Goose Hunting

Goose Hunting

         by Honkin' Hank the Hillbilly

                  If a goose sits on your head

                  demands the feathers from your bed

                  it's time to head down south for good

                  to live the kind of life you should

That Sunday, Milford gave himself over entirely to his inclinations and achieved the biggest origami he had ever met managed. He gave up the hobby from that moment on and never bothered with folding paper again. It was the Sunday of the raid on the dormitory. Girls of all sizes, shapes, color, height, scent, dress, length, bent, and even appearance, converged on the first floor and worked their way upwards, floor by floor, missing not a room, and purged it of offenders. The displaced boys, guilty of frequent misdemeanors over the years, accepted their lot and left for the city where apartments were not quite as affordable, but available nevertheless. But, too, that was the Sunday of the dinner party at which the mayor and the university president were caught insitu flagrante and expelled from their respective posts. These two married and raised children after, but neither has been heard of much since. 

          That Sunday, too, set off a series of events that have plagued our university town for two decades. I tell this to you now as one remembering the events that I participated in and had not a little to do with. My very appearance excites comments and incites rage. When, as I did, I also actively involve myself in the moment's public activities, terrible things can and do occur. I tend to keep to myself now for the most part, but it has taken me almost twenty years to fully understand the nature of my folly.

         The first thing that devolved from the events of that Sunday was the morning paper. At midnight, a party at which I was in attendance turned into a brawl that left two men's lives hanging by a thread. One of the young adults, Jose Phillipe, son of the respected Reeve, Joseph Philippe, later died on the operating table. His father was overwrought and took up federal politics shortly thereafter. The other men survived, but an observer may see him to this day wheeling himself about on an automated wheelchair in the Student Services Building confronting students with loud nasal noises and spittle in a sort of bellowing call for individuals to come attend to him. Members of the Christian Students Organization frequently can be seen for ten minutes at a time standing around his chair in quiet support. When they leave him to get back to their studies he calls after them in loud incoherence.  

         Later in the day, about 10 o'clock, those of us who had gone to the hospital to check on our companions, and were asked to leave by security, marched our way to the back of the pub on Hamlin since we were out of beer. We broke down the doors and stole a dozen cases of whatever beer we could lay our hands on and sat outside drinking waiting for the police to come, which they soon did. In jail, we sang songs such as "We shall overcome," and "Go tell it on the mountain," and "Llght the spot that stains my soul." Some of us were released and others kept. I got out. I think that no one at the police station wished to have to look at me for any longer than necessary. McKay stayed in, and he is in prison to this day for repeated offenses in the following years, ranging from petty theft two grand larceny. What he did the last time was steal a Cadillac that he'd been let to test drive. They found it in Alberta, and him in British Columbia. 

       We shot many geese on the University lawn that Sunday afternoon after we'd been released. With 22's, three of them taken from our father's basements, we walked up and down the university lawns and shot the birds. We were goose hunting and preparing for a major Beta phi Kappa wild meat cook-out that evening. We never did eat them. They needed cleaning and none of us knew how or felt like doing it that. The event that most astonished those of us who began to be aware that some sort of mysterious force was working on our local history was The sudden decision by the Provost, Mr. Alcock, to oust the subordinates in the administration and place on the board many of the parents of the malingerers who were responsible for the general malaise at the University in the past year. Grospbeck's father became the Don of Residences; Mr. Cruft, the stepfather of Grady Parkin Bangcock, was offered and accepted the position of Rector to the Anglican Diocese; Whisper Willowchuk's mother took over the Deanship of Ambri College, where so many of her relatives had held important posts; my father became head librarian at the Dorchester Music Llibrary and sat on the university board of directors from then on to his death sixteen years later; Mycroft Spenceretti, the father of the Vagina Williama, took on the responsibility of Assistant to the Treasurer and still holds that post all these years later.       The entire social edifice of the University, and so the town, crumbled and we now have to live with the effects of our actions. Never will we live down the fact that we caused it. We did to this town what was done to it and we all, except Raymond Slim, feel shame and guilt for having so deformed Slocum's future. I offer this letter as a public apology that, though late, may be of use to those who follow.

