One Man's Trash

by Ivan Coyote

  It was so cold outside that the air burned arrows into the backs of our throats and frost collected on our eyelashes above where our scarves ended, which would melt if you closed your eyes for too long and freeze on our cheeks.

  We packed as many of us onto the sled as we could so everyone could have a go. We rode and climbed, rode and climbed until our toes began to burn. “Once more, everybody goes one more time, then we should go in,” Cathy breathed through her scarf. She pushed her butt to the very back of the sled, and motioned for my little sister to shove in front of her, between her legs. I jumped in the front, and my little sister’s snowsuit whistled up against mine as she wrapped her legs around me. The toboggan’s most alluring feature was the two metal emergency brakes on either side, with the black plastic handles molded to fit the shape of your hand. I tried to grab both and steer, but my sister also wanted to hold onto one, and started to whine. “You can each have one,” Cathy ordered. “You steer one way and you can steer on the other side, okay you guys, don’t fight about it, everyone else is waiting for their turn. Let’s go.”

  About halfway down we flew off a bump. My little sister hauled on her brake and we screeched off the path and smashed into a tree. Cathy’s leg hit first and I heard a snap.

  By the time we rolled her onto the sled and pulled her back to the house, her face was glowing blue white and her teeth were chattering. John came running out with a flashlight. He gingerly pulled up the leg of her snow pants, and dropped it again, his face changing from Christmas rum red to moonlight white.

  “Jesus Christ. Get the kids in the house and pull the truck around. And get her a blanket, she’s going to emergency. Pat, are you okay to drive?”

  A weird silence took over the house after they left. I fell asleep in my clothes on the spare bed and barely woke up when my dad carried me out to the truck hours later.

  “Did Cathy live?” I whispered into his ear. He smelled like scotch and shampoo and his new sweater.

  “She’s fine. She’s asleep. She’s got a cast and a bottle of painkillers. You can call her in the morning.”

  I told my friend Valerie all about it the next day, bragging like it was me. “I tried to save us, but my sister is too little to steer. Cathy’s bone was poking right out of her leg, and she never cried once. There was even blood. Now she has a little rubber thing on the bottom of her cast so she can walk a bit, plus she has crutches.”

  “My dad cut the tip of his finger off with a saw once. They sewed it back on,” she reminded me.

  “Yeah, but you weren’t even born yet. Besides, a leg is way bigger than a finger. Hurts more.”

  Later that winter the wolves got hungry because the government sold too many moose hunting licenses, and dogs and cats started to disappear. Cathy phoned me one Sunday morning and told me that they had found what was left of Little Chief at the bottom of the mountain the day before.

  “I didn’t tell you yesterday because your mom told me you had a hockey game. I know you’re sad, but horses and wolves are animals, and they follow different rules than we do. He had a good horse life, and now the wolves will make it until spring. You were too big to ride him any more anyway, and your little heart will get better in time. Wolves are wolves and men are just people.”

  She was tough like that.

  When she left John, she was tough too. She took her horse and one duffle bag, and most of his savings to cover her half of the house. She never even cried. Or that’s how I saw her leaving in my mind. Dry-eyed in her pick-up, with the radio on and a cloud of dirt-road dust from the Yukon straight back to Alberta.

  Bet she never looked back, I thought.

  My uncle started to date one of the other cooks from the lodge. She had a university degree so everyone called her the professor.

  My little sister grew up and moved to Calgary. She, like myself, inherited our family loyalty, and looked Cathy up.

  My mom and I went to visit my sister at Christmas, and she told me Cathy would love it if I could make it out to visit her in Bragg Creek. But we got snowed in, so I called her the day before we left.

  Cathy’s voice sounded the same as I remembered, except more tired. “I can’t believe you’re almost thirty years old. I remember you as just a little girl with that white hair and filthy hands, little chicken legs. You had such big eyes. My God, you were cute. Just let me grab my smokes.”

