SHORT STORIES
CONTENTS:
Shoal Lake August 19, 1889
Big White Combine
Lethal Combinations
Good Book
Lunch
Bad Men Who Love Jesus
Wallow Stones and Gremlin Grass
God is At Home
Grass of the Apocalypse
Itinerary Item
Carlos Neil and Me
Before and After Val Marie
Two Sin Eaters 4874 BC/1979 AD
The Coffee Rocks
Rebel
Sniff
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SHOAL LAKE AUGUST 19, 1889
Reid Dickie
Shirtless, Rainer Slate stumbled through the open front door of Batter’s Apothecary in Shoal Lake, fell face down onto the oiled wooden floor and passed out. Borden Batter paused at his mortar and pestle, peered over his round glasses and surveyed the prone lout.
“Glynnis!” he shouted. “Someone’s here to see you!”
Glynnis knew exactly who her visitor was by the tone in Batter’s voice. With sweat trickling into her eyes from a mid August heatwave and a swollen lip she’d bit minutes earlier throbbing angrily, Glynnis paused, listened and slumped her shoulders in resignation.
“Idiot,” she groaned to herself.
She felt only slight relief at getting away from the stubborn nut press that was supposed to extract oil from almonds for salves and unguents but fought her every turn. Glynnis split the heavy brocade curtain, peered into the store and saw her half-naked unconscious husband.
“Idiot,” she said stepping around him. She bent and turned him over; a small trickle of blood ran from his lip.
“Rainer. Rainer!” She shook the unconscious man, his big head lolled back and forth on his broad shoulders, tongue slavering his chin.
“Rainer!” she shouted. There was a flicker on Rainer’s face, a sliver of consciousness passed through him. She shook him again. Blood from his lip spattered on his bare chest.
“Wake up!”
Borden Batter stood over the sorry pair, pudgy hands on his hips protecting his kidneys from the sad tableau he saw below him.
“Rather like a large drunk puppy, wun’tcha say, Glynnis? I can smell the hooch from here. The Portuguese have a saying…”
She cut him off. “No more sayings Borden! You’re not helping. Rainer! Rainer!” Her voice become more frantic, her cut lip turned purple.
Rainer’s eyes flickered open ever so briefly then their brown richness disappeared again into stupor.
“Idiot.”
She let his head drop heavily on the floor. It landed hard with a loud thud.
The knock seemed to bring Rainer around.
“What’s burning?” he asked, sniffing the air, becoming more alert with each whiff. “Smells like wood smoke. You smell it too?” He was trying to get to his feet.
Glynnis and Borden both sniffed but smelled nothing, no smoke.
Rainer slumped back down onto his side. “The fire is making me warm and sleepy,” he said. He started to curl into a fetal position but Borden interceded.
“Oh no, you’re not passing out here again, ever!” Borden gave a quick boot to Rainer’s shoulder. This caused his body to unfurl enough that Glynnis could get him to his feet.
“Out the door. Come on, Glynnis. Let’s move him outside.”
“Yes, yes.” The disgust in her voice was undisguised.
Between the two of them, they managed to deposit unconscious Rainer with his back against the alley side of the livery stable two doors down. Before he turned back to his store, Borden Batter peered over his spectacles at Glynnis.
“You’ll never get out of here if you stay with him and he keeps up like this. As sure as there are pork chop bones at an Anglican picnic, you’ll be stuck in a shack with him and his gruesome family all your life. With how many babies? Oh, right, none. Because this one,” he pointed a haughty thumb at Rainer Slate, “can’t plant a seed.” Borden pursed his thin lips into a smile, which evolved into a leer as he walked past her.
“Don’t malinger. Store’s open,” he spat.
At that moment Glynnis couldn’t decide which of these two men she despised more.
“Ouch.” Coming to, Rainer suddenly grabbed the back of his head.
“That was five minutes ago. You’re just feeling it now? That’s how drunk you are? Idiot. Where’s your shirt?” Glynnis could barely look at her husband.
“Something’s burning.”
“Don’t get going on about that again. Nothing is…”
“If it’s not burning now, it will be.”
“You are just trying to spook me, Rainer Slate, you devil. You always have been good at that.” She ran her hand over his chest.
“I smell smoke. There is something else mixed with the smoky aroma, something subterranean, mysterious, even sinister. Something that tastes like it came out of a thousand-year-old bottle. Elegant mischief. I can’t actually name it. I am not able to name it.” He gently rubbed the back of his head. A small lump was forming. “Ouch.”
Glynnis was more than a little spooked now. Subterranean? Sinister? Elegant mischief? She had heard her husband speak mainly in monosyllables in the four years she had been married to him and the year she knew him before that. He was an uneducated lout, a description Borden Batter had applied, accurately, pathetically, to her hapless husband on every appropriate occasion.
“Why can’t you name it,” she asked, curious where this would go.
“Smelling the smoke is a memory. A memory from the future. A burning bush with berries hanging red and delicious, temptation’s fruit luring us back and forth, swinging like a pendulum.”
Slate suddenly stopped talking, his mouth agape. He looked at his wife. She saw a little fear in his eyes.
“Somebody is going to burn down Shoal Lake.”
He said it without thought or inflection, a voice from a subtle wise place within him.
“Somebody is going to burn down Shoal Lake.” His words echoed in the narrow alley.
“Damn that hurts.” He rubbed the growing lump on the back of his head and pulled his hand back to see if he was bleeding. There was a small red smear on his fingertips. “I’m bleeding. How did I get this?” he asked Glynnis.
“I don’t know,” hoping her disgusted tone would hide the lie. It didn’t.
“You’re lying.”
“You must have gotten it when you fell in the store. Luck had it, there were no customers when you came in. Or dropped in.”
He knew she was still lying but chose to let it go. He laughed instead.
“I did drop in, didn’t I?” He smiled his unabashedly cute smile at her, which always melted Glynnis’ heart in an involuntary way she’d come to recognize as love.
Glynnis stared at her handsome half-naked man.
“I have such a headache,” Slate said wrapping his hands around his head as if it was a delicate glass bowl.
“Who’s going to burn down Shoal Lake?” she asked.
“I don’t know who but it’s because of politics, land, jealousy, greed, the usual reasons. I must lie down.”
Slate rolled onto his side and stretched out on the rutted dirt in the alley. He carefully placed his head to avoid contact with the swelling and closed his eyes.
Glynnis made no effort to keep her husband conscious. She let him go, let him sink to wherever he needed to be at that moment. She was spooked, truly, abundantly spooked. Who was this unconscious man at her feet who looked like her husband but talked like a professor? How can a fool be cured? What change had occurred in the past few minutes? What will happen next? These questions all suddenly, overwhelmingly, flooded into Glynnis’ mind.
She had to sit on her folded legs to accommodate the dizziness. She touched her husband’s trousers. They were damp and crumbly. She tasted the contents of a thousand-year-old bottle. Her vision became hazy, details dissolved in a fog of unrecognizable shapes. She heard a fond humming that made her feel nostalgic and happy. Some old songs all in a jumble, tumbling, crumbling then…she passed out.
“GLYNNIS!”
It was the shrill voice of Borden Batter at his most furious. His hands gripped his sides so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“GLYNNIS! WAKE UP!”
***
Three weeks later, on September 10 1889, a stiff northwest wind propelled a fire from one end of North Railway Avenue to the other, wiping out eight businesses including two hotels, livery stable, general store and Batter’s Apothecary. The fire changed the shape and destiny of Shoal Lake, provoking businesses to open along Station Road, south of the tracks.
BIG WHITE COMBINE
Reid Dickie
Bruno Insinger is having The Dream again. He started having it before Christmas and here it was the middle of summer.
Though seeding was delayed by a cool spring, the rains came at an opportune time and Bruno’s 1600 acres of barley and oats germinated into a promising crop. When the crop was about six inches high, the heat started. That was six weeks ago. Not a drop of rain had fallen since and his stunted crops wilted in the fields. Every day was above 80 degrees. The crop wasn’t able to hold the earth in place to counter the erosion; even light winds lifted top soil into hazy blusters. A crop yield 10% of the average was what Bruno expected to get this year. It was a disheartening depressing prospect, a waste of time, energy and money.
In The Dream, Bruno is surveying his fields. For miles around the pale parched green of his stunted crop matches the dry grey earth. The highest point on Bruno’s farm is a rise. Though somewhat precarious, it is tillable and harvestable. He is looking toward the rise which is shrouded in an impenetrable white mist. Above the hill, clouds have formed, billowy and white; from behind them, the sun is sending glowing shafts of light toward the white mist. Gold tinged and subtly moving the heavenly shafts penetrate the mist. Slowly in deep spirals from the bottom of the rise, the mist begins to ascend into the sky. As it clears the top of the hill, a huge white combine appears. It stands enormous against the sky, glistening with clean bright light. The machine is blindingly white, so bright Bruno can only take brief glances at it, a glistering gem against a blue velvet cloth.
