All the bears sing stori.., p.4
All the Bears Sing: Stories, page 4
* * *
Three months ago, he was working on a new water tank for the town. Scaffolding weaved around the structure and a crane lifted pieces up to the crew. Cutthroat times in the construction industry, with companies low-ball bidding just to keep their workers from fleeing to Fort Mac and the big bucks. Profit margins sliced like the thin bologna in his lunchbox sandwiches. Not that he even had time to stop and eat. Grab a bite on the run, slam back a swig of coffee from his battered Thermos, keep moving, keep production on schedule.
From the top of the tower, Brian stole a moment to look at the view. To the east was the blue of the Strait backdropped by the mainland mountains with their dusting of early snow. He eagerly anticipated winter shutdown, when he would put one toddler in the backpack and the other on the wooden toboggan and snowshoe the local hills. Closer to the tower was a wall of trees, the firs green and unchanging through the swing of seasons, the alders and cottonwoods already bare-limbed. Two eagles perched below him and he grinned from his unusual position of high advantage. He liked these private amusements, personal moments within himself. Reserved by nature, when he and Mel married, it was a stretch to open up even to his newly beloved.
Frost coated the catwalk and scaffold planks with a crusty rime. He walked carefully around the edge of the tower, wearing his bulky tool belt of wrenches and bolts to assemble the dome segments slowly rising on a cable guided by his hand signals: thumb right or left, a pinching motion to go slow, circles in the air with his index finger up for lifting, down for lowering. Logical manoeuvres. He kept his eyes on the steel panel, slowly swinging as it approached, and glanced down now and then to make eye contact with the crane operator and give him a nod.
He wore his regulation body harness, clipped into the steel security rail. He hated the cumbersome strapping that often tangled in his legs. But Alison, the first aid and safety geek with her white hardhat, showed up at the oddest times and if he was unclipped it was shit creek—docked wages, and if it happened again, termination. Then it was north to the pipelines, four weeks in, one week out. Alison and her checklist: got your steel-toed boots, high-viz vest, new six-point suspension hardhat with chinstrap and, always, the harness? Alison and her clipboard full of WorkSafe forms and her clean coveralls.
As the morning warmed, the breeze picked up. If it got too strong, they’d have to shut down and find other parts of the job to do. But getting the dome covered was a priority and he and the others hustled to bolt it together.
One of those moments, bewildering in its complexity: a gust of wind caught the panel. Suddenly four tons of steel swung at him, scraping along the rail, sparks coming off the pipe like a welding torch. The railing buckled and broke and his safety clip slid toward the gap at the same time the panel hit his shoulder, pushing him over the edge. Stunned by the impact, he watched dumbly as the clip came off and he was in the air.
He had heard the stories about how your life flashes before your eyes, how the film replays the regrets and joys of experience, but little of that happened to Brian. He flailed through the air, clawing at the riveted side of the tank as he plummeted. He was thinking of the landing, and the piles of bedding sand around the tank. Sand. He remembered for an instant the beaches of the Baja where he and Mel went on their honeymoon, the soft, white, warm sand where they lazed, watching the whales and their new calves breaching in the tepid lagoon. Soft sand.
When he hit there were no whales, no drinks with swizzle sticks, and no lovely, tanned Mel smelling of coconut oil. White-hot light, unbelievable impact and sounds throughout his whole body. His tool belt gouged divots in his waist. He heard muffled yelling. No pain. Not yet. He lay flat on his back, struggling to breathe, eyes squinted shut and tears gushing out. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Hot, then cold rushes.
“Don’t move, buddy. Stay still,” someone shouted. “First Aid’s coming.”
But he had to move, had to see how bad it was. Fists uncurled, and then tightened up. Toes in his workboots wiggled. His feet rolled from one side to the other. Good so far. His head leaned left, then right. No crunching or crackling. Then came the black rush of staggering pain, legs going tingly and fuzzy. His hurried lunch boiled up sour in his throat. He woke staring at the hospital lights in the surgical recovery room.
