Freely Released

A stab at the arts + anecdotes.

Bear Me Away

   The recruiting officer towered.  "Do you think you can handle it?" he asked.  "Long days and intense physical training," he added. Despite the last statement, his eyes were unassuming.  Behind him was a poster of unisex runners done up with frowns, khaki and long-barrelled guns. 

   I'll try anything once, I replied evenly, setting my palms on the desk.  Maybe two or three times.
 
   No, I didn't. 

   The officer pointed to a form.  I bent down to sign. 

   You had to choose a specialty.  Hamilton's regiment offered Infantry, Artillery, Medic and Musician.  They couldn't have gentle musicians firing weapons in an eight-week training course.  I checked the box for an audition.  I like my army without bullets, thanks.  And with croissants at Inspection.

 

                                        *         *         *

DAY 2: 8 A.M.

   I put a hand on the barrel and wrenched the rifle from its wooden hold.  I always thought a gun would be cold.  It was sticky warm, like the air.

   Out to the Parade Square.  An oblong block of dark concrete.  The sensation set in.  Already.  As our boots hit the green, eyes seemed to emerge and train themselves on us.  From every angle you could see every other.        

  "Your weapon," a sergeant said severely.  We stood at attention. "You eat with it.  You go to bathroom with it.  Your best fucking friend."  He paused.  His well-groomed mustache was touched with grisly authority.  No, I thought.  Unfair.  "Musicians," he said, shaking his head.  "You're so soft.  You thought you were going to get musicians to instruct you?  They sent the Infantry!  We don't give a shit about B-flats."

    We circled the three sergeants.  One with the mustache, the leader of One Section.  One with glasses and a compact frame, for Three Section.  His presentation was so neat that you were struck by fastidious intelligence.  The third, ours, was a stocky woman with tan, worn skin.   

     The sergeants did a shocking thing.  Each pulled their weapon apart.

    "This here spring goes in this precise location, right before the butt of the rifle.  A vital component of a soldier's shooting exercise.  Wrong spot and the rounds explode in your pink face.  Your mothers wouldn't like that."

    After Weapons came Drill.

     "This is a line?  Jesus Christ!  You've got to learn to walk, too?"

     Lunch: forty-five minutes, if no punishment for screw-ups.

  In the lecture hall, Emily, Nikki and I chewed on damp brown-bread sandwiches.  The room was cheerless beige.  Large windows amplified blocks of harsh light.  Officers, Sergeants and Master-Corporals took lunch in the posh Mess.  We were free enough.

   "What do you think?" said Nikki, pushing blond hair back under the beret brim. "Some of them are pretty good-looking."

  Emily coughed.  "I'm for strictly post-military sex."

  Yesterday I'd made a list.  If I wanted to date, it was important to be efficient.  Start early.  Three looked like possibilities.  I pointed them out to Nikki.  She was the type who could slip into any conversation and had made the rounds. "Nathan's got a girlfriend.  John's married - can you believe it?  Todd's single."

   Todd sat at an identical folding wooden table, leaning back in the schoolroom chair.  He was wiry, as if made of flexible muscle.  His ears came out.  Glasses with a strap, an army rule.  His grin was strong, braced by an angular jaw and white teeth.   Happiness and mischief, I thought.  And distance.  Eyes shining but focused. As if he saw the underside of the scene, but wasn't saying.

  In the afternoon: Drill.  Lecture on ranks.  Test in two days.  PT to end the day.

  "PT, or Physical Training." hollered the mustached sergeant. "For football stars, this is not fucking gym class.  There's no good and no bad.  There's only done and not done.  You need to drop out?  Aww!  Hurts?   You need to stop?  You do it again from the start.  If you can't, get changed, and go home!"

    Calisthenics first.  Then a game for half-an-hour: usually soccer, to run the entire time.  Last was the real run.  Two kilometers in time, to start.  Work up to five. By the end of calisthenics, I was ready to quit. 

    Quitting wasn't an option.  Not during the Recession, when full-time jobs for students were rare.  Well.  Rare for students who'd been fired twice.

    We began the run in pairs.  For years, I'd had a wheezing problem.  It started up, frightening my running partner.  "You breathe in time!" yelled the sergeant, in front, setting the pace.  "In-in-ouuut!  In-in-ouut!  With your steps!  One-two one-two!  In-in-ouut!  In-in-ouut!" 