  I could hear dogs barking and a man cursing at them to shut the hell up. A television droned in the background.

  She sounded out of breath when she got back on the phone. “Here I am. Hard dragging myself around since my accident. Did Carrie tell you about my legs?”

  She had broken both of her femurs straight through a couple of years ago, and had pins in her knees. She still had to walk on two canes and couldn’t work any more.

  “I lost the trailer,” she explained. “Couldn’t get worker’s comp because it happened on a weekend, and the unemployment ran out a year ago. Had to move in with Edward and lie about being common law even to get welfare.”

  “What are you saying about me?” I heard the man’s voice again in the background. “Who you talking to anyway?”

  “My niece. Turn down the TV for chrissakes.”

  “You don’t have any nieces. You don’t even have any brothers or sisters.”

  I presumed this was Edward. He obviously didn’t understand family loyalty the way we did. Blood and marriage were only part of it.

  “’Member that time you broke your ankle on the sled? You didn’t even cry. You were my hero back then, you know?”

  “Well, I cried when I broke my legs this time. I’m still crying. Some fucking hero I am now, huh?”

  I heard the empty in her voice and didn’t know what to say. So I told her a story.

  “Your old shed is still out behind John’s, you know. Nobody ever goes in there. A couple of years ago John said I should go out and see if your leather tools were still out there. Might as well, since maybe I would use them, and so I did. It was like a time machine in there. Everything was still hanging where you left it.

  “I took down your old bullwhip. It didn’t really want to uncurl, but I played with it a little and it warmed up a bit. I took it outside into the corral and screwed around with it. On about the hundredth try or so, I got it to crack. I got so excited by how it jumps in your hand when you get the roll of the arm right that I hauled off and really let one rip. The end of the whip came whistling past my head, and just the tip of it clipped the back of my ear on the way by, and it dropped me right into the dirt. I was afraid to peel my hand from the side of my head to see if there was still an ear there. Hurt like fuck.

  “But I thought of you and made myself try a bunch more times until I got it to crack again, you know, so I wouldn’t be too afraid next time. Like you would have done.”

  She was quiet for a while on the other end of the line. “You still have some imagination, kid. Always did. You gotta come visit me sometime. I’d love to see what you look like all grown up. I don’t get into Calgary much any more, only when Edward feels like driving, which is never. You’d have to come out here. Carrie could give you directions.”

  I’ve been back to Southern Alberta twice since then, but never made it to Bragg Creek to see Cathy Bulahouski, the Polish cowgirl from Calgary. She can’t ride any more, she told me, and I couldn’t bear to ask her if she had cut off her hair.

  JUST REWARD

  She was never that good at Frisbee, but it wasn’t about that for me. Her summer brown legs bent with a grace I could never possess, and her straight black hair swung unbraided, always a strand or two across her face, in her mouth.

  Her palms were lighter than the backs of her hands, and often she would lay them in the place her hips would be one day, plant both feet in the dust, and throw her head back when she laughed.

  She was doing just this the day we found the money. Her Frisbee throws were unpredictable and wobbly, and this one had arced sideways into the juniper bushe
s that lined the parking lot next to the parched park we were playing in.

  Nothing is as dry as July dust in the land of the midnight sun, so I almost missed the brown leather wallet laying in the dirt.

  “Valerie, come look here. Look at this.”

  “I don’t want to look at bugs. Come on, throw it here.”

  She saw the look on my face and went silent, looked down into my hands.

  A rectangle of worn calfskin with a brass bill clip inside, pinning down a wad of American bills. I stuffed it into the waistband of my shorts and we ran down to the edge of the river, under the cover of willows.

  Eleven one hundred dollar bills, two twenties, four ones.

  “One thousand, one hundred and forty-four dollars.” Valerie was perched on the balls of her feet, her teeth shining white behind chapped lips. “We have to take it to the police station,” she whispered.

  “The police? Are you crazy? We could buy practically anything with this.”

