People Live Still in Cashtown Corners

by Burgess, Tony

  “That’s what ya need? A jaw harp?”

  I picture Penny lifting the jaw harp to her face. The vicious bramble of lines. Two or three purse outward and the harp is caught up like a mouse in the talons of a hawk.

  Outside I put the jaw harp in my top pocket. I pat the pocket and the box is a perfect fit. I feel Penny watching my back as I walk. I can’t believe she almost made me cry.

  The truck is parked behind the Foodland. I have to get something other than the jaw harp or Jeremy’ll think I’m nuts. I can get bread and stuff. I feel that sandwiches will be made, but I have this terrible feeling in my head they are already made. It’s a common feeling. You make a plan to do something and it sits in your mind as a thing you’ve already done. Then when you act, there is the awful pulling apart of things that belong to specific moments. It is often impossible to act, to stay clear. I step out onto the parking lot in front of the Foodland but before I get past the first parked car I am struck by a sharp smell. I recognize it and you have probably smelled it yourself. It is the smell of your emotions. When things aren’t going well, like today, that smell hits me and I feel like I’m in grade two and my mother has dropped me off late for school and it’s raining and I’m standing against the wall unable to go in. The smell. When you’re an adult those little childish boxes that come up around you can almost prevent you from breathing. I have to stop walking, actually stop walking, and hold my nose so I breathe only through my mouth. But smell is unlike your other senses. Sight and sound are all about wavelengths and receptors. Smell is about the particle itself. Some of the thing you are thinking has to enter your head. When you smell someone’s urine, that means some of the urine itself has travelled into your head and is resting there. So this smell now, triggered by me having to imagine the sandwich not made and holding up the bricks of a school, has removed some of these events, molecules of them, the tiny vibrating beads of them and crammed them up my nasal cavity. I need to blow my nose. Even though the smell has faded, those things are still lying in there. They have already created a new unreliable memory out of this trip to Creemore and it should have been so simple. I had to buy some oil.

  Oil. That’s what I’m here for. Not sandwiches or gum or jaw harps. I need to get some oil. So I’ll say briefly what is happening then I’ll buy some oil. I have had a bad moment followed by a fairly good one. I should be just walking off and shaking my head a little then going to get the twelve cans of oil. I will do that, because I described it so breezily; however, and this is a big however: what am I to make of some of these other difficulties? I’m reasonable, I’m out in front of the problem, which is fine except that, when this happens, when I feel I’m out in front and going to do something, I become overcome by the sensation that I have died. I feel actual grief. Who I am is dead and that’s the problem I am now out in front of. So really, how happy can I possibly be? Ever?

  “Bin there, done that.”

  Lilly. Three-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman with a bright red cone for a head. I can’t look at her.

  “Hey, Bob. Remember when Keith’s wife said she was gonna be a reasonable human being?”

  I go to put my heavy bags down on the pavement so we can have this chat, but I realize too late that I don’t have any bags. She’s the one with the bag. So I’m leaning down with my hands heavy at the end of my arms and I touch my toes. I’m stretching. It’s been a while. “You okay? Anyway, she’s not. Being a human being, I mean. She is such a bitch and she made all this noise last fall about how while this divorce was going on she was gonna be a grown up and she didn’t want to hurt the children and they’re the most important thing in all this, but I said to Keith, I says, you watch, she’s saying that now but the person she is is gonna come flyin’ out in flyin’ colours once you have to start deciding serious things, and Keith’s all like, no mom, she’s really trying this time, and well, look, hey, she’s turning the kids against him and saying he’s lazy and even saying that he hits them. Well, she was the one hitting them when they didn’t deserve it. There’s all this stuff every day now about how you should hit kids when they’re this tall but not when they’re this tall and wait, no, when they’re this age and not—you know when you hit a kid? You know when you hit a kid? When the kid’s gone too far and is being a little fucker and knows it and knows that you know he’s being a little fucker. You just know as a parent. Parents know, but she’s now all of a sudden been reading up on studies and reports and she thinks she knows exactly how he messed up those kids. So I says to him, I says, the day you let her get under your skin was the day you lost this battle. Cause he did. He did hit her and that’s something he has to face up to and whether she deserved it or not that’s just not how the world works once you get police and courts and lawyers involved. I told him, I said, now you have to live your whole goddam life as if you’re defending it in front of a judge. Since when did everybody have to decide what’s right for everybody? It’s sad though, Bob, it breaks my heart to see him like this. He can’t be a husband any more and now I don’t see how he can be a father. And why? What’s the reason?”

