Dear Nephew, Unaccustomed as I am to giving advice to anybody these days, I must do this: lay down some guidelines for the younger generation. It feels like an inescapable weight on one’s shoulders, a duty and obligation. Whoever said that youth was wasted on the young must have known about the principles. The three principles which I will list and attempt to elucidate. These principles will ensure survival and success in today’s and tomorrow’s world. From a lifetime of observation and other sources, I have gathered this wisdom and will now impart it to you, my nephew and all who know you. Even those who don’t. 1 Borrow as much as possible from family and friends. They’re usually the last ones who’ll turn on you, giving you the benefit of the doubt, holding off their fury because you’re related or know someone who knows someone. An unfortunate corollary to this type of activity is the necessity for a packed bag and alternate identities, with pictures, if possible. In case of partners’ unfounded accusations of overspending or, God forbid, fraud. It’s getting harder to manage in these days of everybody killing each other for various reasons, but it was always thus. The killing was just cruder. There is always a way. Always a means of obtaining a false identity. Of course, families and friends should also be involved with you in as many business ventures as possible. This stimulates, among other things, their careful observance of your health and well being. Once you have wormed your way in, ingratiated yourself, made yourself indispensable to them, with the least amount of work, you are an asset, a part of the company. The corollary can also come in handy in these enterprises, if things don’t go well. When one shakes off the impetuous dreams of youth for a moment, one can clearly see upon which side one’s bread is buttered. Business relationships with family and friends should be encouraged and manipulated with care. 2 Don’t fall for that security versus creativity stuff. Go for the security, of course. You can look like you don’t care, act like it, say it, especially when women think you’re romantic because of it, but nobody wants to starve, so, keep a back door, a way out. You won’t have time for shame when you’ve bailed out on the co-op and you’re trying to survive. Accumulate as many toys as possible. Gather all and sundry and lock them up. Collect things, the more valuable, the better. Never too many of the valuable ones. There’ll always be a place to put them. The creative urge is sneaky and devious. It is more seductive than the security side, but you don’t want to grow old without being surrounded by as much security as possible. The creativity side may look attractive when you’re young. All that freedom etc., but the odds against anyone producing security out of creativity are huge. It is a foolish longshot, not worthy of a man who is serious about security. Let the starving artists drink beer in their roach infested garrets after you’ve accumulated their creations. Exceptions are made for long legged beauties in black tights. Temporary cohabitation is permissible there. 3Honesty is not always the best policy. In most cases it’s downright foolish. All of the great wealth has been accumulated by dishonesty of one sort or another. Things change. Perceptions of certain activities change. Cunning, guile and deviousness have their place in the ready arsenal of a young man trying to make his way in this world. Lying hypocrites are survivors. Politicians in any age are shining examples. Machiavelli’s wisdom is always good bedtime reading. There can be few more refreshing pleasures, when one wakes up in the morning, than a good bullying session. A suitably inferior person can be fooled into thinking they must take the abuse which you hurl their way, thus proving that dishonesty is most often triumphant and replacing the need for a brisk walk to start one’s day. I’ve imparted some hard truths here. I wouldn’t have bothered except that you’re my sister’s kid and my own children haven’t spoken to me for twenty years. The divorce was between their mother and me, none of their business. After all, one must consider one’s office staff. (A specific tip here: refuse point blank, in no uncertain terms, any job offered you without a suitable office staff. Secretaries and receptionists should be young, attractive, ambitious and immoral. Attention to these details will ensure an enjoyable workplace when one has to attend) The males of our clan always passed down the three principles before they died from the effects of their short, brutal lives. I know what kind of a family you must survive in and what kind of world you face, so I feel compelled to tell you, though it’s bad news: they get the last laugh. Women in this family, in general, outlive men. After all the fussing is over, at the end, you die and they keep going. It doesn’t seem fair, but it was always thus. There are many years to come before you’ll have to worry about it. In the meantime, think of your old uncle and remember, cannibalism isn’t a notion which should be lightly dismissed on long flights. Regards, Uncle Steve

It was the fall when I first flew out to the North Cormorant. It was one of those flights which you caught in Aberdeen, took a fixed wing to the Shetlands, did the rest of it by helicopter. The platform was halfway between Norway and the Shetland Islands in the North Sea. I had no idea that I would spend six of my next twelve months there. There weren’t many who survived falling into the North Sea. There was one on the opposite shift from us. He was a roustabout named Neil from Barra, an ex fisherman. The circling survival ship got him, two miles from the rig, in a gale, at night. You might say he was very lucky. He was supposed to be dead after ten minutes from hypothermia, but when they picked him up after twenty minutes, all he said was, “Gee, thought I was a goner”. The companies screwed Neil around for years after that. I used to see him in the Aberdeen pubs. He hit his leg on the way down that night, wasn’t fit to work. He had been walking along, hit a spot where someone had left the grilling off the deck. The companies didn’t want to pay for his time off. There were stories that some companies had tried to charge guys for their issued rig wear when they were in a chopper crash at Sumburgh, in the Shetlands. Graham was a roustabout on my shift. The roustabouts could work their way up to the drill floor to work as a roughneck or they could work their way up to boss of the roustabouts on the deck. Some got their crane operator papers. They were guaranteed jobs as bosses of the roustabout crews. Graham wanted to work as a roughneck on the drill floor. He came up from the deck, relieved all the roughnecks to get the experience. He took the taunts, jokes and insults on the drill floor until his bafflement subsided. He learned the names of the tools and the procedures we used. He was a young guy who lived in Oban. We became friends, planned the next trip for a visit to the west coast. We piled into a borrowed Volkswagen bug, drove to Oban. Oban was a tourist centre in the nineteenth century for the English and rich Scottish. It still welcomed tourists and was the home of a fishing fleet which specialized in shrimp. Graham’s friends were shrimp fishermen who arrived onshore soon after we landed there. We drank with them for days. They were doing a more dangerous job than we were. They went out in the treacherous waters, for ten days at a time, in small boats, with no safety. They made good money, but they were thankful to return in one piece. Chingy, Graham’s best friend, was up on charges of assault. One night, in Ullapool, the Russian fleet sat offshore. Chingy heard that one of the local girls had been attacked by a Russian trawler man. After enough drinks in the bar, Chingy found a Russian, kicked his eye out. It was more of a local tradition than an international incident. Chingy would be prosecuted some time in the future. He said he could handle jail time. The fishermen gave me a running commentary on the females as we sat in one of the bars on the local circuit. They pointed out the ones they had “rode”. Graham’s phone calls were taken at the Oban Hotel. His own flat was bought and paid for by money he made poaching from a fish farm. He said his ancestors had been hunted by the English and often dodged “mantraps”. I had no idea what he was talking about until I read the books Brodie lent me. Brodie was big Bob. He was, like Graham, a Highlander. He had a mechanical engineering degree, but came to learn the hard way. He was earmarked by the drilling company to follow the usual sequence of roughneck, derrick hand, assistant driller and driller. From there he could become a toolpusher and a company man. At that level, the money and perks were very good. It was a long, hard road, but he wanted to do it honestly. The problem in the oil patch is that a university education only equips a person with the theoretical side of drilling. The old veterans with little education and a lot of experience were being replaced. Their wisdom was being lost. Brodie and I pulled slips, threw tongs, took our turns riding up and down on the riding belt in all kinds of weather. He lent me The Highland Clearances and Culloden by John Prebble upon hearing that my father’s mother was a Ross. I found out, talking on the drill floor or reading the books, that the Scottish suffered as much as the Irish in the nineteenth century. I learned that a man trap was exactly that, a trap for a man. They were a kind of leg hold trap designed by the English and rich Scottish landlords to kill or cripple poachers like Graham’s ancestors. Brodie took a trip, by train, across Canada in the middle of our time on the North Cormorant. He visited my mother in Ottawa, stayed at the youth hostel which used to be the jail. All he had to say to me, when I saw him again, was that I was a “bad bastard” My mom figured I went wrong right after I started to play rugby. Davey was the derrick man I shared a bathroom with. He lived on the island of Mull, tied his own lobster traps. He said his kids used to call him “the lodger” because they saw so little of him. His wife ran a B&B in their house. Construction workers, guys from way across the rig, nothing to do with us, used to show up at the cabin just to see Davey’s forearms. At first, to me, he looked like Popeye. His forearms were extra well developed. When it was my turn to “go up the stick”, Davey was my teacher. I had done a little in Alberta. I was scared up there, ninety feet above the steel floor. Davey came out on the monkey board to help me as I struggled to haul in the ninety foot collars and lengths of drill pipe. I had the security of the thick, leather belt, tied to the derrick by four ropes, the belly buster: he had nothing. My leg trembled uncontrollably when I waited for the block, dog bones and elevators to rise to my level. I was concerned for Davey’s safety because he was always laughing so hard. He would do a Groucho Marx imitation of me in the smoke room later, illustrating to the boys how I looked handling pipe on the monkey board. His rear end stuck out, he put a hand like Groucho’s out, flicking ash off a cigar. Davey’s other duties consisted of keeping the pumps running and the drilling mud to a certain viscosity. He, and no one above him, ever missed the chance to tell you how great it was not to have to put up with the abuse which the roughnecks did. They crowed and preened about it until the guy above them rubbed their noses in it. Davey was Bob, the rig electrician’s, brother in law. They would see me covered in diesel based drill mud or soaked from the weather or paint. Bob would say, “Stevie yer a midden”. He and Davey would laugh as Davey did his silent Groucho impression for Bob. Alan was the assistant driller, from Dundee. He was everything you wouldn’t expect in a rig worker. He was short, had a pot belly and a partially bald head. He would tell me I had no manners when I looked at the paper over his shoulder in the change room before the shift started, crack the filthiest joke, in the same breath. He was a little crazy. You came to see, after a while, that he was given a wide berth by his bosses on the rig. Alan had the easiest job on the drill crew. He bossed everyone around, except the driller and the toolpusher. He did little, himself. He was at the point where his knowledge became more important than his physical effort. He loved it. Our crew sometimes stopped work because we were laughing so hard at the antics Alan got up to on the drill floor. He could imitate Rick, a Canadian toolpusher who relieved sometimes, in such a hilarious parody of confusion, that everyone would be doubled over laughing. When there was slow drilling or some other delay, Alan wandered around talking to everyone. The motto on the North Sea rigs is, “If it moves, grease it, if it don’t, paint it”, so Alan often found the roughnecks scrubbing, painting or greasing. He would give a few unnecessary orders, just hang around. He could tell you about the gangs of Dundee settling their differences with shotguns and then sing the lyrics of every one of Paul Macartney’s songs. Alan threw a couple of the bigger roughnecks around the change room when they challenged his authority. Alan was the only guy on the crew who didn’t take the time to call or visit me in the Aberdeen Hospital. I almost lost my eye, scrubbing down the drill floor walls, had to be medivacced to Aberdeen. The Kiwis, whose couch I was using at the time, snuck a couple of pints into my room. Most of the North Cormorant crew visited. Alan, I was told, shook his head, “I never go” It wasn’t because we weren’t friends. On one of the visits by the Kiwis, we asked a nurse what all the kids were doing outside the window. She explained that, for some reason, psylopscybin mushrooms grew in great profusion on the lawns.“We ‘re always chasing them away” she said. Ronnie was the boss of the roustabout crew. He was from the old part of Aberdeen. He could translate for Bill from Buckie, up the coast. The man sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles, when he spoke. It took me the whole trip, when I returned, to figure out what he meant when he asked, “How’s yer een, Stevie?” I later found that “een” meant eyes. He was asking about my eyes. Ronnie worked on deck directing the cranes, foreman of the roustabout crew. He began relieving the roughnecks, eventually worked his way up the derrick. We met when he took me up to the blocks on a riding belt, him on the air tugger which controls it. I had still not gotten used to the damn riding belts. There was no such thing in Alberta. Roughnecks weren’t expected to go up every time a derrick man threw a pipe across the derrick. In the North Sea it was standard practice. Ronnie was just getting used to the drill floor. Whether it was because he had a plan with Alan and Chris, the driller, or because he wasn’t used to it, he gave a fast jerk on the air tugger handle, sent me thirty feet upward by the belt. I wore the belt around my waist, under my rump. It was attached to a quarter inch cable which ran through a shiv at the top of the hundred and twenty foot derrick, back to the drum. The worst thing you can do in a riding belt, is to hang onto anything. It still keeps going up. Nothing slows its progress. You turn upside down, with your hands grasping something, while your bottom half rises above you. Ronnie caught me by surprise. I stood adjusting the belt and the grease gun. I was ascending to grease the blocks. I lost my hard hat, panicked when I shot up in the air. Ronnie mouthed an apology as he lowered me to get my hat. Later, he said he hoped we weren’t going to have words over the incident. I looked at his big arms and open smile, laughed it off. Chris was the driller from Newcastle Upon Tyne who was often bent over the brake handle, helpless with laughter at the jokes on the drill floor. On a trip onshore, a dentist told him he was getting “a little long in the tooth” when he looked at his receding gums. Chris tried to cut down on the snuff and chewing tobacco after that, but we were all addicted to it, he never quit. Chris had worked his way up the ladder. He could do any of our jobs, if he had to. He wasn’t as cruel as other drillers and toolpushers. They often popped the pipe, full of mud, on the roughnecks or made green hands crawl into filthy spots to clean, during down time. In Alberta, there are certifiable sadists running brakes, working as drillers. There are (unshared) bottles of whiskey awarded to drillers whose crews make hole the fastest. To these drillers, men are expendable. The last I heard of Chris was in a pub. Somebody said that he went home unexpectedly, caught his girlfriend in bed with his best friend. The guys on the North Cormorant never saw him again. They tried Chinook flights from Aberdeen to the North Cormorant and the surrounding rigs, but the helicopters were too big, the headwinds too strong. The smaller, one bladed choppers, which they went back to, were not staffed by the smiling British Airlines hostesses which the Chinooks had. They were less safe and comfortable, but faster. In a wet phone booth in London with a Scottish girl and tickets to Paris, I made the phone call which ended my year on the North Cormorant.

On a pleasant autumn day, Mitch Reynolds stepped out of the Department of Agriculture, his briefcase packed with papers. He attempted to take a deep breath of fresh air, search his jacket for his bicycle clip, descend the stairs, all at the same time. He heard the door open behind him, a voice call his name. He turned and backed into a young woman coming up the stairs. Suddenly, Mitch was stumbling, falling. The girl retained her balance but scattered her files, all over the steps. “Oh...oh...sorry...” Mitch crawled around, helped her pick up the files. The woman stuck her silent nose in the air, resumed her climb. Bob Fagan joined him at the bottom of the stairs, laughing at Mitch’s misfortune. They turned to watch the young woman’s behind. “Ooh, look at that. Hey nice move, buddy. I’m tellin you Mitch, never get married” They turned to walk toward the parking lot. “Hey, how come you’re out early?” “New job. I finally got an outside assignment. How about you?” Mitch had found his bicycle clip again. Bob watched as Mitch gathered his trousers to apply the clip. “Beth’s preggers again, I’ve got to take three of the kids to the dentist while she’s at the doctor’s” Bob waited for Mitch to unlock his bike. They walked through the parking lot. Bob was a big man with five children. Beth was very fertile. Their brood seemed ever expanding. They parted at Bob’s van, Mitch mounted his bicycle. He took his time pedalling on the bike path, admiring the green fields in the autumn sunlight, giant trees blowing in the breeze. The path led him through the Experimental farm to the barn of The Beef Cattle Exposition. The barn was surrounded by pens of cattle of different breeds, the office inside it. The walls of the small room were covered with posters about cattle. There was a rack on one wall which contained pamphlets, brochures and magazines about cattle. A small desk, covered with more cattle information, stood, with two chairs, at one end of the room. There was no one around. Mitch saw a door behind the desk which led further into the barn. He stepped through it. A stronger smell of cattle hit him. Mitch looked down the length of the barn. He saw that most of the stalls were occupied by cattle, one, halfway down, also contained a person. Mitch made his way to it. The sign on the open stall door read, VENUS. Walter James, the facility manager, stood leaning on one wall of the stall, beside a cow. He was a pleasant looking, balding man, much larger than Mitch, dressed in jeans and a work shirt, holding a brown, paper bag in one hand. He smiled, held out his hand. “Mr. James?” Mitch, extending his hand. “Walter. You must be Mitch Reynolds. Good to finally see who I’ve been talking about for the past few months” Walter James shook Mitch’s hand with his empty one. He was referring to the many conversations he he’d had with Mitch’s superiors concerning this new project. “This here’s the star of your show” Walter indicated the cow. “Venus” Mitch stared at the rear end of the cow. He followed Walter toward the front of her, jumping into a cow pie, when she turned her head toward him. Walter laughed. Mitch shook his foot in the air. “Ha. You’ll have to watch out for that. Just scrape your shoe on some straw. Pistachio?” Walter smiled at Mitch, offered the bag. “Huh? No, no thanks” Mitch scraped his loafer on some straw, leaned against one wall. “She won’t bite, but she might kick, so I wouldn’t stand behind her” Walter munched a pistachio. “I take it you’re not really an expert on cattle” Walter watched Venus chew her cud. “No” Mitch admitted. He was wondering at Venus’ big boned body. “No, I could tell on the phone. I went along with all of them. Figured they’d send some poor junior clerk they wanted to get rid of, but this experiment is really dumb” “Dumb? Is it? Why?” Mitch studied Venus chewing her cud. “Why? Simple. We’ve already got a perfectly good breeding programme. No need for this” “Why didn’t someone mention that in all these talks we’ve had, then?” “Ha, we all went along with it. It’s somebody’s plan to spend all the money in the budget. You know how it is. Government. If you don’t spend it, you’ll lose it. Ce sera, sera” They walked out of the stall, single file, Mitch following Walter, watching his step. “Importing foreign bulls to breed ole Venus there, that’s just plain dumb. Everything’s artificial these days. She’s a grand champion, mother of five other champions. She could get hurt with this fool experiment” Walter spoke over his shoulder. He turned to let Mitch get by, shut the door to Venus’ stall. “Hurt? You mean physically?” Mitch stopped. Walter turned to him. “Yeah. Physically. Sometimes cows get hurt, sometimes bulls, sometimes people” “Jeez. This sounded like such a ... safe job, back at the office” Mitch didn’t want anyone, even the cows and bulls, to get hurt. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t let them hurt her. If it gets out of hand, I’ll call it off and they can do it artificially” Walter was reassuring. “That Texas longhorn they found in some rodeo? He’ll be here any day now. I’ll have to keep a close eye on him” Walter answered the ringing phone on his desk. He got into a discussion about cattle. Mitch opened his brief case, put some of the papers on Walter’s desk. Walter sat down when he’d finished on the phone. He motioned, with the bag, for Mitch to take the other chair, pulled the papers toward himself. Mitch waited while Walter read through the papers. “Hm. Yeah” Walter nodded his head with a knowing smile. Mitch watched him. He didn’t look normal with the flimsy papers in his big hands. The granny glasses made him look even bigger. “So, what we have to do is make sure that Venus gets bred by these foreign bulls” “That’s it“ Mitch was happy with this job, away from the office politics. “So you just take my results and make a report” Walter dug into the bag of pistachios. “Pistachio? Wife made me quit smokin. Now I can’t stop eatin” Walter opened a shell with his teeth. “And when she gets pregnant, we’ll wait and get another bull, when it’s time” Mitch could see this job lasting for years. Walter gathered the papers together, opened a drawer in his desk, placed them in it. Mitch stood up to go. “Don’t you worry. We’ve seen ‘em all here. Every crazy experiment they think of, it usually ends up here. Lots of ‘em end here too. Don’t worry about it. Keep in touch” Mitch pedalled home with the satisfaction of knowing that his project was in good hands. Entering his house, on a west end street, he could hear the sounds of The Dating Game reruns. Mandy, Mitch’s fellow lodger, watched from the couch. “Ok, now, Willie, the audience has met our three eligible bachelor girls. Now it’s your turn...go ahead with your first question...” the tv dominated the living room. “Hi” Mitch passed through to the kitchen. He noticed that Mandy had an empty pizza box open on the couch beside her. He didn’t hear a reply, opened the refrigerator door. “If I were the last man on earth and we were marooned on a desert island with just a little food left, would you give it to me so that I would make mad, passionate love to you or would you keep it for yourself and do without sex forever?” Sounds drifted into the kitchen. Mitch searched through the fridge. He opened cupboards, looked in drawers. The tv audience applauded. “I’d eat it and then take advantage of you, when you were weak” Mitch gave up searching, entered the living room. “Where’s all the bread?” “Duane made sandwiches” Mandy stared at the screen. “Sandwiches. That was my bread. Where is he?” Mitch, outraged. “I’d give it to you and then murder you in your sleep. That way, you’d be fatter and I could live off you longer” “Toronto. He’s gone for two weeks” “Great. Why didn’t he buy his own bread? Did he pay his third of the rent?” Mitch was fed up with Duane. This was the last straw. “Oh, yeah. This came today, too. The hydro bill” Mandy held up an envelope. “I’d just ask you to sleep with me, first. I’m sure that you’d beg me to share your food, after that” “There’s nothing to eat. We share the house, we split the rent. Why can’t he understand that we’re supposed to buy our own food?” Mandy wrinkled her forehead, sipped her soft drink through a plastic straw. She leaned over to pick up the tv remote. Mitch was on a mission. He headed into the shopping mall to buy some groceries and a lock. If necessary, when he had his talk with Duane, he would give him an ultimatum. One more chance, that was all. If Duane didn’t buy his own food and keep his hands off of Mitch’s, he’d lock it up. A lock, a simple hasp and a few nails would get the message across. Mitch pulled over to pick up two female hitch hikers. They giggled in his passenger seat until they alighted outside of The Haybale, a country bar. Mitch pulled away, their heady mix of perfume lingering in his car. They were young and cute, with tight jeans. Mitch saw another female hitchhiker going his way. He pulled over to pick her up. She was Jasmine, a small, delicate yoga instructor who recommended yoga to him, gave Mitch her card. She said that yoga was good for everything, that she read in his aura that he was troubled. Mitch thought about Jasmine all the way home. Mandy was sitting on the couch with a cigarette and a Coke when Mitch got home. He had a book in the grocery bag, in one hand, the lock, hasp and screws, in a bag, in the other. The book was about success with women. It recommended the go - getter attitude to men who really wanted to score. “I don’t see how you can just lay around all day” Mitch passed through the living room. “Bite me. You don’t do anything besides work and drive in your car and whatever it is that you do in your bedroom” Mandy removed her eyes from the t.v. screen long enough to give Mitch a disdainful glance. “You just don’t know. I’m out there making things happen, don’t worry” Mitch got the call from the barn, packed his briefcase, mounted his bike. Nearing the Beef Cattle Exposition, he passed a truck going the other way. It had a stars and stripes logo on the door, a big bovine passenger in the back. Walter sat at his desk, talking on the phone. He had a red welt below one eye and a bandage on top of his head. Walter gingerly extracted jellybeans from a bag which he offered to Mitch. “Yeah, ok, tell him I’ll talk to him when he wakes up” Mitch shook his head to the jellybeans. He looked at Walter’s eye. “What happened, Walter?” “Well, like I said on the phone, that Texas longhorn arrived, but he nearly killed my best hand. He’s ok, but he’s in the hospital. Had to save Venus from the damn thing. Big, ole Texas driver just laughed and loaded him back on the truck. We couldn’t control him” Walter pointed to his wounds. There was dirt on his shirt, scrapes on his forearms. Mitch made sympathetic sounds, consulted a paper from his briefcase. “So, the next one is Spanish? Yeah, he’s being shipped from Spain to Mexico and stopping on the way” “Whatever “ Walter snorted. “If he don’t behave properly, like we want him to, I’ll send him packin too” Mitch stared at Walter’s closing eye. Mitch glanced at the date on the Playboy calendar beside his bed, finished reading about success with women. Getting off the bed, looking into his mirror, he smiled a winning smile. He got a box from his closet from which he extracted a new pair of cowboy boots. They matched his new western shirt and jeans. He slapped some Lariat shaving lotion on his cheeks. The Haybale was quiet when Mitch arrived. He asked for a Blue, at the bar, while he surveyed the scene. A girl was singing a country song on the stage with a guitar. She was surrounded by band equipment, sang to an empty room. Mitch climbed onto a stool at the bar, a few away seats from a single woman. He assumed the same position as the woman, back to the bar, facing the stage. He intertwined his new cowboy boots with the stool’s legs and spokes. The woman finished her drink, put her glass on the bar, applauded the singer. Mitch applauded too, though he really didn’t like country music. He leaned over to the woman. “Howdy, want a refill?” The young woman switched her attention to Mitch. She gave him an appraising look, nodded, with a smile. “Sure, two Black Russians, please” Mitch relayed the request to the bartender who gave him a funny nod. When he turned back to the girl, she was standing, locked in a passionate embrace, with the singer. They accepted Mitch’s gift, toasted him, moved to their own table. Mitch finished his beer, worried that he was in a gay bar. As he rose to leave, his cowboy boot heels caught in the legs of the stool and he fell. He rolled in front of the bar as he fought to get free. Mitch approached the barn on his bike, the next day. He saw a truck leaving the barn with a Spanish name on it’s side. He could hear Mariachi music coming from the cab. The back of the truck held a large, dark occupant. “Oh, he’s such an angel” “He’s so knowledgeable about breeding.” he heard two female voices. Mitch locking his bicycle, saw two good looking girls load a camera and a tape recorder into a small car. Walter sat at the desk in his office. He had a black eye, a cast on one arm. Mitch sat down, shocked. “Walter, what happened?” Walter offered a brown bag. Mitch declined. “Peanut? They sent that Spanish bull. He was a fighter all right. He was trying to climb into Venus’s stall, so I waved my jacket at him. It was a red jacket, he busted my arm. Damn fightin bull. Just shipped him outta here” “Who were those girls who just left?” Walter picked up a paper, read aloud. “Semi formal gala. Radisson Hotel. 8 PM Saturday, if you want to go. They’re makin a film about breeding cattle or something. Cute little things. I don’t go to stuff like that. Me and the missus watch hockey or wrestling on Saturday nights” Mitch took the paper from Walter. He looked at it, put it in his briefcase. “So the French bull’s next, the Charolais?” Walter extracted a peanut from the bag. He cracked the shell with his cast. “Hm. She better be gettin a visit soon, she won’t be in season forever” “Season? What?” Walter got up from behind his desk. He moved to the wall where he looked through some brochures in the rack. He selected one, gave it to Mitch. Mitch looked at the brochure, followed Walter through the door, into the barn. They stopped at a stall with HENRY painted on the door. “See, that describes the basic process. Venus is in season like a dog or cat gets in heat. You know?” Walter pointed at the diagrams in the brochure. “See, what they need to do, is breed her with a nice bull like Henry, here. Not get all starstruck with these foreign bulls. Henry’s a grand champion himself, a real gentleman. He’s local. An Ottawa Valley Hereford. Good natured, as bulls go. Hmph. All these foreign bulls are no good for Venus. She’s local too” Mitch laid on his bed reading about success with women. He reread the pamphlet Walter had given him about the reproduction of cattle. When it was time, he picked out a tie and jacket to go with his trousers. A group of people hid the sign beside the door in the hotel which announced the Gala for the National Film Board, but Mitch was certain he was in the right place. He had just seen the girls from Walter’s office enter before him. They looked even better dressed up. The people Mitch followed in, were dressed like him, talking about the National Film Board. He didn’t see many farmers but he thought anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of cattle reproduction would be welcome here. They might even be a celebrity. Mitch took a glass of champagne from a waiter. He made for the group which contained the two attractive girls from Walter’s. He joined the circle who were listening to a distinguished gentleman hold forth. There were two older, expensively tailored women in the group as well as Mitch and the girls. “I mean we need to get rid of this old process. We know the fertility’s there. All we need is the seed...” the distinguished looking chap spoke with fervour. Mitch interrupted him. “Yes, I was just thinking about this the other day. It’s all in the testicles, of course. We all agree on that” Mitch paused for his pronouncement to have the desired effect. He couldn’t decipher the looks on everyone’s faces, but was sure he had got their attention, especially that of the two girls. “Hormones from the pituitary give you those nice, big, full sized testicles” Mitch spoke with emphasis, remembering the tips in his book on women. The older women looked shocked and amused. The distinguished looking gentleman’s jaw seemed to be dropping. The girls looked surprised. Mitch figured he’d keep going. “We know that with one ejaculation of five cc.’s we can preserve six hundred doses of semen.” Mitch addressed the group with a modest smile. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the distinguished chap’s upper plate fall out of his mouth, into his drink. “Now, in the female, it’s the anterior lobe of the pituitary, of course. Gives you that good, healthy mammary gland and that nice tone in the reproductive tract” Mitch finished, rubbed his hands together, looked up. The group had scattered. The girls were giggling, walking away. Mitch had been at lunch when the office got the call from Walter. He sat with a black eye, a bandage on his head, a cast on his arm and a pair of crutches leaning on his desk. He offered a brown bag to Mitch. “Walter. You ok? What happened?” Mitch, eyeing the crutches. He shook his head to refuse the peppermints. “Peppermint? French bull, Charolais got here in the middle of the night. Had to try him out with Venus right away, so I put them together. Damn French bull wasn’t interested. Couldn’t get him to mount her at all. Tried everything. Finally, I sat down for a rest. The damn bull looked like his mind was on other things. Wasn’t Venus‘ fault. In fact, that’s how I got this.” Walter placed his cast covered lower leg on the desk. “The French bull?” “No. Venus got sleepy. She laid down on me. I couldn’t get out of her way. Broke my leg.” Walter sucked a peppermint. “What’ll we do now?” This job didn’t look so long lasting to Mitch, anymore. “Dunno. No doubt, the powers that be’ll have another brainwave” “So, this is it?” “Probably. Venus was up for it, this last time. She’ll be out of season any time now, though. Probably go back to the artificial programme. I guess you’ll be goin back to the office. We’ll kinda miss you around here. I think Venus liked all that attention. Me? I’d like to see you stick around, no offence meant, but I’d probably be a little safer, you know, if we did some other kind of experiment” Mitch walked down the stairs from his room, through the living room to the front door. He wore a t shirt and loose fitting pants. He paused at the door. “How can you just sit there all the time?” Mandy was sitting on the couch, watching tv with an open bag of cookies. “Bite me” Mandy stared at the screen. Mitch wiped a towel across his red face, limped along beside Jasmine. They had just finished a yoga class. Everyone else seemed to gain something as the class went along. Mitch got a cramp at the very beginning. He struggled to concentrate on the exercises with all the female flesh stretching around him. He wasn’t sure that yoga was his thing, but Jasmine was cute. She had given him her card, said to drop in. He had. “...and because the cause of all suffering is desire, we meditate to free ourselves of desire...” Jasmine was explaining some of the intricacies of yoga to Mitch. Her eyes were bright blue. “I seem to get distracted easily when we meditate” “I know. It was hard not to be distracted when I was in Poona” “Poona?” “Mmhm, kundalini yoga” Jasmine wore a serene smile. “Kundalini?” Mitch was absorbed in Jasmine. They walked down the sidewalk together. “Mm, sexual yoga. It’s hard to ignore desire when you have some of the unions you can get in kundalini.” Jasmine looked over at Mitch who walked into a street sign. Jasmine helped Mitch up, brushed him off. A motorcycle stopped behind her. She turned, waved. When the driver of the bike held out a helmet to Jasmine, Mitch saw skull rings on his fingers, tattoos on his arms. A bearded face smiled at him, Jasmine climbed on, they were gone. On the way home from Jasmine’s class, Mitch parked his car at the Beef Cattle Exposition. He entered the barn from the back. He opened Venus’ stall first, then approached Henry’s. “There you go, Henry, remember to be a gentleman, now” He opened the door to Henry’s stall, made for his car. Mandy sat watching tv with a Coke. Mitch entered the house with a large brown bag. “Grasshopper, what have you seen?” the tv spoke. “What’s that, Chinese food?” “Yeah, want some?” Mitch looked at the screen, sat on the couch, placed the bag on the coffee table. “Sure, whatcha got?” Mandy, sitting up, eyes locked on the screen. “Master, I have seen desire” Mandy opened the bag. She placed the containers around the coffee table while Mitch retrieved plates and cutlery from the kitchen. She watched him walk across the living room. “And what did you learn of desire, Grasshopper?” “Duane always tries to get me to go to bed with him. Why don’t you, Mitch?” Mandy filled a plate with fried rice. Mitch hadn’t realized. He took some sweet and sour chicken balls from a container. “Master, I have learned that desire is blind” “I guess I never thought about it” Mitch glanced in her direction. “Well, are you thinking about it now?” Mandy stared at the tv. “Ok, after Kung Fu, then?” “Sounds good, it’s a date” “Pass the rice, please”

