The Life & Times of Amos Brown

little old homeless guy

2009-12-31T14:57:00.001-08:00

How had he ended up being responsible for this sweet little old homeless guy? He was pretty good at looking after his own needs, but this job where he was looking after a flock of homeless people up at a camp outside Toronto was way beyond his talents. And now, this poor old guy had gone astray and who knows where he was? Was he sick – dead - or wandering around confused in some small town between here and Toronto?

He and Patty’d put the guy on a bus back to the Sally Ann in Toronto where he lived - but he’d never made it. The Captain from the Shelter was there to meet him, but the old man wasn’t on the bus by the time it got to Toronto. Now, Amos felt like he’d really screwed up. Like he’d been playing at being a shepherd but he’d lost one – the most vulnerable one – to the wolves of the world’s cold indifference. What did he think he was doing accepting this job – this responsibility? He was a child in a shepherd’s cloak and had no business messing with people’s lives like this.

He’d blown back into Trono like a spring seed carried on warm and fertile western winds all the way across the country – mysteriously, impossibly landing in the concrete asphalt downtown of Ontario’s biggest cold hearted, cold cash city. Between he and Nick they’d pretty much driven the fleshmobile non-stop all the way – taking turns crashing in the cramped back seat while Jacynthe rode shot-gun making sure the driver stayed awake. She didn’t seem to sleep at all.

The passage home was a blur – a dream – from day to night to day – three days dead to the world – in between there and where he would be. Amos would lift his head up from the back seat in the middle of the night to find Nick with his right arm straight out in a punch - his fist gripping the top of the wheel. The speedometer needle was pushing for the bottom, the little six-banger engine humming high. Amos wanted to say “go easy” but he recognized in Nick’s straight ahead stare into the night – his own desire. Now that he was on his way home, he just wanted to get there and get started. He had a new purpose – a new way to walk – the he couldn’t wait to test out on old familiar streets.

He and Jacynthe dropped Nick at the Bay Street bus station. She’d wanted to keep heading to Montreal too, but Amos had talked her into meeting his brother – Paul and Carol were living just up the road on the edge of the university campus renting a professor’s house with Lawrence and Denise.

It’d been a full year since he’d met Lawrence and Denise in the wild rocky mountains treeplanting – the start of his wild western rodeo ride - and here they were to give him bear hug “welcome homes” at the circle’s full turn. Paul had a knack for turning pretty much any situation into a celebration, but that night he killed the fatted calf for his younger brother’s return.

Carol went along – holding back a little – her face all smiles and fun but her foot on the brakes - as usual. Amos caught the sideways looks she gave his strange new companion – and how uncomfortable – jittery - Jacynthe was in this posh university setting. He knew right away it’d been a mistake bringing her here – she was a fish that swam in deep undercurrents and this was a place in the sun.

Not that his friends and family were snobs or anything – it was just that they were middle class puppies - happy and having fun playing on the shores of privilege - and she was a fish out of water. The song that Amos and Jacynthe had composed couldn’t be translated into this language.

They all did their best to make her feel at home. But later, showered and well fed like good little children put to bed, she told Amos this was not the place for her. Early the next morning she slipped away - an alleycat who can’t trade freedom for comforts behind locked doors. She didn’t ask Amos to remember her – but to remember always his heart’s song.

*******
Later the same day, Amos was very surprised to find his song being sung by another cat. He’d met Larry last at the Brunswick Hotel. Friday afternoons theology students – friends of his brothers’ - would get a table, drink draft, and talk God. Amos would drop by before his cab shift and listen in to their crazy talk. They’d laugh and swear and compete to be the most sacrilegious – sure that the church would never be big enough to handle the vision and hope they had in their hearts.

Amos had bragged to them that if they really wanted to be with the people and reach out and touch them with hope – they should drive cab. They threw big words at him like those little sandbags kids try to get through the holes in the plywood. He’d taunt them saying those words were meaningless if they couldn’t make sense to a drunk. Still, at the time, he was impressed by their bold passion and piety-free sense of humour.

Larry, a wiry, dirty blonde, little guy with coke bottle glasses and an energy only matched by his wit-sharpened intelligence - had now graduated with top honours and bottom results. The National Church interview committees couldn’t get their heads around his prophetic, poetic passion for the people so far from the church’s doors that it’d never cross their minds to put a penny on an offering plate. Larry refused to make it easy for them to let him pass and so they put up the wall that had protected the Sanhedrin from Jesus - between Larry and his ordination as a United Church minister.

So Larry’d found –like water moving around a rock - a church where ministry was a matter of what you did - not who you knew or who you blew. The Christian Rehabilitation Centre – or CRC as it was known on the street - stood at the end of a little dead end street. Made from the same red brick, five storey, 1950’s housing-for-the-poor-solution – it was a part of the inescapable cycle of Regent Park’s poverty.

The CRC didn’t really serve the Regent Park community. The people in the apartments had troubles enough and need enough. But their troubles were different from the homeless ones who wandered unbothered among their children, streets and alleys. While the CRC spoke proudly to its funders about social change – it’s walk was all about just helping the poorest of the poor survive another day. This church, who’s sanctuary was seldom used, was a sanctuary for the men and women who lived hand to mouth in the streets, drop-ins, rooming houses and hostels and social service maze of Trono’s downtown east end.

Crazy Larry was well-loved in this ministry because he loved so well. He’d pour out his heart and soul and cry and shout as loud as he’d laugh - and as often. He had Amos talked into working for him that summer by their fifth beer in the El Macombo that first afternoon back home. Amos would babysit 20 homeless people at a run down old church camp on Lake Scugog – just ninety minutes from the city – ten thousand miles from his Scarbro roots and right back in the east end of the place he’d started from.

Larry’s tale
I knew the call had to come sooner or later. I was impressed that it wasn’t until the second week at the camp that Amos and Patty got into waters stormy enough to call for a lifeline. The call came just as I was leaving the CRC late one evening. Carmel was still there, but he was always the last to leave – even though he had the furthest to go – heading home to his late-blooming love.
Carmel, from the isle of Malta, and his Irish bride had both left their religious orders to pursue an earthy love. She must have been willing to share him with Jesus because Carmel still kept monks hours. He’d drive in from their country sanctuary before the sun rose, reaching the CRC by 6am. This hour was when his flock was being put out to pasture. The homeless shelters - using a rationale that the guys needed to get out and find work - evicted their tenants every morning and sent them trodding off to find breakfast at their favourite Mission. Most of them were walking-wounded – barely able to do the hard work it took to simply survive grazing in the fields of Toronto’s poverty industry.
Carmel would meet Eddie at the door and together they’d get a breakfast going for the guys who started lining up about 6:15 – the time it took to get from the Good Shepherd Men’s Hostel to the doors of the CRC.
These guys all had stories to tell of productive lives and victories won - of careers and wives and children. They’d been members of Lion’s clubs and churches. They’d served in W.W.II and Korea. They’d been captains of industry and foot soldiers in the construction ditches of skyscrapers - the towers of power that now blocked their sunshine as they panhandled and made their way through the cold canyons to the next dingy mission oasis.
There were the young warriors too. Guys too tough, too sensitive, and too stubborn or proud to stay shiftless at home in small town economies. In small towns everyone knows your misdemenours as well as your name. There was no chance for new starts where memories run long and rivalries deep. Their crimes were everything from truly jail-worthy acts to simply being born without all the smarts and skills, wits and family supports needed to find a place in tight economies without charity or imagination enough to let them fit in. Behind them were burnt bridges over rivers of memories too swift, deep and wide to swim back across.
While some had anti-social violent streaks in them, most restricted their victimization to themselves. Drifting from place to place, the excitement and adventure of being on the road would slowly begin to wear them down. Their clothes showed what was also happening to their souls. Slowly, you’d become immersed – then drown - in a skid row lifestyle that expected nothing more of you than to live and behave like cattle.
A couple of winters on the street and the fight would leave you. Not enough good food, too much bad wine or cheap dope - a visit or two to one of the city’s institutions for the criminal or insane - and any inner resolve you might have arrived with would slip through your fingers like grains of sand.

We were there, Carmel and I and a small band of revolutionaries from a variety of downtown agencies, to change all that. We were pursuing Christ’s vision of a community that set places of dignity at a banqueting table that the good and deserving had rejected. We were fighting for Tenant’s rights, for Affordable Housing, for a Welfare system that sustained people instead of penalizing them.
And all of us, despite our greatest efforts and hopes, would get caught up in the wheels of the charity business. It was where our people lived. It was how they survived and they needed friends like us who could help them deal with crooked landlords. Friends who could negotiate with keen and green welfare workers making it their mission to pull power trips with the purse strings of welfare rules and regulations. The Charity business was what paid our bills after all.
Church and Government grants would provide, like welfare, only just enough to keep our little agencies alive. Rock the boat too much and you ended up in the drink yourself – unemployed without that renewal of annually tentative fickle funding. As I liked to tell our fresh recruits to the cause – “give em a hand up – but just to their knees - not their feet.”
Always more optimistic than me, Carmel would quote “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.” Trouble was, the pond was behind fence and gates and fishing poles only put in the hands of well-intentioned social service workers.
So now, our latest fisherman was on the phone ready to quit. I had great hopes for this newest young revolutionary – Paul’s little brother - so I listened patiently. Paul and Amos were preacher’s kids like me. We lived up to the stereotypical P.K.’s taste for trouble and delighted in messing with social convention.
Paul and I had found in Jesus a kindred troublemaker. Like Jesus, we had a healthy suspicion of all things religious. And as his followers we had an umbilical cord connection to the church that we couldn’t cut. We loved to rail against conformity and church bureau-crazy confusions while quaffing ales on a Friday afternoon. Amos would drop by on occasion.
He’d boldly tell us older, wiser, divinity students that if we wanted to really connect with people we should all get behind the wheel of a cab. “I do more pastoral care in a day than you could do in a week. I have opportunities to share the gospel every. I don’t have to wait for a captive and already converted audience on Sunday mornings.” I liked his mischievous spunk and the troublemaking twinkle in his eye as he’d tell us we were all full of shit – daring us to make our book-learning come alive.
I lost track of him for a while. I’d finished up my studies, had been rejected by the church as a candidate for ordained ministry, and had been working at the CRC for a while when he showed up again. He’d been treeplanting in B.C. Avoiding law school, Amos’d spent a winter driving cab in Vancouver and found Jesus on the tidal mudflats. Or, maybe it was Jesus that’d found him? Anyhow, as a ski-bum/dishwasher in the mountains he’d heard the Almighty calling him back to serve in the family business – serving the Lord.
Amos was ripe for the Christian Rehabilitation Centre. Carmel and I’d cooked up a funding proposal for a summer holiday for a bunch of our favourite homeless buddies on the shores of Lake Scugog. There was a little house and sleeping cabin that had seen better days on the edge of an old United Church camp property. It was a chance for the boys to get out of the city and dip their feet in a lake, eat healthy and just stay in one place for a whole week. We’d done a test run the summer before - you could see the effects on the boys after just a day or two. It was like an enchanted spell lifted off of them as they started remembering what it was like to be a human being again.
The main camp was still being used by a single mom’s children’s program, but we’d managed to get the use of these other buildings for the coming summer. We got a Federal government grant to hire some students and put together a United Way application to cover food and transportation costs. We scrounged a van from the Central Neighbourhood House and tapped into the Fred Victor Mission’s food stores to keep the costs low.
Carmel went along with my idea to hire Amos and he picked out Patty; a green and eager Community Worker student from George Brown College. We gave the two of them use of my girlfriend’s old Datsun two-door five-speed beater. (Amos’ wheels had died. The motor blew within a week of his return. We’d tipped a beer to it’s memory.)
Carmel gave Eddie the summer off from CRC breakfasts and sent him for the summer up to Scugog. Eddie was a farmboy from rural Quebec. For years he’d been a C.P.R. crew cook and was used to fixin up belly-filling batches of meat and potatoes. Eddie was in his element at the camp; baking pies for the boys between smokes out on the deck. He loved the chance to spoil them with better food than they’d seen in years. It was still the same canned stuff of soup kitchens but Eddie made it for twenty instead of a hundred and he’d send Amos and Patty off to the farmer’s markets to get fresh veges and eggs. He stood a little taller in that kitchen. Or, at least, he was less bent over.
Patty and Amos were officially hired by the CRC boss Rev. John Faro. I truly enjoyed watching Amos trying to get an extra fifty cents an hour out of that stingy old holy scammer. He gave them the “you’re doing it for the cause” speech and they swallowed it just like we all did. We were true believers - there for the people and not the money - and most of us wore around some degree of guilt - like dirty underwear never spoken of – ‘cause we were makin a living off our friend’s suffering. We had money and a life beyond the circles of the homelessness – so getting lousy pay was part of our penance. It helped us convince ourselves we were together with the people on the shitty end of the stick.
Of course John didn’t tell these minimum wage-earners about his other two jobs that kept him occupied and mostly out of our hair. I had the pleasure of giving them the goods on John’s extra curricular jobs as a real estate broker and university chaplain that provided him with a Muskoka power cruiser lifestyle. I might have elaborated the extent of his scamming just a bit. But it was part of the myth of John Faro.
We were part of a long line of workers he’d exploited for the cause. There was no shortage of disgruntled former CRC staffers out working in neighbouring agencies - all the wiser for their tutelage under Reverend Pharo. He and Carmel had made an arrangement decades ago. Carmel ran the place and John did the power lunches and glad-handing politics that it took to keep the money flowing. John was the front man figurehead of the CRC - took all the credit - and that was just how Carmel liked it.
The new Camp Counselors were both pretty green to skid row. Amos knew the clientele from cab-driving but had no idea how the Social Service Industry worked. Patty was a pretty uptight, by-the-book, follow the rules student. There’d been no lectures to prepare her for this. The only rules for the camp were “no drinking or drugs”. She didn’t do too well with the free hand we gave the two of them to come up with a plan and make the first camp happen within two weeks.
Amos approached his father’s church to get them to sponsor campers for $50 a week. The guys in the drop-in dubbed it his “Send a Skid to Camp” program.
Patty was in tears in Carmel’s office before the end of the first week. Carmel asked me if I couldn’t have a talk with Amos. Seems like he was off and running with the ball while Patty was still trying to figure out the rules of the game. Amos was just making them up as he went along.
Over some beers that night we talked over the problem. I wanted to know just how long it would be before he got it on with her? He was obviously already messing with her head, when would he move on to the rest of her? I told him about the bets being laid on it already. Amos played the honourable professional and denied an interest. He told me a few stories about old girlfriend troubles and swore he couldn’t afford such trouble in his life right now.
He was a storyteller like me. A poet even - and as we drank ourselves into that place that only artists can describe (because it defies description?) we fell in love again with our own truly funny, radical, off-the-wall prophetic visions of community and peace.
He told me about a poem he’d written in Vancouver where Christ helped junkie with a fix in a downtown alley. A down and dirty Christ that met people where they hurt, and without judging, pulled from them enough hope to get them thru another day – survive the tragedy of their lives. I played him a Tom Waits song - “Misery is the River of the World – Everybody Row” and read him a few of my own poetic riffs. He lapped it up and showed he got the gist of it - even though his eyes betrayed some puzzling - not an unusual response to my poetry.
We were already pretty drunk when Paul showed up and dragged us off to the El Macombo. When the band quit for the night, the brothers of thunder found me passed out in the alley being ruffed up by the bouncer. I was playing dead and the bouncer was stuffing ice cubes down my pants trying to see if I really was dead. He turned on them “Do you know this guy?”
Paul denied me just like Peter denying Christ.
But Amos said “Yeah, he owes us money – we’ll take him from here.”
The bouncer left and, as Amos bent over me, I opened my eyes and said “get me the fuck out of here” He dragged my skinny ass up onto my feet. As I staggered, I clutched at his leather jacket ripping a few teeth out of the zipper. In years to come, Amos would point to those missing teeth and remind me just how tolerant he was of saintly, prophetic assholes like me.
Now that we’d established a good working relationship, it was all piss and roses from there on in. Patty survived her first week with Amos and the boys. Amos came back high on all the campfire stories he’d collected. “These are God’s people Barry! They’d give you the shirt off their back, share their last smoke, give you their bed and sleep on the floor. I’ve never met more generous people.”
“Just remember Amos” I warned, “the Devil’s in them just like in you. You never know how dark your heart is til you lose your light and way. Then the evil one will play you like a guitar” He nodded. “Yeah, you gotta wonder how such good gentle people could end up living like they do.”
Then Amos told me about this guy he’d jut met - Charlie…

So, Monday morning we packed them off - Scugog bound with another gang squeezed into the van. Some of these guys were carrying all their worldly possessions right along with them. This trip was a great risky adventure to leave behind the lifeline routine of marching from mission to hostel to soup kitchen. Patty had managed to get a few women to go along with the gang this time. Eddie just climbed into the cramped back seat of the Datsun chuckling “ere we go again.”
It was maybe three days into week two when the call came. I was a bit surprised at Amos’ shaking voice. For such a big, bold, young buck - he was out of his depth now you could tell.
“First we discover that he’s got lice. This beautiful gentle little man -couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds -must’ve been at least 80 years old. That was pretty bad. Beau and Rocky told me what soap to buy at the Pharmacy and helped me strip him and bathe him – he was skin and bones. We burned his clothes and gave him the smallest trousers and shirts we could find in our supply. He had to roll up the sleeves and trouser legs. He was a saint – humble and gentle and kept his sense of humour through the whole ordeal.”
I laughed at the picture Amos was painting.
“That night the Japanese church folks invited us over to their campfire. So a bunch of us go over for hot chocolate and marshmallows and this little guy starts talking in Japanese with them! We couldn’t believe it. Turns out that before the war, his family imported Japanese silk and he’d lived in Japan for some time before returning home to Germany.”
“Around the campfire later that same night he told me about how he and his family had been rounded up by the Nazis and sent off in trains to concentration camps. He said he still had nightmares about riding in those boxcars not knowing where he was going or what would happen to him.”
“That was hard to listen to, but listen to this - the next morning I’m having a coffee with Eddie and I hear someone shouting my name. I run over to the bunk house and Beau is standing there over our little friend. He’s rolling on the ground, shaking and spasm-ing like a son of a bitch. I’d never seen an epileptic fit before - but I knew what I had to do from the cabbie first aid training. I put him on his side and made sure he wasn’t swallowing his tongue and kept talking to him.”
“That’s really good Amos.” I reassured him.
“Yeah, but he should have come out of it. Well - he did for a minute or two - but then he’d go right back into it again. Patty was there by this time and I told her to call for an ambulance. Larry – I tell ya - he just kept going into these grand-mal seizures one right after another. It took the ambulance forever to show up. I was freaking. This poor little guy didn’t have the spunk to climb a full flight of stairs and now the stuffing was being wrung out of him by some epileptic demon. It was awful to watch him writhing there on the floor not being able to do nothing to stop it.”
I told Amos “You were Christ for him -with him – suffering in his humiliation and struggles man. That’s all you could do – and you did it.”
“I dunno – I felt so fucking helpless. It was awful. But that’s still not the worst of it. We followed him to the hospital and by the time we got there he was sitting up and okay. We didn’t know what to do with him next. So Patty called down to the Salvation Army Mission –y’know the little one off College. Some of the guys’d told us that’s where he stays. The Captain down there said to put him on a bus and send him back. Patty got him to promise to meet our little friend at the bus station.
So, that’s what we did. He was still pretty dazed and confused but I thought – once he gets back where people know him, he’ll be okay. We said goodbye and went back to the camp.”
“Good. Sounds like you two handled it really well.” I assured him, wondering why he was calling. Did he just need to report in?- just talk it out?
“Yeah, well, Patty called the Sally Ann about three hours later and talked to the Captain there and he told her that he went to meet the bus - but our friend wasn’t there! Larry - he must have gotten off at one of the stops along the way. All I can think about is that in his dazed condition - he’s living out his Nazi nightmare. He finds himself on this bus and he doesn’t know where he’s going and he gets off in a panic. Now – who knows where he’s wandering around? The bus must’ve stopped at dozen little places from here to there. What can I do?”
I paused and let his angst sink in to my heart a bit – as much as I could. Amos had come up against that wall of helplessness that all of us who serve crash into sooner or later. His resources and smarts and strategies had come to and end and he had nothing in his bag to offer. He’d opened his heart to the sufferings of a gentle innocent soul and Life was opening it even wider with a cruel crowbar’s yank. God knows it’s the helpless, innocent weak ones who get tortured right alongside the buggers who deserve it and bring it on themselves.
“There’s nothing you can do about it Amos. You have to let him go. God’s walking with him every step. That’s all I can say. That’s all that I can hope for. It sucks man. I know you probably feel like you need a drink - I sure do - but you’re at a dry camp and you’ve gotta keep it together for the rest of them.”

I hung up the phone and poured a large scotch. The vulnerable heart that made Amos a natural for working the inner city was also the weakness that could chew him up and spit him out. Now we’d have to watch and see. Would he harden up – turn professional social worker and keep the pain at a safe arms-length distance? Would he go native – let go of the comforts of his middle class status and try to trapese without a safety net? Would he run – get a church job and disappear into the lives of safer, neater, community-building? Hard to say what would happen to Amos Brown.
I only knew that my own soul was filling up with more pain than the booze could keep down. In my grandfather’s yarns, I’d been reading about how farmers used to put a chunk of pork fat into a cauldron of Maple sap to keep it from boiling over. Was Amos’ willingness to stay close and open to people’s pain - the fat in the cauldron? Was I that chunk of fat that was keeping Amos from boiling over? Was Christ the chunk of fat that was keeping me from boiling over? Each day the farmers’d put a new chunk of fat into the next batch of sap.
“God, give us the fat for another day. Drop it in this cauldron that boils us up. The syrup’s for another world – another time – give us the fat for today and we’ll keep watch on the boil ‘til you say it’s ready.”

I met the van when it arrived back at the CRC. The boys slowly wandered off – back to the tooth and claw scrape - hopefully with a little fresh perspective in their heads, some calories stored up for the struggle, and a few good memories to get them thru the tough nights ahead. I asked Amos how he’d made it through?
“Well, he grinned, when you’ve got no bottle – you start lookin for other comforts close at hand.”
“No! You don’t mean….?”
“Listen – Larry – what I found was that these guys are just like me. They’re at loose ends in the world. They have this inner desire to give – they’re so giving I can’t believe it. But, here in the city – all that’s expected of them is to receive. Receive handouts, welfare, soup-kitchen food, social worker’s advice…right?
“Right” Amos had come up with something I could tell.
“Well, we all know that it’s better to give than to receive – right?
”Right.” I nodded.
“But if all you ever do is receive, and never get your chance to give – then how are you ever gonna feel good about yourself?”
“Right!” he had it. He’d found the core of the problem.
“It’s all about dignity. It’s a basic human need – to contribute. It’s how I establish status in a community. It’s how I establish who I am.” “You’ve got it Amos – what are you gonna do about it?”
“I have no fucking idea.” he shook his head. “But I have a feeling that figuring out how I’m gonna contribute has something to do with figuring out how these guys are gonna contribute…”
“Sounds like GOD’s got ya by the balls boy” I told him – prophesying “you’re gonna go wherever that mission takes you I can tell.”
“YEEEOOOWWW” was Amos’ reply as he jumped in the van – a huge grin on his face, fire blazing in his eyes, Jesus in his heart, and a long story unraveling deep in his guts.

Washing the Pot

2009-11-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

He loved the drudgery of it. Walking into the busy, noisy kitchen hustling to get up to speed for the dinner service, he’d approach the sinks like a gladiator taking the field. In the short time between the lunch rush’s end and the dinner start-up, when no dishwasher was on duty, the chefs would produce a pile of pots filling both of the deep stainless steel tubs overflowing into piles on the counter. Days when the three chefs were really working up something special, the piles would overflow under and around the tubs on the floor.

Undaunted by the task ahead, Amos would kick aside a path through the pots, making room to take a stand at his post, turn on the taps - take Chef’s “hurry up and get started.” in stride - and begin. The challenge was to make progress through the pile while the three chefs kept continually adding to it through the night. Soon the busboys would begin bringing in their carts of dirty dishes, glasses and silverware that all had to be done immediately to re-supply for the next sitting.

Dirty dishes were stacked into the heavy square plastic trays, hosed down and run along the stainless steel counter into the big industrial stainless dishwashing machine. Lift the lever, push the clean tray out the other side to cool before restocking the waiter’s supply, run the dirty tray in, lower the lever, pulling the steel box over the tray and hit the wash button for it’s five minute cycle. Back to the soaking pots for two minutes, then quickly back to stack the cooled dishes, and prep the next tray before the machine’s cycle was over. If the machine’s red “off” button glowed for more than a few seconds Chef was there to take out his stress on the low man “Hey – what are you wasting time for? Get those dishes moving!” It kept Amos’ mind on a short leash.

He’d come to the place of toil in the hero’s journey. The adventure was well wrought. He’d found the Grail, come to terms with the demons who’d trip him up, conquered the fearsome mountain trolls, and rescued the damsel – wait – no, there’d been no rescues. And here there wasn’t much chance. Amos was the grunt boy of the Resort. He’d taken on the low job, been given “whites” to wear that didn’t fit – the pants not covering his ankles, the shirts pulling at his armpits, buttons that couldn’t be done up over his t-shirts. Terrible pay, no tips, and a good daily dose of verbal abuse. It all only added to his ridiculous-ness, his humbling, his sanctification. It was more like he needed rescuing.

“Any port in a storm.” thought Amos. He’d skied Red Mountain for ten days and headed out when he realized his funds were getting low. He “had” to ski Banff before heading east. But between Trail and Banff there were a few clubs to try and by the time he made Banff his cash flow was down to a trickle.

He’d picked up a French Canadian hitchhiker just after he turned east again towards Banff. How could he pass up a guy standing at the side of the road with skiis in one hand and his other hand empty, arm out in that humbling gesture, thumb up, begging for a lift? Amos had traveled these mountain highways on the generosity of others. It was part of the code to now return the gift to the great universal recycling effort. He was a believer after all. And believers must practice their faith – putting it into action without hope of ever seeing the return – ever knowing how long, far and wide the arc of the cycle might be.

Jean-Claude spoke about as much English as Amos spoke French – to point a fine point on it – fucking little. The Canadian school system had ill-prepared them for this encounter. But somehow they managed to share their stories. Jean-Claude was also on a quest. He’d worked as a fishing guide, taking tourists by canoe into Northern Quebec where only the Indians lived. He was here to ski the Rockies with the funds he’d saved.

Jean-Claude told Amos about a winterized Youth Hostel where they could stay for cheap. It turned out to be a big old log cabin in the woods between Lake Louise and Banff. You cooked your own food and Amos got talking to people there about how they each were managing skiing with few funds. The Unemployment office in Banff held postings for all the jobs in local Resorts and Restaurants and Hotels. There was a steady turnover of positions as people got fired for skiing too much and working too little or moved their way up the job ladder.

Next morning Amos took a trip in and found a job posting for a waiter at the Sunshine Mountain Ski Resort. He called and set up an interview for the next day. He’d have to take the gondola up to the resort the guy explained. “Just give them my name and they’ll let you on.” he told Amos.

Back at the Youth Hostel, he and Jean-Claude agreed to ski Sunshine the next day. Amos just took his skiis along on that free Gondola ride and once up on the mountain no one seemed to be looking for proof of ticket purchase. The job interview lasted maybe ten minutes. Amos had tried to bluff his way into a waiter’s job – lying about his extensive experience. How hard could taking food orders be? But when the guy started quizzing him about how many tables at a time he could handle, the veil of lies became thin and he could see he wasn’t foolin anyone. The guy might have given Amos a chance if his beard, hair, and clothes hadn’t given a first impression of a wooly lumberjack fresh out of camp.

So, he found Jean-Claude and joined him for a sunny day of hitting the slopes. Up until that day, Amos had been thinking that his skiing was pretty fine. But Jean-Claude had skiis like Amos had never seen. Telemark bindings, Jean-Claude explained, were for mountaineering. They’d allow you to lift your heel to climb on the way up. On the way down however, you’d have to perform some pretty complicated dance steps involving almost kneeling with one leg dragging behind while your forward leg swept a wide arc as you shifted your weight onto it, turning to control your descent, while bringing the back leg forward as the forward leg dropped back into the kneel. Jean-Claude was tackling a whole new way of descending snowy slopes – with many tumbles and tries - that Amos had never encountered. “Just when you’ve conquered the mountain”, thought Amos, “the peak only shows you the next, more difficult, one to climb.”

At dinner back at the Hostel, they sat at the long crowded tables with an older guy. His middle age made him kind of stick out in that crowd of youth. Amos noticed that before starting his dinner, he bowed his head for a few long moments. Intrigued, Amos started pumping him for his story. John was from Calgary. He was walking to Vancouver. He was well spoken and well read and didn’t seem like a nutbar to Amos - but a very normal looking guy. John explained that he was taking this time in his life to spend mostly with God as he walked. “Just when you think you’ve cooked up an incredible spiritual quest,” thought Amos, “another more difficult one comes into view.”

Now, Amos was really broke. He might have to start walking east he thought. The last of his money had gone into another night at the Youth Hostel and some groceries for dinner and breakfast. In Banff he found a job posting for a dishwasher at the Post Hotel in Lake Louise. His last 5 bucks went into the Fleshmobile. He drove the thirty miles to the Post Hotel. He didn’t call ahead. He just showed up. He didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t get the job – but - he figured “there was only one way to find out”.
-----
Amos had just spent most of a month living in a tent. And he looked it. His curly hair was long and his thin beard was wisping over his lips as he tried to convince the owner of a five star Hotel that he’d fit right in. Sitting there in the lobby’s leather chairs. Henri, the Swiss Hotel owner, cut the interview short after a couple of quick questions and offered Amos the dishwasher position. It had opened up just that morning.

“Yeah, great, I’ll take it” Amos jumped at the morsel. When Henri told him room and board was included, Amos couldn’t’ conceal his joy. “Really?” Amos beamed like a birthday boy “Right on!”

Henri smiled. He introduced Amos to his beautiful Swiss wife Heloise, who nodded an acknowledgment in Amos’ direction before Henri passed him off to Wendell the desk clerk, telling Wendell to give him room #12.

On their way down into the Hotel’s basement, Wendell filled him in. Wendell was a wiry little guy. A few years younger than Amos, he came to the Hotel straight out of high school, starting as a dishwasher and had worked his way up to the front desk. Amos could see he was plenty proud of his position and obviously considered himself an authority. “You’re in luck boy, you and me got the only single rooms in the staff quarters.” He opened the door to reveal a dingy, small room with one very small basement window at ceiling height letting in the late afternoon sun. “It’s also the only double bed down here.” explained Wendell “I don’t know how you rate this – but Henri’s the boss. He must like you.”

To Amos, who been sleeping in the snow for a month, this dark little cave with a bed was luxury – a gift! “Bathroom’s down the hall. Staff dinner’s at five.” Wendell told him. “be sure to use the back kitchen door. Kitchen staff’s not allowed to mix with the quests.”
“That’s fine with me man. Thanks.” Amos replied closing the door. He knew he’d only be able to take this small man’s officious directions in small doses. Wendell was eager to give him some advice. “Thanks for your help. I’ll figure things out.”

Amos found that he reveled in the humble task of dishwasher. He loved being a spoke in the kitchen’s wheeling, chaotic, order. It felt like a ship in a storm; the captain barking orders, all hands working with skill and speed to keep the boat abreast of the hungry waves. He was working the bilge pump; bailing seawater from the hold – ignored but ennobled by knowing that he too was saving the ship and the day.

With his back turned to the frenzy, with the chefs’ hot pans sliding past his elbows into the sinks, he could listen to the talk, the bustle, the waiters bringing orders in and the chefs tossing together the plates of food. It was so good to have heavy, steady work to speed the hours by, with absolutely no responsibility on his shoulders. There was no doubt about it. Dishwashers were at the bottom of the Hotel totem pole. Chambermaids were slightly higher. Waiters stood a good head and shoulders above this lowly caste. The chefs lived like the Thunderbirds their wings outstretched with only the owners, who also managed from on high, sitting atop their shoulders.

After a month of being Mr. Hermit in the mountains, Amos felt that he’d lost his ability - or was it his desire - to make conversations. He kept quiet and to himself the first few weeks. Doing his shift, reading or walking at night. If he worked the afternoon/night shift, he’d ski. The Lake Louise mountain proved to be an extensive club with many challenging slopes. His favourite were off the back of the mountain. In that valley there was a chalet with a chairlift that went up the next mountain. It took time to get there and it was often less crowded than the main runs. The cost of the lift tickets would eat away at his minimum wages but he was loving this waystation on his way home and not too concerned just yet about needing to save the funds to get him the rest of the way back to Ontario. Not while there was still snow on the hills anyway.

Slowly, Amos got to know the Post Hotel family. It was a small exclusive Hotel. The staff was only the size of a large family. Chef was the notorious alcoholic father, with a legendary temper. He’d pounce on Amos, his black beady eyes glaring, and shout out some order at him like he should have known what was on his pickled French mind already. “Get me some rutabagas from the basement you Eastern bum!”

Amos hurried down into the cellar - only realizing when he got there that he had no idea what a rutabaga was. He sheepishly returned to Chef and told him so. Amos thought he could see the steam coming out of Chefs ears as he swung a heavy butcher’s knife in the air. “It’s a bloody turnip you imbecile. Where did you come from – a hole in the ground?” Amos could have asked someone else what a rutabaga was but like a cat who’s attracted to those who don’t like cats, he found he enjoyed getting under Chef’s feet. Amos retreated back to the basement before Chef could see the smile on his face.

Henrick was the other lead chef in the kitchen. As far as Amos could see he was the one who actually ran things. He had his own chalet behind the hotel on the banks of a quick wide stony stream. He’d been lured from Europe at great expense, according to him, to make a name for the Post Hotel.

Sebastian was the pastry chef. He worked away in his section of the kitchen with large windows and broad prep tables separated from the rest of the kitchen by ovens the size of a small zamboni. He was a happy mouse. Saying little, Sebastian worked away quietly creating mouth-watering pastries. At the end of a shift, kitchen staff could choose between a beer on the house or one of Sebastian’s creations. Amos rarely chose beer. Beer you could get anywhere.

The Sous-chef was Claude. He was a dark eyed, dark haired, attractive French Canadian lad from somewhere north of Montreal. He’d been to school in France, apprenticed in Swiss Hotels, and had now achieved a position as a Sous chef under Henrick’s demanding eye. He was also an accomplished mountaineer. He would trek up to the peaks surrounding Lake Louise, strap on his skiis and conquer the slopes with the same quick humour and skill he used in the kitchen.

One of the waiters, Mark, had been living in Lake Louise for a number of years. He was considered to be one of Lake Louise’s finest downhill skiers. After an evening shift at the restaurant, he convinced Claude to take him on the trek he had planned for the next day. Claude was hesitant, but Nick insisted. The next evening the kitchen crew was astonished to hear Claude’s sorry tale. Nick had missed a turn on his skis, fallen off a cliff’s edge and broken an arm. Rescue helicopters had to be called in to fetch him from a gulch. Claude was quite apologetic. Nick showed up a few days later with his left arm in a cast, reduced to slinging plates one-handed - and a reputation also reduced to ski slopes instead of mountain passes.

The waiters typically didn’t socialize with the dishwashers, chambermaids, and sundry hotel staff. The sat at their own table in the staff dining room Only Francine, would come and join their table. She’d learned that Amos was a student of literature and she would talk books with him. Amos warmed to this attention. She brought him out of his shell with a favourite subject he could talk easily about. Her attentions shone some light onto Amos. She invited him to ski with her some time. The other waiters took note.

There were three chambermaids at the Hotel. They were led by Marlene; a tall buxom barmaid type with long dark hair, strong limbs and a tough chick demeanor. Amos guessed she’d grown up in a family of brothers. Marlene’s first once-over assessment of Amos had been “just another cowboy.” Her two sidekicks were as different as dog and cat. Heather was a dyed-blonde party girl. A heavy metal rocker, she hadn’t been at the Hotel long and no one expected her to last. The other one was very different. She could often be seen talking in close confidence with Marlene. She was boyishly thin - thin legs, thin hips, thin torso, thin arms, and a thin oval head with pointed features and thin lips. Her short black locks were always a mess.

Jacynthe always wore black and seemed like she’d be more at home in a darkened studio than in the bright sun-sparkling streams and clear mountain airs of Lake Louise. She was not good-looking but Amos found the way she moved and kept to herself attractive. Her English was terrible and it took some coaxing to get her talking. She’d respond to Amos’ questions with curious looks and coy questions of her own – as if she was ignoring the surface question and looking for what Amos was really after.

It was Vince, one of the other dishwashers who first convinced Amos to visit the Cave. The Cave was the pub at the Holiday Inn where the Post Hotel staff would hang out. Amos had been questioning Vince about how he’d ended up in Lake Louise. As a cabbie, Amos had learned the skill of questioning – a way of keeping the attention off ones’ self and learning more about the ever-intriguing depths of human nature. Turns out Vince had escaped Vietnam in an open boat with forty people jammed together in a run for their lives. He promised to tell Amos more of the story if he’d buy him a beer at the Cave after work.

The place was almost empty. The chambermaids were there and while Amos headed for a table in the opposite corner, Vince walked right over and joined them. Amos reluctantly followed. The music was loud. Too loud to talk. The bar had a large disco dancefloor surrounded on all four sides by tables. The dancefloor was empty except for Jacynthe. She was dancing by herself – doing a strange, self-styled, expressionistic performance - the nature of which Amos was sure that bar had never been treated to before. She seemed totally absorbed in what she was doing and oblivious to anyone or anything else. Amos watched curiously – at first with some embarrassment for her. But as he watched he could see that she was totally into what she was doing and that intrigued him.

Marlene was watching him watching her. She was surprised he didn’t laugh and make jokes. Instead he began bouncing his head to the music enjoying the performance. He and Vince had a couple of beers, said goodnight to the three, and left. Amos wanted to get the rest of the story from Vince.

He told a harrowing tale of survival. Amos just kept shaking his head. Off Vietnam’s coast, they’d managed to escape the chase of pirates – who would have taken the women and all valuables – by running straight into a raging storm. Vince and his partner had fought the waves and kept their boatmates from panic. It took them six weeks to cross the Pacific. They lost 13 people to starvation and thirst and arrived at Vancouver Island where authorities locked them up for another 6 weeks. Eventually the Canadian government relented and issued the Vietnamese boat people – as the media called them – work permits. Vince had heard of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and jumped at the chance to be a dishwasher in Lake Louise. Amos regarded his new friend with much greater respect. His first impression was of a friendly, harmless, little man. Now, he saw a man with a lion’s heart and a backbone of fired steel. Amos doubted if he could ever produce such a courage himself.

Amos also discovered that Vince had never visited Chateau Lake Louise. They were just a short car ride down the mountain from the great CN Hotel on the picture postcard turquoise lake. “Do you have a swimsuit?” Amos asked him. Turns out he did. “Bring it along and meet me in the parking lot after the dinner shift. We’ll go for a swim.”

Vince was there waiting in the parking lot. To Amos’ surprise so was Wendell - and Jacynthe hung back behind the two of them. “Do you mind if I join you?” she asked shyly. “More the merrier.” Amos replied. She looked at him quizzically. “That’s a strange thing to say for someone who spends so much time alone.” she said slipping into the back seat.

Amos explained the drill on the drive up the mountain. “It’s all about being at home – acting like you belong.” And just like he’d told them, they sauntered through the grand lobby with high chandelier ceilings and deluxe carpeting and couches like they owned the place. Well – sort of. Amos greeted the staff behind the front desk with a smile and a wave as he led his party towards the stairs at the far end. Vince was gawking, his head turning left and right, spinning around every ten steps to take it all in. Wendell was trailing behind whispering urgent warnings “we can’t do this! we can’t do this! we can’t do this!” Jacynthe strode step for step with Amos, looking straight ahead, cool, collected and purposeful. Mom and Dad with a couple of kids in tow.

The young guy on staff at the pool probably wasn’t fooled by this small family of strange-looking swimmers. But there were no guests in the pool and either he didn’t care or he didn’t dare challenge Amos’ unsmiling request for four towels. Within minutes the guys were splashing around, jumping and diving off the spring board, a great racket bouncing off the stone walls and vaulted ceiling of the large elegant poolroom. They didn’t even notice Jacynthe slip into the water.

As if some chemistry in the water had changed them, the guys’ loud excitement waned. Vince and Wendell decided to head for the sauna. Not a big fan of the heat, Amos told them to go ahead. He sat on the edge of the pool and watched as Jacynthe began to move through the water. As in the Cave the other night, she moved freely letting one motion lead spontaneously to the next without plan or a need to perceive how she was perceived. She moved to a music now that was within. Amos watched and tried to catch the rhythm and tune. After a deep dive she rose facing Amos and gave him a wide smile. He’d never seen her smile more than a grin.

Amos slid off the edge in under the surface. With a few strokes he was beside her. She responded to his presence with a spin and a swirl. He circled her with long side strokes, watching her lithe motions. She dove deep and he dove to follow. They met at the bottom of their dive. She reached out and touched his hip. He touched her shoulder and it was like a current had found a path through them. Amos felt a warmth flow from hip up to his arm and out through the hand that touched her. It lasted just an instant as their buoyancy lifted them suspended in the moment together. They surfaced to find Vince and Wendell cannonballing into the pool on either side of them. They splashed water at the guys and played like three puppies and a cat in the deep end.

---
The next night, Wendell knocked on his door and opened it wide. Amos was reading in bed. Wendell had a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. “Hey man, come join us why don’t you?” Amos’ first instinct was to send him away. But Amos felt like it was time to squeeze the sponge. He’d been soaking up the spirit alone for a month now – and it was time to share it. He followed Wendell down the narrow hallway where half the staff were crammed into Billy and Steve’s – dishwashers too - tiny room with two single beds. Smoking and drinking and talking loudly over Billy’s banging on a guitar to the Eagle’s “Hotel California” they welcomed Wendell and Amos with a cheer. Marlene and Jacynthe made room for Amos to sit on the bed between them, backs to the wall. The chambermaids were chatting with others around them but their legs pressed on Amos’ on either side. It seemed a long time since he’d felt the warmth of human touch. He let out a long sigh and relaxed – enjoying the embrace of friends again.

Jacynthe passed him a joint and as their hands touched he again felt a warmth wash through him. After passing the joint along, he reached for her hand and – afraid of what the others would think and not caring – held it. She snuggled closer beside him on the bed saying nothing. Marlene elbowed him, looking away, pretending not to notice.

When the party broke up they were still holding hands. In the hallway people dispersed to their rooms either not noticing the couple or being modest and gracious enough to not notice. Amos’ heart was pumping as he led her to his door and without hesitation drew her behind him into the dark room. They embraced and enjoyed a long first kiss, mouths opening and enjoying the taste they found in one another. Clothes were slowly removed. She led him in an unhurried dance. Each time he went to push or speed things up she pulled away until he calmed and slowed and met her rhythm.

They coupled in the deep double bed. His large long limbs stroked and entwined with her thin strong arms and legs working together to draw and pull him in. Her fingers found every part of him and his hands cupped and wrapped around her small waist, buttocks, legs. He could put his thumbs on either side of her breasts and touch his fingers together in the small of her back. She took him in, breathing in his orgasm as he exhausted himself into her.

He rolled onto his back with a generous sigh. “That was good.” He said. “For a writer - good - is such an empty word.” She whispered throwing her leg across him and shifting onto him with kisses to his nipples. Had he told her he was a writer? “Is good the best you can do?” she teased, kissed and tongued him, stroked and pulled him into a new beginning when he thought they were finished. The dance continued. Every time he thought he’d completely expressed himself, she drew him out of himself further and further and he discovered a new passion, a new heat, a new rhythm that he hadn’t imagined there before. He lost track of the orgasms between them. They weren’t the end of the dance but only a peak or a valley in their journey into the night. He was fascinated that she found new places to explore in his bed and he never knew how many ways he could kiss and tongue and stroke and hold her. Each time he came up for air she would draw him back down into the pleasure of their bodies. She found in him an endurance he didn’t possess – or couldn’t find - alone. There were no words. Their hands and limbs, cock and vulva spoke what needed saying.

She finally let him go when the dawn’s light found it’s way in through the basement window at the ceiling of the room. There was no time to sleep. Time only for a shower and a shit and quickly dress to make the morning breakfast shift. The adrenaline kept Amos going all morning. After lunch he ate with the staff. Jac was there but only looked at him across the room like a cat. Keeping her distance. He smiled and let his attention get drawn into a conversation with Nick. He never thought he’d want sleep more. He left for his room, undressed and dropped into bed. In the second it would have taken to fall asleep she came into the room, undressed and joined him again in a coupling. He didn’t remember her leaving. He must have passed out.