  I gasped, sucking air in.  Finally breaths came in time with the steps.  My eyes widened.  The wheezing ceased!  Slowly my head cleared and the jabbing stopped, replaced by a tolerable ache.  I was pleased.

  "Up!"  Todd and his partner dashed from the back.  Todd's knees were high, his expression unchanged since lunch.  Grinning.  It was a little unnerving.  Like watching a robot, I thought, who loves its metal limbs.

  "Up!"  My partner and I were falling back.  "Up!"  We exchanged a glance.  Fear and gathering readiness.  Shared vulnerability was an unexpected satisfaction.  It had settled into the Armoury from the first hours, though I hadn't known what it was until just then. 

  "Up!"  We bolted.  My partner's head dropped, and my shoulders were sloping.  "Don't fuck around," the sergeant muttered.  "Set the pace!"  Our bodies lurched into position.

   "Everyone get a drink," the sergeant said, once we were done.  You could hear restrained breathing.  "Then pack up."  His eyes were clear.  "Take your rifles."  He gestured to the foutain.  "There are two ways to do this.  First way.  Each of you walks up, sets your rifle down, drinks, lifts your rifle and goes to Weapons.   Second way.  One of you is man enough to hold the little lever for everyone.  Yes, man enough.  That includes the ladies. 

   "The line'll go much faster.  But the soldier on the switch'll be last to go."

   My partner and I ended up at the back of the line.  Todd was at the front.  Bloody hell.  He'd be gone before I got the chance to dazzle him with my mental... swiss cheese. 

   "Hey - you going to make it?"  My partner smiled.  My shoulders had slumped.

   "Maybe," I said.  I looked up, to prove it.  Todd had positioned himself at the fountain.  Recruit after recruit stepped up, thanking him.  Todd nodded your welcomes.   

    Think of something clever, I urged my brain.

     Nothing.

     Go formal.  Attentive but faraway.  Like: this means something.  Then again, maybe it doesn't.  Mystery's good!  Oh god.  It's going to be hello. My partner drank and left for Weapons.

    "Well," said Todd.  "It's about time.  I thought my arm was going to fall off.  I've been waiting for you."

    "I should hope so."  The words spilled.  To my surprise, Todd's smile broadened.  "But what if this is only a one-time thing?  How will I get over the disappointment?"

     "Don't worry," said Todd.  "I'll be here tomorrow."

 

 

                                        *         *         * 

  

DAY 3: AFTER P.T.

   "Master-Corporals," Emily muttered, in line for a drink.  "They're the worst.  First leadership position.  They think they can take out every insult they took as privates on us.  Master-Corporal St-Pierre - watch out for her."  We stumbled toward the fountain.  

    "Why?  What's with St-Pierre?" I said idly, looking on.  Todd showed no sign of departing.  He smiled at everyone.   

  "She's a woman and a Master-Corporal," said Emily.  "That's practically a recipe for bitch.  No one has more to prove." 

  "Hmm," I said.  Todd turned to face the line.  His eyes were searching.

  "Nice guy," Emily said, facing forward.  "Kind of goofy, though.  What d'you think his deal is?"

   I shrugged.  "Maybe he likes being a soldier."

   Emily laughed.  "Who doesn't?"

   When we approached, Emily sipped and went straight to Weapons. 

   "I made good on my promise," Todd said, looking proud at this. 

   "Indeed you did, sir," I replied, feeling ridiculous but enjoying it.

   "I can make better ones," Todd continued, bending down and taking a drink.  He grasped his rifle.

   "For instance?" I said.  Clumps of recruits were straggling out, harried, relief showing in their awkward effort to make jokes.

   "I could promise to pick you up on Saturday, at six or six-thirty, for dinner.  Somewhere good.  We can discuss it."  He shrugged again.  Not whatever.  The shrug meant It'll be good, however we do it.

   The others were getting closer.  I smiled.  We walked to Weapons.

    I didn't know why this was happening.  But at the Armoury, I didn't know why anything did.  A rifle on Day 2.  Wheezing gone.  Silent comraderie.  A sharp-minded new friend.  Five K to run in two days.  Now this. 

   It was an adventure.  The frayed edges of the Gulf War were still being reported, but who'd draft a Musician?  You had nothing to do but stave off the aches and insults, and collect your pay.  And run.