My first offshore rig job was on the Piper Alpha. I didn’t know it at the time but the Piper was one of the biggest, oldest, most profitable production platforms in the British sector of the North Sea. I emerged onto the helideck from my first chopper ride with the wide-eyed feeling you tried to hide on your first trip offshore. I had time to dump my duffel bag in the cabin they assigned me, get some pairs of coveralls, a bag of gloves. It wasn’t a normal crew change. I was replacing a guy who got hurt and medivacced off the night before. I started a twelve-hour shift with a crew of three other roustabouts and the crane driver, Kenny. I was bunking in with Kenny for an unknown reason. Normally, the four roustabouts, alternating twelve hour shifts, shared cabins with their opposite numbers. Mine was a bottom bunk in a room of crane drivers. Kenny was the boss of the crane drivers. I was replacing a guy on his crew, so we slept and worked at the same time. My first job, on my first shift as a roustabout, was dumping fifty-five gallon drums of radioactive shale into the sea. I watched the roughnecks shovel the shale into a drum on the drill floor. In addition to their usual coveralls, they wore outer suits which looked like rubber. It was supposed to be protection against the radioactivity in the rock that was coming out of the hole. Because of the work on the drill floor, the protective suits were shredded and torn, hanging off the roughnecks in strips. There was an engineer running up and down the catwalk with a crackling Geiger counter. Roughnecks, in the smoke room, joked about watching their appendages fall off. The smoke room provided breaks in the twelve hour shifts, scenes of laughter, boredom and rage. When you were new, they tested you. They tried to scare you, probe you, disturb you, wind you up. Then they sat back, chuckled at your reaction. The Scots were masters at this. It seemed to be a racially imbedded talent. All done in good humour, anything for a laugh. During one of those breaks, soaked in mud and oil from relieving the roughnecks, I listened to one the veterans talk. He looked around the steel room, at the walls. “You could put your fist through the legs of this old piece of shit. If there’s ever gonna be a disaster in the North Sea, it’ll be on this old piece of shit” I didn’t think much about it at the time. I laughed like everyone else. There were moments in the next years when I did think about it, though. His words came back to me on other rigs, as I was getting cozy in a bunk. Exhaustion, food, a hot shower, warm inside; outside, a gale blowing between the Shetlands and Norway. Nights like that, I remembered, had a shiver, as sleep descended. Was it just another trick to scare a green hand? The old guy who said it, didn’t laugh. By the time the crane brought the first drum down from the drill floor, I had been told what to do by the man I relieved. When the crane driver lowered the drum, I gave him a signal to stop at the right spot so I could tip it over the rail, while he held the weight. As I tipped the first few drums of shale over the side, I was thinking about the wisdom of dumping radioactive rocks into the North Sea. Who would believe me onshore, who would care? There was no point in complaining. This was the job I’d tried so hard to get. What choice did I have? Pack my bags and wait for the next flight on the helideck? So when the drums of radioactive shale descended from the sky, seawater pouring out of holes in the sides, I dumped the grey, flat pieces, hoping they wouldn’t poison anything. The Piper Alpha, like most platforms, had big cranes on opposite sides of the deck. The deck held all the pipe and equipment needed on the drill floor. Almost everything brought on board was moved by container. Supply ships filled the deck with steel containers which had to be stacked on top of each other, for lack of space. The roustabouts, one with a radio on the same the frequency as the crane driver, landed the containers and pipe. The crane driver moved back and forth between the cranes, depending upon the load, where he had to pick it up, where he had to land it. A night shift, on deck, in a North Sea gale, wasn’t a good time to discover that Kenny was near sighted. The remarks weren’t made by the other roustabouts, as I suspected, to try to scare me. In the black and white shadows of the big, swaying lights, in the horizontal rain, it was an unwelcome revelation. Kenny’s cranes lifted tons of steel from the decks of bobbing sea going tugs, up over the sides of the platform, across containers of different heights. They said that it was his perspective which was bad. On those stormy nights, when it was hard to see and he was tired, the best tactics were to find the spot the container was supposed to go, do your best to signal him and get out of the way. You always looked around for an escape route, in case he didn’t see you. Your greasy rain suit and slipping boots didn’t help when you were being chased across the container tops by steel boxes, in high winds. What could you do about a crane driver with bad eye sight? Everyone knew about it, but no one seemed to care. Kenny was Kenny. He was a fixture, no one had been killed or crushed yet. During my time offshore with Kenny and the boys I did little except eat, sleep and shower when we weren’t working. On occasion, I lay half asleep in my bunk, while Kenny did business with visitors from all parts of the rig. I had long ago given up trying to sort out the dialects of the British Isles. Many of the thousands of offshore workers were from Northern England and Scotland. The money to be made on the rigs, for fishermen who were risking much more, for no guaranteed income, drew the coastal Scots like flies. Since they were sailors to begin with, they knew about ropes, knots, shackles, hard graft in the rottenest weather. It was understood that they would prefer to fish rather than this, but their fishery was in trouble, they had families. The oil business, like the British military, was happy to recruit there, because they knew the value of the workers. The industrial cities of Britain all sent men to work offshore. There were men from the islands and from small farm villages. There were ex military men as well as merchant mariners driven off their decks by containers. When you mixed in some Aussies and Kiwis, you came close to Babylon when they all spoke fast, at once. Many of Kenny’s conversations took place while I was in the cabin but were unintelligible to me, though I heard them. The language was impossible to understand. Kenny, was a partner with another crane driver in a pornographic video scam. He got videos for the rig. Probably he was selling them to individuals, as well. I laid in my bunk, reading, when a conversation about videos took place. It was business talk with a group of guys, about a week after I arrived. By then, Kenny judged me to be safe to have around. He knew that I was only there till the end of the hitch, I’d probably never be back. On this old rig, the crews were pretty well set. The company had a seniority list they’d use if the injured man didn’t return. As they left the cabin, one guy told me to keep my mouth shut by zipping his lip. I nodded. He left with a smile. What was I going to say about it? I had enough problems surviving the twelve hour shifts. We were a hundred ninety kilometres northeast of Aberdeen in the North Sea. Like dumping the shale into the ocean, it seemed a necessary compromise. I did the job, kept my mouth shut, in return for good money and experience offshore. The first step in working offshore was to get experience. It was the first thing they asked when you applied for a job. When you had worked offshore once, you were ahead of the game. There were piles of applications for the jobs on each company’s desk. It was the classic catch - 22. The Piper had two theatres. There was a regular theatre, with comfortable movie type seating, where they showed contemporary movies. They even had a guy outside the theatre with a request sheet on a clipboard. If you wanted to request a movie, they’d try to get it. The other theatre, with the same interior, was strictly for porn. Kenny had a connection, through the supply ships, to Denmark, where they manufacture a lot of porn. He got every kind of porn. I tried the porn theatre one night. I didn’t like it. There were forty or fifty guys sitting together with their hands in the pockets of their accommodation coveralls, watching endless sex videos. Living for two weeks with two hundred men was bad enough. That just made it worse. I went to bed. Kenny and his boys were busy. To supplement the porn enterprise, they were stealing from the containers. Word was, there were cartons of cigarettes and booze stashed all over the rig. As the roustabouts and crane driver landed containers on the deck, they tried to place the ones for the galley as close to the accommodation as possible. There was even a small deck outside the back door of the galley where some containers could be landed. That was supposed to be the end of the roustabouts’ and crane drivers’ dealings with those containers. Certain sealed containers were locked by Customs and Excise. They were opened only by the galley boss, emptied into the galley by the stewards. There was no drinking allowed offshore but at Christmas each man was allowed one beer and a cigar. It varied from company to company, rig to rig. Who knew what the bosses got shipped in? Teetotallers became very popular around Christmas time, offshore. The Christmas I was there, Kenny’s gang, the other crane driver and some roustabouts, managed to land the special containers at night, break into them, steal the booze and cigarettes. They had a system of ripping off the containers, stashing the goods, blaming it on the cooks and stewards. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. It could have happened on a shift when I was working. There were jobs all over the rig to which Kenny could have assigned me to get me out of the way. There were no fire drills when I was there. No one knew if the evacuation procedures would work. The platform kept pumping oil, one hundred twenty thousand barrels a day, everybody made good money, the company was happy. The British government collected five hundred million pounds a year, in revenues, from the Piper Alpha. When my hitch ended on the Piper, I took the taxi from the heliport to the warm Aberdeen pubs to have a drink with the boys, say our goodbyes. I met one of them, a few years later, in Aberdeen. He had left the Piper, was working on another rig, like myself. He told me that the police had finally raided the platform, searched lockers and the rest of the rig from top to bottom, found all kinds of contraband including a working homebrew still. Some guys lost their jobs, some were charged. I assumed Kenny would have been fired. But, sometimes, guys like him never get caught. Even if he did get run off of the Piper, it might have saved his life. A few years later, I was in Ottawa, trying to deal with my mother’s Alzheimer’s. It was a major change after what I’d been doing for the past twenty years. I picked up the paper outside of the apartment we shared. The headline read, ‘153 missing in rig disaster’. Two hundred, twenty-seven men, including construction workers, were working the night shift or in their bunks. The ones inside the accommodation, near the centre of the platform, were killed immediately by the explosion and shaft of fire, which sucked up all the oxygen. The ones working their shift up on deck, were lucky. One survivor said, “It was a case of over the side or die there”. They jumped seventy metres into the heaving, black North Sea. Some were rescued. The emergency procedures didn’t work, nor did the lifeboats. As for the spark which ignited the leaking gas, a welder’s torch was suggested, but it could just as easily have been a guy having a smoke where he wasn’t supposed to. Some of the men I worked with were on the Piper, that night. There were stewards, cooks, office workers, even a few roustabouts, who were lifers on the platforms. They said goodbye to families and friends, went off to work for two weeks at a time, for their whole working lives. Two weeks off every month beat a nine to five. The money was good, there were no expenses at work except tobacco and toothpaste. Your bed was made, your laundry done, there was good food, all you could eat every day, prepared by professional chefs. Many guys got addicted to it. They couldn’t work any other way. The longer you did it, the harder it was to leave. Those crews packed their bags for that two week trip in the summer of 1988, said their goodbyes, never came back. The final count was 164 dead.

I was leaving Matala with Anne and Thomas, the dedicated communist German from Ulm, who owned the French Peugot which elevated and lowered its suspension at the flick of a switch. He and I had argued about communism and democracy for a week every night in the taverna. My strongest argument, the one which he couldn't answer, was to ask him where all the communist travellers were? Why was he the only one from a communist country who was free to travel where he liked, do what he wanted? Thomas' idealism was admirable. We agreed, at least, that the rich, communist or capitalist, were still screwing the poor. He owned a car and offered me a free ride to Iraklion when he learned I was leaving. Anne was leaving Greece, too. She was from England, I was heading for London. She had seen me around Matala, decided to accompany me. I collected the drachma which were saved for me by my boss, Costa, the young, local godfather in Matala. He gave me an allowance each week, kept back a portion of my pay. I worked on various construction jobs he had, was hardened, tanned and strong when he paid me off. He held back a bit for himself, just to make sure everyone knew who was the boss. If he hadn't saved some of my pay for me, we both knew I would have blown it all. The ferry from Iraklion to Piraeus was boring and uneventful. Just as well. After living for six months in Matala, on the southern coast of Crete, never leaving, it was a slow emergence into the outside world. One of the most embarrassing occasions in my life occurred just then. I had the crabs. I got them in Matala and was at the stage of exterminating them which required sexual abstinence. There was to be no carnal contact, not even snuggling, in case of infection of another and a rebirth of the cursed bugs. But I was ashamed. I was too embarrassed to tell Anne. God knows what she thought. Anne had lived in Matala long enough to know that I wasn't gay. She was attractive enough, the ex girlfriend of a guy who was the grandson of Robert Graves, the poet. But I passed up perfect opportunities and situations which thrust us together. You don't get much closer together than when you hitchike together. I had recently been through hell, living in my makeshift tent in the campground, scratching at myself. I wouldn't have wished it on anyone. But I couldn't bring myself to tell her. It was bad enough telling Costas and the boys in Matala. They all took a step away from me. Costas wrinkled his nose when he asked why I didn't tell him sooner. Later, he admitted that when he got them, he separated himself from his family home and friends until he got rid of them. After a few smog filled days in Athens during which we were treated as fair game, ripped off everywhere we turned, we concluded that the air fare to Britain was too costly. There was an election on in Greece, something catastrophic was happening in Northern Europe, living in Athens, even on our skimpy budget, was too expensive. Reaching London could be done, cheaper, by hitching most of the way. Anne was fighting with her parents, proving her independence. She could easily get the required air fare home but refused to make the call, thereby signalling to her family that she was dependent upon them. I thought she was crazy. A guy seemed to meet us in Brindisi, when we landed in Italy. He appeared, smiling like a long lost brother, gave us pizza and a room for the night, ostensibly, for free. He finally demanded payment in sexual favours, from Anne, but too late. By the time he sneaked away from his wife, it was morning and we fled. On the motorway, heading north, it was easy to see why veteran travellers advised always to hitch with a woman in Europe. Even eighteen wheelers with full loads stopped for women. The first big rig which came by, skidded to a fishtailing halt, up the highway. The driver didn't care about the truck, the load or the other high speed traffic. We had travelled most of the day when he caught me dozing, told me to climb into the bed behind us. Everything looked fine. I gratefully passed out in the bunk after Anne and I oohed and ahhed over the pictures of the driver=s family. I wasn't expecting to be awoken by Anne=s kicks as she scrunched herself up against the passenger door and yelled at the driver. We were shocked that the friendly family man was so intent on groping Anne that he nearly ran the big Volvo off the road. We got him to pull over and let us out. The next driver who picked us up in a big rig on the freeway which runs up the spine of Italy, showed us his automatic revolver which he pulled from under his seat. We were thinking furiously, Anne prodding me in the side, our eyes glued to the weapon as he casually handled the pistol while driving. He explained, near the turnoff to Milan, that every truck driver who stopped in Milan carried a weapon to defend against hijackers. He smiled, checked out Anne=s body openly, when he let us off at a truck stop. We clambered down from the cab, grateful for the lift, glad to be getting away from his aura of danger. Anne and I finally separated in a train station in Switzerland. By this time we were barely speaking. I was irritated at her stubborness. She was frustrated at our slow progress. I didn't have anything to prove to anyone so she seemed, to me, to be involved in a frivolous game. I had given up hope that she'd call home for money enough for two flights back to England. The Greek bread had hardened in our packs. We could barely afford coffee and chocolate bars. The tension between us grew every hour. We stopped, at night, in the little station where we got some sleep on benches, warm and dry. When we awoke, we were greeted by backpackers with English accents who got along famously with Anne and onto whom she latched. She went their way and I went mine. We were glad to part. I headed for Shaffhausen, on the German border. In Matala, some of the German visitors had given me addresses and phone numbers for places to stay and jobs. If I could get into Germany, it seemed worth checking out. My resolve to reach London didn't waver, but I took a detour. It seemed logical that I should see a little of Germany while I was so close. Some of the jobs were even on Canadian bases. The Alps were truly breathtaking. Some of the rides were with young, Swiss natives who pointed out that many of the idyllic scenes in the postcard mountains contained, in reality, many poor people struggling to get by. The underside of Switzerland was obvious to them, never explained to the tourists. When I arrived, I called the number I had in Shaffhausen, knocked on the door of the address I was given, but there was no response. I stayed around for two more days but never found anyone. I couldn't find a youth hostel in Shaffhausen and I couldn't afford a room so I used the only shelter I could find, a public toilet, in a park. The place was clean. If I laid in a certain position I could manage a few hours of sleep in the glare of the all night lights. I waited, for two days and nights, walking around, looking at windows full of displays of Swiss chocolate for the tourists, living in the public restroom, eating my loaf of bread with the last of the jam I had carried from Greece. Finally, I couldn't wait any longer. I approached the border crossing between Switzerland and Germany. The early morning traffic was travelling slowly, I got a lift with a young businessman who lived in Shaffhausen, crossed the border, every day, for work, in Germany. The German border guards ordered me out of the car, searched my pack, studied my passport, ordered me to take off my cowboy boots. They studiously examined the Greek sand which fell out, presumably for drugs, counted my little wad of American bills, rejected me. I had to shoulder my pack and walk back across the border beside the line of cars going to Germany. The Swiss guards shrugged and laughed when they saw. "Germans" they said with a gesture that was meant to explain that they were as baffled as I. I consulted a map, took the rest of the day to hitch to Basel. On the side of the highway, at an intersection, I talked to a hippie looking couple who were hitching in another direction. They said they had slept in a park last night, had awoken to find food and coffee in the grass, beside their sleeping bags. Through Basel I would get to France, then England. If I had stuck to my original plan, with good luck, I'd probably be there by now. The day was ending, darkness approaching, the sky spit rain. I stood on the side of the freeway outside of Basel, watched the lights of the comfortable houses, wondered how many cities I'd stood outside of, how many hours I'd spent waiting for lifts on freeways.. Then Bernt stopped. At first, I thought he was gay, picking up a hitchiker in the dark. But his simple reason for helping me out was that once, on a motorcycle trip around Germany, someone had helped him out. He asked only that I do the same for some other stranger when the opportunity presented itself. Bernt took me home to his comfortable, modern apartment, let me use his shower and phone. I called Canada to borrow a little money. It was sent by American Express. It meant nothing in Canada, the world to me. Bernt and a friend wined and dined me. We ate and drank in the tavern which Hermann Hesse frequented while he wrote Steppenwolf. We ate Swiss rosti, drank wine, tried to remember which parts of the tavern Hesse described in his book. Perhaps from outside the window. They took off for a weekend, left me with the house after Bernt showed me his copious wine cellar. I used the Basel trams to get my money from the American express office, left Bernt a thank you note, hitched to France. From Basel I was lucky to get a lift all the way to Strasbourg where I stood on the freeway with my thumb out until a funky looking, old, walk-in van pulled over and picked me up. The driver was French, returning from Poland where he worked with Solidarity to press for democracy. The paintings and slogans which decorated the van were encouragement to Solidarity and its cause. He had installed a finely tuned, powerful engine in the old van. He laughed at the system the Poles were overthrowing as we sped toward Paris. When he let me off at the suburban metro station, I consulted my address book, called Frank. He had given me his number when he visited Matala, insisted that I call him if I ever got to Paris. I spent the next few days in Frank=s family=s expensive apartment. Frank, a handsome blond Frenchman, was an expert in judo. He had trained for most of his life, had awards, could truthfully say that it saved him once when he was attacked by a gang in a metro station. He was about to join the French army. Frank had lots of girlfriends. We sped around Paris in someone=s car, visited expensive restaurants and cafes. Of course, I started out nearly broke and that finished it. I thanked Frank and hitched to Calais. One way of avoiding the fare from Calais to Dover and London was to get a lift with a trucker. I canvassed the truckers I saw waiting for the ferry. There were dozens of big rigs heading to London. Most of the drivers wouldn't risk picking up a hitchhiker because of the travelling insurance inspectors. I was looking as desperate as I felt. Finally, a driver with an English accent told me to wait by the dock, then to get into his truck, quick, while he was loading. That way, he passed the custom inspections before picking me up. Once we rolled onto the motorway, he checked the mirrors, installed me in the cab so that I couldn't be seen from outside. He told me of his life driving regularly all over Europe. He worked shifts which allowed him some time with his young family in the north of England. He let me off with a cheery "Good luck" at the southernmost tube station in London. By the time I reached Rob=s co-op flat in Finsbury Park, I was exhausted. I had been thoroughly shaken out of the dream I had lived beneath the Matala moon. We sat around his kitchen, drinking tea, reading newspapers, one drizzly morning. That was when I found the article on the shortage of rig workers in Scotland.