Vying For Scraps

Vying for Scraps

            Guy de Perpetual

C. L. Dodgson sat in his kitchen in Christ Church studying the picture of Alice he had that afternoon completed. Eleven o'clock, and he was still wearing his shabby muslin housecoat. Outside the rain entranced the footman who smoked his pipe under the shelter over the door, in no hurry for someone to need him. Wet conifer through the open French doors troubled Charles with his first thoughts of gin. Two magpie vied for scraps at the back door where Lorna would be readying the pantry for breakfast. Coffee had brewed, biscuits baked in the oven, the fireplace ticked neatly without flames, and Mother purred to be picked up at his feet. He would give up photography. 

          This likelihood had occurred to Dodgson walking home the afternoon Alice and her friends sat for him in Colonstone Ravine. He had spent much time moving the heavy equipment there by boat and had been worn to a frazzle by the effort, physically unrobust as he was. Each spring the winter's inactivity in classroom and study rasped away at him, discouraging and tentative as the recovery of youthfulness again turned out to be. It would be delightful not ever to bother with the physical weight of the business. Slowing strength and the fuss of massive cameras, however, figured only barely in his decision. Another factor of greater significance bore the responsibility and he knew with clarity the reason he must retire his hobby and equipment immediately. The Rev. Hulme would surely sue, Liddell might hire a thug to take some measure of revenge, and Wycherley almost certainly intended a social purge that would publicize the event and paint him black in the eyes of the faculty as well as his seven sisters, aunt Sep, auntie Lancaster, and grandmother Annie. Time had risen from its long sleep and spoken aloud the startling nature of his desires, spoken these for the first time, even to him.

        The event in Colonstone Ravine occurred unexpectedly. He had set up his 9 mm Leica on the short stand after slogging it through the gorse and Yorgish fern that choked the riverbank and made passage slow and maddening. Tired, perspiring, uncharacteristically short tempered, he had barked at the girls to behave themselves when all they were doing was playing in the water and threatening accidentally to fall in and muddy their pretty dresses. Their shoes already would need scrubbing, for mud showed up inevitably in outdoor shots.

           "Barefoot!" he shouted to Alice and Lydia. "You will have to take those shoes off now. I won't have them in the photos. And they were perfect for this! Auntie let you put on your best and she is so particular about keeping them clean!" Then he felt remorse and put down his camera and walked to the three girls where they stood sorrowful and sullen among the weeds, their backs to him. He spread a blanket and patted it and said he was sorry. They loved him and believed him and so they sat. He put his arms around them and hugged two of them to him. The third sat in his lap and put her head on his chest.

         "Tell us a story," Alice said, eyes mixed with the memory of his sharp tongue and the pleasure of his apology. He did. He told them about the wonders of Alice in a strange land where rabbits scolded children and water filled their shoes of its own accord. While he told it, attentive though they were, one of them, and then all of them, giggling, removed their wet shoes and placed them on the grass at the edge of the blanket. Their stockings were still wet and Dodgson mentioned this to them. Laughing, Alice said, "Let's take off those, too!" And they did that. Dodgson smiled and hurried to his camera. 

        "Be beggars ," he called. The girls jumped about and acted oddly, chanting, "We are beggers. We need bread. Please spare us a little soup. Our stomachs are so hungry." They held hands and danced in a circle, their little bare feet happy on the soft woollen spread. They looked towards Charles, laughing as they twirled, their dresses floating in the air above their knees. They all fell breathless in a heap and began to tickle each other. Charles asked them to pretend to tickle one another for a still shot. This was difficult to achieve. The action of tickling was too dependent on movement and actual doing.

          "Let's stand and take a photo with each of you being a beggar. That will also be very nice," he said. The youngest, Myrnette, stood first. "Undo your buttons a little, and show your shoulder as if your bodice is torn and you are poor," he instructed. She unbuttoned two buttons. The other two began to imitate her and did the same. They unbuttoned three and stood just off the frame taunting Charles. He smiled at them to reassure them that he felt no irritation anymore.

        "Lift up your skirt a little to indicate that you are standing in the mire of a fen and so are of the poor beggar kind," he called from under his hood. The two girls outside the frame raised their skirts a few inches, and then quite a lot, till their underwear appeared, visibly, white, startling against the lonely gorse.

          "Girls!" Charles said, and jerked his head out into the daylight. "Are you teasing me?" he asked after a pause, with false scolding in his voice. He shifted his feet and put his hands on his hips in imitation of an angry nanny.

