Fletcher stares at the ground. He says to it, Right.
HE’S AROUND THE other side of the cone, scanning the sea and sky. The chopper is gone for now, but the two boats float out there, not yet moving in. Fletcher walks further along the beach, across from one of the vessels. The others watch him as he shuffles around down the shore.
He’s limping, Jean thinks. He’s dragging the toe of his combat boot through the littoral ash, turning here and there. It’s like he’s gliding across a ballroom floor. Soft shoe or Indian-style, she can’t decide. Either. Both.
Or he’s cracking up.
Later, on the mainland, after, she will see on a screen a photograph that will by then be famous, impossibly taken from a bird’s-eye point of view. Jean will read in the picture the lie Fletcher wrote in the sand, to keep the law away.
WE ARE ARMED.
The island’s first dance.
THE CORDON BREAKS. News helicopters and all manner of boats. The cops come alive. The occupiers only now see multiple figures on the decks out there. The blue and white helicopter is on its way, they know, purely by the feeling of unleashing that surrounds them.
3
Pele’s hair. Limu o Pele. Pele’s seaweed. Pele’s tears.
Jean goes to Fletcher. There’s not much time, so she takes his hand, puts it on her belly, and says it all: a new life, theirs; she didn’t say before because she wanted to be here, and the group might not have let her come.
Blades beat apart the air, and ash rises around the five. They stand and look up at the helicopter and hear a voice from a loudhailer command them to stand apart, to turn around, to put their hands behind their heads, to fall to their knees, to put one ankle over the other, to remain motionless. They don’t. The sound of the chopper is deafening as it hovers. The men with the weapons rappel down and storm toward them, through a blizzard of ash. When she feels the barrel of the AR-15 jab into her sternum, she hears Fletcher shout, No! She’s on the ground, a knee on her spine, ash in her eyes, and the sound of shouting, the blades breaking the sky, and a rush or a whoosh or an exhalation. A change in the space around her. Is the island erupting? It’s only in memory, later, that she hears the blast. An explosion, in her recollection, audibly vaster than it can really have been. She re-hears the gunfire in the cochlea of her mind, the sound that takes him. She can’t see anything, but feels her wrists being zip-tied, then her whole body being netted in something, the force of a man moving her body against her will. Then she is rising. She is in some kind of harness, and it’s lifting from the ground, then she is moving through the air. She forces open her eyes and through a blur she can distinguish the island’s outline, its shore, an appendage of dust leaning out from the beach she was standing on a moment ago. The ocean is blindingly brilliant, and though her wrists and her ankles burn from their bindings, she’s flying, she’s moving over the face of the water like a fragment of an explosion broken free of its form.
THE INSTRUMENT
Albert spots Donald at the door. Another him. But shabbier clothes. Why? It doesn’t take money to not look rumpled. The way Donald walks. He wonders if that’s the exact shape he cuts, too, when he moves, how he’s seen. Albert watches him walk across the restaurant floor, weaving between the tables.
Hey.
Hey.
Donald’s looking around for the server. Raises his hand. Albert waits until he gets his own drink going, then waits some more. It’s Donald who asked him here.
That hat, Donald says, pointing at Albert’s head. Who does it remind me of?
Albert knows what he means. Uncle Hayward wore these, he says.
Donald runs a hand over his own scalp, seems to catch himself doing it, puts his palm down flat on the white table. That’s it, he says.
Albert and his brother only ever met their uncle Hayward—their father’s older brother—once, when he visited Vancouver for Expo ’86 with his wife and kids. He came up from Sacramento, where he and their father are from. All Albert remembers about Uncle Hayward, Aunt Inez, and their cousins is the way their black American accents sounded thicker than his dad’s, and that they all shared a similar physiognomy, though he and Donald had something Nordic and etiolated jumbled into it. This was, of course, back when Albert and Donald were still conjoined. Albert remembers thinking that if he could run, he would look just like his cousin Clint when he did it: skinny legs, long strides.
