ILLUSTRATIONS © TERRY PLUMMER
ONE


No one knew what happened to Al
except maybe Kay and me that night
barelegged in darkness on the bank
of the Fraser on the perimeter of
Fort George Park even though I’d
only been in town for a while and
I didn’t really know him well I swear
I saw his hand clenched in a fist in
some shallow eddy or rib of the river
weeds foxtails soft thick silt but the
truth is I didn’t know shit about the
cold white north the purple tint of the
sky the mills why everybody drove a
pickup truck the northern lights why
even in August it never gets that dark
up north compared to the sky in the
Kootenay mountains my old home
town but anyway back to Kay and my
thighs were relatively large and incom-
prehensible compared to Kay’s hard
muscular calves it seemed her body was
the antidote to a chaotic world something
about the tightness of her shape the angular
quality of her jaw the smallness of whatever
space she chose to occupy red hair freckles
and small green eyes she was a dangerous
kind of friend who could run real fast and
never cried it seemed the scent of lemons
was rising off the river but it was just the
Sunlight dish soap on our hands from
dousing the fountain on the police station
lawn a couple hours before smoking her
stepdad’s weed twisted tight inside our
report cards cause we didn’t have money
for Zippos or a half sack of Kokanee or
even cigarettes which is kind of funny in
retrospect cause the stiff blue paper burned
and we inhaled and exhaled and hard as
we tried we weren’t really high or as bad-
ass as we wanted to be and we always made
honour roll anyway
Kay said the way she was always
saying things in a transcendental adult way
which got us to talking about Al you know
asking questions not how he might have
died but rather did he die at all and inhaled
and exhaled and Kay didn’t cry.

TWO

A few years later and there was Kay
and me twenty-one or twenty-two
going on a hundred and three finally
made it the hell out of Dodge in Kay’s
little RX7 all the way to the Pacific
Ocean me on my way to bulimia-
ville cause I was gettin’ real used to
lino and late night binges with Leno
or Letterman I guess it doesn’t matter
now the way we twirled alone in front
of the big psychedelic projector screen
in the wall at that techno bar two doors
down from the Odeon on Yates Street
we were Gold Card members cause we
went like five out of seven days a week
three-for-one Monday night highballs
what was the name of that place oh

yeah that’s right no prissy
girls allowed or they’d probably get
their asses kicked sometimes we were
high on mescaline otherwise known as
myth that our gorgeous French model
slash roommate Majou from Montreal
got us from time to time pronounced
/majew/ but the /j/ is real soft like an
engine humming between your thighs
and his little French girlfriend Mélin
pronounced /maylin/ the little bitch
who couldn’t speak a word of English
and Kay and I fuckin’ hated her cause
one night we snuck into his room on
hands and knees real quiet so as not
to wake his warm soft lips and silky
brown hair and long dark eyelashes
god it makes me want to cum right
now lying beside him one on each
side touching his body all over
letting our hands float just above
the surface of his skin his naked chest
his slightly opened mouth and I looked
across the arc of his body like a desert in
moonlight cause it just depends on your
perspective things look different real close
up and saw something briefly in her small
green eyes something dark and vampirish
like she either didn’t give a shit about
anything in particular or she had it in her
to consume the guy whole.

THREE

Why did Al go out jogging that late
June evening the tender muscle of his
hamstring burning was he driven by
his dream of becoming the world’s
fastest eighteen-year-old sprinter of
becoming something larger than he
was lean and strong and sexually
charged he catapulted off the blocks
oh man he was amazing sleek and dark
the only black kid in town the only
black kid I knew except Chris Franklin
and his little brother something Franklin
oh and Cher Kinamore from the Laurie
Junior High School Tigerettes yeah
she couldn’t dunk but man she sure
could jump back in my hometown
of hockey jocks and red-neckedness
and beauty queens no shit Miss Canada
nineteen eighty-four or was it nineteen
eighty-five used to work at the Dairy
Queen and the manager was so proud of
her accomplishment he nailed her
picture to the wall between the john
and cash registers I’m pretty sure but if
you don’t believe me the picture’s
probably still there even though it’s
been so many years things don’t change
much in small east Kootenay hockey-
jocked-dairy-queened-red-necked towns.

FOUR

There was Kay and me going on a hundred
and four I had gotten a couple of tattoos
a butterfly one on my belly right here
just above the button sort of angled
upward in a kind of less than vertical
ascent toward some unfathomable part
of my body I can’t really see the armpit
maybe or hollow place in the knot of my
throat was working at a new café Majestic
Eatery at the local shopping mall a step up
in the world I guess I got to blast the stereo
after the boss left crank up Sheryl Crow
Tuesday Night Music Club
and not always but occasionally after I
locked up I swiped a brownie or two and well
you know how it goes the job was okay but
sometimes when I was vacuuming underneath
the chairs and tables trying to manoeuvre the
piece of shit Hoover around the legs I worried

and my fingertips
were burned from lifting hot coffee cups out
of the industrial dishwasher got strong wrists
though it’s true what they say about waitresses
having great upper body strength I thought
one day while carrying about a dozen plates
it must have been about a dozen cups across
the room when the phone rang and my boss
Brian said
but Kay’s voice bled across the
line sort of high pitched freakin’ me out I’d
never heard her sound like that before like
her devastation was implicitly linked to mine
something about the smallness of whatever
space she chose to occupy if she couldn’t fit
then how the hell could I and she cried