In the weeks to come Amos seemed to be in demand. Staff members kept seeking him out; wanting to spend time talking in his room with him or inviting him for trips to scenic spots. Even Rod, the crusty thirty-something Hotel handyman who seldom spent words on the other staff, would stop just to shoot the breeze with Amos. This wasn’t missed among the small circle of staff and Amos found he’d developed a reputation without doing anything.

Amos wasn’t used to this popularity. Socializing had always been something he felt he had to work at. Now, the more he tried to keep to himself, the more sought out he became. He was happy to spend time with people; share thoughts, stories, laughs. He enjoyed meeting each person where they lived, talking about what they wanted to talk about, poking fun at them and always curious about what made them tick. He learned how to make Jacynthe laugh and she seemed to be coming out of her dark corner and blooming a bit in his presence.

Their dance continued. If he displayed any adolescent bravado it was like she didn’t even see him. If he pursued her, she slipped away. But if he was cool and collected and let her come to him, they would connect. They spoke about art. What it is to be an artist. He wrote her a poem - train thunder, clouds make the moon wonder – it started. She gave him a charcoal sketch of a nude that struck him as both ugly and erotic and it disturbed him – like her. She told him that before he’d arrived they where a bunch of people who worked together. With Amos among them, she said, they’d become a family.

He couldn’t see it but it made Amos feel ready. He felt like he was still a long way from knowing what he was ready for. Just that the sponge had been squeezed and she had done the squeezing – found the juice in him and gave him a taste for it. What had happened to him wasn’t just something in his head, it had changed him somehow, charged him with an energy and a spirit that wasn’t his own, but was his to share.

When the stones beneath the snow began carving chunks out of the base of his skis, it was time to go. Henri and Heloise always held a big Easter party for the staff – a thank you at the end of the season. Amos had given his notice a week before but hadn’t told anyone else. That night he said his goodbyes to each person not giving them a chance to grow sentimental. Jacynthe was catching a ride east with him. Nick was coming along too. Between the three of them they figured they had the gas money. Probably. He thanked Henri for such a wonderful going away party. Henri laughed and wished him well.

In too Deep

2009-10-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

He’d found the Golden Fleece. Now he just had to get it home. He’d discovered the Holy Grail. But would it just vanish when he brought it out to show family and friends? He’d reach into the bag that held it and find only dust? Before he made it home, there were things he still had to do. Things he still had to prove to himself. Things he still had to discover – live and breathe. Taste and digest and turn into muscle.

Skiing the mountains of B.C. was the metaphor for how he would live out the rest of his life. The way he went about this sojourn was the way he would tackle his next fifty years.

Did he know this? Could he have put that into words? Probably not. But he knew it still. He knew that this trip, this effort was about more than having a good time. He was watching and listening for more than what was going on - below the surface – for the meaning of what was said, not said, done. He had opened up his soul as a canvas for lasting impressions. A new innocence was within him. New eyes, new heart came as accessories along with the new purpose. To serve the Lord. But how? On this trip he was fasting from the food of friends – the influence of what sustained his sense of self – and trying to live only on the watery company of the One who knew his true nature.

The first stop Amos had planned was at an obscure little mountain ski club a day’s drive from Vancouver. He’d found it listed in the directory of ski clubs he’d researched and photocopied at the Library. It was late afternoon by the time he drove the Dodge Dart Fleshmobile up the winding mountain road. On the way up he noticed a driveway into a clearing – like an empty building lot protected from the road’s view by a band of trees. That would be his hotel room for this resort he decided – giving thanks to the Creator for that gift.

There was nothing else up there on that road. No condos, no restaurants, just a few homes here and there along the road. The big sign for the resort looked pretty tired. Needed paint. That was okay. Amos liked the idea of hitting a club off the tourist map as his first stop.

It was off the tourist map alright. The parking lot wasn’t plowed. The chalet was dark. The chairlift was still and empty. Amos pulled the Fleshmobile up and got out. “Well” he said to his quiet companion Jesus “The line ups won’t be too bad.”

He looked around a bit. Trudging through deep snow to get a look at what he’d missed. Considered camping there beside the chalet but it felt too lonely and sad. He didn’t like the feeling that “he was too late – he’d missed his chance”. Was this an omen for the trip ahead?

Back in the Dart, he drove back down to the clearing he’d spotted on the way up. He parked the car close to the snow bank on the road side and dragged the heavy canvas tent out of the trunk. The sun dropped low over Vancouver lying hidden beyond the hills. It took his thoughts to the small life he’d planted, and now uprooted, there. Should he go back? Was he giving up on a new life of promise? Was he giving in? Was going home gonna mean he’d fall back into the rut he left behind?

The tent up, chili heated and spooned down, he was in the sack reading Neitsche when he noticed the light outside. It was like a streetlight. Had to check it out. Pulling on his boots and not bothering with his coat he climbed through the tent door and out into the windless, frigid night. Out over the valley, where the sun had set just hours before, a big full moon was smiling at him. Amos smiled back.

While the sun had a power to pull, the moon repelled and pushed and cooled off the day’s passions. It said let go and keep going. It said there’s more to find in the dark night than the day’s sun can show.

Amos turned and took a few steps to the side of the tent to pee – to mark this moment of letting go. Enjoying the release, the sound of water tunneling down thru snow, steam rising, he looked up over his shoulder to the moon again. His heart stopped as his eyes narrowed and muscles tensed. A large white wolf stood at the edge of the clearing, head high, ears erect, watching him. No sound. No sense of aggression in the air between them. Just each noticing the another.

The pee had stopped flowing. Amos let out a breath that misted the sight line just for a second. He tucked away his dick to free his hands and shifted his right leg to face the wolf but in that instant - the wolf was gone.

Had it been there at all? Amos doubted it. And he knew it had been too. He stood there til the cold made him shiver and move for shelter. Before retreating into the tent again, he grabbed the lantern and walked over to where the wolf had stood. There were no tracks in the snow. Just as he’d suspected.

If he’d seen what he’d seen – it was spirit that he’d met. Was it just a reflection of his imagination? A projection of the lone wolf persona he was playing? Whether it came from somewhere deep within or somewhere beyond - like the moon - it was telling him that he was on the right path – and to keep going.

He’d heard a lot about Red Mountain – home of Nancy Green. Skiers at Whistler had told tall chairlift tales about the powder snow. Down on the border next to Idaho, sat the railway-mining town of Trail B.C. Amos headed south for Trail.

On the way was Kelowna. Big White Mountain was a disappointment. He spent two nights in a cheap motel. It left a sour taste – wasting away his stash of funds waiting out heavy snows and high winds watching crap TV. He was betraying his mission.

Peter had given him a novel and an address of an old girlfriend living in Kelowna. He’d made Amos promise to deliver it. The novel was about sexual freedom and discovery – a semi-spiritual, semi-porn, pop literary story. Amos called Sue up right away when he arrived in town. She gave him directions to find her place in a suburban outskirt townhouse. Sue was friendly but not exactly warm. Attractive for sure, Amos noticed, but she was world weary. Life had tired her out it seemed. For a young woman she lacked any true curiosity. Her life held no mystery. As if it’d all been laid out from here to the end and she just had to keep the car on the road. Neither was she curious about this stranger who had pulled up beside her. They chatted over a beer. It was her birthday and she invited Amos to a bar that night to celebrate with her friends.

He’d found the cheapest motel he could and showered and put on his best plaid shirt but somehow couldn’t find the party spirit to get out the door. He knew that in some mystical way he’d been delivered to that place on that day as a birthday present. He knew that the stars, or Peter at least, had set him up for some free love. He told himself he was crazy to pass up such a fantasy opportunity. The voice that tried to pry him loose and out the door was hollow and distant. He’d responded to it a million times before and it had always left him empty and alone in the end. He’d rather be by himself than betray himself again.

So he spent a night and a day receiving kicks from that old demon but refusing to budge. His mind filled with fantasies of what might have been. He got a pizza from the joint next door. Chatted with the bored pizza chef. The storm was keeping business slow. Watched some old movies on the cable TV. Tried reading but he was too angry. Amos was angry for being too timid to dive into a sexual adventure and angry because it wasn’t like he was being pure anyways – eating junk food and watching junk TV and spending precious time and cash wasting away in a room like a million other motel rooms.

Refusing to kill a third day in the motel room he checked out early the next morning and drove through the blizzard – that showed no signs of letting up - to the Big White Resort and bought a lift ticket.

It was literally a white-out – Big White all right – he could barely make out the ends of his skiis and from what he could see, which wasn’t much, the hills didn’t hold the kind of challenges he was looking for. It had nothing to teach him.

He left the Resort and got on the highway at dusk. It was still snowing hard but the plows had pushed the worst of it off the roads. He found the highway south and headed for the famed Red Mountain down along the edge of Canada.

This road hadn’t seen a plow in while and the snow was getting to be - what you might call - deep. Amos pulled the Dart up behind a transport truck stopped at the road’s side. He found the driver putting chains on his eighteen wheels. “The road ahead’s deserted. There’s nothing between here and Trail. It’s a mountain pass so it’s tricky goin. If you take it – don’t make any mistakes son. Me - I’m turning back.”

For some reason, Amos figured he could make it. Turning back didn’t seem like an option. There was nowhere level enough to camp and he wasn’t going to waste another $50 on a motel. So - into the night and snow he drove with two white-knuckled fists on the wheel. He didn’t even play tunes on his stereo – afraid of any distraction. Corner after corner, up one long steep climb, and down the next, fishtailing at times but too scared to stop – going slow but not slow enough to get stuck. Just fast enough to maintain momentum and control – if that’s what you could call it. Down another long black stretch, not knowing where the next bend would come, not knowing what obstacle around it might send him into a spin. Up the next pass he plowed on.

The road went on and on for hour after hour. The fuel gage was now hovering just above empty and every time he glanced at it, his grip on the wheel tightened again. Amos found that he was singing a hymn from his childhood. When he realized that, he also realized that the snow had finally let up. Just as he was beginning to compose his thanks into words, around the next corner, that larger than life – still almost full moon greeted him. It washed the dark road in a sparkling, other-worldly light. It felt like he had crossed over into another realm. He wound the window down and let the crisp cold air fill the car - clearing out the heavy air of the fear he’d been breathing.

The car was floating Amos over clouds as he cruised along through the night - his hands now tapping that hymn out on the steering wheel. Praising his Maker and his trip’s Mate. In such good company Amos at the same time realized suddenly how lonely he was. He was wishing he had someone to share such a special moment with. A moment like this is meant to be shared he thought. His heart reached out into the future for the one he’d find to share it with. One day he’d tell his love the story of this night and how he had thought of her then.

As enchanted as the mountain drive had become, Amos was still hugely relieved to see the sign that read “Trail 10 miles”. The gas gauge was sunk below E and he knew he was cruising on fumes. Coming into the outskirts of town, he passed the sign for the Red Mountain Resort. Figuring that was why he was there, he pushed his luck further still and cut off the main road onto the sideroad and wound his way up to the Resort’s parking lot. He could coast back down the mountain to a gas station tomorrow he reasoned. Tomorrow he’d deal with such a small problem. Today angel’s wings had carried him here and he knew they’d take him all the way to a safe landing now.

He parked his trusty steed in a far corner of the Resort’s dark lot, climbed out and stretched hands to the sky, arching back to take in a skyfull of lucky stars – the Milky Way like a thick band he’d followed here full of promise and high hopes. Amos tossed the heavy canvas tent over an eight foot snow bank as if it was his sleeping bag. Crawling up over the bank and down into the woods with the stove and his pack, he set up the tent in the clearing he just knew would be there. Cooked up some soup and settled down – wondering just how laid back the management of Red Mountain Resort might be? After surviving the threats the mountain trail had posed that night, any fears about human authorities seemed somehow not worth the worry. So he hunkered in and slept the night through like a bear down for the winter.

Next morning, Amos awoke to the sound of cars crunching through deep snow pulling into the parking lot. He climbed out into a sparkling sunlit winter wonderland to pee into the thigh deep snow. Hidden from sight behind the tall snow bank, Amos cooked a quick breakfast of oatmeal and raisins and apples chunks washed down with mint tea. Over long johns and a wool layer, he pulled on his Toronto Hydro issued (donated by a friend’s sister who worked there) baggy beige coveralls – his favoured ski apparel.

With a toothbrush hanging from his mouth like a cigar, he crawled over the snowbank and into society. The look on the coiffed middle-aged guy’s face as he stopped in his tracks beside his Jaguar had a kind of “do I have to share this mountain with a street person?” shock in it that made Amos’ day.

Amos smiled and waved at him – all bright and chipper like. The Jaguar owner turned, shouldered his skiis on his ski suit – together worth more than Amos’ car - and headed for the chalet. His wife closed her mouth and followed. Amos laughed out loud. He couldn’t have been happier if he’d been a two year old making art with the pungent brown stuff he’d just produced.

He bought a lift ticket at the outdoor booth and went directly to the chairlift. His plan, developed from weeks of practice at Whistler, was to stay completely out of the chalet, or any indoor spaces, as much as possible. His body had adapted to the cold now and he didn’t want to throw off his internal thermostat by adjusting and re-adjusting to indoors/outdoors temperatures.

He shared the first chairlift of the day with a guy whose beard and hair was even longer than his own. They traded stories on the way up. This character’d been skiing Red Mountain for a decade. He told Amos he’d left Ontario in his tracks. Amos thought “here is a man truly dedicated to a lifestyle.” He’d taken Amos’ dream, and made it into a life.

When he heard Amos’ story, he said “You gotta come with me when we get to the top man. The real powder’s off the back of the mountain in the powder fields.”
“Yeah, right on man, that’s what I’m here for.” agreed Amos.
“Wahoooo!” the wildman let holler go out across the still mountainside.
“Yeeee-a-ow!” Amos responded in kind, truly excited by this connection the mountain gods had arranged.

At the top, the hairy local took right off skating into the woods like a big cat after prey. Amos could barely keep up. There was no trail – just what the Wildman’d left in his wake. He pushed himself through the deep snow and branches and was panting heavy when he caught up with the big cat standing beyond the trees grinning back at Amos.

Approaching, puffing, Amos saw they were standing on a four foot ledge just above a field of pure white powder. The sun on the snow was blinding bright. The steep slope fell down the mountain for maybe a hundred yards before a boundary of trees stretched completely across the view down. Without a word except for a “WHOOOOOHAAAAAAH” the Wildman was airborne. Expertly plunging into the powder below, he carved one, two, three wide arcs through the virgin’s bed before disappearing into the trees.

Amos was alone. He knew he’d never tackled a hill like this before. He was in way over his head – whaaaaaayyy over his head.

For some reason, Amos figured he could make it. Turning back didn’t seem like an option. He’d been skiing the Rockies for a couple of months now and had taken on some pretty wicked slopes. He’d had a bit of experience in deeper snow - not this deep - but THIS is what he’d come there for.

And so, with a “WHOOUUOOOEEEE” to drown out the whispers of fear - he jumped. To his amazement, he landed soft and immediately sat back on his skiis carving one, two, three perfect turns through the snow performing the turns just like he’d read about in the magazines. “This must be what flying is like for birds” thought Amos, “the wind offering just enough resistance to lift and turn their weight as they simply shift their wingtips.”

Then, the forest came at him like a wall of reality about to wake him from his wonder. He was moving way too fast to stop now. Straightening out his skis, he plunged in like a needle into a haystack.

If you asked Amos how he made it through that twenty yards of forest, he couldn’t tell you. The best explanation he could come up with later was that he was killed instantly - but God sent him back into the forest just to see what would happen next.

He shot out the other side like a human cannonball. Except he wasn’t in a ball. He was more like a wildly thrashing windmill careening off its post. The landing was mercifully soft. The cold, deep, goose down received his tumbling limbs and smothered his velocity with its gentle white resistance.

It took long, long minutes before his mind caught up with him and he swallowed his good fortune . When the wind returned to Amos’ lungs and the puzzled expression finally left his face, he lay there still a bit more - thanking the Maker for what seemed like an appropriately humbled time.

Then, the trusty, sombered knight began the task of hunting and slowly gathering his gear, and his courage, together again. There was no sign of the Wildman – although Amos thought he’d heard a long hysterical hyena laugh as he’d flown through the air. It took him easily an hour to find his scattered skiis and poles and goggles, and then maybe another fifteen minutes to put his nerve back in place. After all, he still had a lot of mountain to ski before he’d make the bottom. But make it he did - eventually. After several more tumbles and a long hike at the bottom back around the mountain to the chalet.

He skied the groomed trails the rest of that day. Slept like a rock. A very happy rock through the long quiet winter’s night. Somewhere in the night, in a dream that told him he’d never be this way again. That he was working with more than luck. He found the resolve to try the back of the mountain – just one more time - again.

This time, he found a trail cut by other crazy types, and followed it for a long, long time through the woods. Just when he was ready to turn back and forget the whole thing, he the woods ended and he came out to stand at the top of cliff with a single narrow chute. It wasn’t a hill. It was a chute on just enough of a slope to hold snow. Bare rock shouldered either side. It was maybe ten feet wide, really, really steep and ran straight down in a really, really long – there was no other word for it - chute. There was no other way down. Amos made an oath right then, that if he survived, he would never again tempt the gods by looking for more mountain than he could handle.

He jumped, hopping his way down that chute – from ski edge to edge to edge to edge, left, right, left, right, there was no where to stop and it was either keep hopping or tumble all the way down risking crashing into the unforgiving rocks on either side.

On sight of the bottom, Amos went into a tuck, turned his skiis straight and sped past the rocks in a blur, thighs on fire, until the deep powder at the bottom slowed him and quenched the fire with the wonder of his heart still pumping life to his eyes instead of the black oblivion he deserved.

At the bottom, Amos and broke his discipline and headed into the chalet for a whisky. He’d just done something impossible. He should have been broken in two by the attempt but instead he’d been blessed with strength and skill beyond his measure to make it through the test – whole – somehow.

Why?

The turns in the snow these past few days had carried him to a new place. Fears were simply food, like pleasure, to be tasted, digested, and dropped off along the way. Each day brings turns only to those who choose to travel on beyond the circles already known.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Heading Home

2009-09-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

Amos skied the Whistler mountain resort as often as he could. He’d drive up Highway #99 in the late afternoon. That twisting, coast and mountain-hugging drive was almost as much fun as skiing a slope in spots. He’d drive slowly through Squamish to the outskirts of the small town outside the Whistler resort. In the twilight, he’d find the dead end parkette he’d scouted out last summer and wrestle the large canvas tent out of his trunk, over the snow bank, and into the deep snow.

Getting the two centre poles between the eight foot cross bar up was like roping a calf in the deep snow. He’d lasso both poles then, holding both ropes, yank both poles with cross bar between into the air. Then he’d scurry to quickly peg the ropes deep beneath the snow into the icy ground swinging a hatchet out from his coveralls’ deep pockets. If he pulled too hard the whole thing would fall towards him to the ground. If he was too slow, the pole that wasn’t being pegged would yearn for attention and twist this way or that and fall to the ground pulling the centre bar out. When that happened, Amos would have to drop everything and begin the process all over again.

He’d work up a sweat by the time it was up and secure. Next he carried his bulky bed roll from the car, over the snow bank and laid it out inside. Two heavy blankets beneath a half decent sleeping bag and two more blankets on top. He’d bought the blankets at an Army Surplus. They were heavy mover’s blankets quilted with well sewn edges that wouldn’t fray.

The next trip was for the Coleman Stove and food pack. Only half of the eight man tent was up. The side with the door. In Toronto before heading west, he’d searched out a tailor down off of Spadina, in a basement shop, willing to put a new zipper on that door. He’d had to try many a shop before finding someone willing to take on his old canvas tent.

His family had inherited it from another family at church whose camping days were over. They’d used it on the great Canadian family car trek west and east in summers of his childhood. Amos had invested a hundred bucks into that new zippered door. The tent must have weighed close to a hundred pounds – with the steel poles for sure. Half the tent still gave him a 6’ by 8’ apartment. He could stand up at the centre poles and even the low side stood four feet tall where three poles held the corners and centre between two good sized screen windows with canvas flaps tied down against the wind.

He’d cook up a soup with noodles, or a pot of chili with crusty bread on the Coleman. Yes, he knew that running a Coleman stove inside was dangerous. But he’d keep the flaps open while cooking to draft the fumes. He’d read by lantern, spooning down his dinner along with Friedrich Nietzsche into the night’s fall. Even though he’d met his Lord, his friend Jesus, he wasn’t drawn to the scriptures.

The experience of Christ was still fresh with him. he was still living it – tasting it – savouring it anew with signs and signals in his every day that he wasn’t walking alone. A lyric from a song would strike him with meaning – a message lifted to his attention – to encourage. He’d notice and give thanks. A snatch of conversation in his cab – an encounter with a stranger was an angel’s lift or a devil’s test. An old alc-y could speak truth with a steady gaze piercing through the booze, A young lady’s subtle lie could twist him into seduction til he saw it for a cheap trick and could laugh it off. Sunlight breaking through the clouds and shining on his path across the Vancouver bridges wasn’t just nice scenery. It was his Maker letting him know he was on his way. He was noticing. Awake. Alive to the mystery present in every subtle and simple flow of moments strung together like pearls.

He didn’t want to spoil it – turn it into an academic exercise by reading about it. His days were holy scripture. The tent that had held his childhood family of five was now a lonely cocoon that he filled with great thoughts and questions of fate and future quests. How would he best serve his Lord? It had replaced the question “How would he make a living?” Now, instead of making the world work for him, he only wanted to work for the world’s hope.

Before climbing under the covers he’d strip down naked and go out into the frigid night for a pee. Lowering his skin’s temperature after stoking his stomach’s furnace was part of the winter camping strategy he’d picked up from library books. Diving in under the cold blankets, he’d wait for his body to warm their surfaces and begin holding it close to him. He was the heater. He was the source of the night’s comfort. He was the keeper of the fire that burned within – a sacred fire that required careful tending.

The next couple of days, he’d ski – systematically trying all the different hills those mountains offered – returning to the one’s that had beat him last time until he found his “line” to follow. He’d take a run for pure pleasure. Then he’d take on a hill beyond his skill level. Laughing, swearing, crashing, tumbling, collecting himself and his gear to begin again. He was competing against only his own sense of limitations and fears. He’d try to talk himself out of taking on that hill again. But, a courage kindled a confidence that gently led him back to the top of that hill – fear and fury stirring in his guts til he plunged down into the run letting out a wild war cry whoop – crazy for the thrill of finding a way down just beyond the edge of being in control. Tasting the place where body, mind and spirit synched with snow, slope and speed.

There was no one to pat him on the back if he did it. No one to notice the accomplishment. No one to prove a thing to. Just the man in the mirror. And the man unseen just behind – with his steady hand on Amos’ shoulder. Amos could see his grin in the snow blowing off the trees. Could feel his presence in the birds he shared his lunch with in a quiet snowy sunny spot away from the slopes.

The next week, he’d be up there again. Weekdays the line ups were thinner – and so were the cab customers – so he’d ski and ski. The evenings in the tent got lonely sometimes so he’d try out the Chalet scene. But he had no heart for it and the expensive drinks would cut into his skiing budget. He sought the company of people less and less and learned to enjoy the solitude of the green canvas walls, starlit sky, and blanket’s nest.

When Amos found that he could manage any and all of the hills to his satisfaction – dancing down even the most difficult in a style all his own - he knew it was time to test himself on whatever else the Rockies had to offer. This winter was his one chance to ski the Rockies. It wasn’t likely he would ever be rich enough to spend winter vacations skiing Rocky Mountain Resorts. He knew he wasn’t cool enough, or maybe care-free enough, to become a permanent fixture among the Mountain denizens.

Amos didn’t yet know what he would do, or where he would end up, but he knew that now was his chance to ski the Rockies – and he went after it with a puritan work ethic.

He found that he was getting settled in to life in Vancouver. He was beginning to actually know his way around the streets in his cab. Taking people where they wanted to go without asking them for directions or resorting to the map book, gave him a sense of propriety over the place. Almost like he belonged there.

Amos had a circle of friends now too; a girlfriend, and a soul brother in Danny who had given him much to carry and the muscle to carry it with. He could see that it would be easy to settle in and let some roots start growing in this fertile rainforest coast.

But it would be a transplant. He was an eastern species. His quest for meaning and purpose – the meaning and purpose for his life – wasn’t going to be found in the laid-back comforts of a Vancouver lifestyle. The new identity he was fashioning here wasn’t as important as the new sense of himself in his old shoes. The demons that chased him out here had been put in their places. He’d faced them and found he could walk strong among them without losing his way to their fearful diversions and distractions.

Besides, Vancouver was just too beautiful. It still seemed surreal to Amos. He felt that his fate lay somewhere in the cold, uptight, city streets of Toronto. They seemed more real and urgent and potent with trials waiting around the next corner. Toronto called him back to its centre like an electron back from the edge of its arc.

Goodbyes were always awkward for Amos. He felt like they were a test of friendship – how sincere, or insincere, would the pledges of staying in touch be? Let’s just say “so long” and leave it at that. He hated expectations of social ties he knew he’d lug around and never untie again. He was touched by sincere efforts to convince him to stay. But, his friend’s love was proven by their unselfish best wishes for him. They listened to him try to explain what was in his guts. They couldn’t understand it because Amos couldn’t either - really. It was just time to head home.

So, with as few promises as he thought he might keep, and some sincere words of thanks, with new rubber on his wheels (a deal from his new friend at the cab company’s garage), he left – heading east. It was a Sunday morning that he left Vancouver. On his way out of town he got the idea to stop at the skid row church in the East End that he'd been curious about but never yet visited. It was mid morning and he figured he’d have time to make the service.

It stood right on the southeast corner of Hastings and Main. The main crossroads of the downtown eastside. It was where the guys he’d pick up from Detox would want to be dropped. Where hookers and pushers and all kinds of folk footloose and free from society’s claims would cross paths. Amos was curious what kind of a church service he might find in the midst of such waters. He’d written a poem about Jesus in the alleys, helping junkies with their needles. He wondered if that kind of Jesus might be hanging out in there.

The service was in progress. He’d turned around on the sidewalk about three times between the car and the front door. Thinking it was dumb and a waste of time and what was he doing this for? Inside the front door he found an old man in an dark old suit. He put a bulletin into Amos' left hand and shook the other and left him to find his way into the sanctuary.

It was a large wide space. Two aisles ran between three rows and columns of pews up to a raised platform with oak railing and an empty choir loft. Silent brass organ pipes were the backdrop within a nave the size of whale's mouth. Over the nave was enscripted a banner that read “All ye who are weary, Come and I will give you rest.” The speaker who was introducing the next hymn stood - not up on the platform hidden behind the oak pulpit – but instead down on floor level, to one side, exposed behind a simple pine podium – a bookstand really with a single post to the floor. A piano accompanied the two dozen singers spread in bunches throughout the mostly empty pews.

The speaker had on a suitjacket and no tie. He looked like an ordinary young man of the cloth. No wild eyed street preacher. Not even a beard. Just a guy you might find working in an office downtown. He had a regular kind of voice. He gave a regular kind of message to a regular kind of Sunday morning crowd. There were no streetpeople in the pews. Amos was kind of disappointed by that. But not surprised when he thought about it. Sunday morning was for the good people.

There was an offering and Amos putting five twenties on the plate feeling large about it - making a thanks offering for what that city had given him. The closing hymn was all about moving on.
“I feel the winds of God today. Today my sail I lift.” In the last verse he discovered why he was there that morning. It spoke the vow he didn’t know was in him until he sang it.
If ever I forget your love
and how that love was shown,
lift high the blood-red flag above;
it bears your name alone.
Great pilot of my onward way,
you will not let me drift.
I feel the winds of God today;
today my sail I lift.

He lingered after the service. Said good morning to a few of the other worshippers. No one seemed much interested in him. All kinds of young guys must drift through there Sunday mornings he figured. Getting too friendly with them could cost you a five or a ten to send them on their way. He thought there might be an angel among them he was supposed to meet. But on his way out he realized he’d already been given the message he was looking for. So he lifted his sail and headed east mountain by mountain.

Stop Making Sense

2009-08-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

John, Zachariah’s son, out in the desert at the time, received a message from God. He went all through the country around the Jordan River preaching a baptism of life-change leading to forgiveness of sins,
“The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
Luke 3 from “The Message”

He woke up on his back but couldn’t see. Aware of ten thousand conversations all happening at once, his ears took him out to the edges of the auditorium. Then the circle became very small. Amos was aware of a circle of people standing just above him although he couldn't see them.

Slowly, it dawned on him that he was lying on the ground – waking from a dream – or was it a dream? If it was a dream, it was one of those where you try to open your eyes but can’t. He blinked his eyes but there was only blackness – only sound was reaching him. In his ear someone was asking, in a voice heightened with concern, “Are you alright man?”

He didn’t recognize the voice. “Yeah, its okay – I’m epileptic” he instinctively lied like a rug
“Get me outa here will ya?”

The Voice helped him to his feet and took his arm and they began pushing through the crowd of Talking Heads fans. It was the 1983 Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” Tour at the Vancouver Civic Auditorium. He sensed - because his eyes still weren’t working, that they were passing through a doorway and out into the halls. The dull roar of auditorium conversations dropped now into a more intense, flatter hallway babble. They kept walking. The Voice gave quick curt explanations “It’s okay – I’m just taking him back here.”

The babble stopped suddenly as they pushed through another door and into the empty echo of what Amos guessed was a washroom. The Voice put Amos’ hands on the cold porcelain of a sink.
“You okay?”
“Thanks, just give me a minute will ya?”
“I’m going to call an ambulance. I’ll be right back.”

Amos bowed his head over the sink. This was it. The edge. He was at the edge of totally losing it. They were gonna take him away; lock him up, medicate him – he could feel the spiral’s centrifugal force, sucking him down into a vortex that would take just way too much effort to escape. He’d been dancing around its edges for months and suddenly now he was in a state of vertigo on the tipping point.

“Its decision time Amos Brown” he told himself. He felt the sweat turning cold on his scalp. “Either you pull it together and get back in the groove, or they’re gonna take you away and lock you up.” His hands fumbled for the taps and he lifted water to his face. The cold splash was like waking up – like suddenly remembering from a deep dislocated dream where you are and who you are – still freaked a bit by the forgetting.

Raising his head, Amos saw a ghost in the mirror. A pale, scary, stupid expression stared back at him. “This is no time to fuck around man” he told the ghost “get your shit together – now!”

It was the first mirror he’d looked into in months. Amos Brown was so desperately trying to figure out who he was that he hadn’t wanted to get distracted by any superficial glassy impressions. He didn’t trust himself not to project some internal fantasies onto his own reflection. He’d devoted his twenty-third year on the planet to finally figuring out what was what with Amos Brown. Done with following a crowd, done with the influences of friends and families, he was doing only what he thought was worth doing. That is - without much money.

Now, his path had taken him to the edge of a dangerous madness. It would be so easy to just let it slip and let someone else take care of things. No one expects much of a crazy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He’d been surprised that his conversion – his “religious experience” out on the tidal flats after Christmas – hadn’t really changed him much. He still had the same array of silly and sincere thoughts each day. He had the same hungers and wants and fantasies and worries. He was in the same skin. So what had changed?

He had a direction. Did he? Well, no not really. He still didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to be doing with his life. He kept doing shifts, driving the cab to pay the rent. He spent his Christmas tip cash skiing at Whistler mid week to avoid the crowds. Working on his carves kept his mind occupied. But on the long chairlifts back up again he’d wonder.

It wasn’t that he had a direction. It was that he had a guide. He’d met the one who knew him better than he would ever know himself. So, he concluded, why not let go of the wheel and ride the bus instead? There was a great sense of relief in that. And there was an incredible sense of excitement. Like there was an incredible adventure ahead. More than he could cook up for himself. Serving this Master would mean a ride beyond the boundaries he’d always try to hide behind. Amos Brown could cook up some fun adventures. But Jesus the Christ could take him places he’d never think up on his own.

It wasn’t that he had suddenly become a nice guy. He was still self consumed and petty. But now he knew that it was all about giving. Whatever he had in him - it was put there to give. He'd been trying to get somewhere with it, trying to figure out what he could trade it for. Now, because he'd met a friend who was there for him unconditionally, he would do the same. He was trying to look at his choices with another set of eyes.

He was still judging the characters that jumped into the back of his cab from his Scarboro point of view. But now, when he would think to take a second look, he could see what he hadn’t seen before. It was like he could see beneath a layer or two on the surface – like he got glimpses of the heart inside. Sometimes he saw a child in the hooker’s smile. Sometimes he saw fear in the guy who was being a prick. He saw how lonely the braggart was. He saw how sad the laughing party gang was.

He still was having trouble seeing where he fit in to the picture. His ideas about being an author were still buzzing around his ears like house flies. But more and more they were losing their potency as a pull forward.

When he tried to tell his Vancouver friends about his experience the words and phrases fell flat on the ground between them. They sounded cliche. His friends would look at each other and raise their eyebrows - and he didn't blame them. Instinctively he knew that what he was trying to explain couldn't be told except with action.

His sister called him one day to say she'd be arriving the next. He picked her up at the airport. Andrea was two years younger than Amos. If Amos had been his older brother's first accomplice, Andrea was Amos' first confidante. The first female, besides his mom, who he’d loved to spend time with. They’d shared innocent hours playing – lost in imagination’s mansion where endless doors could be opened for children to explore – scenarios, dramas, adventures, pushing their tiny experiences into larger than life dramas overheard from adults or soaked up from bedtime stories, or – who knows where that idea came from?

He had fun showing her around Vancouver, telling her stories about his cabbie adventures and the strange people and places they’d go. Andrea had always looked up to him and she was full of questions about what he was doing out there?

She met Danny and he was charming and sweet. Amos told her about his experience with Christ and what he thought it was about. He didn’t know how – but he knew he just wanted to serve.

Andrea immediately assumed that meant he wanted to be a Minister. Amos told her he’d thought of that – it was the family business after all. But it didn’t seem quite right. Serving in a church seemed so limited to him. So ordinary and normal – not the adventure he thought Jesus was getting him into.

She spent four days with him. They walked the cool grey January beaches. She'd knitted him a huge grey wool sweater. Took her all fall she said. It really was huge – even on him. She explained that she’d had to guess his size from memory – hoping it would be big enough. He really was larger than life in her eyes. He liked that. The sleeves had to be rolled up and it came down halfway to his knees. It had a zipper all the way up front and a big wide collar that sat around his ears. He loved it. When she left he wore it every day. It was like wearing a hug. Better protection even than the shield of a leather jacket.

It made him realize that no one loved him like his family. While he was seeking freedom from their too large expectations and to small judgments they’d impose on him, there were also strong chords of connection there that he could never totally severe – even if he wanted to. Could he be who he was while living in the box they’d provided? Their province, their lifestyle choices, their safe and sacred church. He was afraid he might lose the ground he’d gained out here if he slipped back into the mold waiting for him.

Amos and Danny and their pals had been looking forward to the concert since before Christmas. On the big day, they gathered at his place and got tuned up smoking dope and drinking Jack Daniels. They were ready to let loose and have some fun with some heart pounding music they all loved. David Byrnes’ lyrics crossed the border from Rock’s cynical anger to a new place – hints of a spirit place to dance from in the midst of modern madness. The "Speaking in Tongues" album invoked the wild rhythm of a world beat and a world soul moving beyond, or maybe beneath, the box of religion and respectability. They’d listened to the album a thousand times and knew most of the lyrics – discussed where Byrne was coming from. Was he suggesting a new spirituality? Hard to unravel from between his strange art school poetry and quirky images of insanity and fun.

David Byrne was acting out his life on stage. He was dramatizing Amos’ internal confusion and lack of identity. He was singing about madness and losing touch with what matters in the messy world of the silly and superficial. He was cutting Amos to the bone with surgical precision and making a joke of his ego's holy quest.

There, in a crowd of thousands of people, Amos was exposed as the sniveling, weak and worthless human being he really was. All charades were over. He was being portrayed on the stage for the amusement and mockery of all.

"Watch out you might get what you're after
Cool baby strange - but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

People on their way to work say
baby what did you expect
Gonna burst into flame

My house S'out of the ordinary
That's right Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house"

Suddenly the music stopped and the house lights went up. Exposed to the glaring stares of everyone around him, he began to leave, walking from the front near the stage down an aisle past rows of seated people. Every face he looked at was a face from his past. Some one who’d tested him, teased him, scarred or stabbed him. Aisle after aisle, he’d find in each row an enemy, a foe, a friend that’d betrayed his trust and was now mocking him. He’d quickly avoid that stare only to be confronted by another and another of those who had judged him and seen only what they didn’t like. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, schoolteachers, that nasty Sunday school teacher he was sure he’d forgotten – but there she was. The floor was on fire. He quickened his pace keeping his gaze to the floor but the fire was kindled brighter by his haste. It enveloped him. He knew what was happening. The hero of his story was being tested in the furnace. The dross and ugly parts of his soul were ignited by shame and self hate and his psyche was being steeled by a consuming fire. All impurities were being burned and, if he survived, he would be a new creation. He passed out at the end of the aisle and hit the floor like a felled tree.

Looking in the mirror now, sight returned, he straightened. He saw something he hadn't seen before. Out in the auditorium he'd seen himself through the eyes of those who'd found him wanting. Now the Lord gave him new eyes. He saw in his own eyes the light of Christ. He saw how all his imperfections were but fuel for that fire burning bright within.

In that moment he knew that the one he called friend and Master would use whatever Amos offered to acheive the redemption of the world. It was a battle worthy of the best Amos could offer. It was won already. Not because of strength and skill but because of an eternal weapon that was unquenchable. Love without measure, without bounds, beyond judgment and fear, untouchable and intimate. It was so impossible that it put a smile on Amos' face. It might have been Christ's eyes that were looking but that smile was all Amos. He turned away from the sink and headed for the door.

A young man came in and said “Hey where’re you goin? The ambulance is here.”
He recognized the Voice as his guide through the darkness. He didn’t look at him - just said "Thanks for your help man" and kept walking. The ambulance attendants almost crashed into him as swung through the washroom door and strode out into the hall.

A small group who must’ve watched him being led like an invalid into the washroom - and were waiting to see him carted off - were startled like geese to see this large smiling man striding right through them back towards the auditorium brushing helping hands aside.

As if on cue, as he entered the arena, the lights dimmed and the band started playing. He slowed his strides as the crowd closed between him and the stage. But he never stopped - he began gently bumping into concert goers as if they were flotsam in his path. They’d turn indignantly and then, looking into his face, would step aside.

“My eyes must still be on fire” Amos thought – enjoying the startled reactions. When he was close to the stage, he found his spot and began to dance. The show that had mocked his weaknesses now celebrated his strengths and fed his courage.

"Whatabout the time?
You were rollin’ over
Fall on your face
You must be having fun
Walk lightly!
Think of a time.
You’d best believe
This thing is real

What’s the matter with him? (asked Byrne)
He’s alright! (the chorus girls sang)
I see his face
The lord won’t mind (they assured)
Don’t play no games
He’s alright (no doubt)
Love from the bottom to the top

Turn like a wheel
He’s alright
See for yourself
The lord won’t mind
We’re gonna move
Right now
Turn like a wheel inside a wheel

Tina Weymouth, the hot bass player noticed him and they began dancing. The ten yards between them didn’t seem to matter. Their eyes locked and their smiles played back and forth. Amos saw David Byrne glance over at Tina between verses. Surprised that her gaze was fixed and not returning his look, Byrne traced it across the crowd to Amos. Amos grinned wide at him - still dancing. And the spell was broken.

He had nothing left to prove. Amos left the front as the next song started - hardly believing what had just happened (no one else ever believed that story either). From the very front, he now made his way to the very back of the auditorium. At the top of the stairs - where the seats met the roof, he sat and wondered about what had just happened to him. His metal had been tested – tested and purified somehow.

Of course his mind had just gotten overloaded with whiskey and weed and his body had thrown a reset switch. Sure, that was true. But in his imagination – a place as real to Amos as the concrete steps he sat on – he’d passed through hell’s doors and could no longer be scared by his own shadow. He was bigger and stronger than any box he’d grown up in. He’d pulled the sword from the stone, slaughtered the dragon, found the key, the treasure was his to take home and share.

[Letter from Thomas Merton to Czeslaw Milosz, Feb, 1959] Milosz, life is on our side. The silence and the Cross are forces that cannot be defeated. In silence and suffering, in the heartbreaking effort to be honest in the midst of dishonesty (most of all our own dishonesty), in all these is victory. It is Christ in us who drives us through darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair. Everything has to be tested. All relationships must be tried. All loyalties have to pass through fire. Much has to be lost. Much in us has to be killed, even much that is best in us. But Victory is certain.

Thomas Merton. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers, Christine M. Bochen, editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993): 57-58.

The Crisis and The Christ

2009-07-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

It seemed like everything was coming apart at the seams again. Like a baseball losing its cover. Amos was like a tire that’s lost its tread - slippery on a wet road. He’d thought that he could see, but all he saw was how blind he was. His plans to recreate himself on the coast were tripped up by his self same old ways. He was tumbling down the mountain side and hitting every rock and hard place on the way down; every soul he’d ever hurt, every selfish turn he’d taken was painfully clear and bruising him all over again.

Trying to slow the fall was as difficult as escaping a schoolyard circle of scorn. Once the circle is formed and the target identified, the anger of the crowd is a contagious fever that infects every child. Whatever the accusation, how it started, and whether it’s true, becomes unimportant. Once a self-righteous momentum of condemnation has begun, the smell of blood pulls back the screen of adult civility and a vein where shame and anger run is opened. Friends and allies are swept up in the blood sport and as you turn, looking for support, their scorn pierces the skin and hits bone deep. The flesh of trust is rent open and self love, love of the other, love of life bleeds out.

But Amos had left all that behind. Out here on the coast he’d cast off the effects of a fearful past, claimed a fresh start – wounds healed - and vowed to reinvent himself. So why was he still haunted by this circle of demons? It was as if all his minor faults and insecurities had got together and conspired to tear him down. Every time he tried to build himself up with memories of accomplishments, they’d turn sour on him. He’d see that what he was trying to take pride in was really just another selfish grabbing for ego-glory. The good that he’d done was really only all about Amos proving once again what a good boy he was. It was all an act.

Where was the backbone? What held his skeleton together? What mattered so deeply to Amos that without it – he’d puddle like jello in his bed – his muscle and will only resulting in a jiggle.

When he’d try to go to his comfort places of imagination, He found a self-absorbed little boy whimpering and complaining in the midst of comfort and wealth. His enemy was stabbing at his newly exposed flesh and he knew that the knives were of his own design – forged in the bowels of deep mountain memories.

You might say that Amos was feeling a little depressed. The Christmas season had descended like a low cloud over Vancouver. As the year’s days were running out, so it seemed, was his sense of humour. This was not a new thing for Amos. Christmas wasn’t spoiled when he found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. (That was a relief. Knowing that it was only his parents judging whether he’d been good enough for gifts instead of some fat fairy elf made it an even game again. There were only four eyes between them and, if his siblings didn’t turn him in, he could keep his best side facing them most days.) No, his loss of Christmas innocence was more like an unrequested exchange for pubic hair.

It was early December and he’d been flipping through a Life magazine’s review of the year 1972. Along with the heroes of industry and politics and culture, there , in full colour, were the horrors of the year. The pages stopped flipping at a full page colour photo of a Viet Cong soldier holding two severed heads like dead chickens at his side. The heads - upon closer examination - were not American soldiers – that would seem like a horrible, bloodythirsty revenge – ugly but somehow rational. No, the heads were clearly Vietnamese. To Amos that was just crazed. It was an evil hatred turned in upon itself. To hate one’s enemy was a dark and ugly human trait. But to hate one’s self – one’s kin - was a black despair driven from a place even darker than the human soul.

If anyone had asked that twelve year old boy how the photo had affected him, Amos couldn’t have put it into words. But it went deep. It struck a chord in him that had never been struck before. It drummed a last vestige of childhood out of him and a shadow entered where an innocence had dwelt.

He was stung by the false hopes of a Christmas that celebrated “goodwill to all men”. Faced with the stark evil truth of war - naked without a Hollywood good guys/bad guys story – hope for the triumph of the good guys - hope for the redemption of the bad guys - slipped through his grasp like water in cupped hands. He lost a faith in human beings that he didn’t even know he had. He’d taken it for granted that good and bad were different worlds and not two sides of the same street. The bright lights of Christmas now only accentuated just how dark the human soul could be.