Accompanying the vision is the rat-a-tat-tat of tin drums, children’s toys beat with determination and clamorous intent; toy pianos tinkle, plastic clarinets wheeze, a tambourine finds no rhythm. The cacophony increases in volume when the big white combine fires up, perceptibly shaking on the summit. The noise becomes louder as The Dream goes on.
There is a sudden flurry of diagonal white motion; the combine is moving, traveling over Bruno’s acres, eating them up like a starved deafening goblin. A man Bruno doesn’t know steps up to him and writes something on a small slate board. No matter how hard he tries, Bruno can’t make out what the man wrote. That’s when The Dream ends.
The next day was hot and rainless. That evening Bruno sat on the porch swing. He was alone, something that rarely happened on the farm. The kids were vacationing with his relatives and his wife was visiting her sister a day’s drive away. The cold beer sure tasted good, ‘100% good.’ He thought of The Dream.
At first, it sounded like loud electrical static, a broken buzzing that seemed to come from around the side of the house. Bruno cocked his head. From the other direction, a crackle came that sounded close and dangerous, then another from across the lane. He thought he was about to be hit by lightning. An explosion on the cement porch steps made him realize it was hailstones.
He got up and looked behind the house toward the west. The sky was black with roiling clouds, pierced by near-continuous lightning. Suddenly the air was full of ice. It pounded off the roof of the porch, battering the flower and vegetable gardens into pulp, smashing the windshield of the half-ton, careening and shattering off everything. As Bruno watched, his yard, his lane, his fields all turned white. Hailstones, ranging in size from marbles to baseballs, fell for seven minutes over an eleven square mile area. Bruno’s farm was in the middle of that area. The temperature dropped seventeen degrees in ten minutes. In places, the hail was a foot deep. A day later, there were still pockets of hailstones in shady areas.
The following afternoon the hail insurance adjuster inspected the damage. When he was done Bruno asked, “Well, what’s the word? Big white combine?”
The adjuster wrote “100%” on a clipboard and showed it to Bruno.
“Big white combine,” said the adjuster.
Bruno was relieved. It was over.
For this year.
LETHAL COMBINATIONS
Reid Dickie
Sherry Hudnut is about to change her name. After today she’ll be Sherry Blunder aka Mrs. Buick Blunder.
In an hour she’ll marry Buick Blunder who drinks more than she likes, who never talks about his work (he always says he works in “security”), who keeps a trunk in the basement she is “never ever” to open (it is double padlocked just in case), whose penis tastes funny. She watches her doubt in the mirror.
Her mother tarnished Buick by hiring a PI to check out his background. She doesn’t like what she found. He has a past!
Tempest Hudnut stands outside the door to Sherry’s room holding a blue envelope. Inside is the PI’s report. It is her wedding present to her daughter.
Tempest taps lightly on the door.
October 16, 2002
GOOD BOOK
Reid Dickie
A white haired man is sitting in a comfortable chair off in a quiet corner of the Winnipeg library. He has taken off his wet shoes. His sock feet rest flat on the floor, two paper towels from the men’s room spread under each.
Chin tucked into the open neck of his shirt, an atlas splayed at South America on his lap, he is sound asleep.
This morning it rained in Bolivia, too.
October 16, 2002
LUNCH
Reid Dickie
“For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
we’re still just able to bear.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“The greater the depth of transcendence,
the greater the burden of inclusion.”
Ken Wilber
A languid drop of soup slips away from the bottom of Eleanor’s spoon making a slow splash in its thick warm homeland. A man’s hand reaches for the metal door handle. Eleanor’s eyes follow it.
“He is perfect.” She says the words to herself. Motion slows. Everything stops.
Immobile, she holds the spoon in midair an inch below her chin, her mouth open and ready, her eyes wide and hungry. She is in a tableau vivant, a still life posed in a Tim Horton’s diorama, holding her tightly in the moment.
The roar has come again. The roar replaces the ambience of her surroundings with an enjoyable floaty hum that grows in intensity, cementing Eleanor to her place in the set piece the world has become.
Eleanor studies him for the length of three slow breaths. His face is partially hidden by the doorframe. Another breath and the world resumes.
McKinnon reaches for the metal door handle of the Tim Horton’s. He thinks about his health choices everyday at noon and often chooses The Horts; people are calling it The Horts. As he pulls on the handle, his index finger twangs with pain, tenderness from slamming it between two heavy boxes in the van first thing that morning. He shoulders through the washroom door and disappears from Eleanor’s sight. Her spoon continues to her mouth, followed by a quick wipe with her paper napkin.
As the washroom door closes behind McKinnon, the roar stops. Like a radio snapping on, her friend Pansy’s words return loud and near. Eleanor smiles, seemingly fascinated by Pansy’s two-year-olds’ bowel movements. She is hearing none of it.
Eleanor surveys the eyes of her three lunch companions. None of them appears to have noticed her interlude; if they did, they’re being cool about it. The topic changes to gossip about one of the men at the office. She wonders if later she’ll be the topic of their gossip.
Eleanor’s eyes wait impatiently at the washroom door. In a minute, it will open and he will appear. Eleanor makes a comment about the soup to reinforce her presence at lunch with her office friends.
Gossip is more interesting than Eleanor’s eyes so no one notices them bloom with delight when he emerges from the washroom, rubbing his damp palms on his uniform pants. His uniform is blue. It suits him. He strides to the counter and stands third in line, his back to her. Eleanor says to herself, “Third in line.”
She has seen him once before as she stood at her second floor office window looking into the parking lot. He got out of a delivery van carrying a package for a store on the main level. She caught the barest glimpse of his face, more a quick charcoal sketch, fluid strokes suggesting hairline, eyebrows and mouth. It took her breath away.
A minute later, he returned to the van, pausing to look up at the sky above Eleanor’s window. He didn’t see her standing there, transfixed as she was by his simple act of wiping his sweaty forehead with his bare forearm, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Keep still,” Eleanor said under her breath. He did.
She studied the tall lean man: his tanned handsome face, squinting eyes shaded by his arm, high definition lips twisted into another squint, half smile, half grimace, his mouth bright with teeth, the arch of his hairline, his broad blue shoulders. Eleanor transposed his image to the special gallery in her memory, a place populated by the most beautiful people she had ever seen.
Eleanor knew you seldom get the chance to re-encounter true beauty so it’s best to make the most of every encounter. Eleanor indelibly implanted her images of the deliveryman among her beautiful people. His arm finished the motion and he pulled open the sliding van door. A quick step and he disappeared from Eleanor’s sight.
She often summons her portraits of the deliveryman, first the fleeting caricature with its knowing smears of darkness, then the detailed version as he posed for her. There is wistfulness about his face, an incompleteness that yearns to evolve out of the shadows of his arm, the coil of his mouth, the dampness of his skin, just to be – plain and perfect in the world.
“Second in line.” Eleanor watches him rock slightly, impatiently as he stands behind two elderly women taking their time. She watches him turn to survey the room, checking for other deliverymen, checking out women. Their eyes never meet. As he scans the room, she catches glimpses of his face that set off brittle flares of desire in her heart.
McKinnon notices the women at the small table. They seem oblivious to him so he pauses only briefly in his glance, checking for recognition, finding none. Their conversation turns to a weekend shopping trip over the line as McKinnon steps to the counter to place his order.
She watches him fish his wallet out of the right rear pocket of his uniform trousers, digging with surety, the way men’s fingers do in familiar places. His wallet is slim, black leather. It is warm, Eleanor thinks. She smiles broadly at what Sue is saying or so it appears. Eleanor is dancing with the thought of his warm wallet.
The only other occasion Eleanor encountered one of her beautiful people for a second time, she married him. Elger, the magnificent man with the ugly name, first stepped into her awareness in the grandstand at the racetrack and a week later in line at the Safeway, taking her breath away both times. They started talking. They got married. They were doomed.
They had been married just over a year when Elger was involved in a fiery car crash. That was eighteen months ago. These days he sits in a wheelchair, staring out the living room window. Spinal damage took away all feeling below his waist. A bulky brace rubs against the burned areas of his neck and face. The narcotics keep him still and quiet. His once-firm sculpted body is a mangled, oozing mess in a chair, his classic visage made grotesque by fire, grafts and infection.