 

                                      *        *        *

 

DAY 16: EIGHT A.M.

  Todd and I sit in the back of the school bus.  Staring at clouds.  Ribbons of white against the blue.  

  On a grey road, the bus stops.  To the left: wild grass.  To the right: wild grass.  We drag our long packs to our shoulders, align our rifles, and fall into pairs.  The march, a sergeant booms, is five kilometres.  Soon we're listening to boots thud in time.  Sweat sinks in, soaking undershirts, seeping into jackets under arms and necks, brushed out of eyes.  By now, the dank salt smell is neutral.

  When the road turns into a field, we pass the base identification sign and halt in front of a shack.  Hot wind rises from the grass.  A corporal with a strong Scottish accent gives us a tour of the shooting range. 

   "Corporals are all right," Emily whispers, as we are guided towards a steep, short hill.  "Last non-leadership position.  Not into giving people shit."

  Behind the hill is a black metal structure.  Like a cattle hold, in a barn.  Hooked to the top of the rectangle, in eight separate spaces, are silhouettes.  A child could assume we were being tutored in friendly fire.  Beret.  Square shoulders.  Chest.  Cut from black.  Pull on a crank: the target floats jerkily into position, in front of a hay bale.  Turn the crank again: the target sinks.

   The sergeants lead us to a place two hundred feet in front of the hill.  "You'll pick up a box of sixty rounds," the mustached sergeant says.  "When you're in semi-prone position, you'll get aim commands: head, right shoulder, left shoulder, chest."

     With the weapon loaded, I stare downfield.  I expect to be terrified.  But it's the muddle of nerves and dull patience that I figure is the mark of the army.  If you aren't good at it.

   "Understand this!" the sergeant bellows.  "You fire only on command.  When you hear hold your fire, you stop shooting immediately."  He marches behind us, surveying.

  "Safety off!"  Switches flick.  "Aim!"  Down the sight tube, a featureless black face.  "Fire!"

  The rifle's butt jerks into my shoulder, cracks splitting the air.  A mild smoke trail soars and hangs.   Sky and grass retreat.  Recruits slip away. 

   In front, beside, just above: floating paste-white faces.  They scream - about what I can't make out.  

   My face is wet.  I drag a sleeve across it.  The air is punctured by irregular cracks and whistles.  Red tracer bullets tear through the wind.  They are pretty.  Red lights.

  "You're getting your weapon all wet!"  A Scottish accent.  The corporal isn't wearing his beret.  His dark hair stands stiff.  He dries his forehead with a handkerchief.  Then he bends and applies his rag to the rifle.  "Good lord!" he hollers.  "Get back!"

  "Don't move!"  He holds an instrument that looks like oversized tongs.  He opens the door to the ammunition.  Then he holds a bullet up in the tongs.  A bullet.  Red. 

     "You're really lucky!" the corporal yells over bleating rifles.  "It could've blown the line of rounds off in your face!"

  Off in my face.  A few spaces down is Emily.  Beside is Badger.  Spurts of noise, beats of the regular rounds and the jeers of the tracers.  They fly and desist.  

  "Cease fire!" a sergeant shouts.  Now and then.  

   Okay.  Wasn't firing.  

  "Left shoulder!"  Spotty blasts.  "Head!"

  "Look here," says the corporal huskily.  "You hate this.  Don't you."  I nod.  "Here's a trick.  We'll reload.  It'll be fine.  Problem's over!  Then set it to automatic.  The sergeants won't let you finish until you fire off them all.  Let 'em go.  Then I'll take you around the base in the jeep.  Get away from these buggers.  What d'you say?"  I nod.

  Tick.  Rifle's set.  The weapon's butt drums against my shoulder.

   Soon the corporal takes his place in the dirty Jeep's driver's seat.  I sit in the back.

    Shades of green in the grass and brush rise and pass away, singing and fading.  The corporal talks and then doesn't talk.  My mind is clear, since my eyes take in no impressions.  Later, I don't know what the corporal said as he let me off to my unit, or even if I thanked him.

 

                                     *         *         *

   

DAY 17: 10 A.M.

"Recorded Formal Warning," my sergeant said, putting the envelope in front of me.  "You don't waste time.  In this case."  I sat alone with her in the lecture room.  Downstairs, on the parade square, commands were echoing off the walls, footfalls sounding three times for one.  "Sergeant-Major's waiting."

