One of the Lucky Ones

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

He walked along the wet gutter, a stocky boy of thirteen, oblivious of the wet-intensified nuances of green reflected in the ornamental and shade trees, the well-kept lawns of his neighbourhood. Kicking angrily through someone's neat leaf-pile, scattering bits of colour along the boulevard. Feet squelching in running shoes. Hadn't felt like putting socks on that morning, unaware of discomfort.

A raucous cry overhead - he lifted his head to see the long graceful swoops of a gull, wafting on the wind, riding it like a surfer. The birds were a familiar sight in the area, brought so far inland by the attraction of a nearby garbage dump.

Thrusting hands deep into jacket pockets, he bent forward, turned off Delaney to Anderson to the Mac's Milk, for a pack of cigarettes. In the store he argued with the proprietor, an Hungarian immigrant, about the change, finally understood through the heavily accented speech there had been a provincial tax increase. Turned away, fingering the change, not really caring about the money.

"Commie, dirty commie", he spoke softly, yet sufficiently emphatically that his voice could reach the cash register as he swung out the glass door. Turned his head slightly to catch a glimpse of the man's reaction. Like his mother was always saying, you got to assert yourself or those immigrants'll try to take over, rip you off.

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

Last year when the Paki kid thought he could push him around. Wasn't room on the school path for two guys; not for him and this Paki anyway. The kid thought he would shove back; well he showed him and it wasn't long before the guy was holding himself in a huddle not even trying to stop him. And he didn't want to stop, not with all the guys standing around watching. Like when they're standing around you know you owe them a good show. You can't stop.

Then this old dame comes by who works part time in the school library. Her kid with her, a skinny kid in his home room, Debby. He didn't even know they were there, just the guys moved aside and he felt someone grabbing the back of his shirt. Turned around surprised, and there was this big angry face, red lips screaming at him, calling him names. And the Paki kid lying on the ground all wrapped around himself.

He told the lady to let go but she wouldn't, she kept screaming and pointing at the Paki. Then he pulled, hard, and his shirt tore and she let go and he said, "Hey, lady, you tore my shirt. You'll have to pay for a new one." Then he took off with some of his friends and all the way home they were saying how he really took that Paki.

Next day his mother giving him shit, her hair shaking, screaming at him that she was an important executive, had better things to do than keep appointments with the principal of his school. Then sitting in front of Mr. Collins, old man Seguin's heavy, telling him the Paki kid was asthmatic and he'd provoked an attack and the kid was in hospital. Didn't help much to tell the vice-principal the kid was asking for it, pushing him around....

"Can the crap Teddy-boy, your reputation preceded you from your last school." Warned if he ever did anything like that again he'd be suspended. Wouldn't you know it, his old man got in the act and grounded him for a month, locked up his moped.

Anyway, a few days later he put a frog in Debby's locker and all the girls screamed bloody murder, him as surprised as anyone else when they came leaping out after it. Next day he'd hung a dead garter snake over the hook for her coat and the kid got hysterical. Her mother had her transferred to another home room. What could they prove?

That was about when Mr. Stevens had taken special notice of him; Brad Stevens, his physical education teacher. Both him and Barney Kelsey had been picked by Mr. Stevens to be special aides, but after awhile Barney bogged off and then it was only him. Everyone liked Mr. Stevens, all the girls went out of their way for him, the boys copied him in the gym. But it was him that was picked, although he was nowhere near the most athletic kid in his class. He began staying after school the odd time and Mr. Stevens talked to him about all kinds of things, asked him about his special interests. First time anyone asked.

"How about trying out next spring for the hundred-yard dash?" So every second morning he'd get to school early and both of them would jog around the school block twice, to start getting in shape.

"You're too young to smoke", Mr. Stevens told him when he saw a packet in his pocket.

"That's the trouble. Everyone says I'm too young for things I want to do, but when it's something I don't want to do that everyone wants me to do, they say I'm old enough. Balls with that!"

Mr. Stevens explained how smoking wasn't compatible with training for the run, wasn't good for his lungs, would spoil his sense of smell, his taste, stunt his growth. "C'mon, what do you need to smoke for anyway? Be Cool? What does it prove? Ever see me smoke? How about if we make a bet? I'll owe you five bucks the end of the week if you can't stop, okay?"

So he stopped carrying weeds around and bummed smokes off his friends, away from school.
Even his father wanted to know what was going on, him spending all his spare time with Mr. Stevens. Not saying he didn't like it but asking "the guy's okay, eh? I mean, he's no poof of anything is he?"

"Oh yeah, Dad, he wears pink garters and flips his wrist when he talks." When his father's face turned dark Ted made an effort and told him that Mr. Stevens played semi-pro hockey for the Kingston Gliders and was a white-water canoeist.