In her silent prayerful moments, Eleanor becomes aware she was the true instrument of Elger’s loss of beauty, she was the tool fate used to manipulate circumstances. He was on an errand for her, nothing complicated, just a few items at the grocery. He could have walked, she suggested it, he considered it, it was a beautiful day but he changed his mind. He even dropped his car keys and kicked them underneath the car so he had to get down on his belly and squirm his way under to reach them. Yet he still got in and drove away to his destiny. Nothing could have stopped him, Eleanor says to herself every day, still feeling unabsolved. Jill is going on about a new coat she saw at Fairfax. It is blue.
Will he get his lunch to go or is he a sit-down-kind-of guy? The question bounces lightly in her mind as Eleanor waits for him to turn. He turns holding a tray. A sit-down-kind-of guy!
There it is, his beautiful face, calm but discerning, selecting the best seat among the welded metal maze of colourful tables. With the shadows lifted and the caricature detailed, she sees his face is exceptional, unrelentingly handsome. There is a small halt in her breathing.
“Keep still,” she thinks.
She waits for everything to stop, for the pause to pose him perfectly for her momentary cause, her beatification, her hungry ogle. She anticipates the roar. It doesn’t happen. He keeps moving and sits.
McKinnon decides on a two-seater against a far window, on the other side of The Horts from Eleanor’s table. Once he sits, she cannot easily see him from her seat without gawking. Everyone would notice immediately. Outwardly, it appears as if Eleanor is enthralled in the near-whispered story Sue’s telling about her neighbours’ fights. Inside she is a storm of indecision, furiously confused. Should she get up, go over to him and introduce herself?
“Hello, my name is Eleanor. I’ve been mentally stalking you and I have a personal policy that if I see a beautiful person twice I have to marry them and cast horrible doom upon them.”
Maybe not.
Nevertheless, she can’t just let him leave without…
Without what?
Salami, whole wheat bread, milk and romaine.
The list of groceries Eleanor sent Elger to get for lunch, the errand he was on when he crashed. Suddenly she loses her appetite.
Eleanor takes a slow deep breath.
“Keep still.”
She turns her full attention to the trick for cooking whole chickens in a crockpot that Pansy is explaining.
Eleanor never even notices when McKinnon leaves.
March 28/04
BAD MEN WHO LOVE JESUS
Reid Dickie
“Calamity! Calamity! Calamity!” shouted Corny as he ambled into Waywotowich’s Garage, wiping his sweaty forehead with an oily rag, leaving a smear of Valvoline across his wrinkled brow.
“What’s the matter Corny?” asked the cherub from its perch on the gumball machine on the counter near the window at front of the garage on the corner of Reach and Beach.
“Durn. Durn. Durn.”
“Strong language there, Corny. What’s got you so riled up?”
“Ink blots and cumquats!”
“You are angry, Corny! You okay?”
“Blasted oil definitions!! I can’t get yusta them.”
“Huh? I thought you’d worked all that out with the pointy-headed Egyptians and the Saudis and the so-ons.”
“Me too Cheruby, me to. But these new rules sure make a difference. Like, No Scissors On Sunday. Hoooo leeeeee! No Scissors On Sunday!! ”
On the counter next to the gumball machine, a bright cardboard display of pink and blue rabbit foot key chains and a hardcard of cheap plastic sunglasses lay a big greasy pair of scissors.
“What about these?” asked Cheruby pointing to the scissors. “It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”
A worried look came over Corny’s freckled face. He didn’t know what to do about the scissors. He wiped more Valvoline on his forehead and stood staring dumbly at the counter. Corny resorted to his usual problem-solving tactic: he burst into song, his rich baritone filling the cavernous empty service station.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the three-hole punch, the three-hole punch, the three-hole punch,” he sang over and over.
“Corny. You’re stuck. Corny! CORNY! You’re stuck on the three-hole punch again.” Cheruby had to get a little feisty with the nodder sometimes. “YOU’RE STUCK” at peak volume brought Corny back to the immediate service station arising around him.
“I’m stuck.” Corny took a small hammer from his belt and struck his right elbow with a light tap. Innumerable ones and zeroes unraveled inside his head and spun back onto a digital plate.
“I’m stuck.” He brought a wavering hand up holding a blue screwdriver and tightened a few screws along his left leg.
“They’ll be makin’ us register our screwdrivers next, blastomycosis or not. I’m still a little stuck, Cheruby.”
“That’s okay Corny. You stay a little stuck and I’ll keep an eye on the store.”
“Would ya?” said Corny.
“Sure thing, little stuck buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy.” Corny tapped his elbow again but the word didn’t stop. Cheruby was having some fun with him, is all.
“Clown pants and romance and bright shiny kittens, eagles in snowsuits, mufflers and mittens, porridge with tycoons, shamblers and foes, these are the ways of the world I suppose.” Corny’s song filled the garage once more. Cheruby peered through the dirty window into the lot and the street beyond.
Corny’s song was interrupted by the resonant clang of the bell hose – a pleasant, ringing tone that bounced around inside the big room.
“Cadillac,” said Cheruby. “Cad eee lack.”
Corny paused in mid chorus to peer through the grime.
“A customer,” he whispered conspiratorially to Cheruby. “What do we do?”
“What we always do. Serve them!” said Cheruby.
“Oh yeah,” was Corny’s astonished reply. It was triumph.
“Still a little stuck,” Cheruby said under its breath as Corny went to serve the customer.
Cheruby seldom left its perch in the window of Waywotowich’s Garage. It wasn’t because it was naked, winged, pink and chubby; it was because the small plastic children sometimes called it “fat”, “fleshy”, and “organic” as they walked from their day boxes to their night boxes.
“Organic! Pah!” Cheruby would scoff. “How can a cherub be organic? Idiot plastic children!” It resented the small plastic thoughts of the children in this little tourist town.
All true cherubim are hermaphrodites – they possess the genitalia of both sexes, lingam and yoni. That is why Cheruby is an IT and not a HE or a SHE. It could be a BOTH or a THEM, I suppose.
Across the street at the QuikDikWhipSlik Dairy Isle, they were advertising ICE CREAM HATS. The line-up was half a block long.
Corny reluctantly approached the long black Cadillac and the driver’s window slid down two inches.
“Hello,” said Corny hopefully.
“Fill’er up,” a gruff voice said from inside the car.
The metal nozzle slipped into the side of the Cadillac. Corny noticed the bumper sticker that read, “I (heart) Jesus”. He peered into the car to see who was driving as he washed the windows. He could barely reach the top of the front windshield with the squeegee. Due to the smoked glass, Corny couldn’t see inside the car but he did notice the puffy face of Cheruby peeking out the garage window. He waved to Cheruby who flapped its wings excitedly in reply.
As Corny moved around the car washing the windows, the passenger door opened and a large man stepped out onto the concrete service pad. He was well over six feet tall, barrel-chested and thick-limbed with piercing blue eyes, a winning smile and a red goatee. He was completely naked, his white skin covered in curly red hair of varying textures and densities. His bald head sported two stubby horns. His voice was loud and clear.
“Hey there, my little buddy, which way to the pisser?”
Cowering, Corny said “You’re…you’re…the Devil.”
“Yup. I am the Devil but you can call me Satan, all my friends do. And Satan needs to take a piss.” The Devil gestured for directions with question-mark arms and a shrug.
“Through the door to the back on the left.”
The Devil grinned at Corny. “Thanks little buddy.”
Corny was transfixed by the small red-haired tail jiggling at the base of the Devil’s spine as the naked man disappeared into the shadows of Waywotowich’s Garage. When Cheruby recognized who was coming toward the garage it slipped down into its hiding nook beneath the counter.
Corny finished the fill, replaced the gas cap and told the driver it was twenty-five dollars. He never saw the face of the person who paid him. As Corny was walking away, the Devil came out of the garage.
“Much obliged buddy,” he said to Corny.
“Okay. Then, answer me a question.” Corny was quizzing the Devil! “How come, if you’re the Devil, you have a bumper sticker that says, “I (heart) Jesus”? Do you love Jesus?”
A wry smile came over the Devil’s face. “Yeah, about that bumper sticker. That’s my sense of humour. Some kid stuck it there. I thought it was funny so I left it.”
“So you don’t really love Jesus?”
“No, my huckleberry friend, I don’t. Jesus is a dickhead. But I do love the idea of his bumper sticker on my Cadillac. See ya, little buddy.”
For a minute it looked like the Devil was getting back into his car but instead he just dissolved through the door and the car sped away. The clang of the bell hose echoed through the empty garage. Emerging from its hiding place, Cheruby saw Corny standing next to the bowsers with $25 in his hand singing at the top of his lungs.
“Bee stings and coil kings and spaniels in tartans, claptraps with dewlaps, bingo and cartons, glimpses of turtles, myrtles and woe, this is the way we all need to go.”
