As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under Read online

  I opened my eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘Your mother and me. Before Max. We were pretty close.’

  I flicked the roach into the water. I don’t know why I didn’t hit him.

  As I left I pictured the great blue heron returning, swooping low over the dock, knocking him with a powerful thwump of her wide wings into the water. I imagined him flailing, splashing, choking, helpless, calling out. And it gave me pleasure.

  ‘Hey, kid. Wait. Come on. Don’t leave like that. Vec. Hey, Vec.’

  I walked through the cedars and up the hill, breathing in the anomalous cold.

  Jesus Aged Christ.

  Right then I swore I’d never speak to Charlie Baron again. A vow I’d break only once. Three years later to the day.

  CLIPPINGS (2)

  (taken from “Oh, Canada! Sorn Stays in

  Country for School,” runnerspace.com)

  “Heron River native and middle-distance phenom Vector Sorn is set to continue his running career in Squamish, BC, home to the forward-thinking liberal arts and sciences university, Quest. When asked why he was staying in Canada, Sorn told us he did not want to become the workhorse of some title-seeking school south of the border. He was, to quote, ‘wild and untameable, not to mention allergic to apples and straw.’ On a more serious note, he told us he was attracted to the ‘academic rigour and freedom’ Quest has come to be known for. ‘It’s the perfect place for me. I have no idea what I want to be or do,’ he said with a wink, ‘and they seem to welcome, if not celebrate, that kind of uncertainty.’ Sorn will be one of only a hundred new Canadian students at Quest this fall. Highly selective in their admissions process, it is an institution which accepts not only the best and brightest but the most intellectually curious and creative. Apparently Mr. Sorn is as quick between the ears as he is fleet of foot. All the best in the west, Vector, and keep on running!’

  ~

  Just for the record, I didn’t come out west to continue my so-called running career. A ‘career’ (not to state the obvious) is an occupation—a trade, a craft, a vocation, if you will—which spans the better part, or at least a substantial chunk, of a person’s adulthood garnering financial ­stability and personal satisfaction. To note, I’m barely an adult. I’m certainly not in the hood part of being one. Also, to be clear, I have made no money as a runner and although I have experienced some success on the track, I am always left feeling—like most elite runners I know and have read about—that I can do and be better. Satisfaction is fleeting at best. Apart from a discussion on how the latter has an etymological connection to the former, the words ‘running’ and ‘career’ have no business sharing the same phrasal space.

  Had I been asked point blank (and had I been honest in response), the three reasons at the time of departure I would have given for venturing west were, in no particular order, these: to free myself from Max, to get away from Baron, and to escape the real and foreboding presence of Rayn. I feel bad for mentioning her as one of the reasons, but it’s true. I suppose I should have been thankful. I should have held onto every moment. How fortunate I was. How most people would give anything to feel and see someone they’d loved and lost the way I continued to feel and see Rayn.

  I told Stephen and Serra about it and they said there were times they believed they could see her too. Stephen nodded and Serra hugged me and said Rayn would always be with me. In their own way I suppose they understood. But not really. It was like I could touch her. Like she was alive. But not. I could not understand it then and I cannot understand it now. She’d be there walking beside me and then not. On the edge of my bed when I woke and then gone. In a chair across from me at the table and then, whsshh, into thin air. I told this to Dr. Carl, pseudo psycho simian that he is. He gave me some psychobabble explanation of how our memories of the dead are our way of holding onto those who have passed. That was his phrase: ‘those who have passed.’ He said there was real evidence of late supporting the claims of mediums. Those among us who had access to the other side. Some people, and I might be one of them, he said, have a gift. He actually believed this. I could see it in his eyes. A doctor for christ sake. A true ambassador of wisdom, that Dr. Carl. A living embodiment of the excellent foppery of this world.

