The Not So Simple Life (A Comedy)

by Shea, Stephen

  I stepped out of Odin, onto the road and for the first time in three years my foot landed on Stewart soil. I felt unsteady, fearing the earth wouldn't accept me here.

  With my suitcase in hand I trudged towards the house, walking awkwardly across the gravel and up the driveway. As I put my hand to the front door I felt a rush of fearful emotion, as if the house that had kept me safe from the elements all those years as a child recognized me now and was whispering: away, away, go back.

  I opened the door.

  Father, I'm home.

  I felt my way into the darkened porch. A moment later the light came on and my mother appeared, Christopher and Lloyd behind her.

  "Mom," I whispered.

  She stood on the step, fragile and aged, bent-backed as if she had been carrying an invisible rice bag for fifty odd years. Her face had manufactured more wrinkles. When had I last seen her? I couldn't remember her hair being that grey.

  "Casey, my son," she rasped, perhaps introducing me to my brothers.

  Remember him? He's the one who went away. Just phones once in awhile. Goes on vacation and doesn't tell me.

  She stepped down and shuffled towards me, her eyes watery. I lowered my suitcase to the floor, opened my arms: it was like hugging a sparrow, every bone thin and almost weightless; designed for flight, forever grounded. "You came home," she spoke into my chest. "Good boy, you came home." She pulled back, put her hand up to my face. "Casey Stewart."

  Then Christopher took my hand and I hugged Lloyd, thought momentarily of saying happy birthday, little brother, but that would be pointless now.

  They led me into the house, Lloyd picking up my suitcase in his callused hands.

  There was a vague crush of people milling about the dining room, but I only glanced at them because I didn't want to catch anyone's eye. The three of us stood beside the coat closet, no one seemed to want to go any farther inside.

  "How was the trip?" Lloyd asked. He squinted up at me, his leathery face had aged, the cleft in his chin was deeper now. He was only twenty-seven wasn't he? Time was a heavier thing in this land.

  "Good." I felt awkward. I hadn't seen him for three years, shouldn't we be talking about something more important? "Everything was good. How's Dad?"

  "Not well," Christopher answered.

  "What is it?"

  "A stroke, we think, the doc's trying to figure it out."

  "When will he get better?"

  A silence. Oh, Jesus. I didn't want my hunch to be right.

  "He wants to see you," Mom said, finally. And something in my stomach turned over, opened up as if I had swallowed a black hole. "He might be awake now."

  I don't want to see him, I thought. I had traveled all this way to be overtaken by an age old fright, a childhood fear. Mom had disappeared down the hall.

  I followed Lloyd and Christopher into the dining room. The wagon wheel chandelier was too bright. Joanna was seated at the table, talking to our neighbors, Dan and Peggy Whittle and Aunt Nancy. Sitting one chair down was a woman who was paying polite attention to the conversation. She looked familiar. I should know her.

  Joanna glanced up, excused herself, then stood and gave me a hug. It didn't register. I had stopped feeling things a millennium ago.

  "Where's Violet?" she asked.

  "In Vancouver. She had to go."

  Joanna nodded. Chris put his hand on my shoulder, turned me towards the table. "Casey, have you met Sarah yet?" The woman looked up.

  I will always remember that moment. Sarah Brennan's eyes were a wide light blue that spoke of the ocean, her hair dark and short. She had Celtic blood, I could sense the mysticism and artistry of that race passed on through the ages into her.

  "Hello, Casey." She took my hand with both of hers, staring calmly into my eyes. With that touch I felt secrets coming out of me. You know who I am, she seemed to say. You know why I'm still here...waiting. She looked sad and a little weary. And yet there was peace in her gaze.

  I saw your son, I wanted to say. He's somewhere in the mountains. Doing crow impressions.

  She let go. And in the moment when we lost contact, I knew why my father had loved her. She could fill voids.