The line-up for ICE CREAM HATS at the QuikDikWhipSlik Dairy Isle was now two blocks long.
Spring 2002
The New Quarterly, a literary magazine published in Waterloo, ON staged a contest in 2002 inviting writers to submit a story named “Bad Men Who Love Jesus.” This was my entry. It did not win.
WALLOW STONES AND GREMLIN GRASS
Reid Dickie
The wallow was only a few miles further through the flowing grass. A breeze wove the four-foot grass into a sea of green foam. Buffalo’s shaggy head swung from side to side as he headed for the indentation in the earth – his wallow, his basin of bliss, his leap from the prairie into the void.
A massive swarm of horseflies had plagued the herd for several weeks. Their hot stinging bites festered in hides, along spines, in noses, anuses and ears. That burning urgency sent Buffalo into a run for the last few hundred feet. Slobber ran from his mouth and clung like syrup to the tall ripe grass. The huge beast stopped at the edge of the slight hollow and wagged his head in anticipation.
When others of the herd were nearby, a pecking order ensued. But not today. There was only one at the wallow. He rolled onto his back at the edge of the hollow and slid ungracefully into the hole onto the rough stones. The gravel excoriated bits of dirt, burrs, stems and seeds that clung to the dense fur. Generations of fleas died in crushing, grinding horror and maggots, infesting the shedding remnants of his old coat, were annihilated as hide met the dry dirt and stones of the wallow.
Buffalo made pleasurable snorting sounds and kicked his legs in the air as he lolled in the dust. He rubbed the back of his head behind his horns on the rim of the wallow. A pusy smear of scabs was left on the grass.
As he lolled in the growing haze of dust around the wallow Buffalo saw the fitful sky and a blaze of sun followed by a tail of colours a thousand miles long. It was a rainbow streaking through his consciousness. Gremlin Grass was grabbing him behind his knees.
Gremlin Grass is a crazy-making tump Buffalo had found by following his nose. After a long drink at a slough, algae-green waterweeds still hanging from his furry muzzle, he scented Gremlin Grass. His instinct told him this was a helpful plant and to enjoy it. He sought it out and munched contentedly on the small patch of bright green grass.
Gremlin Grass was a rare find on the tall grass prairie. It grew in very small clumps with the ability to survive repeated grazing through regeneration of roots. Its roots foraged and sipped below the surface, burrowing, searching for the ingredients to create its poison, its glee.
Buffalo could easily smell its alluring aroma from several miles away. At the height of its flowering, it was not uncommon to see lone bellowing buffalo wandering frantically, seeking the source of the scent.
In the June heat, the little yellow flowers that burst from the stems of Gremlin Grass had an intoxicating allure. The tiny yellow bags of pollen hanging below each blossom bulged, awaiting dispersal, work for butterflies.
With the help of well-fermented nectars from an assortment of sensuous and colourful blooms, Butterfly is stoned all day. For them, Gremlin Grass is special. Butterfly loves to spread the exotic pollen of Gremlin Grass all over its thorax with its tiny legs, coating itself with the fine yellow mist. Though eyesight wasn’t his strongest sense, a flutter of butters’ above a clump in bloom was one way for Buffalo to spot the source of the enticing smell.
Meanwhile, underground, the roots drank in minerals and moisture. For several days during its short bloom, earthworms that brushed against the roots of Gremlin Grass received a pleasurable jolt to their nervous systems, one that elevated them past their cellular instinct. Their lingering next to the roots and the quick conditioning to the pleasure speaks to the depth of the contact.
Earthworm, Butterfly and Buffalo all enjoyed the gentle cooing of the brain Gremlin Grass brought to them. They liked the way it released them from instinct and gave them a new view of themselves and the worlds they inhabited.
Buffalo’s huge eyes bulged in delight as he rolled in the hollow. Bodily annoyances relieved now, the mind of Buffalo, agog with the prairie elixir, settled into a place beyond instinct, beyond the vigilant reptilian brain into a peaceful state of bliss.
The plume of dust welling into the prairie sky from the basin did not go unnoticed. Several packs of wolves, some nervous coyotes and a pair of wooly mammoth grazing nearby were all aware of the dust and its source.
Flecks of blood mixed with dust, fur and flesh smeared the stones at the bottom of the hollow. Flies began to swarm over the pit and onto Buffalo’s back. Standing, Buffalo shook enormously and the loose corruption shed onto the swaying grass. Shaking his head and snorting loudly Buffalo cleared the blockage of dust and rheum from his sinuses. A tickbird danced and foraged on the thick hide of Buffalo’s back. Overhead the sky was darkening, lightning and thunder crackled and rumbled.
The rain came sudden, cool and heavy, a welcome relief from the heat of the day. Buffalo was drenched in minutes. The open red sores were washed clean; the fur, with repeated shakings, was purged of dirt and salvage; the wetness soothed his dry nose and tasted fresh on his large pink tongue. Rain washed the stones clean and diluted the blood into invisibility as the wallow filled. Buffalo pushed himself over and rolled in the wet grass, stems combing his thick brown fur.
Miles away, after the rain stopped, lightning struck a patch of deadfall in a bluff and set the dead wood on fire. The fire spread into the grass, swept along by the wind. A red flash danced along the surface of the grass. Buffalo raised his nose into the air and sniffed.
Smoke.
Run.
Spring 2002
GOD IS AT HOME
Reid Dickie
“God is at home.
We are in the far country.”
- Meister Eckhart
Here in the far country we are inundated. The plague of pestilence.
Locusts!
Like stuttering, clattering machines they scramble and skutter up from the grass before our bootsteps, or what’s left of the grass and our boots. They eat and eat, brittle winged forces of continuous digestion.
Locusts!
They eat the whitewash off the walls, the hides off our cattle, thatch from sodden roofs, every tuft of horsehair between the chinks in the logs and winter is coming. The sky has been blackened with them for days now as they pass. We can only sit in the shadow of their passing and watch the sun flicker through their thick clouds.
Locusts!
Some people call them Mormon crickets.
October 16, 2002
ITINERARY ITEM
Reid Dickie
10:23 am
Prince Philip presents gold certificates to achievers assembled in clusters.
“What did you achieve?” the woman standing next to me asks. She smells of expensive perfume and gin. Her wild green eyes are suspicious of my turban.
“I delivered food to starving Ugandan children. And you?”
She stares at me. Her nostrils flare wide, her mouth opens to speak but she says nothing. Huffily she turns away as I notice a tiny patch of bright green leaves sprout in the hair on her left temple.
“What did you achieve?” she quizzes the short man on metal crutches on her other side.
“I started a public awareness campaign that led to the provincial government recognizing the special needs of disabled employees. And you?”
Turning away, a look of disgust traces across her lips as a short green stem pokes out of the collar of her green dress.
She demonstrates her distaste for the other achievers in her cluster by exuding a slightly rotted vegetable smell. I take a step away from her, as do others.
When the Prince hands her the gold certificate she is visibly shaken and he has to grasp her arm to steady her. At his touch, she recovers instantly, becoming gracious and humble.
“What did you achieve?” the old prince asks.
“I’m the missing link between the plant and animal kingdoms,” she says.
“How nice for you, dear.” The Prince smiles and moves on.
A tiny red rose blossoms behind her ear.
Reid Dickie
On a high hill in southern Saskatchewan next to a stone buffalo effigy, I met Carlos Castaneda. He was alone and naked except for a guitar. He sat cross-legged on the dry dun grass and strummed, trying to remember the words to some old Neil Diamond song.
The sun was in his eyes. He clenched them shut against the heat, the fury, the bullshit!
He asked if he could have my car. I told him it was rented.
“Rented!” he exclaimed. “Everything is rented!” with a wave of his hand to express inclusion. “We’re all rented!”
I gave him the car.
When he started it, that old Neil Diamond song was playing on the radio.
“I am…I said, to no one there,” sang Neil.
Carlos left me two bags of groceries and drove away.
“Everything is a circle,” said the buffalo effigy.
August 2/02
BEFORE AND AFTER VAL MARIE
Reid Dickie
BEFORE
At Ipswich McCauley’s Museum, you will see five hundred sixty one pairs of baby shoes dating back to 1750; one hundred twenty of them are bronzed, some are moccasins wore by Sioux babies.
Down the road apiece is Doanne Skweizer’s grandfather’s collection of wrenches, 184 in all. Next to each wrench is a glass jar of nuts and bolts the wrench was used on.
In Lipton Seeback’s farmyard is a small shed that contains three hundred eleven early electric fans and a couch made of horseshoes welded together. Not even one of the fans work but, improbably, the couch is extremely comfortable.