  Recording Formal Warning was the last stage before Discharge.  You were supposed to get three chits, minor write-ups, before an RFW. 

  Inside a plain, private room, the Sergeant-Major sat with his hands folded on the table.  I saluted, shaking a little.  I hadn't realized I was used to shaking. 

  "Sit down, Private."  I did.  Waiting to be discharged.

  "The day at the rifle range," the Sergeant-Major said, in his dark, clipped tone.  "It says here that you were - Emotionally Immature."  An inner protest.  Suppressed.

  The Sergeant-Major angled his head toward me, sharpening the focus in his eyes.  "Now understand this, Private.  The sergeants - they don't like you.  But me, I like you."

   He paused.  "You can't do anything.  But you try everything, and you never complain."  He rubbed his grey mustache, letting his stocky fingers block his pale, almost greyish skin.  "You remind me of myself at your age.  It's true.

  "But understand this: you'd be out right now if the Major didn't like your drumming.

  "In two weeks, we go back to the range for the machine gun exercise.  Can you get through those?"

   I didn't know.  "Yes, Sergeant-Major."

   "If you don't, you'll be discharged," he said.  Inspection-tone.  "There's nothing I or the Major can do for you then.  Clear?"

    "Yes, Sergeant-Major."

    "Join your section, Private."  I stood, stiffened and saluted, and left.

                                         

                                         *          *         *

 

SATURDAY, THAT WEEKEND: 8 P.M.

     Black swallows the streetlights as they pass.  Todd has said nothing about the day at the rifle range.  When I asked him how he felt about the weapons, he shrugged.  "I'm a pretty good shot," he confessed happily.

    "But how did it make you feel?" I asked.  "To shoot?"

    "Like I was shooting."  Todd set the signal clicking.  "That's all we were doing."

     By now, Todd had been confirmed as an excellent recruit.  He ran in long strides, instantly took drill commands on the march, played the trumpet expertly, assembled the rifle speedily.  He was an example at Inspection. 

    One night he scrawled a cartoon of me out on a restaurant bill, and labelled it: Scuffed boots.  Hat askew.  Sleeves uneven.  I wouldn't have you any other way!  When he laughed, it seemed as if he were taking apart the army, enjoying its little disintegrations the way a shy radical delights in government missteps. 

   But as time went on, I didn't know.  He liked amusing errors but had no opinions on anything.  Not that I could tell.  The disorienting failure at the rifle range made me desperate.  I was a bad soldier, but a good human?  Maybe that was it.  I was sensitive.

  "No," I say, as Todd turns a corner.  "There has to be more to it than that.  What do you feel?"

   "Nothing much," Todd replies, and grins.  Unbearably.  

    "You always say that," I say.  "It can't be true all the time.  You're always smiling."

    "I like smiling," Todd says.

    "Good lord!" I nearly yell.  "What is it with you?  We fired bullets out of guns!  Don't you feel anything?"

    "No," Todd says.

    "I don't believe you."

    "Why not?"  Todd shifts the car gently as another passes.

    "Because nobody can feel like that all the time!  What're you, some automaton?"

     Todd glances over.  Not smiling.  "You say you want to know.  Are you sure?"  I nod.  "Are you - sure?" 

     "Of course." 

     "Just a second."

     Todd guides the car into a parking space, overlooking the black lake.  Swing sets and bars are grey in the white moonlight.  Below, waves wash the breakwall.

    Todd takes his hands off the wheel and puts them on his knees.  He stares through the windshield.  "When I was nine, my best friend, Carl, and I were walking to school.  It was winter.  December.  Then a man runs up.  I can't remember if he pushed me or whether I fell or what.  But I am on the ground.  The man has a knife.

    "It was random.  The police said.

   "For years whenever I can't think of anything else all I can think about is Carl.  I can see the blood on the snow.  It is dark.  It keeps spreading.  I can't remember what his face looks like before the man came.  I can't see it at all after.  All I can see is the snow and that colour.

   "When I was twelve it got very bad.  For a while I believed that if I thought about Carl enough, he'd come back.  Don't ask me how.  I don't know. 

   "One day it added up: Carl is not coming back."  Todd thins his lips and stares.

    "So I decide to be happy.

    "I can't have my mind blank.  I can't stop thinking."  He turns his eyes on me.  "Now are you glad you asked?"