Donald pulls an envelope out of his pocket and tosses it across the table.
Albert picks it up. Inside it is a letter from some kind of agency. Money for Donald’s film project. Albert says, Jesus Christ.
Donald smiles, touches his scalp again. That’ll be enough to throw something together. Not feature-length. Under an hour. I’m gonna take some time off and just concentrate on doing this thing. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough.
Albert swirls his drink around in his glass, holding the acceptance letter in his other hand. He fans himself with it and says, I guess I’m supposed to say Congratulations.
You guess, Donald says back at him.
It’s going to be about Dad.
About Dad, yeah, and about us. About you and me too.
Albert shakes his head. His mind is full of rage. He tries to imagine something past the anger, something more useful and helpful. He starts speaking slowly, to get it right.
Don, you go ahead and make your movie, then. But if you interview me, don’t edit me. Put in exactly what I say to you, ’cause I will tell you exactly what I think. I don’t believe in this, so if you let me say that I don’t even believe in it, I guess you can put me in, but I’m asking you not to edit me. And I’m asking you to think twice.
Donald answers quickly. I’ve already thought about it, but okay. Say what you think you have to say, that’s just fine. He looks at Albert, like he’s assessing him. Then he reaches over and takes the fedora off of Albert’s head. Albert does not flinch. Stays firm, neither scowls nor smiles. Donald puts the hat on his own head and pouts exaggeratedly, pulls the brim down over his eyes and lifts his chin.
You think you’re clever, Albert says to his twin.
It’s a phrase their mother used to say, joshing their father when he talked crazy. Albert hears himself using his mother’s words. He thinks of the way his mother’s voice sounded when she said it, the theremin-like quiver that had always been there in her tone when she formed those words: You think you’re clever, or Don’t try and be clever. At some point years back, Albert realizes now, the phrase dropped out of the dialogue between his parents. He can’t recall exactly when, because how do you remember a trailing-off?
DONALD IS SETTING up the tripod in the middle of his living room. His father is speaking.
Is Albert going to do the music with you?
What music?
For your film.
Oh. I thought I’d do it myself. It’s been hard enough just getting him to let me interview him.
Donald’s father reaches over to his son’s brick-and-board shelf and pulls a book out, glances at the cover, and puts it back the wrong way around, its spine to the wall. You bought all this stuff with that grant? He gestures at the camera that Donald is clicking into place atop the tripod.
Yup.
His father nods. It’s a ways to go, he says.
What’s a ways to go?
We’re a ways to go from the surface of the almighty God.
Just hang on, Dad. Let me get you miked.
We’re a ways to go from the everlasting light of Jesus. Within the space of equations.
I know, I know. Just hang on a second. Lift up your shirt, I’m going to thread the cord through there. He raises his father’s denim shirt, puts the tiny microphone up it, and reaches down with his left hand to pull it through, then he fastens the alligator clip onto his collar. Okay, I’m just going to test my levels. Donald lifts the headphones from his neck and puts them on his ears. Go, say something.
I’m having a hard time understanding why they gave you all tha
t money, really. I mean, I’m not saying you aren’t talented, because you are, both of you. You have talent. But it’s a lot of money. Money can be a gift from the devil. But money makes possible the flight of the spheres. The Wright brothers believed the world was square. I may ask to borrow some of that money, Don, but I don’t want to take anything away from your art, so maybe you’ll just wait until you think the time is right.
Donald takes the headphones off and looks at his father. Sure, Dad, I’ll give you some of the money. Absolutely I will. But listen, man: the levels are good. So just hold on a second. See this here? When I start rolling, this light will go red. Then I’m going to ask you some questions. And you just say your thing, okay?
I copy that.
Donald presses RECORD. We’re rolling. So, tell me, you were talking a minute ago about God. What does God mean to you?
Why’s the light red?
What?
The light. Why’s it red?
