Four Way Stop
by Janina Hornosty
Julian, the older brother, ran, and nobody ever cut his name in half. Maurice,
the younger one, dawdled, two steps back for every one forward, and they called
him Mo. Julian tripped, stumbled, flew headlong, failed school, stole money, and
ran by his teacher's window waving. Mo burned his foot in a fire in his back
yard, and then his single mother had to bring him things to eat in his bed,
things he'd consume with maddening slowness, but no-one could blame him, because
he'd burned his foot, right? Later, when his foot was healed, he'd still walk it
forward like it was wanting to go back, or down to the ground where it came from.
* * *
The man sitting at the table sucking his Canadian beer was Billy. Billy was
watching the comedian who'd been on at the Rexy for the third night. The comedian
was getting under his skin, and Billy, who'd been hearing more chatter in his
head for no reason lately, was nursing a slow hostility. The man up there wasn't
funny, not in the way that he was used to. Billy liked jokes about women and
their periods and bloating and jockey shorts and cucumbers. This guy was talking
about other things. Once in a while Billy felt a whip of energy in his chest when
the comedian cruised his voice into some quiet, explosive place. Once the
comedian read a poem by a guy named Tom Wayman, about men and factories, and the
poem wasn't funny either but the whipping got so bad Billy had to get up, go out
to the parking lot, and squeal his truck out of the place.
* * *
Maurice's mother, Renee, was on the phone. Maurice, outside the kitchen window
noodling around with some pieces of wood and a hammer, heard her say to his
father that she needed to work next weekend and he had to take Mo. Maurice heard
his father's silence and then the volley of grunts through the receiver.
Maurice's mother hung up and drew a hand through her long tired hair. He asked
her through the window for a drink, and she asked him what he wanted it for.
It wasn't always like that with his mom. Last week, or last month, or
sometime, she looked pretty getting into the truck with her man friend and Mo and
Julian and they went to the man friend's work picnic at a park with a river.
There was a huge cake with blue icing for somebody's birthday, and it had vanilla
pudding filling. The cake felt so good inside, and then outside too. Mo smoothed
the blue icing and the pudding down his bare legs and arms and then lay in a
shallow trench he had discovered in the river bank. The trench fit his body just
so. He breathed in and out and the sun shone on his blue sweetness and he grinned
at the universe like he would break.
* * *
Billy lost his job in the mill and he was back at school. He was upgrading his
highschool Math and English and then he was going to take College courses, that's
what the employment counselor hired by the mill said he should do. Somebody in
his life was always telling him he was smart. Once it was his mother. Now it was
his girlfriend. He hated it when people told him he was smart, like it was
something they had thought of. He knew he was smart. What was so important about
being smart that people had to be talking about it all the time? Why did people
have to be talking all the time?
* * *
Julian's mother, Renee, who was also Maurice's mother, talked about Julian on
the phone with her friend Leanne. She talked about him like he was an earthquake
or a volcano. Renee had been to College for a while, before single motherhood
shook her down, and she had words like "behavioral" and "acting out". She had
some words to speak about Julian but not enough words to think about where the
words came from in the first place. Julian's dad acted out too.
The person who didn't come up much in the conversations between Renee and
Leanne was Mo.
* * *
Where the comedian taught English at a small college, he knew a guy whose
senses were blunted by failure, rage and envy. He knew a few guys like that. But
the main guy was his office mate and so every week day he steeled himself to walk
in and face Bob's face. When he wasn't in class, Bob would always be sitting in
his office chair by the window, not looking out but towards the door where the
comedian would come in. Bob hated the place, but he was married to it like some
stinking old bat he'd been lured to long ago by the nauseating and addictive
scent of her ballyhoo. His words, not the comedian's. Bob could sure paint a
phrase, but it gave him no pleasure. When the comedian came in, Bob's looking at
him was always like a door slamming. The comedian was never sure if the door was
shutting him out or, worse, in. Bob fancied that the comedian hated the place for
the same reasons he did, because neither of them was a tenured professor, and so
he half-liked the comedian, with an ugly sulphurous affection.