A week in post-op then rehab with everyone telling him how lucky he was. Just four broken ribs, a couple ruptured discs, and a few displaced vertebrae pinned, bolted and patched together. Just. And then came the grinding pain every minute, every second. They promised it would diminish with time and pills. Not bad for a three-storey dive, they said. How lucky.
Alison said she had to talk to him, but he didn’t want to see her, did not want to face the regulations, the questions, the implied carelessness. Now the New Year’s party, three months later—the first time he had to see the crew, the crane operator, the boss, anyone else from the job site.
After rehab, he had gone on short walks around their neighbourhood, avoiding dogs and people. Always the same stupid comments about recovery strategies.
“You should try yoga, yogurt, yarrow leaves. You should do tai chi. Qigong. Acupuncture, acupressure.” Everyone’s a fucking expert. Everyone has a story. You should. You should. Amazing the English language has such a useless word as “should” and such wonderful ones like “chocolate” and “coffee.”
“You’re limping.”
“What’s with the cane?”
“Got a bad back? My uncle/father/cousin has/had a…”
Everyone wants you to stand there and patiently listen to their story as the barbed wire tightens around the new metal in your spine, as the red-hot poker runs from your squinting eyes to your toes. When standing and listening are the worst things imaginable. Fill in the words while he stands there throbbing and gritting his teeth. Pain erasing tact.
On those nights when he could not sleep, when the pills did a cranial rodeo, he’d think up responses designed to stun and silence. Then he’d wake up sweating and frustrated. Now the goddamned party. More interrogations, as if he had no other components of a life but a shattered spine. Nothing else going on. Always the first words: “How’s the back? How’s the goddamned back?” Just great, fuckoff; I’m more than that. I’m still Brian and he is tired, so very tired of being seen only as a casualty.
When people ask “How are you?” they aren’t really concerned with you. They want a simple “Fine.” Or “Oh, not bad.” So they can swing the conversation back around to their own situation.
He pushed open the doors and walked through the lobby toward the ballroom, although words like “lobby” and “ballroom” were too grand for this place. The chairs around the registration desk were worn and mismatched, the magazines on the coffee table months old, and several light bulbs were burnt out. Tinny music echoed from the party room as he shuffled in. Knots of people gathered in the corners and hunched over tables, ignoring the No Smoking signs, using empty beer cans for ashtrays.
He didn’t know how to behave. Aching made him crazy. Seemed like just yesterday he was driving his pickup again for the first time, and he gapped out at a green traffic light, still riding the painkillers’ sweet caress. The driver behind him laid on the horn and flipped him the finger. Brian glanced into the rear-view mirror, slipped the truck into reverse and popped the clutch, driving his ten-gauge steel trailer hitch and the round chrome ball through the front grille of the impatient car. Sat there for a moment listening to the car’s fan destroying itself on the crumpled radiator. The driver sat open-mouthed and not moving. Brian waited a polite moment then drove off. Two blocks later a police car with flashing lights pulled him over.
“Didja just do what that guy told me?”
“Is this really about that or is it just because you got a short dick and try to make up for it by wearing a badge and a gun?”
Mel came down and bailed him out, explained the fall, injury and rehab, and they let him off with a suspension and a court order for twenty hours of community service. (Mel didn’t mention the codeine.)
“So where do I do this service?”
“Go down to St. Ignatius Church. Iggy’s. Ask to see Molly.”
“When do I start?”
“Soon as your doctor gives you the go-ahead. Let us know.”
Next day, Brian drove to the church and saw the crowd waiting. Some children among the adults. A tall woman greeted them as they entered; some with a handshake, others a gentle hug or a wide smile.
Brian hobbled up the concrete steps, looking carefully at his feet. He explained his court order, expecting some sort of disapproval or judgement but receiving none.