For the first time in his life, he wept tears that were not for himself. Those first tears of compassion were for the misery of his brothers and sisters. Sunday school had taught him well that on this small green planet we were all God’s children. The Apollo missions had captured a God’s eye view of our small round home. He’d grown up on the wave of Hippies’ songs of love and peace that were everywhere battling - and overcoming ignorance and fear and war. He’d been to the world Expo ’67 in Montreal and seen with his own eyes how happily all the world’s cultures could come together. He believed. He was a believer.

And then, a single photo had exposed the ugly truth that changed everything. He saw how human beings are their own worst enemy. The photo stayed with him as if he’d clipped it out and carried it around in his wallet.

A Christmas that claimed we were all happy, generous, people was now like eating too much cotton candy before the Wicked Whirlwind ride. Once he’d puked it up - he was off it for life. The sweet smells of Christmas now turned his stomach. Those tears of compassion he’d wept had a few sobs in there for himself too. He cried - knowing it without naming it - for what he’d lost. He was a child no longer.

For the next decade he managed to deal with this unnamed grief over the death of his childhood in a variety of ways. Christmas presents were still welcome. He began the practice of last-minute shopping –delaying the pain as long as possible. He gave presents always fearful that they weren’t good enough because no present he received was ever good enough. It could never fill, or even touch, that dark empty place inside. Nothing out of a box could convince him that he was a “good and deserving” boy.

He now knew the truth. He was a piece of shit just like everyone else. Some were just better at pretending it wasn’t so. It’s only other people’s shit that stinks isn’t it? Christmas – he noticed - really seemed to bring out the bullshit in the culture. Charlie Brown’s sad and unloved Christmas tree came close to naming it. But Amos’ loss went deeper. Cynically pulling the tinsel off of consumer’s spiritual hyprocrisy was fun - but it wasn’t enough. It helped to be “above it all”. But it never took away the shadow left where hope had once lived.

Amos became a fan of whatever could cut through the phony and expose the ugly, or laughable, truth. He was in good company of course. In many ways, Amos was only riding his generation’s wave. From Mad magazines to Monty Python, the Seventies youth culture developed a cynical, mocking sense of humour that slammed into sacred cows at every opportunity. From the Black Panthers to the Sex Pistols cultural tastes turned angry. It was cool to be angry and show it in all kinds of creative, destructive ways.

Self-destruction was Amos’ favourite method. His creativity went into living out a double-life. While maintaining a thick veneer of socially acceptable behaviours (school grades, after school jobs, even volunteer leadership work) he spent the rest of his waking hours destroying brain cells in suburban basements and risking his life in cars tearing around streetlit suburban corners.

After a decade of honing this attitude, Amos had declared himself bored by his cynical self-destruction. It was now time for a change. The power and authority of manhood hung like tools on a basement wall. It was up to him to pick them up and use them to make something of his life. Thing was, as he looked over the parts and pieces of his life, he was dismayed by the raw material he had to work with. It simply wasn’t good enough for what he wanted to do.

The Writer’s pad and pen that he’d been carrying around with him all fall were still empty. The lone artist on a mission, had become the same old party animal in a circle of misfits and funky friends that had gathered like dryer lint in the tumble of days. It was the same old Amos in a new setting.

He had hoped to re-create himself. He saw qualities that he honoured in people all around him. But those qualities seemed beyond his reach. He wanted to find a new way of being. He wanted to shed the old skin and – no not just skin – he was hoping to transform from caterpillar to butterfly. He ached to let his inner writer fly above all the suburban Scarborough mediocrity – especially his own mediocrity - that had suffocated all attempts - but not the desire - for this little worm to soar.

It snowed Christmas day in Vancouver that year. Many Vancouverites were not impressed by their White Christmas. Anyone trying to travel around the city without the aid of snow tires – not to mention skid-control skills – was in for some stress. Amos couldn’t have been more happy with the snow. He’d booked a cab for the day and there were more calls to keep a cabbie busy than cabs to meet the demand. Talk about a kid in a candy store.

The whole day was filled with ferrying merrymakers around the city. While driving was slow going, the generous tips made up for the lost time. It was a good thing that there weren’t too many cars on the road. He slid through more than one stop sign and only narrowly avoided several fender benders with a little gas on the pedal and counter-spin techniques learned in Ontario parking lots. His usually nasty Christmas mood was kept occupied by mostly happy drunks.

He did his share of skid row runs that day too. These were trips to the bootlegger for lonely turkeys trying to kill the day with a quart – lucky if they had friend to share it with. Unless, of course, their friend’s mood was as ugly as the one Amos was nursing.

He put in a shift and a half. By 3 am the calls had finally slowed down to a trickle. Sixteen hours behind the wheel was enough. With a good wad of cash in his jacket pocket, he dropped off the cab and flagged a ride from another cabbie back to his Kitsilano basement. Danny was asleep. Helen was away home for Christmas. He cracked open a beer and put a quiet album on sat on the floor back against the wall beside the stereo.

His parents had mailed out a care package that was still unopened sitting in the corner of his room. He hadn’t opened it partly because he didn’t want to expose himself to Danny’s scorn over his soft and happy family’s past, and partly because he was afraid that the comforts of that family would lull him back to sleep. Amos had gone to great lengths to get his miserable self out here all alone. He was determined to turn his angst into art. Falling back into the arms of his family would spoil his misery for sure.
How does it feelHow does it feelTo be without a homeLike a complete unknownLike a rolling stone?
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss LonelyBut you know you only used to get juiced in itAnd nobody has ever taught you how to live on the streetAnd now you find out you're gonna have to get used to itYou said you'd never compromiseWith the mystery tramp, but now you realizeHe's not selling any alibisAs you stare into the vacuum of his eyesAnd ask him do you want to make a deal?
Bob Dylan

Still, it was Christmas – or no, it wasn’t any more – he’d made it through Christmas without family comforts and now it was Boxing Day. Okay, he thought, time to open the box. He sat on the floor of the basement beside the stereo and opened up the box. The box was filled with smaller packages wrapped up in colourful paper. There was a card with care-full notes written by his Mom and Dad telling him of their love and faith in him.

When he’d finished opening up all the gifts, he sat for a time in the midst of presents and strewn paper and felt – how did he feel? He tried to feel beneath the anger and cynicism – down there – how did he feel?

Just as empty as the boxes lying all around him. Not sad or lonely or miserable – just empty. Amos felt kind of like you feel after a good cry. After the tears - the way your mind goes through all the reasons you’re crying until you run out of reasons, and the tears slow and you blow your nose and then there’s a final big sigh. Amos didn’t know it then, but the tears that had started flowing ten years before - had finally run out.

He decided to go for a walk. This feeling was too real to waste on sleep. He put on his black Kodiak boots and leather jacket – his urban defiance gear - and walked up into the alley and out to the street. The clouds had cleared finally and there was a full moon shining on the snow covered streets. He walked down the few blocks to the little park at the ocean’s edge. The moon over the English Bay harbour drew him like a moth. Without hesitation he jumped the steel fencing that ran along the little cliff’s edge and scrambled his way down onto the beach. The tide was out and the ocean floor was black and shiny like an oil slick.

Amos stumbled along the stony shore beneath the wealthy homes that lined the million dollar view. In most places the ten to twelve foot cliff provided enough protection for these homes. But when he came across a concrete wall built all the way down to the shore, he truly felt like an intruder in this city. He looked across the bay to the city skyline and knew that there was no place for him here. He would always be an outsider to the people who lived behind such walls. The moon put his shadow against that wall and he stood tall to see his height and breadth. The wall could have his shadow - he thought - but it couldn’t have him. He turned his back to it and began to walk out towards the water.

It was a long walk out across the stony tidal flats. With each stony step it slowly began to sink into his head that he had literally reached the bottom. He was out among the very dregs of the city. These stones were like coffee grains at the bottom of the cup. All his travels, all his searching, all his hopes, all his mistakes, all his ego-driven desires had been sucked out to sea by the pull of the moon – the world’s biggest mirror.

He stopped and looked up at that moon. The light it shared was not its own. It had no fire of its own. It was a rock that became a beacon only because it was in the right place at the right time to reflect the one and only light of the world.

That was when he felt the Presence there just behind and beside him. It was like someone was standing there letting him know, without words, that he had a friend. He felt that the Presence knew him inside and out – maybe even better than he knew himself – definitely knew the real him – without the masks and the lies and the bravado. He knew, somehow, that this friend would never judge or fail him. Amos felt this as truly as a bell sounding somewhere deep in his bowels. The Presence knew him inside and out and – and – and loved him as surely as the sun shone. Amos felt as deeply loved as he knew how to love – and more.

And yet, Amos felt - somehow got the feeling - that it was a meeting of friends – that even though he was in the Presence of an amazing, timeless, source of knowing and love – that Source had chosen to be his friend. For Amos, the only adequate response to such a gift – a response from the heart and the guts and not the polite conniving head – was to choose to call the Presence “LORD”.

The moon was dropping down behind the mountains now. It told Amos that the journey wasn’t over. He still didn’t know what was to come or where he was heading but he had found what he was looking for out here.

He had thought he was looking for a new self. Instead, he discovered that he was looking for someone to serve. Only after he’d emptied out all the possibilities that he’d filled his life with, did he find his Lord and Leader there at the bottom of it all.

You find me
and offer…
grace to forgive
to begin again
spirit to guide steps through self-love’s confusion
receiving as mine the power of Your sacrifice
senseless service as the road to
no tomorrow’s
grace to forgive
to begin again…

Jesus had been patiently waiting for him. The Father’s son. God’s chosen one. The only one who really didn’t give a shit what people thought of him, or did to him, but lived for one purpose only – to reflect the light and love of the only power that mattered. The power of life that turned forever – forgetting the day gone by and always welcoming the new beginning so full of growing, changing, creative possibilities….

Amos baptized himself five days later skinning dipping from Wreck Beach on New Year’s Day. Danny was there to laugh and bless his crazy white ass with hoots from the shore. Amos had tried to explain the experience on the tidal flats to Danny in the best words he could find - but knew were failing him. For once, Dan didn’t argue. He just listened and looked at Amos with a tilted head and quiet smile and nodded. His silence acknowledging that Amos had found something worthy.

The gift he’d received was the message that it wasn’t in changing that Amos would find his purpose. What the Christ had taught him with his friendship was that it was only by becoming more of who he already was that Amos would find his path to follow. He’d been given a touchstone experience that he could return to time and again. It reminded him that his choices, his efforts, his mistakes, his life is not really about “Amos”. He was in service to a far greater power than his small sense of well-being. What Amos would do from that day on is try to reflect - in his own moon-rock way - the light of the world.

Mediocre, silly, selfish, lustful, lazy-ass that he was, God could use even a dull rock like him to shed light in a dark world. Creative, imaginative, intelligent, funny - God can mine and refine what’s good in anyone. And anyone can do their small part to add some food to the table in hungry places.

No matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will find a way to return
to the Lord

I was heading for a fall
and I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale
I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again
by the Lord

Van Morrison
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Old friends with new faces

2009-06-30T05:38:00.000-07:00

Amos heard his name being called out. He was walking down 4th near home. No one knew him here. Who could be calling his name? He turned to see Dave Andrews just a few steps behind him. They’d passed on the street and Dave had been the one to recognize him. They knew each other from mutual friends at Trent University back in Ontario. “Amos, how the hell are ya? What are you doin here?”
“I live here.”
“No way – where?”
“Just a few blocks from here” he laughed pointing towards the ocean.
“That’s incredible – so do I” Dave pointed in the other direction.

Dave was from Montreal and studied Philosophy like all the other guys from Montreal. They were responsible for a steady supply of black hash into Peterborough and Amos usually found them, while good for a laugh one on one, as a group too deep in thought, or smoke, to get a laugh going. They seemed to take themselves, or life, pretty seriously and that was just too heavy for Amos.

In Amos’ group, playing the fool was quite acceptable and displaying one’s smarts suspect. But in this Montreal crowd there was a stiff judgment-thing happening. He felt in the air between them almost a palpable fear of seeming stupid, or silly, or inconsequential. He’d watched a girl from smalltown Ontario go from happy, friendly, and bouncy to dark, brooding, and suicidal-looking from a year spent in their company. Not that Amos felt particularly welcome in their gatherings anyway – he could carry a sarcasm-riddled conversation spiced heavily with cynicism long enough to establish their tolerance of a Toronto fool among them. And for Amos, enough to keep the sweet black hash in supply.

Now, he was surprised and excited by this chance encounter with Dave. The distance of time and place made their somewhat arms-length, former acquaintance much closer. They quickly ran through each other’s tales – how they’d ended up on this city block of Vancouver. It turned out that Dave was living with another Trent grad – Jake Jefferson. Amos recognized the name, he told Dave, but couldn’t picture a face to go with it. Dave said “Well let’s go do that – Jake’s a t home - have you got other plans? Let’s go.”

Jake was there and he and Amos said they recognized each other from passing in pubs and parties but they’d never really met. Jake was the kind of guy who would actually enjoy dancing at Grade 8 school dances. He was smart and lean - wily even. He had an easy way about him. The way he moved across the room, smoked his cigarettes, and carried a conversation made you think he either didn’t give a damn what you thought of him or else he had his act down very tight, very well rehearsed. For all of Jake’s carefully styled manners, Amos detected also a raw rage that ran close, just beneath the surface.

As a signature story – one that would help Amos learn who he was – Jake told of the time he spit on Thomas J. Bata. Amos knew that the Bata shoe empire was a notorious exploiter of third world child-labour. The library at Trent, the architectural gem and natural meeting place at the centre of the campus, was named the Bata library for the visiting dignitary. Jake had been expelled but allowed back the next year to finish his degree. Trent reputation as the most liberal of the liberal arts school was intact.
“You lost a year for that?” Amos was amazed at the sacrafice “Was it worth it?”
Jake took a long pull on his smoke. “It’s not called the Bata Library any more is it?”

While they shared a toke and a beer, Jake put the latest Talking Heads album on. Jake knew all the words and would sing them, not to himself, but right into your eyes. There was one tune that really seemed to hit home. It had a bouncy, light melody line, that was fun and seemed to be right where they lived. It was called ‘This must be the place”.

Home - is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb, born with glowing heart
guess I must be having fun

The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's ok I know nothing's wrong . . nothing’s wrong

Hi yo - I got plenty of time
Hi yo - you got light in your eyes

And you're standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up and say goodnight . . . say goodnight

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home - -she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place

I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where I'll be . . . where I'll be

The “Speaking in Tongues” album was written just for them. They became more sure of it the more they listened. “They’re coming to Vancouver y’know.” Jake said as if prophesying.
“Who?” asked Amos.
“Talking Heads.”
“Really? Well, we gotta go. You let me know as soon as you hear about tickets on sale will you?” “Definitely” Jake nodded, smiling a knowing smile.

Peter arrived home. It was Peter’s home they were in. It was a very warm, bright, Kitsilano bungalow surrounded by trees and gardens - as they all were. This one though was filled with wondrous, bright and deep colour-filled paintings. Turns out, Peter was the painter. In his fifties now, Peter was making a good living with his art. Peter was as warm and bright as his home. Soft spoken, confident, a gentleman obviously, and attentive to his guest, Amos felt he was in the company of a strong big sister to his young Ontario friends. How the three of them ended up together didn’t come up in conversation and Amos wondered but didn’t feel it was cool to ask.

It was west-coast manners not to ask about work – the reply out here to “what do you do?” was to name your passion; as in “I sail.”. But when Amos announced that he’d have to leave soon to pick up his cab for the 4pm start of the night shift, Jake asked him if he knew “The Underground”. “It’s where I tend bar” explained Jake. Amos recognized the bar. His cab had been to them all by now. It was an electro-funk dance bar - one of the city’s main establishments for gay men. Amos swallowed that shot of information without a flinch. “Yeah, I know it – off Granville right?” He looked straight into Jake’s searching eyes as he passed him the spliff he’d just lit up. When he sat back to focus on the smoke, Amos could feel Jake and Dave and Peter’s eyes carefully watching him, checking him, with glances back and forth, for reactions.

To shift the attention Amos asked David “Are you working man?” In reply, Dave stood up “Let me show you.” The four of them followed Dave past the kitchen into a hallway leading back to the house’s bedrooms. Amos was doing his best not to have a panic attack. His imagination was running ahead of him. Were they going to seduce him into a homosexual orgy? What if he liked it? How would he tell his mother? His heart rate raced. It was very warm in this hallway.

Dave opened the door at the end of the hall and Amos followed the others in. It was a large room with a wall of windows facing east. It was the Master Bedroom but there was no bed. Instead, at its centre stood an easel with an almost life-sized portrait of Dave - hairy, naked and sensual, surrounded by leafy green sun dappled bushes and bright orange, red and blue flowers.

“Oh wow,” Amos exclaimed, letting out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Dave, you look like Adam in the garden of Eden.” Peter seemed pleased with the comment. He was watching Dave. Dave laughed to relieve his own discomfort. “Right before the fall - eh Amos?” Peter added quietly, but for all to hear “Innocent and natural.”

Amos could tell that Dave was loving the attention but at the same time unsure about sharing the intimacy of the portrait beyond the four walls of this room. The painting had a story to tell. As Amos soaked it in, it slowly dawned on him that Dave was taking a big risk here - trusting him with this revelation. And it felt like this was a trial run.

Peter and Jake were coaching – gently encouraging Dave to come out of that dark closet where his sexuality was safely locked up - and live it large in the world. Dave had just put his toe in the water – Amos was the first person from his past that he’d come out to. Jake had a huge grin on his face that said “See, the water’s fine, c’mon in.”

On the walk home, Amos’ mind was doing calisthenics. He realized that these guys were the first gay men that he’d actually known – and he liked them. Knowing Dave from an earlier life caused him to readjust his perceptions. There was more to Dave than he’d originally seen. Like Amos, Dave was out here exploring a wider, deeper, freer, wilder version of himself. That afternoon Dave had crossed a raging river of doubt on a slippery log by trusting him. Amos felt like he had crossed that same river without really thinking about it. The land of homosexuality was no longer a dark continent whose natives he could laugh at and scorn from his ignorant and fearful island of so-called normal sex.

He found that, with some mental exercise, it wasn’t a big deal withholding his judgment of these guys – these friends. His curiosity kept taking him into those bedrooms trying to get his head around what went on there. But he recognized it as the same curiosity he had about everyone’s private sex lives – and what went on in his head wasn’t where he was meeting these guys. They had offered friendship and he had welcomed it. He enjoyed their company and he wasn’t going to let his thoughts get in the way.

In the weeks to come, Dave, Jake and Peter got to meet Danny. Now it was Amos’ turn to watch his friends for their reactions and eye signals. He wondered what they thought of this coaching Amos had signed up for. He knew that the sight of he and Danny strolling down Vancouver streets was probably stranger to most eyes than seeing two men arm in arm in a lover’s embrace. It’s a lot easier to withhold judgment, Amos noted, when you know that you’re being judged and placed on the far side of normal yourself.

While his new friends definitely caused him to wonder about his own sexuality – could he, under the right circumstances be persuaded to open up to homo-erotic love? He decided he was simply a tourist passing through and there was no chance of him staying - even for a visit.

It was decided for him really. It wasn’t like there was a choice or a decision to be made. The amount of time he spent thinking about women - women from his past and women in his future - left a well-worn path in his brain when it came to sex. While he supposed he could leave the path and bush-whack - it would be all uphill work. When it came to spending emotional energy on relationships, he was just plain lazy.

He’d avoided the whole dating scene in high school just because he hated the idea of everyone else knowing and talking about his intimate affairs. He was so acutely aware of himself through other’s eyes, that to see his own awkward attempts at love being the subject of discussion was akin to putting his balls on the altar for public sacrifice. It just wasn’t worth it.

So, he kept himself pure. Or, he kept his own version of sex in a closet of a different kind. He had a Hollywood Playboy, combined with an Archie comic-book - Betty and Veronica - image of women that he’d managed to preserve right through his adolescence. Along with an idealized vision of the perfect woman – the one who would stand by him - or maybe just behind him – trusted, affectionate, understanding – like a good dog - only with a body out of a Playboy magazine.

Porn magazines – soft porn left room for his imagination to work – was much easier than a relationship any day. You could just close the cover with very little mess and put it away until the urge surged again. Minor guilt pangs were easier to live with than demands of a human being who wanted or expected a piece of his attention. The shame of being a boy in the eyes of men was better than risking embarrassment in the hands of a woman.

But it happened anyway. It was closing time and three young, more than tipsy, women climbed into his cab. They were in a good mood and teased Amos with harmless innuendo and flirting. “Hey, he’s cute, look at those shoulders – two of us could curl up in those!” Amos surprised himself by not choking up and turning red. Instead he played along “There’s room for all three of you in these arms ladies.” And they loved it. He thought that maybe he was in for a good tip.

She lived furthest away and was the last to be dropped off. The laughs turned into life stories. Heather didn’t know many people here. She’d grown up on the island – a small town girl in the big city. She and her friends were off-duty hospital nurses. When she invited him up to her apartment for a drink, Amos’ blood pumped a little faster in his veins. He liked her down to earth sense of humour. His sensitive stuck-up meter didn’t register with her at all. She put him at ease with a friendly touch as they met on the sidewalk steering him towards the apartment doorway.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” she laughed, “you’ll be getting the wrong idea about me. Why am I trusting you? You could be a serial killer.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why either. Are you crazy?” he teased “I’m going to have to ask you to give me all your butcher’s knives when we get upstairs.” They laughed and teased each other along these lines in the elevator and down the hall into her apartment. Amos found it as sensible, clean, and maybe just a little cutesy - as its owner. Heather seemed as comfortable in this place as she was in her own body. She had a natural physicality that quietened him - as if he was a skittish horse entering a stable after running wild for a season.

He called her the next week after fully debating the issue with Dan. Dan said it was good for man to have a mistress – the implication being that Amos’ passions needed to stay focused on the training. A woman on the side was okay. Amos thought Danny was maybe just a bit jealous. He liked that. And he didn’t like the way a one-night-stand looked on him. And he definitely liked the way Heather felt – natural and easy like an old pair of jeans. If only he could keep it uncomplicated.

He wouldn’t tell her where he lived – letting her know at dinner that second time that he was too messed up, too self-absorbed for a relationship and she would have to just enjoy his company when she had it and not get any ideas about anything more. Heather agreed with a silent smile – she wasn’t going to scare this stray cat away with a collar. She knew that he was hungry and had come back to her door for more.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

First day’s ski in the Rockies

He was a tourist behind the wheel of a Vancouver cab with one sole aim in life – to ski the Rocky Mountains. A North Van rich kid climbed into his cab and they got talking ski talk and this guy said “ you know that Whistler opens tomorrow eh?”
“No, I hadn’t heard man.”
“Well officially, it’s the day after tomorrow, but the tradition is that they open up the hills for the locals for one day of free skiing before the throngs arrive.”

That was the only invitation Amos needed. Next morning before dawn he had his gear packed in the Fleshmobile and was headed up Highway 99. He’d been there in the summer - stayed at his treeplanting girlfriends’ family condo - so he knew where to find the ski hill and went straight there. The Whistler village was under construction, only a couple of stores and brand new deluxe hotels were open for business. He parked the car and walked past them directly to the ski hill. He was a man on a mission.

Amos was both surprised and delighted when, sure enough, the young, obviously envious, lift operators welcomed his ticket-less butt onto the chair-lift. With a huge grin on his face the chair swung him up into the hills. He was alone on the five person chair. There was hardly anyone there that morning. It might have had something to do with the heavy cloud and mist lying low over the bottom of the mountain. Amos had been waiting months for this day and there was no way that clouds were going to daunt his hopes.

His heart was pounding from excitement and a good dose of fear as the lift took him higher and higher up and over the rock faces and tree tops. He could only see what was directly below and around him the fog was so thick. He was higher than any hill in Ontario within the first ten minutes. In the pit of his stomach a stew of worry stirred in with the excitement and adrenaline in his system and he thought he might puke.

And then, with another sweep up over a cliff face, his chariot broke free from the clouds and he entered paradise. The sun shone bright in a blue, cloudless sky, on a mountain of white, white, white snow! Breaking through into heaven out of the dim mortal reality - for this Ontario lad – truly a dream come true. He couldn’t help but begin bouncing in his seat and whooping it up along with the riders in the chairs in front of him.

This was the dream he’d been pursuing – what he’d given up law school to pursue. This was why he was alive – to live out his adolescent ambition of a Rocky Mountain ski bum – and he was doing it! His heart was soaring like a hawk high over the mountain.

Now, getting back down the mountain was a very different experience for our hero Amos. It was an experience that brought him very quickly back down to earth. He had his long stiff skis - perfect for Ontario’s icy slopes - shipped from home. He’d bought equally stiff boots on sale that fall to cement his ski-bum resolve. Now, he hit the slopes with enthusiasm only to discover that he didn’t have a clue about how to ski in two feet of snow.

Deep snow in Ontario meant you might have snow up to your ankles. Most of the time you were traversing hard packed, machine-groomed snow. Very often you had to deal with large sheets of ice to cross between the edges where hundreds of skiers had pushed the snow before you. Skiing in untouched snow up to his knees was totally different.

Amos took several tumbles before he’d made it down even part of the first slope. His ski tips kept getting pulled this way and that and the more he fought to muscle them together, the more they misbehaved. He was determined to enjoy this though. He kept pulling his legs back under him and struggling, staggering for balance, stabbing his poles deep into the snow looking for something solid to push against.

About half way down the mountain, he wiped out good enough to make him stop and sit After he’d collected his brains and equipment scattered across the hill, he sat and stewed. If breaking through those clouds had been a Rocky Mountain high, then he’d fallen flat on his face the very next thing. This was no dream. This was a nightmare. He couldn’t do this. What a disaster! What seemed at first to be a wonderful gift had turned into an incredible challenge.

As a poet, the metaphor wasn’t lost on him. Just as he’d sought out the freedom and fun of life alone on the west coast, he was finding that what seemed great from far was far from great. Complications and unseen challenges required new skill and insight untested ‘til now.

What was he gonna do? Give up and go home?
Like fuck! Amos answered his own questions. “FUCK THAT!” he said out loud. Hearing his own voice in defiance kindled a resolve in his belly. He could do it. He would do it. It just meant learning how to ski all over again. He learned to ski once, he could do it again. And if that was what it would take to ski the Rockies that winter, then, that’s what he’d do. He had all winter. He had his whole life ahead to learn one lesson at a time – one small step at a time. So, he began.

He managed to get to the bottom of the mountain feeling totally exhausted. His knees were as weak and wobbly as a new born colt’s. His shoulder’s ached as if he’d been carrying bags of cement all day. He was tired and breathing heavy, but he wasn’t totally discouraged. He got back on the lift in spite of his brain’s request for the chalet.

The rest of the day he hacked his way down the slopes – falling often, but with every fall he was learning. Skiing in deep snow was more about sitting back on his skiis and persuading, not pushing, his skiis to shift with his weight. Trying to force his feet around and set his edges hard would get him back into trouble. He had to lighten up. Get lighter on his feet – he laughed thinking of his new gay friends – more west coast swoosh and less Ontario macho man. It would take some time.

Back at the car, Amos packed his skiis and headed out for the little secluded parkette at the end of a street at the edge of the town. He’d spotted it that summer, packing it away in his memory as part of the plan he was cooking up. Out of the trunk, he dragged the canvas six-man tent he’d brought tree-planting. It must have weighed a hundred pounds and somehow in the deep snow he wrestled it up. Lassoing poles and tying the centre rail off to nearby trees took energy from stores he didn’t think he had left in him.

When he had it up though, (just the one side with the door in it) and a pot of soup cooking on the Coleman stove, there couldn’t have been a young man on the planet more satisfied with the choices he’d made. He was proud that the plans he’d crafted were working. Lifting the mug of soup to his lips and feeling the warmth go down through him he decided - living in a dream was a good place to be. His breath raised like smoke from his lips in a satisfied prayer of thanksgiving.

Mastering the Dance

2009-05-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

The unspoken deal was sealed. In exchange for the devotion of a student, Danny would share his secrets to life lived large – free of the ties of a petty morality and the restraints of social norms that scared one back into the herd. The call of the true self would always take you beyond the bounds of what’s expected. Boundaries kept sacred by the so-called successful; Bankers, Vice-principals, cops and certain Sunday-school teachers.

Those people were good at being good - they enjoyed snitching on kindergarten mates for colouring outside the lines – and with the wrong colours too! How did they ever become so powerful? What in their threats carried such fear? How long did one have to be an outcast before you discovered that those threats of exclusion and shame could push you no further than you’d already been pushed?

There was another set of rules. Rules made and kept by those who excelled at crossing the line where the rules lie. All the forbidden fruits of violence, sex, and greed were there to be stolen and sold. The outlaw rules were as tough to keep as the others. The keepers of the outlaw codes were as mean-spirited and power-hungry as those who patrolled moral codes – both armed with petty jealousies – chunks, not chips, on their shoulders.

Those without talent for either good, or evil, ended up serving both sets of rules at the same time – caught between the impossible, half-starved, choices of staying straight and doing time in dead-end jobs or being criminal and risk doing time in all-expenses paid government hotels. But serving, always in service, to whoever controlled the payouts and punishments.

The third option was to live with beauty as your Master. These folk danced the road between the two shoulders crossing the centre lines, changing direction with the wind, and enjoying the trip seemingly uninterested in destinations. They could turn the grey pavement between morality and immorality, between the sacred and the profane, between the profound and the silly, into the yellow-brick road. This alchemy was both worthless and priceless - depending on who your patrons were. Do you dance for the Maker creating sidewalk masterpieces washed away with the rain? Or do you deal with the Devil putting trifles on canvas treasured behind locked inner-circle gallery doors?

Commerce was the fourth way. It’s rules marched single-file somewhere between the good and the bad. Commerce took anything that you could pin a price tag to - and flogged it. The value of the endeavor was in the mind of the purchaser. They were simply the a-moral dealers of human hungers. Those with talent for it kept careful track of who ruled who. They could measure it with numbers. They’d never consider that those numbers are simply symbols that stand in for the heartbeats of time.

And if they did slow enough to listen, or feel those heartbeats inside - stargazing with a lover, or alone and exposed to the great emptiness of the impossible symbol zero - they’d be called on cellphones back to the service of downtown cathedral towers whose nameless gods were paid tribute with stories and myths of the “what’s real”. Truths told in select clubs, schools, and vacation retreats. Never ask who keeps the beat. Who first hummed life into rock and water? Who loved them all – good and bad, and artists and busy-ones? They proved how real their gods were with their chequebooks – the only true test of value.

The ocean tides found their way again into English Bay, raising expectations to the moon only to release them and let them slip away again. Grouse Mountain watched over whatever this batch of humans could come up with. It was hard to surprise a mountain. Generations had come and gone from these shores. The numbers of humans and their habitations were increasing. They covered the shorelines and the hills like a thick, leafy, creeping vine that strangled its host and crowded out all competitors for the little sun that shone on Vancouver’s shores. The mountain waited and watched and wondered when this cycle would reach its full turn. The beginning of the end is hard to see even for a mountain. You need a god’s eye view. Humans only get it in retrospect.

Amos had the feeling he wasn’t Danny’s first student. Danny would make certain allusions to folks he’d tutored in the past, but would never talk about them. A direct question would evoke only a chuckle and change of subject. It seemed a subject maybe too sacred to spoil with talk? Maybe Danny was just passing along his own method of self-schooling that had gotten him through the tough times? Maybe someone had taken Dan under their wing and shown him the ropes - the moves - the way?

He would talk about certain individuals who shone in his galaxy brighter than the rest. They were people of imagination and tenacity who had been tested by life and refused to let hardships be anything but lessons. Growing up in an Ontario Housing project in an east-end Ottawa neigbhourhood, he’d become fast friends with Phil Magiman. Impressed first and foremost with physical strength and beauty, Danny would always begin the stories of Phil by reminding Amos that he was a champion wrestler. Then, he would go on, Phil was brilliant – a philosopher, scientist, and engineer – completely self-trained.

Phil had never got caught up in the gang scene like Danny but used his intelligence right away to invent and create. With a trade as a welder supporting him, he and a partner had begun creating and patenting their inventions. Parenthood inspired ingenuity. A large Pharmaceutical company picked up two of their child safety devices – one to keep cupboard doors from opening to prying little hands, and another to keep parents more attentive to their children bouncing away the hours in those doorway jumper swings.

Money had started rolling in. More inventions were spawned and Phil’s family grew to four. Just as he was on the verge of leaving behind a middle-class life, like he’d already left behind his low-income childhood, everything turned around on him. In a series of betrayals; first the Pharmaceutical company, then his partner, and finally his wife took it all away. As Danny described it, Amos pictured an ocean storm with waves stripping the cargo from the decks of a small boat. Finally, a wave swept Phil from the deck of his craft into the sea. He was stripped bare, beaten, and spit out on the beach. If Phil could wrestle himself away from gravity’s pin, then Amos could get off his butt and follow Dan to the gym.

Dan was living off Government Unemployment Insurance cheques from his last stint as a construction labourer. He had to stay in shape for his next gig. He showed Amos how to gain access to the downtown YMCA gym without paying. There was no sneaking or lurking involved. The technique involved assuming an attitude that the world belonged to one’s self and never questioning one’s right to be there - for free. It was all, as far as Amos could tell, in the greeting of the gatekeeper. Dan’s physical presence was intimidating but it was his smile and open, vulnerable, face that would disarm. Being greeted by this guy as an equal; as someone worthy of dignity, was as good as any currency.

Dan would enter singing some tune, calling out “hey Compadre, how’s it hanging?” to the guy handing out the towels at the desk. He’d greet Dan by name, like a local celebrity. Somehow, Amos observed, Dan had paid his way with this guy – met him on a level more valuable than the rules he was paid to keep. Amos was handed a towel with a nod and a grin that said - anyone on this guy’s coat-tails was in for a ride.

There was a routine, a ritual, discipled in the gym. Dan took Amos through the sets he’d designed to keep himself in shape. Most of them involved bending and lifting, bending and lifting, twisting and stretching; maintaining flexibility so that when it came time to sling concrete blocks again, they’d be light as feathers and Dan could whistle through the work day keeping the tempo of the crew dancing – and his bosses smiling. Amos had worked summer construction jobs. He could see how valuable Danny’s energy, strength, and spirit would be on a construction site. He followed the routine and learned it until he could show up in a gym alone and look like he knew what he was doing.

Danny even got him out jogging a couple of times. “C’mon young warrior” he’d coax him “just around the block.” He would prod and push and encourage Amos jogging backwards to Amos’s forwards trudge along each length of city street. But Amos knew that running wasn’t for him. Running wasn’t what saved him from that Grizzly in the mountains. No, he was better at standing his ground. He could walk for hours, shuffle up to any mountaintop, but pounding his feet into concrete for Amos was crossing the line from self-care into self-abuse.

On the days that Amos would join Dan in these rituals, Dan would let Amos treat him to a breakfast afterwards at one of their favourite haunts. The joys of eating well, was another one of the four corners of Dan’s method. Eating well, looking good, working with soul were the three essentials. Keeping it all light with music, humour, beauty, sacred ideas and conversations rounded out those hard corners into a circle that rolled morning into long afternoons, evenings into night into dream-time, mystery-time, time to begin again whistling, wondering, wandering with purpose soaking it all up with a hungry curiosity and an animal instinct that kept you grounded and earthy and hunting.

Sex was what drove Dan into the day. He was always hunting. Nothing; no lesson, no conversation, no meal, was more important than the opportunity to turn a woman’s head his way and test her eyes for hunger. Danny would leap, run, cross the street, jog backwards, whatever it took to meet a single woman. Every woman who passed his way would be greeted with an appreciative remark. “Gorgeous!” he’d say, by way of greeting “Wonderful!” he’d whistle turning to appreciate the curves she cut in passing.

Amos was completely embarrassed and scandalized by this approach to the opposite sex. Amos met woman as if across a great chasm of respect and fear. Danny met them as if across a mattress. What surprised Amos was how many women, while refusing to give Dan the time of day, seemed to soak up the attention and glow a little brighter for it. Sure, maybe most would give him scorn, but there were lots who responded. The saucy ones would swing their hips just a little more – toss their hair – enjoying the power of denial. The straight and skirted ones would reveal nothing - but Amos would often catch the smirk – the glee of being Eve - in their eyes. Sure, Danny would get his share of scorn, but that did little to dampen the fire that was burning hot, as he’d say, “in his savage loins”.

He showed Amos the best shops to pick up second hand clothes. They found a black linen jacket that Amos could pull off with jeans and sneakers. Dan had a brown wool blazer that he’d wear with his leather wingtip shoes when he wanted to be in society. When his cheque would arrive, they’d dine at classy Italian, German, or maybe a favourite Mexican place on West 4th.

When things were lean, they’d travel across the city for what Dan would call a “scoff”. At all you can eat, buffet, restaurants the growing boys would revel in meat and carb feasts washed down with gallons of coffee. A favourite was the Countryman Buffet. Ribs and chicken smothered in a sweet tangy sauce were scoffed down with thick crusts of sourdough bread. Plates of roast beef and potatoes in a brown gravy with green beans and pickles would balance the meal off. Berry pies, cheesecake, and brownies slid down with ice cream and more coffee. Amos couldn’t believe the place could stay in business with customers like them. It was one of those un-real situations that kept occurring as he accompanied Dan around the city.

To Amos, the whole city seemed more than a little unreal. The beauty of the ocean sunsets he’d catch crossing the Granville Island bridge in his cab made him feel like he was living someone else’s life. The sun sparkling on the south face of Grouse Mountain in the morning, the Lion’s Head peaks just beyond, would catch Amos by surprise. The ocean waves pounding; sending its scents into the streets, seemed to come from another time just beyond memory. Even the warm rains welcomed you into them to explore the wet greys the concrete offered. This was much different from the cold stinging rains of Lake Ontario that drove you indoors to watch from windows or turn to TV.

One rainy day Dan showed up with two umbrellas. “Let’s go man” he called to Amos throwing an umbrella at him. “Rain is from the Maker. It’s a chance to be close to God. Don’t miss it.” They’d walk down the lush green sidestreets – every yard had its own variety of tree and flower. Some Amos would recognize, others were unknown, but they all seemed larger and greener than what grew in the East. Even the leaf stems seemed thicker as if every single leaf had a better grip on life out here. They’d always end up down at the ocean. Rain and waves would play with mists and breezes to produce a mist-ical feel that was beyond anything captured in print or imagination. To feel it on your skin was the only way to know it.

On these walks, or over huge pans of lasagna or shepherd’s pie that they’d build for themselves, the talk would always begin and end with authors, artists, musicians. The one thing about his past that Amos could get some credit from Dan about, was his knowledge of literature. He raved to Dan about Dostoyevsky; about his moral authority and the rich colours, both dark and light, that he painted the world with. He couldn’t get him interested in the brainy Camus and Sarte though. Dan couldn’t believe Amos hadn’t read Tolstoy yet. He gave him a biography – as thick as “War and Peace” - and urged him to read it. Amos introduced Danny to Matt Cohen and Al Purdy, eastern Ontario boys grittier than the slick Montreal crowd. Danny opened up the awful, earthy, American trilogy of Henry Miller to Amos’ virgin eyes.

Miller’s descriptions of his journey into author-ity captivated Amos. The world he lived in; hookers and scammers and thieves, was Danny’s home turf. The way Miller found beauty, and the shine of the sacred, in those rooms and streets was entrancing to Amos. Jack Kerouac seemed an innocent romantic to Miller’s dirty-handed portrayal of the light that streaked all the way through the dark tunnel of life’s misery.

Amos secretly took heart in Miller’s story. It had taken him decades of living before he could put the way he saw into words on paper. He spent his best and brightest, youthful, years just learning how to see - before he even dared to try to write anything down. In Miller, Amos learned that the circle could turn and turn and tumble in a jewel’s sanding box before a gem was ready. Turning life over and over and over again. Turning over the lessons with the truth of experience, turning truth on its head with the lessons of time, turning hope upside down with the ugly underside of honesty, would turn, in time, turn out something worth saying.

They’d haunt second-hand book stores and assault music stores. Dan would go through the stacks rapidly pulling albums from their rows growing a pile that he’d take from aisle to aisle. Amos would watch as the store owner’s attention would be drawn to this frenzied all-you-can-eat buffet approach. Finally Dan would heft his stack of maybe twenty albums and drop it on the counter. “Fifty bucks?” he’d offer. If the answer was a “no”, he was out the door. Maybe next time the owner would be hungrier for a sale.

It’s not like he and Danny were attached at the hip. Amos worked the cabbie night shift, four til four, - as many days as he could take at a stretch. He was squirreling away a stash for his ski trips that winter. On a good night he could clear $100. Slow nights he’d cover gas and the cab rate and come home with only enough to lend Dan til the month’s end. Saving money seemed a talent beyond Dan’s reach – or desire. When he had money, he shared it with a generosity that left Amos humbled. When he was without, he lived hand to mouth and looked, without shame, for other hands to help him out.

Amos learned to give up trying to track the loans and trust that it would all come out in the wash between friends. The Union Hall would call Danny up from time to time and he’d have work for a week or two. Their paths would barely cross with Dan working days and Amos nights.

Helen would keep them informed of each other’s health. Amos noticed how Helen was still charmed by Danny’s domestic presence. Dan knew how to keep a place as carefully as his own personal grooming - leaving only a few crumbs for his pet mice in their basement cupboards. Helen was too courteous to complain to Dan about Amos’ habits. But Dan wasn’t.

Every so often, he’d blow off steam in Amos’ direction. He’d confront Amos about the laundry and dishes left where they dropped. Amos would bring up the issue of money’s lent. Dan would push back with a curled lip about Amos’ petty and caustic snide remarks. Amos had a dirty little habit of regular put-downs. He’d try to hide them in unfunny, joking, observations about his companions’ observed weaknesses. It was Amos’ way of asserting authority – letting others know that he could see their ugly sides – trying to make it okay to say such cutting things by making a joke of it.

What Amos didn’t see was how it revealed his own poverty of grace and manners. He was blind to how those little put-downs, that he thought were witty and harmless, were endured by friends who graciously let the comments pass. Danny held the mirror up. He made Amos look at the prickly barbs on his hide – how they were a poor form of protection – keeping others at a safe distance.

In spite of this nasty blind spot, Amos had qualities that would attract. When he was relaxed and natural, his laugh came out strong and easily. His smile would put strangers at ease and was a gentle stroke of fur that his friends would come close for. He was smart and attentive. When his watery eyes were on you, you felt like a thoughtful mind was watching. That is, until you realized that behind the gaze, as often as not, a whole other inner story was being followed while he tuned in and out to your company. For some, it became a challenge to see how long they could hold that mercurial attention. Others would take offence. Most were just as self-absorbed and didn’t even notice Amos’ inner wanderings.

While the smile and eyes were attractive, he had a large, quiet presence that for most was a barrier. He projected a silent shield that strangers sensed was tough to get around. When he tried to get past his own silence with attempts at small talk in social settings - his own distaste for conversations without purpose – people could smell like bad breath. The truth was that while at times Amos longed for companions, he mostly found his own company sufficient. He didn’t consider himself a loner. He was just very good at being alone and often too lazy to put himself out there, in the world, to share.

Sharing, generosity really, was the subject of Danny’s school. It was the only lesson that mattered. Dan would share his dream of gathering musicians and artists to come together for a benefit concert for Mother Earth. He was sure they would do it and that he could pull it off. He’d list off the musicians and bands he’d approach. He knew their hearts from their music. Bruce Coburn would do it he knew. And Neil Young – more gritty Eastern Ontario boys. Carlos Santana was a sure bet. Dexy’s Midnight Runners were near the top of his list. He knew Bob Gandolph had it in him. “We’re here to create; to enjoy what the Creator makes, and to make whatever we’re given even more beautiful.” They talked it over and over. They agreed and elaborated and saw evidence of it in every place and every one.

Amos’ walk with Danny was taking him deeper and deeper into his own soul. Danny was impatiently hurrying him down into Dante’s Inferno. While Amos didn’t get a lot out of that dense old text, he did get this. The sooner you hit bottom rung of hell, the sooner you could crawl up Satan’s leg, get through his asshole, and make it back into the world. Getting past the demons and getting ready to share was Dan’s program.