FIVE

Maybe he grabbed his Air Nikes
and yellow Sony Sports walkman and
Run DMC tape and said
even though
he had everything going for him
even though he was more popular
than any of the NHL prodigies on
the local Spruce Kings hockey team
maybe he was sick of running for
everyone else and he needed to run
for once for himself maybe he headed
north to Chetwynd the hub of the Peace
River country past the wave pool and
sulphur pelletizing plant or farther still
to Hudson’s Hope the land of Dudley
the Dinosaur to Fort St. John’s man-made
Williston Lake and the W.A.C. Bennett
Dam or northwest instead he’d heard
of the Great River of the Tahltan
people and stopped for coffee at the
Riversong Café on the west bank
of the Stikine River and at last decided
to make a home in the Spatsizi Plateau
Wilderness Park a land so large
or farther still he thought
of Mr. Hatcher’s biology class third
block just between math and metal
shop something about a place called
the Arctic Cordillera he’d always
wanted to try his hand at ice climbing
kind of like rock climbing but well I’m
sure you get the idea the glaciers were
said to come in many colours always
shifting depending on the light green
blue pink even it just depends on your
perspective which side of the ice cap
you wake up on so to speak and no
matter which way you look everything
is empty and white and everywhere
you look is exactly the same but
sometimes emptiness doesn’t mean
nothing it means you’re ready
for anything.

SIX

There was Kay and me gliding past Galiano
going on a hundred and five on the Queen
of Vancouver Island one of the shitty older
vessels mind you when the captain came
on the speaker and said
Kay was absently rubbing underneath
her white Kurt Cobain t-shirt in slow
erotic circles the slight almost imper-
ceptible curve of her belly even though
she was more than three months along
she hadn’t been showing much she was
never the kind of girl who would gain
much weight being a one hundred and
what ten pound waif
you had to go to
the mainland to have abortions so far
along to which she replied
kind of excited
like she was enthralled in the process
even though tomorrow the baby oh
sorry I mean fetus would be gone when
the captain came on again
and maybe I shouldn’t be such a
bitch but I hated all those god damned
tourists their camcorders and Old Navy
sweatshirts gawking at those poor ill
fated whales sucking in the petroleum
from the ships not to mention all the
whale watching tours on those bright
orange Zodiacs
and placed my hand on the impercep-
tible curve of her belly I realized just
then I’d never touched a woman like
that before I guess not even myself talk
about existential angst all those nights
we twirled beside each other on the psyche-
delic dance floor and her skin was warm
and thick there was something there I
could feel it just beneath the surface of her
skin something small and familiar like
a kick or I mean a person can never be
sure but it could have been a fist.


SEVEN
Maybe he headed west to Vanderhoof
the Dutch word for
a small
town sure he liked the idea of slowing
down a little raising birds maybe on the
Nechako river flats or did he follow the
Stuart River to the ancient village of
Chinlac a few miles east of marshland
migrating Canada geese
the north-
ern lights still I don’t know what the
guy would do for a living in a tiny
town like that get a job as a ranger
a tourism officer in one of those little
booths that sometimes have question
marks on them you know big red
question marks preceded on your
way into town by smaller question
marks inside those standard highway
signs so full of hope and certainty aren’t
they burgeoning like magic mushrooms
from out of nowhere like the cairns you
sometimes see a bunch of rocks piled up
thoughtfully by an absentee artist of the
highway they always say
those semi-omniscient signs yeah
right like they know the answer to modern
man’s existential dilemma the booth itself
haphazardly placed on some corner so
remote by the time you find it you’ve
pretty much familiarized yourself with
every nook and cranny of the town fire
station gas station city hall whether or not
there’s a McDonald’s you know the kind
of thing that says it all I wonder what
it would be like to find a town whose
information booths were identified by
semicolons instead that would seem to
be a little closer to the truth don’t you
think
EIGHT
I guess I’d had enough one night or
maybe I was in a bad mood I couldn’t
stop thinking about that tiny fist and it
seemed like Kay didn’t give a shit
I walked up to the first guy
I saw on the street and said
and I swear to god he
said
I said just like that it
wasn’t even me I guess so we went
down to the Inner Harbour he rolled
up my sleeve for me and tied a rubber
band around my arm right here just
above the elbow and a little red bandana
later I closed my eyes he said
but then time became irrelevant
again I looked across the moonlit harbour
threw back my head
I said and a minute or an hour later I’m not
sure which a police cruiser floated past
I remember the blue and red pretty lights
flashing and a man named Constable
John got out said to the guy
and I thought cool
they seem to know each other it felt kind of
cozy even though I still had the rubber
band tied around my arm right here just
above the elbow and Constable John yelled

and
suddenly everything got real fast and bright
as kryptonite or Luke Skywalker’s neon
green light sabre Leo cuffed and taken
away I was so upset about that like I’d
known the guy for years like a great injustice
was unfolding right before my eyes I started
to cry
and held my hand
I sobbed and slobbered all over his uniform
coat sleeve crying
just then an
ambulance pulled up and that was kind of
cool I guess I’d always secretly wanted
to ride inside an ambulance haven’t you
one of those masochistic incidental idio-
syncrasies and the hospital smelled like
formaldehyde like Mr. Hatcher’s biology
class I thought of Al floating in the river
and the fibrous grains of the cat’s
muscle in that dissecting tray as the
doctor slid his hand down my gown
to the butterfly tattoo sort of contemp-
tuously like I was a piece of garbage
or something hit me when they finally
let me go a few hours later my pulse
had slowed I walked across the field
of the hospital lawn picking up pine
cones as I went along and the sun
was rising above the Safeway sign
the empty parking lot a shopping
cart the stop sign at the corner of
Foul Bay Road and Fort Street
and I thought