“Welcome, Brian. I had a phone call mentioning your need for light-duty jobs. We’ll start you off as an Open Hand, a greeter of our daily clients. Table and chair waiting for you just inside the door. Your job will be to inform them of all the services we offer besides hot soup. No sign-up sheet, no proof of identity, no charges, only a pleasant visit with people who may’ve spent the night in a cardboard box under the bridge. Washrooms are over there. I’ll be around if you need any help.”
He read the newsletter listing everything Iggy’s provided: breakfast for school kids, soup and sandwiches for others, counselling, health referrals, legal aid, employment opportunities.
Sitting at this table talking to the men and women was more tiring than his construction job. Yet the hours flew past and the painkillers wore off unnoticed. Some of the hard-living stories astounded him, others he decided were well-practised bullshit, used for street survival. He rose from the chair, groaning with the return of the hot steel in his back and hips.
Molly met him as he was leaving.
“Long day for the first time. Know you’ve made several people happier just listening to them. See you again when you are rested. It takes more than muscle strength to do this mission.”
He nodded and again carefully navigated the steps to Mel, waiting in their truck. It was an early autumn afternoon and the air had a cool edge to it, but Mel had found a swath of sunshine and sat comfortably. Their two children, strapped in their car seats, squealed when Daddy appeared with his crutches—his stilts, they called them.
“Well, how did it go? Longer than I thought you’d be there.”
Brian nodded and chewed up his pills. After a few minutes of silence, he told her about the hurt and lame, the dispossessed, the invisible ones who took his hurt as their own.
“You look… more at ease, somehow. That’s different, anyway.”
* * *
“Brian, over here,” yelled one of his old crew. He hobbled over to the table, his right leg being dragged by the momentum of his torso. “Buy you a beer, buddy. Good to see you out and about.”
“Yeah, words fail me.” He immediately regretted the sarcasm. These guys had nothing to do with the fall. No one did and that was the bitch of the situation, no one to hang it on. Even the crane operator couldn’t have seen the invisible gust. That’d make it easier, Brian thought, if there was someone to thump, someone to say, “You sonovabitch.” But no. Just the rehab techs saying how good he was doing, just the doc saying how lucky he was, just Mel trying to take care of two toddlers and him, her compassion and patience wearing thin. Going from still to shrill in an instant. In the dictionary, “sympathy” lies between “suppository” and “syphilis.”
That was it. Everything that happened was so fucking understandable. It all made perfect logic to everyone but him.
“Yeah, beer. Make it a couple cold ones.”
They went down smooth, as did the next four. Things began to make more sense. He had a question and he lurched to his unsteady feet. Fuck the crutches.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Alison, said she wanted to talk to me, said it was important. But y’see, I’ve been kinda busy. Might say unavailable. I got… issues.”
“Easy, Brian. She took it real hard… you were the first bad accident she ever had. Worse than when Alfie lost his thumb in the cut-off saw.”
“Hard? The landing was hard, Thanksgiving in rehab was hard, feeling hardware in my bones is hard. Then Christmas.” No going out in the bush with the family to find the perfect tree. The scent of needles and sap. Only lying on the couch giving grumpy directions on hanging the ornaments—egg carton angels, painted macaroni designs with flaking glitter. “Watching it all pass by. That was hard. Missing out on lives. Hard.”
“Ali has it all, too. Hard, that is. Cuts close to home for her too. The drunk driver killing her brother on his bike. Him lying in the ditch for an hour. That’s what made her become a First Aid.”
“Well—” Brian didn’t know what to say to that. “What does she want to talk to me about?”
“Guess you gotta ask her. She’s right behind you.”
Brian didn’t hear Ali walk up because of the deejay’s music and hired chatter. He turned to face the woman, his anger looking to paint a bull’s eye on her if she said one word, one word of accusation, anything to even hint of blame.
“Brian…”
“Ali…”
They stood staring at each other; she began to cry. Half of him wanted to put his tattooed arms around her, half of him tried to compose the cruellest thing he could possibly say—but nothing came out.
“How’s the kids?” she asked finally. “Mel?”
* * *
A life, getting my life back. My life. My back. I am still me.