Bob was wrong about the comedian. He was wrong because his senses were blunted
by failure, rage, and envy. The comedian didn't hate the college, he saw it for
what it was, a place among places where one might be. Only his wife, and one or
two friends, understood that the comedian was an angel, always himself
everywhere. So far in his time on earth, the comedian had occupied the following
places: student, planter of trees, coordinator of wilderness trips for people who
heard voices, teacher of composition, maker of laughter deeper than sound.
* * *
Julian had to leave one school because he started a fire in the boys'
washroom. The fire snaked its way up some pipes and emerged in a grade nine
physics classroom, where it was drawn like mad to some powder that rearranged
itself into an explosion. The explosion did not hurt anyone because no one was in
the classroom at the time, but it did alert the principal to the need to redraw
Julian's official geography: from home to the bus to the school out in the
country where teachers and administrators made their careers out of being ready
for boys like Julian. Maurice stayed where he was, because there was no need to
move him.
* * *
The comedian brushed the wings of his mind against failure, rage, envy and
grief. He hovered there, trying for a lighter and lighter touch. The routine he
was working on was eluding him at its centre, always threatening to collapse into
something crass or coy or sentimental or smart. The comedian paced around it,
trying to be patient, trying not to make false moves.
* * *
Out the window, Maurice heard most of what his Mom and Leanne were talking
about on the phone. Mo's dad had been lying on his back on a mat on the floor of
the room where a lot of other men were doing the same thing. The anger management
counselor was telling them all to breath shallowly and clear their minds of all
thoughts. Mo's dad was not lying on his back in anger management class of his own
free will. It was this or something he wanted to do even less. Anyway, the anger
management counselor told the men that today they would try something different.
Instead of just breathing in and out and picturing peaceful scenes and healthy
ways to express their energy, the men would breath out and then on the in-breath
imagine being breathed by the universe. Not breathing in but being breathed, like
the universe was giving them mouth-to-mouth. So, it turns out that being breathed
by the universe did not have an agreeable effect on Mo's dad. He went crazy right
there on the floor, screaming and swiping at the men on either side of him. The
guys who came to take him away and adjust his medication called it a panic
attack. Mo's mom called it acting out.
* * *
Billy kept going to the Rexy all week, even though it made him mad they still
had this comic. He liked the Rexy and he wasn't going to change. Nobody was going
to move him out of his spot. Leanne wouldn't like this comic either but for
different reasons. She didn't come here, but her reasons would be different, if
she did. What reasons? She liked movies with Sally Field, about women and
feelings. What kinds of feelings? Why was he asking himself for reasons? What
feelings? Sad feelings and then reconciling feelings. Why didn't he like those
movies? It wasn't that he didn't feel comfortable about feelings, like that
gremlin counselor at the mill said, the word feelings stretching his mouth so
that his chin receded even further into his stumpy neck. What a moron, feelings
aren't supposed to be comfortable, that's why they're feelings. He didn't like
those feelings, those Sally Field feelings. What feelings? Dissolving into tears
feelings and sympathy feelings and then women arm-in-arm stumping across the screen,
limping and stumping through life together, which they could accept now for some
reason. What reason?
* * *
If Julian and Maurice spent more than 15 minutes together someone would always
get hurt and it would always be Maurice. Julian didn't mean to hurt Maurice, but
he was hardwired for having accidents or losing control, so a tennis ball would
careen into Maurice's eye or Maurice would get in the way of a long-armed
back-hand while they were wrestling in the grass. At the climax, when he was
whacked or crushed or cut, Maurice was anointed with a sullen rage. The mottled
red of his cheeks was like a blotchy wall of fire that Julian sprayed at with his
frantic apologies, sorry, sorry, sorry, I can't even believe that happened, how
did it happen? Julian would bring Mo treats and stroke his glossy brown hair and
Maurice would chew slowly, put his head back and close his eyes. For a short
time, this would release them both, until the heat in Maurice's cheeks cooled.
Then it was business as usual.
* * *
It was the comedian's last night at the Rexy. Billy was still there, in his
spot.
