The Journey Prize Stories 27 (2 page)

Well.

There’s no telling where emotion comes from, but there were times when we read a story and we just knew: this is really fucking good.

What we were looking for underwent subtle changes during our conversation. If a story had a voice we couldn’t get enough of; if our curiosity was piqued; if we laughed; if an ending gave us chills—maybe the rawness didn’t matter quite so much. How to quantify the mystery, the magic of a smashingly good read?

In the end, we embraced the simple pleasure of discovery.

We wanted, as readers, to encounter stories that were not all the same. Some stories in this anthology challenge, and others charm; some play with language, and others cleave to form; some are raw, some more polished. This collection is proof that a story well-told comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, voices, and forms.

The one thing we wanted most, and that unified us in our discussion, was the element of surprise in discovery. Good fiction should surprise, should be something you cannot turn away from. The twelve stories we’ve selected for this anthology are full of surprises. These writers surprised us with language and structure, they experimented with voice and dazzled us with the unexpected.

Perhaps the greatest surprise can be found in how these stories affected us. Some of the stories grabbed us from the very beginning, while others rippled out like water disturbed by a pebble. Regardless of how they took hold, they all engaged us with their richness—the layered and nuanced telling of that story. The more we discussed their individual merits, the more we appreciated how beautiful or smart or gritty these pieces were.

The stories we’ve chosen are all well-crafted pieces that tantalized us, made us question what we think we know, and provoked us with unfamiliar worlds. The sheer diversity of styles and the breadth and depth of subject matter showed us that literary journals and magazines in this country play an extraordinary role in shaping Canadian literature.

This whole process has confirmed for us that the short story form is flourishing.

Expect pleasure. Expect delight. Expect surprise. Expect these twelve writers to emerge as some of this country’s most interesting voices.

Anthony De Sa

Tanis Rideout

Carrie Snyder

April 2015

P
eppermint saliva lips, two numb bums. Lick, stamp, stick around the salvaged oak table in the common room where Joe and Gus compete on Fish Friday. First one to lick and label five hundred envelopes gets his pick of the fresh cod Mrs. B will serve tonight with garlicky roasted red peppers.

“All good, my jumblies?” Mrs. B scans the mail metropolis forming at Gus’s elbows. “Break for fresh air?”

Joe stomps his feet. Gus pinches a perfect three-fold letter, head low. “Suit yourselves.”

Mrs. B has been group home supervisor since her husband accidentally shot himself eight years ago. Now she pitches lifebuoys in a sinking, four-storey heritage house in Greektown that Gus calls the HMS Shitstorm. Tomorrow, when she’s flat-lining on the couch with a migraine, he’ll try to kiss her on the lips.

Joe flicks the long braid that dangles down his back like a fat black squirrel tail. Whenever he squirms, Gus feels the rodent claw up his own spine.

“Don’t steal my Cheerios,” Gus howls, slapping Joe’s hand away from the cereal bowl between them. Gus pulls the mournful face that makes him look like a plumpish fifty-plus, though he’s only thirty-six.

“You chew like an Indian,” Gus shouts.

“You stink like catfish,” Joe replies, stomping his lizard-skin boots. His face is braided with sun and age, soft as kid leather.

Marlee enters, slumps down next to Gus, who is quietly nibbling at the edge of an O. She and Gus grew up on the wrong side of sane so they’re next-door neighbours. Nuthouse Knobs. Crackpot Criminals.
The Deranged
. Marlee came in off the streets, the thing men fucked behind dumpsters. Now, she’s on low-grade watch at the home. Not that she’d ever go through with it, but one rainy afternoon she swallowed a jar of paint thinner just to wash the stench from her throat. The last time Gus acted out—packed his life in a duffel and hitched the Don Valley to his brother’s place—Donny sent him back on the Greyhound from Peterborough, pronto. That was two summers ago. He’s been good all year.

Mrs. B returns, pointing to her watch. Gus plucks two skinny whites from his silver pillbox. He’ll be slow-mo soon, bleary by dinner.

The rice is one item on the plate. The rice is yellow and smells like buttered bones. The red peppers curl, sodden and sad in their oily, garlic swim. At the dinner table, Gus pokes at his rumpled fish, feeling his organs flip.

“Last time,” Mrs. B says, rising from the table. She fixes Gus a peanut butter sandwich she glues together with clover
honey. With a quick flash of her blade, she splits the sandwich four ways. Dropping the plate before Gus, she taps the table.

