Ten Scotches
by Donald McGrath
Out past the roof, the mist is thick over the Skeena.
I’m sitting at the window, my head shoved out past the
sill. I’m chewing sodden granola, slowly, methodically.
I’ve got my elbows on the window ledge, wedged between
milk and juice cartons and hunks of cheese in foil.
It’s a bit cramped but, hey, you make the best of it.
“I can still hear you chewing!” she snarls.
I turn my head, it bumps against the window
frame—“Jesus, ouch!”
She’s awake, sitting up in bed, eyes boring into me.
“But I’ve softened it,” I protest, “I put in twice
as much milk!”
“It’s just not enough!” she barks.
I turn back, remove the spoon from the bowl and splash
what’s left across the roof. Plump, inky ravens swoop
down on the milky mess. I jump up, grab my coat and am
gone.
*****
Rupert: her idea. “Now that we’re graduating,” she
said, “we should make some money. Dan’s in Cassiar,
it’s only twenty miles out. Don’t worry, he’s my
brother, he’ll help us find something.”
It’s been six weeks now and she still
hasn’t found anything. My guess is she’s up by
eleven—at the earliest. By then I’m a full three hours
at the plant, while she lies in bed, smoking, reading.
Even the maid’s cottoned on to it. She’s seen the stack
of People and Chatelaine, the abalone shell heaped high
with butts and drawn her own conclusions. Even started
dropping comments, which I take in with heaps of
pretend indignation. I’m starting to like this, not
doing too bad as the longsuffering schmuck of a husband.
We lied about that, took the burnished gent
at the desk for some local breed of fundamentalist who
might not give us a room. Didn’t know the Savoy
yet—hadn’t seen the guy out cold, heels on a chair,
head under a table; or the naked couple passed out on
the bed, test pattern on and curtains billowing to the
ceiling.
We take turns between the bed and the
floor. Sometimes I think we should just be scouts, be
practical, go for cuddle value. But things are not that
simple. I’ve got the love bug, had it since back in
Halifax. But we’ve been friends, Kate and me… it’s not
easy. I’m waiting for the moment, for a sign.
*****
Getting here. Six days, six in coach drowsing sideways,
lathered in sweat, downing soggy sandwiches and coffee
after coffee. A shower at the Y in Montreal; four hours
on the station steps in Winnipeg; an afternoon in
Jasper among the tourists and the knickknacks.
Telephone poles clicking by outside, Kate wet-thumming
her way through piles of fashion glossies. Myself more
single-minded, downright snotty with my Marcuse and my
Iliad and its hail of epithets—grey-eyed Goddess
Athena, devious-devising Kronos: grease on the wheels.
And before that: two weeks candling in Halifax
for the ticket. Candlers take worms out of cod. You
pass the fillets over a light table, you use tweezers.
At the end of the day you’ve got your little worm
pyramid. A sense of achievement!
Sea to shining sea on shining rails. A glimmer of
fish either side.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gets on at Ottawa—just to make
the trip truly epic. He stays aboard all the way to
Rupert, en route to Alaska. Stayed in Rupert overnight
and, as the local paper put it, “registered under his
own name.” I brush by him once, between cars somewhere
in the Rockies. He’s standing against a backdrop of
mountains, a fur cap tilted on his skull. Posing for a
coin.
What they didn’t print: Mrs. A. S. kicked out of Rupert
Station. It closes after the train comes in. Famous
writer heads up the boardwalk, scouting out the place.
Leaves her in the station with the bags. The
stationmaster talks to her, tries to explain. I don’t
think English is the problem, the problem’s the
concept. He eventually lapses into mime, flicks the
lights on, off, points to the door. Now she gets the
idea, drags the bags outside. A student from Madison
goes after her, hauls her back in, berates the
stationmaster. He knows what a gulag is now!
*****
Six days on the train and then my boots go to crap. How
did that happen? Was I not on my ass all the time? The
soles flap away from the top, wag, like tongues. I gag
'em with electric tape. The boss, before he’s the boss,
sees me standing there in trussed Kodiaks, in a pool of
water. His swollen face hovers over me, pores and
pockmarks gritty with pity.
I’m assigned to the freezers. I wear
fleece-lined boots, woolen pants and shirt, a black
toque, oil pants, waterproof sleeves, insulated mitts.
Someone pulls a string on the ceiling. A
huge metal door slides open and we step forward into
mist. I’m the rookie, so I get the broom for the walls.