What mattered was your own sense of style. To be an artist was to be unique. To do what others feared, not for shock value, but to push back the night-terrors that kept people from seeing the beauty all around them; in everything. It was your job to give others courage; to get them to grasp onto the hope waiting to spring up in every broken soul, in every hurting place, where greed and hate leaves fear in its shadows. The trick was – to live it – and to let your living be your canvas.

Amos had pretty much forgotten the whole idea of Danny actually being the Devil. When he thought of it now, knowing what a sweetheart, sincere, artist lay behind that angry exterior, he’d laugh at his crazy notions. How simplistic. How could he have been caught - thinking a tough exterior meant a sinister heart too?

Amos had been yearning out loud for some weed to smoke. He hadn’t really encountered a good source at the cab company. While wishing out loud that he had some, he also kept trying to convince Dan how weed could really add to one’s creative point of view. At first, Danny had ignored the request. But when Amos kept going on about it, Mephistopheles was forced to keep his part of the bargain.

They got into Amos’ car and drove across the city to the eastern edge of the Vancouver suburbs where the city became strung out into long streets of industrial malls interspersed with blocks of houses barren empty of even the shade of a mature tree. They found Danny’s friend Derek at home and soon they were high. It was good weed.

Derek was young. Maybe even younger than Amos. But he was a street cat. Sure his house was a dump, but he had his own place and had been there for a while. Danny and Derek exchanged news in few words. They seemed to have an understanding between them that Amos wondered at. There was a lot unsaid behind the smiles and nods they exchanged as they smoked another reefer.

Feeling unsettled and more than a little uneasy about the focus these two guys were putting on him, Amos announced he wanted to find a party. Danny and Derek looked at each other and shrugged. While Derek went into the other room to get showered and dressed, Danny sat grinning at Amos. Amos became uncomfortable with this fixed attention and said “What?”.

Danny began to spill out a devil’s prophecy. It was like he had been watching all of Amos’ dreams while he mused or slept. He began describing in a flat surly monotone how Amos wanted to become a writer. He went on in a terrible mocking telling of how Amos saw himself writing in a cabin in the woods with a faithful woman at his side like a dog. It terrified Amos. He hadn’t told anyone of these private thoughts. Danny’s eyes pinned him into his chair and his smile made him small and foolish. Danny was channeling an evil, mocking spirit. The drugs had opened his heart to this demon. Danny was gone and now Amos was sitting facing the demon who lived in his own mirror.

It was a cruel and cutting attack on his most cherished self-image. He’d experienced drug-induced paranoia many times. Having a cherished self-image twisted upon itself was part of the attraction of drugs – never letting oneself get too caught up in mental illusions and delusions was almost a spiritual practice. But to go through that in your own head was one thing. To have someone else tap into those secret thoughts and portray them exactly was haunting. The dark part of himself that could twist things was now sitting across from him – laughing at his surprise like a cat with a mouse.
Amos was caught, trapped, exposed, helpless to rescue his hidden heart from the fangs of this devil.

When Derek came back into the room Danny was still going on. With relief Amos saw that Derek wanted no part of it – what would he have done if they’d teamed up on him? Derek seemed to recognize instinctively that Danny had changed personalities. Something he’d seen before.

“You still want to go?” he asked Amos. Amos said “Let’s just get out of here eh?” So they piled out the door and into the Dart, Danny laughing and singing in the back seat. They didn’t make it far before Danny called for a piss stop. Still in a residential neighbourhood, they pulled into a dark lot behind a warehouse. Out of the car, Danny was hooting and hollering. Amos told him to keep it down – he didn’t want to attract cops in this stoned condition. In answer, Dan threw his beer bottle against a wall.

Amos looked at Derek and said “I’m not taking this guy downtown.” Derek said “Why don’t you just take me home?” But Danny would have none of it. He was belligerent and threatening and getting uglier still laughing at the two of them - dancing across the asphalt. So, they left him there in the darkened lot.

Danny showed up the next day about noon. He’d spent the night in prison was all he’d tell. Whether he remembered the episode in the house, Amos was never sure. When he tried to describe it – Dan looked blankly at him – and he felt foolish all over again trying to explain what’s best left unsaid between soul warriors. What Dan remembered was that Amos had betrayed him by leaving him there for the cops. After that, Amos was a lot more careful what he asked Danny to help him with.

The Devil you say?

2009-04-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

1Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when the time was up he was hungry.
The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test:
Luke 4 from “The Message”

Amos definitely didn’t feel good about the way things went. He felt really guilty about Helen having to move out of her own place. It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, or got entangled in a love thing. It was just the devil that made him do it. But we’re getting ahead of the story.

As a student of literature in university, Amos had come across many, many, references to Goethe’s classic story of “Faust”. Doctor Faust’s deal with the devil is rooted deep in the anglo-saxon cultural genetics. The idea of cashing in one’s soul for some short term rewards pops up in TV shows and songs and conversations continually. Marlowe retold the Faust story in 17th Century England, and American’s know the story as “The Devil and Daniel Webster. Of course, it’s a retelling of Adam and Eve’s deal with the devil. Neil Young’s “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” was the seventies version of the wartime “Live like there’s no tomorrow”.

Short term, self-destructive decisions, in exchange for the quick payoff, are the shadow side of North American culture. No matter how many times we see – in personal and political stories - how it was tears apart the earth, communities, and our families - and have plenty of angels on our shoulders to point it out - we can’t help picking the devil’s fruit and tasting it. To be human is to deal with the devil.

On the surface, Amos told himself, he was merely continuing his classical education. He found a modern translation of Goethe’s “Faust” –not Marlowe’s later retelling - at the Vancouver Public Library. Now that he had an address, he could get a loan card. He felt good about pursuing his own studies – just for the sake of it. It felt mature and manly like when he smoked stale tobacco in his tortoise shell pipe. But the way his blood pumped in his veins as he carried the text home revealed something more was going on - he was unraveling forbidden treasure. It felt like he was thirteen again, stealing home with his first Playboy magazine. He was playing with Promethean fire, unlocking Pandora’s box, daring to mess around in places where little boys get eaten by witches and only heroes survive with scars to show.

Up in the mountains tree planting that summer He’d worked his way through a good chunk of Nietchze’s attempts to push off God and pump up the human spirit’s potential to achieve god-like status through science and reason. The fact that Neitchze’s journey had ended up in a madhouse only made it more interesting and challenging. The attempt to reach the edges of the human psyche - without falling off the end of the world - seemed a worthy venture for a young romantic with no better plans.

Add to that cocktail, the month on his injured back with Jung and Castenada and Huxley and you might get a taste of the elixir he was concocting for a journey into soul and identity. In other words, he was spending way too much time inside his own head - and the heads of dead white men.

So Dr. Faust’s deal with the Devil – to sell his soul in exchange for a devil’s tour of ultimate earthy experience - was a logical next read for Amos. Faust conjures up the devil Mephistopheles and trades his soul to possess the forbidden knowledge waiting over morality’s high garden walls. His pursuit of truth – as a scientist - drives him to exchange an eternity in hell for a quick trip in the Garden – to taste all of the world’s enticing temptations. To live fully he frees himself – for now - from judgment’s second-guessing that sours the sweet fruit of lusts explored. As Amos ate up the poetry of Goethe’s story, he had to admit that his otherwise worthless English & Philosophy, Bachelor of Arts, University degree did allow him to wade through these dense texts. He was able to discover how hopeless Romantics like himself, in other ages, had told their stories.

He’d discovered a good place to settle in with a book. A diner on the corner of Broadway and Granville offered a large plate glass window view of the bridge downtown with the mountains behind. He could look up from his book, out from the vinyl benched booths, into the - more often than not - wet - Vancouver night and at the same time catch his own reflection - reflecting on his path forward. That was where Amos first met the Devil. The Devil was drunk and giving the mousey little waitress a hard time. He broke through Amos’ concentration - shouting at her across the restaurant with a surly demand for more coffee. That was the bait. The wily master snagged a glance of Amos’ disapproving glare like that was what he’d been fishin for all along – the self-righteous can’t resist scolding evil.

“What’re ya lookin at? Never seen a drunken Indian before?”
Spooked, not expecting to have his challenge confronted, Amos tried to play like it hadn’t happened. He quickly turned his head back down to the pages – ignoring the question. But he could feel the Devil’s glare searing into him – the hook was set. He was caught. “O Shit” he thought - still keeping his head down “here we go.” as the drunk pulled himself to his feet and reeled over to Amos’ booth. He stuck a large, wide, clenched fist between Amos’ nose and the novel and fiercely growled “What gives you the right not to talk to me?”

Up to this point in his life, Amos had avoided conflict by either using a distracting humour, by letting others fight his battles, or by simply running. For some reason that night those choices didn’t seem to be options – or maybe, just maybe, Amos was ready to try something else.

He slowly looked up from the book, doing his best to seem calm and cool. But with a closer look at his antagonist now, the cool turned suddenly hot. The drunken Indian’s chest was thick and square equipped with a pair of heavily muscled, tattooed arms. A shoulder length black mane framed a handsome, still-young, face set with a wide, thick-lipped, angry mouth. Dark eyes, under dark brows, pierced through the alcohol’s haze. It was a sure bet this hombre had been in more than a few street fights. Amos had always had the glass of a TV screen between him and any such action.

“If you wanna fight - let’s take it outside” he heard himself say looking straight into the Devil’s eyes. At the same time, in another part of his head, he was thinking “Amos - are you fucking crazy?” He knew, swallowing the second of silence that hung between him and the Devil’s glare, feeling the blood rush suddenly to his head, that if this Indian took him up on the suggestion, he’d get his clock cleaned. Even drunk, this guy was gonna do him some damage. A picture of himself getting pummeled on the street outside, while angels watched helplessly laughing, flashed through his mind.

To his surprise and relief, the devil withdrew his still clenched fist. His face softened just a bit. His shoulders set back from their hunch forward. With dignity he replied “No, I don’t want to fight. I just want to talk.” Thinking he was off the hook, not realizing he was just being played, Amos jumped at the offer. “S-S-Sit down then” he stuttered trying to reclaim the cool that had flown out the window beside him. The Indian took a seat on the bench across from him. The waitress brought him a fresh coffee and topped Amos’ up, giving him a knowing smirk - another fish in net. And that was the beginning of Amos’ association with the Scottish Indian, Danny Sadler. Over several cups of coffee they told their stories.

They were only halfway through that first cup of coffee when Amos realized who he was talking to. He had just conjured Danny up out of the pages of Faust to present himself, in the flesh, as the devil Mephistopheles. In Amos’ mind’s eye, the conversation at the formica table was mirrored in the plate glass; an ancient story was unfolding on another level, in a bizarre but equally real through-the-looking-glass world.

Danny scoffed at Amos’ descriptions of suburban home and book learning. He took the wind out of Amos’ attempts to be self-critical by quickly stealing away any doubt that there was any value at all in what Amos had to say for himself. He took up the part of Amos’ demons and told him what he already knew about his own life. How a sheltered, comfortable, secure life had done nothing to show him what life was really all about. Satan knows the heart as well as Jesus does. This was the chief of devils to whom Amos’ many familiar little household demons reported. The bargaining had begun. First Mephistopheles would discount the value of what Faust was bringing to the table.

Then the offer was put down. Danny’s story seemed to hold all the rich temptations that Amos had only read, or wondered, about. Danny held the cards that were missing from Amos’ deck. He’d Grown up in an Ottawa ghetto, dropping out of high-school still semi-illiterate. The three years Amos had spent studying literature, politics and philosphy, Danny had spent in prison. While Amos had been taught the lessons of living a good life, Danny had sold weapons swimming deep in the ruthless rivers of violence where sharks would always hunt the soft underbellies of “good” people. To be able to see beauty and meaning, and even purpose, in a life lived from these depths was to be able to take in all of life’s offerings and judge for one’s self beyond childish moralities of good and bad.

Amos’ fear of such deep waters was part of what compelled him – the way Niagara Falls draws you standing at its edge - over and down into the void. Danny’s life story was the dark underbelly of Amos’ privileged walk. To be an artist of any weight, Amos hungered to know the passions; to possess the intimate, dark, secrets of the paths Danny had traveled. And, on cue, just as Mephistopheles had offered Faust all he was missing, Danny dared Amos to try on his world and learn something about life through his eyes.

Danny explained he was on a quest to live clean and pure and taste the fullness of a purpose. He was trying to educate himself about art and literature and philosophy – not to achieve some degree or status or job but to know how great men had harnessed life’s passion and made a difference – helped others suffer the sweet pains and subtle joys of living life fully. He invited Amos along.

When they were ready to part, Danny pulled out a stack of cards held with a thick elastic band and handed one to Amos. They were glossy, head shot, colour photos of Danny in a bandana with a sexy grin. His name and number were scrawled on the back. They agreed to meet the next day.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. 6Then the Devil said, “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. 7Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.”

Amos couldn’t resist. In the morning light, Danny’s calling card was obnoxious and conceited. To call that number was obviously just asking for trouble. Still, there was truth in the devil’s telling - that he knew what Amos could never know. What Amos did know, was that if he truly wanted to write as an artist, he’d have to use light and dark and more shades of colour in his portraits than he currently possessed. Danny was offering to add those missing shades of colour to his palette. There’d be a cost of course. That was part of the story. It just seemed too strange a coincidence that a devil would appear at just the right time in his story. The encounter had an unreal feel about it – like there was more going on than what was being said. Subtle clues, like the waitress’ knowing look, Danny’s wink with his offer, was that a whiff of sulphur? The book was off the shelf, it’s cover had opened to the first chapter he needed to live before it could be written. Ready or not, the next page was his to turn.

Of course, it turned out that Danny was a reader of tales also. He was a lover of literature, but unlike Amos, completely self taught. He showed up at the beach just below 2nd and Arbutus by the pool, where they’d agreed to meet, with a dictionary under his left bicep and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” in his left hand. A rolled umbrella served as a walking stick in his right. “Every time I come to a word I don’t know, I look it up” he explained. “Every time I read about another author or book, I write it down”. And that was his course of study.

Danny’d done time for possession and sale of illegal weapons back in Ontario. He was short on details about that life. He wanted to talk about where he was going. He’d been out here in Vancouver even longer trying to forge a new identity free from the broken chains that still hung from his wrists and ankles. He’d sing out as they strolled “I comb my hair in a different way - but end up lookin just the same”. His sense of his own absurdity was as endearing as his proud peacock routine was maddening.

They walked as they talked. Danny was dressed sharp. Sports jacket, dress shirt, jeans and black leather wingtip shoes to Amos jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. Danny would drop their conversation cold every time a single woman appeared. He’d turn and follow, or cross the street to tell her she was gorgeous or sexy or whatever and hand her one of his photo cards. Rejoining Amos he explained “I got a thousand of these made up. Even if one in a hundred gives me a call, I’ll be rolling in pussy”.

It was the way Danny talked about, and treated, women that would sour their times together. They were either queens or cunts and nothing in between. While Amos didn’t put his women on a pedestal, he set them apart in a holy seclusion from the world of men. He couldn’t stand to have them profaned. Or maybe Danny’s abuse triggered his own undeclared hatred of women’s harsh power over him. They would argue passionately about it until they were both enraged. Of course there’d also be large quantities of alcohol involved and they’d split up wherever they were. Amos would go home and wouldn’t see Danny til sometime the next day - learning about the scuffle and accommodations provided by the boys in blue. But I’m getting ahead of the story again.

That first day together, before their first fights, they got to talking about music. Did Amos know this band and did Amos know that singer and Danny announced that Amos’ first lesson had to be in music. Amos was amused that this strange character had apparently taken him on as a student – he didn’t remember signing up. On the way to Danny’s rooming house on the East Side, Amos shelled out for a bottle of Johnny Walker Red (his idea of a sophisticated drink). The lads said a polite hello to Danny’s German landlady on their way up to the second floor room. Amos had never been in a rooming house and he felt like he was walking into a movie. On a table by the bed was a turntable sitting atop a silver amp. On the floor beside the table, a row of records stood between two speakers. The room was sparse of furniture otherwise. A shared toilet was down the hall.

Danny started with Amos’ first love – the Led Zeppelin of his seventies-suburban-basement youth. From there, Danny took him back into Rock n Roll history. Like a DJ, he’d spin a sampling of the groundbreaking Birds with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck on guitar. From England to New York’s Velvet Underground - John Cale and the roots of punk. Then an obscure sampling from The Band – pre-Dylan. Danny would instruct his charge to listen intently to the drumming, now the bass, this guitar wail – the genius of the artistry so original and so sublime they could only be purchased with blood – no?. By the time they got to Danny’s most soul-ripping favourite, Rory Gallagher, the scotch was gone and the stereo was cranked up to window-rattling loud. They’d already ignored the landlady’s banging on the door, but when the record needle ground to a halt in the middle of a wailing riff - the silence suddenly dropped them from the heights of musical ecstacy into the darkening late afternoon room.

“The ol’ bitch cut the power. Let’s get out of here.” Danny was on his feet and out the door before Amos had a chance to stagger to his feet. They stumbled down the stairs and out, past the screaming threats of the landlady, squinting, into the still bright afternoon sun.

“You have a car right?” Danny said. “We should go to Vancouver Island. I’ll introduce you to some people you need to meet.”
“Let’s go man!” said Faust to the deal. “Take me on your tour!”
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9For the third test the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the Temple. He said, “If you are God’s Son, jump. 10It’s written, isn’t it, that ‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; 11they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?”

The next hour was a bit of a blur. Somehow they got into the Dodge Dart, got out of the city, and down to the ferry just in time to drive on and pass out. The second the car stopped, Danny crawled into the back seat. Amos slumped over across the front bench. A ferryman thumped on the car’s hood until Amos sat up and got told to turn off the car’s engine. At least Amos thought it was a ferryman. In fact, it was the angel who had gotten them that far without mishap.

It was night when they got to Victoria and Amos drove them up out of the city. Danny pointed out the sights and spots of his life in that city. He’d lived there for a time and was full of praise for the place. “Why don’t you still live here then?” Amos asked. “It’s a long story.” was all that Danny would say. They drove out of the city. Danny directed Amos to turn here and there until they came to a trailer home set in the woods along a quiet country lane. It was well past midnight and Amos wanted to just sleep in the car. But Danny insisted and knocked and walked through the door and into the trailer with Amos shadowing him. A large bearded man emerged from the back bedroom and at first didn’t seem to recognize Danny, seemed a little hostile about these midnight intruders. Amos was turning to leave when the guy growled “You know where the blankets are.” and turned back to his bed.
They crashed on the bench couches in their clothes.

Amos woke to the smell of coffee. There was a woman with long dark hair standing at the stove cracking eggs into a fry pan. “How do you like your eggs Danny?” she asked in a maternal way – with a mix of endearment and impatience – wisdom that knew the futility of scolding - only adding fuel to the fire - when boys are being boys. She made them breakfast while Danny and her man caught up on news.

Amos slipped outside to pee and try to blow off the worst of his morning farts. He found a small stream down a path and stuck his head in it. He sat back on his haunches and looked around and wondered where the wind that had brought him here was blowing from? If he was on the highway to hell what were these good hospitable people doing here along the way?

He ventured into their company and received a plate of eggs and toast and was passed thick country sausage and homemade raspberry jam and bits of cheese that all were too good to have come from off the island. He could feel his body giving thanks for it. Over cups of strong black coffee with thick rich cream Amos gathered that Danny and Bill had walked together for a time and in a way that had made them brothers. The story wasn’t sung but the fact that Bill and his beautiful wife Gloria couldn’t refuse Dan a bed, told Amos that Danny had shared something valuable with them. Whatever it was, Amos liked what he saw in the simple wealth they so generously shared with him.

They headed for Nanaimo and Danny’s friends’. Amos put his favourite road trip tape into the Fleshmobile’s deck and the adventure was on again. All the way Danny regaled Amos with assurances about how they were journeying to meet a truly spiritual man. Desmond was a true friend – unlike anyone Amos would ever have met in his limited shallow life. Desmond was the older brother of Danny’s love-of-his-life-ex-wife Helene and would greet them as brothers. Helene was the perfect woman. Artistic and wise and street smart and sexy and compassionate and pure. If Amos asked the wrong question, or tried out a joke about her, Danny would ignore it or slap it down quick. Amos had never met such a woman Danny assured him. She would be there at her brother’s home – and Amos would see.

They were more than a bit of a sad sight showing up in yesterday’s clothes, reeking still of yesterday’s alcohol, when they arrived on the doorstep of Desmond’s 5 yr. old daughter’s birthday party.

Amos tried to turn Danny around and get him to come back another day. But Desmond and his wife Sophie and their friends did indeed live up to Danny’s words. A gracious, magical, afternoon opened up to them sitting and chatting with the grown-ups on the front porch of their A-frame home while the children played in the forest’s clearing. Danny was surprisingly quiet. He would speak only to urge Amos and Desmond on into conversation about important things.

These people were practitioners of EST – a behavioural psychology movement that sought to heal and help. They told Amos of “The Hunger Project” that took them proselytizing into urban streets trying to convince people of the fact that there really is more than enough food to feed the world if only humans would cooperate and organize distribution channels.
They were earnest and sincere and interesting people. Amos could see how people in the street could be attracted by such people. They were in possession of a purpose. That purpose gave them an inner light and a confidence that was attractive to anyone who had none of those elusive things.

From bits of conversation over the afternoon, Amos slowly pieced together Danny’s story. These were the people who had tamed the wild beast when he first arrived from Ontario. They became family to him and with EST helped him to do battle with some of the personal demons that had followed him west. Desmond’s younger sister – Helene - was “away” that day. It was the only explanation of her absence given. She had fallen in love with Danny and they had a child; a daughter together. But something had gone wrong. There was something not told. A betrayal or some other broken link in the story had sent Danny out on his own again; banished from island life to begin yet again in Vancouver.

The afternoon was golden and as it turned from bright and sunny to a hazy finish, Amos had the feeling that these faerie creatures in this forest clearing would vanish – taking him with them – when the setting sun released the spell dropping behind the trees. Danny announced that their was not complete. They had to visit Denman and Hornby islands to complete a real taste of Island life. Their hosts, recognizing a quest in the making, urged the boys to carry on their journey. They departed with big slabs of homemade lasagna and cake pressed into Amos’ hands. His heart was as full as his hands. He switched the tape player off as they pulled away letting the afternoon’s song ring on a little longer in the silent appreciation held between them.

A mighty little car ferry took them out to Hornby Island. It seemed like the last refuge of hippies and artists mixed together with the money people. The rich and the creative co-existed in a symbiotic relationship. The artists needed the patrons and the rich need the “look” that the artists gave their groovy little island retreats. Hornby was a short hop across and they just made the last twilight ferry to Denman stars appearing on cue to guide them to the end of the road. Would they find the pot of gold at this rainbow’s end? They stopped into an idyllic English pub in a rustic village. They turned their wallets out and found that their first beer was also to be their last.

But the road had one more turn in it still. Just as they were standing to go, Danny got a slap on the back from a couple of big, middle-aged, Irish rugby type guy. He greeted him as a long lost brother. Turns out that Danny had worked as a labourer in Jack’s construction company. Over a fresh round of beers, a round that turned into two, then three, Amos learned that Danny was a brute for hard work. As the story went, Danny would be the first to show at the construction site and the last to leave. He’d work the day through feeding two skilled bricklayers with brick and block and mortar. Danny was the grease that kept the whole machine going – making money for buddy boy here.

They had a merry time with Jack and his pal Bill and Amos was beginning to hope that they’d give them a bed for the night when he discovered that that was just what was in mind. The boss’s friend followed him into the Men’s room, and standing at the urinal beside Amos, leaned over looking down where his hand was and declared “I’d sure like to give that lovely one a suck!”.

In his sheltered life so far, Amos’d never yet been made such an offer. With a raised eyebrow, Amos simply replied “Yeah? Well, I don’t think so pal.” put it away, zipped it up, and washed his hands of the offer without another word between them. Back at the table, Danny and Jack were into a heated debate about the Hunger Project. Amos sat and listened a bit. The boss was threatened by the idea that he might be responsible for somebody else’s hunger. He was eager to trash any idea that generosity might save the world. Danny was back at him “You can make a difference man. Open your heart. If you don’t open your heart and your clenched fists you’re going to die an ugly mean little man.” That really got Jack excited and he started railing against “do-gooders and bleading hearts and dreamers.”

Amos was disgusted by the cynicism. It was tarnishing the afternoon’s still golden memories. He leaned over and grabbed Dan’s shoulder and said so the other’s could hear. “Let’s go man. We’re wasting our time here.”

Dan stood straight up walked out the door with Amos scrambling to follow. He gave one quick look back at their startled angry looks from the departing boys to the waitress standing beside them with a pretty healthy tab to cover. Danny and Amos were laughing and hooting out to the car. They made a quick escape down the road to who knows where they were going. Amos was still indignant about the bathroom proposition but Danny just shrugged it off “Get used to it man.” Amos had yet to discover that being openly gay was as common as rain in Vancouver. This wasn’t frosty white Ontario. Out here, his sexuality was up for grabs – literally.

The road ended - being an island road - at an ocean beach and they climbed out of the car and threw themselves down on their backs in the sand just listening to the surf and exposing their hearts to the stars. Deep breaths of the warm gentle wind mixed with the beer in their bellies. Amos let go of the day - trusting the stars to keep watch over his bedeviled soul.

A kiss of the first rays of the rising sun brushed Amos’ eyelashes open. He looked over to where Danny lay to find only sand. Had he vanished; a figment of Amos’ overactive imagination; a spirit creature gone home? Amos sat up to see a naked Indian diving into the surf. Returning the “whoop” from the waves he stood and shed clothes as he jogged down and into the icy cold ocean waves – sobering up quick from the last two days of drunken dream.

Climbing back into the Fleshmobile, clothes dampened with seawater, the boys agreed they’d never felt better. Retracing the path back they spoke little of what’d gone between them. Their talk was of the mission ahead. They had good news to bring to the broken-hearted, freedom to share with the captives, manna for the hungry and songs for the sorry, lonely souls the city’s cup was brimming with.

They still had the few bucks they’d never spent on beer money the night before - enough for a cheap breakfast at a diner. They were overjoyed and relieved – laughing at their luck - that all the ferry tickets purchased were return trips. So it was in the company of a sacred laughing hoping spirit that they arrived back to Vancouver’s rain-drenched streets – glistening with sunlight breaking free of clouds to promise a new world begun.

Dropping Danny off at his rooming house they noticed a pile of junk out on the front porch. Upon closer inspection it proved to be Danny’s worldly possessions. It seemed his landlady had trouble recognizing the prophet in her midst and had put out a Room for Rent sign along with Danny’s stuff.

And so back in the basement apartment in Kitsilano, Danny poured on a devilish charm with Helen of Auckland that convinced even Amos that somehow things would all work out between their unholy trinity. Danny became the occupant of the third bedroom in the little apartment with the stairs going up and out into a grassy, shady, backyard off the alley where the Dodge Dart Fleshmobile patiently awaited the next mission...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Honour Among Drunks

2009-03-31T12:14:00.000-07:00

On the Road again
He’d chosen this path and wasn’t at all unhappy about it. He could have bought a plane ticket with the last of his tree-planting stash and made it back to Ontario in time for Law school. He’d spent the fall and winter of the previous year studying for the LSAT exams while driving cab in Toronto. With fair test results, he’d applied and been given a place on the Lawyer’s slow boat to success. It took a spring and a summer in the Rockies to convince himself what a bad idea Law school would be.

It was just too easy. And another four years of uninterrupted study was just too hard. Being a lawyer just seemed way too predictable, and when it came down to it – Amos considered himself too complicated for such a “normal” path. No, he was much happier memorizing street maps, and Vancouver Taxi cab driver regulations. It was a three day course and he was set loose on the road – fresh meat for the Diamond cab company.

He signed up for his first shift at midnight the same day they gave him his cabbie license. Nights on the beach were getting cooler and the Youth Hostel staff were getting tired of him stealing showers. So, he began scratching and scrounging out a living as a tourist behind the wheel of a Vancouver cab.

He could speak English fluently– which was better than about a third of the drivers – new Canadians driving cab nights, practicing English, working day jobs too trying to get a foothold on the slippery slope of the Canadian dream. For $50 a night and the cost of gas you could rent a car and flog your wheels on the streets. Maybe another third of the drivers were young like him and using the wheels as a way of paying the rent until the rest of their life began – acting, writing, studying, pimping, pushing drugs towards any number of dream-lives just over the horizon. The rest of the drivers were career men. They owned their own cars and cab license plates - worth as much as a house. They’d rent their cars out for the night shift to guys like Amos and put in long dayshift hours feeding coffee to, and sharing tips with, the company dispatchers.

There was also the odd middle-aged guy who’d been spit out of a regular job and was trying to keep all the ends of his life still meeting. Everyone knew though, that the longer he spent hours behind the wheel of a cab, the greater the stretch became. Those guys had the wild-eyed look of a drowning man and were just no fun to be around. A few women drove too. They were tough chicks – like they’d grown up in a family of brothers and enjoyed the status of being treated like they had balls.

Amos had his own secret dream. It was maybe more like one of those endless, repetitive nightmares - he was driving, hunting, driving around the city trying to find the address for – “Amos Brown: Author”. He told no one and only admitted it to himself every time his mind turned another phrase or his brain started composing narratives of say - his drive across the Lion’s Head bridge. He carried a note pad around in his jacket pocket to jot down choice inspirations. The words in his head sounded true. He was sure only a mind like his could conjure them up. But the words stayed in his head. They faded away every time he picked up his pen. His dream of being a writer always seemed so profound and real until he picked up his pen - and the dream slipped away like smoke.

He saw himself as unremarkable. He couldn’t see - in the broad glaring light of day - that he had anything new or worthwhile to say. His comments had been covered. His story was common. His observations were only as smart and cynical as the next young poet’s. He wanted to produce something wise and worthwhile. But he was green and hadn’t yet earned his say. In spite of these self-doubts, he saw himself as a heavyweight. He just didn’t want to step into the ring and take the punches - not until his own punches were ready to throw. So, the pages remained blank and he filled hours with quick cab conversations, books between customers, tokes and tunes, and - plans for his season of skiing in the Rockies.

You see, dreamer that he was, Amos had another dream he was pursuing. It was his high-school idea of a successful life. What could be better than the life of a Rocky Mountain ski bum? While being a Lawyer, or a Writer, was miles and miles and years away, in just a few months there’d be snow in the Rockies and Amos planned to be skiing. Not that he was any kind of great skier. Never much of any kind of athlete, skiing for him was closer to dancing and he could dance – sort of. He had just enough rhythm and agility to get down the hill to his own suburban white boy satisfaction. He skied with music in his head and loved it – no team to let down – no pressure to perform for a coach – just him and the hill testing his turns.

So, Amos put the pieces in place to make that teenage dream come true. He needed to know that the things he dreamed up in his head – that he could step into them outside of his head. Before he could write a story, he needed to live a story.

Next step, up at the University, he found an ad - someone named Helen was looking for a female student to share a basement apartment in Kitsilano. He called and must have sounded harmless enough - Helen invited him over for tea. In the kitchen, where you could just barely see sky through the window over the sink – between the top of the back alley’s hedges and the bottom of the first floor apartment’s deck - Helen and Amos worked out an arrangement. She was a third year biology student from New Zealand. She was quiet, and serious, pretty in an old black and white English movie kind of way. She had a good sense of humour. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of him and spunky enough to return his teases with a taunt of her own.

Helen thought Amos seemed pretty normal. He told her about his travels to New Zealand and wandering through the Pacific Islands. He told her about his university days studying poetry and philosophy and his trail out to B.C. where he’d ditched the idea of being of a lawyer and instead - just wanted to ski. She was a little bit charmed by his boyish sense of adventure and she was a little bit worried about the way he tested her with a party-animal story thrown in – watching her for reactions.

But he listened and paid attention to her in a way she hadn’t encountered among many Canadian boys. Amos asked her questions in a gentle kind of big brotherly way. Helen wondered what her folks back in Kiwi-land would think about her shacking up with a strange man. That thought was what sealed the deal. She heard herself agreeing to share the little basement flat with this water-eyed man.

Amos and Helen were both far from home and, for whatever other reasons, were here to cut their own paths beyond the reach of parental approval and protection. For Helen, pushing past her parent’s idea of a proper roommate was proof to herself that she really was her own person and not just a child waiting to grow into her mother’s image.

For Amos, Helen’s respectability offered some ballast to his small sailing craft being tossed about in the ocean’s big, deep, swells. He knew the ocean recognized no names and no credentials and tested every man the same. He wasn’t looking for a lover, or a party, just a place to roost and write and become whatever it was that he was becoming. He knew that winter storms were coming and that a safe harbour – one that would draw out the gentleman in him – just felt right.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Honour among Drunks
What did he have to lose? Amos tried to calculate the gamble in his head. In exchange for maybe 15 minutes of prime rush hour chances to catch some quick choice cab fares, he was going to follow up on a three week old drunken promise. It was a crazy long shot he concluded. When you’re driving cab, timing is everything. You don’t want to interrupt the flow if it’s happening and Amos had already had a good start to his day. First trip out, a radio call from his zone took him way out across the Lion’s Head bridge to North Vancouver. A nice $18 fare and two buck tip to start the day. So, why was he now considering wasting precious minutes on a lost cause?

Maybe it had something to do with the taste of fate in this coincidence. That first fare took him right to the same street, same spot he’d been just weeks before. He recognized the building across the street as the place he’d dropped those two drunks. Talk about a wild goose chase. He’d played out quite a little game with those characters trying to get his fare from them. It was pretty funny – now - looking back at it. At the time he hadn’t been too amused. They’d told him to come back. They’d sworn that if he came back – they’d give him his money. And now - not only did they waste his time three weeks ago - now Amos was going to waste time again standing there knocking on the door to apartment #112.

********************

I’d only bin out a week and was makin up for lost time. The pogey cheque they spring you with didn’t last 48 hours. A hundred dollar hooker, a bag of Johnny-pills, a few quarts of whiskey and I had me a comin-out cel-bration. I didn’t have no worries ‘bout spending the $600 they give ya on rent like you’re supposed to. My bud Frank had an apartment in North Van and he owed me. Yeah, he owed me for keepin my yap shut about that other guy the witness saw comin outa the house wit me.

If those damn people had shovelled their walk, I never would’ve felled on me ass with that TV in me arms. Who ever heard of snow in Vancouver in November? Just my fuckin luck. I don’t blame Frank for leavin me there. The alarms were goin like crazy, and a big fuckin German Shepherd was comin round the corner. That was the way we did things – if shit happened – and you had the toilet paper to get a clean break – you took it. That’s the way it goes. That’s the way it went down.

So now Frank owed me. He was puttin me up at his place til we could get some new jobs happenin. Share and share alike – like it or not. Just when my cash ran out, Frank’s pogey cheque arrived and it wasn’t long before we’d worked our way through that too. We spent the last of his cheque drinkin at our fav-rite waterin hole - the ol’ Queensway Hotel. Really, our fav-rite was the Dunsmuir but we’d bin barred from there since ’79 when that waiter got just a little too lippy for his own good.

So anyways, we go strollin out of the Queensway, into the daylight to catch the number 98 bus home, when Frank flags a cab. I’m thinkin –we got no money for that- but Frank’s already climbin in the back seat so who am I to question why?

The driver’s this young pup with curly long hair and beard. He’s the kind to show off his street smarts but you know that his mother still folds his fuckin underwear for him. So I get the jump on him with a little intimidating. Before I put me ass in the seat, I leans over into the front seat. I pins his right shoulder back hard with my right hand while my elbow’s pinning his arm down too. I stick me face into his and the kid pulls back as far as he can – which ain’t too far. I give im my best junk yard dog growl - “I’m the meanest son-of-a-bitch you’re ever gonna meet. I’m so mean – even my mother hates me.”

I could tell he was scared eh? His eyes went wide and for a second there I thought he was gonna cry. But, then he puts this grin on his face and he says to me, he says “Even your Mother?” He’s acting all kinda surprised - but pullin my leg like. And shit - he had me – I had to laugh.

I weren’t expectin this young pup to be pokin fun at me - and that mighta pissed me off but - I could tell he weren’t laughin at me – he was jes jokin wit me. What’re gonna do when yer bluff gets called? He was bettin on my good-natured side. Made me think of me dear old mom - ol’ Evelyn, that drunken bitch who‘d slapped me into this world. So I has to laugh and I says to him, I says “NO - not me mother. Sure she loves me – in her own way.”

When I’m that pissed y’know, I gets all tender-hearted like and sappy and this kid had hit me there where I weren’t expectin it. I could tell eh - the kid had heart. From any other college-smart-ass that remark mighta come across cocky-like and earned him a cuff. But this kid weren’t puttin me down – he was just gettin down wit me - and joinin in on our little party.

*************************

So Amos drove them all the way across the bridge to a run-down little apartment building that’d seen better days. All the way they’re telling Amos tall tales about a cop they’d nearly killed and a bank they’d nearly robbed and how much money they could make robbing houses in West Van where the insurance companies just buy the people newer stuff. These guys are a couple of jokers thought Amos. Eugene, the guy doing all the talking, had an oily Elvis slick three decades old. Frank didn’t have enough hair left for that and had had to settle for a greasy comb-over. They both wore button up patterned polyester shirts over beer guts and under hip length leather–like jackets. They were a real comedy team. Intent on impressing Amos with their gangster status and mostly just coming off like barking dogs who’d lost too many teeth to bite. They were probably dangerous enough in their day, Amos noted. And you still wouldn’t want to push them too far – no telling how deep a mean streak ran in guys like that – what was one more assault charge to them? But as pickled as they were today, it was just a matter of keeping them talking about how bad they were and they’d be as happy as a pair of puppy dogs with old shoes to gnaw on.

**********************

“So, when we gets back to Frank’s place with the kid, I’m honestly feelin pretty bad ‘bout telling this kid that we gots no dough. He was just a workin stiff and here we were stiffing him more. As Frank’s breakin the news to him, I gets an idea. I says “Hey bud, you just wait here and I’ll get some cash from the landlord for ya.”

Well, now the kid’s havin a laugh at me and I can’t blame him eh? How many times has he heard that one eh? So I says to him, I says “Come in wit us then – we’ll get you the cash.” Frank’s lookin at me sideways like, but we all pile out of the cab and in we go.”

The door to Pete’s apartment is never locked. As shitty a landlord as he is, ya gotta give him one thing - at least he’s got an open door policy. In we go shouting out his name, but he’s not around. Frank’s heading for the door but I head for the bedroom and the Cabby, well he’s following me step for step. Sure enough, Pete’s in bed so I gives him a shake and tell im we needs some money.

Well, ol’ Pete was a little less than hospiti-able about the whole thing. After he tells us to fuck off about six times, he gets his ass outa bed and staggers into the kitchen. The cabbie’s lookin at me like “what the fuck?” but I’m on Pete like a dirty shirt – I know he’s always got cash – he’s just tighter than a friggin Scotsman.

Pete gets to his kitchen and he’s in the fridge – it’s empty. He slams the fridge door, looks around, lifts up a quart of whiskey off the counter – it’s empty too. Then he heads out the door and down the hall -the three of us followin along like a bloody Labour Day parade. He goes straight down to #112 and uses his pass key and lets himself right into Frank’s apartment. Franks like “what the fuck?” but by the time we get in the door, Pete’s already got our forty-pounder of C.C. in his paw and he’s pourin himself a tumbler full.

By now, I can see that Pete’s not carin diddely bout payin off our cab fare. Frank’s gets a couple more glasses out and sits at the table with Pete pourin himself a cupful. So, what the hell eh? I takes a seat and pour out one for me and I turns to the kid and says “I’m sorry bud but you can see we ain’t got the cash. Ya wanna a drink?”

It was the least I could do – be a little hospiti-able - and this fuckin kid – y’know what he has the balls to do? He walks over to the table and grabs the bottle and tells us, he says “No, I’ll just take the rest of this and we’ll call it square.” Well, you never seen three old dogs jump faster. You don’t take no bone away from no hungry dog – never mind three of em. That young pup was crossin the line there. He had no idea what he was gettin in fer – whoa baby!.

He takes a coupla steps back towards the door but he smartens up and lets me take the jug back outa his hand - and he’s got this big grin on his face again like he was jes pullin our leg with that little stunt. But I can tell that he’s pretty pissed at us too - bout being jerked around. This kid’s surprisin me. He’s got some spunk. I like him and I tell him so. “Listen, you little fucker - you’re a good kid. You come back here at the end of the month and I’ll have your fare for ya.”

He gives me a look like “what kind of sucker do you take me for?” and that makes me say “Really, I swear on me mother’s grave. You come back at month’s end and I’ll have your cash fer ya. You come back – you’ll see.”

******************

So Amos knocks on the door. It’s the end of the month. It’s a busy time for cabbies. Folks who can’t afford cars, with pogey cheques to cash, are calling cabs. He waits thirty seconds. Then he gives the door a pound and waits some more. He’s just giving up and leaving when the door opens and there he is. Eugene’s in his underwear and looking like he’s just been washed in with the last tide. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon and he’s obviously sleeping off a drunk so Amos figures – “yup, I’ve wasted my time.”

But right away his drunken friend recognizes him and he says “Jes a minute, jest a minute” and disappears back into the apartment. Amos wonders what new wrinkle he’s gonna pull now but he’s already invested this much time in the mission. So, he gives ol buddy boy yet another precious minute and he comes right back. He’s got a crumpled up ball of toilet paper in his shaking hand and from inside it he pulls out a crumpled twenty dollar bill. He hands it to Amos and says “there you go kid.” and closes the door.

Amos stood there in the hallway looking at that crumpled twenty for an age and a half. He couldn’t believe this guy had actually come through with the cash. But - he had believed in him - just enough to get Amos away from his cab and up to his door – and here that belief had paid off - unbelievably.

Amos wondered what kind of resolve it took for that guy to put that cash away. The toilet paper ball was a stash that he’d hidden away from himself – and from the claims of his brother thieves - so he could keep his word to a cabbie he didn’t even know.

That was one of the best nights Amos ever had driving cab. It was like there was a Big Dispatcher in the sky just lining up fares for him - sidewalk flags that took him out to the suburbs where a few blocks away a customer had called and was waiting to take him right back downtown where bingo, he’d get another flag, then a call, then a flag, then an airport run - and so it flowed all night. He had a ball. The full moon was a coin in his pocket. Everyone was in a good mood and wanting to talk and have conversations that flowed with the music on the radio – gentle and jazzy, staccato and rocky, deep and classy – every time he changed the station the next passenger picked up on the vibe and added to it. When it flows it flows. Some days having faith is just so easy.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Machu Picchu Shuffle

2009-02-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

Amos remembered that only six months before, he’d walked a mountaintop trail in the Andes…

The cloud that they’d been walking through all afternoon lifted just in time to reveal the sun going down. His legs were rubbery weak. There was a great relief in his bones and his heart that they’d found a place to camp. And what a place. It’d seemed like a gift from the ancient Andean ancestors.

Discouraged and tired they’d started back down the trail on the other side of the peak. It was getting dark and there was no patch of level ground that wasn’t strewn with rocks and boulders. What else could they do except keep trudging down the Inca trail? It was the end of their second day of walking. The trail had taken them up over one peak, then deep down into a lush forested valley, and back up,up,up to a second peak and down and up now through rain and thick mist to this third mountain pass.

With every step his knees would wobble. The pain had passed into weakness but now, descending, a new set of leg muscles were being asked to perform. For the ten thousandth time he wondered what he’d been thinking when he’d agreed to this mountain trek. The only exercise he’d had in the past winter was walking from his cab to the front door of his next customer. He’d developed a belly; a counterweight for the pack on his back perhaps, but it was just more dead weight for his sorry long legs. Pushing a gas peddle requires very little muscle tone. Pushing two hundred pounds up a bloody mountain is a different story.

The guys he was with, James and Andy, were in good shape. James, a high school buddy from Scarbro, was a construction carpenter. His legs were trusty tools he used for long hours every day. They’d met Andy in Cuzco. He was an Engineer for Shell Oil working out of Burma. It was a desk job but he was the kind of guy who sought out physical activity over drinking or spectator sports. He was in Cuzco to do the Inca trail so James and Amos invited him to join them. His legs, watching them pumping up the path in front of him, looked like hydraulic powered cord and pistons under skin.

Amos soon realized that there was no way he could keep up with his mates. At their pace, he had to stop every 50 steps because his lungs just kept running out of air. The mountain air had been thin in Cuzco. James had read that the trail would take them up to 4,200 metres. It felt to Amos like he was trying to suck oxygen out of the air with a straw and it seemed to be a rarer and rarer commodity – the bottom of the glass - with every step they climbed. He could tell that James and Andy were getting frustrated by his more frequent and lengthier stops. They were impatient to discover the mysteries of this ancient path.