"Okay, but that doesn't mean too much. I've known men who seemed all right but you just knew they're not all there. I don't want you to get mixed up with any creeps like that, eh?"

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

He knew Mr. Stevens was married because sometimes he talked about his wife, saying he had to get home early to start dinner, or something like that.

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

He decided to take a short cut through the park, the burdened trees drooping rain-sodden leaves, sprinkling his uncovered head. He ripped cellophane off the cigarette pack, crumpled it and dropped the paper, watched as it floated gently to waft over and cover a glistening dog turd. He thought with satisfaction that someone, not aware of what lay under the crinkled paper, someone would be in for a surprise.

And that reminded him he was supposed to walk his mother's poodle after school and so he slowed down. Shook a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, inhaled, threw the cigarette on the ground and walked on.

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

One weekend when his wife went back to Toronto for a week to visit with her parents, Brad invited Ted to go to the Gatineau Hills for the day. They drove up to Luskville in Mr. Stevens's red Volkswagen bug. It was early spring, the ground still hard underfoot, the trees yet bare of leaves and the early spring runoff sent water cascading over the falls in a solid silver sheet. They climbed the path leading to the fire tower, their boots gripping the granite rocks, other boulders towering over them, spring sun glinting off the quartz in the granite. Here and there holdouts of dirty ice marking the passing of winter, melting under the sun's glare.

At the stream bed they clambered as far as they could up the rocky terrain and Brad explained how ancient the rocks were. They climbed until they were stopped by another fall of icy melt-off. There they sat on a flat rock eating summer sausage on onion rolls and big red delicious apples, spray from the falls lightly sprinkling over them.

"I'll bring you up in a month or so if you'd like to come back", Brad promised. "Just before the blackflies. Then the run-off will be over and we'll be able to climb all the way up and cut over to the fire tower. From there we can hike to Lake Charette and do some fishing.

"Oh yeah, I'd like that."

The rest of the day was spent sitting on the rocks, climbing the damp wooded hillsides, talking. Talking about Brad's canoe, his fascination with white-water canoeing, how he had been canoeing with a group of men around Kingston for years; sometimes taking long, lazy trips through Algonquin Park.

"Why'd you call the canoe "Beagle"?

"Oh", Mr. Stevens shrugged and laughed, "all my canoes are named that. After Charles Darwin's boat during his voyage to the Galapagos." And Ted learned who Charles Darwin was, his absorption with nature and his evolutionary premise, his grandfather Erasmus who really started things going - and one thing leading to another, he learned about a man by the name of Scopes who taught biology in Tennessee in 1925 and the trial that followed his contravention of a state statute.

"How'd you learn all that?" Ted asked and Brad explained he had an older brother and their father taught them both the fundamentals of biology, nature studies. "My brother's working toward his doctorate in environmental studies. He's a born naturalist. We had great times together when we were young on my father's farm. Not much of a farm, the ground's not very arable around Kingston; mostly my father kept sheep."

"Must be great to have a brother. Must be really great to have a brother for a friend. Nice to have your father teach you stuff like that."

"Yes it was. I'm one of the lucky ones. Darwin's grandfather stimulated his interest. Leonardo da Vinci's uncle taught him, made him look really close at nature. Most people don't realize, they take things for granted.

"Yeah", Ted mumbled, throwing pebbles into the stream, watching the spreading patterns. "Yeah, I wish I had a brother. I'd be friends with him. My old man is busy, my old lady is busy. Sometimes when she'd mad at me she says I'm her only big mistake."

"Well, sometimes it's hard to show people how you care for them", Brad fumbled. "Like my wife. It's hard for her to demonstrate her love for me because when she was young no one ever showed her how to. People hide their feelings, they don't realize how important it is to communicate. I'm not embarrassing you, am I?"

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

And they did go back to the Gatineau Hills. The next time Brad showed Ted how to grasp a snake just behind the head with one hand, the tail with the other. He held the snake, watching it thrash and hiss, admiring its patterned back, amazed at its cool, dry exterior, its tensile strength. The next snake he lunged for, he caught firmly behind the head and as he was lifting it, it ejected a milky liquid that slimed over his hand and trousers. He dropped the snake and it slithered into the underbrush. Brad laughed, said the snake had evacuated in fear.

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

On succeeding hikes Ted learned to distinguish bird calls; the harsh call of the blackbird, the imperious one of the blue jay, the teasing call of the chickadee. He saw hummingbirds for the first time, and learned to identify butterflies with names like White Admiral, Mourning Cloak, Fritallery, and question Mark. Brad taught him the difference between a simple and a compound leaf and how to identify trees by their bark; their shape and their leaves.

