“Fuck it,” I say. “Fuck this life. Fuck these plates.” Three of which I smash in the sink, shards dancing up to patter on the wall and floor.
I sit down on a kitchen chair and feel my hand throb and stiffen. It can’t be escaped any more. For months I have held Victoria responsible for the way I live. I have held her responsible because it didn’t take me long to discover that I didn’t manage well on my own.
But there is no avoiding it. It may seem an obvious point – but those dirty dishes are mine. It is my filth in the bathroom. And I am living this crazy goddamn life stuck in neutral. All this is
And I admit to myself that I am scared because I realized I must sink or swim. I am afraid because Victoria isn’t here to prod and cajole me over the rough spots any longer. This is my rough spot.
And suddenly, for whatever reason, I think at this minute of my old humpbacked cigar-puffing Dane. Perhaps because my first memories of him are associated with feelings of aggrievement and persecution. My introduction to him was by way of a philosophy professor who was a demanding, half-crazed German who belonged in nineteenth- century Heidelberg rather than a North American university of the sixties. Whenever we malingered or bitched about the work load, he would repeat to us one of Kierkegaard’s entries from his journal.
“There is nothing everyone is so afraid of as being told how vastly much he is capable of. You are capable of – do you want to know? – you are capable of living in poverty; you are capable of standing almost any kind of maltreatment, abuse, etc. But you do not wish to know about it, isn’t that so? You would be furious with him who told you so, and only call that person your friend who bolsters you in saying: ‘No, this I cannot bear, this is beyond my strength, etc.’ ”
He would announce this sternly to us and then add with Teutonic glumness, “I refuze to be a valze vriend. I will stretch you.”
I have one of my rare charitable thoughts. Perhaps Victoria has done me the favour of telling me I can stand alone. Perhaps she has done me the favour of making me bear the stink of my own loneliness.
And so I get to my feet and go back down into the street. I think of Soren taunted and jeered at in the streets of Copenhagen. I take heart from his observation that “one is tempted to ask whether there is a single man left ready, for once, to commit an outrageous folly.” And Sam too. I don’t forget Sam and what he suffered and how he overcame the odds.
I begin to shuffle down the street, muttering through my teeth, telling myself the story.
“After they struck him with coup sticks and quirts they stripped off every bit of his clothing and took away his boots. The old scars on his body, the puckered, ridged hole on his shoulder from a bullet he had caught at Antietam, the sabre scar on his belly, turned blue in the cold April wind.
“Looking Glass indicated he could begin to walk. The young bucks expectantly fingered their lances and edged forward, impatient at the restraints imposed by their chief. But Looking Glass had set the trial and conditions. They dared not defy him. Sam Waters would be unarmed and naked, but he would be given a hundred-yard head start before the braves were loosed in pursuit.
“Twenty yards out Sam spat grimly. What the hell? he thought. He paused and waggled his bare ass derisively at his captors. There was a howl of rage. ‘Huh sutkis weepa hupka, kaksakis nuhka!’ he taunted them in their own tongue. Let’s play dog. You sniff my ass and I’ll growl.
“On he walked, hardly aware of the bedlam he had created. He didn’t feel the cold. He was preoccupied only with making the river three long miles away. He marshalled his strength. In a moment, he would be running for his life. Running barefooted across sharp rocks that would slash his feet, and cacti that would lodge their wicked needles in his flesh. He would have to disregard the pain and press on. And when he reached the icy river, running fast with snow melt and whirling with ice cakes, he would have to plunge in and allow the current to sweep his exhausted body downriver either to his death or to salvation.”
I scrape along past the neighbourhood Texaco station where I buy my gas. Ernie the pump jockey waves to me.
“When Sam heard the whoops behind him he sped away. He didn’t look behind. He didn’t need to. Sam knew the lithe, ochre-streaked bodies were hot on his heels, closing fast, trying to get into range for a spear cast that would bring down the great Bull Head, the white warrior.”