The train out of Cuzco had dropped them at the spot reserved for the young gringo tourists. Young European and North American and Australian backpackers traveled a well worn path from one cheap hotel to youth hostel to cheap food spots along what the locals called the Gringo Trail. What the guide book didn’t tell you, the other travelers would – passing tips to each other as they crossed paths. Thousands of them every year all looking for the same things.

You could take the train’s first class car right to the foot of Machu Picchu and a tourist bus would haul your ass up to the “lost city”. You’d stroll through the site, snap a bunch of photos, get your photo taken beside a llama, buy an alpaca sweater in the tourist shop, and get back to town in time for dinner. But on the gringo trail you rode second class with the locals and their chickens and baskets full of produce and penny candies and even pots of hot cocoa tea. How those women made it from one end of the jam-packed train car to the other pouring tea into bright coloured plastic cups was a mystery to Amos - let alone how they managed to keep that tea hot.

The porters had pitched their giant packs off the luggage car railside and they’d made their way down a steep slope to where a river raged churning white and muddy through a deep gorge cutting them off from the mountain trail before they’d even begun. Smiling campesinos waved them over to a small platform at the gorge’s edge. A heavy steel cable ran from one side across to the other. From the cable hung a homemade steel and wood basket with not really enough room for the three of them, their packs and a family of forest dwellers on their way home. They paid him his 500 peso fee – pennies to them - and left their courage behind as the little platform swung out over the gorge. His partner pulled them across with a rope tied to the basket - suspended from a single wheel riding that cable a hundred, or was it a thousand, feet over the surge.

The smiling little guy from the mountain side got pulled back across by his buddy and they disappeared up across the train tracks til tomorrow’s batch of gringos arrived. There was obviously no turning back now. We’d crossed over. Civilization was cut off behind us by that angry mud-white river. A wide clear stone path into the jungle beckoned us back into time. The family had already disappeared along it before the boys had even hoisted their packs. They were suddenly ten years old and ready for adventure.

The boyish fun took Amos a good way into the jungle. Even when the trail began switching back and forth up inclines, his enthusiasm was enough to keep him pushing to keep up. At times they even had to use their hands to pull them up over the next scrabble of rocks and roots. What kind of trail was this? Then a burro and a mother and two little kids trotted past them. That inspired another surge of energy.

But by mid afternoon, Amos was just running out of steam. He had to take longer and longer breaks to stoke up another head of energy to get him marching on. When the frustration became loud on his compadres faces – they’d said nothing – he ordered them to stop waiting for him. “You guys go ahead at your own speed. There’s only one trail up here. I’ll catch you at our first camp. Have dinner ready eh”

It took no convincing to set them free. They hadn’t traveled across the globe to go slow. James and Andy were eating it up and hungry for more. This was the trail that warrior messengers ran with urgent news of the Incan kingdom. This trail crossed the whole range of the Andean mountains from Chile and Bolivia through Peru almost to Ecuador. Armies marched it to conquer and control an expanding kingdom centuries before any European set foot on it. This piece of the trail would take them to the most sacred site of the Empire. Machu Picchu – where the high priests sacrificed the best and brightest young specimens of their tribes to the sun god – trading bright futures of one in exchange for a Sun that would shine on the fortunes of a whole kingdom. Off my friends sprang into the dark, bloody history of the Inca trail.

Amos discovered something that he’d missed by trying to keep up. He discovered his own pace. Instead of throwing his hiking boot out to the full extent of his long leg, he simply brought it up beside the other and let it drop just a foot ahead. It was slow. It was progress. It felt right. It freed his mind. Instead of having to focus on the push, push, push of physical effort, the short-stepped trudge freed his mind to explore his surroundings. He fell into a pace that allowed him to lift his gaze from the path to look around and see. Right away he started noticing amazing details about his jungle path that had been a blur before.

How thick the moss grew on fallen trees. How it hung like a beard from crisscrossing deadfalls suspended, hung up by the branches of other trees off the forest floor. He noticed the tears dripping from those beards. Why were they crying? Crying to see this suburban invader bringing the most dreadful disease yet to the wild. Crying to see yet another member of the consumer culture scourge that had already infected this wild sacred place and would – within the lifetime of a jungle tree – become the killing cancer of the last age of earth.

Amos didn’t just notice what was around him. He started to notice what was going on inside too. The trudge was telling him about who he was. The slow, steady stomp of long heavy legs suited him. He was no gazelle. He was no monkey. He was a lumbering bear. He was destined to be a wise old Galapagos turtle carrying the ages on his back – hard to crack and full of observations that only the slow traveler will gather.

The more he reflected on how this pace was working for who he was, the more he started enjoying himself. Soon the music came. His whole body started getting into the slow steady beat, beat, beat of the path. He was into it. Amos even came up with a name for this dance of his. He’d call it the Macchu Picchu Shuffle. It would take him wherever he needed to go.

Rounding a bend he came upon James and Andy taking a break. He shuffled up to them and kept going right on by. “Hey boys” he said with an easy smile “Make way - I’m coming through” and through he stepped like a cat hip to a tune that they couldn’t hear. They passed him before he rounded the next bend but for all their quick starts and stops, Amos never stopped again all afternoon. The Shuffle carried him right up over the first amazing mountain pass –where he stopped to inhale the panoramic view of mountain ranges in every direction – and then down, down, down to a well worn dirt campsite where the boys had a fire blazing and a pot cooking dinner.

It was a restless night. Jungle noises are unfamiliar distractions for suburban boys. Amos could sleep through traffic and sirens and the beeps, buzzes, and hums of electronic conveniences. But the sounds of the forest kept his imagination going with theories of what creatures each snap in the woods and each chirp or growl or cry might belong to – and how desperate they might be for a taste of American beef. He dozed on and off. The tarp kept the drizzle that arrived before dawn off his sleeping bag and quietened the forest. Its peaceful patter gave him an hour or more of solid rest before the jungle choir - a thousand voices strong - woke him his facing breaking into a wide happy grin matched on the faces of his fellow warriors. Sunlight had made it’s way down into the valley to find their campsite while the sun itself remained hidden somewhere behind the next mountain they had to climb.

A quick meal, bread and jam and some cocoa tea sent them off on their quest. It was at least a three day journey and they had a lot of ground to cover. There was a steady stream of trekkers and you wanted to keep your place in line. Amos didn’t mind being overtaken by a pair of other gringos every so often. He was having way too much fun with the Shuffle. He soaked in every change in the forest as the trail took him through dense underbrush to great stands of mature mossy jungle where even the air seemed green. Over trickling clear streams washing bright gravel pebbles down to their destinies, then, into wide quick rivers where ropes strung across allowed the trekkers to wade hip deep safely through.

His steady unstopping pace allowed him to catch his mates where they stopped for extended rests at such picturesque places and they snapped photos of each other crossing the river, risking their necks on slippery rocks for the big payoff – stories to tell. Tell soulmates, tell children, tell the guy on the bunk next to them in the Salvation Army Shelter. Who knew what lay ahead for them? Their young legs took them further on to find out.

By midafternoon they got up above the treeline to where the trail started leveling off. It still dipped and turned but the switchbacks straightened out and they were now moving across a set of mountaintop ridges. A fog had descended onto them before they could reach sunshine. They could only catch glimpses of the distant terrain. Looking down from the trail they could see dizzying drops to rivers winding through the valleys. But the peaks on the other sides were up in the same cloud that they were walking through.

With fewer things to see, Amos spent more time looking in. He had to pay attention to where his feet were going. At times the trail grew thin along steep mountain flanks. The path was reinforced and widened in those places with the ancient stonework of the Incans. The same interlocking, mortarless stonework as the great ruins around Cuzco was evident in these mountain roads. They remained in tact centuries later. The masons had knit their stonework into the hillsides to become part of the mountain’s fabric.

As he made slow progress across the ridges he strolled back through time. He visited childhood friends and remembered people he hadn’t thought of in years. He remembered with thanks those teachers who had influenced him by recognizing who he was, appreciating his gifts, and encouraging him to keep growing. He stumbled upon those who had angered and hurt him. Ignorant bastards who had misunderstood him and thwarted him with pesky disciplines or worse – ignored him. He kicked at memories of those he had let down. Who saw great things in him but he’d disappointed by steering away from their high hopes to stay safe and alone with his own version of himself.

Amos had always shied away from success. It never seemed attractive enough to be worth all the hard work - giving up on his freedom to read stories and watch movies and just play with his thoughts and imaginings. Those teachers found him bright and quick and curious in a way that set him apart from most of his peers. The older he grew the fewer playmates he could find who wanted to venture into make believe and adventure. Boys turned their adventures into sports where there was little drama for him. He wasn’t fast enough or coordinated enough to play the hero and was relegated to the role of supporting or chasing down the heroes. Girls games turned into gossiping circles and he didn’t have the guts to engage in those bloody little dramas. He wasn’t a girly boy but he wasn’t a boy’s boy either.

So he worked for his teachers but he lived for his time alone with his musings. He made those teachers proud at times but they were always disappointed in the end. “If only he would apply himself” the report cards read year after year. His parents loved him the way he was – but, but, but they always tried to coax and cajole and even threaten him into achievements. Amos just kept trudging along looking for something out there to match the power of what was inside.

Instinctively he knew that he didn’t want to be the big success in other’s eyes. Instead he coveted the role of the hidden unlikely hero. The shepherd boy that only Samuel can see as King. The stable hand who without thinking or trying pulls the sword from the stone in an emergency – called upon to serve in a moment of need. No, the high road was not for him. He watched and waited and played the game as best he could – without heart or hope of winning. He would remain a loafer and aloof and alone.

Lost in these revelries, as he remembered, he discovered new insights about the boy he thought he knew. From this height on a mountain in the future, he could see how the boy had shaped the man and how the man was pushing those same roots deeper into the soil of destiny.

He’d written his Law entry exams that past winter, studying in the cab during long waits for the customer’s call. He’d done okay on it. Good enough to get him into one of the less prestigious schools and he’d sent off his applications to the three he thought would take him in. He didn’t want to be a lawyer but he couldn’t think of a better way to get to where he thought he was going. Advisors had told him that law was a good platform from which he could work out a career. It would lift him up to a professional strategic height and from there he could map out a path.

Amos heard footsteps behind him and voices higher and more lilting than the mostly male backpackers who he’d met so far. He paused at a wide place in the path and a young man with two young women approached and stopped to say hello. Their accents were French and they exchanged the usual questions and answers. Where was he from? And them? How long have you been traveling? You? Any good finds along the way? What’s next? Isn’t this great? They were Swiss it turned out. Nothing memorable about the one pair but he knew he would always remember the sweet angelic face of their companion. Her smile was warm as sunlight and her eyes lit him up from deep inside. It was her!

Secretly he’d pined for a woman who could see in him what others missed. Someone who served the same mission with a passion that would ignite his own. His girlfriend from University had been his first real love. Joanne was funny and earthy and best of all – undemanding. She could drink like a fish and enjoyed getting high just as much, and as often, as Amos. He often thought of her more as a buddy who he slept with than as a lover. She was a great traveling buddy but could never go deep down into the heart of things with him. When he got morose and philosophical she would joke and poke at make fun of him til he came around. That was good for Amos. They complemented one another. But, to his shame, he was still always searching for the one who would ignite his passion and purpose.

But of course he was tongue-tied beyond the usual gringo small talk and let her slip past up the trail. She took his heart with him and Amos spent much of the rest of the afternoon pursuing her. The thought of catching another glance and smile kept him amused as the day wore on and the incline started getting steep again. The path was switching back and forth in tighter patterns but it was hard to make out how high into the cloud they climb might go. It was a grey soup. A drizzle of rain accompanied the fog and he caught up with James and Andy at a campsite. They’d stopped to pull rain ponchos from their packs. There were three different small groups of packers all pulling gear from their packs. They were pulling out tents and starting to pitch them.

“It’s getting late” noted James. He was their navigator. He had the map and was tracking their progress. “This is the only campsite marked and then there’s nothing for a long ways”.
There sure isn’t much room here” noted Amos.
We might run out of daylight before we make the next one.
Should we try to jam in here or should we go back?

What sacrilege to suggest going back. There didn’t look like enough room here for the packers that had already started pitching camp let alone three more guys. They would have to go on and they would deal with whatever they found. Amos hated leaving behind his Swiss sweetheart and his big chance at romance. She’d given him another warm smile as he managed to bump into her with some lame smalltalk. The guys were waiting now. Off they went.

Turns out all three of them had been smitten by her. “She’s mine” each one protested as if they were laying claim to a newly discovered land. They walked on. The going got only slower and wetter. The climb was steeper and steeper with each switchback and the turns started coming sooner and sooner. Amos’ legs were giving out. Even the shuffle was hard to keep up. The shuffle was all his companions could muster too and even they were starting to complain between heavy gasps for the next lungfull.

They reached the summit in a total fog. A wind only blew in more cloud and rain and they only knew they were at the top because in every direction they stepped the mountain sloped away. All that effort and no panoramic payoff. No place to camp. No way to see what lay ahead. Just a great cloud of unknowing.

With no other choice - they started down. Amos was truly fearful that his legs were going to give out on him. He tried rallying his courage by swearing and cursing out loud and his companions joined in with a good round of complaints to the gods or anyone else listening. In that haze it felt as if angels could be just a few steps away and they would never know it.

They would never know it - except for the magical appearance of the stone stairway. They almost missed it. James and Andy marched right past it and so did Amos but he’d caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye and stopped in his tracks. Was that his imagination? He backed up a few steps and there, cut into an almost vertical rock face was a set of stairs going up into heaven. “Hey guys! Stop! You gotta check this out!”.

He waited until the three of them were huddled together on the narrow track and he got to see their eyes open wide in amazement. They dropped their packs and Amos claimed rights to be the first up. It was almost a ladder but each step was deep enough for an excellent footing and there was no fear involved. His heart beat fast with the adrenaline of discovery.

Just twenty steps up he stepped out onto a leveled grassy spot the size of a modest suburban living room. James and Andy were at his heels and they stood and staggered open-mouthed around the site. It was backed by a six foot wall and surrounding the half-moon of ground was a thigh high handcrafted stone wall. They laughed and hooted and slapped each other on the back and Amos thanked those that had been listening after all. This place was not on the map. This place was a gift.

The adrenaline still pumping, they climbed back down to get their packs and James thought he heard the trickle of a stream. He scrambled down as far as they had climbed up and found a stream of fresh water. As they pulled out their tarps and pots for cooking over the small firepit, Amos produced a surprise bottle of scotch. “Boys, I didn’t tell ya before, but today is my birthday.
No way! the guys exclaimed.
Yup - no longer a boy. I’m twenty one today.

And then, as Amos poured a round of drinks into tin cups, the curtain lifted - as if the experience had been staged and timed. The three of them turned, and in a silent awe, watched the wind take the cloud away to reveal a long deep valley before and beneath them. The sun was setting behind a set of peaks at the far distant end of it. From this spot they could survey all that the valley contained.

“This is a sentry post. declared James their guide in all things Incan. From here the sentries could keep an eye on anything coming or going towards Machu Picchu. They just shook their lucky little heads, took a seat on the ancient wall, sipped at the single malt and laughed and chuckled at their fortune as the light slowly took away the magnificent mirage.

They cooked a simple meal over the campfire and told stories while the stars arrived bright and blanketing the sky. They were all so exhausted from the day’s march that soon they climbed into their bags for sleep. But in spite of his weariness, sleep eluded Amos. He lay on his back examining the stars. They became the people of his past. As he focused on each one, or on a group, individuals came to mind. Soon they were beyond numbering. His heart swelled with a sense of the wealth of his inheritance.

The love and attention he’d been paid by so many. Even the challenge and abuse he’d received he valued as part of what had both hurt and hardened him. And along with this great wealth that filled him, there was also a great obligation that surfaced and expanded out into the sky. His future was out there beyond him. His manhood was waiting to be traveled and, whatever it held, he knew that it would both surprise and impress all who had known him. Impress them not so much with he might do - as with how the Creator had used him for something special, unusual for a Scarbro boy - more precious than simply success.

It was more of a feeling than a thought and he lay there in awe of what was being presented. He lay there for a long, long time. It held him and slowly became part of him. A transformation was under way in his DNA. It was either the aliens who’d inscribed the Nazca plains, or the Incan gods who accepted the potent blood of youth in exchange for life spilled and distributed, or it was the ancestors transforming his ideas about the childhood Jesus he’d known - into something only to be discovered much further down the trail. Whatever it was – it was both very real and very unreal and he knew only that it had changed him.

The next morning the guys were still laughing at their luck. Amos said nothing to his companions about his sleepless night and tried to see in their faces if they saw anything different about him. But they hadn’t, or didn’t, or surely couldn’t put it into words if they had, and they packed up slowly reluctant to leave the magic of this high, strategic, stronghold. They’d another day’s walk ahead before they’d reach Machu Picchu.

Amos traversed that long valley’s trail still shuffling along but with a light heart that carried the load. Now it felt like he was carrying his future on his back instead of his past and his mind roamed ahead trying to imagine what role he might play in the world. He knew that whatever it was, he would be accompanied by the mystery and magic that had revealed those stairs in the rock.

That night they camped on another height. This one was on the map. It looked down upon the sacred Machu Picchu like they were looking down from the Toronto Dominion tower at Nathan Phillips’ square below. The next day they would explore the famous ruins and join with all the world travelers who could tick off that visit as a wonder accomplished. But the mountains held another wonder for them first.

That night around the campfire, as Amos turned away and stood to pee out over the cliff, he stretched his back in an arc and looked skyward. There were no stars in the sky. Only clouds. But as Amos moved to turn back to the fire, he noticed that something also moved in the sky. Intuitively he lifted his arm and saw a dark arm raised on the cloud before him. He laughed and quickly shared this new magic with his friends. They played puppet shows into the night – silly with the thought that here they were - projected larger than life in the sky above world famous Machu Picchu. It was both fun and strange. Holy unreal - and simply explained.

In the morning they came down from the mountains and walked through the maze of stone walls. Amazed at the magic craft of stone age people - the combining of human skill and awesome natural beauty together in this remote jungle sanctuary. Mixing with middle-aged American and Japanese tourists muddied the pure spring water experience they’d shared on their trek. Amos knew that the ruins they walked among were only a human, if ancient, expression of the mystery hidden up among the mountain clouds of unknowing.

---------------

Mountaintop grace

2009-01-31T09:10:00.001-08:00

Mountaintop Grace

Amos wanted his life to be a story worth telling. That was about all he knew. And he was terrified of wasting his life doing something meaningless. So terrified that, rather than fail his own proud self image by pursuing the wrong path, he’d become stalled here at a dead end. At the end of the last public beach. At the end of the road west. At the end of his childhood.

Not a bad place to end up. He was in an idyllic rain forest, ocean side oasis, living off the fat of the land in a bubble of time that, like his youth, couldn’t last. The fall weather was coming. Even in Vancouver’s temperate climate it meant rain, rain, cold and colder rain. Urban camping was fine for the summer but he’d have to find four walls and a roof in that concrete city sometime soon.

Amos managed to cadge a shower every few days at the Jericho Beach Youth Hostel. He figured the staff were onto him – they knew he wasn’t checked in. But since he fit in with the young crowd traveling cheap, they looked the other way as he strolled casually by with soap and towel in a bag.

Urban camping wasn’t alot different from being homeless. He had a home of course. Back in his parent’s basement in Ontario there was a place for him. But he was here to find a way forward. To go back would be a defeat. This was something he had to do on his own. What that “thing” was seemed just beyond his reach – out there in the ocean somewhere. He was hoping it might wash in with the next tide.

Amos walked the beach. He read and read and read. Jung and Castenada and Neitsche. He cooked meals over a Coleman stove on a picnic table in the public park where he parked his Dodge Dart. At the Canadian Tire, he bought fiberglass and body putty and spent hours sanding down and repairing the rust holes in the body of the Fleshmobile. It was far from a professional job. It was more of ritual than he knew. He was patching up the holes in his heart. The salt on the slippery road of adolescence had eaten away at his defences. It needed working over – a new face. Working with his hands got his mind settled and focused and he started developing a plan for the new man.

He jotted a few things into a notebook but would doze off before he got anywhere into it. He wandered the downtown streets enjoying feeling both stranger and tourist - feeling like, as a Canadian, this was his city. He belonged here. Both strange and familiar. Familiar like the feel of the wheel in his hand taking corners at high speed. Strange like what was going on inside him – spinning out of control. It was a confusing mix of heroic aspirations and the brutal realities of his limitations. He dreamt of doorless concrete walls that shut him out.

A few weeks went by like this and things were getting thin. Amos was getting concerned about his quickly dwindling treeplanting stash of cash. He located the Provincial government’s Social Services office and sat patiently waiting most of a morning to talk to an intake officer. The middle aged woman had her hair pulled back so tight it looked like it was causing the pain in her face. She took in his story as if she’d heard it before. Amos was getting the impression that maybe he wasn’t the only lost soul on Vancouver’s doorstep.

Homeless, jobless, injured back, no place to go. He was looking for a welfare cheque to get himself a place to stay. She told him to get lost. Not a touch of motherhood in her. Wouldn’t even start a file on him – without an address he didn’t qualify as a resident.

Leaving with his tail between his legs, it was a blow to his balance. It felt like he’d lost his footing. Canada had rejected a favoured son. He’d put his pride away and held out his hand for some help. Getting it slapped down was harsh. He thought he had a place at the table. They pointed him to the dumpsters in the alley and told him to help himself.

Leaving that cold glass and steel office tower, he had a sense of why there were thousands of angry people protesting in the square outside the building. Something about cutbacks the new government had imposed. He listened to a speech or two. It wasn’t hard to connect with the anger. It felt like the vibe of a punk bar. Fun stuff - but his time for such theatrics was short. It would take him nowhere fast. He needed to find a footing before he could dance.

In that punch-drunk state, Amos almost called up Christine. He thought about trying to patch things together again – get back to familiar ground. Then he remembered that she’d be going back to college and getting into that circle of friends and he couldn’t stretch his imagination far enough to see himself in that circle.

Not that they’d be all that different from his circle of friends back in Scarbro. They were a little younger than him and still mostly passionate about enjoying life. They were living within the security of their family’s wealth. Homes with full fridges, cars to take them to the next party, cottage playgrounds to run away to when responsibilities got to feeling heavy. The difference between his suburban pals and these Vancouver rich kids was only that they had much more of the same. Their luxuries came with spending money and no need to work at crappy summer or afterschool jobs. Those rich kids would have to get jobs eventually. But they knew it was just a matter of stepping onto the next stone in their parent’s country club pond.

It wasn’t his family’s pond Amos was interested in. Working in a church seemed a worse fate than becoming a corporate hack. It was good work he knew, but he couldn’t get his head around being good himself. The effort involved in being a good person - that others would look up to – just didn’t feel like him.

So here he was facing the Pacific Ocean gathering courage to swim his way into the future. His guts told him he had to step out from under the shadow of the large trees in his family. The branches of his clergyman family – father, two uncles, older brother all hung over his head. The lack of daylight was stunting his growth. He’d grown tall fast reaching for those heights - for a place in the sun – achieving in the academic skills it takes to compete with those tall trees. But his trunk was still narrow.

Instead of growing slowly and steadily – developing the breadth and width of experience that would give him the weight he needed to pull off the art that was in him – he was top heavy. Full of knowledge and no wisdom - he was only just wise enough to know it. The fruit that was waiting to spring from within needed a good heavy trunk to deliver the juice up out of those deep roots. He was gonna step out into the sun. If it’s possible for trees to step. He was gonna feed on pure sunshine and brave the westerly winter storms unprotected and alone.

Lost my shape
trying to act casual
Can’t stop
I might end up in a hospital

Changing my shape
I feel like an accident
They’re back
to explain an experience

I’m still waiting
I’m still waiting

The feeling returns
whenever we close our eyes
lifting my head
looking around inside

The island of doubt
it’s like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight
got the message from the oxygen

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them

I’m still waiting
I’m still waiting…

“Crosseyed and Painless” by Talking Heads
from the album “Stop Making Sense”

He was free. Or so he thought.

He was free. Free to do and be as he pleased. He’d dropped the heavy pack of expectations of family and friends on the shore at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Passing on a place in an Ontario law school, he’d cut the ties to a future designed to please and impress.

But Amos was finding all this freedom to be a troublesome friend. Free will is God’s greatest gift to us human kind. It’s also God’s greatest burden. As free and unentangled as Amos had worked to become, he still was haunted by devils and saints who kept after him with their bantering questions. Somewhere in his psyche was rooted the idea that his life was a gift. And from that root in his tree squabbling crows sat in the branches – trading questions and answers …
“how will you spend your days?”
“it’s a free gift – enjoy it to the fullest!”
“will you waste them?”
“it’s all yours – you can do whatever you want”
“who do you think you are?”
“you won’t know it ‘til you taste it – to experience is why we’re here”
“are you a leech or are you a lion?”
“don’t worry, be happy”
“unto whom much is given, much is also expected”

One great find in Amos’ life so far was that he’d discovered one place –maybe the only place – that he could truly feel like “me”. Deep in the midst of nature he could hear himself think. Wind, water, rocks, trees, sky - ocean islands, mountaintops, woods, rivers, lakeshores, meadows – took him away from the mirrors those saints and devils confused him with.

He saw mirrors in the eyes of everyone he met. Caring too much about what others thought of him weighed him down, tired him out, sapped the creative fruit juice right out of him.

So, scrambling up from behind his beached logside bed with the pre-dawn light only just crowning the mountains in the east, he threw his bed into the back of the Fleshmobile and headed for that light. He’d asked around a bit and was told about a mountain trail just up the Whistler highway a bit. Reportedly it offered a mountaintop lake and enough of a hike to keep him walking all day.

The parking lot was at the foot of a spectacular waterfall – a roadside picnic spot. The sun was shining. There was a cool breeze blowing. No humidity in the air. Amos couldn’t have ordered up a better day from a menu. Out of the car’s back seat, he pulled out his pack with a bit of food and water, sleeping bag and tarp, and found the trail entrance. A sign-board described what the hike was like but he walked right past it. That’s why he was here – to find out what the hike was like. He could read about it in the city.

The process of walking up a mountain for Amos was like taking a walk down into his soul. Climbing up from a boulder strewn meadow into a steep-banked forest, he was already thinking through the worries of today and getting into the memories of yesterday. People would pop up like visitors in a dream. People he hadn’t thought about in years. People he thought about all the time. In the conversations he’d have, hardly noticing the trail, new ideas would come up and old questions would get tossed around.

His attention would get momentarily pulled back by the stream he’s gotta cross or the view that greets him from a break in the trees at a turn in the path. Amos pauses and lets the beauty sink in a bit – the difference between waking-sight and inner-sight slowly melting away.

A good view always made Amos lonely. He knew it was natural to want to share something beautiful - but he also didn’t really mind being alone. Amos was a dreamer. Since childhood he’d loved to get lost in stories – especially stories of adventure. The hero must suffer many pitfalls and setbacks that test his resolve and push him to the edge of surrender. The quest makes it all worthwhile for he values it more than his life. A damsel, or a dame, is always involved, but the goal for the true hero is even greater than bagging a babe. The goal is peace and prosperity for all; the holy grail – a return to the Garden, Camelot, etcetera, etcetera.

To see himself as the hero of a story was to be awake for Amos. If he didn’t feel that he was a part of an emerging story, he’d get lost and confused. If a song couldn’t be written about his day – it was a day when he’d lost the trail. The greatest thing for Amos about driving a cab – he’d spent last winter driving in Toronto - was picking up the storylines of people’s lives. Some would spill them out to you in a blog of passion to tell you who they are. Others would make you guess –dropping hints with every word and laugh and sigh and expression captured in the rearview mirror.

Walking up that mountain, Amos was looking for a plot worthy of his own efforts. He was like an out-of-work actor killing time. And it was killing him to not know where or how he would play his part. He needed a part with drama and challenge and a good dose of the impossible all through it. The quest - that seemed to defeat so many valiant souls - was to live well.

To fail, was to fall into the fearful pit of becoming “normal”. Settling for a life of wife and job and kids and the accumulation of stuff that told you were a success seemed a ruse. It was the seduction of a witch with a head full of snakes that seemed so strangely desirous. But the hero knew that ruse would turn you to stone within a few short years. Amos was terrified of looking back from a future waking and discovering that he’d been seduced and his time stolen; quest sidetracked and forgotten. Only a mirror could defeat the witch – and he was afraid of mirrors.

Fear, as always, was the enemy that had him confused. Somehow, Amos instinctively knew, that walking up a mountain –just him and his fears – that he’d sweat out the answers he was looking for.

The sun had peaked and was already heading for Hawaii – giving up on him so soon. The path was getting steeper and the woods thinner. There were larger patches of sky appearing with each turn of the switchback trail. The turns were getting tighter and more often. Amos was feeling like the day would end with him no closer to thinking his problem through. How would he make his way? What profession? What path? How to begin? Back to Law School? On to Journalism? Just start writing his guts out? Butcher, baker, soldier, spy? It was weighing as heavily on his mind as the dinner in his pack. He was hungry and tired and the courage was draining out like a slow leak in his water bottle.

Each step was heavier and slower. His breathing was quicker and deeper and his heart was making itself known. Of course, these were all signs that the peak was just ahead. So he kept on. With each plodding step it felt like he was repeating the question over and over. “Which way to go? Which way to go? It got chopped into a mantra “Which – foot up - Way – foot down. Which – Way? Which – Way? …Which - … ”

Just before Amos reached the top - it was only a turn or two away, the hairs on his necked bristled . From behind, so close that he could hear the flap of wind beneath wings, an eagle swooped over.

“Whoa!” It stunned him – as if an angel – suddenly, surprisingly – had dropped in with an announcement. He was a rabbit instantly frozen as talons sunk and lifted. The power of something sacred pierced deep.

Stopped in his tracks. Breath lost with surprise. He waited for the other shoe to drop. But it was gone. No message. A mirage.

With a heavy breath in and a sigh out – he kept on. His step was just a bit lighter. There was an afterglow still. The air was thinner. The wind lifted.

Reaching a peak is always a holy moment. Going from the view of one side of a mountain – as spectacular as those views can be – to the view of all the valleys surrounding and the peaks beyond in every direction you turn – is to transform from a human’s to a bird’s-eye-view. Like an epiphany, suddenly you see what God sees – how God sees the world; the big-picture perspective, the long and the short of it. You see how small and limited your day to day view of the world can be – only when you get a glimpse of just how expansive the curve of this planet really is.

And on this peak, not only did Amos get a bird’s eye view – soaking it up like a sponge – but he also got to view a big beautifully awesome bird soaring in the winds that rose up off the cliffs. There it was – that eagle angel. His gaze followed it intently. His aching body left behind, Amos became only eyes and sighs.

It soared with wings outstretched. Without effort - held aloft by mountain winds. And then, with a simple dip of one wing, it turned and circled down in long wide arcs that pulled along his attention like a good story. Until, when it seemed like it was over, the bird found a current that lifted it up, up, up, up again.

Amos couldn’t look away. It was like the bird had snatched his soul in its talons and was stealing it away. It rose up higher than the setting sun. Up over the mountain peaks, he watched it climb - his head craning back and jaw slack with wonder. This time it dipped the other wingtip and, with a little more speed but still without effort, spun in an arc in the opposite direction. He followed its twisting path down, down, down, almost out of sight until – a new draft was discovered - and up lifted the great bird as if by a great hand - to begin the story all over again.

It repeated this game of wing and wind over and over and over. The sun dropped behind the horizon and Amos watched until the wings blurred past stars appearing. His soul was gone. Or, what he’d thought of as his soul. Amos realized now it was only an earthbound imposter. In it’s place there was a vast emptiness – deeper and wider than even his huge ego could contain.

Like a feather dropped at his feet, the angel had delivered its message. God had told Amos as clearly as if he’d read it in the Psalms. “You are as free as my eagle. Whatever direction you choose, I am already there; with you, before and behind you. Wherever you go, I will use whatever you offer.”

Amos had thought he was gaining freedom by ditching his past. Now, his future offered him a freedom that finally lifted the weight from his heart. The burden of choice that had made his own free will a troublesome friend was now a gift. The Maker had assured him that the choices he would make and the directions he would choose really mattered very little in God’s big picture. God would use every dip of the wing, every decision – good and bad - to create opportunities for life and love abundant. Instead of a troubling responsibility, his freedom was a creative opportunity to play. He’d found the path back to the Garden. Amos was on his way.

Before darkness set in, he followed the path down the other side of the peak. The trail led him around and up another rise and just beyond that was a clear grassy spot overlooking a small mountain lake. Bigger than a pond it rested in the midst of a ring of hills. It’s surface was calm. In the night’s dark it mirrored the galaxy’s shining stars. And those stars seemed closer than they ever had before.

Amos started a small campfire, cooked up some grub and boiled water for a brew of mint tea. He stretched out and gazed over the dim dark outline of the lake. With bites and sips, he chewed over the gifts of the day. Sleep began to sneak up on him. The dreamlike quality of that day was drifting towards the dreams that lived at the bottom of that mountain lake.

Whether he dreamed it or not, he wasn’t sure. A glow appeared just beyond the peaks across the lake. As he watched it, it slowly grew in size and intensity. Amos wasn’t sure at first, but the glow seemed to have a green hue to it. To his surprise and amazement, a giant full moon slowly rose from behind the hills to totally bathe Amos and the lake and the hills in its mirrored light. It was as green as grass. If the moon is made of cheese – it had gone moldy that night.

Mold, of course, is new life emerging from the decay of yesterday’s food. For Amos, it was a sign; the advent of an adventure. It peered down from the sky, and also looked up at him from the lake. It was like two great monster eyes were regarding him sideways – amused - wondering - what will this small hero do?

Standing at the crossroads,
trying to read the signs,
to tell me which way I should go to find the answer.
And all the time I know
- plant your love and let it grow

let it grow, let it grow
let it blossom, let it flow
in the sun, the rain, the snow
love is lovely, let it flow

Time is getting shorter
and there’s much for you to do
only ask and you will find what you are needing.
The rest is up to you
- plant your love and let it grow

let it grow, let it grow
let it blossom, let it flow
in the sun, the rain, the snow
love is lovely, so let it grow

Eric Clapton’s “Let it Grow”

Back in the city, the next day, Amos invested the last of his cash reserves in a course to become a Vancouver taxi driver. He bought a can of dark brown metallic house paint and a roller and just like the guy in “Black like Me” gave himself a new colour of flesh. As he slapped the paint on the Fleshmobile in the beach parking lot in the late afternoon sun. A car whizzed by with a kid hanging out the window who let out a WHOOP! It sounded like ridicule. It sounded like a war cry challenge. Amos dipped the roller into the paint and kept at his crazy transformation. There was no turning back now. He was going native.

down from a Rocky Mountain high

2008-12-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

down from a Rocky Mountain high

They took the long way down to Vancouver traveling off the Trans Canada thoroughfare, taking a minor two lane route across country to Whistler and Christine’s family condo first. The rugged healthy fun of the Treeplanting camp followed them and they kept it going through the first weeks of sunny July days. But Chuck and Hannah had jobs lined up in Ontario to take them through the rest of the summer. They’d be gone as soon as they got to Vancouver. Vancouver posed a problem for Amos. It was the end of the road. It meant a decision.
He’d been accepted at the University of Ottawa Law School. The plan was to make a bundle treeplanting and return for four years of Law. He didn’t really want to be a lawyer but he figured he could be and then he could do something worthwhile with a law degree. “Unto whom much is given, much is also expected.” was his Dad’s mantra. Right along with “a Brown boy’s never been in jail.”
Law school was the kind of thing expected of an intelligent young man coming out of the suburbs. On the other hand, he knew that he’d barely completed three years of undergraduate studies. He hadn’t found anything to sink his teeth into in the academic world. He’d gotten by with courses in English Lit and Philosophy where he could do little research and simply apply his own critiques and analysis. With his natural intelligence and overactive imagination he didn’t need to bother reading and quoting secondary sources. His professors seemed satisfied enough to read a student’s own ideas instead of reading quotes from the critics they’d assigned. He could apply himself instead to his main preoccupation of tasting life. The idea of spending four years applying himself to the absorption and regurgitation of law texts was daunting.

It seemed like now was the time to take the leap and start writing. For as long as he could remember he’d thought of himself as a writer. He’d stopped talking about it years ago. Being a lawyer was a much easier future to talk to people about. Everyone knew what to expect. Telling people he wanted to be an author was as much as saying “I’m different from anyone I know or we know. I think I can do something no one we know is good enough to do. I think my thoughts and words are worth more than what any of you might have to say.”
If he was ever going to write, he was going to have to get beyond those haunting ideas. He instinctively knew that he would have to cut loose and recreate himself – he had no idea how to do that – but now was the time to try. Here at the other end of the country, over the mountains at the end of the road – make it happen now or give up on that dream forever and pursue the well-beaten path of a law degree.

Christine felt Amos growing quieter and more distant by the day. The fun they’d found up in the mountains was magical. But when she tried to take her mountain man home with her, the spell started wearing off. As she introduced him to her family and friends, she started looking at him through their eyes. It was as if the layers of camp dirt were slowly washing off with each successive day.

Amos was losing his sense of humour. That decision was pinching at him the way his spine pinched that nerve in his back at every move. Those little doses of pain wore at him. Amos found that he had to work at being “fun to be with” and that was making his jokes wooden and his laughter hollow. They explored the town of Whistler and ran into Christine’s brother at the pub one night.
He was an impressive and likeable guy. Good looking, athletic and wealthy. Cam was training for Coast Guard rescue work. Amos was impressed. It felt like he was in the presence of Royalty; a young Duke, a playboy who was choosing to serve an honourable purpose. He was in a league beyond Amos’ reach.

He wanted to get along and be sociable; be happy with Christine, enjoy the carefree days of summer. But more and more he was feeling a strong physical rejection for all fashion of things. He was becoming super-sensitive to anything that seemed superficial, commercial, phony. In the mountains everything was so completely real. As they made their way down to the city, there was a new target for his phony-meter everywhere he turned.

They explored Vancouver with Christine as tour guide. By far the most impressive sight was where she called home. She took them deep into the West Vancouver rainforest. The road to her parent’s place wound its way along the shoreline from the north end of the Lion’s Gate bridge towards Horseshoe Bay. It passed one impressive home after another. These weren’t the big new money mansions you’d find up the slope on the other side of the freeway. These homes were uniquely crafted into the shore’s nooks and crannies and forest. Old money had carved out a piece of priceless shoreline where architects designed not huge but large impressive West Coast homes. Passers by only caught glimpses of each estate tucked behind rocky outcrops or dense cedar forest.
Their destination was down a lane and behind a tall hedge. The first impression was modest and inviting. It was no mansion. But it was a very, very cool place. The young couple, Christine’s parents, that had built this home to raise their family in had impeccable taste. They had nothing to prove with money they’d always know and always would know. It was fifties Hollywood chic; cocktails, art, and elites. A Cary Grant Vivian Leigh generation had lived out a family life here.

Christine’s friends were a generation with nothing to build. It was all provided for. Their creativity seemed to be all about getting the most pleasure out of what they had. They all had well refined social skills and the clothes to match. Christine had taken him shopping and he dutifully bought a polo shirt and shorts to match. He wouldn’t put out the eighty bucks for the Docksider shoes though and that was the give away. Her friends took one look at his old runners and sniffed out his contempt for the fashions that gave them their “How do you know if you’re in, if you don’t know who’s out?” definition.
Amos had traveled in different cultures. He’d ventured boldly into workplaces where his school smarts set him apart. He’d traveled in third world countries where he crossed language barriers with courage. In those places he’d gotten by with humility and humour. Here though he found his humility undervalued. He wasn’t just a fish trying to swim with sharks. He was a fish out of water.
He was trying, putting on a fair show of it, but you could see that he was trying – trying to hide how he was flopping around. Amos tried to find places in the conversation to add in his stories of labouring in the mines or traveling in the third world. They listened politely privately confirming their assessments that this guy wasn’t one of them. He might have been able to pull off an aloof, too cool for school, style if he’d had any cash to back it up. But he was broke. His rusty old flesh-toned Dodge Dart stuck out like a sore thumb among the sports cars and convertibles in Christine’s friends’ driveways. He was like a foreign exchange student. There, not because he fit in, but because he was so different.
Their talk was all about windsurfing, mountain biking and the last party. It seemed none of them had jobs to speak of. Christine’s treeplanting experience was an exotic anomaly – like this specimen she’s brought home with her. That was when he first heard the old joke “Whoever dies with the most toys – wins.” He tried to swallow his distaste but it only made him sick and sallow.

What was handicapping Amos was that he wasn’t just playing along. His best creative energy was being spent inside his own head. He was trying to figure out what was true and real inside himself. He wasn’t really much interested in trying to fit in with this West Van crowd. But what was worthy of his efforts? What part of him was real and what had been contrived and fashioned as a means of pleasing family, friends, and the ghosts of social so-called “norms”?
He found that he wasn’t willing to dance to those tunes any more. He was searching for a ground that was authentic for him – but he wasn’t sure of just who he was. He kept catching himself simply reacting to the same old “strings being pulled”; being the good boy his parents wanted or being the bad boy his friends were comfortable with. When he was by himself he was an artist - but had no idea how to play that out in the world outside his own head.

With an ever-diminishing ground to stand on, he withdrew. To say he was self-conscious would be an understatement. More like self-absorbed and scared silly. It felt like an adolescent awkwardness on steroids. Because he refused to be the puppet of his former self, he had no arsenal of social skills to draw from. He’d hung up his guns. How does a gunslinger get along without guns? He was defenseless and alone.

Christine’s dad, the Financier, tried to engage him during a short sail on his thirty-two foot boat up the sunshine coast to their summer home. They couldn’t seem to find any ground they could stand on together. Luckily Chuck was there to carry the conversation so it didn’t get totally awkward. Chuck asked him questions about the boat and sailing the coast. It was simple polite conversation that never occurred to Amos.
Her mom asked Amos to help with a salad. As he sliced carrots she got his family background out of him. No pedigree there. He was just a few generations off the farm. Parents were professionals – clergyman and a schoolteacher. Respectable sure but neck deep in middle-class aspirations. And, since she just happened to be a psychoanalyst, she gave her daughter her assessment.
“You’ve got a complicated one on your hands dear. As a middle child he’s got something to prove. He’s trying to transition from boy to man but he’s got no idea where he’s heading. He wants to cut a different path from the way his family’s gone but he’s all tied up in a knot of what he thinks God wants of him with no taste for it. A bad case of Protestant work ethic, mixed in with a powerful dose of suppressed creative anger, bottled up under a heavy lid of self-righteous guilt.”
“Could you help him Mother?”
“He could really use a year of good therapy but my pro bono slot’s already filled. No, I can’t help him but I can help you. Cut him loose dear. Right now, he’s like a stray cat that’s afraid of the indoors.”

They drove Chuck and Hannah to the airport and with those goodbyes went the last threads of their treeplanting adventure. That journey was over. He told Chuck that maybe he’d see him in September. Then again, he explained, I might just ski the Rockies this winter. He’d never admitted to Chuck his dream about writing. But he had talked over his reservations about Law School. He’d worked up a good cover story. “I’ve always dreamed of being a ski bum in the Rockies. If I don’t do it now – I never will.” That story – was true – and was a lot more socially acceptable a story for Chuck to take home to Scarbro. He couldn’t have Chuck explaining to people that “Amos has decided to be an artist.” That was just way too gay, too presumptuous, too out there.

Christine and Amos drove back into the city. They’d left Christine’s car parked at the beach along the city’s shoreline. It was neutral territory. They were on the Stanley Park side of Lion’s gate bridge. At the centre of the bay between West Van on the north Shore and Kitsilano on the south shore. They walked the beach mostly in silence. They’d talked about what’s next over and over and they both knew that neither of them really fit into each other’s next chapters. Still, it was hard to say so. Amos was entering deep waters. It was hard for him to let go of what felt like his last lifeline to shore. Christine knew as well as he did that she couldn’t rescue him and anyways he didn’t want to be pulled in to the shore where she stood.
They sat on one of the beached logs that scattered the shoreline –put there like benches by ocean storms decades ago - and watched the sun go down. Christine left for her West Van home and Amos drove out to the opposite side of the bay. Out to the edge of the Kitsilano suburb where cliffs rise up from Jericho beach to Shaunhessy Heights and the University of BC.