  "Casey." It was Mom, sounding almost angry. "The doctor says it's okay for you to see your father now." She grabbed my hand and led me away from Sarah, squeezing tightly as if she were holding a child in a crowd. I followed her down that long thin hallway to the master bedroom. The door was closed, Doctor Edwards stood in front of it like a weather-beaten scarecrow, had perhaps been there for hours shooing bad spirits away with his stethoscope.

  But something too big for your medications and ministrations had settled here, hadn't it Doc? Slip sliding its way down the hallway.

  Doom, Daddy, here it comes. Doom.

  Doctor Edwards had aged too, how long had I been away? I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a clock.

  "Hello, Casey." His voice had always been alarmingly deep. "Your father is awake now." He moved aside and I felt this force welling up behind me, pushing me towards the door while a voice whispered no, no don't go in there.

  It took all of my will to grasp the cool knob, twist and walk inside.

  Twenty Six

  Pop Meets Casey

  I thought Mom would have followed me, but I was alone, she or the doctor had closed the door. One dim lamp cast pale light that didn't quite reach the bed. I turned and saw my father.

  He was on his back, head resting against the pillow, creases in the linen looking like cracks. He had the face of a tired ascetic, drained by the weight of his vows. Here was the center of all the aging I had seen in the house, in this land. He looked ancient. Almost dead.

  But his eyes were open.

  I breathed in.

  "Casey," a hoarse exhalation. I had to read the movements of his dry lips to understand what he was saying. "You came home."

  "Yes."

  "Come here." One of his hands opened like a claw, signaling me to move. He wheezed, coughed suddenly, his face stricken with pain.

  I edged up to the bed, looked down on him. I had a hypochondriac's bedside manner. Uh...how about I stay right here and when you cough, point the other way. Okay?

  "I wouldn't let them take me to the hospital. Told them I had to stay here. Don't want to die in a room I don't know."

  "You're not going to die."

  He stared at me, his eyes almost angry. We both knew the truth. I could feel his life ebbing away.

  "There are things I should have explained."

  "Don't worry about it, Dad."

  He blinked. Perhaps he had expected anger or bitterness. He closed his eyes and for a long time I wondered if I should leave. I started to move.

  "You went to the coast." He was looking at me now, straining to keep his eyelids from falling. "Did you see the ocean?"

  I sensed this was important to him. "Yes," I lied.

  "I've never seen it," he admitted, which shocked me. But I should have known. He hadn't taken a vacation, had not been anywhere else but on this farm since he was a child. "I used to imagine all that water. Ships cutting through the waves. Funny, when I was a kid I thought about Vikings all the time. That probably sounds strange to you. But I did. I even had a dream about a burning ship last night." He paused. "I asked your mom to throw me in the oven and scatter my ashes in the ocean. But she wouldn't have anything to do with it. Said we already had two plots in the cemetery. Said I'll always be beside her. Can't even go where I want when I'm dead." He looked right into my eyes. "What's it mean if you've never seen the ocean? What kind of life have you lived?"

  "Don't...don't worry about it. I'll take you."

  "Not in this life time." He laughed. Which turned into coughing, the kind that came from deep in the stomach. The phlegmy sound grated on me. I touched his arm and it stopped. His flesh was burning as if all the energy inside him were unraveling, seeking escape from its confinement.

  "I saw your son," I said.

  "My son?"
/>   "The son you had with Sarah. I saw him."

  His eyes narrowed. "You know?"

  "I guessed."

  I couldn't read his expression. "It was the day you lost your finger. Your mother and Gary stayed with you at the hospital. I felt so...so wrong. Like I was a failure—chopping off my son's finger. Sarah comforted me. I've spent so much time thinking about that day and everything involved with it." He paused. "How...how was Nathan?"

  So that was his name. "He looks just like you."

  Another silence. "I...I wasn't...I never meant to hurt you." He paused. "Did you hate me?"

  "I'm just starting to understand you. I read one of your poems."

  He stared at me and we shared a moment that I cannot describe exactly, it wasn't compassion, it rang with warmth, perhaps was something as plain as recognition. But to give it exactness would be to destroy it.

  "I'm glad you came home," he said finally. Then he closed his eyes.