He felt like a father figure when they talked on the morning bus from Kanata. They usually got a seat together because they were first at the park n ride which took them downtown, he to the headquarters of National Defence, she to the waitress job at the hotel. They were actually close in age, he, the married father of three, almost bursting his uniform buttons from the desk job, she, the single mother of three, a kind of speed freak, the kind of person who couldn’t gain a pound if she tried. Lady Madonna. His was an understated importance in the military. He got used to deflecting direct questions about it. The odd time it required a quiet “secret” to a persistent questioner, but mostly “bureaucratic stuff” or “paperwork” covered it. She diplomatically changed the subject when she felt they had entered forbidden territory in their morning conversations. Her son, Chris, was the usual topic of conversation, anyway. He had just joined the army. The other kids were still in school and she was glad to see Chris do something. The dead end jobs and bleak prospects were too much. Even if it seemed crazy once, now it made more sense for him to join the army. He highly recommended it though he was privately glad that Danny, his eldest son, had avoided the army and gone on to play football for the university. She felt better when he praised the discipline and character the military instilled in young men. And she did see a difference in Chris when he came home on his first leave. In fact, he looked better than he had in years. She still couldn’t imagine anyone getting him up at 5 AM never mind all the other stuff they made them do. Some mornings, especially in winter when the outside world was still dark, they lapsed into long silences, each contemplating the day ahead as the bus carried them into the city. When spring turned to summer, the sun rose every morning over the fields on either side of the six lane highway and they chatted about Chris’s latest adventure in the army. One day that summer he had endured a hard shift at his computer, fielding access to information requests, filling in for annual vacations being taken, when she saw him on the same express bus going home to Kanata. They stood all the way, hanging on to bars and straps, the bus packed with people. She told him that Chris’s unit was going to Afghanistan next month. In herself, she wasn’t sure about Chris’s gung ho attitude and she definitely didn’t trust the government mouthpieces. The more they praised it, the less confidence she had. But Chris said when you sign up, that’s it, no more choice, you have to do what you’re told. So he was going. She allowed herself a little touch of pride when she told him, grateful to see that he was impressed. He made a mental note to see which units were about to be rotated to Afghanistan as he walked across the lobby of DND. Captain Rogers, that little bastard from RMC. will be there this afternoon. Everyone will think the superior officer is monitoring his new crew but the jumped up little bastard will really be there to learn something. He knew nothing about public relations and the information wars. And they had put him in command of the whole bunch of them, the information warriors. Not a clue, hadn’t ever worked behind the scenes where the real fights were fought. Someone had enough drag to promote him fresh out of university, young and confident, but lacking the one thing necessary in this business, experience. You had to know the law to a point, but it was mostly experience. Almost a gut instinct. What the public will swallow, what it won’t. What to hide and what to offer. Only learned by experience. He could see the little bastard at the back of the room, watching while he led the classroom full of future intelligence officers through the basics of his trade. It was policy now to immerse the new ones in as much of the machinery as possible before they were sent out into the world. “Embedded reporters are no problem” he crossed out the words on the blackboard. “A one way ticket home will not be questioned by headquarters if it is necessary. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, they get out there and go a little crazy. Not sure if it’s too much of that Afghani hash or what” It brought the usual chuckle. “Anyway, ‘operational security’ is a good enough reason if they get out of line. If we see bad news here, news that hasn’t been approved, they’ll be on their way home and somebody over there will be in deep shit” He enjoyed using the word because it always brought a further chuckle from his audience. It also drew a silent, disapproving frown from the little bastard at the back. He was good at what he did so he was given free reign in these sessions with intelligence officers, diplomats and spin doctors of the future. The younger people related to his intelligent but homey style. They loved his forays into irreverence. “This” he held the paper up between two fingers, at arm’s length, with a distasteful expression “is an access to information request form. There is a standing order, unspoken and unwritten, of course, that the first one gets shitcanned. Maybe even the second one. If they’re persistent and keep after the information, there are a whole bunch of lawyers who you’ll probably meet later, who’ll take over. They have lots of ways to delay it. But if they’re that persistent, hey, my personal advice to you is, cover your ass first. Get your commanding officer or somebody above you to contact the lawyers. Believe me, when they’re really persistent, really determined, it’s best to get away from it” An appreciative grunt came from the audience, as if they’d suspected that all along. The little bastard’s frown deepened at the back. He got up and slipped out. She sat with him on the express downtown on the Friday before Labour Day. They chatted mostly about her job, some of the crazy tourists she saw, how glad she was that the busy season was almost over, the restaurant was always so hectic. She had to work through the weekend. The busiest time, the most tips. The tips paid for the sitter and more. He admired her pluckiness and inexhaustible energy. He had Billy to register in his hockey league, his wife had Becky. He also had the shopping to do and the lawn to cut. Maybe a little time for some beer and CFL football. They said goodbye when he stood up so she could get out on Laurier Ave, one stop before his. He awoke with adrenalin coursing through him, his heart beating fast. The phone. His wife interrupted her snoring with a complaining grunt. He picked up the receiver. “Hello” “Deaver?” “Yes, who’s this?” “It’s Briggs, Deaver” General Briggs. What the hell did he want? “Sorry to wake you, Deaver, but we’ve got a problem” “No, no, it’s okay, sir. What problem?” “There’s been some soldiers killed and wounded in Kandahar. We don’t have all the details but it’s bad. We need someone senior in the office. Now. Tonight” A pause. “The press has some of the story, Deaver. They don’t have all of it and we need time” “Ok, sir. I’ll go down in my car. It’ll take me about an hour” “Good man, Deaver. Everyone’s on vacation. We can’t have the press talking to that crew that’s there now. They’re all recruits or temps. Call me at home when you’re there. You might have to write a press release but use operational security as much as you like. Talk to you soon” “What about Captain Rogers, sir?” “I’ve already talked to him. I know you guys were pissed off that he got made up to your commanding officer right after graduation. He’ll stay out of your hair. I made it clear that you’ll be in charge for this crisis. We’ll probably have to give details by Tuesday, after we tell the families. You know what to do. Don’t give em a thing till you hear from me. I’ve got to go, Deaver, call me” He showed his id to the soldier at the entrance to the underground parking where a burly sergeant with a sidearm met him. Another soldier parked his car and he was escorted by the sergeant up to the ninth floor office. If the man had heard anything, he showed no emotion, said nothing. Mayotte, Ryan and Dupuis, three raw recruits who were manning the office for the long weekend, looked up as he walked in. He wasn’t in uniform and they didn’t have their hats on but they stood up as he entered. “As you were, gentlemen,” They sat down and watched him as he turned on the screen on his desk and read. When he twirled around he spoke directly to Dupuis in a low, steady voice, “I want the numbers on how many allied forces have been killed by the American Air Force in Afghanistan. Injured too, if you can get it.” Dupuis looked up from writing on a pad. His stubble cut was growing in. He spoke with earnest young eyes, “It’s not the kind of information the US military is likely to give up, sir” His mind was racing as he called General Briggs. “No, you probably won’t get anything out of them, try NATO, try the armies, try the governments, see what you can find. We may not need it right now, but I want it, in case” “Briggs” “Hello sir, I’m here. It looks bad. Two killed, a couple seriously wounded and some walking wounded. They’ll be out of commission for a while. The report says friendly fire” “Shit. Americans?” “It looks like it, sir” “What the hell are they doing? Something’s wrong there. This is ridiculous” “Some good news though, sir, no reporters” “Good, that’s a relief. There are some press reports but they’re vague. Ok, Deaver, I’ll be in touch. You know what to do. I’ll get back to you when I hear how they want to handle this. Good luck” “Thanks, bye sir” He turned to address the others. “Ok. We’ve got a few hours. Then the phones are going to start ringing. It’ll be the media. I’m going to write down five talking points. Make a copy and as you answer the calls, stick strictly to the script” Mayotte and Ryan watched him with expressions like Danny’s, wide eyed, almost innocent, respectful. They were Danny’s age or younger, Ryan still with a bad case of acne. He wrote out the points he wanted them to follow when dealing with the media...basically, tell them nothing. He gave them a lecture on the importance of shitcanning the first access to information requests about this incident and told them to pass it on to whoever relieved them. Who knew how long this would go on? The first few days of vagueness and saying nothing were necessary in order to give them time. It looked bad but maybe it could be massaged, manipulated, fed to the public slowly so it didn’t look so bad. He spent the rest of the night answering nervous phone calls from General Briggs and drafting a press release which showed the military was on top of the situation. When the day shift, such as it was, arrived, called in from cottages and parties celebrating the end of summer, he ate breakfast alone in the food court across in the Rideau Centre and called home to rearrange his schedule. His wife was angry but she would cope. He might be home in the afternoon. He and his counterpart, Captain Shields, were constantly busy talking to officers who called or showed up when they heard. Their computer reports didn’t really communicate the tragedy like talking to another person did. Especially someone like him, someone right in the heart of the crisis. Finally, after innumerable conversations which he couldn’t avoid and two meetings with the staff at which he emphasized the importance of secrecy, General Briggs ordered him to go home, get a shit, shower and shave, and return to the office, in uniform, for however long it took. So far there were no big problems but a situation like this could turn volatile at any time. He resigned himself to a lost weekend as he pulled out of the parking garage and adjusted the radio. When he stopped for the light at Laurier and Elgin, there she was. She was looking straight at him from the bus stop. He pulled over when he was through the light and waited until she ran to the car and jumped into the passenger seat. She was surprised to see him downtown on a weekend but glad for the lift. The shift had been exhausting and she was ready for a rest. She chatted on as they approached the Queensway, quieted down while he negotiated the ramp and speeding traffic. When they were safely travelling in the middle lane, she told him that she had just gotten an email from Chris, that he had been made a corporal. “Corporal Chris Defalco” she said with a laugh. “Defalco? That’s not your name. Isn’t it Mackenzie?” he said with s glance at her. He could feel it burn through his breast pocket. His hand involuntarily rubbed it. He felt sick. She stared at the line of cars ahead, said that Chris had kept his father’s name and that she had gone back to her own. She looked over at him. “Your eye. Something in it?” she watched the tear run down his face. “Yeah, yeah” he reached blindly for a tissue below the dash. She handed him a tissue. He wiped his eye. “Something blew in the window...” he rolled up his window a few inches. They drove in silence as the Queensway climbed the hill to the Kanata park n ride. “Thanks for the lift, Captain Deaver, see you Tuesday morning” she shut the door and walked to her car. “See you Mrs Mackenzie” He pretended to look into his eye in the mirror as her car passed behind him. They waved goodbye. He turned the key. The car stopped, the radio played. Lady Madonna. He fished the list out of his breast pocket, unfolded it slowly. At the bottom. Names of the dead. Corporal Chris Defalco. He leaned his forehead on the steering wheel and wept.

Matala is a small fishing village on the very southern coast of Crete, between Africa and Greece. It is famous among travellers like the route from Australia to Europe is famous. By the time it is listed in the travellers’ books, it is old and well known. I was staying with Rob, a friend from Canada, who lived in Finsbury Park, worked at the London zoo. He mentioned that ”beneath the Matala moon” was in the lyrics of ‘Carey’, that he’d had a good time there when he’d gone in the past. This was all the direction I needed. I had always liked Joni Mitchell’s songs. My first memory of Matala was waking up, hung over, a dog barking near the fence. I felt around my sleeping bag, couldn’t find my passport or traveller’s cheques. There was a guy cowering by the fence. He had them. His name was George. George was frozen to the spot, quaking in fear, confronted by a big, hostile German Shepherd named Cello. Harry was Cello’s owner. He was a big Dutchman with a mullet, a FREE SONNY BARGER sleeveless t-shirt, big muscles. He liked to push people around. Harry had seen Cello trap George as he ripped off my stuff. He was up early, making a coffee in his trailer, just outside the wire fence of the camp grounds. He lived there for the summer before travelling with Cello, his two boys and wife, back to Holland, for the winter. He knew Manoli who had, by this time, responded to the barking. He stood, sleepy, beside George, smiling resignedly. I tried to look serious and angry, thrashing around in my sleeping bag. We had a meeting in Manoli’s office, where he had a cot and some coffee making utensils. Everybody in the campground left their valuables there when they went to the beach. I slapped George once, settled for my passport and Traveller’s cheques back. I found out later that George could have killed me in a fight, nothing short of a gun was going to stop him. As we talked, George quiet because of Cello’s presence at the door, Harry and Manoli believed that what I said was true: I wasn’t a rich tourist, I dug ditches at home. All I wanted was a coffee, some boiled eggs at the taverna. I told them to tell George not to do it again, to let him go. There was no harm done, no cops for miles. Harry gave me a tarp, to put up between two trees, for a tent. I joined the other tourists at the taverna. We sat, guys from three or four countries, rock and Marley turned up loud, at the taverna across the road from the campground. We’d welcome, with quarts of German beer, the buses which showed up from Iraklion, four or five times a day. They would stop, disgorge passengers in front of the taverna, refill themselves, before heading back to Iraklion with their load of tourists. The departing tourists had done their time in Greece, were moving on. The visitors in the summer months were two or three weekers. Some, were on package excursions from Australia, some, on two week vacations from their jobs in England or Germany or Norway. They were all replaceable to the Greeks. They were all replaced. I didn’t notice the Greeks at that time. I had the same attitude toward the locals as most of the tourists. They were there for my needs, but they weren’t important. The other tourists and travellers were interesting to me, the Cretans, who I call Greeks, were in the background. Matala was crawling with women. Every bus disgorged more who only stayed around for a few weeks. I didn’t see the Greeks, but they were there. Sipping quietly on a Coke or coffee, they were, like us, watching the girls. There were caves in the cliffs at Matala. Some said the early Christians used them to hide from the Romans. Someone in Joni’s crowd discovered them. Probably hippies looking for a Journey to the East. But they shat in them. They were, according to tourists and Greeks, too gross to be worth looking at. I saw the Matala moon many nights, but I passed on the caves. The Greeks approached me after I stuck up for a Greek, in a fight with some Germans, over a woman in the disco. They had been watching me since the incident with George. They knew, through the staff at the taverna, that I would be out of money soon. My first job was with Janni’s crew of woodcutters. He owned a dump truck and a few chain saws. He employed some older Greek guys and an Austrian also named Janni. The Austrian Janni spoke only Greek, lived with his wife, in a quiet village, away from tourists. I accepted him as he accepted me, neither of us asked the other why they were there. They were all amused by me. I was as blond as they were dark but I could work like them, withstand the heat and bugs, put up with the cuts and scratches I received on the job without complaining. I was satisfied, if not happy, with the wages they paid me. I felt better getting home to the campground, having a shower, getting drunk, eating in the taverna at night, than just crawling off the beach, drunk by three in the afternoon. After roughnecking in the bush of Alberta, there wasn’t much one couldn’t make one’s self do. Every year the Greeks took some tourists or young locals to work with them, every year most quit. Austrian Janni was a hard worker. He and Greek Janni, a large, jolly man with curly brown hair and a bushy moustache, kept three of us busy picking up the old branches, throwing them into the dump truck. At the end of each tree, we combined to throw the bigger logs into the truck. They were old olive trees, eighty to one hundred years, which didn’t produce any more. So every day with Janni’s crew was, for the most part, in an olive grove. By tradition and custom, the boss supplied the food for lunch. Sometimes we’d all clamber into the dump truck, Janni would head for the nearest restaurant. It wasn’t a tourist place, more for Greeks like these woodcutters. There was nothing fancy out front, just a couple of tables and chairs where the old men could drink their coffee. I rubbed a cold quart of Henninger over my forehead in the shady back of one of these places, watched Greek Janni bargain with the owner over our lunch. He inspected the carcasses of freshly killed rabbits, they reached an agreement. The parts were fried, in a pan, there in front of us. I started to understand, a little, the Greek, the communication between the men. I stuck to the large parts of the rabbit, those that looked familiar. The Greeks and Janni the Austrian popped the lemon shaped rabbit skulls into their mouths, crushed them with their teeth, devoured the contents. They laughed at my look. I took two buses, to meet Janni, in the morning. I changed buses on a hill where students in uniform waited, buses and cars full of people went to work. There was a cement plaque by the side of the road which I couldn’t read. People had been waiting in that spot for thousands of years. The cliffs fell to the Mediterranean Sea, beside the road. Before the heat of the day descended, the sea breeze blew across Crete. When we were on the job, in the olive groves, we had the best lunch. The two Jannis shut down their screaming chain saws, the crew made itself comfortable in the shade of a big olive tree. The Greek Janni supplied the wine and feta from his house. The tomatoes, onions and cucumbers were cut into the big bowl with a generous slug of olive oil, to soak them. The bread, from the bakery, that morning, and an occasional can of mackerel pieces were bought. The rest of the meal was grown at home. The best of the olive oil was kept for the family, the rest, sold. Janni’s olive oil was smooth, golden. You could eat it with just a piece of bread from the loaf. All of the Greeks seemed to have another side, a hidden side, which you could only see if they trusted you. My next job was for Georgio who called me “Stefanos”. He had a farm in the mountains, drove a little Toyota pickup. He showed up one day at the taverna, offered me a job. I agreed, he picked me up every morning until the job finished. He and his compadres squeezed me into the cab of the pickup, talked to me all the way to the job. They wanted me to hear their illegal Partisan songs on the cassette tape. Georgio owned a huge field, maybe many fields. All I knew was that he needed wire to be strung across hundreds of the concrete posts which we had planted, so that his usual crop of tomatoes would climb, avoiding spoilage on the ground. Costa had seen me in action, by now, with the tourists, the travellers and the Greeks. He knew I was ok. He checked me out in the campground, taverna and disco and knew I was no threat to his position as godfather of the surrounding valley. He knew that I could do the Greeks a lot of good. He gave me a job working with his crews on construction and, then, in the new disco he was building, in Matala. Costa picked me up each morning at six am on his Yamaha 750, at the campground. We roared off into the hills to one of the many construction jobs he had going. Sometimes he walked through the campground to survey the sleeping women. If I slept in, he approached my tent, moved my sleeping bag, with a toe, to see if it was empty. If it wasn’t, he looked over the woman I had slept with. He turned up his nose or gave me an approving smile, depending on what he saw. One hot day, the tourist police showed up on a job. The guy, with a uniform, gun and a belt that went over his shoulder, talked to someone on the other side of the site. Costa left the forming he was doing beside me, touched my shoulder as he passed, confronted the policeman. His brother George, a big guy who spoke no English and wore a carpenter’s belt, like everybody else, stopped work, stood beside the policeman. The other guys told me that George was a champion boxer. He was built like a weight lifter. They looked over at me a few times but the outcome never was in doubt: Costa had a job to do, there were houses standing half finished all over Crete. If a man was willing to work and he was productive, why stop him? Because the young locals won’t do it for the wages? Bah! The policeman walked away, smiling at George. Costa gave me a wink and a smile when he returned to our forming. At Costa’s mother’s, we sat beneath the grape vine filled pergola, drank iced tea, his mother bringing us glasses. He said that he’d been to London, checked it out. His sour look was tempered by understanding, but I had no inclination to defend London while I sat there with Costa and his mother on their family farm. I was sleeping half at the campground, half at the new disco, when Rob came to visit me from London. He brought a forty ouncer of Johnny Walker Black which he called “mother’s milk”. Thomas was a German who made friends with Rob the second he saw the Johnny Walker. I was working, only saw George and a band of young guys from the area heading up the hill. George, who I met when I first arrived, liked ultraviolence. He had a determined frown, a long, lethal looking flashlight in his fist, as he started up the hill. The young men of the village took care of business. They had recently kicked a whole tent of Frenchmen out for attacking the other guests, especially the females ones. They had, just last week, shot an Italian dead on a nearby beach, for selling heroin to the kids. The legal inquiry had just finished. Nobody knew anything, therefore, no one was guilty. There were no cops in Matala. Rob had, long ago, given Thomas the bottle to drink. The German was getting violent, challenging the whole campground and the Greeks, to knock him off the hill. Rob was protecting himself as well as getting away from Thomas’ aggravating bleating. He had to see a Swedish girl, anyway. Why hang around Thomas? Thomas, I saw the next morning, as I waited for a lift, suffered a lot of cuts from some bats around the head. He was unceremoniously trundled onto the first bus leaving Matala in a near catatonic state. He had big clumps of hair missing beneath the bandage on his head. As the season went on, the disco neared completion. I was living day to day, Costa holding back some of my week’s drachma so I’d have something to leave with. There were women from all over the world there. Some women were there for the weather, some because Greece was Greece, but these Greeks believed, and it seemed to be so, that women were there, to be with them. One girl told me that a Greek propositioned her on the beach, saying, “Maybe you’re with Stevie, but he’s not a Greek” The Greek men had a heart sworn assumption that the tourist women should pay for everything. If I, in my goofy, chivalrous way, paid for the drinks or the snack for myself and a woman, I was the butt of a lot of jokes the next day or considered a sad case, to be pitied. They spoke of a man as “poly mafia” when he was seen night after night with a tourist girl but didn’t pay for anything. The “Papa” (Pope) was the greatest Godfather of them all, the Catholic church was the greatest mafia body. I was constantly getting called from the disco or my tent to come settle disputes. An Australian or Dutch girl would be trying to explain to Manoli, in a headlit scene, that just because she danced with a Greek guy or let him buy her a drink, that she wasn’t giving herself for the night or marriage. The Greeks loved the drama of it. Manoli would console the Greek guy, I would shoo the tourists to their tent. The guy would look mad for a while, then, after making sure that the girl wasn’t with anyone else, go back to the disco to see if he had time to pick out another. I don’t know what the married Greek guys told their wives. All of the tourist women agreed that the Italians were worse than the Greeks at aggressive come ons. The women said that if they slapped a rude man in Italy, they got slapped back. I stuffed myself at the snail feast. The snails grew on everything below a foot. I saw women and children out gathering them off of rocks and plants in the fields. We gathered in a shack near Matala, ate our way through many pounds of the little shelled creatures. They were served by the men, to the other men, from a big, boiling pot. More were boiled while we ate. We sucked the little critters out of their shells by windpower alone. Until I got the hang of it, I had to use the fork on the table to loosen that last little piece of flesh stuck to the shell. After a while, I could get the last piece by using, as the Greeks did, the shell from the one before. We ate them for hours. One morning, on Costa’s bike, we stopped at a crossroads, in a sleepy village, where an old man with a net hat, baggy jodhpur pants, big, black, leather boots, stood under a tree. He had a grey, bushy moustache. The dappled sunlight glistened on his knife. Costa and he exchanged greetings and information. He had hanging, in front of him, the carcass of a goat, half skinned. He told Costa something, looked over for confirmation to two young boys who were sitting in the shade of a neighbouring tree. Above them, two goats, which had grazed on the lower branches of the tree, were standing on the thick, lower limbs to get at the leaves above them. Tourist season was ending, regulars who had been there all summer, were thinning out. Some of us got drunk on the raki they made from the dregs of the wine harvest. We finished the disco. Prospects for the winter narrowed. I could leave Matala to work at a tomato canning factory, in Crete, or hitch north. It was time to go. Costa paid me off, one night, at the disco. He told me, “To work in Greece, Stevie, takes some grease” and pocketed a percentage of my savings. I hitched back to London where Rob and I found a pub with ‘Carey’ on the jukebox.

I was not surprised at the shuffling of feet beyond the high wooden fence. It was Halloween night and I was working my first shift as night watchman in the old lumber company where my grandfather had worked for thirty years. They say, at the end, the owner would send a car for old Tom to take him, in comfort, the two miles each way he had walked for so long. There were children and parents walking the streets outside the yard, sometimes explosions of firecrackers in the distance. It was an old lumber yard, a throwback to the glory days of Bytown when timber was king. I walked around the perimeter wooden fence, checked that the big doors to the yard and garage were locked, wandered into the little kitchen for a cup of tea. I knew that drinking too much caffeine on graveyard shifts could have disastrous consequences when the lack of sleep eventually caught up to you, but this was my first shift, Halloween night and tea didn’t seem as dangerous as coffee. I wasn’t one to be superstitious and all the leprechauns and little people and faeries of Irish folklore weren’t foremost in my thoughts except when I remembered my mother who was born in Galway and believed in it all. I had bad dreams about the freezecat but that’s another story. There were three mugs set out in the kitchen at the back of the office. I dropped a teabag into one, plugged in the kettle and checked that day’s Sun girl. The knocking at the office door sounded normal. Maybe some of the trick or treaters outside had seen the kitchen light. I walked through the dark office. As I reached for the doorknob I heard the words “No need for that” I couldn’t believe my eyes when a man walked right through the door and shook my outstretched hand. “Tom, Tom Wheeler, your grandfather, and you’ll know Murphy” To my astonishment another figure stepped through the closed door and shook the hand which my grandfather had just squeezed. I felt it. I know they both squeezed my hand. I recognized my grandfather by pictures I’d seen. He had a large head, a bald pate and a perpetual smile. My irreverent friends would have called him “wingnut” because of his large ears, but not to his face. Murphy’s theory was the reason I was here in the first place. His theory of gambling on sporting events hit a few rough spots when I tried it after his death. Or maybe I didn’t get the full gist of it. Whatever happened, I lost my shirt over those bets and was forced to take this job. The last time I’d seen Murphy he was sitting up in his casket with my coffee cup in his hands and a brawl going on all around him. They made their way through the office to the kitchen where my grandfather refilled the kettle and washed out an old teapot. He made tea while Murphy and I sat down at the table. I wasn’t sure what to do about it and the manners of these two ghosts, for that is what they must be, were impeccable. “I thought we came here to decide” said Murphy, filling his pipe. “Yes, we can decide tonight, all right. Tonight’ll be the night we’ll decide” Tom said as he set the pot down on the table to steep and pulled up a chair. He too filled his pipe. “You didn’t follow through on the system I told you about just before I died” Murphy said to me. “What do you mean?” I piped up. “A team usually loses at home the first game after a road trip. That’s part of it. There were a few more tricks of the trade which you failed to employ when you made those bets. You would have bet the opposite and cleaned up if you had” Murphy lined up the sugar and milk near his cup just behind the spoon. “Hm” I grunted. Tom poured tea into our cups and spoke to Murphy as he added his sugar. “I think three” Murphy took his time, measured his sugar carefully with his spoon, added milk and stirred the combination vigorously. “After a lot of thought, I have to conclude that the answer is two” A long silence broken only by the sounds of tea drinking and the unwrapping of a package of biscuits Tom had produced. Peak Freans. “Maybe, if they were doing a proper Irish jig. But even then, with the footwork, you’d have to hope they were once Irish in order not to step on each other’s toes.” “See, three is the superior number” Tom answered,” being half again what your number two is It could be easily done by three angels dancing a Highland fling on the head of a pin” My grandfather’s father was a stonemason from Putney but his wife was a Ross from the Highlands and he defended the northern clan at every opportunity. “We’re not talking about a needle here” Murphy proclaimed. “The thick end with the eye in it. Only Irish angels could dance on the head of a pin and there’d only be room for two of them” Tom disappeared for a moment behind a cloud of grey smoke from his pipe. Anger showed on his countenance when he reappeared. “Three Scottish angels could do it” Before I knew what was happening they had jumped up and were circling the table, Murphy with a large shillelagh, Tom with a battle axe. I sat still and watched. Murphy swung a vicious two hander which caught Tom in the neck. His head was clearly separated from his shoulders but just popped up and landed back in its spot. It was facing the wrong way, but Tom adjusted it and caught Murphy on the side at hip level thereby cutting him in two with the axe. Murphy separated in the middle but his upper body, after popping up, returned to the bottom half at the waist. I could hear laboured breathing as they sparred and clashed but no more than the sounds of two old men exerting themselves. Finally, they put aside their weapons, drank tea, smoked their pipes and resumed the debate. “Two is a balanced number, equal on both sides of its duality” Murphy declared out loud. “Well, we could add them together to equal five or put them side by side and come up with thirty two” offered agreeable Tom. One of his brothers had been an accountant. “Ihirty two would be a little crowded on the head of a pin” Murphy observed. Both disappeared behind clouds of grey smoke as they contemplated the problem with newly fired pipes. “The angels would have to step lively all right” Tom observed. “Thirty two Scottish angels could do a Highland Reel on the head of a pin” he declared. “Mind you, they’d need eight circles for the teams of four” “Hm” responded Murphy. “I could see putting them side by side and coming up with twenty three” I was wondering if they would again arise to resume hostilities but all they did was wash and dry the cups together like an old married couple. I could hear them mumbling to each other as they stood at the sink with their backs to me. My disbelief was in a suspended state. Except that it wasn’t a trick in my head. They sat down at the table again and looked across the office to the front door. The knock on the front door came after a long minute of waiting. I made to rise but Tom put up his hand to stop me and Murphy said “Shh” The door never opened but four little men carried a log fire with a bubbling pot slung above it through the office to where we were sitting in the kitchen. Behind them a mad cackle blended with the whooshing sound of a wild wind and a dark figure flew through the wall, did two circuits of the office and landed deftly behind the pot. My mouth was hanging open when I looked at my grandfather and Murphy. Both nodded and smiled at the woman in front of us. “Hello, Zelda” they said. “Boys” the woman spoke while her appearance changed like fluid before my eyes. First she was an old hag, then a beautiful maiden, then an ancient crone with a wart on her nose and finally she settled on a plump milkmaid who peered curiously into the pot. “This is Steve, Tom’s grandson and an old friend of mine” Murphy spoke up. “He’s on the other side, is he?” she stirred the bubbling broth with great concentration. “Yes, he’s still there” Murphy nodded agreeably “But not for much longer” This conversation troubled me. “And how’s tricks and treats tonight then, Zelda?” Tom inquired. Zelda turned into a smartly dressed businesswoman while she surveyed the pot and the four little men. Were they elves or goblins or gnomes? I didn’t know and no one was telling. “It used to be better in the old days” she said “You can’t scare anybody any more. Then there’s all the white witches. Dogooders I call them. I mean you can be spooky without being evil” She joined Murphy and Tom in puffing on a pipe. With all four of the little men smoking their pipes as well, we disappeared for a moment until the cloud moved on. There was no smoke from the fire under the pot though, I will say that. As if on a prearranged signal, the little men picked up the fire and pot, waited till Zelda stepped out of the way, carried it through the office and the closed front door. Zelda watched them go, an ever changing expression on her ever changing face. “Goodbye, boys. I sensed you were in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop by to say hello. See you round” She did a high speed circuit of the darkened office, one second mounting her broom, the next a black blur, the next gone through the wall. After this display my grandfather produced a pint of single malt Highland whiskey and Murphy found a pint of Black Bush in his pocket. The tea mugs were used to share the shots. “Tell you what” said Murphy “We’ll meet next Halloween night here and decide for good” “Agreed” said Tom “Next Halloween night. That long enough for you?” “Oh yes. By that time there won’t be any doubt. I’ll know by then” “Same here” said Tom. They stood and proferred their hands. Each squeezed my outstretched one. As I followed them across the office, Tom said “Halloween night is over here now. But it’s just starting west of here” They waved goodbye and walked through the door. I opened it and watched them walk to the outer fence. They turned to me. “I’ll say hello to your Dad” Tom spoke in a loud voice. “And don’t bet on anything more than five to one” Murphy shouted They turned west and walked through the fence. Up in the sky, silhouetted against the full moon, Zelda flew by on her broomstick. I walked back to the kitchen to turn out the lights. I felt that glorious buzz which just the right amount of good whiskey produces. It was time to do my rounds and make sure nothing strange was happening in the yard that Halloween night.