Without a job, he didn’t want to spend the last of his dwindling tree-planting stash on rent, so he’d decided to live on the beach, do some urban camping out of the trunk of the Dodge Dart. He walked out to the most remote part of the beach where he figured he wouldn’t be disturbed. From the giant beached log, where he made his bed with a tarp, some rocks, and rope, he could look across the harbour and roughly pick out, he guessed, the beach where days before he and Christine had walked the family’s dog. Looking east from where he sat, the city of Vancouver glittered, reflecting the setting sun’s last rays and replacing them with its own bright lights. Under the stars, with the surf rolling, rolling, rolling he closed his eyes on who he’d been. Tomorrow he’d start writing the first chapter.

If you're going thru hell...

2008-11-30T10:13:00.001-08:00

His August of house-sitting for a girlfriend’s rich, West Vancouver, parents had dwindled with that relationship. Christine was starting to feel sorry for him and that didn’t help the old self esteem much. He found it harder and harder to be “fun to be with”. Although, Amos mused, he never did perform well under pressure.

The last of his Worker’s Compensation claims paid for one last Physio treatment. He’d twisted his back pretty good throwing boxes of tree seedlings around on the tree-planting crew that spring. Painkillers had gotten him through the rest of the ten week planting season. In the mountains, living in tents, a crazy instant community had formed among the treeplanters. They shared the same food, weather, and work. The different social scenes they came from didn’t seem to matter up there.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Turns out the crew played just as hard as it worked. On the way to their third block, they came down out of the mountains like bees and swarmed the only pub in a little valley town. Avola had a gas station and a post office and not much else. Except – there was a great little picturesque log pub. Not fancy but far from a dive. It had a warm and inviting character, a good rockin sound track, and was almost empty on a Tuesday evening.
The crew knew each other pretty well by this time and were really letting loose and crazy. Ten days of pushing themselves to their physical limits required a response of pushing themselves to their alcoholic limits. The twenty of them managed to clean out the bar’s fridges and kegs, and were working on the booze when the owner showed up and cut them all off. It was in the fun and hilarity of that night that Christine and Amos had fallen together as a couple.
The thin mountain air; the stunning views from their hillside workplaces; the tough conditions and hard work, made Amos feel very alive, and very happy. He was not a great planter. The ground was a long way down and he lacked an athlete’s trained inner push. His natural inclination was to find a way around the pain and meet up with those who had a talent for suffering on the other side.
No, Amos had more of a talent for fun. He could make people laugh – not as a joke-teller or clown, but with timely little bits of wit thrown into a day that made things roll along; poking the fire to make it burn a little brighter. He wouldn’t often take the lead, but he would go along with anything, or anyone, for a ride and a laugh.

He was especially attracted to anyone who would laugh at his sense of fun and Christine’s laugh was strong and light. It gushed out of her clear and tumbling like a mountain stream. She found Amos fun to be with and he was more fun when she was with him.

It was on the first day of the third block that Amos wrenched his back. He was helping Bill throw boxes of seedlings into the back of the pick-up when he felt that familiar sharp twinge about a handspan above his tailbone. Amos had injured himself this way before. Two summers ago he’d done a number on his back swinging bags of concrete for a pool company. He limped through the rest of the day. Every bend to plant a tree was accentuated with a searing stab of pain in his left lower back.

The next day he went to town and picked up pain-killers and muscle-relaxants at the clinic. When, at the end of that plant, the pills had failed to free him from the pain, he and Bill agreed on a plan to get him through the rest of the short tree-planting season.

The crew’s productivity was good but the government inspector was finding a high percentage of rejects – seedlings with exposed roots, roots not planted straight down deep enough but with a bend, trees planted too close together. Bill would keep Amos on the crew as a tree-checker doing quality control for fifty bucks a day. Amos realized that he wasn’t going to make the bundle of cash for his first year of law school in Ottawa like he’d planned, but, what else was he going to do? He was having the time of his life with this mountain family – take away the sweat and toil and it would be like getting paid to camp and hike in the mountains.

Amos soon found that he enjoyed telling others what to do and how to do it. He did his best to not be an asshole - use his humour and diplomatic easy ways to encourage them along. He’d approach the planters with a big smile if it was a beautiful morning - or a sympathetic grunt and complaint if it was raining. His approach was to make a common enemy of the Ministry of Natural Resources Checker. He’d point out their mistakes through her eyes.
Verna was a local girl; a mountain woman; earth mother. Even though he demonized her a bit to the crew, he actually felt honoured to be following around the mountainside quizzing her about life in the Rockies. She was so healthy and so mature. Verna wasn’t a decade older than Amos but she seemed to belong in the natural beauty that still felt like living in a postcard to him. She was a mountain lioness to his city alleycat.

To the crew, Amos was so obviously afraid of coming across like a picky, power-tripping, jerk that they ended up wanting to help him out. They slowed, sacrificing speed (money) to plant more carefully. Poorly planted trees would look bad on him –not to mention the fines their company would get hit with from the Ministry - and he sought out their help in a needy, little brother, kind of way. It was surprising and a little disarming. For such a big, strong, smart and happy guy, Amos’ watery eyes were always searching you out for approval.

One night it happened that the crew’s women found themselves alone in the mess tent and conversation turned to Amos. Christine wasn’t there so they started in about the couple – how good they seemed together but - Amos’ bad boy eastside rough patches were a strange mix for a rich girl West Van debutante like Christine. Darlene laughed “Oh, that Amos can adapt and swim in most waters. He just might be able to pull it off.”

Barb nodded, she wondered out loud if the others had noticed how much of a chameleon Amos was?
“What do you mean?” they asked digging for the goods, leaning in, curiosity peaked.
“Well, I first noticed it when he started talking to Claude with a French accent.” Barb smiled as eyes widened and heads slowly started nodding. “Then I started watching him a little closer.” Barb was a doing her Doctoral work in Languages and Semiotics. “He can change his diction, his vocabulary, even adjust his dialect to fit yours.”
“Wow, what a phony!” scoffed Olga.
“It’s actually a highly developed social talent.” explained Barb “he uses it to put you at ease and make you feel comfortable. He makes you feel at home - like you’re talking to a family member. I don’t think he even realizes that he’s doing it. It’s kind of endearing.”
There was a moment of thoughtful silence in the circle.

“Of course,” Barb continued, “he could also use it to con you and suck you in.” The hairs on the women’s necks raised in unison as spines stiffened and they pulled back from the huddle.
“Will he use his powers for good or for evil?” Barb teased them and with a “hmmphh” or two the subject shifted and they carried on dissecting the crew’s interplay, intercourses, and social evolutions. It was a dirty job – but – as Bill liked to say - someone had to do it.

The season was coming to an end with the arrival of July’s blistering heat. There were no more misty mornings where the crew woke up and ate their breakfast in the midst of a soggy mountain hugging cloud. The curtain of mist was pulled back and the sun was with them from the time they first threw back their tent flaps to the time the crawled back in dirty and weary and a little richer. This was their last block. And it turned out to be the worst. Instead of the jungle-gym tangle of left behind scrub trees to climb over and through, this block had been burned clear.

A controlled Ministry burn had left a blanket of black ash an inch thick over the whole clear cut. By midday, the sun would take the surface temperature up over 100 degrees. Even in early morning, the ground was throwing off a low heat.

This meant that the ash would fry the tree seedlings before they’d get a chance to start growing. So, the planters would have to scrape away a 12 inch circle clear of the ash. They’d get an extra 2 cents per tree for their trouble but it slowed their progress considerably. The heat of the sun would suck the strength and sweat out of them as if with a straw. It seemed an especially cruel way to end a physically grueling season.

Amos was truly happy that he wasn’t planting. Even though he was gonna end the season with only a third of what the others had made, he’d loved the time spent with this mountain ragtag family. His back still stung with every step but the pain seemed worth the pleasure. As sorry as he was that their mountaintop high was coming to an end, he was also really looking forward to traveling down to the coast with Christine and Chuck and Hannah. Christine had invited them to stay at her parent’s condo at Whistler. She said they could probably also visit the summer cottage on the Sunshine Coast if it wasn’t being used by her parent’s friends already.

Bill had him carrying extra water from the camp up to the crews. On his third run of the morning, Bill pointed him up over a ridge towards the east side of the block where he’d find Barb’s team planting. He put the jugs into empty tree bags, slung them over his shoulders wincing with the extra weight, and started his ascent.
At least there were no fallen trees to climb over with this burned block. The ash crunched under his boots like gravel and sent up little puffs of black dust with every step. The sun was heavy on his back and neck like a hot hand pressing down. The tree bags bounced and tugged with every step. He put his chin down and leaned into his trudging Sisyphus task.

He broached the ridge and discovered a further obstacle. A thicket of black burnt trees lay in a little gulch between him and slope ahead. They’d been scorched of their foliage but not incinerated. The fire must have swept up across the gulch, leaping it for better fuel on the other side. He could make out the crew up, almost at the top of the clear cut, another half mile up. The thicket ran all across the mountain’s ridge maybe thirty, forty yards deep. He could try to walk around it – although it stretched right into the forest with no end in sight. Or, he could push his way through. Extend his suffering in long walk around, or intensify it with a quick push through.
He pushed forward. There was no obvious path through. The short, thick, poles stood dense together like burnt stakes in the ground. Their branches were brittle and broke off easily as Amos forced his way. There was just enough room to get your body past each pair of stakes, then you’d have to sidestep and push ahead through the next space. No straight rows like the tree planters left behind – this was Nature’s chaotic maze.
Sadistic Scientists couldn’t have come up with a more cruel psychological game to put rats through. Amos pushed his way forward into the test. The charred branch stubs scratched at his exposed arms and face. With every step they’d catch at his sweat drenched T-shirt and pants causing him to have to stop and unhook himself from their clutches. The tree bags of water would also get caught on a branch behind him and he’d have to spin around and tug them free. About halfway through the thicket, Amos began to stop stopping.

A fury had got hold of him. Like a bear swarmed with bees, he began thrashing at his attackers, throwing his weight forward against the branches, no longer caring about the tears at his clothes and flesh. The heat had toasted the patience right out of him. He was in a senseless place, he’d passed beyond reason and care and an animal fury had taken his mind and was driving his body against care of self or soul. Control was somewhere ahead of him and instinct took from him the option of stopping. To stop would be to resign himself to hell’s eternity there. “If you’re going through hell – keep going” was the voice in him – human or animal or holy – he couldn’t tell. Nor could he stop to wonder what he’d done to deserve this. His purpose had never been so focused.

“If there is a hell” he muttered through clenched growling teeth “I must be in it now.” By uttering this complaint, he now felt the attention of the spirit world upon him. He’d named it and by the power of word, had called forth the presence – at least in the presence of his own mind - the angels and demons that were taking bets on him. Did he have the guts to keep it together? Or, would he lose it? Would his soul let slip his mind’s grip? Let his sense evaporate - sucked like so many drops of sweat up into the sun’s thirsty atmosphere – dropped into dust and ash at his feet?

The voices asking these questions, stopped him in his tracks. Amos took a deep breath. There was something sweet in that breath - different from the hot panting breaths he’d been sucking. Attention paid now - Amos thought he could hear the rustle of a falling stream. He took six careful steps and stopped again. The sound was like a drink. He could feel the cool sound touch his mind and find his cerebral cortex. It trickled down his spine and found his balls slowly filling gut with calm and hope.
The hope of relief transformed him and he shook off the burdens of skin and muscle. This renewed strength hurried him on. It wasn’t the mad dash that had driven him before. He was still catching more scratches than he would have with a slower, steady pace, but the growing sound of water tumbling over rocks and into his ears drew him with calm instead of the panic driven into him by the heat.

The last few yards of the thicket, when he could see clear ground ahead, he started kicking over the poles in his way – snappin them off with the force of his whole weight in each kick. “Get the fuck out of my way” his boots were telling those trees. Clearing the thicket – finally – fuck! - he peeled the tree bags and his slimy torn shirt and boots and socks and pants off his trembling limbs. He stepped into the stream; into water that had started the day as snow. The stream grabbed his feet and the sensation was pure toe to head orgasm. He turned facing down the mountain, looking back at his torture-test and dropped his naked butt down onto a rock only twelve inches under water. It pushed the hot breath right out of him. He let it out in a crazed laugh-yelp-hoot of victory. He lay back, up into the stream, across sharp wet rocks as if it were a cool green lawn. The ice-water tumbled over his shoulders and swept away the last of the heat and hurt. He tilted his head back into the tumble and the freezing water filled his ears and eye sockets and open mouth. He lifted his head and spat it out – a newborn spitting embiotic fluid from its lungs.
And that was how Barb and Mike and Renee found him. Naked as a baby, giggling with a shameless wide grin on his silly face. They’d heard his holler from the midst of the thicket and had quickly trundled down to see what’d happened.

“What are you laughing at?” it was Barb’s voice full of delight at this sight of Amos finally vulnerable and free. Amos pulled himself up to his elbows. “You all look like fried shit.” They had big grins on their faces – apparently they found his naked near-corpse amusing. He climbed to his feet and after splashing them all - up onto the bank beside Barb. He reached over to the tree bags by his discarded boots and pulled out the bottles of water.
“I brought you guys some water” he explained – waiting for his hero’s welcome. Mike stepped forward grabbing the offered bottle. He twisted off the lid, took a sip, and turned it upside down at arm’s length. Amos’ jaw dropped with the falling water. Mike stepped over to the stream, and filled it up. Then, he lifted it high to his mouth and poured it down his throat letting it splash down his neck and chest and lifting the last of it up over his head for an ice-cold shower. Barb was killing herself laughing. Mike looked over chuckling at Amos’s sorry expression “Thanks for the drink man. We found this stream on our way up this morning.”

There was one final crew party but it was subdued. Members of the crew had already started to drift off to their next destinations. Some hoped to get on with fire-fighting crews deeper in the interior. Others were heading back east to Ontario. Amos knew that if he was going to pull together enough cash for a school year, he should be doing the same - heading home and looking for more work fast. But he wasn’t ready to head back to Ontario yet.
He hadn’t come this far without making it all the way west – as far as he could go. There was more adventure in the trip yet – he knew it. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to find on the coast. He knew that he was running from his future as much as he was running for it. But he didn’t let that voice talk much. It could be shut up with beers and plans for the next day’s road trip.

Treeplanters

2008-10-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

The treeplanters formed a family for a season. At its head, Bill Williamson, was the benevolent pirate captain. He kept his crew fed and safe but always hungry for the treasure of gold to be made planting trees. Bill was a tall and lanky farmer’s son of unquestionable integrity; strong enough to wrestle any bull-headed idea to the ground. Mythical tales were circulated about Bill lifting a man off his feet with one hand and shaking him til he was scared-silly. The man had kicked Darlene’s kitten. Darlene and Bill had been sweethearts since highschool. Together they’d trained as church educators but Lawrence had led her out into the mountains and she’d never got him back into church again. Every summer he’d rule his crew like a young Moses – a pirate Moses - leading Israel to the promised land.

The promise of big bucks for backbreaking toil drew a crew of mostly university students to Bill and Darlene’s mess tent in the Rockies. Half the crew had done a season or more already with them. Success had brought them back. The most seasoned of the planters was Joseph. He and Marie towed a trailer with kids and a dog and cats and a bird and kept mostly to themselves like the gypsy aunt and uncle of the crew.

There were a handful of women in the crew which tended to keep things a little more civilized. Barb was a graduate student that’d been with Bill and Darlene three seasons already. She was intelligent and kind; a big sister who laughed easily and enjoyed the antics of her wild, younger brothers.
Colleen was a theology student who was preparing for her first Ministry post by going way out of her comfort zone - and way beyond her physical abilities - to let the mountain wilds test her, break her, or season her for any challenge.
Olga, was a big, strong, cowgirl blonde from Calgary. She’d also joined the crew to test her strength and got an extra daily stipend as the crew’s nurse. Christine showed up a week late in her own little green Pacer. She was an athlete; short and sinewy and the youngest member of the crew. On days off, she’d bounce up the mountain roads for morning runs just to burn off extra energy.

Claude was last season’s top planter. He had the Voyageur spirit of a Quebecois – quiet (he was working on his English) but quick to laugh and join in a story or song. Frank was studying to be a Chiropractor. He’d practice on anyone who’d admit within his earshot to having a sore back. Steve was the muscle-man. He’d pump weights before breakfast. At mealtimes we’d catch him flexing and caressing his arms and chest.

At the first camp bush party, once the block had been planted, Steve challenged the crew-boss to an arm-wrestle. Bill was pretty liquored up and feeling no pain. He turned his cap backwards, stuck his smoke in clenched lips and dropped his elbow onto a forty-gallon diesel drum. He let Steve –pumped up and deadly serious - give it his best shot. Bill calmly finished his hand-rolled smoke. With his free hand he put it out on the drum’s side and, to the crew’s delight, gently pushed Steve’s pride down to the drum’s top.

After that, Steve still pumped iron every morning, but the caressing subsided. Craig was another farm boy from southern Ontario. He was cut from the same genetic cloth as Bill. Their families knew each other. He and Amos and Chuck had arrived at the camp together, driving Amos’ “fleshtoned” Dodge Dart.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“I’ve never been so scared, or run so fast, in my life.
The speed might have had something to do with the fact that I was running down a mountainside but the fear – the fear was all about the bear. I should have been afraid of turning an ankle or wiping out against one of the logs that crisscrossed the clearcut forest, but there was only one thing on my mind. Putting distance between me and that big fucking bear.”

It was only our first day out. Chuck and Amos and I had been assigned to plant a section of clearcut on a mountainside overlooking the Caribou Valley. We were so green that we’d plant a tree or three and then stop to admire the view. I couldn’t get over how beautiful it all was.
I grew up on a farm, so I was used to the outdoors, but I had never felt so surrounded by its wonders all at once. Mountain peaks lined up in a row up all down both sides of the valley. Their stony heads pushed up above the tree line that draped their shoulders like green robes on royalty. Their toes cooled in the wide, white, river that ran the length of the valley. We were way up on one side of the valley. It’d taken us a couple of hours to drive Amos’ old Dodge Dart up the rough logging roads to find our camp.

He’d picked me up at my family’s farm just south of Orillia a week before. We’d both just finished our exams; me at Guelph and him at Trent. Our new boss, Bill Williamson, had told me to catch a ride with this guy Amos. Treeplanting promised good money for hard work. Hard work I was used to. I’d been picking stones from my Dad’s fields since I was old enough to lift a football sized rock. The idea of making $200 a day sounded too good to pass up. I had another year’s tuition to pay and the more I could keep that student loan down the better. As a farm boy, I knew all about carrying debt.

We’d taken turns driving his Dart across the country. This Amos guy was a laugh. He was a big boy. I’m six foot and close to two hundred pounds but he had several inches and more than a few pounds on me. He had flab, but there was muscle beneath it. And he had a big grin that he wore on his face almost all the time – at least when he was with you. On those long stretches of road, he’d go off to another place and his face would drop and he’d get all serious and sometimes mutter to himself. I could tell he was a more complicated kind of guy than he let on. Wasn’t into sports at all so we couldn’t talk about that. He studied literature and philosophy and I didn’t have much to say about that.
That was the kind of stuff that chicks and artsy guys took but he didn’t seem too artsy to me. Sure he listened to that art rock, King Crimson, Eno, Talking Heads, type stuff I’d never heard til I got to university. This guy Amos was a bit of a mixed bag. He had the body of a Jock and the head of a Nerd. On the outside he was a Hoser. Jeans and construction boots, plaid shirts, long hair. And then, with a closer look, a serious, sensitive side would surface.
– like this one time I was knocking gays and he got all angry-defensive-like and his eyes watered up. Just when I thought he might cry - he turned it on a dime and pretended to make a pass at me – staring at my balls and stroking my thigh and saying in a fag voice “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve got a nice set there.” I turned red and told him to fuck off and we both laughed – almost hit a deer - except I swerved onto the shoulder and missed it.

Mostly though, Amos was just into having a laugh. He had a small stash of grass with him and we’d do a toke or two every day just to help with the monotony of driving along. It always made the car stereo sound better too – even the art rock was tolerable then.
We’d been traveling across the top of the States on two lane highways through Michigan and North Dakota. Just when we were ready to head north into Saskatchewan, we hit a snow storm – a blizzard really. Kind of surprising for the last week of April. The roads got so bad, and the radio reports so full of warnings, that we decided to pull off for the night and shell out for a motel. Everyone was off the road, even the truckers and the motel was full up – we got the last room.
Next morning, the radio said the roads were closed between Saskatoon and Regina. We were still an hour or two south of Saskatoon. Amos said we had to pick up Chuck at the airport in Edmonton that night. It was like the roads were closed for ordinary folks, but not for Amos.
“Let’s hit the road Craig.”
“But the weather guy is telling everyone to stay off the roads.”
“Good, then there’ll be no one for us to hit.”
The transport trucks, and us, were the only ones on the road that morning. We got our tires into the grooves the transports made and were making progress. The snow was so deep, you could hear the Dart’s belly, the oilpan and undercarriage, dragging along the snow ridges between the tracks. Amos just kept slipping and sliding along. He put on a country station, rolled the windows down and sang along at the top of his voice. It was contagious and I had to join in.
We made it up to Saskatoon and cruised right through the downtown and out the other side. By the time we got to the outskirts, the roads had been cleared and the sun was shining. Amos put the hammer down and we were off – we’d make Edmonton on time no problem now. Then - the car engine died. The motor just quit.
We pulled off to the side, got out and lifted the hood.
What a laugh!
We were looking at a snow bank!
The snow was jammed up all around the engine so tight that you could even see the imprint of the underside of the hood in the snow. A pick-up pulled over and a couple of old farmers in baseball caps trudged over and they got quite a chuckle out of our predicament.
“Dig out your distributor cap and dry off your wires and give ‘er a try then.” they recommended, “See what happens.”
So, armed with windshield scrapers we chipped the snow out all around the motor and found the distributor cap and took it off and wiped it with a rag. We pulled and wiped down all the spark plug wires, and Amos jumped in the drivers seat, and started her right up.
“Let’s go man, we can still make Edmonton in time if we boogey.”

We picked up Chuck at the airport just in time. His exams hadn’t finished in time for him to make the drive out, so he’d had to shell out the extra cash for a plane ticket. Chuck and Amos had gone to high school together in Scarborough. The presence of Chuck in the car was like adding a little high test to Amos’ engine. All signs of the sensitive, thoughtful Amos disappeared. With Chuck he was a full out, rock n roll, better to burn out than to fade away, maniac.
We met up with Bill late the next night at the Clearwater Hotel. After a few beers and some tall tales, he told us to meet him in the parking lot next morning at 6am. We didn’t want to mess-up our first day, so we crashed early. Next morning, we met a straggly crew of about twenty treeplanters. Everyone was in good spirits as we got introduced around. By the look of them they were mostly students like ourselves. Mostly guys but there were women in the group too.
The Dart pulled in behind a convoy of two trucks and a van. Like I said, it took us a couple of hours winding up those logging roads to get to our lot. Logging trucks would thunder down the road past us filled with the pines we were replacing. We shook our heads at the speed they traveled and wondered what would happen if we ever met one coming around one of those hairpin corners. The Dart bounced and shook and roared fishtailing under Amos’ heavy foot. He showed that little fleshtoned granny car no mercy as we drove it up, up, up into the steep forests.
The camp was already set up. There was a big canvas mess tent with two long tables for us to sit and chow down at. An old school bus carried the cook stove, propane fridge, food and water supplies. Bill’s wife Darlene, and her sister Hannah, ran the kitchen. We were told to find places to pitch our tents, get ourselves set up, and then help with unloading the boxes of tree-plugs ready for the morning.
At dinner the stories started. A good planter could do at least a thousand trees a day. This was considered pretty rough territory to plant in so the price per tree was higher than the flatlands of Northern Alberta or Ontario. Looking up the mountainside from camp we could see that a clear cut block was anything but clear. As you negotiated the pitch of the hill you had outcrops of rock and boulders to climb over or around. The loggers had taken the best trees but certainly not all of them. Hundreds of trees were cut down but left behind - not considered worth taking. In places, they were like piles of pick-up-sticks strewn across the hectares. A planter had to climb over or under them to get at a patch of dirt to plant the plug in.
We were issued short, narrow shovels and instructed in the craft. First, scrape away the topsoil. Then, stab your the shovel blade into the earth up to its hilt. With a shove forward of your arm and a simultaneous kick of your boot, you’d push the earth forward to make room for a tree-plug. As you bend for a toe touch, your other hand is reaching into the bag slung around your shoulders holding several dozen young trees. Each one was maybe four inches of tree and four inches of root in a plug of dirt. It was important to push the roots straight down into the earth – no folded roots. Each tree was to be planted no closer than 8 feet from another. If the Ministry Checker discovered folded roots or trees too close – we’d be docked pay. Too many bad plants and the whole crew could be fined or even pulled from the contract.
“Plant them fast and plant them right.” was Bill’s final words of instruction. The experienced planters nodded their agreements and exchanged knowing smirks, tilting heads and rolling eyes at us green recruits.
The first day was brutal. It was still dark when Lawrence barked at our tent doors “Time to get up.” I couldn’t believe how friggin cold it was.
I crawled out of my tent onto a crust of frost and new snow. At the mess tent every new planter that joined us was shivering and bitching about the cold. The experienced planters finished their oatmeal and eggs quickly and grabbed their bags and shovels and headed out to pick up their trees and assignments for the day.
I was teamed up with Chuck and Amos for the day. Bill showed us our line to follow up the mountain – a piece of orange tape was tied to a limb or a young tree every fifty feet or so. “Follow that line up over that ridge and start planting at the top of the ridge. Plant til you get to the edge of the clear cut at the tree line. We filled our two bags with seedlings two hundred per bag – a bag across each shoulder bouncing off each hip as we headed off like paper boys with Saturday morning deliveries to make. We scrambled up over the criss-cross of fallen trees, around the rock outcrops and through the patches of underbrush left untouched by the loggers. Three southern Ontario greenhorns, laughing and joking and bitching our way up to our first day on the job.

Like I said, we were off to a slow start. We’d plant a bunch of trees and someone would make a joke…
“Nine hundred and sixty-five still to go”
“When’s our first coffee break?”
“Bill and the snack wagon should be by any minute.”
“Wow, will you look at that view eh?”
“Yeah, awesome!”
We’d stop to wipe our brows and look around again at that British Columbia picture postcard perfection in every direction we could see. By mid-morning, we were still maybe a hundred yards from the tree line when we heard it.
“Crash, crash, crash” it sounded like a huge boulder had come loose and was crashing down the mountain. We all three looked up at the same time. It was no boulder but it was just as terrifying - and it was heading straight for us. We three looked at each other, and as if on cue, shouted in unison…
“A BEAR!”
“What do we do?” asked Chuck in a panic.
“RUN!” shouted me and Amos together.
We turned on our heels and booted it down the mountain with the sounds of a charging bear in our ears. I took one more quick glance behind me as my legs started pumping. It was the biggest, brownest, fastest, bear I’d ever seen. I’d seen some fair sized black bears around the farm, and in Algonquin Park, but this bugger was way bigger and it was crashing down the mountain straight at us like vengeance on delivery.
Running wasn’t exactly a straightforward effort. Not only did we have two heavy bags of trees on either hip that bounced with every jog, but there were those boulders and fallen trees to get across. It was a boot camp obstacle course with live ammunition being fired at your back to keep you moving. Over my shoulder I saw Amos jump up on top of a tree and run down along it. Chuck was a step or two ahead of me and we reached the edge of the ridge together and went flying over it like a couple of rabbits, our tree bags bobbing like bunny tails behind us.
Chuck and I kept running down that hill. All I could think of was getting off that mountain as quick as I could. We only noticed that it was just the two of us when we started slowing down at the bottom of that ridge. We heard a shout that pulled us both up short. It sounded kind of like….
“FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUCK AAAAAWWWWWFFFF”
We looked at each other and Chuck’s eyes grew wide. We both turned and started shouting…
“AAAAA-MOSSSSS, HEY AAAA-M-O-S-S-S, AMOS, ARE YOU OKAY? – AMOS – AMOS-S-S-S “ we stopped shouting and listened.

Nothing.
Nothing but silence.
An awful, dread-filled, silence as it dawned on us.
Amos was somewhere up over that ridge with a big fucking grizzly bear. What was even worse was that we were going have to do something about it. The thought of going back up there with that bear sent a chill through me. It started down in my bladder and went up into my skull. Chuck looked at me again.
“A-MOSSSS – AAAMOSSS - HEYYYY - ARE YOU OKAY? But it was no use. The only response was sound of the blood pounding in my head and the heavy breaths still pumping in and out of our lungs. That beautiful wild mountain had now turned cold and deadly on us. We stood there still and listening – it seemed like time had stopped. It was like my feet had turned to stone and my legs were planted in that rock. I knew we had to go back and find him. I just didn’t know where I’d find the courage to do it.

And then we saw him.
Standing on the ridge, grinning, and swinging his shovel over his head. He was hooting a victory howl like a friggin Maple Leafs fan.
I was never so glad to see anyone. Chuck looked at me and we both started laughing – relieved and happy and surprised as hell.
He started down the mountain towards us and we started up.
“You guys won’t believe what the fuck happened.” he blurted out to us as soon as we were within earshot.
“I don’t believe you’re alive.” I admitted.
“How did you get out of that one Amos” laughed Chuck.
He told us that he had wiped out running along the top of that log I’d seen him on. He said he hit the ground and looked back and saw that there was no way he was gonna out run the bear. It was getting really close.
He said that’s when he remembered that bears have bad vision.
“They hunt with their noses right. I knew that if I zigzagged I just might have a chance of that bear losing my scent.”
So, instead of heading for the ridge, he ran at a right angle and when he looked back, ready to make another turn, the bear had stopped fifty feet behind him.
That’s when we heard him shout “Fuck Off” at the bear. What we thought were his last words was in fact the effects of adrenaline and fear and anger coming out of one totally freaked out Amos.
He said the bear just looked at him when he did that.
“Maybe she thought I was crazy” he laughed, “Probably, she just figured that she‘d already scared the crap out of us - showed us who was boss. So why bother further with a crazy human screaming and shaking a shovel at her?”

What was truly crazy, was that we went back and started planting trees again. I don’t know if we were so determined to make our $200 bucks that day, or if we were more afraid of disappointing Bill. Anyhow, we only lasted maybe ten minutes. It was hard to plant trees with one eye always on the woods above us. We finally came to our senses and headed back down the mountain with only a few hundred trees planted but one hell of a story to tell.

They dropped us in a cage

2008-09-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

They put us in the cage and dropped us deep into the earth. Twelve of us at a time standing belly to bum, shoulder to shoulder, pressed in much tighter than men would stand together if it weren’t for the money. The cage operator ushered the long line of miners into the cage. Each of us crossed the threshold, leaving behind personal space, family, daylight, safety. As different as we all were on the surface, in the cage we were all the same.

Same hardhats with the same little lamp on our foreheads with the same electrical cord snaking down to our belts where ten pounds of battery was the light of our life. As the steel door slid across with a slamming clang, we were all imprisoned in the same battle. Each shift we took new ground. Tearing iron ore out of the earth’s belly, sending it to the surface where the Company turned to it gold. In the alchemy of that process our lives were the by-product. Paycheques in exchange for a living; for dreams worth risking limb and youth for. The Cage man rang his long warning bell and pushed the lever that released the brake holding the elevator cable. We left behind those lives and dreams.

When the cage drops we’re all at the end of the same steel cable. That steel cable is our umbilical cord as we drop into Mother Earth’s womb. The Company’s no Mother. This is no elevator taking us gently to our floors of work – we drop free fall – stomachs still full of breakfast sucked up into chests, daylight snatched away, we all become suddenly lighter on our feet – somehow appropriate – we’re as close together as queers on a dance floor.

Of course we were scared shitless at first. Five university kids looking to mine the tunnels for danger and come up twelve weeks later with enough cash to cover tuition and rent for another year. We were there to cover summer holidays for the regular crews. After a long winter in Snow Lake, the few weeks of warm weather and sunshine kept the men sane and their wives content.

Snow Lake was the end of the road. There was no more road going any further north into Manitoba. You had to travel a long ways to get there. It wasn’t a place you’d just wander to – like ending up in Vancouver or Halifax. No, if you were there – you were there with a reason. And your reason wasn’t the fat paycheck waiting for you at week’s end. Your reason was what you’d left at home. There was a farm’s debts to cover. Hospital bills to pay. There was a house full of kids waiting in Portugal or Newfoundland for their chance in the land of malls. Most of the men were there on their way to somewhere else. Only a few hundred had made this place their home. Their trailers had porches with swings and flower beds – evidence of women and children. Women were rare and single women over the age of 15 were non-existent.

The old timers were slugging it out in hopes of a pension that would keep their wives going long after their husbands’ lungs and livers gave out. The middle aged guys would try not to think about their own dreams anymore. They listen instead to their teenagers’ dreams of escape. They see us university kids here to earn a ticket to take them somewhere else. They know it’s a pit stop for us. Some pat us on the back. Some try to trip us up. They have their fun telling us to watch out for the Stope Rats down below.

The cage drops each crew to our Drift for the day. With a sudden jerk like pull on the leash, the elevator stops at the level – 200, 400, 600, all the way to 2400 feet. From there the horizontal Drifts start zig zaggin down on a decline all the way down to 3600 feet. All the mined ore gets dropped to that bottom before being hauled up the processing Mill on the surface.

Have you ever seen an ant farm? You know – dirt between two panes of glass with ant tunnels through it? You see the vertical tunnels – they’re called Shafts. The horizontal tunnels are Drifts. The excavated areas where the ants live and the miners’ work are Stopes. The opening of every Shaft was called a Grizzly. Sometimes the Shaft would drop 20 or 60 feet from a Stope down to a Drift. On every Drift opened the main Grizzly where ore was dropped to the bottom. Lose your footing here and your end was – well – grizzly.

Big Al McAllister was our kindergarten teacher. He was a lifer. He was the boatman who took us across into Hades and showed us the dark secrets of underground mining. In his fifties, he was solid heft. You knew that he could easily lift any one of us off the ground. He’d been injured – not bad enough to stop mining – but bad enough to give him the job of schooling the green recruits. He had the bark of a drill sergeant, but he loved nothing more than to bite off and chew over a big story from his years of mining. He was a storybook character. We all loved him immediately and wanted to impress him with our miner’s hearts. After some safety instruction, he’d let loose with a ballad of dangers gone by, of close calls and tales of warning. Told us that all of our wages were paid just from the traces of gold smelted from these black rocks. And he told us about the closet full of fool’s gold they’d discovered in one young dreamer’s room.

The Drill Crews were the real Miners. They were the front line in the battle. The progress of their drills was what we were all there for. Unlike Drift mining where the drilling was done from wheeled, motorized tanks, Stope mining was all hand, legs and back work. Stope Miners were the Infantry. They packed in their heavy machine-gun like drills on their backs. Set the drills up on tripods. Hauled and hooked up the hydraulic hoses that powered them and opened fire on the rock face.

Every shift they’d drill their holes, fill them with dynamite, and run their electric detonation wires like spiders connecting threads to a web. Once every man was on the surface a single electric switch would be thrown detonating the charges in the dozens of holes all through the mine all at once.

Eight hours later the next shift would trudge through the settled dust and begin dragging the debris to the grizzly’s mouth. With winch, pulley and cable, small bulldozer like blades would be engineered, again with hydraulics and air power, to drag the rock across the Stope to drop down the hole. Grizzly fed, they’d set up for the day’s drilling.

Al told us tales of men whose lungs had filled with gas before they knew what’d happened. Their would-be rescuers had dropped one, two, three bodies down before an older hand figured it out. They’d struck open a fissure of gas - it was snatching the breath out of them.

Al told us of friends lost to loose rocks let go from the Back. The Back was the roof of every Drift or Stope. Loose was the rock that might let go at any moment crushing the life out of you like a mosquitoe slapped by God’s hand. He drilled into us how to watch for “loose” in a Stope that’d been blasted the shift before. How to test it with an iron bar and an ear tuned for the drum beat that told you there was a crack of air behind that rock.

Our classroom was a brightly lit oasis down a well lit shaft at 1600 level. It’d been a shop in the days when 1600 feet was the bottom of the mine. Now the mechanics worked another 1000 feet below us. When Al tired of teaching us the rules and dramatizing their rationale with his stories, he ‘d give us small assignments out in the dark hallways. First, we’d all go out together to clear rubble and lay rail down a shaft that would probably never be used. Then, when we’d proven to him that we wouldn’t flip out in the dark, or buckle under the workload, he’d start assigning us as helpers to the men who were making money for the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company.

My brother Pete was apprenticed to a train driver. They’d empty loads of rock from the Stope grizzly into their train of bucket-cars. Positioning a bucket car under this grizzly, they’d hit a lever and WHOOSH the rocks and boulders would tumble down. If you didn’t close the hatch in time, the bucket would overflow and you’d have to clean the spilled rock by hand. Every so often you’d throw the switch and nothing would happen. The rocks would be jammed up in the hole in their hurry to drop. With a steel bar in hand, you’d stick your head up into the hole and poke away until gravity once again took over. Hopefully you’d be back out of the way before the avalanche hit.

Then, they’d haul those buckets of rock down the main drift to the big mother grizzly. There might be three or four Stopes on a level but the train crew could only keep up with a couple at a time. The mouth of the Mother Grizzlies was about six feet across – further than you’d want to have to jump. The Shaft dropped hundreds of feet, maybe a thousand depending on where you were in the mine. Over beers in the town’s only bar, Pete would tell us tales of his workmate jumping around the edges of that hole like a warrior daring a dragon to swallow him hole. He was in too big a hurry to hook his belt line to the safety anchor. His nonchalance at dancing with death would raise the hair on the back of Pete’s neck. He’d shake his head telling us about it – getting it off his chest and drowning the fear with another beer.

From the bottom of the Mother Grizzly it’d be hauled again in massive dump trucks built low and long. I never worked this part of the mine – and it wasn’t part of Big Al’s orientation - so had to just imagine the huge elevator that pulled the rock up to the surface. I can’t think of that part of the mine without also thinking about the man who fell to his death there that summer. In mind’s eye I see his body lying on top of the rubble waiting to be lifted. With a slip of the foot he dropped. Never again did he see the surface where his hopes waited and withered.

On the surface the Mill did its crushing. The valuable minerals would be extracted from the pulverized rock leaving only a sandy residue of waste.
That sand was recycled. Mixed with water it was sent back down into the Mine through snake holes drilled in the rock. This slurry would be piped to the Stopes in 8 inch PVC plastic pipe. As the miners blasted away at the monster’s “back” the roof would tumble down and be hauled away.

The muddy contents of the pipe – appropriately named “Fill” would fill the Stopes back up, raising the cavern floor to where the miners’ drills could once again bore up into the Back. The water in the Fill would drain away into the bowels of the mine leaving a beach of black sand for the miners to stand on. The work of filling up the Stopes was giving to the “Fill crew”. That’s where Al assigned me.

I’ve often wondered why I got the beach detail and Pete got the death-defying dirty son-of-a-bitch job. From what I’ve seen so far, the job of a big brother is to break the hard ground. The younger brother watches and learns and gets to know the easier paths to take. Did Al know that? Pete was the alpha dog and he got the toughest jobs. All the summers we worked together he’d be given the shitty end of the stick and I’d sit back a bit and watch and learn. It wasn’t fair. I’d feel bad about it knowing Pete was risking his life while I sat on the beach watching fill flow from the pipe. It was the way it was.

There were three of us on the Fill crew. One guy was given a radio walkie-talkie that connected us with the Mill on the surface. At the start of the shift we’d radio for the Fill to start. If, after an appropriate time delay, the Fill was flowing then it was just a matter of positing the end of the 8 inch pipe so that the Stope filled up uniformly.

But, if the Fill didn’t flow, or if it stopped at any time during the shift, the guy with the radio had to call in to halt the flow. If that sand and water wasn’t flowing where it was supposed to be - it meant a pipe had burst. Somewhere in the mine a drift was filling up with sand. A drift full of sand meant trains got stopped - meaning Miners might get backed up with no where to put their loads of ore. The gravy train would come to a stop. And that couldn’t happen.

The other two guys on the Fill crew were sentries. They patrolled the miles of drifts on every level. In every drift there were the places where the Fill’s snake holes emerged. Steel pipe would provide safe passage through the drift down through the next 200 feet to the level below. On the level where the Fill was needed plastic pipe would direct the flow horizontally along the drift to a Stope. The Fill crew was constantly checking those pipes for weak spots or potential new leaks.

Preventing a burst pipe meant saving time and effort. If the guy in the Stope suddenly realized that the flow wasn’t happening, he had to get on the radio and stop it immediately. Every second counted. Sixty seconds of Fill flowing into and active Drift could take hours to clean up.

Once the Mill was alerted, the hunt began. Where was the leak? If it was on an active level where trains ran we’d hear about it pronto. If it was one of the dozen or so inactive levels, it could take us some time to hunt it down, repair it, dig out the mess, and get things flowing again.

When the Fill was flowing, the job was a breeze. Once in a while, the guy in the stope watch would have to re-position the pipe to “fill” up a different part of the cavity. But for most of the eight hour shift, it was like watching a huge bathtub fill up with water. It was a day at the beach – just no sun. I took big fat novels with me in my lunch bucket.

The sentry duty was just as enjoyable. We’d split up and cover different parts of the mine. Instead of bothering the Cage Operator to take us between levels, we’d find our way down through abandoned Stopes on wooden ladders. Every level was connected by these ladders once you found your way. You might step down a ladder for a hundred feet through a hole only big enough for a man - only to come down into a Stope so huge your headlamp got lost in the dark before hitting rock face.

I’ve climbed a hundred feet up into a Forest Ranger’s Tower. That height is terrifying. It’s not the same when you’re in the dark. If you can’t see how far you might fall, your imagination has less to go on. It’s like youth. When you haven’t fallen from heights before, you’re not afraid to climb. What you can’t see – can’t hurt you.

Roaming the Drifts, climbing the Stopes, we’d run into fellow Miners. More often than not they were happy for some diversion and they’d stop what they were doing to shoot the breeze. We had kind of a Social Convenor, Morale Booster role as we’d hear their beefs for the day or get a taste of what they were looking forward to that weekend. We’d hear the speculation about what Stope was opening up next and where the Drill Crews would next be assigned. A miserable Fill crew member could spread a lot of misery throughout a mine in a day.

The head of our Fill Crew was Ray. He’d been in the mine for a few years and knew the ropes. His way of shifting from a dead earnest telling of his world’s philosophy to a clowning good humour reminded me of Ross Hudman - my early teen friend and guide. He was a tall and skinny sewer rat of a guy well suited for work in this strange world. He was Ralph Norton of the Honeymooners. He was full of wisdom sayings like “you don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you.” He was curious about my life and would ask about University and what I hoped to get from it.

Ray didn’t talk a lot about himself. He seemed content to work away at this chosen trade – shared no big dreams with me - resigned maybe to a place in the world he’d found that suited him. He kept to himself. Didn’t hang with any crowd in the dorms or in the bar. Was friendly with everyone but no one’s friend. Solitary man. I guessed at a broken-heart story that sent him down away from the pain and into the hard-rock mines. He wanted nothing from anyone and took only what life offered today.

He was a different guy in the bar. Much cooler. Much more business like. Under the cover of dark, underground, there was an intimacy – a brotherhood - a willingness to talk more freely, to share ideas, away from watchful eyes. In the bar, you had to watch your back – always aware of the potential for public shame – a test coming your way in the form of an insult or fistfight - getting caught in the drama of someone else’s pain. In the mine you left that surface world behind. You could work out your thoughts on the day before. You could try out new thoughts or old philosophies on someone worth swapping ideas with.

One morning we walked into a Stope, returning to the place where we’d been sitting all day the day before -.to discover a rock the size of a house where we’d spent yesterday’s shift lounging in the sand. These were the pink elephants you tried not to think of as you went about your day’s work. It did kind of put life into a dark, stark, perspective. You never know when something gonna let loose and – it’s all over.

Everyone says that. People always say “you never know” but you also never really think about it. You go on with your day in the bright sunshine distracted by a thousand things to see and do. But in the dark, sitting there in a black Stope for hours, you can focus and such things as life and death.

Once it happened that the five of us students met up underground. We stopped and had a smoke and shot the breeze. We got to talking about what it felt like to be in a pocket of air with miles of rock surrounding you. Pete came up with a game. “Let’s all turn off our lanterns. We’ll see who’s the first to turn their light back on.”