  She shook her head, a wrinkle creasing her forehead. “Our parents would take it away anyhow. The police.” She said this like there was no other option.

  “We could hide it for a while then, in the fort. We could save for our educations.” I appealed to her practical side.

  “If we take it to the police, and they can’t find whose money it is, then we can keep it. We could be heroes.” She raised her eyebrows and rubbed her palms on her shorts for emphasis. “Rich heroes.”

  It was settled then. I never once thought to argue that it was I who had found the money. I had no name for what I felt for her; we were nine years old and I would have done anything she wanted.

  “You fucking did what?” My father was chewing his pork chop with his mouth open.

  My mom slapped his arm, right above where his shirtsleeve was rolled up to. “You did the right thing. I’m really proud of you girls, and so is Valerie’s mom.”

  My father looked at me like he couldn’t figure out just where he had gone wrong.

  The policeman shook his head as he filled out the form. “Well, he was probably an American.” This guy was sure to make detective. “No ID, huh?” He narrowed his eyes at us, beads of sweat on his forehead.

  We shook our heads simultaneously.

  “Beginning of summer, probably on his way up north. To Alaska,” he explained, as though there was a multitude of destinations for tourists to choose from. “There’s a chance he’ll check in on his way back down. No one claims this in six weeks, say, then you two are in the money.”

  We spent that money over and over in our heads for the rest of the summer. Valerie wanted a camera, and an easel and paint set. “No cheap stuff. The kind of brushes with horse hair in them.”

  I wanted a BMX with chrome pedals, and a microscope. “Maybe a chemistry set, too. And walkie talkies. One for me, one for you. We could talk on them late at night. And a rowboat.”

  “Cowboy boots,” she added, swinging in the hammock, a piece of straw between her front teeth. “Red cowboy boots.”

  It was the ninth of August. We had seven days left.

  The next morning, the phone rang at exactly eight o’clock. I was eating puffed wheat and listening to “Seasons in the Sun” on the radio that sat between the toaster and the plant on the lemon yellow counter next to the window. My mom was filling the kettle, and held the phone between ear and shoulder, motioning silently at me to turn the music down.

  “She’s right here. I see. Okay, I’ll tell her. Thank you, officer.” She uncurled the phone cord with her forefinger and hung it up. “Someone claimed the wallet. He’s downtown, he wants to give you two a reward. I’ll drop you both off on my way to work.”

  We sat side by each in the back seat of my mom’s Tercel, silent and lead-bellied under our seat belts. Valerie smelled like Irish Spring soap and toothpaste. I had forgotten to even brush my hair.

  He looked like a caricature of a tourist come magically to life. The buttons of his polyester print shirt strained to hold his belly inside his khaki shorts. He even had waxy hairs sticking out of his ears. He shook our hands, his moist palms unnaturally soft. “Here’s my little heroes,” he wheezed. He patted us both on our heads, mussing our hair and smiling at the cop behind the counter. “Let’s head across the street and get you girls your re-ward.”

  He stood perspiring in the service window of the Dairy Queen. “What’s your favourite flavour of milkshake?”

  “She likes strawberry, chocolate for me,” I piped up. Talking to strangers was my job. Explaining why we had done what we did to parents was her territory, but strangers were my area of expertise.

  “Too early for milkshakes,” she whispered to me, as he pulled out his billfold and handed over the four singles. I shushed her. Surely this was just the first phase of our reward.

  But ten minutes later we sat alone at the bus stop, the change from our milkshakes stuck to my palm, for bus fare. He had told us what good girls we were and hopped into his motor home. His wife had waved over her knitting at us from the passenger seat. The TravelEase edged back onto the road.

  “I hate South Carolina. Never going there.” Valerie spit in the dust and tied up her shoe.

  My dad was still at home when we got back, strange at this time of day. He was smoking an Export ‘A’, drinking tea, and reading Shogun. We tried to head straight into my room, but he looked up and cleared his throat.