The first time I think it’s a joke, the kind of
mindless task you’d drop on a college freshman. But it
has its purpose. You swing at the hoarfrost, you sweep
and sweep until you see pink—it literally dawns on you.
Out come the girls, four whole walls of Playboy and
Hustler, teeth a-chatter, nipples rigid from the cold.
In the centre of the chamber stands a vat
and, above it, a metal grille hanging from heavy iron
chains. For halibut heretics. We hack off their fins
with machetes, pile them on the grille, lower them into
the darkness of the vat. They arise lustrous, glazed.
Transformed into good Christians.
When an order for shipment comes in, we go
to a back room piled to the ceiling with them. We climb
on the piles, grab onto ceiling pipes and kick. A row
of us, running along and kicking. A toque hits a
lightbulb and sends out a shower of sparks. Curses,
shouts, the rumble of southbound halibut.
*****
Now my brother’s here, hitchhiked from
Newfoundland. Hard to believe, but he is in the room,
sitting right there on the bed with his empty pockets
and mouthful of stories. Had an escaped convict for
company in New Brunswick. Got put up by the cops. Saw a
car roll over near Wa-wa. Old lady pulls up, makes her
way into the ditch. Sees two guys hanging upside down
in their belts. “Jesus Jesus Jesus” and a strong smell
of gas. The old lady pokes in her cane, jabs the talker
in the ribs. “Mind that tongue, sonny!”
Harry: lovely impecunious twin! Breathless,
excited, with two bucks left to his name. Walked past
the desk clerk, as me. Another mouth.
The sleeping arrangement’s simple,
symmetrical. Kate’ll have the bed, one twin on either
side. The Queen is ecstatic, just loves her eunuchs to
bits. That Egyptian haircut makes sense now.
*****
The Savoy is wearing but there are no
apartments. The few got snapped up early in May, a
month before we got here. There’s one highrise in all
of Rupert, an eight-story building, eight stories of
pure daydream material with toilets and bathrooms and
dining room tables and—best of all O Holy Mother
Murphy—a stove to cook on.
We know a guy lives there. The Pharmacist.
Met him at the Rupert Hotel the night of the crutch
race. There were two guys in casts, both on the left
leg—different accidents, though.
There’s not a whole lot to do in Rupert.
The Pharmacist. He was the one who talked
us out of the Savoy—for one night. “I’ve got this
place,” he said, “above the drugstore.” Used to live
there, company paid for it. No furniture, but we’d make
do. Sure we would.
So we tell them downstairs, stash our bags
and go off to meet the Pharmacist. We’ve agreed on the
town hall fountain.
We wait for hours. When he finally ambles
up we’re exhausted. He’s all good cheer, he slaps us on
the backs as if we’re pals of a lifetime. Been
drinking. Toddles ahead of us, around to the side of
the drugstore. Coaxes a key from a pocket, prods for a
lock. We’re going upstairs…
“Didn’t I tell ya!,” extending his arms and
smiling the broadest of smiles.
We’re seeing but we’re not believing. The
room’s empty, except for some cardboard boxes in a
corner, a table by a window and a yellow plastic
tricycle on its side. Not a sign of sink or toilet.
“It’s a storeroom,” says Kate.
“And a damn big one at that!” He’s bowing
left and right. “More than enough for two lovebirds!”
“Planning to join the party?” she snaps.
“Oh not me,” he laughs, not quite catching
the tone. “I’m comfortable where I am, wouldn’t give it
up for the world.”
“Jesus,” I say, “do you really expect us to
stay here?”
“Where will we PISS?” says Kate.
“There’s a bathroom downstairs,” he says.
“I’ll give you the key.”
“What about bathing, showers?”
“I don’t know... you… you could go to the
Y, I guess…. I think there’s a Y.”
How did we? This crackpot…
“Well if that’s how you feel!,” he says,
self-sorry.
“We’ll stay,” I say, “We’ll stay just for
tonight. You can have your key back tomorrow.”
“No hard feelings.” He slaps my arm. And to
Kate, wagging a finger in mock admonishment: “Now my
little lady, sleep tight and no hanky panky!”
We haul a large collapsed cardboard box out
to the middle of the floor. Pry the sides apart, slip
in. We plump up our jackets for pillows.
I wake in the night, it’s cold in the
room. The box slants from my shoulders down to a
flatness where Kate… Perhaps she’s downstairs, in the
bathroom. The key…
Time passes. I slip out of the box, pull
myself up with the table leg. In the faint light from
the window, I see Kate take shape. On the other side of
the plastic motorcycle, she’s breathing deeply, knees
drawn up, back to the wall.