* * *
Julian was telling Mo to hurry, stop dragging his feet. Julian wanted to get
somewhere, Mo wasn't sure where, but it meant crossing the street, a street that
crossed a highway, fast. Julian kept running a bit of a way and then going back
to Mo like he was a stubborn puppy that needed things acted out. Suddenly out of
nowhere a truck was barreling through the intersection and Julian was in the
middle of the cross and he had to go back or forward.
* * *
When Billy saw the comedian at the gas station in broad daylight he suddenly
wanted to heckle or get close or get away. He watched as the comedian finished at
the pump, went in to pay, got in his car and turned on the engine. Billy watched
him pull on to the highway and then without thinking Billy was in his truck
gunning after the green car with the comedian in it. He had to bob and weave
through some traffic to catch up, but he did and soon he was right behind the
guy, mouthing stuff into his mirror, trying it on. "Faggot" he tried first, but
even his own face in the rear-view mirror told him he was slumming. Then he tried
parroting one of the comedian's own lines, delivered with a twangy edge of
sarcasm: "What do you want it for? What do you want it for, bucko?" He had his
hand on the crank for the window, and he started to throw the words outside into
the wind as practise. "What do you want it for, asshole? Why do you want that?!
For what reason, you motherfucker, what's the reason?!? Billy was screaming as he
maneuvered to pass and then get in front of the comedian. He passed him and threw
the words back into the wind. He tried to get a bead on the guy in the green car,
was he looking at Billy, was he listening? The wind was strong out there on the
highway and it was slowly sinking in to Billy that the words were just coming
back in his face, like that scene in The Big Lebowski where the guy throws his
buddy's ashes out to sea but the wind is blowing from the sea and the ashes end
up all over him. Or was it all over his other buddy standing behind him? He
couldn't remember, but the buddies end up hugging, not like they're gay or
anything, they just kind of lean in to each other because their bowling friend is
gone. That was a great fucking movie even though Billy's buddy told Billy some
arty college boys made it. Billy was still craning his neck back trying to see
the comedian's face, and yes, he thought the comedian might be looking, but the
weird thing was that the face seemed to be getting smaller and smaller like when
you're moving past a landmark in the scenery, and the next thing he knew Billy
was cruising through the middle of an intersection at the heart of a four-way
stop and there were two kids there in different places and some yelling outside
his truck and inside his truck and he couldn't stop.
* * *
Julian and Maurice's mother was on the phone. She was telling Leanne that it
sounded bad but she'd be happy when Julian was grown up and out of her hair. She
knew it sounded bad but the counselor told her that she had to stay in touch with
her feelings.
* * *
The sun was bright and warm, and Julian's shouts about doing or not doing
something were just another sound. Maurice found it pleasant to toe the sandy
stuff and weeds on the ground at the curb, loving the magic dallying. He guessed
he'd cross the road now, but no one was going to rush him.
* * *
Julian had to go back or forward and since he was running forward he just kept
going.
* * *
The comedian was in his small green car, moving down the highway and then coming
to a halt at the four-way stop. The guy in the truck was yelling behind him all
the way from the gas station, and still yelling as he passed the comedian's
slowing and then stopped car. The wind blew his words away as he careened into
the intersection, head craned around, face growing smaller but the mouth still
forming agitated shapes. On the road crossing the highway, at the edge of the
crosswalk, a kid was emerging, dangling one foot and then the other out onto the
highway. Another taller kid was dancing in short sprints across the highway and
back, yelling something to the smaller kid. The comedian read the moment of
realization when the truck guy's face snapped forward to attention but it was too
late to stop and two thousand pounds of steel obeyed Newton's first law of
motion.
* * *
Sometimes the sun is shining and the wind blows words away and accidents don't
happen even though everything says they will. Julian, the older brother, ran, and
he reached the other side. Maurice, the younger one, dawdled, and he didn't get
too far on the road. Billy couldn't stop or even slow down but there was nothing
in the path of his truck and the universe breathed him another chance. In his
place, stopped at the four-way stop, the comedian was brushing the wings of his
mind against failure, rage, envy, grief and grace.
Janina Hornosty lives and works in Nanaimo, BC. She has published one collection of short fiction,
Snackers (Oolichan, 1997).
|
|