I clean the cream from my whiskers with my paw. I sit watching the delicious little birds hop from seed to seed on the dying thistles in the garden outside the window. This window seat is made for these lazy autumn afternoons. Red’ll be home soon. I love to watch his change of expression when he approaches the house to greet his latest wife. She’s Lola this year. It was Linda back in those days, Bennie’s sister. It’s getting harder to remember that I used to live with Bennie. The boys came up with the idea, in a poker game, at Bennie’s. There was Mutt, Jeff, Bennie and Slocum. I watched from the back of the couch, cleaning my paws with my tongue. There were clouds of smoke and interesting smells emanating from the table that night. The boys were flying high. Bennie figured his ship had finally come in. The next morning, as we drove to work, Bennie talked about the score. He talked to me, but he was really talking to himself. He was a good provider though, so I went along with it. Bennie was my owner, a cat worshipper, who also owned Brutus, a watchdog. Bennie took me to work with him most days. I was an excuse for Bennie to talk to himself, a warm body to have around. Bennie was the only employee left in Red Smith’s auto parts warehouse. Red didn’t make much wholesaling used auto parts, but he had a famous safe which made him a tidy profit. He held payrolls for a lot of companies which didn’t have the facilities to handle large amounts of cash. They couldn’t fit into bank schedules. The safe also held such items as receipts, estates and some money from questionable sources which Red labelled, ‘Other’. On the way to work the next morning, Bennnie dreamed along with the sports show on the radio. “With my cut, I could buy an island, like Brando. Down in Tahiti. So what if he’s fat? Women still love him. I’d have a party for the boys, but not for a couple of years. This is Slocum’s chance too. He can escape from his old lady, finally. The guy’s not well. She’s a bad influence. Don’t you think he’s shrunk and turned grey since he’s been with her?” I sat in the back seat watching some dogs on the sidewalk. Gross. Brutus ran out when Bennie opened the front door of the warehouse. There are dogs and there are dirty dogs. Brutus was dirty and aggressive with everyone except Bennie and me. Bennie had trained him, I had shown him my claws when we first met. He almost lost an eye that time, always respected me since. I wouldn’t turn my back on him, though. Brutus is big. He’s a big, dirty watchdog who would tear anything apart just for fun. Unless someone killed Brutus or otherwise incapacitated him, they’d never be able to steal from this warehouse. Unless they had an in and knew how the safe worked, that is. Bennie was counting on this as part of his plan. He could control Brutus and retirement was approaching. If he ripped the place off, he could sit tight for a few years and let things cool down. If everyone kept their mouths shut and they paid a lawyer Mutt knew, they would all end up rich. Even Red had some kind of insurance for a robbery, Bennie figured, but it wasn’t an urgent consideration. Red could afford it, no doubt. There would be questions. There would be all kinds of cops. They would insist on a lie detector test, but he didn’t have to take it, they couldn’t use it in court. Brando never backed down from a role. This was one for which Bennie had been preparing all of his life. That was the way Bennie saw it, anyway. I always thought he was a little crazy, but who could have known? The safe only opened once a day. If robbers did get past Brutus and the other alarms, unless they came at exactly the right time, they would have to blow the door off of it. It would take a big explosion to blow the door, neighbouring alarms would go off all over the place. There wasn’t much paper around, but there might be a fire. The other thing, which only Red knew about the safe, but no one else knew, was that it expelled all of the oxygen, slowly, after the door closed. Red got it from an art museum when the government closed it down. One of the perks of having a foolproof safe was that big companies were advised, by word of mouth, to use Red’s, in emergencies. Red made a pretty penny helping out big companies. When the boys thought up the plan at the poker game, it was after Bennie had told them all about the “special job” Red was doing that weekend. A big company was moving millions of dollars from city to city. They were leaving it in Red’s safe overnight on the weekend. Bennie and the boys planned to rip it off. I stretched and tasted the fresh cat food Bennie had left in my dish by the office door. I settled in the comfortable window, watched Bennie strike poses in front of the mirror. Every time I cleaned the outside of my ears, I remembered the ticks. Getting rid of them was a painful process. Bennie thought he looked like Brando when he practised a sneer. I thought he looked like an overweight Elvis impersonator. There was an inventory to keep, some paperwork to do, but Bennie mostly listened to a redneck on the radio and talked to me during his work day. When we were at the warehouse, Bennie kept Brutus in his run outside in the back. Red dropped in on Friday afternoon for a few minutes. He ruffled my fur, scratched my ears. Red was just getting to like me in those days. He went over the delivery of the money on Saturday morning, told Bennie that he had Sunday off, that he, Red, would be there to make sure of the pick up on Sunday morning. Red sat in Bennie’s chair, feet up, smoking a cigar, called Linda. He put Bennie on with his sister, enjoyed their fraternal banter. Red glowed with love for Linda. His face changed when he talked to her on the phone. When he spoke about her with Bennie, the latter thought he was kidding. Bennie looked at Red, quizzically, behind his back, after these conversations about his older sister. The boys planned to pull into the warehouse as soon as the delivery was made on Saturday morning. They would load the money and take it away. They would leave Bennie in the safe to be released by Red the next day. The story would be that the robbers showed up right after the security company delivered the cash, pushed Bennie into the safe, left with the loot and the security film. The key to getting away with it was for everyone to behave normally. These guys thought they could pull it off. It sounded good, that night, when the boys met for poker at our place. Mutt had all the papers and powers of attorney for them to sign. It would give their lawyer, who wasn’t above a bit of graft himself, the right to move their money around. No one could quit their jobs or do anything out of the ordinary for at least two years. They were all thinking about retirement. The boys were closer to old than young. The delivery Saturday morning went smoothly, the security company guards moved the cash into the safe. They had just pulled out of the parking lot when Mutt, Jeff and Slocum pulled up, at the front door, in Slocum’s black van. Bennie had already taken the film out of all the security cameras when they walked into the office. They wore gloves, but no masks or disguises. Bennie showed them the millions of dollars they were stealing by opening a package. They got lost in a delirious minute of congratulations while they admired the bills. After a short debate, they figured that I should keep Bennie company in the safe. There was nothing soft and warm inside the safe. I never did like it. They threw me in with Bennie after they put my dish and some water inside the door. I circled the safe quickly, ran out, just as they slammed the door shut. They left him some chocolate bars and water, but they couldn’t do anything about the light. There was no light, but Bennie planned to sleep and rehearse his shock and anger until Red arrived. They didn’t even notice me until it was too late. No one had time to worry about me, so they left. The three of them giggled as they got into Slocum’s van. In a few years, they would be on easy street. Margaritas all around at Bennie’s place in Tahiti, one island over from Brando’s. All they had to do now was to drop off the money at the lawyer’s. At the time, I didn’t know, nobody did, except Red, about the slow leak of oxygen from the safe. Bennie must have realized that I clean the cream from my whiskers with my paw. I sit watching the delicious little birds hop from seed to seed on the dying thistles in the garden outside the window. This window seat is made for these lazy autumn afternoons. Red’ll be home soon. I love to watch his change of expression when he approaches the house to greet his latest wife. She’s Lola this year. It was Linda back in those days, Bennie’s sister. It’s getting harder to remember that I used to live with Bennie. The boys came up with the idea, in a poker game, at Bennie’s. There was Mutt, Jeff, Bennie and Slocum. I watched from the back of the couch, cleaning my paws with my tongue. There were clouds of smoke and interesting smells emanating from the table that night. The boys were flying high. Bennie figured his ship had finally come in. The next morning, as we drove to work, Bennie talked about the score. He talked to me, but he was really talking to himself. He was a good provider though, so I went along with it. Bennie was my owner, a cat worshipper, who also owned Brutus, a watchdog. Bennie took me to work with him most days. I was an excuse for Bennie to talk to himself, a warm body to have around. Bennie was the only employee left in Red Smith’s auto parts warehouse. Red didn’t make much wholesaling used auto parts, but he had a famous safe which made him a tidy profit. He held payrolls for a lot of companies which didn’t have the facilities to handle large amounts of cash. They couldn’t fit into bank schedules. The safe also held such items as receipts, estates and some money from questionable sources which Red labelled, ‘Other’. On the way to work the next morning, Bennnie dreamed along with the sports show on the radio. “With my cut, I could buy an island, like Brando. Down in Tahiti. So what if he’s fat? Women still love him. I’d have a party for the boys, but not for a couple of years. This is Slocum’s chance too. He can escape from his old lady, finally. The guy’s not well. She’s a bad influence. Don’t you think he’s shrunk and turned grey since he’s been with her?” I sat in the back seat watching some dogs on the sidewalk. Gross. Brutus ran out when Bennie opened the front door of the warehouse. There are dogs and there are dirty dogs. Brutus was dirty and aggressive with everyone except Bennie and me. Bennie had trained him, I had shown him my claws when we first met. He almost lost an eye that time, always respected me since. I wouldn’t turn my back on him, though. Brutus is big. He’s a big, dirty watchdog who would tear anything apart just for fun. Unless someone killed Brutus or otherwise incapacitated him, they’d never be able to steal from this warehouse. Unless they had an in and knew how the safe worked, that is. Bennie was counting on this as part of his plan. He could control Brutus and retirement was approaching. If he ripped the place off, he could sit tight for a few years and let things cool down. If everyone kept their mouths shut and they paid a lawyer Mutt knew, they would all end up rich. Even Red had some kind of insurance for a robbery, Bennie figured, but it wasn’t an urgent consideration. Red could afford it, no doubt. There would be questions. There would be all kinds of cops. They would insist on a lie detector test, but he didn’t have to take it, they couldn’t use it in court. Brando never backed down from a role. This was one for which Bennie had been preparing all of his life. That was the way Bennie saw it, anyway. I always thought he was a little crazy, but who could have known? The safe only opened once a day. If robbers did get past Brutus and the other alarms, unless they came at exactly the right time, they would have to blow the door off of it. It would take a big explosion to blow the door, neighbouring alarms would go off all over the place. There wasn’t much paper around, but there might be a fire. The other thing, which only Red knew about the safe, but no one else knew, was that it expelled all of the oxygen, slowly, after the door closed. Red got it from an art museum when the government closed it down. One of the perks of having a foolproof safe was that big companies were advised, by word of mouth, to use Red’s, in emergencies. Red made a pretty penny helping out big companies. When the boys thought up the plan at the poker game, it was after Bennie had told them all about the “special job” Red was doing that weekend. A big company was moving millions of dollars from city to city. They were leaving it in Red’s safe overnight on the weekend. Bennie and the boys planned to rip it off. I stretched and tasted the fresh cat food Bennie had left in my dish by the office door. I settled in the comfortable window, watched Bennie strike poses in front of the mirror. Every time I cleaned the outside of my ears, I remembered the ticks. Getting rid of them was a painful process. Bennie thought he looked like Brando when he practised a sneer. I thought he looked like an overweight Elvis impersonator. There was an inventory to keep, some paperwork to do, but Bennie mostly listened to a redneck on the radio and talked to me during his work day. When we were at the warehouse, Bennie kept Brutus in his run outside in the back. Red dropped in on Friday afternoon for a few minutes. He ruffled my fur, scratched my ears. Red was just getting to like me in those days. He went over the delivery of the money on Saturday morning, told Bennie that he had Sunday off, that he, Red, would be there to make sure of the pick up on Sunday morning. Red sat in Bennie’s chair, feet up, smoking a cigar, called Linda. He put Bennie on with his sister, enjoyed their fraternal banter. Red glowed with love for Linda. His face changed when he talked to her on the phone. When he spoke about her with Bennie, the latter thought he was kidding. Bennie looked at Red, quizzically, behind his back, after these conversations about his older sister. The boys planned to pull into the warehouse as soon as the delivery was made on Saturday morning. They would load the money and take it away. They would leave Bennie in the safe to be released by Red the next day. The story would be that the robbers showed up right after the security company delivered the cash, pushed Bennie into the safe, left with the loot and the security film. The key to getting away with it was for everyone to behave normally. These guys thought they could pull it off. It sounded good, that night, when the boys met for poker at our place. Mutt had all the papers and powers of attorney for them to sign. It would give their lawyer, who wasn’t above a bit of graft himself, the right to move their money around. No one could quit their jobs or do anything out of the ordinary for at least two years. They were all thinking about retirement. The boys were closer to old than young. The delivery Saturday morning went smoothly, the security company guards moved the cash into the safe. They had just pulled out of the parking lot when Mutt, Jeff and Slocum pulled up, at the front door, in Slocum’s black van. Bennie had already taken the film out of all the security cameras when they walked into the office. They wore gloves, but no masks or disguises. Bennie showed them the millions of dollars they were stealing by opening a package. They got lost in a delirious minute of congratulations while they admired the bills. After a short debate, they figured that I should keep Bennie company in the safe. There was nothing soft and warm inside the safe. I never did like it. They threw me in with Bennie after they put my dish and some water inside the door. I circled the safe quickly, ran out, just as they slammed the door shut. They left him some chocolate bars and water, but they couldn’t do anything about the light. There was no light, but Bennie planned to sleep and rehearse his shock and anger until Red arrived. They didn’t even notice me until it was too late. No one had time to worry about me, so they left. The three of them giggled as they got into Slocum’s van. In a few years, they would be on easy street. Margaritas all around at Bennie’s place in Tahiti, one island over from Brando’s. All they had to do now was to drop off the money at the lawyer’s. At the time, I didn’t know, nobody did, except Red, about the slow leak of oxygen from the safe. Bennie must have realized that something was wrong because he made a lot of noise in the safe around the same time that Red arrived, the next morning. Red’s Cadillac pulled up beside Bennie’s Celebrity in the empty parking lot. I watched from the front window as Red got out of his car and walked toward the building. He looked back once at Bennie’s car. He was about half way between his parking space and the warehouse when his cell phone went off. He dug it out of his jacket pocket and answered it. I could tell that he was talking to a woman he loved by the change of expression on his face. It lit up. He stopped, looked at the sky as he talked. He had a big smile on his face when he turned back to the car. He listened to the phone, smiled at his shoes. Red got back into his Caddy, talking on the phone, his eyes on Bennie’s Celebrity. He was talking to Lola that day. He thought Bennie had his days off mixed up, so that he was taking care of the pick up. He was partially right, Bennie was there, but he was in the safe. The noises from the safe got fewer and further between, quieter, then stopped all together. Brutus started howling and whining from the back of the warehouse. Brando’s death scene in The Godfather always was one of Bennie’s favourites, but I think he would rather have played it in a tomato patch. When the security guys from the pick up company arrived, there was no one around. They called Red and told him that they could see the cat in the office window and that Bennie’s car was there, but no Bennie. By this time I was hungry, the litter box was filling up. I knew, from Brutus’s mournful howl, that Bennie had somehow died in the safe. Red drove over from Lola’s the next morning. He took a long time calling long distance, pushing digital codes to open the safe before its special time. Red’s reputation was on the line. The reputation of his service to the big companies. The security company had to have the money. Red breathed through his nose a lot, walked around the office with a serious expression followed by the security guards talking into their cell phones. If they had arrived earlier, if Red hadn’t taken so long to open the safe, they could have seen Bennie gasping for his last breath. The police were called as soon as Red opened the door and found Bennie dead in the safe, the money gone. Red seemed surprised and a little hurt by the discovery of Bennie’s body. When he saw the cat dishes of water and food inside the safe door he adopted me on the spot. He took me home to his very comfortable estate. It was as if he was protecting me. He switched from Linda to Lola just after Bennie’s funeral. Linda accused him of holding out on her, but Red paid her off. It wasn’t the payment she wanted but she had to settle for it. The police questioned all of Bennie’s friends. Nobody talked and no one was caught for the theft. Lola’s a real cat lover so I’m pampered and lazy here. There are no poker games with smoke and interesting smells, but the food is great. Yesterday she got some cat treats and served them to me on a pillow. It gets harder and harder to remember life at Bennie’s. Red suffered his loss manfully, in public. Bennie’s death was so shocking that Red’s compensation from the insurance company went unnoticed. Red doesn’t know Mutt or Jeff or Slocum. They don’t move in the same circles. They were all there at Bennie’s funeral which was also attended by a large number of undercover cops. I watched from the passenger seat of Red’s Caddy. When it was over they filed past the Cadillac on their way to the cars. Red argued with Linda over Bennie’s grave. Slocum looked me right in the eye and winked as he passed the windshield. He knew that I had seen it all and that Red was a good provider. something was wrong because he made a lot of noise in the safe around the same time that Red arrived, the next morning. Red’s Cadillac pulled up beside Bennie’s Celebrity in the empty parking lot. I watched from the front window as Red got out of his car and walked toward the building. He looked back once at Bennie’s car. He was about half way between his parking space and the warehouse when his cell phone went off. He dug it out of his jacket pocket and answered it. I could tell that he was talking to a woman he loved by the change of expression on his face. It lit up. He stopped, looked at the sky as he talked. He had a big smile on his face when he turned back to the car. He listened to the phone, smiled at his shoes. Red got back into his Caddy, talking on the phone, his eyes on Bennie’s Celebrity. He was talking to Lola that day. He thought Bennie had his days off mixed up, so that he was taking care of the pick up. He was partially right, Bennie was there, but he was in the safe. The noises from the safe got fewer and further between, quieter, then stopped all together. Brutus started howling and whining from the back of the warehouse. Brando’s death scene in The Godfather always was one of Bennie’s favourites, but I think he would rather have played it in a tomato patch. When the security guys from the pick up company arrived, there was no one around. They called Red and told him that they could see the cat in the office window and that Bennie’s car was there, but no Bennie. By this time I was hungry, the litter box was filling up. I knew, from Brutus’s mournful howl, that Bennie had somehow died in the safe. Red drove over from Lola’s the next morning. He took a long time calling long distance, pushing digital codes to open the safe before its special time. Red’s reputation was on the line. The reputation of his service to the big companies. The security company had to have the money. Red breathed through his nose a lot, walked around the office with a serious expression followed by the security guards talking into their cell phones. If they had arrived earlier, if Red hadn’t taken so long to open the safe, they could have seen Bennie gasping for his last breath. The police were called as soon as Red opened the door and found Bennie dead in the safe, the money gone. Red seemed surprised and a little hurt by the discovery of Bennie’s body. When he saw the cat dishes of water and food inside the safe door he adopted me on the spot. He took me home to his very comfortable estate. It was as if he was protecting me. He switched from Linda to Lola just after Bennie’s funeral. Linda accused him of holding out on her, but Red paid her off. It wasn’t the payment she wanted but she had to settle for it. The police questioned all of Bennie’s friends. Nobody talked and no one was caught for the theft. Lola’s a real cat lover so I’m pampered and lazy here. There are no poker games with smoke and interesting smells, but the food is great. Yesterday she got some cat treats and served them to me on a pillow. It gets harder and harder to remember life at Bennie’s. Red suffered his loss manfully, in public. Bennie’s death was so shocking that Red’s compensation from the insurance company went unnoticed. Red doesn’t know Mutt or Jeff or Slocum. They don’t move in the same circles. They were all there at Bennie’s funeral which was also attended by a large number of undercover cops. I watched from the passenger seat of Red’s Caddy. When it was over they filed past the Cadillac on their way to the cars. Red argued with Linda over Bennie’s grave. Slocum looked me right in the eye and winked as he passed the windshield. He knew that I had seen it all and that Red was a good provider.

I first noticed her while I was waiting for Yvonne. It was a throwback to the Hitchcock movie. Me and the rear window. Mine was the only house which looked over her back yard. When the tree by my kitchen window was full of leaves, I could only get glimpses until I cut the right branches. It was risky, but I had developed strong arms and the tree was close to the window. I started to use escort services when I arrived back from Iraq and couldn’t use my legs. I didn’t want a commitment of any kind. A whole year of hospitalization, only to find that they couldn’t cure the paralysis in my legs. There was a long period of rehabilitation after that. I was treated as a hero at first, felt like an object of pity, later. The reality was that I went to Iraq to boost my income and career. Some of my photographs won prizes. My impetuous nature, my thirst for adventure, my selfishness, they were all part of it. But when I returned, the benefits soon wore thin. I didn’t feel that I’d accomplished anything. The people around me had never seen war. They only knew the old me. My wife and young kids treated me like I was sick, friends hid their smugness and pity behind their concern. When it became unbearable, I made plans. Something had happened to me while I was an embedded photographer in Iraq, which I would never wish on anyone, but which didn’t make me feel the least bit suicidal. A descent into the bottomless pool of self pity wasn’t an option. The misunderstanding of my well meaning friends and family caused me to make the escape. I had been changed. I didn’t care anymore. I had been through too many operations, too many hours of physio punctuated by hours of doing nothing. I couldn’t deal with all the ties of my old life. It wasn’t worth trying to explain and I didn’t care what anyone else thought. If there is a god, may he or she forgive me. I played the role while I was recovering then I ran. Who’s going to suspect a man in a wheelchair of acquiring a new identity? It was easy. Only one person in the world knew my new name and where I was. She was a lesbian mother of two who lived in Vancouver. We met in university, kept in touch over the years. She was no threat. She knew as little about my former life as I knew about hers. Money was no object for me because of the insurance. The network had me well covered. I disappeared to an east coast city one day. Every so often, another story appeared in the media about my depressed state at the time of my disappearance. My wife moved in with a former mayor. She and the kids looked happy in media pictures. The first man I saw with the neighbour turned out to be her husband. When they sat out on their backyard deck around supper time, they seemed to have that intimacy. She touched him when she gave him a glass. Sometimes they argued, other times they’d sit reading while their barbeque smoked in the background. They seemed comfortable with each other for most of that early spring. I watched from my kitchen window the night of the party in her backyard. I drank tequila while I watched the couples till they departed. The guy must have been a close friend of them both. She kissed him goodnight before her husband, disappeared into the house. The guys talked, then the husband produced a hand held video camera, left it with his friend, disappeared into the house. By this time, I had my powerful binoculars focussed on the small screen in the camera which the buddy was watching on the deck. He sat with his back to me, as fixed on the images as I was. We witnessed the marital coupling from several angles. The husband made surreptitious smiles into the screen. When it was over, the bedroom lights went out. The buddy took the camera with him into the house. Lights in another part of the house went on and off. All was dark. I started drinking in a local bar but the other drinkers there were even more patronising and depressing than my real family so I joined some wheelchair racing enthusiasts. The athletics became too hard for me in a short time. I wanted to be comfortable, not driven. I didn’t really have anything to prove. I just wanted to take it easy, pay attention to the things I liked. I became content staying at home, playing my guitar and reading. I used the tv and computer, but usually when Yvonne wasn’t coming over, I read or played my music. The next time I saw the neighbour, she was sitting on her deck, sipping a coffee. She had discarded her robe, exposed her body in a skimpy bikini. I studied her closely with the binoculars. I noticed a mound in her backyard, just below the deck. She had planted a peony bush on it. The edges of the mound were visible, at first, but she kept it watered. Soon it blended in with the rest of the lawn. Her husband was never seen again. Cops interviewed her, the story of her husband’s disappearance was in all the media, for a short time. It was the man I’d first seen her with. His name was Norman. She shed tears for the press, played the role of the grieving widow-distraught spouse, in public. I knew, from watching her, that she smiled a lot, to herself, when she was alone, watering the peony. She was slim with short blonde hair, long legs and a pretty face. I came to appreciate her figure when I saw her from my kitchen window, on summer mornings. I had hours to inspect her body, through my binoculars. She stretched, drank coffee on her deck. She often wore a robe which she discarded when she sat down. I was blessed when the hand held rocket hit the truck in the middle of Baghdad. Blessed because when the shrapnel hit my spine, it didn’t affect my genitals. I could still function sexually. In fact, I was hornier than ever. Yvonne had no inhibitions with me. I paid her good money to dress up and take off her different costumes. It was a kind of visual foreplay. After I saw the neighbour, I insisted that Yvonne and I do it in the kitchen. She didn’t notice the neighbour, didn’t notice me looking out the window, while she was busy. The buddy showed up some months later. He had been around at first, offering the grieving widow the obligatory shoulder to cry on. She wasn’t a widow officially, but there was no sign of her husband. The buddy must have run into her somewhere a few months later. I watched Yvonne dance around the kitchen, strip to the music. The neighbour and the buddy sat together, on her deck, drinking something out of tall glasses. Yvonne left after supper. I watched them kiss on the deck, disappear into the house. Lights went on and off in her bedroom. All was dark. My neighbour sat on her deck again in late summer with two mounds in the back yard below her. On the second mound, which was barely visible, she had planted a rose bush. Often on summer mornings she sat on the chaise lounge, read, drank coffee, smiled to herself. On hot days I could see rivulets of sweat through my binoculars. They trickled from her neck down between her full, bikini’d breasts. Yvonne began talking about retiring near the end of the summer. Usually we didn’t talk. I didn’t get turned on by it and I was paying. Yvonne didn’t take offence. Instead, she told me about customers who liked to talk and liked to hear her talk while she satisfied their sexual desires. I would be sad to see her go. The neighbour cleaned up her deck for the winter with three mounds in the backyard. There were blowing leaves gathering on them. The third one sported a hydrangea bush which looked like it had always been there. I wasn’t surprised that the detective who talked to her, on the deck, with a notebook in one hand, a badge in the other, had disappeared. He showed up at later that night, had a few drinks with her, stayed out on the deck for a smoke. Her bedroom lights went on, he finished his cigarette, disappeared into the house. Her lights went out. All was dark. By this time, I assumed that my neighbour was having sex with, killing and burying the men in her life. I thought about calling the cops, but I didn’t want any publicity. It would be a big story. The black widow. The seductress-murderer. There was always the anonymous tipline. But every time I went to make the call, I was battered by questions: Was she doing anything that was more shocking than what I had seen in a war? Was it any of my business? Was it a connection, even so tenuous, to my former life? Did my neighbour’s men get what they deserved? Did she? Did I? Did the Iraqis and the Americans? The questions stopped me, then became unimportant when Yvonne retired to start her own agency. They remained in the back of my mind but they were impossible for me to answer. My finger was poised above the phone several times, but the questions stopped me. I had contributed to Yvonne’s nest egg. I didn’t regret it. She introduced me to Rita, brought her around one day. I got specials for free: Rita and I got along well. It was even easier for me than with Yvonne because Rita already knew what I liked. I figured my neighbour would probably get caught on her own. There was nothing to watch in her backyard during the winter. Boredom started me back into photography again. Slowly but surely, I got ready for the spring. I wasn’t sure what for, but I would be ready in the spring. But in the spring, she was gone. A new family had moved in. I watched the mother teach her children about the three bushes in their back yard as they came to life in the warm sunshine. They watered them carefully, fussed over them, pruned them. In the spring, the peonies bloomed, the rose blossomed all summer and the hydrangea put on an impressive show in the fall. The framed picture of the yard, deck, three bushes, hangs on my kitchen wall.