Boy scouts, why can’t we...
*****
Three days after splashdown my brother has
found himself work. I introduced him to my boss. Clyde
likes bookends, I guess.
Harry has his own room now, down in the
Annex. I knock on the door and the casing falls in
across his floor. His bed’s so lopsided, so alpine, he
keeps his little finger curled around a nail in the
wall. The roof outside is dotted with beer bottles and
Kentucky Fried.
It rains all the time. We work, drink, play
bingo.
We go to the bathtub races.
Their hour come, the brave little tubs
don’t shirk—they’ve got a job to do. Drainholes
plugged, overflows plugged, sterns dragged low by
outboards, they’re out to upset accepted notions of
bathtubs. Their work is not in the house.
People see this and they like it. Something
in them responds to these spastic cartoony craft
with their outlandish ambitions and outrageous
names—Titania, Nemesis, Nelly Baby—with their helmeted
pilots and racing stripes, their makeshift pontoons and
airfoils. Away they go, buffeted silly, banking, loving
the water. It’s more than civic spirit, more than any
fondness for popular mechanics. It’s the method of a
public madness, madness brought on by water, by
relentless rain.
*****
And Kate’s working—wonder of wonders! In a cannery
across town. I’m eating my granola dry now, dry as a
bone. Things are falling into place.
Then I nearly buy it.
I’m out of the freezer for awhile. We’re
sorting abalone. The forklift’s got the aluminum buggy
hoisted up to the ceiling, sidewise on the forks. There
must be a ton in it.
I have to push the shells through the
tailgate onto a wire screen below. I climb up, in. I
release the door lock and start poking away with a
shovel. There’s a right way of doing this: I should be
evening out the load as I work. But nobody tells me,
and I’m not thinking. I’m mesmerized a bit by the
height, the racket of shells on wire.
I feel it tip. The shovel leaves my hands,
which clamp themselves somehow, any old how, onto the
frame of the lift. I flip out straight, sidewise.
The buggy is metal, 240 pounds empty. And
there’s that half ton of shells. And the floor’s
concrete.
I take two days off. Kate’s brother lends me the use of
his trailer in Cassiar. I buy groceries, a block of ice
and go down to the Rupert Hotel to wait for the bus.
The ice’s in a cardboard box, it’s melting
by the time the bus arrives. I stow it under my seat.
When we go up a hill, a pool of water flows toward the
back; when we go down, it rushes to the front. But it
never really reaches either end.
Cassiar’s a row of green clapboard shacks
built on stilts over the Skeena. This is the old-growth
forest with its head-high ferns and its cathedral light
under the canopy. I see bald eagles glide over the
river and, once, a heron standing in reeds at dusk.
Train tracks run right by the trailer. In
the morning, Native kids drop pop bottles into the
grooves and run laughing into the woods to wait.
I sleep late, I’m happy. I remember how
much I love trains, the yards in Halifax. A world, it
was, of strange forms: bug-eyed lanterns that, when you
put your eye to them, showed darts of flame or blue,
liquid depths. A gate into my art college world of de
Chirico, Rousseau and Ernst. I find a pad of paper,
take inventory: fire-breathing shacks, képi conductors,
wrought-iron foliage. Or moonface clocks, matchstick
boardwalks, red-wheeled baggage wagons groaning with
luggage and nostalgia. Tremendous couplings, hellish
steam...
*****
I get back from Cassiar and the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers Union goes on strike. It’s
a big one, all up and down the coast.
Three weeks pass, I’m close to broke.
I decide to leave. I’ll take the train back
east while I’m still liquid. Harry’s going to wait it
out.
A parting spree’s in the cards. We go out.
I down ten scotches, spend the rest of the night
propped up straight against the headboard. Merciful
God, it’s my night for the bed!
I get up in the dark, pack my bags and,
somehow, tidy up.
Later in the year, I run into Kate in
Halifax. She’s stone-faced, sphinxy. And she’s got a
riddle for me.
“What, tell me, is the asshole conjugation
of to check out?”
I stare blankly, blinking.
“Give up?” she says, her voice thin and
high.
“Yeah....”
“It’s chuck out, you jerk! Why the fuck did
you throw out all my make-up?”
“Ten scotches…?” I venture, after some
seconds. But I can’t be sure.
Donald McGrath is a Montreal-based writer and translator who has published a book of poems
(At First Light, Wolsak and Wynn, 1995) in addition to articles and
translations on art. McGrath has completed a second poetry manuscript (which is
currently trying to find a home) and is working on a short-story collection.
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