Astwurst Shfickins brought his mother’s collection of dolls made of goat dung – all two hundred seventy three of them – from Norway. She made every one herself. He keeps them under locked airtight glass domes, each dome lit by an intense overhead beam.
A mile detour gets you to Ditdit Kbeema’s House of Coconuts. It is not a house made of coconuts but rather a collection of all the varieties of coconuts the planet provides. Ditdit will always try to sell you a polyester Hawaiian shirt. Do not buy one.
Lukas Smallth claims to have about $30,000 worth of coins that he watched being run over by trains after he put them on railway tracks. When you ask him the obvious question, Lukas will likely weep.
Pershing Dowhauser inherited an uncle’s collection of clothespins and displays them on a clothesline holding up an aunt’s collection of Irish linen tea towels with birds on them. Everyday is laundry day at Pershing’s house.
As a school project when he was eight, Gorse Grass started keeping a diary of his toilet habits and still persists at this fifty-three years later. He will show you his twenty-seven volume diary, point out highlights, explain his rating system and, if he is in a good mood, show you the entry for his most favourite bowel movement ever.
Dawn Intrafficschool’s museum features the two things she collects: ribald stories about nuns and obscure laundry detergents. Dawn will enthrall you all day with her nun stories, which she reads aloud in her bold voice. Since she blushes easily, she will spend most of the time beet-faced and embarrassed. Next to her wringer washer is her collection of rare laundry detergents with names by Pek, Jer, Poomt, Durf, KKKleen and White World. Whether removed from the market due to corrosive natures, unhealthy emissions or witless naming, all her detergents have a story to tell, just like Dawn herself.
VAL MARIE
I stopped at a pay phone outside a garage in Val Marie, Saskatchewan at 3:00 am to call in my report. A small green ball of light shot around the streets of the tiny village the whole time I made my call. It ignored me and, making a tiny rocket noise, zoomed about four feet off the ground up and down the dozen dusty streets that comprise Val Marie. The few streetlights in the village were the old-fashioned, loaded-with-shadows white light types so the brighter-than-neon green gave an eerie organic illumination to the scene.
As I drove out of town, the green ball streamed by me then turned down a street it had traveled 80 times in the last 5 minutes.
A few miles on, I stopped at the side of the highway. As I stepped out of the car, Orion stepped out of the sky and rubbed my shoulders. I palpitated next to Highway 18, massaged by a constellation.
By a stream, I fell asleep. I know this.
I am eastbound now, horizon speaking directly to me in the dim yellow language of morning.
AFTER
Toodhow Klippenhaus will show you his collection of Venezuelan toreador hats for a small fee, usually from $5 to $8. He has over 800 to show you. Set aside a day.
At Aurora Gaunt’s Soup Museum, taste sixty-six kinds of consommé.
Watch for the dozens of flags flying at Biffyland, the world’s largest collection of outhouses, all in working order. How many? They have lost count but you can count on getting lost in the Biffy Maze. This is a recommended pit stop.
For some odd reason Clynmyst Gigglougg kept everything his mother told him never to put in his mouth. And here it all is, awaiting your perusal. Warning signs are posted.
The Old Testament is written on the west wall of Bryton Galosheski’s barn, on the east the New Testament. The gable ends are painted to look like the fore and aft of Noah’s Ark. All along the ridge top of the gambrel roof is a large wooden cutout of the Last Supper, elaborately painted on both sides. The entire roof area is covered with antlers, horns and hooves of wild animals fastened securely with airplane wire. Some say “awesome”, others say “ghastly.” You decide.
If broken scissors are your bliss then do not miss the stimulating displays at Dayton Drayder’s Home for Wayward Half Scissors. Dayton can answer all your scissor-related queries, even “Is half a scissor better than no scissor at all?”
March 15, 2004
None of these museums exists. Sorry.
Val Marie does exist in southwestern Saskatchewan at the western edge of Grasslands National Park. It has 137 people, an excellent bed and breakfast called The Convent, interesting tour guides and the Information Centre for Grasslands National Park. It is often the Canadian hot spot.
GRASS OF THE APOCALYPSE
Reid Dickie
“…down from the mountains and
up from the valleys will come
men as bitter and implacable as
the grass of the apocalypse.”
- Jean Giono
Now, the nameless…
The mountain men are broad, strong and enduring, fleet on the steep and the flat. In their contemplative practice, they encourage encounters with inorganic beings in imaginal places. Agape Descending, The One into the Many.
Izbister Falling
The valley men are lean, fast and cantankerous, always hungry even after a large meal. They are in possession of the moment through practice and discipline. They have constant access to the Witness. Eros Ascending, The Many into the One.
Izbister Rising
September 29, 2002
TWO SIN EATERS
Reid Dickie
THE SIN EATER 4874 BC
The course salted acorn bread was already turning black. Credne had placed it on the naked chest of the cadaver less than an hour before.
“Go fetch Burstall. Tell him two chickens,” she said to her oldest child. Gothal smiled slightly, glad to be away from the grim tableau of death and the small wailings that dominated the little shack.
“Where might he be?”
Credne shot a look at her son. “Find him,” was all she said as she got another loaf of bread. It was the last loaf, the one she’d planned to serve her family at supper, but Credne felt no remorse, no loss, nothing really. Her grief numbed her. She was grateful to have the bread at all for this sad occasion. It was no sacrifice. It was just what Spirit required.
When Gothal opened the door to the hovel, he stumbled over a small basket someone left on the step. It contained two small loaves of acorn bread. Several other anonymous baskets appeared on their stoop over the next few hours as word of the death passed from lips to ears. Credne was grateful for the gifts and the understanding each small hard loaf conveyed.
After physical death has occurred, the body requires time to release the soul and all the virtue or lack thereof, and wisdom or lack thereof, it has gathered during this lifetime. The deceased’s sins are also released, tainting the soul. But the sins can be sieved out by placing on the corpse the most common edible in the locale, loaves of salted acorn bread. As the soul ascends, the bread collects the sins, cleansing the soul. However, proper disposal of the blackened bread is essential. The role of the sin eater is to devour the tainted bread, absorbing, integrating, transcending and healing each sin.
Gothal walked quickly along the mud path toward the centre of the cluster of hovels that comprised Rivertree, so named because it sat near a river and a very large, very old tree. He scanned the small marketplace. Only a few vendors had ventured out on this blustery day. The intermittent downpours, constant lightning and thunder and wind gusts that bent the old oaks discouraged most people from leaving the relative safety of their huts.
It had been a hot pleasant midsummer. Life had been easy, but that changed when the body was found. At that hour, the wind began to howl cold and mournful and hadn’t stopped since. An ominous pall hovered over the tiny community, a chimera of disbelief felt by everyone including Gothal. He shivered and pulled his coarse wool wrap tighter around his thin frame.
Gothal made some quick inquiries of the merchants. Coutha, who sold live chickens and dead fish, shook her head at his query. Balcoot, earless and fingerless due to past indiscretions, sat before a pathetic array of wilted wet vegetables. He sneered at Gothal’s question and shooed the boy away with what remained of his right hand.
Gothal never liked talking with Clarank but he knew if anyone could locate Burstall, it would be Clarank. Horrified by the weird gelatinous appearance of Clarank’s eyes – they appeared to drip out of the sockets – but compelled to stare at them, Gothal asked him about Burstall.
Clarank moved his jaw to indicate speech but all Gothal heard was a sound like two stones being rubbed together. He listened more intensely and began to hear small fractured words in the grinding racket. The message was distant but clear.
“You will find him in the grove at the point of fear.”
Gothal didn’t like the sound of that. He’d hoped Burstall would be lurking somewhere in the little market. It was logical he was in the dense oak grove that surrounded the small band providing sustenance and protection. Today Gothal dreaded the oak grove.
A cold wind howled through the oaks, straining faint foul laughter from their branches as Gothal walked deeper into the forest.
Since most people in Rivertree feared Burstall, hunting for him in the forest would not be enjoyable. The only person who felt comfortable in Burstall’s unpredictable powerful presence now lay stretched naked and dead on a plank table.
Gothal feared Burstall, and, though freed from the macabre scene at home, his fear gathered as he trudged among the old trees. The lad whistled tunelessly to help relieve the increasing tightness in his body. The wind ripped the jagged notes from his lips and dissolved them in the swirling air. Gothal hoped Burstall would suddenly spring from behind a tree and end this nerve-wracking quest.
At 14, Gothal’s role as eldest child kept him occupied tending his five younger siblings and 24 sheep. Usually he liked the responsibility; in fact, he thrived and grew with the experience. But he dreaded the role he had to play today, that of seeker of the shaman.