We heard of Uluwatu from a Canadian, at the beach in Parengtretis, Java. Most of the good places we visited, we heard of from other travellers. The exhaustion and heat of Jogjakarta was replaced by the air conditioning of the bus which dropped us off at Parengtretis. Cooling at the beach helped temper our return to the heat. We were sitting on the dark sand, enjoying the sea breeze, when a man approached us with a hash joint. He was the Canadian who told us about Uluwatu. He first came to warn us about the rip tides in the ocean. He was concerned, good enough to ask when he saw us swimming. “Know the rips?” He explained that seven different currents in the Java Sea converged at Parengtretis, nobody swam there. The rip tides were like undertow, travelled parallel to the shore before returning out to sea. The strategy, he said, if one did get caught, was to let the current take you out to sea, body surf back to shore. We felt only the cooling water when we waded around after that, too wary to swim. We were grateful to him. He recounted stories of people wandering into the ocean at Parengtretis, never to be seen again. Most were stoned on the mushroom soup and omelettes which were cooked at the crude restaurants behind us. Psilocybin mushrooms grew in buffalo dung around Parengtretis. The children sold them in the street in a conical palm leaf for pennies. The restaurants were full of western travellers talking, listening to music. Some sat motionless, staring out to sea. The only western dishes the locals knew how to cook for the visitors were omelettes and soup. The Canadian from near Ottawa had hung out with some surfers in Australia, joined them for their trip to Uluwatu. They had spent the night there at full moon. He recommended it, but said he wouldn’t do it alone. We went on to Legian Beach, in Bali, where we found a comfortable losmen, settled in. The day of the full moon approached. I had spent too many cold, wet winter days in Canada to run around checking out every sight which the travel guides had recommended. I was content to read on the porch of the losmen or swing in the hammock beneath the green papaya trees. For meals we walked to the restaurants. Our furthest trips were to the beach where everyone went to watch the sunset. The beach at Cuta and Legian is miles long. It is wide, the jungle doesn’t impede sight by hanging over the water, the sand is fine. The dangerous surf rumbles in white, foaming lines. It is common knowledge that frequent drownings are kept quiet because it’s bad for the tourist trade. People regularly drown in the sea even near the part of the beach marked ‘safe’ in five different languages. The French had a direct flight from Paris to Denpasar which enabled them to leave France one day, arrive in Bali the next. Unfortunately they behaved like the other tourists. When the day of the full moon came I went to Uluwatu alone. I was the one caught up in this romantic adventure, Joyce wanted the relaxed comfort of the losmen. Uluwatu is forty kilometres south of Denpasar on the easternmost edge of the round bulge at the bottom of Bali. The trip, by bus, bimo, motorbike and horse cart, took most of the day. The temple of Uluwatu stands on high cliffs overlooking the ocean. It is the ruin of an ancient stone structure, the holy site of several different religions. In the past, many people threw themselves into the sea from the five hundred foot cliffs during a religious rampage which swept down from Java. The temple looks down on a small strip of sand which is the beach used only by expert surfers. In high tides and treacherous currents they paddle over razor sharp coral reefs, homes of poisonous sea snakes, to the waves. From the centre of the old temple there is a three sided view of the coastline: pale blue, giant waves roll in sets, in slow motion. The cliffs are carved into jagged walls by the sea and the weather. When I left Legian Beach, that morning, Joyce had been smoking a joint of Afghan hash with Rosalyn and Sally, Australian women, who believed in the power of black magic. It was practised everywhere in Java. Rosalyn stayed with a Javanese family on vacation. She said the son, the guy she was with, could butt out a cigarette on his arm without leaving a burn. Sally told us of a tourist couple who had everything stolen from their losmen room while they slept. She said they were put under a spell by the thieves. I had equipped myself lightly after hearing this, carrying only a small pack with a hatchet, a canteen full of well water and a groundsheet. I was drawn to the ocean from the hot, dry ruins of the temple. At the road beneath the temple an old man sat carving. Grey stone parapets surrounded him upon which were perched families of monkeys. An old one with a crushed left hand jumped onto a nearby wall, stared at me. I yelled at him but he just blinked. The old man smiled, handed me a fist sized rock from a pile beside him, made a throwing motion. I threatened the monkey. His face registered surprise as he retreated. The old man produced a book which was signed by visitors, a box for the admission price. He warned me about “the monkey people” when I told him that I had come to stay the night, asked him how to get to the beach. I reached an agreed price with a local boy, both of us sweating. I followed him through parched fields fenced by hedges of cacti and bamboo barricades. I clambered awkwardly over mounds of earth, trying to control my swinging pack, keeping my sarong free of branches. An open valley appeared before us, a jagged crevasse had penetrated the land. Women were descending into it, in a line, baskets on their heads. I paid the boy, sat in the shade, sipped water from my canteen, the cold Fantas I bought at the temple, long gone. I watched the women move gracefully up and down the trail. The vessels on their heads never wavered, all of the impact absorbed by their rolling hips. I followed them to the bottom of the crevasse where they turned off. I kept going straight ahead. The Java Sea was rolling in loud, spectacular breakers into the small beach where a group of western women and a photographer stood. They looked out to sea, turned to follow the photographer up the trail. Publicity pictures for the surfers. They greeted me on the way past, impressed to hear that I was staying at Uluwatu, alone, under the full moon. They warned me about the rock throwing monkeys. The spectacle of the booming surf held me. I sipped from my canteen in the blazing, windy, stereophonic roar. The power of the sea put the world into perspective. I returned up the trail before sunset to watch it from the top of the cliffs and heard the last of the surfers’ motor bikes leave. I thought I was alone. Below me, bobbing lights appeared and small fishing boats braved high tides near the cliffs. I laid with my head on my pack, staring at the stars and the moon. The moonlight looked impossible to capture in a painting or a photograph. I felt the first stab of pain in my abdomen at the same time that a rock landed beside me. The monkey people. I realized that I was surrounded and the rain of rocks began. One hit me at the same time that I vomited. An uncontrollable attack of diahorrea overcame me. The rocks came faster, liquid poured from both ends of me. I staggered toward the road holding my fouled sarong, cursing the rock throwing monkeys and the well water. The night heard my spasms and loud retches. Having been in Asia for more than six months, I felt acclimatised, adjusted, immune, cocky. I had drunk the well water without putting a chlorine tablet into it. The band of monkeys were fast moving shadows, small stones were hitting me. In desperation, I jettisoned the pack. The rocks stopped. When I looked back, the monkeys had fallen upon it, one was brandishing my hatchet, another drinking from my canteen. I staggered down the road, each step causing a squirt, a belch, a knee trembling retch. At dawn, I endured the giggles of women and schoolchildren when I crouched by the side of the road, stinking, dehydrated, desperate. A young Balinese with a two fifty Honda drove me back to the losmen in Legian. Joyce paid the guy an outrageous price. I showered and collapsed in bed.

I was of a young age when I was born. Lack of experience and physical inabilities forced me to spend most of the first few years on my back, with a few moments on my front. Various big people coo cooed, picked me up, put me down, held me, changed me, fed me and kissed me goodnight. I was the centre of attention for a while. When winter ended, I explored the world around me. My mother wondered at my insight. I crawled, poked, investigated the various rooms of our cardboard box. I deduced that summer was near when a flower bloomed outside of our cardboard door and an extremely hot thing, above us, in the sky, burnt the bejesus out of our box. I was drawn to the sound of traffic, as soon as I could stand. There was no turning back when it came to me and traffic. I rushed straight for it, as fast as my little legs could carry me. I was saved from certain disaster, many times, by strangers. Several rainy springs, my mother gathered all twelve of us children together, to collect cardboard, for a new box. Waterproof cardboard was hard to come by. For a long time, I thought the furry fellow, who kept licking me, wagging his tail, was my father. It was Rex the dog. Big people kept him happy with food and water, like me. The only apparent difference seemed to be that they made Rex defecate outside before they disposed of it, whereas I could go right in my pants. I went to school by following the herd of my brothers and sisters when I was of an age to do so. The teachers taught and the students, of which there were many thousands, learned. What we learned is another matter. Children followed marriage. They seemed to pop up regularly, in various rooms of my home. I was, by this time, the proud owner of a wooden packing case. The appearance of new children always coincided with my wife gaining, then, losing, a great amount of weight around the belly area. Often, when the family gathered, in the packing case, we had a karaoke night. None of us could carry a note. Neighbours sent complaints our way, but, in the main, our karaoke nights were successful. We all knew ‘Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog’, by heart, each member of the family sang it lustily. Perhaps the neighbours wouldn’t have complained so much if we sang some other songs, as well. Now that I am old, I grow young again. The others grow old and young again at their own pace. The passage of years winnows things down to bare essentials. It’s normal to return to childhood as you grow old because as the years go by, more and more, you don’t care as a child doesn’t care. If all goes well, I’ll be of an old age, when I die.

I chalk it up to heat-induced temporary insanity. It could happen to any Canadian crossing the equator. I had a strong desire to make my way to Germany, dye my hair orange and drum for a punk band which specialized in industrial music. The desire passed as the bus followed the road through the lush jungle vegetation past rice paddies and wilted looking livestock. When I thought about summoning enough energy to listen, I was convinced I could hear the plants grow in the humidity. The whole island was a hothouse. The single minded bus driver seemed to be the only one expending energy as he missed pedestrians, livestock and other vehicles, leaned on the horn. We were used to the danger by now. A sort of fatalistic resignation takes over on breakneck bus rides through the countryside of Sumatra. It was too hot to care. We had left the craziness and heroin of Penang behind. The sweat dripped off of our noses. Everyone on the bus, even the natives, had a worn out, washed out look. We were travelling from Medan, where the ferry from Penang had taken us, down the spine of Sumatra to Lake Toba, thence to Padang, about halfway down the island, on the coast. In Padang we spent hours at the consulate waiting to get our visas renewed because it was cheaper there than in Bali. Of a dozen uniformed clerks, two were reading, the rest inspected the Western girls or stared into space, a paper clip twisting in their fingers. When they did stir to attend the sweating crowd of travellers they wanted to first see proof that you had a return ticket. It’s the only legal way to enter Indonesia. It didn’t matter that we’d entered days before at Medan. The passports and applications lay in a pile on a desk. They didn’t have to worry about an overwhelming influx of immigrants heading south since the island of Java is the most thickly populated place on earth, but it was one way for the government to get money from travellers. A Japanese girl told Joyce that she had tonsilitis and that they didn’t have toilet paper even in hospitals in Padang. Seventy-five cents for dormitory beds at the local hostel. Officially marrying before getting to Asia saves a lot of problems. Single women are targets. At Lake Toba, we recovered from the bus ride during which it was too hot to sleep. The soaking heat deprived us of every traveller’s last resort, the final escape from the tedium and discomfort ... sleep, oblivion. There, time stood still, then went backward. We had landed in a timeless, primitive existence. Surrounded by the jungle and jungle sounds. Old men wailed their night songs in the dark. It sounded like a Tarzan movie. Wild boar lived in the jungle, endangered humans occasionally, provided meat and tusks more often. Snakes and mongooses and their spirits were part of the diet and the mythology. Ancient Sumatran devils caused poor sleep, restless dreams. All the dwellings had horned roofs which intruded, then dominated. A reminder that no matter what it was like in the outside world, this was here and now. This primitive existence was the present. Reality. No luxuries, no concrete, no advanced plumbing or electricity. Rats made nests in the roof so when you woke up into the flickering darkness from a dream of ancient enemy skins hanging by the fire, you could hear them running along the rafters over your head. You could see their shadows on the thatched roof when the candle light caught them. Sleep again became a refuge along with a short prayer for the balance of rats. We finally boarded a freighter, in Padang, the cheapest way to travel from Sumatra to Java. The beginning of our sea voyage was normal. We watched the port, then the island of Sumatra fade into the distance behind us and with it, the confusion and brain fever. Deck space, a place to sleep beneath the canvas strung across the deck for protection from the sun and rain, was what we paid for. Two big, deeply tanned Aussies who were obviously used to the sea and travelling by sea, probably lived by the sea, told us they had accompanied fishermen from an island near Bali on an early morning trip. They witnessed, then tried, the eating of the raw hearts of the fish they caught. They found it to be a life giving experience with aphrodisiac powers. Meals were cooked in the tiny galley below deck; a green vegetable which had obviously been boiled, over a bed of rice, on a tin plate. Tasteless but necessary to settle the queasy stomachs everyone felt The sea looked calm enough. But a rhythmic sway began to get to everyone. Coconut oil smoke made it worse. Even the regular crew and the Aussies were hit by sea sickness. They laughed and made wise cracks between spews. The rest of us weren’t so lighthearted about it. Soon there were travellers and crew members staggering to the rail to vomit over the side. The unwary ones stood downwind from others puking over the side near the front, got splashed. One grain of rice, well soaked in the stomach’s digestive juices, inadvertently snorted while vomiting, causes untold misery in the nasal passage and a long lasting, unpleasant reminder of how sick you really were. Finally, that particular movement of the ship passed and so did the seasickness. The travellers and crew wobbled about unsteadily for a while, then settled down. No one offered the travellers rice after that. Our diet became the fruit we had brought on board with us. We settled down on the deck, tried to sleep through the hot days and windy nights. Serge from France, tanned dark brown, curly hair down past his shoulders, wispy goatee, regained his happy smile as he recovered from the seasickness. He wore a sarong like a native, always carried a flute attached to his backpack. Everyone commiserated with him when we found out he was on his way back to France to fulfill his military obligations. He had been drafted. These were his last few days of freedom. He had made his choice. He was tempted to keep travelling, but he knew that eventually he’d want to return to France. The army was one step above jail. He couldn’t go back on the run. He was a proud Frenchman, but that had nothing to do with the government’s army. His ideas and life were far from conformity, uniformity, the military. One night, in a Tull like performance, he started playing. Under the canvas, starry night above, the sea breeze blowing his hair in time with the tempo of his song, Serge captivated everyone. All the travellers stopped talking or sat up to look and listen, even some crew members, smoking by the dark rail, paid attention. He started in the familiar pose which we had all adopted... leaning, laying back against our packs and bedrolls, then he seemed to find something as he played the first few, hesitant notes. He stood up, still playing. His flute came alive. His song gained and lost volume and speed as he breathed life into it. It wasn’t recorded, probably forgotten even by Serge, a few days later. There was the soft soughing of the ship as it made its way through the water, the sea breeze in the wires, occasionally something would flap in the southern night wind. The notes of Serge’s flute seemed to linger and then be snatched away by the other sounds. His eyes closed, Serge stood and played to the night, to his humble companions, listened to the sounds around him and echoed them. He didn’t stand on one leg, but he carried us all away as he talked to the wind in its own language. Selamat Jalan...Good Journey. A fitting Indonesian goodbye to Sumatra. Then someone told us that we were passing Krakatau which erupted in 1883 killing thousands of people. It was just a lump on the horizon from the deck of the ship. A famous volcano which the world knew about because of the tragedy. Later that day, we landed in Djakarta.

I swallowed a piece of gristle, cut into the lamb, smiled at Mrs. Ready. She was old, with a glitter of intelligence in her eye. I worked my way through the big meal gratefully, home-made food was good. I watched Mrs. Ready fussing with the potatoes. Surely, when we’d eaten our way through the lamb, potatoes and vegetables, had our dessert, chocolate cake, and coffee, surely, then, she’d get around to it. I was investigating the disappearance of the cop who came here to investigate the disappearance of her nephew Cecil. We usually don’t eat and drink with the people involved in an investigation, but she’d insisted. Cecil was a small time hustler, sold anything he could get his hands on. It wasn’t just to support one habit, Cecil was into everything. He drank, drugged, gambled and whored like a sailor on shore leave in a wide open port. There were a hundred Cecils, but this one happened to have a beer one night with Louis, a money launderer from Gatineau, across the Ottawa river. They were boyhood friends, met at a strip joint once. The brass insisted that Cecil was worth watching. When he went missing, they wanted detectives on the case. My partner, Dave Speller and I were fresh out of uniform. It was because we had recently been in uniform, dealing with scumbags on the street, that we were familiar with Cecil. We cruised around Cecil’s usual hangouts, the taverns and strip joints, nobody had seen him. We forgot about it. There were murders, blackmail and more cases of white collar crime than ever before. Then one day a message landed on Dave’s desk. I was on the way to court. He was reading the note, and I said, see ya, so did he. He shouted to me, “Hey, Cecil went to visit his aunt” I ran to catch the elevator, those were the last words I heard Dave say. Nobody thought much of it when Dave didn’t show up for work the next morning. His wife Jackie called at noon. Dave was missing. At first, we kept it quiet. His car was parked a few blocks from Mrs. Ready’s house, in a shopping centre. Forensics went over it with a fine tooth comb, but couldn’t find anything significant to point us in a direction. The house to house questioning, with Dave’s picture and that of his car, produced nothing. Nobody had seen the car stop at the shopping centre. Nobody had seen who was in it, who got out of it. We traced all the cases he was involved with, braced whoever could possibly have had the remotest grudge against Dave. It wasn’t hard to do, he’d only been a detective for a year. All of the suspects had an alibi or were in jail. Mrs. Ready’s was one of the first places we checked. She was a perfect, little old lady, white hair in a bun, pink pant suit and sneakers. Yes, she was Cecil’s aunt, but hadn’t seen him for years, until the one visit. Yes, Detective Speller had come to ask some questions. He was such a nice boy, even had some cookies and a cup of tea with her. She was distressed to hear that Dave was missing. It was all over the newspapers, tv and radio. Jackie phoned me twice a day, at least. I was in shock, but not as badly as Jackie. A dark foreboding hung in the background when I went through Dave’s effects again. His desk held no clues. My own piled up with ignored work. Even Cal Davis pulled out all the stops, called in all the favours, made the men return to their snitches, once again. It didn’t matter how hard we pushed, we still turned up nothing. I sat in my apartment, on a Friday night, with some rented videos and a bottle of rye. I was stumbling by the time I went to bed. In my drunken reasoning, I had resolved to return to the scene of the last sighting of Dave, Mrs. Ready’s. The instances of someone attacking or kidnapping a city detective were rare, in Ottawa. There were lots of threats made in courts and jails but no one ever followed through. Until Dave. I had the feeling, it grew every day, that Dave was dead. Mrs. Ready mentioned supper when I called her. I had a bunch of paperwork to tackle, the never ending court appearances. I stopped off on my way home from a long, frustrating day. Seeing her gingerbread house brought back painful flashes of Dave. She lived in a quiet neighbourhood in the west end of Ottawa with manicured lawns and overhanging trees. The house itself was well maintained, painted, roses grew over the trellis at the side. Mrs. Ready’s sensible Toyota sat in the lane way. I left my tie and jacket in the car, knocked on the door. It opened immediately. “Detective Sloan, come in, come in” Mrs. Ready was small, about five foot three. She held the door open for me. “Hi, Mrs. Ready. Thanks” As I followed her into the living room, my eyes fell on the chair which had been last used by Dave. Before that, Cecil, himself, had used the chair, when he came to beg. In the dining room was a table set for two. I would have disappointed her, if I had not sat down. I had no intention of eating a big supper there. She insisted that we have a snack at least. She served me slices of lamb with home made peppermint sauce and a glass of wine. She ate everything on her plate, which was as big as mine. The mashed potatoes were creamy, smooth, the cauliflower and carrots, steamed just right. Mrs. Ready looked like a little, white haired sparrow, but she ate like a vulture. We downed the glasses of wine, ate the food with gusto. She asked me all about Jackie. I asked her if there was anything about Dave’s visit that was strange. She replied, as she had, no doubt, a hundred times before, that there was nothing. I ate the chocolate cake and ice cream which she served for dessert and we sat with our coffees. I couldn’t get past the fact that Dave had been here last. Mrs. Ready looked interested and concerned but she said that he’d left after a few, brief questions about Cecil. She let me walk around the living room. I sat in the easy chair, looked at the spotless, hardwood floors, the doilies on the tables beneath the antique lamps. I hadn’t seen doilies since the family went to my grandmother’s house, years ago. I attempted to think like Dave. Where would I go next? Mrs. Ready wrapped up some slices of lamb for sandwiches, gave them to me on my way out. I drove home depressed. Reporters called, occasionally, inquiring about Dave. There was no point in trying to hide it, we were honest with them. We told them that we were as mystified as everyone else. I finally got a little hope when I went back over the reports made by the team who questioned people, in nearby houses, on Mrs Ready’s street. It was a real longshot. The people across the street from Mrs. Ready were noted, by the canvassing officer, to be ‘out of town’. When I called their number, in desperation, I got a teenager named Brent who told me that he was in the house the day of Dave’s disappearance. His parents were out of town, he wasn’t. He seemed, like most teenagers, unaware of anything around him which didn’t directly involve loud music, drugs and girls. The loud music in the background signalled to me that he was home alone, again. He remembered because he and some friends were “getting ready” for a concert that night, at the Corel Centre, sitting in the living room. He had seen Mrs. Ready drive Dave’s car away. Brent called her “old lady Ready” I was stunned. I had called Brent from my cell phone, on the way home. I decided on a short detour to Mrs. Ready’s house. Mrs. Ready was pleasant when she answered the door, asked me in. I couldn’t stick to my plan of trying to trick her into talking, I just blurted it out. I asked her, why she had driven Dave’s car, where was Dave? What had happened? Mrs. Ready insisted on a little wine, when we sat down at her kitchen table. I didn’t see any harm in it. I had a glass with her, waited for an explanation. I wasn’t sure that Brent’s tip was true, it sounded outrageous. When she finally got around to it, she laughed at Brent’s accusations. She said that he and his friends were so stoned, they couldn’t be relied on. Even Brent’s parents left their house from time to time, to get away from him. Brent didn’t like her because she called the city when his dog did its business on her lawn. She kept talking, I began to feel dizzy. I remember trying to get to the sink, Mrs. Ready pushing a chair in front of me. The perfect kitchen moved. I remember hearing her giggle. I fell to the floor. Something was wrong, then there was blackness. Everything was swirling when I woke up. My hands were behind my back, fastened with my own handcuffs. My feet were tied together, my mouth taped shut. I was as surprised as I was groggy. Light leaked into the room, produced visibility. I was at the bottom of some stairs, I could feel the scrapes I’d gotten on my face. She must have pushed me down them. It was a cellar. I could make out a furnace, the outlines of a washing machine and a dryer. I was laying on a concrete floor near a drain which didn’t smell good. There had been something powerful in the glass of wine. I heard a phone ring. The conversation above was muffled by motors running behind the furnace. I squirmed and wiggled my way to see that the motors belonged to two old fridges at the far end of the room. The door opened at the top of the stairs and the light went on. I could see only her feet, at first. Then I turned my head and Mrs. Ready appeared. She was dressed like a surgeon, even wore a mask. She floated around the cellar talking to herself, humming, gathering implements: meat cleavers and saws which she placed on a rough counter. I tried to signal her by bugging out my eyes, wiggling like a fish, but Mrs. Ready ignored me. She got two card tables from the darkness, set them up. Then she opened a case to inspect the scalpels and knives within. I watched her plug in a skill saw, start it up. That was the only time she looked at me. Our eyes met when she depressed the trigger of the saw and the sharp teeth revolved at high speed. She giggled beneath the mask then looked me over, as if gauging the height and weight of a piece of meat. Mrs. Ready picked a deadly looking knife from her case, set it on the table. She looked into the drain in the floor, tested the hose attached to the laundry sink then took a sip of wine from the glass she carried. She approached me and made a sound which I’ve heard people use to calm upset children, but it wasn’t working with me. I wasn’t soothed when she tried to stab me in the heart. I turned away at the last second and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. She raised the bloody knife again. I was backed up against the wall, nowhere to go. I forced myself to look at her. I could hear her starting to giggle. The wet knife came closer. Suddenly there was a cry from behind her. A tall, bulky form pushed her against the wall. She crumpled easily, dropping the knife on top of me. It was Cecil. Broke again, he’d crawled out of whatever hidden cave he’d found to ask for more money. Even this jaded lowlife was shocked by the scene. Eventually he found the keys to my cuffs. I called the department. I sat in my car in front of Dave and Jackie’s apartment building. Forensics had verified that Dave and some other unidentified males, had been in Mrs. Ready’s cellar. Parts of them were found in her fridges and the drain. Maybe she saw Dave as a convenient victim to feed her habit. The investigation was continuing. I went up to Jackie’s to break the news. She was relieved that, at least, Dave’s remains had been found. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the DNA results also confirmed that I had eaten part of Dave. It was probably the big muscle in the thigh which Mrs. Ready served as lamb. There were still some slices in my fridge.