  I don’t know why she has a red cone for a head while everyone else in town has scribbles for heads.

  “Anyway, we’re letting him stay with us for a while. I’ve never seen anyone get so low so fast. It breaks my heart. And those kids, well, Sheila’s still a little sweetie but that Paula is a monster from hell. She’s her mother. And that’s gonna be a big problem. But, anyway, so, we have our own things we’re dealing with aside from all this other stuff. My sister had her tubal finally and she’s doing okay, except she just gobbled up her pain meds in the first couple of days. I don’t know if she was taking four or five at a time but those things are hard to get. Oxycontin. Your doctor has to make arrangements with the pharmacy cause they don’t have that stuff lying around any more. So she’s out of her Oxy’s and if I have to hear her whine about it one more time when she knows full well that you have to pace yourself with that stuff especially when you got this humungous scar running across your belly and your insides all yanked out. Yes, it’s going to hurt but it’s up to you to be responsible, you can’t just take those things like that. I think she was getting high. That’s what I think, but she doesn’t say that. She’d never admit it. She’s a mom now and has two teenagers so all that stuff is behind her. Well, newsflash if you’re eating four or five Oxycontin every four or five hours then you’re pretty much acting the exact same way as when you were a kid drinking wine and doing acid out by the reservoir. In fact I bet she does know what she’s doing. I bet she’s pretty sure that she can get more of those Oxy’s. Anyway, I got other things to worry about. All my fish died in the pond. Didn’t last the winter. Don’t know if it was too cold and froze right to the bottom or maybe they didn’t get enough food. Who knows? All I know is they’re supposed to survive the winter or I wouldn’t have left them out there. I’m heartbroken and I don’t know how to tell the kids. They named the fish last summer. But not gonna have to worry about it cause if the bitch gets her way I won’t ever see my grandchildren again. So, that’s one less thing to worry about. How are you? You gotta sore back?”

  I look at her.

  “No? Well, here give me a hand getting these bags into the van.”

  She drops the bags and pulls out her keys. At the van she slides the side door open. I push her in and fall on top of her.

  I hold her down with all my weight. Her back is wide and soft but she’s still pretty strong and does a push-up. I’m surprised she hasn’t yelled yet. I pull her arms out flattening her and I put my knees on her shoulder blades. She takes a bunch of fast breaths and before she can do anything with all that oxygen I punch the back of her head. She collapses a little and I have a chance to pull the seat belt across and under her throat. I can’t get it to loop around so I just pull hard under her chin. Now she won’t yell for sure. I put a knee on the back of her neck and haul up hard on the belt. This is pretty much gonna be it for a while. I hold and pull ha
rd, not moving or letting her move. When she does move a little I take advantage and draw the belt tighter under her chin. This is how snakes do it. When the prey breathes or tries to escape, the snake tightens. If you never let up and keep applying the pressure, things just kill themselves eventually. She rocks a little now, but again that’s just working to fully close her windpipe. Finally she has exhaled and can’t inhale. She bucks under me and tries to turn to one side. I see her face now. The red cone has fallen away, but her cheek is speckled with crimson. The white of the eye is clouding up pink. She stiffens and I just keep the pressure on. I’m pretty sure that’s it for her but I hold on for a while. That’s it. Sweat is falling from my face like cluster flies down a cold winter window. The drops bomb her back and stain her shirt. I sit up on her and lean back to swing the door shut. In the dark I move my legs down, wiggling my hips to the flatter part of her back where it’s more comfortable. I guess I’m waiting for something. While I was killing her I felt pretty sure I was completely losing control of myself. I thought that once she died I was going to just start pulling her body apart and filling the whole van with blood and guts. I even thought that I’d eat some of her and cover myself in gore. It’s a feeling that got hold of me and carried right through to the finish. But now I sit here on top of her and I am definitely not going to do any of that. If pushed I wouldn’t object to it but the wild need of it seems to have just calmly stepped aside. I sit on her. Her warm sides fill the floor around me and I feel very comfortable. My mind isn’t snapped or anything. I’m not particularly afraid of what I’ve done even though I do know that now, whatever happens, at some point down the road I’m going to have to listen to someone tell me what I’ve done. That isn’t a very nice thought; however it isn’t what’s happening now. I am sitting on her soft body and I stay like this for quite a while.

