy’s tinfoil ball, bouncing it off Rusty’s head. Alistair trailed, silent.

  Lor’s nostrils stung with poplar scent. “How long is this path?”

  Alistair nodded from beneath the white hat.

  “We’re here,” Dawn Cherry said. “It’s a two-minute walk.”

  It had seemed like two hours.

  The pathway opened to blue-black sky. At the clearing’s edge, moonlit, stood the Carpenters’ and Joiners’ Union Hall, nut-crackered between an oak and a clump of icy black poplar.

  “Yow,” said Fatty. “Zers.”

  Someone had scattered bales of hay around the hall and lit a batch of outdoor candles. Slitted windows seeped red light across the snow, up the walls and flagpole, to a wooden angel on the roof.

  “That’s one creepy nativity scene,” Lor said.

  Fatty flipped the tinfoil ball, caught it in his elbow’s crook, rolled it to his palm. “Come on. My nuts are freezing.”

  They followed him in, except for Lor, who stopped by a window. He could smell glass again. The lights came on inside, washing out over the trees.

  Then the leaves stilled. The sky hollowed. The world stopped. No wind, no bells, no voices. Lor looked up at cold stars, and suddenly felt more alone than he ever had in his life.

  “Al?” He hustled for the door. “Alistair?”

  † † †

  “Bloody blue Goddess. You guys some kind of punk group?” A short, chalk-skinned bald man, thin pigtail, round glasses, and fringed vest.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Alistair set down a guitar.

  “It’s Pixie,” Dawn Cherry said, from the side of the stage. “From the other band. Pixie—Alistair, Lor, my partner Fatty. You know Rusty.”

  “You guys have five minutes to finish soundcheck,” Pixie said. “We have some expensive gear to set up.”

  “Who are you?” Alistair said.

  “Mystic Rhythms. You’re opening for us. Five minutes.”

  Alistair glared at Dawn Cherry. “The fuck?”

  Dawn Cherry put a finger to her lips and shook her head, while Pixie uncased a rack of effects. Two tall blonde women clattered up the stairs carrying an acoustic guitar, a mandolin, a violin.

  “Twins,” Fatty said, twirling drumsticks.

  “Hey Dawn Cherry,” said one of the twins, a low alto. “Sorry we’re a little late, but . . . who are these jerks?”

  Dawn Cherry closed her eyes. “The openers. I think I told you.”

  “What, some kind of old school . . . ” the twin looked nauseated. “. . . punk group?”

  “This is a folk gig,” said the other twin.

  “Forget it,” Pixie said, unrolling a snake of bundled wire. “They get half an hour, who cares. No lights, low volume.”

  “Fuck you,” Alistair said. “We—”

  “Hey!” Dawn Cherry stepped between them. Then whispered, “’Stair, I’m doing you a big favour. Don’t screw it up.”

  Fatty played a snare roll, a cymbal crash.

  “Too loud,” Pixie said.

  “Least I got one. Woo.” Another ratatat, punctuated by three loud flams. “Hey, you guys know how to play acoustic?”

  “Dork.” One of the twin
s snorted. “See this violin? An electric five-string ZETA, not that that means anything to you.”

  “More money on this stage than you’ll probably make in a lifetime,” the other twin added.

  “I have been soundly chastened.” Fatty rose to bow. “Do you play the skin flute as well, m’ladies, perhaps the bone-phone or the scrotal harp? Because if so, I have a booking for you right here between my—”

  “Fatty!” Dawn Cherry turning red. “Jesus H. Christ of Latter-day Fucking Saints!”

  Lor set his guitar against the amp and peeled the foil from a new pack of Lucky Strikes. People were starting to trickle in.

  “That’s a right bloody long walk on that pathway,” said a starchy old Englishwoman, leaning on a silver cane. “We might just as well be parked somewhere in the Belgian Congo.”

  She was followed by a plump man with thick glasses and a camera. Somehow familiar.

  Lor lit up, exhaled through nostrils. “Al, who’s that guy at the door?”

  Alistair squinted from beneath the hat. “That’s the juicebag from Humongous Pizza Slice. That spy, Malachi Frump.”

  “Frump?”

  “Something is not right here,” Alistair whispered to himself.

  “What do you mean?

  No reply.

  “Al?”

  “Hey twins, want to go for a hoot?” Fatty, chewing a drumstick.

  One twin snuffled. “You kidding us? We don’t do drugs, not even aspirin.”

  “Enough,” Pixie said, “Off the stage. There’s a real soundcheck to do here.”

  Alistair looked down, shoulders quaking. He stomped over to Dawn Cherry, face hidden beneath his brim.

  “. . . these assholes?” Lor heard him say.

  “’Stair, please.” Dawn Cherry unwrapped a long banner, stapler in one fist. Alistair watched her unfurl the banner, then staple it across the back of the stage.

  “The fuck is that?” he said.

  “Can you read?” she said.

  Lor read: Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Solstice from the Working Class Feminist Collective. It was a very long banner.

  “That’s who’s sponsoring this cab?” Alistair said.

  Dawn Cherry nodded. “Surprised? That’s no surprise.”

  “I? What?” Alistair said. “You can’t be a stripper and a feminist.”

  Dawn Cherry didn’t bother to respond.