  “Whoawhoawhoa. Where’re you two going?”

  Valerie picked idly at a scratch on her thigh; I stood on one leg, then the other, waiting for the inevitable.

  “Didja get your re-ward?” He split the word in two, like someone from South Carolina would.

  I nodded almost without moving my head. Valerie shrugged.

  “Welllll...?” His one eyebrow raised, his hands perched like spiders on the wooden table.

  “We got milkshakes,” Valerie said softly.

  My dad turned his right ear to us, played with a make believe hearing aid.

  “He bought us both milkshakes,” I blurted out, the sweetness of chocolate already halfway back up my throat.

  “Small or large?” he crowed, slamming both palms flat, slopping tea onto his paperback.

  “Large ones.” The bottom of Valerie’s jaw stuck further out defiantly, her brown palms returning to her hips.

  My dad laughed from deep in his belly at us both, and reached for his smokes. “Well, I hope it went down good, because that was the most expensive fuckin’ milkshake you’re ever gonna drink.”

  Twenty years later I realized we had, in fact, spent that money on our educations.

  THREE STRIKES

  I was about eleven when I moved into the closet.

  It seemed perfect at the time – a cozy little shelf for a bed, situated close to the sock drawer, protected on all four sides. No hiding place for anything with furry hands to grab me. My closet had those accordion doors with the little wooden slats. You can see out of them quite well when you are up on the top shelf, making them excellent for reconnaissance purposes. I dragged a little reading lamp on an extension cord up to my humble fort and I was the king of all I surveyed.

  My mother, who worried easily, was thoroughly disturbed, wondered if something was wrong at school. She never asked me outright, of course, just whispered questions to others when she thought I was out of earshot. “Do you think maybe someone tried something funny with her? Did any of your kids ever move into their closets?”

  She had many reasons for her anti-closet-residing stance. I could electrocute myself up there with that cord. I was far less likely to ever make my bed. I could fall and break my neck. I could choke to death on my gum and no one would ever know.

  Eventually, I gave in and slept on the ground in a bed like all the other mortals.

  Years later, I recalled the episode. I couldn’t help myself. “Just think, Mom, all that time you spent talking me out of the closet. You’d think you would be more pleased with how things turned out.”

  She found this
neither witty nor ironic.

  Gay Pride, 1990. Hand in hand with my organic food warehouse worker/political theorist girlfriend, I spot my mother. She is standing outside a shoe shop on Denman Street, wondering what the parade is about. Her eyes meet mine at the same time it dawns on her what everyone is all dressed up for. She spins on her heel and retreats into the store, pretending that she hasn’t seen me.

  I go for dinner with her that night, without the girlfriend. Neither of us mention what we did that day.

  Christmas, 1999. “I have a funny story for you,” my mom whispers conspiratorially to me over the phone. “I think I ... how do you guys say it ... I think I ‘outed’ you today.”

  She was taking a knitting class. Her current project was a pair of wool socks for my girlfriend in Montreal. She had them almost finished, but forgot the stitch that finished off the top part. She called up her knitting instructor (who also used to teach highland dancing in her glory days) and asked her if she could pop by for a sock-closing-up stitch lesson.

  “Come on by, dear, I know how worrying knitting can be, so close to the holidays.”

  My mom said she didn’t even think about what she was saying. “So sorry to trouble you like this, but I really want to get these in the mail. They’re for my daughter’s girlfriend.”

  “You should have seen her face,” my mom laughed. “A nice lady like myself, knitting socks for homosexuals. I’m so used to it all now, you know, and somewhere along the way I must have got over myself.”

  [NOW]

  CLEAN AND SOBER

  It all started with the jam jars. My mom was in town visiting, digging in my cupboards for mugs to pour us a cup of tea. She made that clicking sound of disapproval with her tongue and raised an eyebrow at me.

  “You, my dear, are thirty-one years old. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped drinking out of jam jars?”