  Later I pull the bags off the asphalt and into the van. I lie along her side with an elbow resting on the fat across her spine and I go through the bags. Roast Chicken Chips. Two large bags, a deli box of potato wedges, a six pack of Kool-Aid Jammers, a narrow box of thirty large freezer bags. Some lean ground beef. A packet of Bahai Citrus Marinade. Two large plastic bottles of Coke Zero. As I pull these things out of the bags I lay them on and around her. Not for any special reason, just so I can get a look at what she bought. Some pink deodorant. I check. Anti-perspirant. The difference preoccupies me for a moment. Two cans of beans with lard. And, a little surprising, a very large pair of purple Crocs. Not real Crocs. Foodland Crocs. I look at the plastic loop that holds them together. This, I decide, is where I’ll focus. I have decided that even though I’m not feeling bad, in fact, better than I have all morning, I need to conjure some emotion to commemorate the event. The Crocs she will never wear. The plastic loop she’ll never pull across her teeth to break. That’s the poignant thing. These rubbery shoes she’ll never work her toes into. It must be so sad. I hold them for a moment. They are so light it feels as though they would float if I let go of them. I turn the tag over. Doesn’t say much. A bar code. A price. $5.99. Size 11. I hold my mouth closed in case I cry, but I feel a broad smile in my hand. The fake Crocs she will never gnaw apart. I have to admit to myself that there is no way to feel genuinely bad about this. I sit up to see if I feel any burden. I don’t and realize that that’s probably just as bad as if I had ripped her apart and eaten her. I feel good, but it’s not that simple. Something very dangerous, something far worse than what has happened just now has been put out of service. We enter into battles without understanding the terms of our survival and when we do survive, when we do what is necessary, when we pull up strong, then all the rest, this cost, this remainder of my life, is only lessened because we did so much more than all the others. We stood while God hammered the sky and we never stopped walking while chainsaws milked our legs and we did something very wrong and awful, but at least it cleared the air. It lifts those that come after. It was us we offered up and no one will ever know this but us.

  I think I’m okay with this now. I do feel bad after all. She didn’t really deserve to die and I didn’t really have to kill her. But this is what hands have done and this is how we move on. I reach back and pull the doors open and step out of the van.

  The sun is brilliant, turning the light grey parking lot into a white hot bath. I step away, my head lowered, not crazed or frantic or covert. In fact, I have her Crocs in my hand.

  One of the things Creemore likes about itself is the names of the two rivers that run up either side. The Mad and the Noisy. Much is made of these two rivers’ names. There’s a Mad and Noisy Art Gallery. Other things. There’s a micro brewery that draws water from the Mad and Noisy. All that would be fine, because there’s no denying the fun, but the entire population of the town seems to think they’re mad and noisy because of this. And some of them have a kind of mad and noisy affectation. I swear. It’s hard to put your finger on, exactly, but you can see it. A little sunken in the eyes, a little wild in the hair, and all sparkly talking. I think about the effect a place’s name can have on people. I am the only person who lives at Cashtown Corners. Should I have a lot of cash? Not much you can do about that. Although, it has occurred to me that people often pay cash for their gas. Most people use plastic to pay for gas anyway for sure. I actually think more about Johnny Cash when it comes to Cashtown. I mean, if a town in Alberta called Vulcan can claim to be Spock’s birthplace and erect statues and serve ham and live-long-and-prosper eggs, and give Leonard Nimoy the keys to the town in a big parade, then—no. It’s pretty clear you’re a fool if you think the names of places make you something. Cashtown.