Past the shopping mall. A young matron pauses from loading her grocery bags in the trunk to watch me go by. Does she imagine that I am pursued by Brass Pot, Trader Bell and Wakshee, and does she know they are gaining on me? I pick up the pace.
“A spent lance skittered off the rocks by his legs. Sam’s energy was flagging. His lungs burned, his chest heaved, sweat coursed down his brow into his eyes. He glanced down at his feet. A bloody pulp.
“A coulee. He staggered down one slope, branches whipping his face, ploughed through a spring drift spraying the snow with specks of blood, scrabbled up the opposite bank, fingers tearing at the earth.”
Easy does it! Make Cameron Crescent, swing back on 14th Street and coast home.
“Sam could see the cold grey river flecked with ice floes as it snaked along. But the cries of the braves behind him were more distinct and had a triumphant note. One final effort. He began to sprint. A lance whistled past his head. He began to zigzag, darting and twisting to elude his pursuers.”
A car horn blasts sharply behind me and a guy in a grey Buick forces me up on the sidewalk. I hadn’t realized it, but in sympathy with Sam I had been weaving from side to side down the road, dodging Shoshone missiles.
I press on for home, a public spectacle. A couple of kids even go so far as to follow me on their bicycles, giggling and chanting, “Go man, go!” like onlookers urging on a ledge jumper. Maybe it is their intent to rifle my pockets for change when I collapse. But I disappoint them. In fact, at the very moment Sam is clawing his way out of the river shivering, retching and coughing, miles upstream and safe from his howling captors, I am fitting my key in my lock; coughing and retching. I have gone a considerable way my first time out. Perhaps as far as a mile.
I showed up at the River Run. But only to watch Victoria run. She did a lovely job, and I was proud of her although I didn’t tell her so. There was a man waiting for her at the finish with a thermos and a sponge.
I am not trying to fool myself or anyone else when I say that I could have completed the run if I had chosen to enter. By September 14 I was running six miles a day and had dropped seventeen pounds through hard work and fervent fasting. I am quite sincere and honest in saying that I could have – no,
I’ve changed in some ways. They are difficult to describe fairly and accurately. For instance, my domestic habits haven’t improved much. My dishes are seldom done punctually. I don’t barge in on Victoria or even phone her any more. But I still sometimes sit outside her apartment in my car, plotting extravagant schemes to regain her love. Even though I don’t believe in their efficacy any more.
But then again I’ve found myself a job. They can’t keep a good man down forever. I’m a salesman in the chinaware department in Eaton’s. I’d be lying if I claimed I liked my work, but I can bear it. It sure the hell beats working in a community college as I did before.
In a month and a half I’ve learned all the patterns, never been late for work, or obviously insulted a customer. Mrs. McCuish, my supervisor, is quite taken with the way I handle the old biddies. I have discovered a latent and surprising talent for the jollification and pacification of the blue-haired hags who stalk our aisles searching out that special piece for that “set” which has been growing like a cancer in their china cabinets since their marriages forty- five years ago. As Kierkegaard suggested, I find myself constantly amazed by my capacity to absorb abuse.
Speaking of Kierkegaard, he is slowly supplanting Sam Waters as my guide through life’s pitfalls. I’ve discovered that his approach is much more relevant to life in a department store than Sam’s. Sam is dying a slow death as I continue to transfer his story to paper. He has lost some of the importance he had when he resided principally in my imagination.
No, it’s Soren whom I contemplate as I fondle a piece of Doulton and make ecstatic faces across the counter at some dame who is starting a daughter-in-law off as a collector. Continuing the family tradition.
It is Soren I think of when I ask myself why I gave up Victoria. As he forsook Regine, did I forsake Victoria? No. I merely understood that I would only embitter her by surprising her at this late date. She needed to be done with me. And my completing the River Run would only anger her by confusing the picture of me that she had built up over our years together.
That’s not to say that I intend to leave it at that. I am going to show her I can finish something. The something is my Western, my story of Sam and his tribulations. Victoria will get a xerox copy of the manuscript in the mail. If