You mean the light on the camera?
Yes.
It’s red because it’s recording.
Yes. But why that colour? Why is that the recording colour?
Donald shrugs behind the machinery. I don’t know. Why do you think red is the colour of recording?
I don’t know.
Donald presses PAUSE. Dad, what I’m doing here is making a documentary about you. Now I know you have a lot to say about a lot of things. Right? This is your chance. It’s possible that a lot of people might see this. So it’s your chance to set the record straight on whatever you feel like talking about.
I was just asking you about the light on the camera. You want to be a filmmaker, but you never thought about that. I find that puzzling.
Well, maybe it’s puzzling, Dad, but nevertheless it’s not really what the film is going to be about. It’s supposed to be about you. So let’s talk about you.
The only discussion worth our breath is the discussion of how we’re supposed to enter the kingdom of God when we have no understanding of the notion of infrared.
There you go, Donald says. He hits RECORD once more.
The light is on again, his father says, squinting at it. I have to say that the thing I’m thinking is that the best performances I’ve ever seen were the ones they failed to record. I saw Roland Kirk one time in San Francisco, before you and your brother were born, and your mother and I were seated next to this college student with a camera. His machine was running all through the show, and by the end of the show he opened it and realized that the whole thing was messed up. Someone had put the wrong size film in it or something and it was all chewed up. He was beside himself. Like a child pitching a tantrum. Roland Kirk had brought the house down, and all this college kid could think about was some chewed-up tape.
I see. Okay. You made a few jazz records back then.
I did. Uh-huh.
Do you want to tell me about them?
No. You’ve heard them. Just learning then.
What did you learn from making them?
I learned that I’d rather do what I do now.
Which is?
I’m a carpenter. Semi-retired.
Do you like doing carpentry?
I cannot ask for more. I’m happy.
Donald lifts his head and looks at the ceiling. He puts his hands on his hips and closes his eyes. Then he presses PAUSE on the camcorder. Let’s quit for now. Okay, Dad? We’ll do this another day.
There may be no more days. The moon does equations and the sun does equations. But it’s not a showdown between them, it’s no duel. Because each and every star does its own equations. And those stars that have planets, those planets do equations. And those planets that have moons, the moons do their own equations. It’s a slide rule the size of God’s thigh bone.
Okay, Dad. Donald moves from the equipment and lies down on his couch, facing away from his father.
May I disentangle myself from this machine now, Don?
Yeah, man. Disentangle yourself. Maybe we can try it again later.
Donald’s father unclips the mike and unlaces himself. You were born with God’s creativity in the tips of your fingers, he says.
There’s a sixer of beer in the fridge. Grab one and get me one, Dad, if you don’t mind, and we’ll watch TV, okay?
It will watch us, Donald’s father says.
He goes to the kitchen and returns with two brown bottles.
ALBERT CHOOSES TO wear the fedora during the interview. He’d considered sunglasses, but thought that’d be too much.
The red light is on.
Tell me about yourself, Donald says from behind the camera.
Where should I start?
Tell us what you do, how you make a living. Or how you wish you made a living.
Well, I teach music, privately. I’m a tutor. I teach kids how to play guitar. How to read. And I play, of course. You and I had some minor success years ago, toured around the country, got on the CBC, recorded some stuff that went nowhere.
Are you bitter about that, the fact that we went nowhere, as you say?
Albert rolls his shoulders. Readjusts himself. Bitter? No. Just real. Those were good times, but I’m fine with just gigging around town here with my little group. The Albert Abbey Trio. He centres his gaze on the camera and says, exaggerating his voice like a stentorian radio announcer, Last Saturday of every month at Lambeau’s in Gastown. He lifts his look beyond the frame, to Donald. You don’t mind if I get a plug in, do you?
No, fine. So what’s the difference between what you do now and what we did when we played together? I mean, how do you feel about the direction your music has taken?