  I think it’s clear by now but I’ll mention it just to be sure: I’m not a religious man. I have no delusions about an afterlife. We are here and then we are not. That’s it. I should note too that I don’t consider myself a spiritual person either, as some of the secularists might say. I don’t have a wind-in-the-trees connection to nature. The wind in the trees is the wind in the trees. I believe in science, reason, and the explanation of things based on knowledge and discovery. I strive to understand what happens to me and around me. Art is an important part of that striving (hence this little project I’m writing). In all its forms art allows for an intuitive understanding. It speaks a language we feel rather than one we comprehend, which is an essential part of knowing. Feeling is a type of knowledge we cannot yet articulate but know for certain is present and true and real.

  . . .

  It’s true. I didn’t want to be anyone’s workhorse. Which is one of the main reasons I didn’t go south on scholarship. I got offers from all the Ivy League and Big-10 schools. They sent recruiters, paid for flights and accommodations to visit their campuses, treated me like royalty when I went, assured me I’d receive the best education, the best coaches, the best programs, the best labs, the best roads, the best tracks, the best fans, the best sunsets, the best food, the best water, the best beds, the best coffee if I drank coffee, the best beer if I drank beer, the best music, the best books, the best people, the best women, the best men if that was my thing, the best nightlife, the best morninglife, the best life period.

  The best the best the best. The best of the best. The number of sentences I heard that began, ‘I assure you, we have the best . . .’

  I took all the free stuff they offered and said, all earnest and nodding, shaking their extended and over-eager hands, ‘You know, it’s funny. I don’t know. I like it here. I really do. This could be it. This could be the place for me.’

  What a prick I was. I never considered going south. Not once.

  . . .

  I heard about Quest listening to the Sunday Edition on CBC radio. A place where you did one course at a time. Complete subject immersion. Courses like Fate & Virtue, Reason & Freedom, Democracy & Justice. In the same year I could choose to study the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory, Forensic Geology, and Evolutionary Psychology. There were courses with names like Testimonials, Narrating Murder, the Limits of Knowledge, and Asymmetry, a course premised on the question of whether there was really such a thing as left and right.

  And they accommodated elite athletes.

  It was perfect.

  I told Stephen and Serra about it and they said Rayn would have been in the seat next to me on the plane. Stephen shook my hand and said I’d do well wherever I went. Serra hugged me and wished me luck. When I said there was no such thing she grinned and said in the history of the world no one has ever been more his mother’s son.

  AIR CANADA, FLIGHT 510: TORONTO TO VANCOUVER

  Pickups always seemed out of place to me on the highway. But even more than out of place, Stephen and Serra’s pickup was anachronistic: the two-tone brown, the open box with the worn spare tire up front and two concrete slabs for weight at the back, the hand-powered windows, the clunky wipers that moved out of time, the lack of head room, lack of leg room, lack of air conditioning, the temperamental heater, the primitive speedometer (the needle bouncing somewhere between ninety and one hundred), the fuel gauge that never moved from three quarters full, the AM/FM dial with its vertical red line that floated across station numbers as you manipulated the knob requiring the hands of a surgeon to locate certain channels, the absent USB ports, blue tooth, sync system, satellite, the fact that there wasn’t even a CD player or a tape
deck. There was the strange absence of any type of button or computer-dependent mechanism, the outside modern frenetic world limited to what you could see through the windows and the few unsophisticated and imperfect sounds of the radio. But more than anything it was the smell. The smell of ­rubber boots and hay and country air and river life and cellar dampness, the smell of a time that did not belong to me, the smell that never failed—whether I wanted it to or not—to bring back Rayn.

