Black Rabbit and Other Stories (17 page)

“Yo,” he said.

“What?”

“Whatta ya mean, what?”

The small pale globe of his face bobbed as he sized me up. His eyes looked like ink spots.

“What the fuck do you want?” I asked.

“Easy, big guy. I'm just seeing if you wanna buy some primo herb, see. I'm the man around here. If you want, I got, 'cause I am the man. Word.”

“Get the fuck out of my face.”

“Are you a cop?”

I stood up and pushed the bicycle over with him straddled on it.

“You fucker!” he cried. “You shitty fucker!”

Kicked him hard in the stomach and this brought quiet for a time. I pulled the bicycle away from his twisted legs. It was surprisingly light. I hoisted it over my shoulder and walked down to the concrete lake barrier. I heaved the bicycle into the water. It sank without a ripple.

The guy stood up now and ran toward me spitting and cursing, his arms akimbo. What did he expect to do? What did any of them expect to do? I flipped the dude and he went head over heels into the lake and sank like his fucking bicycle.

I walked away from the lake and found a decrepit diner up on
Parliament full of losers and drunkards. I wasn't hungry at all but thought I should eat something. I was feeling light-headed and perhaps even vulnerable. Little black asterisks floated before my eyes. They weren't unpleasant, distinguished by lovely movements and patterns. But they interfered with everything.

I ordered ham and eggs from the wall-eyed, grimacing waiter. He asked if I wanted a beer.

“For breakfast?”

“It's normal around here. No offence. How 'bout a hot cup of joe?”

“Okay.”

Okay it was. The waiter walked with an ugly limp, his hand sprawling behind his hip, his shoulders jerking. Other patrons sat around sucking on their beers and smoking foul cigarettes, lost in their thoughts. The waiter returned with a plate of glistening ham and eggs. He refilled my coffee cup.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. You're not from around here.”

“No. So what?”

The waiter smiled with yellow cement teeth.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“Truth is, no one's from around here. Everyone's from somewhere else. I'm from Wisconsin. Can you believe that?”

“Wisconsin?”

“Yup, that's right. Enjoy the grub.”

He loped away. The food tasted bland, forgettable. I expected no better. I ate quickly, paid, and left.

The asterisks had all but dissipated, except for a stray or two which held on fluidly at the edges of my field of vision, and I accepted them for they garnished my reality, and I can't say enough about that kind of thing.

Where then? Nowhere, of course. I didn't want to go home but I had nowhere else to go. That didn't stop me, it never had. Step one, step two, step three, and so on. Well-fueled, I could go for hours.

I headed out to the west end. I knew no one out there. Everyone walked in twos or threes. Was it Sunday? I wasn't sure. I heard bells
ringing. But they rang on Saturday also. In twos and threes, well dressed. I could not distinguish a single face among them, though I felt them studying me with aplomb.

I came to a green park. Some children played by the swings. A few adults stood aside, chatting, or taking in the cool damp air. The children wore crayon colours, slightly smudged. The adults looked like grey silhouettes, sombre, too serious for their own good. I glanced at my legs. Grey. I was one of the adults. But I was alone, childless, an intruder.

Quite possibly I was a threat. Imagine that, me a threat to children. They didn't know me. But they must have known I had a mother too once, that I was a child once. That indeed, I understood.

They didn't know I sought only justice. No, that's not it. I didn't know what I was doing. I've never known what I'm doing.

I'd be astonished quite frankly to find someone out there who really knows what they're doing. Those stepping forward claiming knowledge would be liars for the most part, bald-faced liars. Who can say with absolute certainty that they know what they're doing? I stood up straight, tilted my chin and thinned my eyes. Two women with pointed faces approached me.

“What do you think you're doing?” said one.

“Yeah,” said the other, standing a yard or so behind.

“Is it a crime to take in some air?” I asked.

They looked at each other.

Was the truth too much for them? Or not enough? Didn't matter. They didn't bite.

“Leave.”

“Leave or we'll call the cops.”