Albert clears his throat. We were reacting to a lot of things. That’s how I think of it now. We were trying to break out of a kind of expectation. It’s quite ridiculous, really. But it was a personal reaction to our environment. I mean, have you explained our condition, in the film? Like, how are you narrating this? Are you going to voice it over?
I’m just interviewing people so far. You tell it.
Okay. Albert leans forward in the chair and focuses on the camera. Donald and I were born craniopagic. Conjoined at the top of the skull. Totally rare. Rare to even get born, and then very rare that we would live afterward. They say there’s no more than a dozen people like that at any given moment living and breathing on the planet, that’s it. And we weren’t considered safely operable at first because we shared the artery that brings blood to your brain. We didn’t actually share very much brain matter—it was that artery they were worried about. So Mom and Dad were advised to let us be. But science caught up with us eventually. Now, this is going to sound like a digression, this next part, but bear with me for a second. Okay, our father was a musician, a kind of minor jazz musician before he came up to Vancouver in the seventies, before we were born. And he taught us both how to play music, how to read music. And we really took to it. The doctors were tickled about that. They saw it as therapy, I think, us doing something involving motor skills. But Dad would have taught us to play whether we’d been conjoined or not. You know what I mean?
I think so too. Go on.
Well, we weren’t half bad, really. And we formed a band when we were still in high school. Got our buddy Paul Mack to play drums. He was great. I think you should always get a drummer who has ADD, you know? It seems to be maybe the one place in the world where that is an advantage. Anyway, the thing that messed with everybody’s minds was that we were playing punk rock. Like, three-chord punk. Really simple power-chord crap. The stupidest, easiest shit. I played guitar and you played bass. See, but you were too good, really, and that was the problem. I still think you’re the reason we didn’t actually get listened to as punk. It wasn’t just the freak factor. This is a criticism and a compliment, so don’t make that face. Physically, of course, you could play like Dee Dee Ramone, but psychologically you couldn’t let yourself do it. Because you were just too capable, basically. You filled everything in, all those little runs. You were bored.
I am probably guilty of that too, so don’t make faces at me, seriously. We sounded like D.O.A. infiltrated by James Jamerson, and it was just a mess. Not a punk rock mess, just a mess. But that doesn’t matter. What I’m saying doesn’t make all that much sense because, truthfully, we were just a story on the news: two freak twins play in a band. We couldn’t help but get on TV. But that was the problem. We were news rather than music. Nobody was ever going to listen to our sound no matter what we did.
We were rebelling against Dad, you think, with the punk thing.
Of course. Dad was all Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra, so we chose the dumbest, most regressive three-chord form. I don’t know. It’s not a unique story, if you put aside the craniopagy.
So talk about the surgery. From your view, what did that do?
To my music?
Sure. Or whatever.
This is the ironic thing. Is it ironic? I don’t know. But anyway, it was because of those records Dad cut in the sixties. That’s how the surgery happened. Like I was saying, Dad was in this little quartet in San Francisco, and they did three records back then with some little outfit called Clairvoyance Records. They sunk like a stone, and then Dad became an acid casualty, married Mom, moved up here.
“Acid casualty”. That’s a harsh way to put it.
Let’s just say that Dad lives in a permanent state of improvisation these days. Does that sound better?
You were talking about our operation.
This guy in the States, this Silicon Valley, nouveau riche multi-zillionaire heard about us—on the news, of course. He’s a complete jazz fanatic. White guy originally from San Francisco. He saw the story about us, but recognized Dad from those old records back in the day. He was a fan, a collector, the type who tracks down every last recording from an artist, who wants to own it all, every bit of it. And he had always wondered what had become of Dad after those three records. He’s a software guy—David Lloyd is his name, I should really thank him here, because he was very generous to us. He tracked Dad down and actually flew to Vancouver to meet us all. I imagine you’ll use that picture of us for this movie, Don, the one where we’re all at that restaurant?
The Outer Harbour Page 4