Gus is squeezing his head. He can see his mother’s ash fingers tap-tap the ashtray. She is butting the stub out, covering her ears. Can’t stop the blue-splitting shrieks.

“Come on, Gus,” Mrs. B taps again. He shakes his head, tries sorting patterns on his mother’s peeling yellow linoleum.

“You need your energy. Donny’s coming tomorrow,” she adds.

Donny’s greasy jeans are tucked into oil-stained work boots in the living room of the care home. He checks his watch, pacing. Crew’s on site. Fuck. Shit. Piss. He’s got the engineer’s change orders. Cost overruns. Goddamn job is killing him. Looking up he sees Gus lumbering down the stairs still wrapped in his white terry cloth robe. Big as a hollowed oak, premature belly spread. Donny shakes a full prescription bottle at him.

“Don’t skip out on me, Gus. You know what happens.”

Donny watches his younger brother’s eyes dart around the room, taking inventory. He sees Gus freeze at the sight of his work boots.

Gus bunches the terry cloth belt in his palms, squeezes, lets the fuzzy ball drop to the floor. He yanks it back up like a fishing line, absently lets it drop. Donny pats the couch cushion, coaxing his brother over.

“Look, Gus, we can’t do our usual pizza run this aft. Got a date with a wrecking ball.”

Gus bunches the belt in his lap, blinks wet, wandering tears. Donny wraps his arms around his big old stump of a
baby brother, tries to hold the roots down, keep the disease from spreading. Root rot. Runs in the family.

Gus sobs into his brother’s neck. “I want to come home.”

Donny holds him close, tries to stop twenty years of trembling. Five years, six major episodes, a thousand pills and private dreams between them.

He can see it in his brother’s puffy eyelids, the grey, candle-drip skin. New meds are doing a number. He looks more like her now. Same mess of auburn hair, same staple-sized crease below his lip. Donny pictures his mother seated on the stairs, the dim glow of her after-dinner cigarette, eyes going in all directions. And Gus at nine years old, past the biting and moodiness, withdrawing into his mumble mouth, doing after-dinner dishes in the pyjamas he’s worn all day. While Donny fucks off to his buddy Cheevie’s house for double dessert. Cheevie has Nintendo on the set, a mother who never once tried to pry open their bedroom door with a chef’s knife. Smooth exit, just like the old man.

Donny loosens the belt around his brother’s waist. “Gus, you can’t come home. You know Pinky’s happy as horses with the house all quiet.”

“Fuck Pinky,” Gus says, turning away abruptly.

What’s he supposed to do? Gus left them broke, wandering for days then begging for money on their doorstep, sending his wife for depression pills. Pinky won’t let any more of his bad blood in. Last time they took Gus back, he sold Pinky on the internet. Amazing how many men will drop the price of a used car on a mail-order Chinese bride. Gus posted her picture on a dodgy-looking website advertising Exotic Lucky Asian Brides. Pinky was wrapped in white-and-pink wedding chiffon, a
purplish-pink orchid in her hair, something bite-sized dangling on the end of a shrimp fork. Gus wrote that she was petite, submissive, ornamental. Some old goat paid Gus $1,400 cash on a subway to share his life with “Pinky Cameroon Sparkle.”

Cheap Chinese takeout, Gus said to Donny, winking, flashing his wild smile, as he handed over a wad of hundred dollar bills in the hallway. Donny could tell Gus was on a mounting high, heading from glue-headed to God in a few hours. Meds were sparks going off, Gus had told Donny. Light screaming through his skull, flash fireworks, followed by the inevitable hours of blind panic. Gus said he was only trying to pitch in. Pinky was ready to move out.

Gus pulls his belt from his housecoat, tying it like a tourniquet across his bicep. The familiar phrase rattling in Donny’s skull. Think you can save your brother? You can’t even save your marriage, useless fuck.

“Pinky will come around,” Donny says, trying hard not to look restless. “Her dad’s covering my new equipment loan.”

Gus starts to flap his arms, a whooping crane in a stiff wind. Donny holds his brother’s arms down. Gus wrenches away, rising to his feet.

“Pinky’s got a face like the back of a shovel.”

“Gus,” Donny orders, trying to wrap his arms around his brother’s aches, hold his burden tight.

Gus steps away, shouting in a faux-Asian accent. “Twyme, twyme, me, moneybackgawantee.” He flaps and turns away again. “Fuck Pinky.”