Into the Silverthrone Caldera
I have been witness to things great and beyond understanding or reason. But nothing prepared me for this. For her.
That summer I got a job as a log grader and second loader in the drop zone of a heli-logging show up-coast at Knight Inlet. The Klinaklini River valley at the head of the inlet is a place of superlatives: majestic, glacier-capped Mount Waddington rearing up four thousand metres from riverside thickets, grizzly bears the size of cars with little fear of puny, scampering men, trees like the pillars of Solomon’s temple, felled and waiting for our arrogant, noisy machines in the air and on the ground, and men with big stories, as if we were masters of these great things.
Though surrounded by such grandeur and taken in by our confidence, we often suspected a dreadful power lurked beneath, behind or beside our work. Some problems were mechanical, logistical or pure folly, but the rest remained in the mystery of place.
But we hardly ever talked about it for fear of appearing weak.
Every night was the same. The deep fjord lost its heat quicker than the valley, drawing the warm interior air in gusts through the flailing riverside cottonwoods, in past the wet, black noses of the sleek cinnamon bears sifting it for messages of opportunity or threat, blasting in to test our resolve. It blew without ceasing, as if it took our presence personally. It slammed into the camp scow like a clenched fist, letting up only when it paused to gain strength or change direction. Then, even the bowed trees seemed surprised and stood confused but relieved.
Lying in our narrow beds in the bunkhouse, we listened to the outflow wind pushing fiercely against the creaking and groaning hull, straining the cables like fiddle strings singing taut. Knowing if the rusty wires ever snapped, our whole camp—bunkhouse, cook shack and supply sheds—would be driven down the inlet and capsized by the gale-driven waves.
An exhalation more like a howl, a wail. Every night was the same.
Then came the magic hour. The land air was equally exhausted. The wind had emptied itself. Spent. Although the sun was still hidden behind the eastern ramparts, the sky brightened. Daylight flowed down like golden syrup, waking some animals and signalling others to seek refuge. It shimmered through the treetops, making prismed light off the droplets of sap and night dew. But when it reached the fallen monarchs, it lost its luminescence and became flat and listless.
After too short a night, the bell sounded and, fuzzy-headed and bleary-eyed, we stumbled in our slippers to the cookhouse to lard up for the day facing us.
“She was a howler last night, eh?” one of the pilots remarked as we waited in line like obedient beasts. “Hope she doesn’t build up like that today, but she probably will.” She. The presence of a looming matriarch calling the shots.
He was one of the American crew the company had imported with their aircraft to harvest this valuable block before the bugs got into it. We had become friends through casual conversation, sensing common interests beyond logs, favourite brands of beer and inflated sexual conquests. Not just a “camp friend” made out of desperation, the sort you’d cross the street in town to avoid.
We shovelled the breakfast load into still-sleeping stomachs then filed into the lunchroom, where more tables of food awaited. Made sandwiches, grabbed yesterday’s greasy, cold pork chops and chicken, a half-dozen oranges and apples, cookies, slices of pie and cake soon to be crushed to a sticky pulp. Filled a couple of Thermoses with tea or coffee, stuffed it all into a knapsack with some dry clothes and rain gear, and returned to the bunkhouse to gear up. I glanced longingly at the bed that would not be mine for another twelve to fourteen hours. Then on with the caulk boots and safety pants, grabbed my hardhat to join the crew boarding the crummy for the bouncing ride over potholes and washboard up to the landing—where the voracious worst of the insect world waited.
Never needed a timepiece. Like union brothers, these flying butchers have regular shifts you could set a watch by: blackflies and no-see-ums start the day, then as the breeze picks up, they hand the torment to the slightly more robust mosquitoes. With rising temperatures comes the main assault—big horseflies and deltoid-winged deerflies who are not content to merely sting or suck blood. They want chunks of my salty flesh. Hovering around until I am in a position of vulnerability then biting down through my shirt where my suspenders cross and rub. When stunned with a fast slap, they suffer creative, but dark, vengeance. Kill one, the swarm reinforces.