We sit watching a young Chinese guy getting drunk in the restaurant on Penang Road where they serve fried eggs and chips. I feel weak and sick. The past few weeks of high speed travel and junk food combined with the humid heat and heroin is causing my stomach to flare into violent nausea. Every quick movement, each meal, causes it. I=ve lost so much weight after four months in Asia, I spear another greasy chip, rub it in the yolk and force it down. The Chinese guy drinks his beer with a flourish and makes a show of smoking his Pall Mall. He plays western rock on the juke box. He sits with his elbows on the table, stares at the bottle cap twisting between his fingers and casts pugnacious glances at the surging noon hour crowd around him. Like thousands of other young Asians we=ve seen from Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur, he wears a neat white shirt, stylish dark pants, leather shoes, well groomed long hair and shades. We rise to pay for our breakfast and make our way back to the hotel. The Chinese guy orders another beer. When we reach Chulia Street, the clamour of trishaws and blaring cars and trucks which assaults us from every direction on Penang Road, changes. It becomes a less frenzied throng of Indian and Chinese pushcart vendors, labourers carrying huge loads and children playing in the street. Food wagons strung along half the length of Chulia Street display bowls of rice and noodle soup, deep fried snacks and roti. They waft food smells over us mixed with the ever present tang of boiling coconut oil. My stomach begins to erupt when we pass by the small crowds seated at rough tables which surround the more prosperous wagons. We hurry to the far end of the street, our refuge in sight. The old Chinese custodians glance up from their newspapers in the lobby of the Yeng Keng Hotel to watch us make our way into the courtyard and on to our ground floor room. The grey day bursts into a violent downpour. I lay gingerly on the bed waiting for the nausea to pass while Joyce goes to get some cold soft drinks. The old Chinese manager appears at the door with a quiet knock and a handful of Sumatran weed, tied in sticks. We haggle. I pay for them, and lay down again to sip a Fanta and watch Joyce roll a joint. We smoke the joint watching the ceiling fan turn slowly. The lizards dart after flies on the walls. The marijuana helps. It started a few nights ago when we stepped out of the Yeng Keng and walked up to the first trishaw driver we saw. He hadn=t even begun his spiel, the spiel every trishaw driver in Penang sings softly from the side of his mouth, on every street corner, near every hotel which lodges Western tourists, AYou want to smoke opium? You got any problem? You need something? You want smoke? Buddha? Number one! You want smack? You want to smoke opium?@ As he opened his mouth to begin his pitch, we stepped into the trishaw. AWe want to smoke opium@ He hesitated, surprised and broke into a wide grin as he hopped onto his bicycle seat. He pedalled in slow circles around some busy, bright streets as we negotiated the price. It was a little higher than what we expected, but still cheap. We stopped in a dirty back alley. It was lined with small, crowded hovels built of boards, signs, sheet metal and tarpaper. The driver jumped down, greeted by a throng of young children and dogs. He looked over the crowd, chose a little ten year old girl, charged us a small fee for the ride and left us with the child. She led us, by the hands, to one of the ramshackle buildings where we were greeted at the door by a teenaged Chinese boy. He informed us of the prices in a bored, professional manner and showed us into a fifteen by twenty foot room. We sat on a wooden bed without a mattress. This opium den was made of tin and tarpaper. It was lit by flickering kerosene lamps and contained a tidy arrangement of meagre furnishings. There was a small wood stove, some dishes on a bench and the bed we were sitting on. In the darkness, at the rear of the room, two ancient Chinese men reclined on a large, wooden bunkbed. They were withered up, old, opium addicts with shocks of white hair and emaciated faces. They indicated, by their manner, that they were the bosses. When the boy spoke to them, they produced a wooden box from the darkness and put our money into it. They spoke to him quickly and lapsed into silence, not uttering another word while we were present. Occasionally one would light a large, old pipe for the other, but neither moved from the bed. The opium came on small squares of paper across which it had been painted like an ebony brush stroke. The boy indicated that we must lay down, one at a time, on the bed. He produced a wooden head rest which looked like a miniature pulpit. Joyce laid on her side first, head propped up on the slanted board. The boy scraped some of the gummy opium from the paper with a small stick. He held the stick over an ancient kerosene lamp until the opium began to bubble and move. A cloying sugar smell filled the room. The opium pipe, rubbed smooth by use, had a glass bowl stained yellowish brown and a long, dark, wooden stem. When the opium reached the proper temperature on the stick, it=s constituency a delicate balance of solid and liquid, not hot enough to burn, but hot enough to work with, the youth placed the pipe stem in Joyce=s mouth, the bowl upside down. As he rolled the stick around the inside of the bowl, all she had to do was lay still, steady the pipe with one hand and inhale. The opium peeled off of the stick onto the inside of the bowl. He lit the stick on the lamp flame, held it to the bowl and told Joyce to smoke. He got three pipes from each paper. Joyce smoked two pipes, I smoked two papers. It became easier to draw on the pipe the second time around. I elicited the only reaction from any of the Chinese that night as the two old men smiled with the teenager when I got a good enough hit to burn one whole pipe without pausing for breath. I waited for him to make the sixth pipe. The small lamp burned black and orange, feet from my eyes, the sugary smoke filled my lungs, a lethargy settled through me, a feeling of well being. A flickering tar paper shack in a remote Asian city. Coleridge came to mind. It was at this moment that a young Malay woman appeared at the door and began talking to Joyce. She had beautiful, brown eyes and a radiant smile, despite large holes in her front teeth. She was the mother of the little girl who had led us there, asked if we would like to smoke some smack. I finished my pipe, Joyce inspected the vial of white powder and tasted it. The woman borrowed a cigarette, emptied the end, refilled it with a tiny amount of heroin and twisted it closed. We were already stoned on the opium but a few puffs of this legendary China White produced a weakness in the knees and a tingling in the groin. We decided to buy a small amount of powder from the lady and bid our inscrutable hosts farewell for the night. As we left with the young woman, she whispered to Joyce that we should return to her place next time. She said that she gave better prices for smoking and buying. Back at the Yeng Keng, we smoked a small amount of the white powder. Greed made us snort two little lines each. The euphoria of the opium and the venerable reputation of this particular kind of junk made us collide at the sink in our room at least four times. We were vomiting and spewing all over the place. I lost count of my own retches at an even dozen and fell into an exhausted sleep. The next few unsteady days were spent fasting, mailing home letters and presents and doing a bit of wobbly shopping. It was time to push on to Sumatra. We decided to pay one more visit to the smiling lady. By now we had realized that the circuitous route which the trishaw driver had taken on our first visit ended up a few blocks from the Yeng Keng. We walked slowly through the dusty streets in the tropical night. A trishaw bearing a western couple passed on its way to the opium alleys. Another came from the alleys carrying a couple. We acknowledged their knowing smiles with a wave. A crowd of children descended on us when we reached the alley. They tried to take us by the hand as they imitated the sales pitch of the trishaw drivers in their musical, broken English. The little girl from our last visit dragged us to her door. We were greeted with open arms by the smiling lady. She hugged Joyce like a long lost sister. Her husband appeared in the doorway behind her to welcome us with a hearty handshake and a glowing smile. Their one room home was too small to accommodate more than two visitors. We got the chairs, the lady sat on a box, the man on the bed, an infant asleep beside him. We sat in semi darkness for a time, their kerosene lamps barely working, listening to stories of the many western friends they had entertained. They said they had done business with a lot of westerners and showed us a collection of snapshots and visa pictures with, >To my friends=, >Love= and >Thank you for everything= written on the backs. We couldn=t see much until one of the children who had been scampering in and out produced a bright kerosene lamp. They wanted us to smoke some opium, but my stomach was still in a shaky state. Joyce didn=t want to spend the money on opium so we bought a vial of white powder. The lady apologized for charging what she considered a high price, but explained that the dope came from the old Chinese men next door. They were her landlords and forced her to charge high prices to tourists on the threat that she and her family would be evicted. The prices were low by western standards. We had to have a sociable smoke before we left so the man made a joint with one of Joyce=s cigarettes and her dope. He recounted stories of the trade. We found ourselves charmed by his sincerity and open smile. He spent long minutes telling us he liked foreigners, tourists, westerners, always did his best to help them out and tried to keep his dealing fair and square. They talked of the black American who lived with them for some months while he was stranded in Penang with no money. A short time after he arrived, he hit up the white powder against our friend=s advice and was unconscious for days. He slept in the chair on which I was sitting and was treated like one of the family. They had, just that day, sent him a shipment of junk back in the States. My system wasn=t ready for more dope so I declined the joint after one hit and sat watching the others smoke it. The lady had a great fondness for Joyce and rummaged around at the back of the dark room to find a bunch of clothes which she gave her. They were Chinese in style and didn=t fit Joyce so she never wore them. The idea of accepting gifts from these people while we sat in the smallest house we had ever been in, in the midst of the worst poverty we had seen, seemed logical at the time. When the joint was finished, the man announced that we were lucky because we=d arrived just at the time of day when he fixed up. He offered us a hit but added in the same breath that he didn=t want us to partake because he knew we wouldn=t be able to cope with it. We declined, grateful for his honesty and watched as he unrolled his outfit. He cooked some powder in an old, battered spoon, cleaned his eyedropper squeeze syringe with water and a cigarette filter and tied off his right arm. The dark room filled with that electric silence which descends when a person ties a band around their arm and pumps their hand to swell the blood vessels. The meticulous, gentle care he takes in finding a vein and pushing the needle in, the blood drawn back into the tube of the syringe, the careful surveillance of the two liquids. The whack, bang, crank which follows. We watched the dark vein pierced, the concentration and perspiration on the dark brow. The smiling lady smiled with her arm around a small girl. The baby, the only son of the family, breathed softly on the bed beside his father. The tiny room was heavy with the smell of burnt heroin. He began to tell us again of the many foolish tourists he had seen shooting the drug, coming close to overdosing or dying, full of confidence before, switching to smoking or snorting after. Then, in the sad, soft light of the kerosene lamp, his eyes glazed over. He stopped in mid sentence to allow his moment of ecstasy to rush through him and forgot what he was saying. I thought frivolous western thoughts of Clapton and Neil Young. We sat in silence in the sweaty Penang night. We left their house amid fond farewells and walked back to the Yeng Keng. I was still too sick to do any heroin. I smoked a joint of Sumatran and laid on the bed. The little green lizard darts like an arrow and gobbles up a lazy fly with a lightning tongue. A peal of laughter rings from an upstairs room of partying Australians. The ceiling fan turns slowly.

He’d been alone a lot. Not lonesome in the sad sense of the word... he was used to it. There was that woman, once. She stayed for a while but, eventually, she drifted away. There were the two dogs, of course, so he wasn’t really alone. Just no people around regularly. He wasn’t sure if he owned the dogs or they owned him. He didn’t think about it like that, anyway. Ownership, laws, rules. Like the soldiers and media types in the boat who came by. They were so sure that it was necessary, mandatory, even, that he leave. They tried to convince him to join the rest of the evacuation. They could shout and roar and threaten but they’d never catch him. They wore gloves and masks and worried when they got a bit of water on them. And here he was, paddling, belly down, his inner tube and plastic container, to the grocery store. The water stank and there were turds floating by, but he’d seen the kids of Bangkok swimming in the filthy canals when he was there on R&R from Nam. They survived. In fact, the Thais were some of the strongest. Some of the toughest. He paddled with his right hand to turn left. Up to the park where the tops of the swings were still visible and across the submerged boulevard to the mall. All but the hardiest and most determined had given up shopping here. It wasn’t really shopping, you didn’t pay for anything, most of the valuable stuff was gone, looted. What were they going to do with the electronic appliances and games, anyway? There was no power. He drifted in the door of the grocery store. There were a few pet owners still making regular trips to the store but he doubted that many, if any, had tried the dog food. He found that it didn’t taste so bad. The cans were safe and the dried stuff, though it was hard to get down from the top shelf without wetting it, was tolerable. Full of vitamins and raw protein. Not processed to taste good for humans like everything else. The dry stuff made up for the lack of vegetables in his diet. He arranged the bags of dry dog food on top of the cans in the container. He pushed it up the aisle in front of his inner tube. The Saint Bernard breeder was struggling with a large bag, trying to squash it into the bow of her canoe. He stopped to help the woman. They exchanged nods without words. There had been nothing to talk about after the first few days. The latest gossip and rumours had become meaningless. Especially when they realized that they were stuck with the bodies. Some neighbours didn’t get along with each other, but to see them like that. Talk became trivial, unnecessary. He nodded goodbye to the Saint Bernard breeder, paddled up the aisle, out the door. The sun was hot as he headed for home. The dogs’d be waiting. It was kind of ironic, he mused, as he paddled along. There was Eric Clapton explaining his long fascination with Robert Johnson. That had been the DVD on in the living room when the water started rising. The hurricane caused more damage than usual. The generator he’d hooked up conscientiously after the last hurricane, was doing fine, until the flood. An earnest guy from England, an ex junkie, probably one of the best white blues players ever, sitting in a deserted building in Dallas, fifty or sixty years after Robert Johnson recorded there. Max wagged his tail in time with the drumbeats. Brutus perked up his ears, howled along with the song when the guy accompanying Clapton launched into the electric slide solos. Then the generator quit because of the rising water. Darkness enclosed them until he found some candles and lit them. The dogs knew right away. They appeared more anxious every time he looked at them. From the moonlight reconnoitre, the water first approaching his knees, then rising to his hips, things started looking very bad. There were the sounds of shots and shouting that night, but nothing out of the ordinary for that neighbourhood. The storm surge had lifted his van onto the roof of his stilted house. They found it a dry place, high enough to escape the water. He knew that the accumulation of a twice divorced, twice-estranged father disappeared that night, below him, saw the evidence of it the next morning. Clapton and the DVD player were under water with the tv. At least they had some bottled water and provisions. Once they had settled in the van, the dogs were their usual happy go lucky selves though they didn’t like it when he made them accompany him to an empty neighbour’s house to do their business. They smiled as they shook all over him upon their return. It was the only cheerful note on a depressing first day of the flood. More bodies appeared, floated by. The destruction reminded him of Nam. The memory rekindled the spirit of those days. They were “can do” days. Days when he and his buddies did whatever had to be done. No arthritic complaints at the size of the job. They did it then and now he felt that spirit return. They needed food and water for the future. The idea of taking the inner tube and the plastic storage container to the grocery store came to him when an old man’s body floated by, turned toward the park. No use sitting, feeling sorry for himself. They needed supplies. Thirty years ago he would’ve just got them. Now, he would do the same. They see a pathetic old man paddling an inner tube through the shit. They see long grey hair sticking out of a battered old hat and a grin with some teeth missing as he looks up at them in their boat. Some had life jackets on, some, with weapons, wore kevlar vests. Who was going to attack them? Some of the young ones with their bulging muscles and square chinned aggression were probably glad that he refused their help. They couldn’t understand his smiling replies, his rapt attention as he listened patiently to their many reasons why he should join the evacuation. Maybe he was judging them too harshly. But they didn’t look like they wanted him near them when they heard his refusal. No way they would take the dogs. He realised that he was smiling at his own joke: it was an evacuation all right. Like everyone in New Orleans had a dump, relieved their bladders and puked at the same time. Then left. Or maybe it was God. Or Mother Nature. He preferred to think that the earth was taking back its own. Like weeds that grow up through neglected concrete and asphalt. The older guys in the boats frowned disapprovingly when he refused. They warned him that they’d be returning with a body bag tailor made for him. They couldn’t help it. Saving people in emergencies was their job. They did it every day, all year round. They had to believe in it. Mr. Johnson’s tv, at the corner, way up in the attic, gave him a glimpse of the situation as it was portrayed by the media. It ran off a car battery for a while. Mr. Johnson had gone with the rescue workers in the boats. He was a stubborn, old pain in the ass most of the time. He complained all the time he was being rescued. He put his faith in the system and its compassion for veterans and seniors. The dogs greeted him with a tail wagging, slobbering frenzy until he yelled at them. They all enjoyed the dog food as the night fell. He had been living under the radar, out of sight of the system, for so many years now, that it wasn’t a great strain on him. He would have paddled around the city to see how old friends were doing, but from the dying images on Mr. Johnson’s tv, it was obvious that there were too many nosy media types, soldiers, national guards and cops. Too many guards guarding untouched neighbourhoods. Those who believed in the system were now stuck at the Superdome and Convention Centre. Viet Nam cured him of “my country right or wrong” patriotism. He learned, by experience, that smooth assurances from the powerful weren’t to be trusted. His doubts were confirmed many times over the years. People with power often deceived in the name of freedom. He contemplated the devastation of New Orleans. Only fools believed them. He surveyed the interior of the van, lit a joint. Billy would have been making his run just when the flood hit. He wondered if the shipment got through.

I am walking across Ratna Park in the middle of Kathmandu on this early, sunny morning, the smell of beadies in the air, the sounds of broken mufflered vehicles in the distance. I step around a pile of shit, not dog shit, human shit. This city is just an adjustment for the people of the mountains. Some of them shit here as they would in the meadows and hills. “God made man, man made money, money didn’t make man, don’t think about money” chants the fortune teller. He is a student of the occult from India. Dusty, dirty, selling glimpses of his truth to lazy, stoned Western travellers in sunny Ratna Park. We sit down on the grass, cross legged, facing each other. He presses a glass bead into my palm. “It is from Kashmir. Never let any but your loved one see this and it will bring you luck” My loved one. We stay outside of the city in the Chobar Valley in the second story of a house owned by a family who lives on the first floor. Last night, like most nights, we smoked a chillum with the father, man of the house and his smiling wife. By candlelight they giggled in disbelief when we told them that it was against the law to smoke hash in the West, that they put you in jail for it, went to great lengths to stop people from doing it. The husband and wife talked Nepalese to each other, gave us looks of sad commiseration when they concluded that we were telling the truth. On the road, in front of the house, we can catch the bus a few times a day. It takes about a half hour to take us to the centre of Kathmandu. The fortune teller continues his singsong spiel for ten rupees, his eyes unclouded by freeways, supermarkets and luxury. “Your heart is open and sometimes goes up and down. You will live to be eighty four, no sickness, no disease, no hospital, eating and sleeping, good health until you die” His stare holds my eyes. “Now, pick a number below five, sit properly, do not lie down” He presses a piece of paper into my hand. Led Zep music comes floating across the park from Freak Street. “Four” I pick. “Another, please” “Three” “There, I will write them down” He takes the paper from me, writes on it, gives it back to me. “Now, blow on the paper. If it is the same number, you will pay my fee?” “I already paid ten rupes, ten rupes is your fee, that’s it” It’s not hard to be firm and suspicious when you’ve been in Asia for six months and had almost everything stolen. The fortune teller is exasperated by my attitude. He decides to give me a break. “If the number is the same, you give me what you like. Don’t think of money. Man will die, God won’t die, money won’t die. You think too much. Don’t think of money” He takes back the paper, unfolds it. It reads thirty-one. “There, you see, the same. It means long life, happiness, a large family” “But they’re not the same, I picked forty three” He points to some other pencil marks on the piece of paper. “See, forty-three, the same. Give me what you will” He holds out his hand, waits. Some men near us, sit cross legged facing the barbers who shave them with long, straight razors. Kids wander over to us. A small crowd begins to watch. I give the fortune teller five more rupees. In better days, somewhere in the South, in the huge, teeming world of India (who knows how he got here?), he didn’t feel the humiliation of poverty and begging. He didn’t think of selling his truth to sceptical Westerners worried about rupees. I rise, make the namaste sign to him, walk toward the street. There is rice and milk to buy and the bread’s only available in the mornings. We’re meeting at the Tibetan restaurant where they make good lassi. Once we saw the smile on the Tibetan woman there, an unforgettable, beaming smile, we made that restaurant our regular rendezvous. Tomorrow we would begin our trek to Annapurna. Joyce has become friends with a Canadian girl, one of two sisters, who stay in a youth hostel on Freak Street. Shirley confides to Joyce that she is having an affair with Jay, the Nepali who runs the place. I hear later that the Nepalis do everything else in a crouch, on their haunches, so why not sex? The half sitting, half crouching position becomes comfortable after a while. It is not normal for North American knees, but becomes natural with practice. The feet splayed, tip of the rear grazing the ground, the convenient knees to lean on, quite natural after a few times. Seems a bit strenuous for sex to me, but to each their own. There are two main treks in Nepal, the one to Everest and the one we were taking, to Annapurna. The birthplace of Buddha is just a few miles away. The small, walking path winds upward through rhododendron forests, past spectacular waterfalls and impossible terraced paddies. Our eyes bulge at the sight of the huge burdens carried by the Sherpas. We look away from their thick, muscular legs as they pass us when we stop to wonder at the little building beside the path. It is a Nepali version of a Legion for Ghurkas. The silent, fearless killers, so admired by the Brits, deserve a Legion. Just didn’t think I’d see one here. Some travellers hire the Sherpas to carry everything so their hands are free to take pictures. They can’t survive without toilet paper and corn flakes with milk in the morning. The Sherpas are stolid beasts of burden. At the far end of the trek, as far as you can go, unless you intend to climb Annapurna, there is a windswept airstrip on a plateau. The same travellers who hired Sherpas to carry everything, take a plane back. They have other destinations to photograph, no use wasting film walking back. We stop at Pokhara as we descend. Many Western travellers just go there and stay there. The shore of the lake beside Pokhara sports restaurants with ‘Western Chinese Food’ and stereo speakers mounted in the outdoor dining rooms. The rock n roll never ends. Hostels are full beside the beginnings of a hotel there. The attraction, though, is the silent beauty of calmness, peace, as one floats in dugouts rented by the locals, by the hour. On sunny days, in the middle and all around the lake, float silent dugouts, some with two occupants, some with one. Snow capped Himalayas rise on all sides of the lake, descend from grey to brown to green. Valleys which end in the lake are carved by tributary streams descending from the hills. Giant white clouds float above terraced paddies built with patient hands and mud. Like some times and places in the Rockies, moments there are perfect. Back on Freak Street, in Kathmandu, we meet Billy Bob from Kansas City. Every year he manages to get his holidays and enough money to spend two weeks in Nepal. It is always coordinated with the arrival in town of the famous Manali hash from Northern India. This straight looking, short haired American was the stonedest of the stoned. He shared chillums with all who approached his gregarious presence on Freak Street as he spent his two weeks enjoying the stories of the travellers, the news of old, Nepali friends who he saw every year. He didn’t hesitate to demonstrate, with his passport, that Billy Bob was his real name. We had never met one before, must’ve blurted out our curiosity in a Led Zep soaked burst of coughing laughter as the chillum passed. Where the Bagmati River has flowed for ages in its journey to join the Ganges, a valley has been produced. The valley is below our house. When we sit on the balcony attached to our room, we can watch every day activities on the road in the distance, see the green, yellow, brown after harvest colours in the fields below, watch the cow and goat blink at the hawk circling above them. I was reading Henry Miller’s, Night of the Assassins, then. A combination of what he wrote and what I was thinking at the time, convinced me that constantly pursuing experiences so that you weren’t only thinking and talking about the world is, in the end, useless. As useless as the attitudes of people who think and talk about the world, but never experience it. Sitting on our rough balcony, getting ready for our imminent departure to Goa in the far South, I realized that I had come all this way for nothing. I was convinced that all the travelling, the learning, the questioning, was a waste of time. As addictive as it was, there was no more value in it than in staying safe and secure at home, watching it on television. Krishnamurti had something to say about that, too. It was a little surprising and humbling, but it made sense there, at that time. We stop in the Tibetan restaurant on our way to the train station. The smiling woman gives us lassi. We walk down Freak Street, saying goodbye to old and new acquaintances, cross Ratna Park. As we leave the park, I see the fortune teller again. His words rise above the Led Zep and muffler sounds, “Man will die, God won’t die, money won’t die. You think too much. Don’t think about money”

Up at the crack of dawn, down to the hotel pool, few quick laps, room service coffee and paper, baseball scores, one more day. Check numbers... cops, cleaners, locker. Breakfast at the place downstairs, waitress with a nice ass, poached eggs on brown, slice of some kind of melon, more coffee. Shoe shine stall off the lobby, barber somewhere around. Taxi, watch out for those pedestrians, poor bastards, feels nice around the ears, nice barber smell. Chinatown, could’ve got the dope here just as easy. Better from a white man, even an ex biker. Neither would remember anything. Here. This is the number. Asshole taxi driver didn’t like the tip. Fuck him if he can’t take a joke. Chinese man, middle aged, used to gun em down in Nam. Not Chinese but close. Door opening, no one around, too early for the public. Trucks leaving with crews and piles of clean laundry. Chink wants more money for the coveralls now. What the fuck? Theirs, not mine. Brand new cleaner’s coveralls under the arm, car rental place, something utilitarian that won’t be noticed, something cheap and plain. Nothing memorable. Rental agent, somebody’s daughter with big tits, perfect teeth. Credit card. Alias. Cheap little economy number, one with reclining seats. Car rental girl, long legs, short skirt, know what would look good on you, baby? Freeway Macdonald’s parking lot, more coffee. Map. Silver Spur, ring road, freeway, industrial park. This is the way to go. Morning radio sports talk. Pitching wins championships. More pitching is needed at home. It’s obvious. Industrial park, business park, easier when they’re among a lot of other buildings. Silver Spur. Just opening. Dark, smell of vomit and urine and sex. Big pictures of strippers everywhere. Subdued rock music in the shadows. Waitresses setting chairs at tables. The noontime rush’ll be crazy. Owner in back office. Large, hairy, ex biker, accompanied by two heavies. Wants more for the packet. What the fuck? Theirs, not mine. Ex biker, men, snigger at the suit and tie. In the old days a little blood and a few broken teeth. Shock. Reevaluation. Factory next door, a few long blocks down. Parking lot, back, coveralls on, the southern entrance. Security guards with wands and tasers, cameras everywhere. Wink from the man checking ID. Through. Find a cart, push it around the giant floor. Hundreds of drones in blue smocks. Jesus Christ, how long is this assembly line? Chinese cleaners with the same coveralls nod, continue cleaning, talking to each other in Chinese. Locker room, change room. Empty. Locker number fifteen. Combination 43 -14 - 12. Open the door, stick the packet under papers on the top shelf, beneath the photo, wife and kids. This can be a lesson for the kids. Locker door locked, push the cart to an exit. Out. Remove the cleaner’s coveralls at the car. Drive to the nearest bin. A payphone. “Narcotics. Detective Randall speaking” “Detective Randall, I want to report drugs. Illegal drugs” “Yes, and what’s your name sir?” “That’s not important. I saw heroin. In a locker at work” “Heroin. That’s a serious allegation, sir” “You want the locker number?” “Who does this locker belong to, sir?” “James Thayer. Giant Computer. Boundary Road. The factory. Locker fifteen. Bye” Hang up, park the car a little closer to the fence, to the entrance the cops’ll use. Recline the seat. Few hours of shut eye. Sun found its way past the visor. Hot on the legs. Get out, stretch. Back in the car in time for the show. Grey ghost car. Parking out front. Two plainclothes cops waving badges at the security guards, hurrying into building. Emerging with James Thayer cuffed, confused, mid thirties, still in his blue smock. Pushed carefully into the car, whisked away. Satisfaction. Rent a car flying down the freeway to Chinatown. Dumped. Taxi back to the hotel. “Hello. It’s done” “Any trouble with security?” “No. The man was smooth as silk. Cops grabbed Mr Thayer within two hours” “Good. That should be the end of that union” “You think so? In my experience, they’re pretty resilient. Another one’ll spring up in a few years” “Not with a leader like Thayer, though. And we’ll be ready next time. Congressmen are working on it as we speak. They better be. Fuckin Commies. Anyway, I’ve got your number if I need you again” “Yes. Just leave a message at that number” “Well, thanks. The cheque is in the mail to that box number you gave me” “Ok. See you” Discard the suit and tie. Quick shower. Mini fridge. Ice cubes. TV. Sports update. “Hello?” “Hi babe, how are you?” “Oh, its so good to hear from you. You wouldn’t believe what happened” “Yes I would. Ryan’s dentist appointment?” “How did you know, dear? He needs braces. It’s gonna be thousands” “Jesus Christ, Emily.” “I know, honey. But we can do it.” “Fuck” “I know, dear, but it’s his future. We don’t want him going through life with crooked teeth” “What about Patsy?” “Well, you know she had that recital last night” “Hmm” “She did fine. She’s so buzzed about it. She wants to be a professional violinist now” “Yeah. Right. Till the next fad. Billy ok?” “He wants you home for the weekend, dear. They’re in the playoffs. He’s pitching the first game on Saturday. You can’t miss that” “Tell him I’ll be there. I’m finished here. I’ll be catching the first flight home tomorrow. There’s no need to pick me up. I’ll grab a cab. Just as cheap” “So your consulting must have been successful, dear” Swallow the cold, smooth rye. “Mmhm...very successful” “Ok dear, see you tomorrow. You’ve got a lot of messages on your line. See you then” “Ok Bye”