Donny met Pinky in one of those mahogany-and-brass steakhouses with the deer antlers mounted above the bar. She was serving rib-eye steaks to men who chewed the fat over real
estate deals. Turns out her dad owned the place. Owned three apartment complexes and a dry-cleaning franchise. Her family was an empire. His was a broken tenement. She danced through the room, pale blue moons dusting her eyelids, still as a watercolour. He knew he wouldn’t be worthy but he asked her out anyway, tumbling over his syllables. On their fifth date, he made a nest of his long arms, cupped her bird bones inside, called her My Lily Hands.

Donny pulls Gus’s hand away from his dismal face, turns to see Joe pound down the stairs toward them.

“Get away Tomahawk Chuck,” Gus shouts, seeing Joe approach.

Joe grabs Gus firmly by the terry cloth shoulder—“Smoke break. It’s noon polar bear. Let’s migrate”—leading him toward the front door.

Donny moves in to help, but Joe raises a dismissive hand, motioning for him to stay put. Gus is led to the front door. Donny hurries to stuff an envelope filled with pizza money inside Gus’s housecoat. Joe shoots him a puzzled look, stomping his feet.

Native guys float, they had told Donny. Mohawk or Cree, toeing twenty-storey beams, steady rivet gun in their hands. It was all bullshit. Joe preferred doing the ground metal framing but left to repair a support brace on the third floor. Crew said he must’ve had a rubber backbone the way he bounced down in one piece. Whatever was on his mind back then never came back. Joe was on his own so Donny found him a place with Mrs. B. Once Joe settled in, Donny figured it would be good enough for family so he dropped Gus off with two green garbage bags and a blue duffel bag, two days after his brother
had set fire to their shower curtain. Abandon ship! Blame Pinky? Sure. He was fucking free.

On site two hours later, the front-load driver shouts down to Donny: Okay to take another run? Donny nods, directing traffic. Raising its toothy bucket, the driver steers the front loader through wet mud, shattering glass on a downward strike. Whining like a beaten dog, the low-rise splits in half. Burying his toe in sharp debris, Donny thinks—this is the job. Build an extension off the house to give Gus his own entrance. Donny returns to his truck, roughs up his estimate pad, knowing the numbers won’t add up. Pinky will never go for it. Her parents would pull the loan. He’s nothing but a low-level contractor. Pinky’s mother is a princess. Her tiara’s halfway up my ass, he thinks. Fuck it. He’ll find the money. Set Gus up in some studio apartment close by. Take him out twice a week, get his meds on track.

Donny knows the drill. Pour concrete slab, pound the building out, pad an invoice or two. Take his commission off the top. Throw me an extra buck, he’ll tell the subs, I’ll throw in the townhouse complex too.

Things Gus will do for a dollar:

Clean the kitchen floor with a soapy grey mop.

Commit to Cheerios in the morning and finish them.

Buy Marlee and himself cigarettes when she gets her Thursday cheque.

Gus pulls two turtle blues from his pillbox when Donny leaves, his arms heavy rubber fins. He lumbers to the bus stop, watches
the number 12 roll up. He stubs out his cigarette and climbs the stairs. Staring down at the fare box, he watches the coins tickle the steel throat, then spit out a paper tongue at him.

“Alberto’s Pizza,” Gus slurs like a drunk directing a cab.

Brusquely, the driver motions him to the back of the bus. Gus sits in the last row, opens his pillbox, swallows another. Blearily, he watches Bookbag get on. She sits up front with a friend but waves back. Gus can’t lift his sweaty hand. They rumble on for ten minutes until Alberto’s red neon lights up. He yanks the cord.

At Alberto’s, an alert hostess ushers Gus to a back table. He’s blinking fast. Skipping ropes and twigs start to stretch and snap in his head. Flat bottom spinning between the temples, Gus stabs a fork into his leg so he’s clear enough to order his usual Hawaiian Special. When the silver tray arrives, a large pie, thick crust smeared with pineapple and ham, he dips a wedge into his Coke. He orders another coffee, adds six sugars, then pockets the spoon. The table is pivoting, but he needs to piss.

Along the corridor in the restaurant, Gus counts gold diamonds fringing the emerald carpet all the way to the men’s room. He teeters before the urinal next to a bank of stainless-steel sinks. The burly man next to him bounces on his toes. Watching him, Gus bounces too. The man zips. Gus pulls slowly at his fly. The man calls him something Gus can’t grasp. Gus grabs his own crotch, fumbling furiously.

“Pull that faggot shit on me again, you’re dead.” The stout man drops his shoulder and drives Gus hard into the mirror before walking out the door.