  I sat with my hand on his arm for the longest time. Expecting him to wake, wanting to nudge him into awareness. But he remained sleeping.

  After a few minutes Mom and Doctor Edwards came in.

  "He's very tired," the doctor said.

  I left the room, milled about aimlessly, listening in to a conversation between Chris and Lloyd. Sarah had disappeared, retired for the night I supposed.

  Finally, I did the same. My room hadn't changed, there was still an out of date Lord of the Rings Calendar on the wall: Gollum stared at me.

  S-ss. Firsst we takess hiss finger, my preciouss...then we takess hiss father. S-ss.

  I looked away. The room seemed smaller, confining. My collection of Fantasy books were all neatly piled on a bookcase in the corner. I had never seen them that way, had always left them haphazardly around the room.

  I wondered if Mom tidied the room, her cleaning a magic rite to bring me home.

  Never wish for something, you might get it.

  I lay down on the bed without undressing: it would be too much work. For the longest time even closing my eyes was beyond my abilities. When I finally did, a knock came at my door. Mother let herself in, bent over me in the way she had so many mornings to get me up for school, for chores, for breakfast.

  The bus is coming! Get up, Sleepyhead!

  Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed.

  "Your father passed away," she whispered. "A few minutes ago."

  I sat up, awkward. Dealing with death wasn't something you could rehearse. Not knowing what to do, I held her. It felt like she was shrinking.

  "We better go," she said a moment later. "There are things to do."

  What things? I wanted to ask. But she had already started trudging towards the door, her shoulders sagging, gravity pulling her towards the floor.

  I followed Mom, sleepwalking upstairs to find everyone still there. Joanna was crying; I looked at my brothers helplessly, no one seemed to be comforting her. I think I might have wept too, I can't remember. We sat at the table, it looked naked without food or plates. I spent most of my time staring out the window. Someone said something about the funeral, that we shouldn't hold it on this day because it's so and so's birthday.

  Plans were made. People were phoned.

  "I need some air," Christopher announced and I found myself following him out of the house into the front yard. It was cool out, but I was already too numb to shiver. Lloyd had come too, was there some sort of brotherly E.S.P. going on here?

  We wandered down to the garage. Christopher led the way in, flicking on the light. Inside we gathered around the blue '67 Cadillac that had been my father's one prize possession. He had bought this garage and had it moved here specifically for housing his Cadillac.

  Lloyd wiped dust from the top of the car. His hands were stained with dirt and oil, he had worked with both so long that he couldn't wash them away. He examined his fingers. "Remember when Dad took the Caddy to Moose Jaw and got it repainted and redone inside and that guy backed into him? He swore enough to knock over a church."

  "Has he driven it since then?" I asked.

  Lloyd nodded. "Every spring he took it to town and got Red to check it over. Then he'd park it back in here for another year." For Lloyd this was quite the mystery, why father would be interested in something that had nothing to do with the farm. Lloyd's life revolved around the earth, he had been born with a hoe in his hands.

  "Did any of us really know him?" I asked.

  "Of course we did," Lloyd whispered, almost angry. "He was our father, Casey." In Lloyd's world everything was that simple: he was our father, therefore we knew him. This is earth, plant it with seed.

  Maybe Lloyd knew more than I did about life.

  Christopher placed his hand on the Cadillac. "It's such a beautiful car. It's too bad we couldn't bury it with him."

  I wish I could blame everything that happened later on that one statement, but I can't.

  We returned to the house and finally everyone retired to sleep. It was still dark, some nocturnal force had stretched the length of night. My mother went to the spare guest room; for the first time not sleeping in the same bed as her husband.

  I lay, eyes open. I thought of the funeral, which led me inexorably to a picture of the earth coming down, my father in a casket and him hearing the tractors and the plows in the land next to the cemetery, rumbling over top of him for the rest of eternity.

  Twenty Seven

  Horn Honks, Whale Songs and Visions of Eternity

  By late afternoon I was entering Kickinghorse pass, well on my way into British Columbia. I had left Odin at home on the farm and was now piloting Dad's '67 Cadillac, a gas guzzling, finned, blue beast of a machine that sailed down the highway like a steam cruiser.