We left Bombay on one of those trains you see on tv. Guys hanging off the sides, people sitting on the roof. We were travelling third class, the cheapest form of rail transit in India. Everyone in our class was packed into passenger cars with wooden bench seats which were quickly occupied by mothers with their children and a young Sikh military officer, off duty, to whom a crowd of young men passed a strong looking metal trunk through the open window. He had been smart, boarded the train, ruthlessly knocking old women out of his way, without his luggage, secured a window seat. The rest of us defended what little space there was near us and stood our ground through the swaying departure. Joyce found a piece of floor near our backpacks where she could sit. There was no point in talking. We were in for twenty straight hours, travelling third class from Bombay to Goa. I stood leaning against a window, bending over to watch the endless slums roll by as we left the city. A pair of Australian women began complaining as we entered the countryside. The difference stood out between the pampered Aussies and the stoic Indian mothers who sat on the floor for hours without uttering a bad tempered peep. The whining grated on my nerves. Chai wallahs appeared at the windows on the platforms of every stop along the way. You passed the money out, they passed the chai or sweets or Fantas, in. The Aussies loved the distraction, but their greed showed. They bought more of everything than they needed, shared it only with each other. They could not sit still and nothing was good enough. We somehow slumbered a little that night. I found myself standing at the window again as the morning appeared. Water buffalo looked up from wet paddies as the train sped by. “Hello, how are you? Where you from? I am a salesman from Bombay” I looked up to see a chubby, sweating Indian in a wrinkled suit and tie. He was smiling at me. When I told him I was from Canada, he laughed loudly. Leaning close, he waggled his forefinger in front of my nose. “Never trust an Indian” He winked, proceeded to outline the steps the Indian government had taken to obtain a nuclear reactor from Canada, all the while swearing it was for peaceful reasons, then produced a nuclear weapon from it. It was vague to me, I had heard of it, it had happened, but it was vague. I didn’t think it as hilarious as my Indian friend did. I felt embarrassed when he called Indians untrustworthy and thought, to myself, that I had about as much to do with the government of Canada as he did with the government of India. He talked with his hands, demonstrating telling signs of the naivete of Canadians and Westerners in general. He used comical facial expressions to emphasize slyness and brilliance. We chatted till he got bored and moved on. The vegetation grew lusher as we travelled toward the equator. The Aussies had been reduced to tears, then exhaustion. I was just glad they shut up. Joyce imitated the longsuffering Indian women. We didn’t find out till we were installed in a farm house, with a family, near the beach, that Goa was a European vacation spot. Famous celebrities from the West, rock stars, film stars, those in the know in Europe, with the means to travel to India for a one or two week stay, populated the seaside town during the European winter. I soon became addicted to the bean baji they made at the little restaurant in the main square where the buses stopped. The square was a leisurely stroll down the beach and dirt road from the farm. The Aussie couple who arrived in one of the local buses had “gone native”. They introduced themselves to us in the restaurant. She was the chai wallah and he was the chapati wallah. They explained that they had left home two years before and as far as they could tell, from the letters they kept receiving, their families were on the verge of hysteria. They were supposed to like India and travelling, but enough was enough. They weren’t expected to like it this much. They wondered if a family member would come over from Australia to try to find them in the teeming masses of India and take them back. At the moment, they were perfectly happy in India. They dressed like Indians and spoke to Indians in their own language. They liked the pace of life, the people, the country, the craziness. The guy pronounced “Boom shanka” in an experienced manner when someone shared a pipe of Manali hash. Goa had been a Portuguese colony until the 60s so they didn’t approve of dope smoking. There were less beggars there than in the rest of India and the locals still retained some Christian traditions like church and drinking scotch. Goan cops didn’t allow nude sunbathing. They took their time, walked slowly down the beach, looked carefully before telling German and Scandinavian girls to put their clothes back on. The “Boom shanka” was part of a religion which included sharing pipes of hash. We had seen, in the train station in Bombay, an Indian all dressed in red, red robe, red in his long hair, red paint on his face, sharing a pipe with a blond Westerner with thick dreadlocks down to his waist. They went through the boom shanka chants and held the smoking pipe up in front of them, as if offering it, before they smoked. The barefoot Indian looked fearsome, wild eyes, many necklaces of nuts and baubles, carrying a red trident. They said he was a worshipper of Kali, the goddess of destruction. The family matriarch, the grandmother of the family, questioned us one day. She gave Joyce a pitiful glance when she found out that we had no children. I had to admit that no, neither my grandmother nor my mother owned her own sambas. The grandmother was proud of her palm sambas. We lived among them. They were large plots of land like farmers’ fields full of tall palms bordering the beach. They produced enough wealth to keep the family independent. Women bent double in adjacent rice sambas for twelve hours, two dollars per day. Other women, those working for the grandmother, carried huge piles of palm branches to the walled in yard at the farmhouse. The branches were trimmed for firewood. The women, barefoot, casually killed the large rats which scurried from beneath the branches where they had their nests.. They were in a concrete trap and every one was killed. Those that weren’t crushed by the ends of branches wielded by the laughing women, were slapped sharply on the ground by the tail. When bullfrogs are hunted for frog’s legs, the same killing slap is used on the water. We wandered over mud paths atop the dikes which bordered the sambas by the white beach of the Arabian Sea. The wind rattled the palms and bent each stalk of rice. Spots of bright colour in the distance pinpointed women’s blouses. Luminescent blue and green birds darted through the dappled sunlight. For people used to traditional North American fare at Christmas, the shark steak dinner at the seaside restaurant was different. The cruel realities of the sea were displayed along the beach where we walked every day. Piles of sunfish lay rotting in the sun beside dead sea serpents, many poisonous. One of the indelicate but necessary realities of travelling in Asia is checking your shit. Yes, it’s unpleasant, but a tendency toward diarrhea, called “loose movement” by the grandmother, is a good indicator of illness. Travelling with a woman was much better than travelling with another guy or alone. The advantages were innumerable. Women related to women in the kitchen, food preparation was a common part of their lives. There were a lot of things which an Asian woman could never say to a Western man but which she could share with a Western woman. Joyce was learning to bake something from the women of the house just as we were leaving. It tasted good when we ate it for supper, but they left it out all night and I got the runs from eating more of it in the morning. We had to be very careful about cooking utensils in Goa because, as the women demonstrated, anything left out in the kitchen is an object to be examined and crawled over by the same giant cockroaches which hung around the toilet. The toilet was even scarier than the kitchen. When you crouched to defecate into the darkness below the little room beside the kitchen, the giant barnyard sow in the back yard could be heard grunting and trying to climb the concrete chute below you, to meet your turds halfway. When I started squirting brown juice, I couldn’t stand the sounds emanating from the depths of the toilet. I visualized a fat septic tank with teats waiting for my diarrhea. I found a place in the bush where I squatted, wishing for the cool Himalayas. The monsoon season was approaching, it was time to head north before the world was submerged.

I firs met Bubba an Stone one midnight when dey was gettin chased across de Interprovincial Bridge by Andre St. Pierre an is karate club. Dey flag me down an I elp em out, giv em a lif. I booted er to Ottawa, lef a buncha drunk black belts pantin an cursin at de moon. What dey did in de tavern to piss off de karate club, I dunno, but I seen St. Pierre an is boys get some guys, after a few beer one night, an it weren’t no pretty sight. So I give em a lif an we ad a few beer in de Market. I never see em again till las mont when dey come in de club on Elgin Street where I work behine de bar. “Frenchie!” Bubba roar an crush my an like a big, drunk bear. E’s even bigger now dan den. Stone, got a black eye but, as usual, e got a good lookin girl wit im an cement on is boots. I don tink Bubba an Stone learnt much in school excep ow to drink an fight an play football. Dey could play football cause dey were real tough an Bubba strong like a bull an mean when e put on de pads. Stone, e was jus mean alla time. After dey cripple some guys in university ball an fail all deir courses, dey end up in de construction business. Stone learn ow to build ouses from is fadder, got is own company. Bubba started out as a labourer for de city. Now dey give im is own truck. Dey’re bot pissed off at de wedder dis winter an, like mos people, dey’re about to crack aroun de end of Fevrier. Dey want to go to Florida an look up an ole football buddy. Dey invite me along dat night at de club. An I say yes. Tabernac. Stone, e bin through a couple marriages an lotsa udder women an got some kids scattered aroun. E says e can handle everyting excep women. Bubba got no kids an e’s fightin wit is girlfrien. De one Stone call “de douche” when Bubba can’t ear im. I shoulda known better when Stone tole me to bring an extra suitcase. One of is wives got all deir luggage an Bubba’s girlfren got de cops to keep im away from de apartment. My brudder, Guillaume, e’s smart, but e’s stupid. Smart wit money, stupid wit women. E always know ow to make a buck but insteada bein appy wit a nice little business in ull, e get tangle up wit a good lookin woman from Montreal. E moved down dere an got busted wit six keys o toot. I figured my brudder won’t be needin is suitcase for a while. I get it from my mudder’s an bring it along. It was a Monday mornin, not too early. We bin on a tour of de otels upriver in de Pontiac since we lef ull some time Saturday mornin. So our stomachs not de bes when we jump in Bubba’s new Corvette an ead for de border. Wit me an de suitcase in de back seat. Bubba, e’s big and tough, but e loves is Corvette. Is girlfren’s mad at im cause e spent money on de car e was spose to spen on er. He yell an take a slap at me an Stone if we spill somethin in de Corvette. Bubba can eat tree family size bags o chips, while e’s drivin, witout spillin a crumb. E takes a big paw fulla chips an stuff de whole ting in is mout while we ‘re bootin it outta town. De boys are ungry when we get to Kemptville an we all need a beer so we stop at de otel dere to join de farmers an rednecks in de tavern. Dey make de good meatball sandwich in de otel in Kemptville. Pretty soon, Stone gets inna game a pool wid some rednecks. De waitress, Katie, she’s stoppin longer to talk to me at de table, every time she bring de beer. It ain’t so bad bein small an French wit de long eyelash. Women love de long eyelash an get real mudderly when dey’re bigger dan you an tryna speak French. So dey usually come onto me firs. Sometime, it work, sometime, it don. Dis one came onto me firs. Definitely. Me? I’m small, but I’m wiry. A lover, not a fighter. I never tot trouble would start in Kemptville. I get up to go for a leak an ear bullfrog noises. I look aroun to see Katie arguin wit some rednecks. By de time I see it’s me dey’re talkin about, a bottle’s comin my way an de fight’s on. A couple jump Bubba from behine, but dey’re flyin over de pool table in a urry. I kick one guy in de back, Stone breaks is cue on a guy’s ead an we make it to de door. Bubba spins dat Corvette tru de gravel a few extra times to spray dose farmer trucks an we boot it for de border. We stop at a gas station to clean out de car, ave a piss, get ready for de USA. When we pull up to de border crossin, Stone sees some guys over to one side watchin guards tear deir truck apart, an laughs. We answer all de questions from a young guy in a uniform an e says to wait a minute an goes to get an ole guy. Dis guy looks like a state trooper from Texas, almos big as Bubba, wit de gun an de badge an de sun glasses. E takes one look at Stone’s black eye, wants our i.d. I tink we woulda bin o.k. if Bubba din take off is sun glasses to look in de glove compartment. Dunno why e’s wearin em anyway, it’s almos dark. I’m watchin de ole guard examine de i.d., but I see e’s really lookin over top of dem at Bubba’s eyes, in de side mirror. I could see is eyes too. Dey were red, real red. In fac, dey look like dey avin internal emmorage. De ole guard put is big, fat ead in de window, smell a real deep breat an tell Bubba to pull over beside de guys Stone laughed at. Bubba takes one look at de guys’ truck gettin torn apart an de back of is neck gets red as is eyeballs. We’re all pretty cool cause we know we’re clean. We go into de office wid de president’s picture on de wall beside all de wanted posters an answer more stupid questions. Bubba’s lookin out de window while some guards look unner de Corvette wit mirrors, open up de ood. De ole guard keeps smellin real ard while dey ask us who we gonna visit in Florida an if we ever take drugs. He stops sniffin so ard when Stone rips a real loud beer fart. Finally, jus when I tink we’re finish, de young guard march into de office wit Guillaume’s suitcase an a look like e jus won de lottery. E pull de plastic on a little panel in dere I din even know about. De ole guard reach in wit is big, fat fingers an pull out a baggie wit is udder han on is gun. E looks at us wit a big, ugly grin an opens de baggie. Ten seeds fall out on de counter. Couple udder guards, in de room behine us now, got deir hans on deir guns. Bubba turns red, Stone turns to me. Everybody looks at me. I try to give em a shrug like Trudeau, tell em it ain’t my suitcase. De guards smell blood now. Dey take me an Stone to one room, Bubba to an udder one. De young guard gives us some pamphlets an leaves us alone. Stone’s blamin me. I can ear Bubba roarin. Stone looks at is pamphlet, looks at me. “Uh oh” Dese pamphlets about some new law dey made in de States, ‘Zero Toleration’ I agree wit Stone when e say, “Uh oh” Dis new law means dey can take Bubba’s new Corvette an keep er cause of ten ole pot seeds even my brudder forgot. Collis. I never knew my brudder could write. It never come up. I guess everybody can write deir name an address dese days. Dat’s what saved us. Guillaume wrote is name on de tags an inside de suitcase. Dey ask more questions an finally fine out dat my brudder’s in jail in Montreal. Dey bring us all togedder in a room to tell us what we gotta do to get Bubba’s Corvette back. Bubba’s real red an starin at us like e’s gonna explode so I stay behine Stone when we go in. I feel better when I see some guards wit deir hans on deir guns. Dey probably woulda let Stone and Bubba go back to Ottawa cause it was my brudder’s suitcase, but Bubba explode right dere. “You idiots” e yell an make a dive for us. E knock alf de guards down an roll aroun on de floor wit de fat one till one young guard it im on de ead wit a night stick. Stone jumps in an pretty soon dey’re cuffin dem an draggin dem away. Me? I jus stan dere. A young guard notices me an point is gun at me. “Resume dat position” e say. Stone uses is phone call to get a ten tousand dollar bond on de spot. I gotta go, according to Bubba’s call, back to lawyers in Ottawa to get affidavits signed dat we don know nuttin about drugs. Maybe it weren’t fair, in a way, but me, I was appy to catch de nex bus dat came tru de border to get away from Bubba till he cool down. So de nex day is Tuesday. Instead o bein alfway to Florida, I’m gettin off de bus at de station in Ottawa an lookin for dis lawyer, Kenny Nelson, who use to play ball wit de boys. Turns out, is office is in a big, new building on Elgin Street wit igh speed elevators an lotsa plants. My brudder, Guillaume, e don like lawyers an e always say be careful wit dem, but dis setup looks o.k. to me. Dere’s lotsa good lookin women, all dressed to kill. I talk wit a sweet, blonde receptionist till Kenny Nelson shows up. E takes me to is office an I tell im de story. E asks me some questions. E’s laughin so hard, e’s almost cryin. E phones some udder lawyers oo played ball wit de boys. Dey all laugh an finally e tells me to come back tomorrow morning, de papers will be ready. Me? I’m tres fatigue by now an dis blonde got me tinkin bout some relaxation. I go for a breakfas special in de unnergroun fas food joints where Theresa works. Theresa, she’s big, wit lotsa poing. She love de long eyelash an take real good care o me from time to time. Theresa got a real good job in de government building on top o dese fas food joints. She comes down for a coffee wit me an gives me de key to er apartment. I got to know er about a year ago when she came into de club wit er government friens. So I go up to er place after I pick up a few grams from de stash. I ave a sauna an a swim in er pool, get some relaxation till she comes home an we hit de sack. She cooks a nice Italian supper an I feel guilty when we’re sittin in fron de fireplace wit de wine an smoke an listenin to er jazz records. Guilty about de boys, I mean. Me an Theresa ave a good time an she ‘s tryna talk me into movin in wit er like she always does. I don tink she really wants me to move in, it’s jus sorta a game we play. We bot know it would spoil all de fun. In de mornin I see Kenny Nelson an e’s still laughin an phonin more guys oo played football wit de boys while I sign papers sayin I don know nuttin about seeds or dope. Finally, e gives me all de stuff we need an I get a bus back to de border. We musta got lucky cause one a de young guards was a Corvette freak like Bubba an dey spen lotsa time talkin bout em. Bubba’s mellowed out, but e’s still mad. E lets us in de Corvette when we get everyting straightened out. Pretty soon, we’re bootin er sout on 87, lookin for six packs. De boys jus don feel right widout a cold, American beer between deir legs when dey’re drivin in de States. De only words Bubba says to us, excep “Put on Van Halen”, was “You idiots!” Every so often, while e drink is first six pack, he looks across at Stone an in the mirror at me an shakes is big ead. After de firs couple o six packs, Bubba let Stone put on Dire Straits. I don pay much attention anymore. Since I met de bands at de bar, seem to me de guitar players are jus as crazy as ousepainters. Well, de trip goes pretty good after dat. By de time we get to de sout, we figure out dat we only got one day to stay in Florida if we’re gonna make it back to Ottawa on time. “No way!” Bubba says. “Red says toot’s thirty five a gram in Miami. We’re stayin for a vacation. We deserve it” Red’s deir football buddy. E runs some kinda tourist resort where dey specialize in parties. We ad a real good time, stayed for two weeks, till we ran outta money. Guillaume always says dat de only people dat party like Quebecers, is Americans. I believe im now. We end up alfway to Cuba wit dancin girls an gangsters an almos get shot outta de water by de coast guard, but dat’s anudder story. My brudder, Guillaume, he’s comin into de club for a drink tonight. Is woman in Montreal got im a good lawyer an dey trew de whole ting outta court. E’s comin in to pick up is suitcase, too. Nex week, e’s goin on vacation.

We escaped the desperate hordes of Bangkok to the small island of Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand. Its main industry was the export of copra from the millions of coconut trees on plantations. The labourers earned a dollar and a half American per day. There was a little tourism, a little fishing, a lot of houses with self contained environments. Each house had pigs, chickens, water buffaloes and a garden. There were free coconuts: pineapples and bananas cost pennies. We headed across the island to a village called Tongkien where you could sleep for free under a bamboo canopy in front of a restaurant. You ate whatever the fishermen came up with that day. A few kilometres away was Lamlamai, the beach. It had pure, white sand, warm, light blue, translucent water. In the sun it was almost too bright to look at. There were sand dunes between the sea and the coconut trees. The Thai sun baked everything in vibrating shimmers, the sea breeze blew. The only people who didn’t seem to be affected by the blazing sun were the fishermen who stalked invisible prey with their coolers, Chinese hats and wet sarongs. They stood still, waded in the shallows with their nets, looked like outgrowths of the shore. The Thais appeared out of nowhere, two of them, sat beside us in the sand. The sun, breeze and salt water dehydration drove us up into the trees to sit in the shade and drink coconut milk Sante, “peace” in Thai, and Anothai, hacked some coconuts open, we all drank. Joyce liked the mature yellow coconuts, I preferred the yellowish brown ones, older. Some people liked the young, green coconuts, no one ate the old, brown ones. Anothai, tall, well developed above the waist, skinny below, challenged me as we sat. He was dark skinned, full of energy, knew English because he worked for the Americans who were stationed there. I was forced to respond to his pushing me, using me for a Thai boxing punching bag. The kids in Thailand knew Thai boxing like Canadian kids knew hockey. It was their national sport, on tv all the time. He flopped out some lazy jabs, then surprised me with combinations of whirling knee kicks and high kicks. Most of them landed on my shoulders and upper arms. My rudimentary karate training bluffed Anothai into giving up after a long sparring session. Sante and Joyce watched with forced smiles until we mutually backed off. I made sure our hatchet was in plain view in our pack when Anothai flourished his curved coconut knife. Sante said that he was educated in Bangkok, taught school on Ko Samui, but decided to give it all up and grow coconuts instead. We sat in the sand facing the beach, comfortable in the shade and the breeze. Sante and I talked of education, work, money, our respective countries, considered religion and meditation. Sante exclaimed “Ah, not think!” He demonstrated by sitting up straight, looking ahead with eyes closed, pointing with his index finger from the middle of his forehead to the horizon. He wore an intense expression of concentration and made no sound until he was finished. He said that meditation was taken for granted in Asia, everyone knew how to meditate. It was simply the emptying of the mind, the absence of thought. We slept under the canopy of the restaurant that night, returned to the ferry dock in the morning. Anothai was after our money, Sante tried to cadge whiskey. We bought coconut palm bongs from them, went back to the ferry dock. A man on a neighbouring island grew powerful ganja, the Ko Samui crop was rough, less powerful, plentiful, cheap. Two brothers, trying to escape the heroin addictions which they had picked up in Bangkok, stayed at the same hotel. They were from New York City, wired to China White and oriental women. Both swore they would take an oriental woman over a westerner any time. They apologized to Joyce, told me of the wonders of living with a Thai girl. They knew that they had to get out as soon as possible. They knew that they would inevitably be statistics on the list of heroin casualties if they didn’t. They smoked a lot of local weed to help them get through their withdrawals. We rested, let the tension of Bangkok drain away. We walked down long, white beaches radiated by the sun. The salt water and wind sucked the moisture from us beneath the blazing sun. We drank soft drinks constantly. Heavy punching bags tied to trees in back yards and farm yards were used for punching and kicking practice. The whole country was filled with Buddhist monks who survived on what the population gave them every day.