I’ve never experienced dark like that. The absolute absence of light. In every dark room I’ve woken in – sometimes it’s taken a few seconds to get my bearings – but your eyes adjust and you can make out where you are. In that black hole the primeval fear of the grave that holds no promise of further life rose within us and our hands were quick to snap those lanterns back on as soon as the first of us had weakened.

While Pete slaved away feeding the grizzly, I sat back and feasted on the finest literature. That summer I devoured Dostoyevski’s “Brothers Karamazov” smorgasbord. I chewed over Melville’s long idle wanderings of muse in “Moby Dick”. I reread Conrad’s spicy “Heart of Darkness”. I tasted “War and Peace” but didn’t have an appetite for Tolstoy. On that black beach, I had hours to read slowly. On those black Stope walls I could project the stories and let them take my heart and imagination into the expanses of a starless sky.

In the art of those words. In the power of those ideas pictured and turned into tales. In the world of meaning they painted, I found a resonance, a note, a chord was struck deep within me. I knew that putting together words was why I‘d been given breath. I knew that what those guys did with those novels, I could do. What God had given the world through those men’s hearts and imaginations, God was picking me up like a pen to do again.

Those hours on the Fill crew provided me with a footing, lifted me up to the place where I would mine out of the earth my work and purpose. A song was written in me that resonated with everything I’d seen through my child’s eye. It was the word spoken to me in the womb. It was the tuning fork that every thing that life through at me struck against. In that black cave, this little light of mine, blazed bright.

But on the surface, in the sun, among men and lives lived hard, I was a boy. How could I dare to sing a song to such men? Their songs were wild and tough and truer than I what I could ever capture. What they’d felt, I hadn’t even touched. What they’d seen, I hadn’t even noticed. In the light of day, on the surface of things, my song dissipated into silly daydreams. The note that was struck remained deep underground. Stored away in a treasure chest. Visited only in dreams. Forgotten with the morning’s occupations.

On the surface we lived and ate and drank hard at it. We enjoyed the fantastic northern fishing and did several canoe treks into the wild lakes surrounding. But beer was our main surface occupation. In August there was a crisis. The truck drivers were on strike and the Hotel, the only source for a case of beer, declared no more off sales. That meant you could only get a beer in the Hotel bar. We declared it a conspiracy and a corruption of the monopoly that the Hotel held over our lives. We never considered quitting drinking.

By August the heavy drinking schedule and the heavy dreaming schedule down below began to play on my mind. The two worlds were becoming blurred. One day I found myself looking in the dorm closet for my shoes. To see into the dark corner, I tried pointing my head over and down – as if it had a lamp on it. That’s when I knew I was starting to lose it.

Around the same time I stepped into the dorm room to see Anne standing there waiting for me. In the blink of an eye she vanished. The young beauty who’d seduced me into her bed the year before had become a vision. My literary imaginings were surfacing and getting a little too real. I pushed them back down below where they belonged.

The drying up of the beer supply caused tensions in the town to run high. We heard tales of domestic squabbles rising. Of course the trailer town and the dorm were two separate worlds joined only underground – and in the bar. One of the biggest and wildest of the Miner’s decided that he had a hate on for one of us university kids. Newf, called after his homeland, was a known troublemaker and brawler. Derek had been assigned to him for a day and had somehow pissed the big Newf off. At the bar, Newf let it be known that he was gonna “get” Derek.

I don’t know if he was just toying with us or if he had really chosen Derek as the next outlet for his steaming brewpot. But we did get a few chuckles out of Derek’s gymnastic manouevers – avoiding running into the Newf at all costs. He quit going to the bar. Which meant that he quit drinking and peered around every corner before stepping out. Of course it would have been much less painful to just confront the bully and let him give him a pummeling. But I had sympathy for Derek’s fears. I joined in with the teasing of him, but I also carried with me the same fears of facing the bullies – letting my written words get pummeled in public.

The town dried up in more than one way. There was also very little rain that summer. Forest fires were raging through the northern Jack pine. Rumours of them coming our way were spreading through town just as fast. We didn’t care. We had nothing in town to care for. We were told that if the fire hit town we’d be recruited to fight it – with fire pay on top of our miner’s wages. Sounded good to us.

We were drinking at the Hotel one night and it was unusually empty. Just a few of the hard core alkies and us. At closing time we walked out onto the main drag – to find smoke in the streets. Car horns were blaring through the usually silent night air. We climbed the hill up to our dorm and could see that the lights were on in all of the trailers below. People were packing up and leaving town. We had no where to go and nothing to pack. One of us came up with the brilliant idea of climbing the town’s water tower to get a better look.

Up we went the five of us. From the tower, we watched as the ants below scurried to get their kids and wives and photo albums and TVs and stereos to safety. There was a never before seen traffic jam as a line formed to take the one road out of Snow Lake. From where we sat it was all pretty entertaining. As the night wore on, the smoke got thicker and we could see the night sky light up with the fire’s glow just over the next ridge. That extra pay was practically in our pockets.

We figured we better get back down to the dorm where they could find us for fire duty. We sat and waited and wondered why they weren’t showing up. In the wee hours of the next day, when daylight mixed with the smoke in the streets, we finally crashed and found our pillows.

The seven a.m. breakfast bell rang and we shuffled down to the mess hall. “What was happening?” we asked and the kitchen crew told us. About 4 a.m. the wind had shifted. The wind that had been blowing the fire into town was now blowing the flames back. Back into the forest it’d already run through - and so it was burning itself out. The crisis had passed.

Work in the mine was halted that day while the Miners brought their families and possessions back to the trailers untouched by disaster. We weren’t so greedy that we were sad that their homes hadn’t gone up in flames. But we did enjoy the holiday from a shift at the mine.

Such was our perspective on the world. Young and care free. No strings and no worries. Working just to pay our way through school our lives had an up in the air, ungrounded, way about them. Even though we dropped in the same cage every day shoulder to shoulder with those Miners, our lives on the surface were up in a tower. Maybe not an ivory tower, but a tower of youth and priviledge and bravado that kept a distance between us and the “real” world.

With each passing year I would climb another few rungs down that ladder. Down to earth where wife and family and photo albums waited to be filled. But that treasure chest hidden deep below the earth that I found that summer remained buried. Not forgotten. The memory of purpose found fed by words written by others on pages in the past. My own pages remained empty. And in me, there remained a vast empty Stope where the hard rock mining of God’s work waited.

working and sinning

2008-08-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

I took my first job when I was twelve. Not many of my peers had jobs at that age but my dad was raised by a farm boy and considered it his duty to make sure we were saddled with a strong work ethic early on. My older brother had been a carrier for the Toronto Star newspaper for several years. He’d amassed many prized possessions that he was now willing to sell me – for cash. My parents weren’t about to buy me these important consumer items – stereos, records, bicycles, basketballs…so I put the bit in my mouth and slung that bag over my shoulder and began the lifelong trudge for cash.

Not like Tyler Trap’s parents. He lived two doors down, was an only child, and got whatever he asked for. His dad had worked for Canadian Tire since high school. He’d always taken the stock options on his paycheque instead of Christmas bonuses. It meant that by forty, he was financially secure enough to retire to a career as a Postal Carrier. Working for Canada Post in those days was like retirement with four hours of daily exercise and a good paycheque. I dreaded going over to Tyler’s the day after Christmas. It took the shine off of my consumer high to see the loot his parents had laid out.

Tyler’s mom was a full time church lady. She had a big smile, big hair, big boobs and a big old car with batmobile fins from the fifties. She sang in the gospel choir at the Baptist church. I went along with Tyler once – only to find that I was a statistic in a recruitment campaign. The worship was fun and everyone was excited – especially about the prizes for the most new recruits. Not unlike bringing in new customers for the Toronto Star.

No, I was in the same boat as Ross Hudman. He lived across the street from Tyler. His parents were German immigrants and made my parents seem like spendthrifts. His older brother was a few years older than my big brother. Roman would soon quit school to start working the bar and nightclub scene. Ross had a younger sister like me too. So we’d sympathize over the latest cruel inequity our family’s had come up with to make us miserable as the three of us, Tyler, Ross and I, walked the mile to Fairmount Public school.

Ross got up in the dawn hours and delivered the Globe and Mail to our suburban Scarborough neighbours. I delivered the Star after school. Ours was a middle middle class street. A few streets to the east were the blue collar middle class homes and a few streets to the west were upper middle class homes. Roy’s route took him further west where mine took me further east. I had it better because the distance between homes decreased as you went east - and the tips increased. Ross’s reward for climbing to the big homes on the hill was a pat on the back and regular pay. I might get stiffed the odd week but at least I could cut across the lawns – no high fences and big hedges between homes on my route. Less to protect but more to share seemed to be the way of things in the cross section of life that was my world.

Ross was new to the neighbourhood. His parent’s thick German accents were the first non-anglo voices I’d heard. Tyler and I had been fast friends since my family moved in the summer before grade one. We were attached at the hip, liked all the same things, watched all the same TV shows and re-enacted them daily. Whether we were fighting off intergalactic Romulans in his basement wreckroom, or wrestling Tarzan’s white hunters in his backyard pool, the bad guys all had German accents – just like Ross parents.

The Hudman family moved in at the end of our Grade Five year. Ross wasn’t into pretend games. He introduced us to the art of playing practical jokes on neighbours – mostly just Nicky Nicky nine door – which was about how many times you could ring someone’s front door and run away before they came out in a rage to chase us. But Ross was definitely the third wheel in our trio.

But other things were changing in my world that year too. My body was becoming large. And not just tall. I was still the tallest kid in the class – even though I’d been “accelerated”. Me and six other kids had done grades 4 and 5 together. So, not only was my body accelerating me into a fat, goofy-looking, uncoordinated kid – but my brain had pushed me into a nerd status among the tough kids.

The tough kids shared common ground with the good boys in their love of sports. Sports had changed that year too. They were no longer games we played. They had acquired a competitive edge that meant if you sucked at sports you’d be cut from the team – cuts that went deeper than who won and lost. If you were a brain and good in sports, the bad guys left you alone. Without status on the field – I found I was a target – a big one.

The last day of grade five, out at the bicycle racks, the guys gathered to see who was in who’s class next year. It came down to who was on the class team that would help beat the other class’s team. Bruce and Steve, the guys who always did the playground team picking, were taking stock. When Bruce got to me he said “Amos you’re in our class? Well you suck at sports so you’re no help.”

He wasn’t being particularly cruel. Just stating the facts. I’d been assigned a seat on the bench marked “Loser”.

Getting fat that year was really bad timing. Not only had something changed about sports but over that summer the fairer sex had somehow transformed from pests to sex objects. We were all obsessed with breasts. And I don’t mean just the boys and girls of our class – girls with the purchase of bras and boys with the budding fruit they held. No, our whole world was titified. The sexual revolution was in full swing. Playboy mansion scenarios were becoming mythologized in the media as if it were Mount Olympus. Teenage beach movies filled our pubescent heads with the idea that “Life’s a Beach”. Our mothers even brought porn into our living rooms. Cosmo magazines were the next best thing to Playboys to a hyper-inquistive twelve year old – and beat the underwear section of the Eaton’s catalogue by a mile.

Tyler had always been really happy to see me return from the family cottage in September. But that summer, he’d spent the long Scarbro days hanging out with Ross Hudman. They’d developed a repertoire of inside jokes and had some fun teaching me their new games. It didn’t take long to discover that the object of the game was to ditch me.

My active imagination was now put to work with a new task – pretending that I didn’t care about being ditched. Pretending to laugh along as a wobbly third wheel. Pretending while learning to protect my dignity with a brave face. Tears wouldn’t do. Temper tantrums might get my parents sympathy when my brother would pull such tricks on me. But I was swimming with sharks now – I found that my friends had teeth and would tear me apart at the slightest taste of blood.

Tyler’s betrayal of our “best friends” relationship was a kick in the nuts. But what are you gonna do? As a kid your social choices are limited to your neighbourhood. You get along with whoever is within bicycling distance or go it alone. I chose to go it alone.

I pulled back into my own world. Like I’ve said – it was a well-developed world of books and scenarios of one adventure after another. It was a world full of excitement and risk. It was a world that tested our limits in life and death missions. It was a world I’d shared with Tyler. But now I shut that door and kept it to myself.

The door had been closing slowly – pushed shut as my peer group put away first their stuffed toys and then their GI Joes and finally their Hot Wheel cars. Imagination was longer “fun”. Fun was to be found within the rules of the playing field. Only girls and gays would spend time playing without rules. Rules defined how to keep score – who were the winners and losers – and that was how you “played”.

Probably my greatest liability in that game of life - that game we all must play – the sport of survival – is that I have always taken things very seriously. To me, at the heart of it all, GOD is watching and always measuring my capacity for passion. If I can’t be passionate about what I’m doing. If it doesn’t matter – really – if it isn’t about life and love and a sacred purpose that makes risks small and the blood pump – then it isn’t really worth my time.

If I played soccer or football or streethockey, GOD was watching. If I wasn’t playing a heroic part. If I was, in fact, a liability for the team. Then I was wasting my time. Might as well waste it by myself than waste it with friends who would sideline me.

If I talked with a girl, it was about whether we would spend the rest of our lives together. No - I wouldn’t actually talk with a girl about that – I wasn’t mentally ill. It was just that I was always watching my self through GOD’s eyes. And GOD was passionate and full of purpose and deadly serious – even if HE did enjoy silly kids’ Sunday school songs – it was really all about those slow trudging sacred straight-faced hymns.

My Mission Impossible – should I choose to accept it – was to go undercover. I would play along as best I could with whatever scenario life presented – public school, piano lessons, Sunday school, hanging out with friends, spending time with extended family. Only I would know that I was in fact pursuing a purpose worth risking my life over. Only I, me and GOD, would be able to measure the progress, the slow careful patient steps that would result, in the end, after sacrifice and suffering, in GOD’s justice and mercy.

Ross Hudman was Mephistopheles. The demon sent to tempt and test and train me. Little did he know. Little did I know. I was a double agent. While Ross dragged me down to the devil’s ground - out of the high and mighty clouds that a minister’s son lived in – GOD was preparing me to live in a world of deception and betrayal. I learned that my mission, my secret purpose, could be and would be pursued in any circumstance. The straight and narrow path of a good Baptist boy was not for me. My road would wind and curve and dip and peak and get mired and muddy. While many eyes might see it as wrong, GOD and I would keep the faith.

It was the paper route that eventually drew Ross and I together. Slowly Tyler came to take his turn as the third wheel in our trio. There were several factors. I had accelerated grades ahead of Tyler so that now Ross and I were going into grade 6 while Tyler was still in the 5th grade. It didn’t make a big difference but it mattered.

Tyler was good at sports. He joined in after school sports teams. I had my paper route to do instead. Ross was even worse at sports than me. I was fat and uncoordinated. He was skinny and equally uncoordinated. That was another factor that made a difference.

Sin was maybe the big divide that Tyler couldn’t cross. Ross had taken to smoking cigarettes. At first it was a big secret. One of those big secrets that he and Tyler shared that kept me on the outside. But for Ross, the best part of sinning was sharing it. He told me and swore me to secrecy. The parents couldn’t’ know.

Ross would smoke on his early morning paper route. At first he’d steal a smoke from his mother’s pack. It helped him to wake up in those early morning hours, he explained. Soon he was buying his own pack at the corner store. I remember the thrill of the adventure, Tyler, Ross and I going to the corner store to buy his first pack of smokes. We shared in the risk he was taking - to see if he the people who’d been selling us candy and pop and comic books for years would now enter into this conspiracy of silence between us and the adult world.

We hurried down to the woods of the ravine and watched Ross light up his first purchased cigarette. He got me to take a puff but Tyler wouldn’t touch it. He’d been warned about GOD’s wrath for sinners. The United Church GOD that I served wasn’t too worried about such trespasses. In the end it was theology that split up our trio.

Tyler couldn’t take GOD with him into sin and I could. Tyler’s world was divided into GOD’s world the THE world. I’d been taught that GOD is love. Love, of course, is to be found everywhere. I didn’t see sin as a deep pit, or high wall, that separated the saved and sinners. Maybe it was because I knew so many ministers and knew that it wasn’t the lack of sin that made them saints.

It was the kind of lesson I couldn’t put my finger for you - just something within the way my dad taught me, the way he talked about other people and treated people. I never saw sin as anything more than the clothes you chose to wear. Sin might define who you hang out with. But GOD could see us all naked in our birthday suits and couldn’t be fooled by behaviour. GOD was love and even smokers could love.

My parents were worried though. They asked me if Ross was smoking. I knew immediately that Tyler had told his mom and his mom had told my mom and now I was being put to the test. I told my parents that just because Ross was smoking didn’t mean that I was gonna start.

They were worried, just like Tyler’s mom, about the bad influence he might have on me. Tyler’s mom put a wedge between her son and Ross. But I asked my parents about whether they didn’t think that I could be a good influence on Ross, they were able to see things upside down. Ultimately, they trusted me. Even though they never knew whether I was on that secret mission from GOD or not – they trusted that I was.

In the years to come I gave them lots of reasons to suspect differently. I took a puff of pretty much whatever Ross offered me after that. While I never did take to smoking, I did get into pot and porn and rock and roll and bars and well, I never did get laid - but that’s another story.

The worst part about the paper route was also the best part. Both Ross and I hated going “collecting”. So, we’d go together to keep each other company and give each other courage. Knocking on doors and shaking people down for the week’s paper money could bring out all kinds of strange reactions in folks. Some were cold and stiff. Some were rude and would treat us like pests. Some were terrific. Some were just strange.

Roy would do imitations of each of them as we approached. He could nail the character of every and any customer and have me splitting my sides laughing by the time we got to the door. If it was my turn to collect he’d make little side comments while the customer dug in purses or pockets that would produce guffaws and strange, annoyed looks from the adults.

After collecting we’d buy pop and chips and head for Ross’ basement. Inside the lid of his parent’s old stereophonic cabinet Roy would put record after record on the turntable. My brother had Beatles and Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkle records. Roy’s brother was a few years older. He was into much heavier fare. I was introduce to the funk of Bad Company; the rage of Black Sabbath (I knew I shouldn’t be listening to such obviously satanic-driven art but it rang true with something in me). Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention broke taboos and Alice Cooper made a circus of it.

And Led Zeppelin. We knew their first album well – every song - and I remember getting excited by Roy’s anticipation as he played me their second offering. Roy’s enthusiasm drew me in. Before there were DJs, Roy was my own personal tour guide of rock and roll music. The hours I spent reading he spent listening. It was like he would pull out the best chapters and verses and delight in the sharing of them. We just sat and listened. It wasn’t background – it was a taste of the life waiting in our foregrounds.

Roy would offer comments and cues – “listen to this part – - - don’t you just love that?” And I did. The heavy rocking thunderous rolls of sound drew out my adolescent, hormone-raging angst. The sexual energy of the Lemon Song made us laugh and squeezed out of us our own sensuality. The driving sorrow of “Heartbreaker” made me love the Blues before I’d ever heard them. Jimmy Page’s peels of guitar made your guts soar – taking your anger and throwing it to the stars. Robert Plant’s vocals; his moans and cries and the way he put everything into every song was heroically inspiring. John Paul Jones was the invisible master adding the bass lines and synthesizer that held it all together. But it was the drumming. The drumming of John Bonham that pulled me in and makes me a lifelong fan. Led Zeppelin provided the beat that I walk to - to this day. This music – its variety and range unique and unduplicated by any others - is the Beethoven of our age.

Ramble On would seduce you into a gentle country rhythm that starts like a Crosby Stills and Nash song but bursts into heavy surges of metal only to take you back to a gentle rambling.
I’ve got to Ramble On
I’ve got to find the Queen of all my dreams
How years ago in days of old when magic filled the air…

Those basement jam sessions brought me, more than anything else – more than girls, more than pubic hair and deepening voice, more than parental or peer pressure – into adolescence. I found in the music the expression of the wide-ranging emotions, thoughts, fears, taboos, and guts that it would take to live life fully. I knew, or felt, in some uncanny way that this music was the safety net that I could always fall into when the tightrope-walking act I practiced every day failed to suspend me.

My closest friends have always been people who could turn me on to new music. Sometimes I find stuff I like on my own. But mostly I rely on the passions of others. When I find someone who has searched out and dug deep into an artist or a genre with passion, I love to hitch my wagon and get taken for a ride. Nothing yet however has replaced my first love – the tortuous courting and friendship of Ross Hudman who broke my hymen and opened up my soul to rock and roll.

Lets go for a spin

2008-07-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

It was a sleepless night in the Otonabee residence. I lay there waiting for the escape of sleep. My first year of university was in mid-flight, mid-winter, mid-term exams. I was already tiring of the routine. Feeling like a rat in a concrete maze walking the hallways down to the cafeteria three times a day. Running on the exercise wheel of classes and performing tricks on paper for the trainers. Where was this taking me? Was it preparing me for another maze to run my adult life through? I wanted open roads. I needed open roads.

Staring at the ceiling, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a tiny red glow just outside my window. I sat up and pushed the large sliding window aside. Along with the winter chill, three large Scarboro boy-men climbed through the ground floor window.
“What are you guys doin here?”
“We’re on a road trip. You comin?”

I’m sure that responsible thoughts must have crossed my mind. Thoughts like “you’ve got studying to do” or “you’ve got an exam in two days”. But I’m also sure that I was dressed and out the window with my old high school buddies before even Dave had time to finish his beer. It was a matter of honour. To turn down a road trip would be a both a slap in the face to my old comrades and an admission that I was becoming soft in the academic cushiness of Trent University.

Chuck was driving his 1972 Lincoln Continental and the four of us piled in. Why he’d bought that old boat was beyond me. The cost of keeping it in gas was astronomical. But Chuck had the cash. Instead of being a poverty stricken student he’d opted to work downtown at the Lever Brothers plant where his Dad was a supervisor. Of course a Lincoln Continental is a perfect road trip vehicle. It sat six with elbow room. Eight could cram in when necessary. Leather seats, lots of leg room, and Chuck had added a wicked stereo system. Add beer and weed and it was a party on wheels.

Dave and Doug had cracked under the pressure of exams at Western University in London and escaped back home to Scarboro to regroup. Chuck had come up with just the thing – a road trip to Dave’s family’s Pigeon River cottage. It was the site of many long drunken philosophical discussions among this band of Pigeon River Pirates. On this night they were all excited about some new adventure they’d come across. On the way out of Peterboro they explained.

On their way to pick me up the Lincoln had ventured out onto the ice of Chemong Lake. At Bridgenorth there’s a boat ramp and cottagers had created a snow road to cross the Lake.
“You have to check this out Amos, you’re not going to believe it!”
Chuck turned off the road and steered down the steep incline. First his front fender bumped onto the lake – kissing it hello - then the rear fender dragged down the last bit of snowy shoreline – like clenched fingers trying to get a last hold on safety.

Before the Lincoln stopped bouncing Chuck stomped the gas pedal to the floor. As the beast lurched ahead we got sucked a little deeper into the upholstery. Dave turned to look at me and Doug in the back and we must have mirrored the big wide grin on his face. Surging into the night across a darkened lake I could feel my blood increasing speed with the car. It raced up to the tempo of the Led Zeppelin on the stereo as Chuck leaned forward and gave the volume a crank. We lowered the windows and let the freezing night air sweep away whatever remained in our overstuffed university heads.
“You loving this Amos?” Chuck asked over his shoulder.
As the only suitable answer - I let out a long whooping war cry.
“Yeah? – well check this out.”
With his left hand he switched off the lights. His right hand at the top of the steering wheel suddenly dropped to the bottom and with only a moment’s hesitation the great steel coffin went into a spin. I was pinned to the door like a wet leaf on the windshield. We spun like a top into the black night.
“WHOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” was the Pirate’s unison cry – our fates joined together tempting death to take us all right now.

As the ride slowly lost velocity and came to a halt in a cloud of snow. Doug, Dave and I said together “Do it again!” urging Chuck on like 3 year olds. Chemong Lake is a big long lake. With the lights back on Chuck headed back down the lake, got the boat up to speed, and cranked her again. And again. And again.

Young men have great imaginations when it comes to thrills and adventures. And Chuck was just getting started. It was like he had diagnosed what ailed us and was doling out a remedy to suit. We’d stopped for a pee break and were checking out the stars. He popped the trunk and said “Get in boys”.

Dave and I took the first shift. The trunk was so huge that even I could stretch out between wheel wells. There was plenty of room for the two of us.
The anticipation in that trunk, building as the mighty V8 roared into the night, building as Dave and I muttered oaths and prayers, building until finally the ton of steel, leather and rubber spun wildly round and round. Being locked into a frozen blackened box, racing through the night waiting to blindly spin out of control could be a great form of psychological torture. Testing the limits of fear (and stupidity) made life worth living – or so it seemed to our adrenaline driven brains.

The problem with defying death is that the adrenaline becomes more addicting than nicotine. Like smoking, smart people never start. Life is short enough already – right?

What makes this story fun to tell - instead of tragic - is the simple fact that we survived. How many young men have done equally fun and stupid things and ended up as casualties? Just take a look at auto insurance statistics for young men and you’ll get a good idea. Telling and retelling these adventures to each other over brews by the fire in years to come, we’d get philosophical and ask “why?” “Why would we survive when others perished?”

I suppose such musings have always been the by-product of the road traveled from testosterone to danger to adrenaline. Whether that road is traveled because of events beyond control like war or weather, or whether bored young men take to that road just looking for opportunities to test the power of testosterone, it’s a road we crave. Our generation was born into a time of peace but it sure didn’t stop us from digging up our own kind of brave and pointless battles.

These battles were diversions from the thing that really terrified us. The straight line of our lives that lay ahead. School, jobs, marriage, family, mortgages. They lay on the road ahead as sure as death. The wild freedom we had just won as young men was slipping quickly through our fingers – like the night turning to day just over the horizon. Spinning through the dark out of control was a perfect antidote for such linear inevitability.

Chuck was driving and I was co-pilot now. The guys in the back were yelling “go nuts! go nuts!” so Chuck kept his foot down as the speedometer past it’s midpoint. “Go nuts! go nuts!” cheered the cargo and the car became a hurtling bullet through the night.
“What’s that up ahead Chuck?” questioned the trusty co-pilot.
“What? I don’t see anything.” answered the pilot letting up on the gas. And then, the dark blur up ahead came into focus.
“IT”S THE SHORE!” we screamed together. We hit it like Evil Kneivel hitting a ramp. Chuck stomped on the brakes but that had as much effect as our screams – we were in the air. As the Lincoln took flight I saw us crashing through a cottage picture window. It could just as easily have been a stand of oak trees we hurtled into. No need to fear the future. The future had just compressed into a super-natural breath-taking instant - now.

The Lincoln landed like a cat on all fours with a thud that bounced us off the roof. It seems we’d landed in a parking lot. Chuck spun the wheel, booted the gas down and steered us back over the embankment and onto the lake before I could even compose my prayer of thanksgiving.

The muffled yells from the trunk were a little less enthusiastic now and a lot more angry. Looking at each other and just giving our heads a shake Chuck stopped the car and we got out and lifted the trunk. Doug and Dave sprang out at us like Lazarus from the grave. The air was as blue as their bruises.
“What the fuck happened?”
“Well, you guys said – go nuts.” protested Chuck.
“We were saying – donuts – do more donuts” they swore, “we wanted you to spin the car in some more DONUTS!”.
“Oh” we said.

What were the chances of us hitting a parking lot along that cottage shoreline? Why were we so lucky?

“You go when you’re times up - when your number’s called.” is a popular proposition. “We’re spared because God has something important for us still to do.” is another good one. “Guardian angels guided us.” is one I like. But “Who knows?” is one of my favourites. It’s often followed by “but I sure am glad to be here!”.

The Cottagers probably called the cops on us. But as our cups of luck, or fate, or grace, were full that day, we headed home before having to answer any tough questions. It was time to get back to the books. I suppose I didn’t have all the facts that might have been crammed into my head – ready for that exam. But I do know that I couldn’t have been in a better frame of mind.

I was having a hard time giving a Shit

2008-06-30T10:00:00.001-07:00

I was having a hard time trying to give a shit myself. I mean, if no one else really cared - then why should I? Ms. LaFreniere was on my case and she was the one teacher in the place I actually respected. Not that she was the only good teacher at R.H.King Collegiate Institute, it was just that she was someone you could be honest with and know that she wouldn’t lay the whole teacher should/must/can’t trip on you.

For example, her English classroom looked out onto the Smoking Lounge, an outdoor space where students were allowed to smoke. It was an alcove out of the wind. There was even an open space under a second story Science Room so you could get in out of the rain. This was the seventies. Being cool and smoking went hand in glove. Today it’s funny that the best outdoor space would be designated as the Smoking area. Probably everyone smoked there out of the wind and the rain and the School Administration figured it was simpler just to go with the flow and make it official – like they actually had a say in it. I didn’t smoke tobacco – it turned my stomach – but reserved my lungs for a finer herb.

So there we were in Ms. LaFreniere’s grade 12 English class discussing one of her whacked-out books. Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, and Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” were a few of the pieces she gave us to chew over.

A high point of that year was when I said that “On the Road” could be summed up with one word. When Mrs. LaFrenniere agreed that “it” was it, Tracy Fish flipped out. Tracy was a jock and a bully. I’d been the brunt of his treatments before. He couldn’t let this little victory of mine go unchallenged. He said there was no way a whole book could be summed up with just one word. I just calmly said “either you get “it” Tracy or you don’t.” It was my own version of browbeating – revenge - and it felt great.

So anyway, this one day I spotted Tracy Fish out in the Smoking Lounge lighting up a joint. I went over to the window and yelled at him “Hey Fish – quit skipping class and get in here.” thinking I was being pretty funny. He yells back at me “Hey Brown - why don’t you get out here and help me smoke this?” So, recognizing a chance to befriend a bully, I jumped up on the window sill, climbed out the window, hopped to the ground and strolled over to join him. Before I could get a good toke, three other guys had followed me out the window. What can I say? I suppose I have some natural leadership tendencies. Mrs. LaFreniere wasn’t impressed and stood at the window yelling “You guys get in here!” in her best shot at being angry while trying to hide the amusement in her eyes. Fish and I developed a mutual respect from that day on.

She wore long hippie skirts but I couldn’t picture her as a full-fledged psychedelic flower child. She was way too smart to be too far out there. I could see her at Rochdale though. Rochdale College, just around the corner from Yorkdale’s hippy haven was Toronto’s version of Haight-Ashbury. It was a ten storey, University sanctioned, experiment in communal living. The guy we bought our Mexican $20 an ounce weed from had told us stories about Rochdale. Those were the legendary glory days of free love, turning on and dropping out. In 1976, long after the doors of Rochdale were welded shut, we were still getting high on the waves that followed those sixties tsunamis.

As kids, we’d watched it all go by on television news and seen the pictures of naked youth in LIFE magazines in the dentist’s office. By now, made-for-TV movies were presenting a cheesy version of it all for our consumption. I wasn’t allowed to go see the Woodstock or Easy Rider movies and there were no home rental videos back then.

As I think about it - its more like we were in the trough between waves. The late sixties summer-of-love wave was the big one. The early seventies produced the most amazing music as artists took the freedom unleashed by the sixties and ran with it in all kinds of amazing directions. But now, in the mid-seventies, the Beatles had split up. Hendrix and Joplin the guy from the Doors were dead and the big waves had passed by.

The hippies were in their thirties now and dropping back in – getting jobs as high school teachers for example. The times were like a hung-over re-hashing of the big bash the night before. It was like stargazing and someone says “Wow – did you see that? That was the most amazing shooting star I’ve ever seen!” And all you can say is “Really? That’s great man.” and keep looking up at the heavens – waiting for something to happen.

The Sex Pistols and The Ramones hadn’t hit my radar yet. If it wasn’t on CHUM FM, I hadn’t heard it. The mood hadn’t turned Punk-angry yet. Things were still simmering in a depressed and lost discontent. We had no cause to fight for. No anti-Vietnam or Civil Rights high ground to hammer away from. The Sandanistas’ powder keg was yet to be ignited. Beer kegs and no shortage of narcotics kept things dampened down and dazed. All we had to rebel against was our own priviledge and prosperity. Not a very inspiring target. Self-defeat was where we were at. Angry, young and bored were the punk lyrics waiting to be written about us.

The one extra-curricular activity I risked getting involved in was Student Council politics. Teenage culture meant that anyone who put themselves out trying to achieve something – sports, academics, arts, fashion, school council, or dating – automatically became a target. Every move was scrutinized, criticized, mocked. If you were really good in sports you might achieve something close to social status.

I was useless in sports and good in class, so I didn’t have much of a reputation to risk. Student Council ran the school dances and raised money for sports uniforms and was supposed to carry the school spirit. My brother had been School President three years earlier and had had great successes hiring local big name bands like Lighthouse and Fludd and even Rush to sell out crowds. Once there’d even been a small riot afterwards with Scarbro toughs taking on the boys in blue from 51 Division in the parking lot.

Things had definitely cooled off since. We could have school dances again after a year’s ban on them but then the teachers went on a work-to-rule strike that meant all teacher-led sports and clubs got dropped. That year’s School President was a real freak. Dillon Donaldson wore thick glasses, scraggly beard, and hair down to his belt. At a Grateful Dead concert, he’d fit right in. In Scarborough, he was out there. He ran a cynical election campaign on the platform - “If you think this school’s a joke – vote for me.” and won by a landslide. He moved into the Student Council office just off the stage of the auditorium. The smell of dope smoke hung in the heavy stage curtains where the Student Council meetings were held.

I’d managed to get elected as the Grade 11 representative, due to a lack of competition and my brother’s reputation, and got to know Dillon just a bit that fall of 1975. Things were going okay. Dillon was very smart and had a quirky sense of humour. He was getting things done and we ran a fairly successful dance – it wasn’t a flop. Then, just after Christmas, he hung himself in the Student Council office. I remember hearing the news from our Vice President Paul before it was announced and it was unreal. Death hadn’t crossed my suburban footpaths before and suicide seemed like something that happened in other places but not here. I was playing a minor part in the first drama on the school stage that wasn’t amateur. We had no idea how to act this one out. An aura of doom descended on the school like a heavy wet wool blanket. We got used to it but it pretty much lasted for the rest of the year. If a school could become depressed, we were wading through it.

The Vice-President was a good guy. He was smart and sensible and I realized he was probably pretty much running things for Dillon anyway. Paul showed me something about leading in tough times. When others would have just said “fuck it”, he stood up and stoically got the drum beating again. He brought a sense of dignity and responsibility into the Student Council meetings. The edge had come off of the cynicism and self-satire of what we were doing. I did what I could to help him organize the last big dance of the year. When the dance was over he took me into the inner sanctum of the S.A.C. office and convinced me to run the next year for President. It was basically the “it’s a dirty job – but someone’s got to do it.” speech.

I recruited Steve Miller to run as my Vice-President. He’d always been funny and popular and a good athlete and I knew I’d need the votes he could bring in. I thought it was game over when Billy De Marco announced he was running. Billy was a really funny guy. He’d been our football team’s drunken mascot the year before and was a natural clown. He could get us to work up some school pride without making us feel like we were getting all American about it. Having pride without acting proud – the measure of Canadian cool. The school was ready for a good comic laugh.

I would have voted for Billy myself. But I knew enough about the Student Council to know that it’d take more than laughs to make it work. I couldn’t see Billy actually getting things done. With an uncommon sense of responsibility - and totally prepared for failure - I organized my campaign. I knew that I had almost zero popular coinage to work with. I also knew that I had almost nothing to lose. Just the attempt at the office meant being labeled a super-loser for the attempt. Every time I thought about that, terror would rise up like a cliff-edge out-of-control dream. Maybe it was the terror that finally pushed me into it. I decided to go big. If I was going to fall on my face in front of the whole school, I might as well make a show of it.

Steve talked up all the grade nine and ten girls who thought, as he did, that he was hot stuff. I recruited the conscientious girls from the Student Council and we got them to help make signs and poster the school with them. We hung a huge banner in the school cafeteria – something that had never been done. Our slogan was “IF YOU GIVE A SH*T, VOTE AMOS FOR PRESIDENT”. We didn’t ask permission. We just borrowed the ladders from the janitors and put it up after everyone had left for the day.

First class next morning Steve and I got called out of class down to the principal’s office. A.C.Burr was a big square-headed, deep monotoned voiced, subtle-humoured man. He was probably an excellent administrator but as far as we students were concerned he was a huge humourless cop. His presence in the school had a dampening effect on the raging hormones of teenage boys. He was not amused by our banner.

“You have to look at it this way sir” I began, “It’s a challenge to the student body. You know how bad student morale is at this school. That’s why they brought you in isn’t it Mr. Burr? If Billy DeMarco gets elected you know that things are only going to get more out of control. That banner is a test whether - deep down – beneath the jokes and the cynicism – those students actually care. Do you believe that our students really care about this school Mr. Burr? I paused and he replied in his slow, low, monotone… “Wellllll, ummmm, yes I do believe that our students care about this school.”
“Then I need your support Mr. Burr.” I picked it up again. “If you take that banner down, it’ll show that this is your school – which it is – but that we students have no say and there’s no reason to really care. But if you decide to leave that banner where it is – it’ll show the students that you and I have a working arrangement. That we’re in this together and we believe in them. Do you believe in those students Mr. Burr.”
“Welllll, ummmm, yes, of course I believe in our students.”
“I thought you did sir. Thanks very much for your support. I think that together we can do some good things with this school next year.” I stood up and put my hand out to shake on it. I glanced back at Steve. He was sitting there with his mouth open. I jerked my head to get him standing too while Mr. Burr was pondering whether or not to shake my hand. He did. Then he shook Steve’s hand and wished us good luck with the campaign and we were out of there.

The fact that the banner stayed gave us some credibility for sure. And it made them think. Not that anyone would actually admit to giving a shit about the school - but maybe someone should eh?

I was still sure I would lose to a Joker. I figured we could probably get the conscientious vote. But Billy would get the stoners and the Italian vote. We were definitely outnumbered. Steve was ready to bail. He wanted to drop out of the race before we were humiliated. His idea was that we could save some face by making a joke of it – “who gives a shit about being President anyway” right? I had to threaten him to stay with it. I told him if he quit he could forget me helping him with his essays. He was a good talker but a terrible writer. He depended on me to keep his grades where his parents would let him out of the house to date his latest true love.

Talking Steve into it helped me convince myself that we had a chance. Part of me really wanted to be school president. I knew that I could do a good job at it. But I also knew that winning school elections was not about who could do the best job. It was a popularity contest pure and simple. I believed in our cause and somehow, from somewhere, got the guts to keep going. Even though I was sure we would lose, I suppose there was a streak of faith in the student body – that they could do the right thing. Or, maybe it was my religious upbringing – a combination of a hope for miracles and a passion for lost causes.

The voting happened right after a whole school assembly in the cafeteria. Candidates gave their speeches and then everyone went and voted. All the Athletic Reps went first. They were all jocks and got lots of cheers and jeers and everyone knew that the best athletes would win the offices they wanted. No geeks bothered trying for the Athletic Association offices. Then the Grade Representatives went next. Each grade elected two reps to the Student Council. The speeches were pretty much what you’d expect. There wasn’t a lot of competition for office and both the grade 9 and grade 13 reps got in because no one else was running.

The School President speeches were saved for last. Billy was going first. As he approached the podium there was a buzz of excitement that ran through the cafeteria. What outrageous things would he say? Just looking at Billy made you smile and everyone was ready for a good laugh. But he wasn’t hamming it up in front of the bleachers now. As soon as he started talking you could tell that he was really nervous. Maybe the fact that he was sober had something to do with it. The audience went silent. Billy was reading his speech like he was stumbling through Shakespeare – awkward and stilted and totally unsure of himself. It soon became painfully obvious that these weren’t his words. As he stumbled on the auditorium rumbled with comments. Billy noticed and stopped reading and gave a weak laugh but didn’t know what else to do except keep reading. Watching this natural funny man read a dull speech was sad – like seeing a wild animal on a leash.

Billy’s flop was the door that opened up for me. I just had to walk through it now. And I did. As nervous as I was, I was not afraid. I knew that I could deliver a good speech and I trusted my message. The speech had come together for me in the early hours of that same morning and it was sitting in me like something heavy. It weighed me down and grounded me so that when I walked to the podium, it was like I belonged there.

I unloaded the speech on them. I made them laugh. I played up the “Giving a Sh*t” thing and really pushed the angle that I wasn’t afraid to stand up to our Neanderthal School Principal. I referred to him as “Big Al” with him sitting right there on stage – not smiling as I looked back to him. It was perfect. He looked pissed off but did nothing to stop me. My speech caught those who had already written me off by surprise. They had to look again - there was some wit, and some rebel spirit, behind the geeky exterior.

Steve’s speech was unusually self-effacing and not cocky at all - and very short. We sent them out to the voting polls with a laugh. I later found out that Billy’s speech was written by his cousin from another school. It got his cousin elected and it got me elected too.

I have to say that it was an incredible high getting elected School President. It totally went to my head. I loved the fact that as I walked the school hallways people looked at me instead of through me or past me. Sure, it also earned me a fair amount of ridicule from the too-cool-for-school lads. But now I was a geek with an office. My own office with a key. As they jammed their coats into narrow lockers, I threw my stuff on my couch or desk while I made calls on my Presidential phone. Now there was an edge of jealousy in their jibes.

They would groan as teachers would excuse me from yet another class for important Student Council business that needed attending to. I would cruise the halls memorizing where all the beautiful girls were at which time of the day so I could bump into them at the end of class.

I wasn’t all show though. We got the year off to a good start with another crowd pleaser. Student I.D. cards were the big fundraiser of the year. It filled the coffers for the year’s sports expenses and set the operating budget for the Student Council expenses. Selling school spirit was tough. The cards would get you discounts at dances and sports events. But why spend ten bucks on a card if you’re never gonna use it? After last year’s depression, no one was sure whether it was cool to care or not.

So I introduced for the first time a laminated photo Student I.D. card. Instead of the usual cardboard business card that you’d lose within a few days of buying it, you could now possess an official looking pice of identification. We hired a company to come and do the photos and they gave us the job of typing the names and birthdates on the cards and running them through the laminating machine.

We did a grade a day starting with the senior class. In those days, Grade 13 students were 18 years old and eligible to drink. When word got out that we were producing laminated photo I.D. with your birthdate of choice under the plastic, there was an enthusiastic line-up of under-age drinkers happy to pay $10 for such official looking fake I.D.

Public drunkenness was way more socially acceptable in the seventies (before mothers got MADD) and bars and Liquor Stores would take any reasonable excuse to sell booze to minors. We raised a record amount of funds for the S.A.C. coffers that year. Our teacher advisor Ms. Lafreniere was very impressed. At our next meeting, the rest of the Student Council reps gave some knowing smirks as she sang our praises, but no one spilled the beans.

The next challenge was the first Dance of the year. This would tell whether we were worthy of the office – or not. We were conservative in our choice of a Band for the first school dance. I didn’t think we couldn’t pull off the attendance needed to pay for a band like Rush. It was a heady experience for a 16 year old to go through the glossy photos and marketing mailings from every bunch of musicians in Toronto.

We decided to go with an old reliable. Liverpool was a Beatles cover band and had pulled in a crowd at our school before. They weren’t cheap, but weren’t looking for the big name bucks either. We pulled in just enough to pay the band and the cops and the cases of beer for our student volunteers in my office afterwards.

At sixteen, I managed to pull off a high watermark of confidence that I haven’t seen since. I look back with admiration at that kid and wonder where it came from. A smart operator emerged from behind those geek glasses. A set of contact lenses, being known by everyone in the school, and keys to my own office made me king of the world. Except for getting rejected in my stab at dating the school’s most elusive beauty – that was a real kick in the nuts – I was riding high.

Did the power go to my head? Definitely! I got called in to the Principal’s office halfway through the year. He told me that I had the highest class absentee rate of any student in the school. Because I was a good student, teachers were willing to let me off classes to attend to Student Council business. Often, I would just wander the hallways or hang in my office.

Sometimes I’d drop in to chat with Kiki Mohammed the Guidance Counsellor. He was as bored as I was and we’d have long philosophical talks about how education should really be done. He assured me that as long as I got a B+ average, I could get into any university. “No future employer will ever look at your high school accomplishments”, he assured me, “so why knock yourself out?”. Being from Pakistan wasn’t very popular in those days. Paki jokes were being told on FM radio. I, for one however, thought Kiki was pretty cool and took his professional advice to heart.