“We know what you're up to.”

“That's right. So leave.”

I clapped my hands to my pounding temples and shut my eyes, hoping the ladies would just vanish. But when I opened my eyes they still stood there in all their righteousness, for they were righteous if nothing else, and had I been in their shoes, I would have been too.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “But I have nowhere to go.”

“Not here.”

“No, not here.”

I reached over and hugged the closer woman, taking her by surprise. Her friend yelped, mistaking my intentions, which I can assure you were pure and good. I hugged her warmly, but perhaps I did not know my own strength, perhaps I did, but I did not know how it applied to human beings. I felt her ribs crack beneath my arms. But surely she was too fragile. Surely I could not be faulted for her fragility. She passed out at my feet. Her friend shouted abominations and the children screamed as the other adults herded them together. Sirens wailed in the distance.

So I ambled away, with no bitterness, though confused, perhaps, by what had gone on, confused and perhaps a little sad.

I kept walking until my feet were sore. I had to sit down. I also needed a refreshing beverage.

A small café near an abandoned warehouse appeared. A rough place populated by grizzled bohemians and a sullen group with tattooed arms and metal things sticking out of their heads. I felt nothing. I ordered an iced tea from the bald barkeep. He had a nose-ring and a rod jutting out of an ear. His flat grey eyes studied me as he popped open a tin of iced tea and poured it into a glass.

“What?” I said.

“Do I know you?”

“I don't think so.”

“No, man. I'm sure I know you.”

“I think you're mistaken. I think I would remember a mug like yours.”

“How's that?”

“I'm thirsty, dude. Give me my iced tea.”

He flipped the empty tin in the trash and slid the glass over but continued staring at me even while I drank it down. I finished and rested the glass on the counter. He continued.

“Quit fucking staring,” I said.

“You're a ballsy fuck, aren't you?”

“Hey, pal, what did I do to deserve this?”

“It's just your face. I don't like it.”

“Just my face?”

“Yah, your fucking face. I hate it.”

“Is that it? Is that how simple it is?”

He said nothing.

Why was I engaging? It could only lead to bad, it could only lead to harm. And what was he doing? Was he conscious at all? Did he have any idea at all? I paid him and even left a tip.

“I don't need your chump change!” he screamed, flinging the coins at me.

What then? What does one do then? I grabbed one of the wooden chairs and whipped it at the barkeep. Slow to react, he caught the brunt of the impact with his face. Then I picked up a table and threw it at him. The bohemians scattered. The tattooed people watched expressionless, impressed. I climbed over the counter and pushed the table off the bartender. Then I grabbed him by the jaw and lifted him to his feet. I head-butted him in the nose and he crumpled up, shooting blood.

I climbed on top of the counter and jumped down on him. I repeated this three times. Each time he grew softer. The tattooed people continued watching with blank expressions. What more did they want? What did any of them want? Then I walked home. I needed to sleep. I needed nothing more than to shut my eyes and sleep for one long blissful stretch, and maybe even dream a little. Dream about my childhood and my mother who loved me. Dream about the happy life that perhaps lay before me, glittering, full of flowers and music.

But I would not sleep that night nor dream of my sunny childhood, nor of my loving mother, nor of my merry future.

Denied even this. Denied.

I had to go back to the beginning, that was my sentence after all. To be caught forever in the loop. For where does one go when all is said and done? Where does someone like me go, except to where he started?

And at some point in my return, I revisited the dingy diner with the limping wall-eyed waiter.

“You again?” he said.

“Looks like it.”

“Ham and eggs, right?”

“You're good.”

“I know.”

“And a beer, sir.”

“Right on.”

He lurched away. And I wondered how long he'd been doing this stinking job in this hole. There had to be something better out there, but what did I know? What did I know? I who kept moving around without purpose, yet purposeful, no? My hands ached.