    "Yes," I say.  Something should come.  Nothing does.  It is as if he is coming closer and withdrawing, like fog.  

    One small boy is in the snow, bent over.  Red strains pull away from another boy, lying flat, and toward the first.  The man is running, unseen.  The lines grow thicker and Todd lets them approach.

     He puts his hands on the wheel.  "I'd like to have dinner," he says.  "Would you like that?"

     "Yes," I say.  Todd shifts the car into drive.

    

     ' til next weekend.

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

PS:  I wasn't able to include this song's first verse & chorus, because, well, I didn't know it when any of this happened.  But wish I had.  There's an amazing version of it, sung by The Stanley Brothers, on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (with an equally worthwhile rendition of You Are My Sunshine, by Norman Blake). 

Angel Band

My latest sun is sinking fast

My race is nearly run

My strongest trials now are past

My triumph has begun

Oh, come, angel band

Come, and around me stand

Oh bear me away on your snow-white wings

To my immortal home

Oh bear me away on your snow-white wings

To my immortal home

posted by: FreelyReleased at 06:25 | link | comments (10) |

You Are My Sunshine

Fall

You are my sun-shine, my only sun-shine!
You make me hap-pee when skies are gray!
You'll never know dear, how much I love you -
Please don't take my sun-shine away!

   Brawny boys in the back are clapping and singing it like a fight anthem.  The bus lunges.  I lay against Jamie's calm, warm chest.  Until meeting Jamie, I had no idea you could love someone you hadn't known as long as you could remember. 

    You grew up with the familiar kind of love, I'd recently observed.  At fifteen.  Then you got older and sought another.  Adults marked time until it arrived, the way your mind kept time in the night, waiting for day.   

     When the buses moved off, dawn had been breaking beautifully.  Glassy blue and reticent grey backing pink.  I'd been irritated at the whole show.  About being awake to see it.  Fuck, already.  Two hundred other teenagers had loaded instruments and uniforms on board and set out in four lurching tour buses for an out-of-town performance with the marching band. 

    Jamie had gotten to the dingy rehearsal hall first, pulled my uniform out, and found us a seat.  He always did.  This was one of the reasons I loved him easily.  Sometimes too easily.  I was pleased to be careless.  If being with Jamie was just luck, my life was in the grip of good fortune.

   "They can't even sing it right," I complained, annoyed we couldn't sleep.

   "What do you mean?" Jamie asked, in that good tone.  That was the thing about Jamie: you got the sense that he actually wanted to know, that he believed it would change him slightly. 

   "We had to sing it in Grade Six with this extremely old music teacher," I said.  Mrs. Nightengale had been a staunch defender of Depression songs.  We rehearsed Lily the Pink, about a peddled cure-all, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, where hobos went in the afterlife, and all the verses of You Are My Sunshine.  "It's a very sad song, you know."

   Jamie nodded, in a way that telegraphed he was tolerating a know-it-all.  "It is," I insisted.

   "Sing it," Jamie said.

   "I'm not going to sing it," I scowled.

   "Maybe you don't know it," he said, lifting an eyebrow.  He grinned.

   "The other night dear, as I lay sleeping," I half-muttered, half-sang, "I dreamt I held you in my arms.  But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken.  So I hung my head and I cried."  I paused.  "Then the chorus."  Jamie nodded formally.  "I got an A.  I know the rest."  Jamie put his free arm over me.  "I'll always love you, and make you happy," I went on in a rushed monotone.  "If you will only stay the same.  But if you leave me and love another, you'll regret it all someday."

   Jamie's eyebrows rose.  "Holy shit," he said. 

   "Yep," I said, chewing on I told you so.

   "What else is there?"

   "You told me once, dear, you really loved me," I continued with added momentum.  "And no one else could come between.  But now you've left me, to love another.  You have shattered all my dreams.  Then you sing the chorus again."

   "What a bitter guy," said Jamie.  Car dealerships were whirring by.  Probably full of bitter people, I thought.  Parents gaping at prices they can't afford.  Salespeople angling to meet inane quotas.  Jamie had difficulty with bitterness.  Whenever I'd strike up a self-righteous speech, Jamie would try to soften the blows.  Logical explanations.  Patience.  I liked arguments. I preferred my blows fast and sharp.  Jamie aimed to disarm them. 

  "I love you," he said, once I finished butchering the verses. 