  We said very little on the drive to the airport. We didn’t have to. Risking the ticket, Stephen stopped outside gate 18 and we all stepped down from the truck. I reached into the uncovered box for my one suitcase and shook Stephen’s hand which was warm despite the cold. I said thanks and he nodded and told me if I ever needed anything they were only a call away. I hugged Serra and she held onto me longer than I expected. I stood there for a moment, the suitcase at my side. Part of me wanted to stay. Part of me wanted to ask them to come. But neither were really options. It was the nervousness surfacing, the uncertainty. At the sliding doors I looked back and saw them standing there: Stephen, stalwart as a man half his age, one arm about Serra’s shoulders, strong, squeezing her close, and Serra, settling into him, her head against his chest, watching me go, semi-smiling, her sad-happy eyes looking on, the truck exhaust like dry ice rolling at their feet in the unseasonably abnormal cold. It was a picture I would remember. They reminded me of what Max and Rayn might have looked like had they reached an age of grey hair and forgotten freedom. But ‘remind’ is the wrong word. It suggests a remembering and I cannot remember them the way I remember Stephen and Serra. I would never know them as old. One day, should I make it to that age, they will in memory be younger than me, their son, and it will be strange to picture them with less life in their faces than the one looking back from the mirror in that distant hard-to-imagine morning as I wake one more time and wonder (as I have come to do in my singular obsession) why we do what we do and, more selfishly, what the many things of my days might have been if the one thing on that particular day had not.

  . . .

  As the plane ascended I watched the city shrink and go quiet. The towers and skyscrapers became chess pieces. Roads became maps, the designs of men long dead revealed. Lakes became depthless and crayon blue. Outside the city all land was green or brown or yellow, boxed and neatly partitioned as though parcelled out long ago by some ancient unnameable king. There was no sound and no movement save for the miniature vehicles inching silently along. There were no people anywhere that I could see. It was so easy, at times, to imagine the end of things.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. This was to be a fresh start. All it takes to change a mindset is a decision to do so. Like changing a shirt. By the time the attendant came around with her cart I was feeling excited again, mischievous even. The seat next to me was empty and so I had no audience but her. I asked for a vodka martini and gave her my library card for ID. She could have easily rolled her eyes and said there was a whole cabin-full of people to serve if I couldn’t tell and so she had no time for little boys and their games. But she didn’t. Instead she grinned and folded her arms which I appreciated and interpreted as permission to ­continue.

  ‘See, this card lets me borrow books like Beautiful Losers and Portnoy’s Complaint. Not to mention the boozy tomes of Bukowski and Richler. The way I see it is, if I’m allowed to read about it I should be allowed to do it.’

  She put the pink eraser-end of her pencil to her chin, nodded, and said I may have a point but by that logic she should be allowed to wear her uniform unbuttoned just enough to encourage tips and tuck a Glock .45 into her ass-tight pants so that she might reach back and pull it on anyone who seemed suspicious or gave her flack about the speed of service or tried to use a library card for ID.

  ‘Elmore Leonard.’ I pointed. ‘Let me guess. You’re an actress.’

  ‘Let me guess.’ She pointed. ‘You’re a director.’

  I slid the library card into my wallet and grinned.

  She took a glass and a silver shaker from the belly of the cart and did her thing. Her hair was platinum blonde and pulled neatly back, a thin streak of pink down the middle, mostly hidden. I imagined a tattoo, something Asian, hiding beneath the short navy scarf she wore, tied off to the one side of her neck. The uniform was androgynous: navy pants and a collared navy shirt, neither of which revealed anything of the body beneath. The standard name tag below her left lapel read Valerie.

  She set a napkin down, the martini next to it, and asked if I wanted anything else. I said a cigar would be nice and she said that she was sorry but since we were living in the early twenty-first century and not the early twentieth century we weren’t allowed to smoke on planes anymore. Maybe I’d noticed the signs and the clean air. I said I was pretty sure there were no commercial airlines in the early twentieth century. Everybody travelled by train or by ship. And the air, just so she knew, is not as clean as people think it is. Just look how many kids have asthma these days. She said history had never been her strong suit but she knew for a fact that the air Canada (she paused for me to tally the pun) had to offer was some of the best air in the world, particularly the air in BC, which is where she was from, if I cared to know, but nevertheless, if I really wanted a cigar I should head to Gastown when we landed. A place called The Irish Heather had a whiskey room in the back called Shebeen where it was rumoured you could get a fine cigar and Scotch from God’s own reserve.