When the Eastern forests of the North perform their dazzling dance of colour as Winter approaches and the Snowbird is up and away, human beings and animals acknowledge the occasion by observing traditional customs in accordance with Nature's Plan. An example of this occurred in the Ottawa area. It all began when The Honeyman approached the front door of the small downtown house of his old, old friend, The Real Article and his wife, The War Department. He shivered in the cold November wind and wished he'd never left his dirty little trailer by the river. His dog, Go'Way!, braced by the cool air but resentful about being dragged into the city and away from the beach and the yacht club where he scavenged a daily harvest of dog victuals, paused to deposit a grumpy intestinal objection in the middle of the walk which led to The Real Article's front door. The Honeyman was concerned that their welcome might be worn out before they arrived and kicked the offending object off the walk. He reassured himself with a quick pocket check for the presence of tobacco, honey-whiskey, and honey, knocked on the door. Thus continuing a tradition of reunions which he and his old, old friend had established when they met pursuing Dutch girls while the rest of the world was chasing Germans across Holland. Reunions which continued through battles with frostbite and venereal disease in Korea and were observed with less frequency once the pair became separated on The Rubby Route in Western Canada. In the latter days it had taken The Real Article several reunions in single men's hostels, seedy bars and fleabag hotels to adjust. When he encountered The Honeyman he had to deal with Go'Way! too. The dog was just a pup then and suffered repeated nauseating attacks of dizziness caused by his performance of a series of stutter step starts and stops because The Real Article invariably greeted him by yelling, "Go'Way!, C'Mere!" or, worse, "C'Mere, Go'Way!". The Real Article was dressed, as usual at four in the afternoon, in his lime green terry cloth dressing gown and rubber boots. The latter acquired from a late night garbage can and handy for keeping the feet dry in the soggy living room which suffered occasional floods in the wetter seasons. The old, old friends greeted each other with jocular salutations in the vein of, "Y'ole bugger, yuh never looked worse!" and "It's a wonder yer not dead or in the can!" while they punched arms, faked head butts and knees to the crotch. Go'Way! affected his usual show of emotion upon seeing The Real Article by tearing off a piece of terry cloth sleeve and further shredding the bottom of The Honeyman's coat. The separation had been long and this, combined with The Real Article's tendency to repeat things after his first sexual encounter with The War Department in the back seat of a Voyageur bus, let the occasion overwhelm him, causing him to yell, "Go'Way!, Go'Way!" at Go'Way! Naturally, the dog responded with increased affection by demonstrating his famous Large Cat Attack impression. He jumped up and down three times, wrapped himself around The Real Article's neck, like a mink stole. The Honeyman calmly removed Go'Way! by yanking on his tail and commanding in firm tones, "C'Mere, C'Mere, Geddown, Go'Way!" while thrusting his other hand deep into one of his raincoat pockets. To which Go'Way! responded by descending in a leap. On the way down, he snatched a small fish from The Honeyman's hand. The old, old friends repaired to the living room to recline on orange crates in front of a large t.v. screen as Go'Way! discovered the remains of a half eaten anchovie and pineapple pizza among a flotilla of boxes and packages on a puddle. He reminisced about his riverside home by rolling in the pizza, ignoring the old, old friends as they toasted each other and the world in general with a bottle of The Honeyman's Special Spatial Honey Brew. Hoisting his used MacDonald's milkshake container, The Real Article smacked his lips, licked his moustaches and offered up a traditional toast, "Up yers!” to which The Honeyman replied, "Up yer Geester fer Easter!" to which The Real Article rejoined, "Up yer nose with a rubber hose!" And all these tried and true toasts were followed by noisy guzzling and other memorable salutes like, "Bottoms up!" "Up alla them!" and "Up, up and away!" Which they were, by the time they detected a loud roaring emanating from another room followed by the appearance through a door of a cascade of chocolate bar wrappers, apple cores and a Laura Secord box. Go'Way! barely acknowledged this commotion, finding himself in the midst of a floating canine smorgasbord featuring a selection of boxes and containers drifting in all directions. He produced a tidal action by flopping his tail. This caused the remnants of Chinese, Italian, and Indian takeout meals to pass gently under his nose for sampling. But his moveable feast was disrupted when an empty sugar bowl propelled from the other room struck him on the snout just as he was about to test the flavour of a passing container of mouldy Moo Goo Guy Kew. The Real Article, realizing that the distant hubbub signified The War Department's uncanny ability to detect the supper hour and her suspicion of a lack of attentiveness on his part, signalled The Honeyman to follow him into his wife's presence. Which he did. Cautiously. In case of a continuation of the barrage. Straightening his tuft of red hair, extracting a bottle of Very Special Buckwheat Honey from his raincoat, smiling the irresistible, brown toothed smile which had earned him his name long before he entered the bee products business. The War Department had her gigantic bulk perched daintily upon a huge waterbed, parts of which were indistinguishable from her own corporate entity. Her purple hair grappled in agonizing clinches with lime green curlers. Her breath was bellicose, her bellow bull-like. The Real Article performed formal, if hurried, introductions, dodging hard buns and several plastic knives sent in his direction by the spouse he called Petal in intimate moments. The Honeyman bowed and proffered his bottle of Special Buckwheat Honey before ducking behind a cardboard dresser to avoid a semi-fresh chocolate drink whipped with a wicked sidearm motion by The War Department who was in full cry, "Where's supper?...Who's this?... Whatcha good for?...What kinda name is Go'Way?" Triggering an enthusiastic response by Go'Way! which landed him on the waterbed and spilled the Special Buckwheat Honey all over the pile of Saltine crackers spread out on The War Department's lap. Causing her renewed roaring and lashing about which sent waves throughout the bed and catapulted Go'Way!, who now resembled a tar and feather victim of the good ole days, back into the living room, but allowed The Honeyman to edge into the open to continue his litany of smooth talk and compliments while he fished around for another bottle of Special Spatial Brew. And this stratagem seemed to do the trick. For The War Department's bellowing subsided when they ploughed through the second bottle. The flow of foodstuffs aimed at them dwindled as she realized that her husband and his old, old friend were experiencing far too much ecstasy of the mind to do anything about getting her supper. A problem she solved immediately, after washing down the last of the honey soaked crackers with the dregs of the Special Spatial Brew, by announcing that they would all go out on the town. To The Lafayette Tavern. In the heart of the Byward Market. Through which she and the cracker covered Go'Way! marched ahead of the old, old friends, the dog biting tourists and shoppers protectively when they objected to his new found friend roaring at them and hitting them with hands full of the breadcrumbs which she carried in her large purse. While the old, old friends watched them affectionately, content to tag along behind, and, in the spirit of reunion, play one of their old Rubby Route jokes on the well heeled customers of a fancy tea room. Wherein The Real Article picked his nose and held up his finger to the light to examine the results as The Honeyman produced a syncopated rhythm of loud belches with flatulent accents and a seductive wink for the ladies over whose table they were standing. And the pair were already out the door, strolling with a chuckle, toward the next trendy spot to repeat their little prank, by the time waiters and management were summoned to comfort their distressed customers. At The Lafayette Tavern, The War Department and Go'Way! were strategically positioned in a corner table with another couple, The Stunned Rock and his wife, The Wayward Incident, when the old, old friends arrived to join them and order quarts of beer and microwaved onion and cheese sandwiches. The first were consumed and being replaced by their waiter, The Nose, when two more old cronies of The Real Article arrived, just finished their appointed rounds of delivering beer in a Brewer's Retail truck, Old Bargie and The S Turn. Who were veterans of The Rubby Route of Eastern Canada and joined the table, soon consuming enough of their own product to be persuaded to perform the trick they were famous for all the way to Newfoundland, the eating of the mugs and bottles which had contained their beer. This display had earned them a pretty penny in their younger, gambling days but was now reserved exclusively for entertainment at gatherings of old friends and family and religious holidays. Old Bargie learned the trick in a dream and The S Turn learned it from his father, The U Turn, who likewise learned it from his father, The Hairpin Turn, and so on, even unto the first generation. The War Department, in her cups and pleased to be conducting such an interesting tour of the attractions of the nation's capital, launched into a jolly harangue of the rest of the customers who remained polite until she began to punctuate her discourse by flinging fists full of breadcrumbs and uneaten quart bottles at them and prodding Go'Way until he attacked several of the more vociferous complainants. By the time The Nose arrived to protest what he termed "antisocial shenanigans" and demand payment for the missing bottles and glasses, The Honeyman had established a warm camaraderie with The Stunned Rock, The Wayward Incident, Old Bargie and The S Turn, treating them to a taste of Special Spatial Brew. The Real Article sat back contentedly, pondering the simple pleasures to be found in the gathering of small groups of friends and their pets. But exception was taken to The Nose's interference and lack of service and a hell of a brawl commenced during which the group acquitted itself admirably, the majority hiding behind The War Department and Go'Way! who were on the front line. Fortunately, all but the drunkest of enraged customers and most determined of the staff were sufficiently wary of Go'Way!'s painful nips and the whirring purse and ear splitting battle cry of The War Department to keep a prudent distance. Except for one unfortunate waiter who later likened The War Department to a Sumo wrestler on speed and venturing too close in trying to hit her with an oar, was caught up in The Bear Hug of Infinite Sorrow. From which he escaped only when The War Department noticed an innocent and terrified third party knocking over her quart in an attempt to vacate the premises with Go'Way! attached to his Achilles tendon. The Real Article spied the manager heading for the phone, presumably to summon the local constabulary. The group fought its way to the front door, piled into the Brewer's Retail truck, made good their escape. In the direction of the trailer down by the river. The Honeyman and his bottomless pockets acting as navigator for The S Turn in the cab, the rest sprawled in the back, happily pillaging the province's liquid property. The plan was to stop by The Honeyman's home long enough to pick up a supply of Special Spatial Brew and honey and go touring. But it was forgotten when they arrived and soon deteriorated into a celebration of the departure of Autumn, the arrival of Winter, Remembrance Day, and an epiphany experienced by The Stunned Rock who swore he had been granted a visitation by The Powers while peeing outside the trailer and looking up into the star filled sky. The War Department shook the little trailer to its foundations as she roaringly took on all comers at leg wrestling. Old Bargie and The S Turn gobbled up the few glasses in the kitchen while The Wayward Incident served up large portions of beans and cabbage. Go'Way! scavenged happily on the dark beach. The old, old friends kept a sharp eye on The Stunned Rock in case, as often happened to susceptible Special Spatial Brew drinkers, he had a revelation. And they were not surprised to be rewarded. After The War Department despatched him through the window at the end of the trailer with a triumphant hoot and a lightning leg hook. For by the time they found him, he had climbed onto the roof of the trailer and was declaring prophetically that they should depart to follow the Star of the East. Which they did after they adhered to the established routine of old, old friends' reunions and burned down the trailer, The Honeyman miffed at his shortsightedness in allowing the group to end up at his place, making him last host of the night and, according to ancient reunion rules, obligating him to provide his abode for the burnt sacrifice. So it was, that they loaded up the Brewer's Retail truck with supplies of honey whiskey, honey, fish for Go'Way!, a pile of beans and cabbage, made a side trip to store The Honeyman's beehives in the deserted yacht club, and set out for the East Coast. Following whatever star happened to appear above the road when they looked up. With the New Plan. To descend upon other old, old friends and continue the customary celebration all the way to The Atlantic. This was not an exception to the rule that the reunions of The Real Article and The Honeyman invariably concluded with rousing traditional choruses in accordance with Nature's Plan. For many an Autumn dog walker and suburban leaf raker has since turned a puzzled head, in the Eastern Canadian evening, at the sound of an invisible choir roaring and barking the harmonies of "Up, Up and Away" when the only apparent activity in his quiet street was a lone Brewer's Retail truck trundling along in the direction of The Dawn.

I awake to the hum of the air conditioner vibrating a fast, funk beat, green curtains opened a foot in the middle. There are white clouds on a powder blue sky, sunshine on the palms and slanted roofs. I slumber for twenty more minutes. Groping and squinting, I light the first cigarette of the day, lay back to smoke it. White sheets outline the pleasant hump of Joyce’s hips in the bed across the room. Henry Miller’s Plexus lays open at my feet. I try to recall the last bit I read, but several incidents jumble together, it’s not clear. The small speaker in the wall begins to crackle. An old rock tune wheezes through. The Malaysia Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand. We have the steaming chaos of Bangkok to travel through, to the photo shops of the Siam Centre, then the Indonesian Consulate, for visas. We need passports, return tickets, whatever other paper we have to pay for. Old Siam? The mysterious East? Bangkok is another Tokyo or Hong Kong, another filthy, polluted, high speed, hot city. Bangkok is downright depressing. I rise, run to the shower. The tepid water on my skin diverts me. We smoke a joint of Buddha weed, I eat the yogurt Joyce has gone out for earlier, we gather up all the necessary papers. Our packs sit on the floor beside the dresser. In this room there are two single beds, a hand shower attached to the bathtub. I got a four inch cockroach in the bathroom with the flick of a towel rolled up. The room is air conditioned by a central unit that services the whole building, at times. It all costs two dollars American per night. Long before there were guide books on the subject, before Rolling Stone magazine ever suspected, restless western souls explored the vast continent of Asia. The first wanderers grew to gigantic hordes of travellers. Political policies and wars set down the route: from Europe to India, from India to Bangkok, from Bangkok to Australia or America. All of the modern roads of discovery converged on Bangkok. In every city, in every country, there are hostels, hotels, guest houses, with cheap rates, basic accommodations, services for travellers. By word of mouth, later through travel guides, the locations of these places are revealed. The Malaysia Hotel in Bangkok is a venerable institution on the trail around the world. Perhaps, she’s the grandmother of them all. The Malaysia is a haven of sleazy, relaxed decadence for westerners. She’s a modern hotel, by sixties standards. She rises six stories with a grimy little swimming pool, a cafeteria and bar. The loud juke box is full of rock. There is one blues song. The lobby contains a travel agent and a second hand book shop where you can trade two of your pocket books for one of theirs. On the notice board, by the front door, we read, ‘The Dutch girls I met in Burma, I am in room 202, would like to see you again, Rob’ and ‘Don’t pick up Thai chick outside of the Pussycat Cabaret - she’s a rip off. My friend and I lost $2,000 and got badly beaten up by the guys she works with. She offers massage and takes you to Oriental Hotel on Rama 5. The police won’t do a thing - beware!’ under which is written, in another hand, ‘Too bad, you ole smoothy’. There is an abundance of drugs, prostitutes and opportunities to encounter Bangkok’s thriving underworld at the Malaysia. We were told of the Malaysia in Seoul, getting drunk on Soju and eating bulgogi beef with an American couple. A veterinarian and his wife who were heading home after doing the circuit from Europe to Asia, told us, “Everybody stays at the Malaysia” We make our way across the street to the Blue Fox. I begin to sweat. My body is adapting to the tropics. It’s affecting my mind. I think evil, violent thoughts in Bangkok. I wake up from dreams of being attacked in the street by Thais. Lots of travellers go through it. I think of the marine I talked to, who was raised in Connecticut, posted to the Philippines. He went through a painful sickness which acclimatized him to the heat. When he returned to the States, he couldn’t stand the cold. The physical effort of a Canadian or a northern dweller confronting the heat must be more strenuous than that of a person from the south. Coldness is a way of life in Canada. Heat is a vacation. All I thought about for the past three winters, working in the cold, was escaping to a hot climate. Now I was suffering because of the heat. It is cool and dark in the Blue Fox Bar, where we find an empty booth, order breakfast. The owner is a pleasant looking Thai who works behind the bar in blue jeans. He smiles, says hello. His two pretty daughters are serving beer to a few die hard Australians at the bar. We smoke cigarettes, drink strong coffee while the loud juke box kicks out an endless stream of Beatles, Stones and Bad Company. The daughters only understand a few words on the menu, but mouth each word of the rock songs. The regular westerners are there every morning at quiet tables, with cigarettes and coffee. Some are guests of the Malaysia, some from the surrounding hotels. The same westerners spend most of their time in the Blue Fox. As the day progresses they switch from coffee to beer or liquor. Most can be found there around closing time. One guy looks like a French gangster. He is dressed in a tight, black T - shirt with tattoos on his skinny, big veined arms. He wears dark shades, has slicked back, greasy hair with a small, black moustache. Joyce checks out his jewellery, watches him deal. A pretty, young Thai girl hangs by his side. She disappears, returns with strangers with whom he converses. Sometimes he slips outside with them, to do his deal. He is sitting with two large Americans who look like they just got out of the service. All three stare at the cartoons on the colour tv at the end of the bar. When breakfast is finished, we can’t put it off any longer and we plunge into the streets of Bangkok. It’s hard to deal with the unrelenting discomfort of a place like Bangkok. The streets are jammed with traffic which raises an unbearable decibel level of sound. There are the noises of broken mufflers on buses, motorbikes, trishaws, shouts over them. The sound hits you like a wall. We cringe at the loudness on the sidewalks. On the main streets the air is blue from exhaust fumes. Tension stalks the faces on busy, steaming corners in the heat. The smell, noise and visual spectacle contrast with Buddhist monks who walk around silently, in saffron robes, with empty begging bowls. The population is expected to fill them with food. Everything and everyone is bathed in wet, glaring light. We walk a short distance to Rama 4, one of the main arteries in Bangkok. There’s Rama 1 to Rama 5 all aiming, like spokes in a wheel, for the centre of town. Rama 4 is a wide six lane boulevard, lined by hotels, stores, wots and parks. It gets worse as it gets closer to the centre where it becomes another high speed, raucous, dirty street. We walk the two long blocks of Rama 4, turn left for more long blocks, decide to take a trishaw. The sweat, noise and pollution is overwhelming. The trishaws are the worst polluters but cheap. The buses and trucks are bad, but the trishaws are driven till they drop. Mufflers don’t matter. The smoke from their exhausts ranges from black to sky blue. We flag down a trishaw driven by a tough looking, unshaven Thai, his picture in his i.d. taped to the ceiling. There is a mandatory bargaining - pleading session required before we get in. He starts high, we start low. He lets us stand, sweating in the heat, drinking in his fumes. He is surviving on the streets of Bangkok. We are haggling over small amounts of money. His trishaw almost doesn’t reach the Siam Centre. He revs the motor all the way. The machine coughs a lot, but makes it. The Siam Centre is a big, air conditioned complex of businesses like American Express, banks and expensive grocery stores. We make for the coolness as fast as we can stagger. We drag ourselves up the stairs, breathe the cool air. We don’t need to come here, but it’s well air conditioned, so we walk around the grocery store, buy some soft drinks. We have to go across the street to one of the small photo shops, to get a dozen pictures each, for the visas. We drip dry in the cool air, cross the boulevard to the warren of little streets filled with restaurants and shops for tourists. There is a good six story book store there. A spiral staircase winds up the middle through all six. The sidewalks are steps down the hill, between stores and cars. There are turds and gray sludge floating by, in open sewers. The kids swim in the filthy canals. There are thousands of monks in saffron robes, bald men and women who walk around, all day, with begging bowls. It used to be compulsory for young men to become a monk for a year. Now you have a choice between becoming a monk or a soldier. The army is winning. The soldiers look like the best dressed people in Bangkok. The soldiers look clean, healthy, purposeful. The monks live in wots and beg for food. They go out early in the morning, the public fills their bowls. The crowds consist of thousands of people, oriental with western dress, many very poor people, businessmen, big, rich cars with chauffeurs, ordinary people shopping, groups of guys hanging around, hiding from the glare of the sun. They aren’t a friendly crowd. The boys in Viet Nam did their r&r in Bangkok, so the Thais know the hustle and con. They aren’t impressed by foreigners. Their national sport is kick boxing. We watched it, like hockey at home, in the Blue Fox, all day Saturdays. At the Indonesian consulate we buy visas for twenty dollars each. They insist that you buy return tickets from Malaysia to Indonesia. We hit the street again, walk all the way back to the Malaysia, to save money. I buy cold drinks in the lobby of the hotel before we collapse in the room. The pool scene at the Malaysia is weird. English and Australian guys make fun of Thai girls who withstand everything. The guys drink, put on spectacular diving displays from the railing of the balconies above. The girls stare into space, in silence. We are stoned on Buddha weed, the whole thing is in slow motion. Bangkok is everything that’s wrong with Asia. While we are in Thailand the police have a feud with the army, three district police chiefs are shot. There are three different guerilla groups in the south, more in the north, mixed with communists, drug lords and the Golden Triangle. Bangkok is the capital of it all, the centre. It tears along at its own breakneck speed. People there are on the edge of hysteria. We leave on a train which is guarded, near the border of Malaysia, by soldiers with sub machine guns and radios.

It was the last time I would go to Finn, I swore to myself as I searched for him in the Elmdale Tavern. He was around one of the regular spots. I needed to see him fast. At the Carleton Tavern I found Finn with a quart and money coming out of every pocket. I sat down with him, ordered a pint. It was still early in the day. I hit Finn up for fifty bucks to pay Murphy. Finn charged a fee for even handing you the loan. It cost sixty to borrow fifty for a week, but it would be worth it. Finn copied phone numbers and odds as he readied himself for a busy day ahead. Sunday, of course, was his big day because of the NFL betting. This was Saturday when college football and pro baseball took most gamblers’ attention. I finished my pint, said goodbye to Finn, caught Murphy at the Prescott Tavern, gave him a lift to Mary’s. Murphy and Mary had been engaged for twenty years. He still visited her little flower shop every morning. We stopped so he could pick a bouquet of flowers for her in a city park. Murphy didn’t believe in paying for flowers. When they were in season, he helped himself. It was a bone of contention between them. Murphy believed that flowers were given to man by the good Lord, shouldn’t be bought and sold. Mary believed that people gladly paid for the little ray of sunshine they purchased with a nice bouquet of flowers. Murphy had a friend named Calhoun in Montreal who could, for a price, buy a block of tickets in a provincial lottery which would produce winners. All I had to do was give fifty dollars to Murphy. I didn’t follow the whole scam back to the actual score, but I questioned Murphy enough to know that it felt like a winner. He assured me that fifty dollars would produce five thousand for me. Added to some others and passed through the right hands, it would yield twice as much, for him. This guy, Calhoun, had an in, was sharing the wealth. Murphy did it for me out of the kindness of his heart and good business sense. He didn’t have to include me, but he saw me as a good luck charm. I dropped Murphy off, went home to a weekend of sports on t.v. and too much beer. It didn’t cheer me up, to hear, on Monday morning, that Murphy had died on the weekend from a heart attack. I drove to Mary’s which was above her flower shop. It isn’t decent and polite to speak ill of the deceased, but getting lottery tickets was another matter. He always wore the same suit, his best, for giving and taking payments, more taking than giving, it always seemed with Murphy as he did his weekend rounds, careful not to exceed his booze limit. The lottery tickets had to be in his suit. Mary was in her shop with a short, dark, Scottish lawyer named Jack Scullion. She introduced us without mentioning if the man even knew Murphy. I listened with polite sadness, shook my head regretfully. Mary described Murphy’s last moments. It seemed that he died in her arms. Just after they had named a date. They had been engaged now for twenty years, so they were celebrating the twentieth year by marriage. She was as good as his wife anyway, Mary said. I agreed and inquired about Murphy’s “effects” as diplomatically as possible. Perhaps it was a little too vaguely phrased. Mary didn’t respond. Jack Scullion walked around the shop like he was looking for something suspicious. He kept an ear cocked in our direction though. He was trying to figure out who I was, where I fit in. Margaret, Murphy’s sister, appeared with her husband, Ralph, a used car lot owner. It was safe to say that the vultures were circling. I managed to find out that Murphy would be dressed in his best suit tomorrow at Ralph’s showroom. They were having the wake there. Ralph told me, in confidence, that it was his idea. It seemed a bit greedy for Ralph to take advantage of the crowd of potential customers which would gather to send Murphy off, but I wasn’t one to judge. There didn’t seem to be much of a chance of getting at Murphy’s suit pockets until the next day so I drove home and waited. I joined the line of people entering Ralph’s showroom. The place had a western theme, the staff were dressed as cowboys and cowgirls. They wore black armbands while Ralph himself was resplendent in a black western suit with tie and boots to match. He had probably considered wearing his black, ten gallon Stetson, but decided against it in case of misinterpretation by the mourners. There was a good mixture at Murphy’s wake. A crowd of children were the offspring of Murphy’s family. The older ones were Murphy’s cousins, uncles and aunts. When Murphy had mentioned his family at poker games or at the end of late night pub crawls, he gave the impression that he was the black sheep. His own opinion was that the family disliked him because they were jealous of his money and freedom. The people grew noisier as the booze flowed freely. Their presence was welcome. I needed as much attention diverted as possible while I sought the tickets. Most of the sniffling and crying came from Mary and Margaret. As I shuffled along toward them in the line, I could hear Margaret declaring that Murphy looked like himself. Mary’s voice rose over Margaret’s, in grief stricken tones, to tell someone that her brother had called to extend his condolences. He added that it was nice to think about old Murphy finally laying quiet with his big yap shut. People in the line who heard it at first looked puzzled, then made clucking noises. They agreed that it was a down to earth, honest assessment of the deceased, rest his soul. I eyed the coffin, snuck a peek at Murphy within. He did look like himself, I will say that. The dark, pinstriped suit, Murphy’s best, with the vest done up, decorated his body. His face was pinker than normal, but I only saw him in bars or restaurants so maybe this was what he really looked like. He had his hands folded peacefully over his pot belly and, all in all, looked like he had just exhaled and forgotten to inhale. There was no doubt about it, the life had gone out of Murphy. I could smell the gin on Margaret when she hugged me and the rye on Mary’s breath as she looked at me with red rimmed eyes and running mascara I managed to nod sadly and escape her while giving Murphy another quick, visual once over. Jack Scullion hovered in the background, watching everyone, especially me. There was plenty of drink and some sandwiches which the ladies had made. I helped myself to the food, found the coffee. It would take a clear head, whatever I did. Ralph was giving a sales pitch to a couple beside a beat up old clunker which looked like it had recently been retired from delivering pizza. He made the mistake of leaning a little too hard on the front bumper when he pushed it to demonstrate the shocks. The bumper fell off, barely missing his cowboy boots. Ralph never lost a beat. He made a note to see the mechanic about “bodywork problems”, kicked the offending bumper under the car. The pile of sawdust beneath it was turning black, absorbing oil. Jack Scullion approached me with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other. He had jet black hair, scars on his nose and around his eyes. He bore all the signs of a fighter feeling no pain. He stood spread legged in front of me and asked if I was in Murphy’s will. When I told him I didn’t think so, he seemed to relax. As much as a short, Glaswegian lawyer can relax. His shifty eyes wondered how I could benefit from Murphy’s death. He turned and stood by my side with a wide stance. He gestured alternately with the beer and the smoke while he surveyed the room. “Ach, it’s a right shower here, just noo, Jimmy” I nodded, but I didn’t really know what he meant. He didn’t notice, went on with his monologue, sometimes addressing the room, sometimes confiding to me. “Aye, they’re aw here noo. The vultures’re here. Look at em circlin, look at yersels, ach. See em? They’re after his money. The poor old boy isn’t even cauld yet. See em? They’re a right shower a bastards” No doubt, like most of his race, the Scottish lawyer was a little crazy and extremely violent. Rather than point out that he, too, was in attendance for strictly financial reasons, I managed to escape back to Margaret and Mary. I was getting desperate. Mary and Margaret had been absorbing the alcohol at a rapid rate. They had run out of tears. Their mutual hostility emerged with each drink. I addressed them with an eye on the coffin. “Well, ladies, it must be tense waiting for the will to be read. To see who gets what of Murphy’s. I understand that Mary here was just about to tie the knot with poor Murphy” Margaret frowned and produced many heretofore unseen lines in her face. “Hah” She blurted out with a laugh. “Tie the knot. He’s been engaged to her for twenty years” Mary reacted with bug eyed indignation. Her truthfulness about Murphy’s last moments was being questioned. “We were like man and wife. He didn’t spend time with his other family” she said before she found another glass of rye. Ralph had finished his pitch, but had no takers. He threw regretful glances at the bumper as he approached us, beer in hand. “Anyone got a few words to say?” he asked with a kindly smile. “Ha. Family’s family. It’s his blood in my veins” Margaret asserted. Jack Scullion had joined us. He had a fresh beer, stood spread legged with shoulders back. It was as though he was bracing himself on a heaving deck. “The will overrides everything” said Mary pugnaciously in Margaret’s direction. This hostility caught Jack’s attention, it was right up his alley. He looked around for an opponent, saw Ralph about to speak. I sidled toward the casket as Ralph began what he thought was sort of a eulogy for Murphy, but which he never finished. He never really got it started. Mary took offence at the look which Margaret gave her, hit the dead man’s sister with her purse. Jack saw his opportunity, gave Ralph a Glaswegian handshake which could be heard all over the showroom. There was evidence of Jack’s nutting ability the next day in the taverns; quite a few black eyes and bandaids sported by the mourners who clashed with him He made up for his lack of height by jumping straight at the other man’s face, applying the head, around the hairline, into whatever features were available. With Ralph sitting in a pool of the blood which was spouting from his nose, the women shrieking as they rolled around in front of him, I made it to the casket. Jack was taking on all comers. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I searched Murphy’s vest and trouser pockets with one hand, the other still holding my coffee cup. I was about to try his jacket when the lights went out. It wasn’t dark, but it turned everything in the showroom shadowy. The struggling figures in the brawl were being joined by others, the children shooed to the office. Maybe it was one of them who was responsible for the half light. I checked one side of Murphy’s jacket pockets and found nothing. The noise of fighting and breaking glass became louder. I tried the other pocket, felt cardboard. I pulled the lottery tickets out of Murphy’s pocket, squinted at them. They were the right ones. I was saying a prayer of thanks to my dead chum and the good Lord when I dropped the tickets. They slid down on the other side of Murphy. I panicked for a moment. Placing my cup between Murphy’s folded hands, I used one of my hands to shift his weight, the other to feel for the tickets. I grasped them just as a bottle crashed against the casket and a sliding body took my feet out from under me. Ralph had provided a fold out table from the lunch room upon which to place Murphy’s casket. As my weight shifted, the casket slid off the table. Murphy sat up with my coffee cup in his hands. Crawling toward the door, tickets in my hand, I glanced back. Murphy’s sudden rise from the prone to the sitting position, had caused a pause in the fighting. I heard various opinions of this phenomenon. “It’s a sign” The words “miracle” and “resurrection”were mentioned several times.. When I joined Finn, the next day, at the Carleton Tavern and paid him back, cheerfully, he gave me a curious look. He was totalling up the weekend’s action over a quart, asked me if I’d been to Murphy’s funeral after the donnybrook at his wake. I confirmed that I’d attended the burial. It was a sad and solemn affair for all involved including Murphy’s family and everyone’s legal representatives. We drank a memorial toast to Murphy that day before I bought everyone a round and placed a few bets.