Suddenly something wet, warm and furry struck him on the side of his head, fell onto his shoulder where it teetered spurting thick liquid. Bits of intestine clung to Gothal’s hair. Wiping his face his hand came back covered in blood. Its source was a newly deceased rabbit, its throat open, blood pulsing forth.
With disgust, Gothal pushed the rabbit away from him as a cruel, inhuman laugh rose from between two hoary oaks. From the trees Burstall’s bright eyes – piercing blue and intense – peered from beneath a nest of long hair that waved back and forth, changing hue as it swayed. The partly obscured eyes and the mean chortle transfixed Gothal.
“He’s dead,” offered Gothal feebly.
“I know.”
“Mama, she be Credne, asked for you to eat the bread for him. She said two chickens.”
Burstall’s eyes brightened at the prospect. “Suddenly I feel hungry. Lead the way scrawny child.”
With his instinctual forest homing device working to perfection, Gothal navigated the darkening oak grove with ease and accuracy arriving at home quickly. Burstall walked the whole way two steps behind him, breathing hard and muttering in some strange language, which had frightened Gothal into imagining Burstall was going to kill him and eat him. Their quick arrival in early twilight was a great relief to the boy. There was another basket of acorn bread on the stoop when the pair arrived.
“Here. Skin this.” Burstall tossed the slain rabbit he’d been carrying to Gothal. “You stay out here,” Burstall said, taking the boy’s head in his hands and forcing their eyes to meet. “Do you know who you are?”
Gothal did understand, suddenly and inexplicably, he understood. As soon as he said, “Yes,” he felt a great weight lift off his young shoulders. He smiled at Burstall. “Thank you.”
Burstall was taken aback by the boy’s gratitude and seeming comfort in his presence. He smiled back at the boy, releasing his head. “I’m not going to eat you, by the way.”
A shrill keening laugh erupted from Burstall’s face, which turned into a huge gaping mouth with flapping teeth and bright yellow tongue. Gothal jumped away from the sound, which had brought Credne to her door.
“Not so comfortable now scrawny boy?”
“Leave Gothal alone. He’s in here,” Credne said matter-of-factly to Burstall. His attention shifted away from Gothal to the open door of the shack.
The shaman plucked a little rattle made of two walnut shells and small stones from his tattered cape. He shook the rattle from inside his closed fist with just a small opening at his thumb letting sound escape. He pointed the sound toward the open doorway, rattling continuously as he approached.
Credne had lit two small candles and a glowing butter lamp, the only illumination in the small room dominated by the dead man. Burstall’s rattle caused the candles to flicker wildly as he crossed the threshold. He whistled through his teeth and waved his rattling hand directing the small stinging sound toward the corpse.
The body appeared to be mottled with large black growths. In fact, Credne had kept applying loaves as they appeared at her door. One balanced on the forehead, three on the chest, two on the belly and two on the abdomen, one on each thigh. Ten loaves, all of them blackened, most covered with a fine shimmering mold that ran from glittering emerald to iridescent blue. So adorned were the remains of Recorso.
Recorso means “always returning to a state of grace” and the one who bears the name sustains that state within the band. With the death of Recorso, grace is loose, its magic is free, possibly even unavailable to the band, which has always been guided by grace. Special rituals need to be performed to ensure the succession of grace occurs smoothly.
The sin eater knew what to do.
Credne pointed toward six more loaves on a stool near the body. Burstall took two of the loaves and placed them over Recorso’s genitals. Almost immediately, the bread began to blacken. Burstall made an eerie delighted sound that frightened Credne, which was its intent.
“You will get out of this house now. I need time alone for this. Take your children and go into the forest and wait until you hear three wolves howling in unison then you can come back here and he’ll be all yours. Take two of those loaves and get away quickly.”
“How long?” Credne inquired, her strength and understanding both evident to the shaman.
“With smiling spirits, two days. Leave the chickens…and the boy.”
November 11, 2009
THE SIN EATER 1979 AD
After chasing off an emaciated cur that came sniffing at the meat, a man with two fingers missing from each hand hung freshly skinned goats on large hooks at his stall in the central market in Old Delhi. My friend Murta and I strolled through the heady mix of smells, sights and sounds. The smog-filtered sun gave a yellow hue to the muggy haze. The back of my shirt was soaked with sweat.
Boom boxes blasting popular Indian music competed with the sounds of ducks and chickens, goats bleating, chiming bicycle taxi bells, the hollers of vendors, the pleas of beggars and the din of shoulder-to-shoulder people. Commingling in the market air was a rich brew of odours from cooking food, animal feces, a thousand kinds of curry, strange smoldering fires, sewage, incense and the aromatic crush of raw humanity. Now and then, the crowd and the air were split by the loud incessant honking of a car horn as a shiny black Mercedes, its windows tinted dark, inched its way through the throng. As we left the market we could hear, coming from up ahead, drumming accompanied by the occasional loud crack of a whip.
Adjacent to the market was one of many temples to Siva. In front of the temple, a large crowd had gathered, giving wide berth to a young man wearing a soiled loincloth who wielded a long leather whip with amazing elegance, expertise and speed. He had a small chin beard with a red glass bead braided into the end. His black hair, tied in a knot that rested at the nape of his neck, shone against his skin.
Two other young men beat drums at the edge of the circle. They accented their drumming with hoots, yowls, whistles, growls and laughter. Every sharp, startling snarl of the whip incited them to drum a little faster.
With breath-taking skill and sensuality, the man danced with the whip. It gently entwined itself around his body leaving nary a mark then spiraled away wild and dangerous, its loud snap echoing off the walls of the temple. His dance slowed to transfixed weaving. He extended his arm, the whip cracked and the tip tore away a small piece of his forearm. A bead of blood appeared in the wound, his face twisted into a grimace. The drummers increased the beat and his dance resumed, more frantic and intense, the whip his willing partner. His steps became wild and flying, clouds of pale dust rose around his bare feet. The snap end of the whip raised a small explosion of dirt wherever it hit the ground.
The dancer’s grimace melted into calmness and finally bliss as he swirled and leapt with his long thin friend. A trail of blood rolled down his arm. The next snap of the whip dug a piece out his chest just above his left nipple. The blood flowed freely down his chest and belly, soaking into the stained loincloth. His face was a mask of agony once more. He momentarily arched away from the pain then appeared to embrace it, live it fully and integrate it into his dance, into his being.
To my Western sensibilities, this galvanizing display seemed a form of madness. I flinched breathlessly at every invited wound because I was only able to observe the outer structure of the ritual. The inner meaning remained a mystery. Every time the whip cut into the man’s flesh, Murta glanced at me to gauge my reaction.
The drummers beat louder and faster, their cries mixed with the shouts of the dancer. His feet and body moved in abandon, the whip appeared to be controlling him. By degrees, after every cruel bite, the agony on his face changed to ecstasy. With measured intent, suffering transformed into the inner experience of transcendence.
The man’s brown body bore many whip wounds; some healed to pale blemishes, some to redness and the start of a scar, others with fresh dark scabs in various stages of healing. The drummers also had numerous scars and scabs on their bodies from previous encounters with the whip.
The dancer was oblivious to the crowd that gathered to watch. Another crack of the whip and a rose of red blood blossomed on the front of his thigh. He limped for two steps then the dance and the drums ate his agony once more. His arm was aglisten with blood, his torso had spattered lines around it from the movement, and the front of the breech was damp red. His leg grew a long red tattoo to his ankle that left shiny blood beads on the dry ground. His leaps got higher, his cries more blissful as the whip flew and its static cut the air. He opened a wound on his shoulder blade and another on the calf of his right leg. His eyes were shiny with pain; his raw flesh bore the marks of agony. He was traveling with the pain. It was his companion, his catalyst. The body, pain and all, transcended.
His brown face cracked into a beatific smile and his eyes cleared, no longer glassy but witnessing transformation. Like Dionysus, he spun in the dirt, the whip and the flesh disappeared in a blur. The drumming became furious; the crowd participated in the wildness with whistles, yells and shouts of their own. Several horned goats, seemingly as transfixed as the crowd, bleated wildly at the edge of the circle. Murta said the dancer probably wouldn’t open more wounds. She was right.
The drumming suddenly stopped and the dancer stood motionless in the centre of the circle, his whip now limp and benign in the dirt. Blood trickled in leisurely rivulets down his body. A wailing cheer went up from the crowd and they began tossing coins toward the bleeding man. The drummers scurried about collecting the money, carrying it in their inverted drums and offering gestures of gratitude to the crowd. As the crowd dispersed, several merchants with shops near the temple brought out food and water to give to the trio.
“Are you all right? You look a little freaked out.”
“A little. Tell me what we just witnessed, Murta?” I asked.