    I loved him too, of course.  But didn't say it as often.  Though I had no words for this, I was afraid my love and his couldn't be compared.  His would be fine.  Better than fine.  Powerful, freeing and bonding.  Good. 

  Mine was good too, I wanted to protest.  Protest to whom, I didn't know.  To everyone.  Whoever that was.  To Jamie.  It was good.  It just wasn't right.

 

                                                                        *                 *                *

   Jamie may have been luck, but he was not coincidence.  It was part of a strategy.  One I'd been devising for a year or more.  At fourteen, I grew out my hair and attempted lipstick. 

   In the back of my mind, I had weighed the options.  Gay people were brave.  And lonely.  Straight people were romantic and surrounded.  And there was nothing, yet, to say I wasn't one of them.

    Most girls around applied Final Net hairspray to their buoyant bangs.  I decided on an all-over cement fix.  On the lips: white frost.  In other circumstances, this look would've grounded new meetings in familiarity.  Circumstances such as alien landings.

   When I looked in the mirror, I saw the shadows of magazine models, tall and rosy, glossy, sheer as chrome.  I was nothing like them. 

    But who was?  I'd touch my hair, ensuring wind and nodding wouldn't dislodge it, and shrug internally.  Nobody, except very few people, was perfect.

   However, I thought, looking myself in the eye.  You may be a bit behind.  You're going to have to get inventive.  Proactive.  Determined.  Daring. 

   "Who is that?"  I asked one morning.  A tall older boy with curly brown hair was striding down the bus aisle.  Something mild struck.

   "That's Jamie," said a friend, bored.  "My brother's best friend."

   Perfect, I thought.  He's going to be my boyfriend.  "Can I meet him?"

   It was time to step from junior high school just-in-it-for-the-dance boyfriends to the Real Thing.  Real Life.  My parents had met at fourteen and fifteen, dated for six years, and married.  I knew the value of getting down to business.  One day you were scrambling for a path through the shadows, and the next it could be laid out before you.  

   But maybe there was an unfamiliar glow in the unexplored dark spaces of my mind.  Maybe my heart. 

   Probably not. 

   With help from friends, it'd come off more smoothly than I could've predicted.  One dance became two.  A chat with Jamie at a party was moved from the group to the isolated porch.  The glory of garden lights!  The fetid smell of rotting wooden steps! 

   That night, I went to sleep happy.  I thought it was happiness, anyways.  Really it was potent relief, the kind teenagers feel when escaping walls that approach from the sides and above.  

  

                                                *     *     *

 

    I hung up and told my mother that I'd be picked up in ten minutes.  "They sent Jamie to Hamilton in an ambulance," I said, unsure of what this meant.  "His mother said they can't treat his head injury here."

    When the car grumbled idiotically in the driveway, I shuffled down the outdoor stairs.  The driver was Jamie's best friend, Simon.  "So stupid," he kept repeating, fingers fixed on the wheel and his eyes stark and focused. 

   They'd been outside Simon's house - Simon, Jamie and a few of the other regulars.  Jamie had climbed on top of his car.  Laughing, showing off for them, pleased with his balance and gentle power.  He pushed himself, sliding onto the trunk.  Then he slipped off, hitting his head on the asphalt. 

  I could picture Jamie on the roof of the car.  The unspoken joy in the sunset.  The grin as he slid.  His surprise and instant regret.  Jamie loved a thrill but wasn't a risk-taker.  What the world had to offer, he would take and prepare for others, helping them in when they stood frightened at the shore.  He must've felt sure he was safe.

   The hospital was a monstrosity of blank windows, scattered unseeing eyes.  Inside, we stepped onto the elevator.  Two policemen rushed in before us, accompanying a stretcher with dark red and brown jags, the face hidden.  "Off!" one yelled.

  The next box took us upstairs.  Outside, Jamie's mother came toward us with an awkward smile.  "He's okay," she said, pulling me aside.  "His short term memory is damaged," she said.  "The doctors say it will come back in a few days."  She paused.  "He keeps asking if you're his girlfriend.  'Yes, dear,' I say.  'For over a year.'  Then he says, 'Oh, good,' and falls back to sleep.  Then he wakes up and asks again." 

   Inside, Jamie's eyes were closed.  Nervously I stood by his bed.  His face was pale and scarred in places, with a bandage making his head sweaty.  Suddenly with open eyes he said, "You're here!"  He smiled.  "You're here."  His eyes shut.