My power-drunk attitude, combined with a general lethargy among students that winter, made me wonder “what’s it all about anyway?”. I’d finally relented to our Social Convenor’s demands for a disco dance. He was from one of the two black families in our school. We were a working-class hard rock school and I tried to tell him that it would bomb but he was insistent. I fronted him the funds to hire the DJ but told him he’d have to pay the cops from the take at the door. (Notice how this was now a personal decision and not a Student Council vote?)

I personally refused to attend the dance not wanting to tarnish my reputation – keeping a good ten-foot-pole between me and the Disco scene. I got a call at home that night. He didn’t have the cash to pay the cops. I showed up with the chequebook and rescued them. There were about two dozen girls, one black guy, and one gay guy dancing up a storm under a glitter ball. Me and the cops just shook our heads and wondered at this strange culture transplanting itself into Scarboro turf.

Enthusiasm was in short supply. My initial burst of adrenaline had run out. High school is life’s first endurance test. Learning to deal with the boredom of classes from teachers who’re bored with their subjects and impatient with students who don’t totally suck up to them. Almost as bad as the boredom of the daily drama of who’s in and who’s not. As if it mattered. Sticking it out meant finding something to get you through. If it wasn’t sports, or academics, then drugs were an interesting option. But really, they were just another distraction while you put in your time waiting for puberty to wear off and adult cares to kick in.

Mrs. LaFreniere was on my case. She was typically so easy-going and supportive that this “get-serious” talk kind of caught my attention. Like I said before, she was my English teacher and I think she managed to pose the lifting-of-school-spirit as a quest.
On the quest there is always a point where the hero loses track of his sense of direction. He is waylaid and distracted. He forgets who he is and why he is pursuing the holy grail. I was in that place – mired down in the game-playing of high school and forgetting that I was there for a reason.

How she did it, I don’t know. But she got the juices flowing. I went home angry at her for pushing me – but knowing she was right. That night out of the soup my universe I cooked up a plan to launch a talent show.

It wasn’t exactly an original idea, but it hadn’t been tried in years. I knew it’d be met with resistance by the rest of the Student Council. So, I pitched it as the start of a new school tradition. We’d call it “The Annual” and this was to be “the First Annual Annual”.

The big night came. We’d rented a stage, lighting, and a sound system for the gymnasium. The classy old auditorium had been torn down the year before – did I mention that? Yeah, the classy old brick building that was the first secondary school in Scarbro had been condemned as a fire hazard and torn down. They’d built a new structure clad in corrugated steel. It looked like a factory from the outside and felt like an antiseptic medical institution inside. Are you starting to get the picture of what I’m talking about? What it was like to try to create a wave in a millpond? Well, the talent show made a splash.

Steve and I rented tuxedos as the evenings’ Masters of Ceremony. Surprisingly the seats filled up. There’d been a bit of a buzz around some school talent. A couple of brothers had pulled together a rock band that covered Rush tunes. Rush was homegrown Toronto rock and very solid music. The Santern brothers had to have talent to cover those tunes – and the school came out to see them. Would they crash and burn, or could they pull it off?

We gave the opening act to Bernie Fitzgerald. He was a member of the computer club in the days when you had to know code to use a computer. In other words – a real geek. I knew that he was a major Bob Dylan fan and a bit of a head. Being a geek myself, I had sympathies with Bernie and his crowd and they convinced me he was good.

He took the stage and gave us his best Bob Dylan impression - a performance with heart. He banged out the tunes, blew a harp attached to his guitar and sang with as raspy a voice as any teenager could. The performance earned him a healthy response. It was the first surprise of the evening.

The next act was even a bigger surprise. You know that scrawny little guy in your class that looked like he was three years younger than everyone else? You know how he got picked on in gym class? You remember his bone-white legs in white shorts looking like two sticks holding up a marshmallow? Well, we discovered that night what he did at night. Instead of wasting time at strip malls and drinking in basements like most of us, he was working up a comedy routine. On the stage that night, he transformed himself into Rich Little. His impersonations of Richard Nixon and Bill Cosby were really good – and the jokes behind the imitiations were funny. The humour - and the surprise of this guy pulling it off - combined to generate cheers from the audience. These students were actually impressed. It was like they were saying “Hey, maybe this school has something worth appreciating.”

The Santerns were on next. Pete was the drummer and in my Functions and Relations class. He was a good guy I thought. His older brother Frank was definitely a dick though. In the negotiations for this evening we’d bashed heads as he made one demand after another. This was their debut at their own school and as far as he was concerned it was all about them. To me, they were the evenings big act, but also a big risk. I thought Frank was asking way too much and pushing it. We both thought we were doing each other a big favour. Turns out we were.

Frank got all the money and the fame and I got the satisfaction of pulling off something they said, and I thought, couldn’t be done. The boys rocked the place. Steve pulled off Geddy Lee’s high pitched wails and Pete did a very decent job of putting down Alex Lifesons’ rhythms. Lorne’s older brother put out the bass line with competence. We were impressed. They even did a tune of their own that didn’t suck at all.

They did a full set and would have done more if I hadn’t pulled the plug on them. It was getting late and we had one more act. I encouraged people to stay in their seats because we had yet one more surprise for them. Mr. Manesh, our new long-haired Egyptian Chemistry teacher was going to give us a song. Mr. Manesh was very young, very hip, and pretty timid about being a teacher. He used to beg us to stop cheating during his tests. We knew he was way too cool to actually discipline us. But we had no idea just how cool he was until that night.

He took the stage with his guitar and in his broken English introduced his song “Castles in the Air”. It’s remarkable that I can remember the title of that song. Usually, I can’t remember names and titles for shit. But Mr. Manesh made a memorable evening remarkable. After the loud, hard-rocking tunes that spoke to us of where we’d come from, he put out a quiet, sophisticated ballad that told us where we still had to go.

Students were still talking about that night weeks later. I got a lot of credit for making it happen and it seemed to get the school spirit through the slush of a Scarboro winter. There was one more dance in the school year. The “Greasball Boogey Band” was a gang of guys who pretended to be greasers from the 50’s. It was popular to have a 50’s dress up day back then. All the guys got to do their best greaser tough guy imitations and the girls dressed up either as either cheerleaders or sluts. The band put on a big act and the dance was another break-even affair.

The year almost slid away into oblivion and it was me this time that got things whipped up into leaving the year with a finale. I re-wrote the Student Council constitution; creating a more cooperative and less hierarchic system. I limited the powers of President and broadened the Counicl so it wouldn’t be open to the kind of exploitation and single-minded decision-making I’d exhibited. I called a whole school assembly to explain it and have the student body vote on it. I think they voted for it because they didn’t really understand the difference and when you are a teenager “change is good.”

Somehow we convinced the Principal to give us a day off at the end of the year for a School Spirit day. We organized games and music at the newly created Bluffer’s Park at the base of Brimley Avenue. An amazing number of students actually showed up and participated and we raised money – leaving funds in the coffers for next year’s Council.

Grade 13 was an exercise in stamina. High School had no more lessons to give me – I was sure. I didn’t run for Student Council again. I’d outgrown it. Been there – done that. The teachers were out to prove that they were “on to me” and felt they had to give me a tough time after letting me have such an easy ride the year before.

I’d spoiled my own reputation with the new Student’s Council by spreading a rumour that Steve and I had gone skiing in Quebec with S.A.C. funds the winter before. I got a kick out of seeing the rumour spread and my reputation trashed. I was into self-abuse in a big way. I got a real satisfaction out of confusing people, keeping them guessing with their misperceptions and assumptions about who I really was.

I love to play with those perceptions I guess because I really do care what people think of me. I care way too much and that really bugs me. As much as I work at only caring about what I know to be my own truth, my feet remain glued to this earth with the gravity of communal judgment.

This telling of this tale of my political career is, I suppose, a combination of pride and expose. I have to say that I got a swell of pride (without being proud) when my daughter’s youth group leader told me about her performance in her high school talent show. I already knew that she was attending the R.H.King newly named – “Academy”. I’d heard that they’d brought in a new regime complete with school uniforms and mandatory extra-curricular performances and it had whipped up a demand from parents looking for some spit and polish from their education dollars. She probably wondered, and I didn’t tell her, why I got a big grin on my face when describing this annual talent show, she called it “The Annual”. It was a nice surprise. Maybe I really did give a shit after all.

On the Road

2008-05-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they let me leave Scarborough with Dave Horseman mid-summer 1976. We’d each saved up $400 by working at the Shell self-serve gas station and car wash on evenings and weekends. The trail for young men from Ontario to

Alberta’s oil fields was well worn in those days. But we weren’t looking for work.
My brother had given me his copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”. The tales of freedom and discovery that sent a generation “on the Road” in the sixties was still working its magic on me in the seventies. Kerouac made the getting from A to B of hitchhiking into a spiritual quest. Dave was my Dean Moriarty; slightly older and tougher and street-wise. His life had shoved him ahead into a way of dealing with the world that was bold.

I don’t know how spiritual Dave and I were at sixteen. I do know that we had surplus hormones raging through our bodies and we needed to set them free. We were heading for adventure. Deeply spiritual, deeply horny, deeply looking for any trouble that wouldn’t kill us or put us in jail, we were hungry and tired of the same old Scarboro fare.

We flew to Edmonton where Dave’s older brother had once shared an apartment with Rick Proudfoot. Rick was a roughneck on oil rigs out of Edmonton. He was maybe 21 or 22 but to us – he was a matured man. He was the man. The fact that he would even talk to us – let alone invite us along for the ride – was a great honour. I was surprised that he seemed perfectly okay with putting up two kids from his old high school looking for a western adventure. Rick was a burly, hairy, and very friendly guy. He quickly became our hero.

Dave was the youngest in a family of five tough kids. His firefighter dad had died when Dave was real young and his mom worked long shifts as a nurse. Dave was raised by two much older brothers who were known to be as tough as they were smart. His two sisters were just as smart and from what I could tell – not exactly the motherly types. Dave had learned how to take a beating – verbal and physical - early on.

My first memories of Dave Horseman are of his challenges to my innocent childhood state. Whenever our paths would cross in the neighbourhood, he’d call me names and try to provoke me into a fight to win back my self-respect. I would decline the offer and run. I had no interest in fighting real people. Imaginary battles were just fine with me. And self-respect wasn’t a big commodity in my life - certainly not worth blood and bruises.

I had a big brother too so was used to getting verbally and physically assaulted. The problem with fighting for me was that it was way too emotionally charged. Good schoolyard fighters like Dave made a sport of it. For me, these scraps took on Biblical significance. Fighting was against the God of Love and a punch in the face was to me a spiritual attack. Tears would well up and I’d cry not because I was in pain but because the emotion of it all would overwhelm me.
Because I was a large kid I was a target for small bullies like Dave looking to win points in the schoolyard. He finally cornered me one day after school and I was trapped by a circle of classmates. I refused to fight but Dave just tackled me to ground anyways. He was in the process of turning my hair green with grass stains when I simply stood up. Dave’s arms and legs were still wrapped around me, so he ended up looking like a chimpanzee hugging me off the ground. The jury of peers circling us broke up laughing and Dave just had to let go, drop to the ground, and laugh along with it. I had won the fight and Dave’s respect without throwing a punch. He pretty much left me alone after that.

It was wit again that formed a common bond between us in high school. I had become tired of academic achievement as my mark of social status and was working on becoming a smart ass instead. Dave and I began competing for number of classes skipped in a week. Extra points were awarded for getting kicked out of a class. Music class was the easiest.

Mr. McManus was a smart ass himself and couldn’t stand the competition from the likes of me. Near the end of the grade 11 year, I boasted to Dave that I would get kicked out of class without saying a word. I knew that McManus had had it with me. I simply stood by my stand-up bass with bow poised and when our teacher, baton in hand, did a scan of his band’s readiness, I gave him my best big wide in-your-face smart-ass smile.
“Get out Brown!” he snapped.
Dave exploded a guffaw into his poised trumpet with a “BLAAATT”.
“You too Horseman!”

We were raiding Dave’s fridge at home making massive sandwiches, still laughing about that one, when the school called. Mrs. Horseman was getting ready for her shift at the hospital. She picked up the phone and it was the principal – I guessed – calling about the incident with Dave and I. She listened, then flatly responded “Why are you bothering me about this – he’s your problem when he’s at school.” and hung up. She turned to Dave. “What are your marks like now?”
“Still straight “A”s.” he said not looking at her.

And that was the end of that. The Horseman house fascinated me. There was no God there. There was no suffering of fools or weaklings. There was never a hint of false courtesy. No tenderness for hurt feelings. No keeping up of appearances. And no fear of petty authorities like school principals or priests or the such. Those were all luxuries. In my home they were deemed essential and it was fascinating to see how love, respect, honesty and hard work were rooted in that home without the shrubbery of manners. Once you got past the big snarling black dog Sniff (by matching his snarl) – you found an inner circle of respect.

Roughneck Rick was between jobs waiting for the union to call. He had lots of time and money to burn. We’d ride in the back of his Trans Am, sipping rye whisky from the bottle (it made me choke - but I kept choking). He’d take us to house parties or bars or wherever he and his gorgeous girlfriend, Anne, were going. Long dark hair and big dark eyes, Anne was a very sexy woman - and again – so friendly. She gave us tips on how to pick up women. (Yeah right I thought – “hey babe, let’s hitchhike back to my pup tent!”).

Days we’d hang out in the apartment, recovering from the night’s adventures. One day we were visited by a real live ex-biker who’d done time for nearly murdering a cop right in front of my dad’s church. The stories he’d tell us curled our hair. We lapped it all up. He was the friendliest criminal I’d ever met. He was the only criminal I’d ever met.

After maybe a week of western orientation, Rick was heading back to the rigs and it was time for us to be in the mountains. He drove us to the outskirts of Edmonton and wished us well. We stuck our thumbs out inviting chance to bring us luck. I’d done a fair bit of hitchhiking around southern Ontario. Roy Robson and I would escape Scarboro for a day – taking our fishing poles on the Markham Road bus up to the 401 ramp where we’d catch a ride east. Our only plan was to get to water and fish – wherever whoever stopped for us might be heading. Once we made it all the way up to Lake Simcoe outside of Brechin before we headed home. We once rode with an alcoholic salesman who’d stop at every Legion and buy us a beer. At the fourth Legion we told him we were gonna check out the pond at the edge of town. I left my bobber hanging from the hydro wires alongside the Uxbridge pond. It was there for years. We once rode on a haywagon with a country kid who showed us his burlap bag full of baby raccoons. We always made it back to Scarboro before dark.

But two teenagers with big backpacks were having a rough time getting a ride outside of Edmonton. At the end of July cars were full of kids and camping equipment and had no room for two extra riders. We stood by the road all morning long. It was approaching lunchtime and our stomachs were growling so we came up with a sneaky teenager-type trick. (Desperate times call for desperate measures.) One of us would sit off in the bushes with the packs while the other hitched. If we got a ride our story was that “our buddy was taking a pee while you just happened to stop – do you mind if we squeeze in?”

We soon got a ride with a guy who’d been driving all night and needed one of us to keep him awake. I jumped into the back of his pick-up while Dave took the job of keeping the driver talking up front.

Riding in the open air, the wind whipping past, Alberta foothills appearing on either side, the mountains somewhere ahead, was all that I’d come here for. It felt like my mission had been accomplished – and we were just getting started.

Somewhere past Edson the driver decided to get a motel room and we were out of luck. Dave tried to convince him that he could drive the truck for him – but we were soon back at the side of the road. We got a ride out of town about 20 miles and then – nothing. We tossed a Frisbee back and forth, laughed about our adventures so far and bitched and complained about the lack of rides.

While Dave was “peeing” in the woods, a late 50’s Chevy pick-up with a home-made camper on the back stopped. The driver was a thin young farmer-looking guy in a straw hat with long black hair and a beard under it. We could see he wasn’t too amused about our two for one deal, but he got out and opened up his camper for us to jam our packs into. We crammed into the cab of the pick-up – Dave straddling the four on the floor shift - and we were off. John was heading to the mountains to camp for the week and would take us right to a campsite outside of Jasper. What luck! He soon warmed to us and seemed happy to have some company – a couple of green and wild Ontario boys probably reminded him of his own first adventures out of Ontario.

The thing you couldn’t help noticing about John was that he had his left hand on the wheel and a hook on the wheel where his right hand used to be. The hook was two stainless steel question marks that he could open and close at will it seemed. It wasn’t far into our introductions when Dave – not bothered by manners – asked John about the hook. He patiently told us the story of the sawmill accident back in Ontario.

Over the next few days we were to discover just how handy one could be without a hand. John was a very cool cat and we grew to respect his ways. Meeting him was just the kind of gift the road could present - if you opened yourself up to what it had to offer.

John was a natural teacher. Wise, subtle humour, never hurried, generously opening the book of his life. The maybe six years he had on us made him a child of the sixties. In other words - John was a hippy. I’d never met a hippy before either (just like with criminals - I only had a TV caricature in my head) He patiently shared with us how he’d carved out a life in the mountains at the edge of a small town. The hippy ethic he showed us – was to be generous, free of judgments, and boldly open with the choices one makes. For two young jokers coming out of an Archie comic book-suburban existence, it felt like we’d walked into a novel new way of being. But first, we had to pass the test.

We arrived at the campsite outside of Jasper and got set up. Dave and I unrolled the pup tent, put it up and threw our sleeping bags inside – no cookstove, no food, no fuss-no muss. John just opened up the back door of his camper, pulled out some cold Lethbridge Pilsner beers, and popped off the caps for us with a snap of his hook. Dave and I looked at each other - very impressive. We grew more impressed as he demonstrated an even greater feat of dexterity with his hook - nimbly rolling a joint at the picnic table.

Weed was nothing new to us. We’d been smoking pot for well over a year already. The guy who ran the Car Wash at the gas station where we worked kept us supplied with some good $20 an ounce Mexican. He personally hand cleaned it of sticks and seeds and sold only enough to keep himself in free dope.

So we shared easily in this communion with John. Anyone who smokes pot knows that there is a society one joins when one gets high for the first time. After that, when you meet another smoker, there is a shared common ground you meet upon. But whether we smoked or not wasn’t the test.

Sharing the reefer at our picnic table, we chatted and commented on the fine quality of the weed. As the joint neared it’s end, when a roach clip is often produced to keep one’s finger from burning while the last and best of the joint is consumed, John clamped the roach in his hook. With a twist of his left hand, he pulled the hook off and offered it to Dave.

I was glad it was Dave he handed it to first. I immediately sensed that this was a test – just how cool would we be about using John’s hook? On one level it was just a tool; a practical device like a knife or a fork. On another level – a level that marijuana makes more potent – we held in our hands a symbol of dramatic, traumatic change. John’s life had been radically changed at the sawmill – the kind of change we are taught to fear and cautioned against from infancy. The hook set John apart. He was no longer normal. He was one of them – the tragically Disabled. We held in our hands what made him an outcast. Would we lift it to our lips in a sacred toke or would we awkwardly laugh and be repelled by the weird other-ness of it?

I guess we passed. We didn’t laugh. We were cool about it. Each did a toke in turn and passed it back to John. I said “that’s pretty handy John” and only realized the pun after it was out of my mouth.
“Exactly” he said. And then it was cool to share a laugh about it. Over the next days we got to watch the reaction of others with this rite of initiation into John’s circle of trust.
John told us he was planning to make a pilgrimage the next day to a special place just outside of Jasper. Would we like to go along? We checked our calendars and there wasn’t anything planned so – “why not?” Free Camp, John explained was a few miles out of town. Every time he was in Jasper, he would go out of his way for a visit.

Next morning, we jumped into the cab of his old Chev and drove out beyond the town limits to where the railway tracks crossed the highway. “We’re on foot from here” he told us. Following the tracks, we encountered a steady trickle of people moving back and forth along a well-worn path.

They were not exactly the tourists you’d see crowding the streets and stores of Jasper. They all had lots of hair. Long hair, beards, beads. No polyester blends in their clothing. Denim and cotton and well-worn wool sweaters seemed the trend for this crowd. There were teenagers like us there. And there were some wise old folks in their forties. But most of these people were somewhere in their twenties. Arriving at Free Camp, taking the whole scene in, I figured there must have been a few hundred hippies camped out in this Sherwood Forest.

Tree forts were popular. Some of these folks had gone to great effort to build themselves platforms up above the ground. Sheets of clear plastic hung between trees and served as walls and canopies and blocked ones view from straying too far in any one direction. Just as well. Our suburban eyes were full of wonders. Dave and I hung back and let John take the lead. He had a few names of people he enquired about as we made our way in among this band of merry men and women.

Dave pulled at my arm “Amos – these people are freaks. We gotta get out of here!” I had never seen Dave so unraveled. He was supposed to be the tough guy. He’d led me into Taverns and Biker Bars and once scared off College thugs trying to raid our case of beer. But now, there was something that unnerved him about this place. I don’t know what it was. Maybe he thought we’d have to go naked at some point if we stayed too long? Maybe it was the lack of “tough” that was unsettling. People here were friendly and relaxed. Very relaxed.

We came to a large circle with log benches around a big fire pit. An older guy, John’s senior by a couple of decades, welcomed us and offered us steel mugs. We were taken up to where a huge cauldron –like I’d seen used for pioneer maple syrup boil-ups - hung on poles over the fire. Our host handed us a dipper and we filled our mugs with a hot tea.
“Marijuana tea” John explained. “Everyone pitches their twigs and seeds into the pot and everyone shares in the tea.” We took a seat on a log while John chatted with the old hippie. There was grey in his beard and he carried an authority about him like well, not a Mayor or a teacher or a Priest but maybe a combination of all of them without the rigid “box” any of those labels might suggest. He introduced himself as Marvin and we clasped hands thumbs up. John produced a reefer and the four of us shared a social moment.
“Who can stay here?” I asked.
“Anyone” the old sage replied. “That’s why it’s called Free Camp. Anyone who wants to stay can stay as long as they want. No fee. No rules.”
“Don’t the cops come out here?” I asked further.
“Nope. They know we’re here. But they also know there’s never any trouble out here. We take care of our own. If somebody gets hurt – we deal with it. So, they leave us alone.”
“Cool.” I nodded. “Very cool.” taking another deep toke.

We sat and John and Marvin started telling stories of years gone by. They spoke of an annual “Bacchus” bash that was the height of the summer’s social season. Athletic games and live music and festivities galore were spoken of in excited reverent terms. It was something to be experienced they told us – highly recommended.

And then the conversation turned to bears. Apparently they were a real problem out here. The main reason for the raised platforms. John told a story about watching a young guy having a game of tag with a bear in a field at the edge of the camp. This guy had kept the bear chasing him in circles for about twenty minutes.
“Bears follow you by smell.” Marvin explained. “They’re really very short-sighted. If you can get beyond their field of vision and zig-zag so they lose the scent trail – you can outrun a bear. Run in a straight line and they’ll be on you in seconds.” The guy in the field had managed to stay far enough in front of the bear to keep it confused about just exactly where he was.”
“Pretty risky game.” I said. “What if the bear’d caught him?”
“Bears also hate loud noises” Marvin explained with a laugh. “If you want to get rid of them all we have to do around here is start banging on empty pots and put up a racket. There were enough people around the field that day that if he’d got into trouble – we all would have been able to scare that old bear off.”
“Cool.” I said. “Very cool.” (that was the limit of my hippie repertoire at the time)

After a few cups of tea I stood announcing. “I need to take a leak.”
“The loo is that way” Marvin pointed past some plastic sheeting and I headed out. Winding past a few more campfires, I found the rough-fashioned outhouse at the edge of a clearing. A path continued past it through the field and into another wood so I chose to skip the loo experience and keep walking. The woods were tall pine and hemlock. The undergrowth was kept low by the fallen needles. In the hushed cathedral quiet of the woods, as I stopped to unzip and unload, I could hear the roar of a river. It called to me.

Zipping up, I carried on down the path. The volume of the roaring water rose with every dozen steps until I came upon the stony shores of a white raging river. Fist-sized rocks and bigger were strewn truckloads deep along the shores and I stumbled over them down to the water’s edge. Kneeling, I scooped up water to wash my hands and was shocked by the ice-cold chill in mid-summer. Even Lake Ontario would warm in July. But of course Lake Ontario wasn’t fed by glaciers. This was ancient ice freed by the sun at last to become this powerful raging river. Time frozen for centuries was now racing on towards ocean depths deeper than the glaciers were high.

High? Yeah, you could say I was high. I splashed the ice-water onto my face but that wasn’t enough. Placing palms on two large rocks just out from the shore a bit, I plunged my head into the river and let the rushing water fill my ears. I needed to feel it - not just hear the sound of its passing. It sucked the breath out of me like death and I pulled myself back with a gasp shaking the freezing water off my head like a Labrador. Still kneeling, I reveled in the wonder and power of the moment as the baptism trickled down my shoulders and into my shirt. It was another one of those –“this is why I came here” moments instantly etched into my soul.

Stumbling back up the river’s bank, out of the bright sun and into the woods, I noticed the forest’s floor was ankle deep with low bushes laden with ripe blueberries. Giving thanks for yet another gift from God, I stooped to pick a handful thinking “the bears would sure like this spot.” Rising to continue - it was as if my thought had summoned them. A large black bear was no more than a good cat’s throw in front of me. I dropped the berries in my hand as she rose to stand.

Watching her go up to full height I knew this was a “she” letting out her terrifying skin-tingling roar because - as my eyes grew wide and my heart started thumping - I also saw two small black cubs looking back at me from either side of where she stood tall and toothy. A mother bear protecting her cubs. What could be more threatening?

A thousand thoughts raced through my mind in a blink of an eye – although I’m sure I never blinked. Was this it? Was I about to die? Should I run for the river? Should I lie down and pretend like I’m already dead? Yeah right – AS IF!

From somewhere deep in my Scarboro loins came a reaction I didn’t know I possessed. It rose up and spewed from my lips in a stream of rage. “FFFFFFFUUUCCCKKKKKK OFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!
It was my native battle cry.
The bear cocked her head sideways regarding me now with curiosity.
I glared back at her.
“Are you serious?” her look said.
I didn’t budge.
“You really think you’re something don’t you?” she shook her head.
I thought I detected a grin as she dropped to her fours and started foraging in the berries moving her cubs away from the path.
“Good” I said like we’d just settled something.
My heart was still pounding in my chest as I stepped slowly forward. I kept walking a slow pace right past where she and her cubs were now getting back to their afternoon snack. Or, I suppose they were - ‘cause I didn’t look. Once I started walking I just put my eyes to the path and kept walking as if I was just minding my own business weaving past dangerous characters on Yonge Street.

I have no idea where that behaviour came from. You could call it instinct but it was more like another person took over for me in my own shoes. The self-conscious teenager stepped back in fear and doubt and another person stepped forward. Was it me – a new bolder version of me – a hidden warrior waiting for the right time to emerge? Or was it something more? Do you believe in guardian angels? Did the bear see a fierce-looking angel with a fiery sword of destiny standing behind me? I have no idea what that mother bear saw that day. It was either amusing enough, or threatening enough, or maybe a combination of both, to make her see me as more friend than foe. It also changed forever the way I saw myself in the mind’s mirror.

I had a tale to tell when I got back to the fire. I couldn’t sit down and had another few quick cups of tea while the guys quizzed me about what’d happened. Marvin grinned and looked at me with some new eyes. He offered his hand again - thumbs up - and drew me forward into a hug this time. “Welcome to Free Camp man.” it seemed that I’d been initiated.
“You’re fucking crazy man.” was Dave’s way of congratulating me.
John was all nods and smiles. He produced another joint in celebration.

Years later I circled back to Free Camp. I was unemployed in the middle of a summer break from university. I was traveling on my own this time. The rides were easier to catch that way. It was the eighties now and I was curious whether the hippies still roamed the woods as free and wild as in my memories.

They were there. The day I arrived just happened to be the day of the annual Bacchus celebration. I pitched my tent in the woods at the edge of the camp and partook in the celebrations. I hung back in my usual way. But I was no longer the child who had become something more that summer.

Circling back helped me remember the day a new person had stepped forward. And I had a sense that still another breakthrough was waiting to be hatched. The youth that had emerged from the child was outgrowing his skin again. I carried my full height and weight now but this new change was more about growing deeper into who I would be. I knew there was a purpose waiting for me and it was driving me crazy trying to see it from where I stood. I had more searching to do.

Mother of the Groom

2008-04-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

The story came packaged with the most unusual wedding shower present - a pair of rollerblades. A strange gift from my new mother-in-law. It seemed kind of fun, but right away I sensed that she was trying to tell me something. And she was. It was only days later when I was sorting out the shower gifts from the pile on my living room floor that I discovered the handwritten letter rolled up and inserted into the foothole of the left rollerblade. There were quite a few pages; half-sized stationery with flowered borders, covered both sides in his mother’s hand…

Dearest Melody,
I am so thrilled that you have chosen to spend your life with my Amos. He is a wonderful man and you are a wonderful Christian woman. I suppose you already know this, but I just wanted to make sure. That beautiful mountain of a man – big and strong and nice to look at – has a volcano inside. Has it erupted around you yet? That’s where the roller skates might come in handy.

I blame it on the doctors at the time of his birth. I didn’t know any better and was away from my mother and family. When Amos came along we were in the middle of our first winter up in the wild and woolly Muskoka country where Dan had been sent on his first church mission. It was the last week of February and we’d never experienced snow so deep and so all-enveloping. It blew up against our little Manse and drifted in the windowsills to be discovered in the morning like unexpected visitors standing inside the front door. It just kept falling day after day, week after week as I grew more and more expectant.

We’d been through one birth already of course. But Peter had been born in West Toronto Hospital where we were surrounded by both of our families and lots of doctors and nurses – not at all like the little Red Cross Medical Mission in Burk’s Falls.

We’d been through one winter in the drafty little manse. Dan had been assigned to serve the Muskoka west Pastoral Charge with its seven remote little country churches. Of course in mid-winter it was down to five as two of them were on summer roads. The central church in Magnetewan wasn’t any bigger than the chapel in my Dad’s West End Toronto church. But it was exciting to be on a mission. Dan loved the adventure of it and I was along for the ride. In the fall I taught school in the one room schoolhouse just a little walk from the manse down the tree-lined dirt road through the village. You could see the river down between the houses on the one side.

Mrs. Hurlycoat would watch little Peter and I would give the local children their lessons each day. There were forty children aged from 5 to 15 all in that one big classroom. Their parents were so pleased to have a “real teacher” as the winter before the lessons had come from Mrs. Oppenmeyer, the General Store owner’s wife. She hadn’t made it past grade 8 herself and her thick German accent took some getting used to. The children were disappointed when I had to leave to give birth to Amos. Mrs. Oppenmeyer would take them through their lessons just fine but there’d be no singing and no special projects to work on. Those children were used to making do.

The contractions came near midnight on a Sunday night. We’d been to the Williamson’s for a big Sunday roast beef dinner after church that day and I think the smell of roast beef must’ve enticed little Amos out into the cold. I woke Dan up and told him it was time to get the car ready and to call Mrs. Hurlycoat to watch Peter. I kept busy putting my things into a suitcase and laying out clothes for Peter for the next day. By the time the car was brushed off and warmed up – it was snowing – of course – Mrs. Hurlycoat was in the Manse.

First things first, she turned up the thermostat on the oil furnace like she always did. It was part of the deal. She didn’t complain about the extra trouble three year old Peter would put her through and we didn’t say anything about the extra oil she burned (“It’s the congregation that fills the tank isn’t it?” she asked by way of an explanation the first time she went to the thermostat.) Everyone in the village seemed to know our house and household better than we did. We’d often get the impression that the good people of the church saw us as their mission – keeping the city minister and his family going through the winter – the same way we saw them as ours.

Dan got me bundled up and into the icy little Aston Martin. My water broke on the way out to the car. (It was the icy patch I slipped on three days later walking up our sidewalk with Amos in my arms.) Riding in that little English car through the snowdrifts in the daytime was treacherous. Following the little patch of light those headlights shone into the night’s snowstorm was terrifying.

The snowbanks were up above the car’s roof in most places. It made the road like a tunnel and easy to follow as long as you stayed in the snowy tire ruts. If the car jumped out of the ruts the deep snow would grab at your wheels and threaten to pull you into those walls of snow. As frightening as that was - it was out in the open spots where the wind blew across the fields that the real terror lay. The road would become part of a wide blanket of snow that you had to just steer straight through. You knew that the road was straight in that stretch and you just had to hope that your aim was true. Dan started singing hymns and I knew then that he must be just as terrified as I was.

I suppose God heard the hymns and sent angels because we made it through to the little Red Cross Outpost. We were like a ship arriving in safe harbour. Mrs. Hurlycoat must’ve got through on the telephone to them because they were up and waiting for us – both of them. The nurse and her husband the caretaker ran out to the car to greet us with a wheelchair. “The doctor’s on his way” they assured us as the wheelchair went sideways into a drift off the sidewalk and the gentle old caretaker dragged me backwards out of the snowdrift and through the doors apologizing all the way. They got me into one of the three rooms (after evicting an older gentleman in his skivvies. He seemed like a regular, or a relative, by the way they spoke to him).

Amos and I spent the next thirteen hours in a wrestling match fighting to push him out of his watery hideout into the world of light and air. The doctor arrived with snow in his hair. (And I’m not talking about the snowy locks of age and experience.) He was a young Italian man from Toronto – out flying solo on his first mission like Dan. Over those thirteen hours, Doctor Triggiano and I took turns feeling scared, angry, and helpless at the situation. Amos is a Pisces you know. He seemed to like being in the water just fine thank you. If he was coming out it would be against his will.

The nurse was the saving grace for all of us. She’d been the local midwife for years and years and had seen this kind of battle more than a few times. Agnes was her name I believe. I didn’t like seeing the way she winced as the doctor pulled a pair of forcepts from his bag. But Agnes remained stoically calm offering strong words of confidence and encouragement throughout. Those words were for me - but I’m sure Doctor Passano received them too. He would take deep breaths right along with me as we prepared for yet another push and wrestle. He finally dragged little Amos out of his cocoon and into the first day of March. The sun was shining brightly now through the window. I was an exhausted mess crying endless tears –enough to fill a river. Almost too weak to worry, I watched helplessly as they whisked my silent baby away to another room.

After what seemed an eternity, I heard his angry cry piercing the silent snowbound quiet of the little Hospital. The nurse came in, told me everything was going to be okay, and gave me a pill with some water. I took a deep breath, sighed, and dropped off into a sleep as deep as the snow.

The next sound I heard was Dan’s voice bellowing through the little outpost. I couldn’t really make out what he was saying through the painkiller’s haze but I could tell he was mad. ”He’s black and blue! Looks like he’s been in barroom brawl! What the heck did you do to him? And my wife’s hardly any better! I want some answers and I want them now!” Poor Dan was really beside himself. He’d had several complaints the week before about his last sermon.

So you see dear, Amos had quite the stormy entry into the world. Who knows whether he could sense the terror in his mother as we drove those snowy roads? Who knows whether he picked up on the doctor’s anxious, tentative hand? The first faces he saw were frightened. The first sounds he heard were hurried worried instructions. Angry accusations were the first words he heard from his father. If you go by first impressions – you have to wonder what the little darling must’ve felt about this world he’d been pushed into?

He thrived after that. Once he got some food in him he started growing and didn’t stop –he’s still growing I think. But every once in a while – and this is why I’m telling you all this – the slow simmer that’s inside him boils over. And when that long slow fuse comes to and end , it seems like the anger’s coming from a bottomless pit. It just blows and blows.

With attention, you get so you can notice the signs. For a few days before, he gets real quiet. He starts taking everything very seriously. Every comment is taken to heart. Even encouragements seem to make him wince. Storm clouds gather. And when it breaks, he starts letting his tongue go. His shouts roll like thunder. His words shock like a lightning hit – it’s scary how he can strike right at your deepest, most hidden hurt.

It’s so not like him. Not like the kind and gentle Amos we love. I don’t know where it comes from but on those days – it’s like he’s raging at the world – mad about being here – mad as hell – and somebody’s gotta pay. And that’s when all you can do is strap on your roller blades and skate out of his way.

When you get back, the storm will have passed and he’ll be ashamed like a bad puppy that’s peed on the carpet again. I just have to wonder if it’s got anything to do with that Red Cross Outpost. He would have some good reasons to be mad about that whole little adventure. That - and it was quite some time before he got any of that roast beef.

God's Henchman

2008-03-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

Is it even possible to get back through memory’s haze to see and feel the way it was? Can I remember seeing the world from inside the Garden before I got kicked out? I grab onto a fiery sinew of string inside of me. It runs through my intestines. It goes deep - twisted down through my guts - hidden from sight and rarely even felt. “It’s nothing really. No big deal. Not worth letting bother me. There’s people with real problems out there – how can I whine about this little annoyance?”

I’ve got an ugly mouth ulcer today; a canker sore. Not a cold sore on the lips where it can be seen. No, my suffering is unseen behind my smiles. When I smile or talk the open sores rub against my teeth and are atagonized. I never get just one. There’s usually a batch of them. They usually start with a small nick in the skin. I chew on the inside of my cheeks or my fork slips and jabs me in the gums or sometimes it’s just too much acidic food that wears a little patch raw. And when they start, they pop up like mushrooms over night. “Hey – where’d that one new come from?”

Are they the surfaced end of the string? Is their annoying, almost-surfaced pain connected with the ulcers on my soul? I know that down in there somewhere there’s a canker that never really heals up. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s not like I feel pain down there.

It’s only as tangible as that wisp of smoke that’s all that’s left of a dream as you come awake. The waking snuffs out the candlelight from the place where you just were – and now eyes open - how you were and who you were and what you were doing – is extinguished and a sunlight of a new day floods in. It’s lost. What can you do? There’s no way back there – except maybe with this string of pain that makes itself hard to ignore every so often?

Something happens in my week – a bitter exchange, a disagreement that turns sour; a misunderstanding that gets my heart beating fast and my mind racing - annoying and distracting – but not serious enough to make me stop doing what needs doing. So, I push it down inside – sending salt down to the wound. That little cut in my soul flares and ignites that string like a fuse with a slow burn - an acid flame comes back up the string. It turns my stomach and I don’t know why. It is days later - after the incident - and I have long forgotten quickly pushing it down. The first sore in my mouth splits open. A dream offers only clues.

I Knew. I knew while we were doing it that we were uncovering some hidden and adult thing. It was exciting and gave us great pleasure at the time – not physical, sexual pleasure – I suppose we were too young for that. It was more about satisfying a curiosity; an itch. It was an adventure. Hidden, warm, in our cozy bunk bed with my little sister there as a nurse; we took turns being Doctor then patient, the three of us, examining each others’ private parts. It was the first time I had a close up look at a clitoris. I suppose I hadn’t been that curious before. It’s not like my sister and I hadn’t had lots of baths together as babies and toddlers. But now I was climbing over a hill, about to venture down into the expansive new vista waiting.

But it’s not a choice you get to make is it? You don’t get to choose to stay in childhood. It’s more like a rising flood in the River of Time. A child’s natural curiosity is fed by more and more raindrops of information until, before you know it, the river lifts you up and spits you out on the bank of adulthood.

Our session ended innocently just the way our other games would end. It was lunchtime and my cousin Sheila headed home. I suppose I’ll never know just how her parents caught wind of our game. Did she have some guilt or shame about it? Did my little snake scare her? Did she tell her sisters – wanting to prove how grown up she was? Did she share with her Mom some new knowledge she’d gained that morning in the Garden? Maybe she made her Dad choke on his macaroni and cheese with a question about penises?

Knowing Sheila there were some emotional power games going on. She could be nasty and vengeful as well as fun and loving. One day her sun would shine on you, and the next – lightning bolts out of a blue sky. Once she’d sniffed out what a powerful emotional reaction our little game had in her family, I’ll bet she’d turned me over to her Dad as the guilty one.

I don’t know where my Dad was. If he’d been there Uncle Don’t would have been a little cooler. But just my Mom was there – my Uncle’s little sister - and me and my little sister - when he stormed into our cottage that sunny afternoon. We were standing in the kitchen. I was washing the lunch dishes and Wendy was drying. Mom was putting things away in the fridge. He didn’t knock or call out a hello. He just let himself in and surprised our busy little crew with his sudden presence.

Uncle Don’t liked to appear like he was laid back and relaxed. He would tell stories about people that would make the adults laugh. Those stories always made me wonder if the people in his stories knew how much he despised them. His chuckles, his amusement at his own superior wit, would come from somewhere deep in his chest – paid out from a well-guarded bank. Everyone loved him. He was just like his father they said - would do anything for anyone. I stayed out of his way.

But that day I was cornered. At the sink with Wendy behind me and only my Mom between me and him, he unleashed some sour fiery accusations my way. I don’t remember what he said. I just have a dream-like image of the four of us there. It feels like the wolf was in the door of the three little pigs’ cabin. I feel a sudden bonfire of shame burning in my head and I feel a piercing stab in my loins. Not in my balls, not in my belly button, but right in between. Where a baby would grow if I was a woman.

Not to be overly dramatic about it but – my childhood got aborted just then. No wonder it makes me so fucking angry to face that scene. It was the day I got fucked by the adult world. Others can tell stories of actual physical molestations by adults. No doubt you have your own story of the day you got screwed over and spit out on the bank of adulthood. It’s a story no one wants to tell or really wants to hear. No wonder it’s been hidden under layers and layers of years and years of making sure I never again get trapped like that. It explains a lot. It tells the whole story I guess.

Whatever I tell you now about the rest of my life and times is simply an illustration of the effects of this experience. The Day I realized I was naked. The Day I got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The rage that stings still from the hot piercing wound my soul received. If it wasn’t my Uncle Don’t, it would have been someone else. He was the Angel with the fiery sword sent by God; God’s Henchman who stands guard at the garden wall.

“Way Down in the Hole”
When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track

if you walk with Jesus
he's gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole

he's got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don't have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand

we'll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

All the angels sing about
Jesus' mighty sword
and they'll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord

don't pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

Tom Waits

I do battle with him every time I take on a fight for someone hurt by a big deaf authority figure. I keep reaching out and grabbing that fiery sword thinking drunkenly that this time I’ll disarm God’s Henchman. Thinking I can get back to the place where we are free to be - just be. It’s why I drown the sting with whatever’s at hand. Too much food, too much sleep, too much drink, too much work, too much bullshit.

Then for a while I play it their way. I play the game by the rules. And I play it well. Oh-so-well you’d think I was made for the game. In all the ways I’m ashamed of - I’m just like him. I play the game like a self-satisfied, righteous, sarcastic – I’ll cut you if you cross me – fat cat. Everybody loves me – that’s my goal when I get stuck in that headspace. People like to think I’d do anything for anybody. They like to think that I’m different from them; different from their kids and relatives. They want to know someone who doesn’t get trapped and tortured by demons – who’s risen above it all.

I play it like Uncle Don’t until I can’t stand it anymore and I’m driven staggering back to the edge of the Garden to take another swipe at God’s Henchman. Then, someone’ll take a stab at me – not liking the angry stand I’ve taken. The daggers’ tip is poisoned. It finds its way down there to the wound and flares up into a full blown mouth ulcer that lasts for days and weeks.

So, if that’s the nightmare of my life. What’s the dream? What keeps me laughing and buoyed and bobbing along? The river goes on. It winds along the banks of where I live now. And while I keep failing to get back to its source – so far – I can always take a dip. I can dive in to the cool, clear waters and wash off the bullshit of the day’s work. Every so often I play hooky and go and splash around with a pal – pretending that we’ll never end up on that bank again; clothed and armed and oh so serious about building a better world or mousetrap or home for our kids; safe from those who would fuck them up. The river is the source of life that starts in the Garden and never ends. While there’s no going back, there’s salvation there running downstream.

The Promised Land

This holiest of holy places
found, re-membered,
where the beginning, the end,
and the everlasting is

Some times, we come upon
this hidden place in the middle of
the day’s street
and stop

through child’s eyes we see
rediscover
the buried treasure
the dream we forgot was real

my lion’s ravenous hunger
my lamb’s trembling fear
is lost, swept away
in the everflowing

The stream that begins in glory
thunders down mountainous egos
sweeps the valleys mess
in prophetic floods of truth

and rushes corrupted to the wild garden place
where the trees leaves are for the healing
of all nations
-beginning with my hurts and hungers and yours

and a little child shall lead us
heroically to re-imagine
the impossible forgotten world
beyond the angel’s flaming sword

into the furnace’s refining fire
into the cross’s redeeming execution
struck dumb in reverence
restoring creation

Eden resurrected
I promise
don’t forget
-thus saith the Lord

Alleycat Reeve
inspired by Robert Milner’s imagination on canvas
October 2007