Once, they came across a long wire-like worm and watched as it jerked spasmodically, like a mechanical contrivance, unlike anything else they'd ever seen. "It's a Gordian worm", Brad said, although he admitted he'd never seen one before. "It's a parasite, lives inside grasshoppers. Every grasshopper hosts one. When the grasshopper dies, the worm craws out, to die itself.

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

Ted represented his school in the hundred yard dash at a family-of-schools meet and came a close third; another boy with longer legs and slighter build won first. During the graduation exercises a week before the end of school, athletic awards were distributed and Ted was awarded an overall athletic achievement recognition, along with a handful of other boys.

His parents had been unable to attend. His father was in Calgary on business, his mother had a bridge game. Ted sewed the badge on his jacket, sticking his thumbs more often than the fabric.

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

Then school was over for the summer, and Brad went to Kingston to teach at a hockey school and his wife went to stay with her parents for a holiday. Near the end of the summer Ted received a post card from Brad who'd gone up to Tuktoyaktuk for a few weeks to be with his brother who was studying the environmental effects of oil spillage in the North.

By the time summer was over Ted was anxious to get back to school, the first time he'd ever felt that way. He'd spent a good part of the summer on insect hunting expeditions. Using a butterfly net he'd amassed a good collection of beetles and butterflies. He'd put them in a killing jar, carefully pinned each specimen to a drying board and finally set them up, preserved in death as they had been in life, identified and meticulously labeled. He was eager to show Brad his collection.

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

They were glad to see each other again, but Brad seemed somehow distracted, and his mobile face didn't seem to crease into a smile as readily as before. He suggested a week-end camping trip in September, said he would speak to Ted's parents about it.

Not long after, Ted came upon Brad sitting on a bench in the gym, after school. His mentor sat hunched over in a corner, hands around his head, rocking back and forth, moaning. Ted was frightened, ran to his side, asked what was the matter.

Brad lifted hollow eyes to the boy, not seeming to recognize him at first, then made a visible effort to appear normal. "It's okay,Ted. I'm all right. I can't see anyone just now, do you mind? I'll be all right tomorrow. Tell you what, I'll explain everything to you tomorrow. Meet me here after school, all right?"

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

That was yesterday and today was today and today Brad's wasn't there to tell him anything.

Ted reached the side door of his house, pulled a key out of his pocket and let himself in. Fifi danced crazily around him, jumping in excitement, wanting to be let out. He held the door open and let her out, knowing his mother would be angry; he was supposed to walk with the dog, not let it out on its own. He hoped it would be run over.

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

Earlier, coming home for lunch, he'd found Chinese food in paper cups left over from yesterday's dinner, and he found himself looking for more in the refrigerator, stomach growling. The refrigerator was almost empty. He picked up a hard piece of cheese, bit into it and felt revolted. He pulled the jug of milk out and lifted it to his lips, letting the milk dribble down either side of his mouth.

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

He walked to the front of the house, into the living room, stood there looking out the big bow window, thinking of the announcement over the school's sound system, before dismissal; felt freshly nauseated.

"Mr. Stevens, our physical education instructor has died." Mr. Seguin announced it as though it were an ordinary happening, just like he made ordinary announcements every afternoon before dismissal. "Let us all have a moment of silent respect for the man who did so much to make our school's physical education program a very special one."

White faces, everyone looking at everyone else. Someone giggled. Some of the girls began wailing in long ululations. Ted's spine crept in a melting horror. Ted's home room teacher explained to the class that Mr. Stevens had been shot to death that morning in a trailer park several miles distant to the school. He had been visiting with his estranged wife. Living, he continued evenly and quietly, with another man. He felt they were old enough to know what happened. Brad Stevens, he said, was one of the most decent men he had ever known.

Later, they'd all filed out, some of the girls still weeping, the boys not saying anything. In the corridors, standing in silent clumps, teachers watched the students leave. Ted felt as though his face was frozen in an attitude of blank astonishment; his head seemed to be buzzing and he wondered why.

Outside, he overheard two boys he knew. "What a sucker! I heard about it on the news but I didn't know it was him. What a sucker! Getting killed for some broad - Jeeze!"

Where, where did he get shot? In the head. through that brain that knew about Darwin and the Beagle? Through the chest mangling the heart that loved his wife and his brother and his father?

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

Ignoring the scratching appeals of the dog to be let back in, Ted moved draggily upstairs to his bedroom. He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, threw it in the waste basket. Tugged the insect collection off his bookshelf where the exploded plastic had been carefully cut to fit, and began pulling insect pins out of his specimens, dropping insects and pins bit by bit onto the shag rug, grinding them with his wet shoes.

c. 1987 Rita Rosenfeld