  I pick up my oil. Buy two cases and haul it back up Main Street to where I parked my pickup at the pharmacy. I drop the case in the bed and pat my jaw harp pocket.

  Cherry’s a silly colour for a pickup, but it was free. I peer into the pharmacy and wave to Penny Larkin. She seems to have cheered up a bit so I wave again. As I walk along the side of the truck I spy those purple Crocs. I had tossed them in there on my way to get the oil. A sad little reminder but I suppose I needed one. I reach in and pull them up by the plastic loop. Not every day you can say you got shoes like these to take home. Cone faces and squiggle heads. Good Lord. Not every day.

  3

  On the drive from Creemore to Cashtown corners, I listen to Barrie’s rock station. I only have about five minutes or so and I always hope to hear a good song. It’s an old Pink Floyd song. Nice enough. Sort of floaty. Out in a field to the south a tractor drags a wide tiller through dry soil. An orange-brown cloud rolls up into the air behind it and hundreds of seagulls fill the floating dirt. I’ve heard people say, “Oh, no. The seagulls are eating all the seeds!” That’s not what’s happening, of course. The farmer is tilling not seeding. The seagulls are eating worms in the turned earth.

  I turn up onto the lot and swing around the pumps. A yellow Camry is sitting empty beside pump six. I pause for the person to come out. She does and hops in her Camry. The silver Corolla still sits against the rocks on the northeast corner.

  “Hey. There’s a Corolla sitting over—”

  “I know.”

  “Should we call the police or someone?”

  “Wait a minute. Lemme go check it out.”

  The keys are still in the ignition and I start it. It rolls back onto the road and I pull it up behind the trailer. A little out of sight. As I’m walking back to the booth I hear a distant siren. The sound sears as the cruisers drop into the basin. Two. Lights flashing in ridiculous combinations as if they’re too excited to make sense. I pause, shield my eyes and watch them race through the red light toward Creemore.

  “Well, I didn’t call ’em.”

  Jeremy is walking back from having turned his music off.

  “Nope. That’s some other business.”

  “You don’t see cruisers goin’ off like that to Creemore very often.”

  “Nope. Some big emergency.”

  I watch Jeremy to see what he thinks.

>   “I know there’s a meth lab in town.”

  I whistle.

  “Really? Well, I bet that’s what they’re after, then.”

  “There gonna need hazmat suits.”

  I nod, agreeing. But really, hazmat suits? I try to picture the meth lab, though I have no idea what a meth lab is supposed to look like. Instead, I picture the van with the dead woman inside.

  “What was with the car?”

  I can see those seagulls. They wheel around against the ground like a giant saw.

  “Car?”

  “Yeah. The Corolla. What are we gonna do about that?

  “Oh, yeah. Hmmm. Not much we can do.”

  I keep my eyes on the gulls. I’m aware of what I’ve just said but have said it in a way that sounds settled. I can see Jeremy out of the corner of my eye. He moves a little, picking something up.

  “Didja get the oil?”

  I nod but stay focused on the gulls.

  “I just think it’s kinda weird. A car left like that. It wasn’t even parked or anything. Looks like it just rolled up off the road all by itself.” I turn to see what he’s picked up. A pen. I’m a little surprised at how nothing much has happened since I got back. I don’t even remember exactly how events got so crowded up earlier.

  “Oh. Well. I guess we’ll find out one way or another.”

  I smile and Jeremy smiles back, but he looks a little vexed. I think he wants me to say more about this. I could. In fact, right now, the way I’m feeling, I could probably pull off just about any story I cared to tell. It’s odd how dramatically things have changed. I think this is a moment I need to seize. I think this is how we turn a corner.