“Okay. The dancer is a sin eater. Are you familiar with the term?”
“Not specifically.”
“He is following an old, old tradition where a man, by inviting pain to himself, experiencing it fully and dancing it into ecstasy, accomplishes the transformation of suffering into bliss. As a result, his immediate community – those witnessing the event – is spared that suffering. He has eaten their sins and in return for this service, the spectators and the nearby merchants pay him in coin and food.”
“He suffers so they don’t have to,” I said.
“Exactly. He’s transcending his body and his mind. He is really dancing with his spirit, the whip is a symbol of spirit but it’s also the connection that joins body and spirit.”
“Christianity has something similar. Jesus suffered so Christians wouldn’t have to. He ate their sins,” I said.
“The only differences are cultural. We just witnessed a more hands-on approach that most Christians wouldn’t find acceptable or comfortable. The distance between Christian Communion and goatboy with his whip is great only in its level of comfort for the participants. In the ritual of spilling blood and rending flesh, sanitized and made safe for modern Christians, no blood donation required. Just sip the wine and taste the wafer and try not to think about cannibalism,” Murta said.
“That is the ancient root of Communion, the human sacrifice, eating our own. Christianity proclaimed we don’t have to keep going through this all the time because Jesus Christ did it for us in One Big Sacrifice.”
“The Lamb of God. And goatboy? What did the Christians make of him with his little horns? Satan, of course.”
“Since you are familiar with the dancer’s intent, how do you feel now?” I asked.
“I have known people who, witnessing a sin eater, don’t see flesh or movement at all. They only experience the direct connection to the Divine the dancer has created. That’s how I feel. In my own personal way, with the dancer’s help, I’ve been touched by the Divine. And you?”
“A little queasy.”
While Murta and I stood talking, I noticed the drummers were cleaning the dancer’s wounds with urine and a poultice made of chewed leaves. The dancer was standing, filled with energy, his smiling face lit with a transcendent glow.
Several goats sauntered up to the trio and stood nearby, gazing with huge glassy eyes. One began flicking drops of the dancer’s blood out of the dirt into its mouth with its tongue.
Spring 2002
“The Sin Eater 1979” was selected as a Top Ten Finalist in the 2002 Eden Mills Writer’s Festival Short Story Contest.
THE COFFEE ROCKS
Reid Dickie
Requiring little or no cream in your coffee was a badge of honour when coffee became mandatory for everyone. Bungle waged a private war within himself every time he sipped his brew black. He even eschewed sweet, though it was a radical stance; artificial sweeteners were mandatory for people under 25. Sweet and low, thought Bungle.
The media was baffled, as usual. Why were so many college age men suddenly feeling compelled to gather around boulders and perform seemingly random rituals that involved a great deal of touching flesh to stone, dancing in slow motion and smashing their cell phones, now mandatory for everyone from birth, on the rocks? What’s going on? The media hasn’t really wanted to know the answer to that question in decades.
Let me background you on the stones. They became a trendy landscaping feature in the early part of the 2000s after cosmetic poisoning of lawns, boulevards and all grassy areas was made mandatory. Weeds were against the law. You were fined if a weed inspector found a dandelion on your lawn.
That meant the grass everywhere was toxic all the time. Entire residential blocks hired cosmetic lawn poisoning companies to continuously slosh chemicals on the earth to prevent weeds of all kinds. Only green grass and some flowers were permitted.
Instead of lawns, concrete became the popular option. To add some visual relief to the cement, we used stones. Rocks didn’t need poisons and broke up the straight lines. They became such a common feature of city landscapes that businesses catered to a lunch crowd who sat on small rocks to eat off larger rocks. Every coffee shop had a few big boulders among its tables and benches. There were coffee shops on every block, often nothing but coffee shops with boulders out front or in back. It was the Stone Age but with coffee.
Bungle was working on his eleventh cup of the day as it approached two in the morning. Bungle and his buddies hung out at Win-Win Situation, a slightly sleazy coffee bar known for some “interesting” brews. The coffee boys gathered around a large granite boulder, one of the more popular stones outside Win-Win. Garnet, Loop, Fifi (a man with a woman’s name) and Bungle usually met at this boulder for their nightly howl.
Why they were continuously drawn to this spot night after night, meeting groups of others, was utterly outside the awareness of these four young men and all the other men who, for equally inexplicable reasons, were drawn to other large stones. What subterranean direction were these men following? What Kosmic commandment held them in its sway?
No one could explain this bizarre behaviour.
There are a number of chemicals added to coffee to increase its addictiveness, as with cigarettes. Since the Human Genome Project mapped our DNA, everyone is vulnerable to the good and evil whims of scientists, corporations and politicians. One effective way to exploit without being discovered is to add several hundred genetic markers to products to increase their addictiveness, markers that ensure a wide gamut of human types will become further enslaved to the product. Tobacco, coffee and alcohol are the obvious places for such an experiment. But it extends into breakfast cereals, canned peaches, baby food, instant soups, soft drinks, among hundreds of other everyday products. Don’t get me started about what the greasy burger chains do with their meat!
One of the unforeseen reactions to these chemical markers is this odd behaviour in young men of a certain genetic make-up: northern European with blonde hair, blue eyes and pale complexions from Sweden, Norway, Holland, Denmark, Germany, usually very lactose tolerant.
During the “rituals,” the media show the young men gathered in the dark, eerily lit by midnight streetlights, caressing the stones, singing wildly, incomprehensively. Dancing, entranced, in slow motion, their lithe bodies swirl around the stones, each a moving expression of his inner agony. There the media coverage usually ends. This is a heavily censored story.
Those were only the first symptoms. The second stage is stranger. At a time of their lives when most men can think about little else but sex, the coffee boys become utterly asexual. Their sex thoughts dry up, their genitals shrivel, their body hair falls out and sex becomes irrelevant to them. This the media never report. Nor do they report the late stages.
The endgame begins innocently enough with each taking a turn smashing his cell phone into the rocks, the plastic jabberware disemboweled and silent. It is a symbolic gesture. Its meaning resonates only within a certain strand of the DNA, far below waking consciousness, dreaming and deep dreamless sleep. The media give teasing glimpses of but no explanation for the heretical smashing of cell phones against the rocks. It is disturbing for people to feel someone doesn’t want to be in touch with them, that there are unphoneables.
After that, the boys go “seeking the softness of the rock” and “turning to stone”; meaning they throw themselves down repeatedly with great force onto the stones. Sometimes they take running starts and smash their shoulders into the stone, breaking collarbones and ribs, sometimes necks. But the usual cause of death, and most of the coffee boys die, is smashing his skull open on the rocks. You can live to do it again if your body is working on sheer instinct alone. It cannot be done thoughtfully a second time. You no longer are able to think.
As Bungle emerged from Win-Win Situation carrying his dozener for the day, he saw his friend Fifi laying on the concrete jerking and twitching, his right shoulder a mass of blood and bone. Loop and Garnet stood wide-eyed and speechless, pointing.
Fifi’s spasms became more organized and he painfully drew himself up into a low crouch. Then he ran, as fast as he was able, into the rock headfirst. His body arched and he fell, a dead heap, blood oozing from his head in ever-decreasing pulses.
A sudden envy grew in Bungle when he saw his friend, someone he’d known since Grade Four, now prone, lifeless, delivered, an escapee. Bungle felt a need to accomplish this too, an inner drive that compelled him toward his next act, his destiny, his time.
Bungle howled one last time at the glare of the yellow sodium streetlight, put his headphones on, pushed a button and “Baby Elephant Walk” by Lawrence Welk began to play – all good music had, like weeds, been made illegal – turned it up full and sped, fleet and fair, his blonde hair streaming away, headfirst into the rock.
His bounce was sweet and short, he lay next to his friend. A sudden geyser of blood erupted from a growing bump on his head. Bungle had blown his top. The rock was sprayed with a fine mist of Bungle’s brains and blood. They’d still be there the next morning, dried into a red crispy peeling sheet.
If you listened carefully, you could hear the bucolic strains of Lawrence Welk still playing on Bungle’s headphones.
August 16, 2002
“The Coffee Rocks” won Honourable Mention in the Canadian Writer’s Journal Short Story Contest, Spring 2003. Published in CWJ April 2003 and in Choice Works #7
DISCARDED CHILDREN
REBEL
Reid Dickie
Rebel reaches for a box of tampons and slips them inside her jacket. Above her head, the convex mirror relays the image of her crime to the clerk in the convenience store.
“Hey,” the clerk says loudly. There is no mistaking she is talking to Rebel.
“Hey!” she says louder. “Put that back, you thief!” The clerk is walking briskly toward Rebel.