   Riding the highway, Simon and I said little.  Outside was a horror, black cut by lines of bitter white light.  When I got home, I reassured my mother.  Upstairs, in bed, I thought of the strawberries, and wondered what I could bring to the hospital.   

      At the end of the last school term, I'd gotten sick. My body felt full of sand.  I couldn't stay awake or eat.  When my eyes opened, they peered through a fog, combing an outline of my mother's face or the television out of the grey.  Nothing, from mono to HIV, showed up on test results.  A week passed.  Then two.  Midway through the third, the school relieved me of exams.    

   The longer it went on, the more feverish waking became.  Just beyond my sightline was a world of jeering and coercion, formless black spectres.  If I woke too soon, they'd be drawn out of hiding and demand my vision, to pull me from the universe of home.

   Jamie began coming over after school.  The grey would fade, and his worried face would surface.  "I brought you strawberries," he would say, remembering my favourite.  "Try one!  They're so good."  I would, unsure of whether I'd spoken or not.  Then try, and drift out. 

   Each time I felt a wondrous gratefulness for Jamie.  Relief throughout my body.  You don't have to be afraid, I'd hear, in a gentle voice.  

   That night, while Jamie slept in the hospital, I passed the two expressions past each other: love, in love.  They had to be the same.  It was impossible to love Jamie, to know he was handsome and kind, smart and forgiving, dedicated and honest, and not be in love with him.  That'd be a betrayal of the simplicity of truth.  Our life stories weren't plotted by trickery.

   God!  It didn't matter.  Jamie was hurt.  What difference did it make?  A U2 tape and a walkman, tomorrow.  I'd write him a letter.   

                                               

                                             *        *        *

 Winter

   Jamie and I were awkwardly punching our boots through the ice-crisped snow. I'd broken up with him a week ago. 

    This had happened before.  I'd merely get irritated. Just annoyed, because of some blank, an idle missing factor. 

    Then I'd be alone and overlook his letters.  I'd written them too.  Sometimes they'd been about love.  Others had been flattering, or looking for reassurance, or jealous.  We'd laughed at secret jokes and cried in front of one another.  We'd fought and made up.

     Then I couldn't stand it and called him, dragged him out for a walk in the biting wind where I unloaded in a long stream all my feelings and he nodded and waited for me to get to the point, which was unchanged: let's get back together.   

   Finally, one night, he exploded.  "I don't know what you want!" he yelled.  Then he cried, and stopped.  "Why do you do this?"  

   It sent a terror though me.  To ward it off, I thought, You want a fight? No problem.  I hollered back, empty and strong, weary and determined.  But didn't know what I was defending. 

  

                                                *        *       *

 

    Over a year passed before Jamie and could speak again, even casually.  In the meantime, I dated someone else and so did he.  I broke up with him and Jamie stayed with her.  Hoping for a friendly chat, I nerved myself, called, and invited him ice-skating.

   "I don't know," he said severely.  "I have a girlfriend."  I sighed.  Had I been more mature, I would've chalked it up to a well-earned remark.  But I rolled my eyes.  "Hello?  Are you there?"

   "Yeah," I said listlessly.     

   "I just don't know if it's a good idea, with Catherine and everything." 

   "God, Jamie," I said.  "It's ice-skating.  What do you think I'm going to do?"

   "I don't know," muttered Jamie.  "I have no idea.  This is the problem."

    Then I felt the old urge to convince him.  To knock him out of his smugness - it must be that - with a shocking point.  No, I thought.  You've got to suck it up for now.  If you want to know him. 

     When I got off the phone, for the first time, I felt the positions of right and wrong diminish.  Not because they weren't there - I was still right, and Jamie still thought he was right, clearly a delusion - but because there wasn't a disagreement between us.  Not really.  Disagreement, in some cases, was a only a shelter.  A way of protecting a fear that defined you.

    I still didn't know how to explain Jamie.  I still loved him.  But something told me there was impropriety in the nearby dark.       

     

                                                *       *       *

 

Spring, A Year Later

   "You're going to do what?"  Jamie asked.  He shook his head.  "You realize that in the army, you have to do what people say, right?"

    I shrugged.  "So what?  That's what they pay you for, right?"

    We were sharing a table at lakefront burger dive. 