  We talked twice more on the flight but only briefly: once when she brought the meal (Pacific salmon on wild rice) and a second martini (which I hadn’t asked for, and, to note, was virgin like the first), and once when we landed. When she brought the salmon and the faux martini she placed another napkin down with a black arrow drawn across the bottom. When I flipped the napkin over I saw a name and cell number. She was serving the seat in front of me when I looked up. I raised my glass and she smiled. When we landed she was one of two attendants standing at the exit issuing the standard ‘Thank you for flying Air Canada’ goodbye. The exitway was narrow and somewhat awkward in its limited space and so as I inched by her I was close enough to see the tiny hole in her nose where the ring she wasn’t allowed to wear while in uniform would go, close enough to smell the mango shampoo she used, close enough to touch her though I didn’t, close enough for her to touch me which she did, furtively squeezing my hand, which stopped me for a moment and made my heart go and hastened me to say, ‘No—thank you,’ which I felt immediately stupid for but she smiled again and said, ‘Careful of your step, Mr. Sorn,’ so the feeling of stupidity dissipated and as I walked the corridor to my new province I felt the way I imagine someone who believes he’s been born again feels the moment he realizes his new path: driven and confident and good, eager to begin, humming with too much excitement.

  CLIPPINGS (3)

  (taken from Twitter)

  Danny Mann @d_man 32m

  totally mucked @vanval’s latest project. youtube.com/watch?v=

  dmko. had it coming the little fucker

  Valerie Argent @vanval 23m

  You’re such a man, @d_man.

  Danny Mann @d_man 22m

  least I dont fuck little boys @vanval

  Valerie Argent @vanval 21m

  The wit, @d_man. How I miss the intellectual stimulation. God knows there was never any other kind.

  Danny Mann @d_man 21m

  @vanval bitch, slut, fuckin whore

  Valerie Argent @vanval 20m

  Oh, the daggers @d_man.

  Danny Mann @d_man 11m

  how much his mommy paying u anyway @vanval, xtra for diaper changes & bedtime stories?

  Valerie Argent @vanval 10m

  Make that up all by your lonesome, @d_man? If only you knew what a good bedtime story can do. Oh wait, you’re not very good with your tongue. I forgot.

  Danny Mann @d_man 8m

  why dont u f.o.a.d @vanval he’s lucky I did
nt do worse the little fucker next time I see him I’ll kill’m I swear

  Valerie Argent @vanval 6m

  Just so everyone reading this is clear, @d_man: he’s not the little one—you are. And I mean that (pinky finger wave) in every ­possible way.

  ~

  So much for the fresh start. More than four thousand kilometres from home and in town for less than one full rotation of the earth and already I had a good old-fashioned bounty on my head.

  Dr. Carl would say @d_man was suffering from a classic case of ­heartbreak and that I didn’t really have anything to worry about. It was natural, Dr. Carl would explain, expected even. Pounding his gorilla chest, kicking at the dirt and snorting like a bull, sounding the lion’s roar, relying on his evolutionary instinct to reassert himself as the alpha male. He was lifting his leg and marking his territory in solipsistic tweets.

  I wasn’t what you’d call twitterate enough back then to fully comprehend all the details of a tweeted tête-á-tête. I had an account but never really used it. The fact that the conversation was waiting for me like a message when I woke up meant only one thing: that she—VA—had gone into my phone and had a thirty-minute row on my dime. At the time I didn’t even think about it. I simply read what was there and interpreted @d_man’s final words as a real and present threat against me: ‘next time I see him I’ll kill’m I swear.’

  Some might feel violated by a cellphone intrusion. Not me. I don’t keep anything I care about inside that mash of synthetica. If I lose it or spill a coffee on it or it stops working for some other reason I go out buy a new one and move on. Had she gone into my suitcase and leafed through my journal (or Rayn’s), on the other hand, then I would have been upset. Those are real and private and undisclosed to the world. Untraceable, undownloadable, unfollowable. Actual physical pages filled with thought-about, written-down words. But then again how would I ever know if she read them? They’re not locked. There’s no ‘search ­history’ detectable anywhere, no control panel, no virtual depths to mine. There are fingerprints, I guess, but even if I was that neurotic the only thing fingerprints would prove is that she touched the books, not that she read them. The act of reading itself is essentially unprovable.