At the tavern two men were beating a third, really pulping him. They grunted with effort. It made no sense for me to interrupt. They were doing something important. It wasn't my place to upset the natural balance of things, to impose myself gratuitously onto the polished act. It took practice to get those chops, and cunning to maintain the conceit. I was best off as a silent observer, taking mental notes, passing no judgement on the participants. They were like athletes, after all. As for the guy getting the beating, everyone gets a beating in the end.

A group of deaf children came to the wicket with a tall man in a red blazer. A warm June day, not a cloud marred the sky, but thunderstorms had been forecast. Irene McBride counted out seven tickets for the children and a ticket for their escort. Had he presented a voucher from a tour company or a legitimate social agency, she would have given him a complimentary ticket, but the man paid in cash and didn't smile. He looked about forty, dark-haired, square-jawed, on the gaunt side. He reminded Irene of Jacob Tate, a man who had worked for her father back on the farm. Jacob was tall, had the same way about him and a similar face.

The man took the tickets from her. He wasn't wearing a wedding band. The gold pinky ring on his right hand featured a red stone, maybe a ruby. Men who wore pinky rings tended to be vain. The children signed furiously to each other and made guttural sounds as they waited for the boat. The man could not have looked less interested in boarding the Maid of the Mist, in viewing the Falls up close. Irene couldn't see a nametag or tour guide identifier on his jacket. The fine red cloth reminded her of an equestrian's coat, though its wearer looked too tall to be comfortable on horses.

As a child, Irene had ridden horses at the family farm on Garner Road. That was before the Falls became a mini-Vegas. They sold the farm when Daddy died, like others around them had sold, the land parceled off and turned into housing surveys or golf courses that stretched all the way to Thorold. What with the wineries and casinos,
and the Falls still drawing fourteen million people a year, the Peninsula was booming. New attractions like the Great Wolf Lodge kept the tourists in town for longer stays than ever. None of that mattered to Irene; she preferred Niagara Falls when it was a hick town and most of her family was alive.

The man in the red blazer led the deaf children to the gates. He surprised Irene when he stopped to light a cigarette. The children paid no notice and smoking wasn't prohibited in the outdoor areas, but the way he held the cigarette to his lips and drew on it with his eyes half-closed and his head tipped back troubled Irene. Jacob used to smoke like that. Before he skipped town he robbed her father of some cash—she never found out how much, but her father cursed him until his dying day. What became of Jacob Tate was anyone's guess. Irene suspected that wasn't even his real name. In retrospect it sounded made up. The man in the red blazer could not have been Jacob. The resemblance was superficial, she concluded; Jacob would have been almost fifty now, if not older.

The man turned around and looked in her direction. She doubted that he detected her spying on him; the wicket's tinted glass obscured the ticket vendors even up close. But maybe he had sensed her scrutiny. Certain folks have a radar for that, especially those with something to hide. He finished his cigarette and crushed the butt under the heel of his big black shoe before rejoining the children. Irene wondered what his story was. He didn't fit the profile of someone who cared for the challenged. He didn't appear that interested in what he was doing, scarcely looking at the kids, and making no effort to communicate with them. She doubted he knew how to sign.

She watched him pass through the gates. She'd always liked tall men. Even if their faces weren't perfect, they seemed more handsome than shorter men. She had dated a tall boy in high school. Marty Banfield played on the basketball team and though he lacked coordination and shooting touch his height made him indispensable. But Marty was only interested in one thing and when she refused his apish advances he stopped calling her. Back then Irene had a figure. She had gained one hundred pounds since high school. One hundred
pounds. It seemed absurd to her. How had it happened in just ten years? Not a huge eater, a Pepsi addiction played a part. She drank it by the gallons and hated the sugar-free stuff. She'd tried switching to coffee, then tea, even fruit juices, but always returned to Pepsi.

A customer with a turban came to the wicket and asked if he could get a group rate for his party of twelve. When Irene quoted him the discounted price he balked.

“Only ten per cent?”

“I don't set the rates, sir.” But she felt soft that day and after a moment's consideration offered to give him one ticket on the house. The man beamed upon hearing this and summoned his gang. He paid in American dollars with a favourable exchange rate.