   He had decided on a community college after graduating high school and was working weekdays at a winery and orchard, earning tuition, doing backbreaking manual labour.  I had one year to go. 

    When he rose, his muscled shoulders hunched with authority.  He surveyed the room, out of habit, as if needing to acquire all the necessary details at once.  It filled me with pride.

   "Want to hit the docks?" Jamie said.  We strolled down a long line of wooden steps to floating pathways into the waves.

    "Why the army?"  The breeze scraped our faces. 

    "It's the Reserves," I say, "and the cash is good.  Anyways, do you think a restaurant's going to hire me with my stellar employment record?"

     Jamie grinned.  "You were great at McDonald's.  I liked the way you hit the cash with your fist to open it."

     "Right before they fired me," I muttered.  "We can't all be Pizza Hut Employee of the Month like some people I know."

     "Honestly, it's not that hard.  Get Don as your manager," Jamie said, laughing. "When he goes out for a joint, don't criticize him."

     "How's Catherine?" I asked.  Jamie looked down.  "We broke up, actually.  Well.  I broke up with her.  She's kind of upset about it."

     I wanted to give him a salute of approval.  She wasn't good enough for you.  And she's gone!  But I nodded.  "How're you feeling?"

    Jamie tilted his head.  "You know.  A little lonely.  Like you always do in the beginning.  But it was the right thing.  She's so young.  I don't think she understands what she was getting into.  In a long-term relationship.  You know what I mean."

    We started walking again, joined in our superior perception of love.  The sun was a hazy white.  

    "What about college?" I said.  "You could find someone there."  

    Jamie smiled.  "Maybe later."

    "You know - the male-to-female ratio in the Reserves is four to one," I added, looking out.  "Excellent odds."

    Jamie laughed.  "You have plans?"

    You only need one, I thought, recalling Jamie's stride down the bus, and felt the sky relax into evening, the blue falling.

    Jamie dropped me off at home, but I didn't go in.  I wanted a walk.  The sun was seeping away slowly. 

    Just then I could sense it.  It made me want to pace, so I took to the sidewalk, making it about vantage points.  You could look at trees and see the anarchy, branches defying gravity in all kinds of awkward, beautiful ways.

    I walked through a square park to a hidden creek.  It ran down through drop in the land and was dwarfed by leafy trees.  Down there you were alone.  Rustling was either a chipmunk or a murderer.  Scratch murderer, I thought, glancing over my shoulder.  Chipmunk or squirrel.

   Once I had arrived by the water, now only visible in the slippery reflections of the moon and streetlights uphill, I found myself consumed, as I often did there. 

   "Why do you care?" my sister had said, irritated, an afternoon not long ago.  I'd told her we needed to rush home, so I wouldn't miss a call.  "She's not your boyfriend."

   "I know," I said, wanting to follow that with something carefree.  "I know."

    No, she wasn't.

    If she were, I wouldn't have thought her over, trying to figure out why she was so calm.  Not calm, like Jamie.  Not a peacemaker.  Alive, steady, fair.  Someone who brought calm, but didn't make you feel liked you'd been missing it.  It was in you all along, the even warmth of her voice seemed to say.

    The first time we spoke, I hadn't orchestrated it.  I hadn't even seen her and waited to exchange hellos.  She wasn't anyone I paid attention to.  At first, I thought this was because she was dull.  Later I couldn't believe that ever seemed true.  I would march into cold breezes and try to find ways to punish myself.  As if penitence would erase it.

    She wasn't dull.  She just didn't use flash to disguise herself, making her her foreign, unrecognizable, to someone trying to do just that.

    That first afternoon, we were talking, outside the school as people were flowing out the doors, thrilled or tired or apathetic.   The buzz was on: the smothering hum.  Everything blended together, slid by out of focus.  As always.

   She looked up and asked me about the English essay.  I kept my eyes on hers. 

   In the periphery, people were opening their car doors and getting inside.  Runners were lining up on the track.  Cigarettes were lit.  Bikes were unlocked, and rounded backs flew out of sight.  Every figure's scene somehow interlocked.  The afternoon sunlight was clear.  It covered us.  Everyone.  This was the world, I thought, as if eyeing it for the first time.  One I knew but rarely saw.

   We finished, and said goodbye as usual.  I turned towards my house, and she turned towards hers.  I thought: she's a good person to know.  I'll miss her when we graduate.  And put it away.

 

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