  In the back seat, hidden by a blanket, was my father. Beside him his good cowboy hat. A big Texan ten gallon thing.

  I honestly don't remember moving his body from the master bedroom and stealing away in the Cadillac, though all the evidence pointed to me. The only thing I could recall was dreaming of the ocean, then all of a sudden I was driving down the highway. There is no record of what happened in-between.

  Yes, your Honor I did kidnap my dead father. Yes, your Honor, I'm sure the jury can see I've always been a little flighty.

  I could not let them plant my father in a cemetery. He was not a piece of wheat that would grow; the coffin a wooden kernel. No shoots would lift a headstone.

  And so I traveled non-stop, the trip seamless and perfect, as if someone had cleared the traffic for me, opened all the gas stations, and put extra men on. I had my own personal pit crew standing by in each small town.

  Nearly every gas attendant commented on what a fine beautiful Cadillac I was driving. No one had given my Volvo a compliment on my previous trip. Forgive them Odin, they know not what they do.

  It rained twice, but the water just glanced off the windshield. Nothing slowed us. Even the mountains seemed to guide us around turn after turn.

  I thought of Violet. She would be laughing right now if she knew what I was doing. Laughing and saying something like: you mean you've never stolen a body before? You can't know the Tao until you've stolen a body.

  Later on I passed a hitchhiker who looked like my half brother. He bowed solemnly. A few more miles and I went right by a brand new Nike shoe.

  All things return to the origin, to a state of balance. I believe that. It's what keeps me going.

  The deepest epiphany struck me as I came down from one of the larger mountains. Words, phrases, images were all settling in my mind with such clarity I was overwhelmed. I knew what I was going to create: my father's life. My head was ripe with his story, waiting to burst. I'd make it so everyone—my family, the world—would know the man called Arlen Stewart.

  Of course, I'd have plenty of time to write the book in prison.

  It became late summer again, the trees green and shining. And soon the mountains opened up and I could see the lights of Vancouver ahead in the dusk, looking like a thousand cand
les.

  I did not want to join the people in that port city. I did not want to see the ocean with man-made beaches and docking bays, crowded with giant ships. I skirted the suburbs, heading north.

  I got my first glimpse of the Pacific half an hour later when the highway edged near the shore. My heart started to beat faster. I drove further along.

  I found an old logging road that would do the trick, careened down it, bottoming out twice, edging closer and closer to the water.

  The Cadillac loved every bumpy moment, humming peacefully.

  Finally, I came to a clearing, a place where lovers met, people camped, bird watchers peered at speckled grouses. I stopped the car, got out and stood at the edge of a small cliff.

  The ocean lay below me, dark and restless, moving inexorably against the rocks. Waves cresting white and silver. The moon had again leaned closer, watching my every action. I welcomed his cyclopean eye; he would understand in his ancient and mystical way.

  I walked back to the Cadillac feeling very light. Again there was no thought, just doing. It was the same feeling I had when I practiced the form, moving through a series of ritualistic movements thousands of years old.

  I carried Dad out of the back seat and carefully placed him in the front. He was a little stiff and didn't quite sit down, but leaned against the seat like a five foot nine board. I struggled to get his cowboy hat on his head, had to squish it between the roof and his skull. It only slightly resembled a Viking helmet.

  I rolled a large stone on the accelerator and the motor began to whine. Then I poured gasoline inside the window and splashed it across the top of the car, the hood, the fenders—a petrol baptism. Finally I wished my father luck in the next world, threw a match, bent in, dodging flames and pushed the car into gear. I leaped back.

  The Cadillac growled, tires spinning in the gravel, making the car swerve from side to side. For ages it swayed back and forth on one spot, then the tires found purchase, the car gathered speed, engine roaring. It hit the cliff at high end, arced skyward.

  I watched it go, over the edge and down, a huge blue metal whale returning to the ocean, to its home, burning like a comet. It dived, deep and true, into the water, sizzling.