The clerk is in her mid twenties, bigger and taller than Rebel but a hint of fear in her voice betrays her bravado. Rebel recognizes the fear and, her face twisted into a sneering mask of hatred, starts walking toward the clerk. She growls a low sustained warning but the clerk keeps coming toward her, talking louder.
As the clerk stumbles backward from Rebel’s glancing blow to her face, the tampons slip out of their hiding place and fall to the floor. Rebel scoops up the small box and runs from the store. Blocks later, her heart raging in her chest, Rebel stops and leans panting against the cement wall of the parkade where she lives. She feels wet warmth draining from her crotch.
Her period wasn’t something Rebel had considered when she finally fled her mother’s alcoholism, her stepfather’s sexual advances and her brother’s manic depression. The harrowing environment of dysfunction she left behind receded into the cruel reality of living on the street, finding something to eat, a place to sleep, warmth, cleanliness, friendship, even love. At this moment, Rebel would settle for a few minutes alone to deal with her menstrual cycle.
She slips into the near-empty parkade. It smells of engine oil, exhaust and the faint rancid odour of discarded things decaying. And, of course, urine. The ill-lit corners in the cement parkade are dark and eaten away from uric acid.
Everybody’s always pissing. Rebel has watched as businessmen carrying $1,000 briefcases and wearing $3000 worth of clothes, step into a corner and piss to their heart’s content before getting into their expensive cars for the commute home. She has seen women dressed in elegant evening gowns and long gloves, aglitter with jewels, yank up their dresses and squat to relieve themselves. One woman took a small lace-edged hankie from her tiny evening bag and daintily wiped herself with it before carefully folding it and putting it back in her bag.
Like dogs, everybody’s always pissing. The creepy security guard who works midnights lets it hang out and leaks wherever he pleases. If he thinks he’s alone – he’s not – he’ll stand in the middle of an empty level and spin around in circles, howling and pissing, his cock flying in the centrifugal force.
It is after-hours for the day workers who drift in from the suburbs and their comfortable homes, park and secure their expensive cars and SUVs so they can perform their important daily grind feeling secure. Seldom do they notice Rebel, even when their headlights sweep across her, crouched forlorn against the cement.
She reaches up into a recess in the low ceiling of the parkade and hauls out her knapsack that contains everything she owns. She finds some table napkins she lifted from a donut shop and rummages for a fresh pair of panties. The ones she finds aren’t fresh but they’ll do. She crouches behind a low dividing wall and slips out of her jeans. Her crotch is sticky with blood. Wiping away most of the purged fluid, Rebel opens the small box, unwraps a tampon and gently pushes it in. It hurts a little going in but feels settled and helpful once it’s fully inserted. She pulls on her clothes; her jeans are foul smelling and soiled with her blood.
Rebel’s stomach rumbles. Damn. Why hadn’t she grabbed a bag of chips or something along with the tampons? It would have made the escapade complete and her punch more justified. Rebel resigns herself to another dumpster dive behind a fast food restaurant.
She sits and relaxes in the quiet parkade. She hears echoey voices coming over the cement wall. Several other runaways share the parkade with her but the voices aren’t theirs so she doesn’t check to see who it is. A minute later, a car engine starts up and pulls away toward the exit ramp.
No one notices Rebel’s presence. Silence returns to the parkade.
SNIFF
Reid Dickie
“Johnny Cash.”
Conrad stood at the counter of the convenience store, his emaciated body weaving inside his dirty clothes. He didn’t know why the cashier couldn’t understand him. He moved the stinking rag away from his face revealing black patches of skin around his nose and upper lip, deterioration due to continuous contact with the gasoline Conrad sniffed every day all day. He spoke again without the rag over his mouth and still the person did not understand him.
Conrad couldn’t tell if the person was a man or a woman. His eyesight was growing dimmer everyday from sniff. Squinting, he repeated his words to the cashier. They made perfect sense to Conrad.
“Johnny Cash.”
Based on scrambled prompting from his dissolving brain and passing through his black rotted teeth and decaying lips, all that came out was an incomprehensible hiss of air. Conrad had been unable to form words for several months.
“Johnny Cash.”
Just after his tenth birthday, Conrad Nightbird began sniffing gasoline with other children on the grim Pikangikum Reservation in northwestern Ontario. The poverty, abuse, disease and desperation in which he was immersed seemed to diminish with each deep pull of the acrid solvent that Conrad took into his lungs. His mind settled into a sustained state of indifference to the world around him. Nothing mattered. Sniff erased caring. He liked that.
If he could still have remembered back to his early use of sniff, Conrad would have recalled being huddled around the warm air vent outside the dilapidated school in the middle of dark winter nights with a group of other children from the reservation. He would recall the rag that passed from dirty hand to dirty hand, the relief the rag brought and the smell of young addicted bodies. He might have remembered accidentally setting fire to the community centre and the subsequent banishment of him and three other teens from the reservation.
That was when Conrad drifted into Winnipeg.
Since then, he had lost the mental capacity to remember anything of his past or to anticipate a future. All that remained for Conrad was a confused and dim now, a present that was mostly a blur. Sniff had wiped away the brain cells needed for thoughts and memories. Any personal ability he may have developed to analyze and think things through was gone. He could no longer step back and observe himself; all perspective had dissolved into the solvents. His sense of self was flat and momentary. He barely existed.
Without a sufficiently distinct sense of himself, Conrad could no longer support complicated feelings such as love or anger. He was not capable of emotional range. All that mattered to him was basic bodily impulses and instincts but, in the throes of his deterioration, even hunger and sexual arousal had been erased. He was left with only one instinct, one need: to cauterize himself and the world with sniff.
This was not an egocentric requirement. The loss of personal perspective and the brain damage from sniff reduced Conrad to a pre-egoic state, back to the primary matrix. The only reason he existed was to feed his cells the sniff they screamed for every moment. It was his only attachment to the world, his last responsibility.
Most of his language was gone. Conrad was reduced to a few basic sounds, mostly senseless noises. To Conrad, his noises remained a murky communication that still allowed him contact with others.
“Johnny Cash.”
The one thing, in some cases the last thing, all huffers truly know is that fire will kill them. Open flame of any kind is their nemesis. It takes a single witnessing of a sniff-drenched friend who forgot and lit a cigarette. The indelible image of a human being exploding like a bomb from internal fire will not be denied, no matter how high you get.
Conrad’s last emotional strand related to this fear of fire, yet he was not sure what fear was anymore. He did not know if it felt good or bad. This left him uncertain about fire.
Conrad’s only other link to the world was through music. Vague and fleeting, snippets of song lyrics or distinctive voices still resonated inside his mind. He was saying “Johnny Cash” because he “remembered” a song about fire Johnny Cash sang. Conrad’s previous request at this same convenience store several days before had been “chestnuts” because he recalled a song about chestnuts roasting. The clerk did not understand him then either.
Since the cashier could not understand his words, Conrad began to express himself with uncertain gestures of his right hand. It moved in the air like a dirty grotesque puppet, nails and fingertips black and rotting from the solvents. Conrad’s squinty eyes traveled back and forth from his fingers to the hazy form behind the counter. Neither his words nor gestures were getting through to the cashier.
Something distant but overpowering began to rise in Conrad. In that undifferentiated wasteland that was the remainder of his awareness, an emotion was emerging. Though he could not identify it, Conrad was feeling frustration due to the lack of communication. And his body was responding!
As the central organ dealing with toxins, Conrad’s liver had become a sluggish mass of disease and corruption. It began sending flushes of toxic waves through Conrad’s bloodstream several days before. This sent shooting pain through the core of Conrad’s body. At the convenience store, this enormous pain registered for the first time in what was left of Conrad’s consciousness.
“Johnny…”
His eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed into a cardboard display of Bar B Q potato chips. His body began to shake, his arms and legs flailed among the noisy garish bags. Every pulse of pain sent Conrad into convulsions, dark vomit spewed from his mouth, a trickle of blood came out his left ear. Brittle bags exploded, reddish potato chips flew into the air with every spasm. The harsh crackle of the bags, the frightened cries of the young cashier and the store manager on his cellphone calling 911 filled the small store.
Just as the manager was telling the operator he had a fifty-year-old sniff addict out of control in his store, Conrad’s body settled into stillness. His arms and legs stopped flailing, his body relaxed and, sinking into a red bed of potato crumbs, he died. Slowly, like a flower opening, his rotting fingers released the foul rag.
Though he had not remembered, Conrad turned seventeen the day before.
January 12/03
“Sniff” won Third Prize in the Winnipeg Writer’s Collective Short Story Contest, Spring 2003. Published in Collective Consciousness May/June 2003