       "Yes we are! We are naughty girls and you can't do anything to us!" they called in high, squeaky voices, laughing and jostling each other. Then one of them pulled her dress off altogether and lay on the grass. The other two by now had gotten into the spirit of playful naughtiness and took theirs off, too. One, the least precocious of the three, removed her underwear also and stood there naked. She did a handstand, and then lay on the grass with her knees in the air. Charles said nothing, suppressing his feelings. Then Alice, too, and Miss Wycherley, quickly removed their clothes and ran about the camera and about Charles in this state. They entreated him and said, "Take off your jacket, Charles. Take off your shirt. Take off your shoes. Take off your belt. Take off your trousers. Take off your socks. Take off your underwear. Take off your underwear." 

       And he did that.

During His Last Sixty Years Wiley James Met Only Eleven People

During His Last Sixty Years Wiley James Met Only Eleven People

         Extreme-Dancing Douglas Riveter

Some men find city life dull, and the people dull who live there. They find themselves dull, too, when they imagine how it might be if they could reflect on their circumstance, take a new bearing, and change direction. Wiley James was one of those men who had grown, through constant constrictions at his place of work, weary beyond endurance of the city. He delivered auto parts for Piston Ring. His boss seldom showed up but criticized his employees when he did. 

          One day on Higgins, at Polluck's vegetable and fruit distributors, a grader left Wiley's car stuck in two feet of dirty snow. He shovelled it free. He stopped at home for some gear and a thermos and headed east along Highway One. He picked up his sled at Wharton's in Sioux Narrows. This took some time since he was alone. Back at the turnoff to Highwind Lake, he stopped his truck, backed up to a drift, and hauled the machine off. He drove his truck along the side road until he found a likely spot to leave it, hidden from highway view. A few minutes later he was on his way across the frozen lake to a cabin of which he knew. A man on Christmas tree island had some years ago lost his wife in childbirth. The cabin stood empty as far as Wiley knew.

         Islands drifted by in the snow-blowing white. A storm built. Shoreline looked faded and distant. Then suddenly near nearby and hazy. The roar of the motor muffled in the denseness of wind and snow. Soon in this purity of being Wiley felt only a floating of spirit and the rush of slow motion. All the sadness of the city lifted from him in those twelve miles. The skies above, as the snow below, and as the forest itself, contained only two colours, gray and grayer. The snow gray and graying blew with purity over his helmet. The trees nearby, waving past in silence, appeared from out of their hundred year placement in a gray of a slightly darker shade. His inward being itself turned to a welcome and cold gray that responded to nothing as much as the thought of a wood fire blazing and the glimmer of candle light on the old brown gloss of the log cabin walls.

        Christmas tree island came in sight, the sled slowed, the cabin materialized out of the gray light, the land lifted him out of the lake and then all motion stopped before the door of the dark abode. Wiley stepped off the sled. He heard the silence in the sudden noise of wind. He stood in the middle of her peace and strong being. Being here was. He mounted the steps to the veranda. He tried the door and found it locked. He felt about until he found a key behind a box of kindling. He stepped through the door and into the damn cold room. It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The day was drawing to a close. He saw the stove. He took kindling and placed it around a page of newspaper he fished from an inside coat pocket. He lit the match, which flared and gave his immediate surroundings light.The paper took, the kindling began to crackle, and then to flare and burn. He added larger wood chunks and rose to look around. This would be his home. Here he would be happy. A moose head mounted above the living room couch smiled down at him.

         At last the house was warm. It not taken two hours. The temperature outside was thirty below. Now he took off his jacket and sat on an easy chair in his shirt sleeves. He drank coffee and ate biscuits that he had brought from home. He spread butter and raspberry jam on them and dipped them in the steaming liquid. The wind returned from silence and become loud and insistent in his ears. He put some toilet paper in each ear to get himself acclimatized to the noise around him. In the city he had not heard a thing. Cars honking, traffic slowing, engines surgeon, twenty people talking aloud in a room, the TV blaring, all had been silent to him. Here, the creek of a bow above the roof drew itself into his ears like it had been shouted. At night he lay there thinking, considering Winnipeg, considering Calcutta. Nearby, a wolf howled. Its sudden presence made the hair lift on his neck. It called again and again and came to stand beside his cabin where it spoke twice more before disappearing.

         In the morning, hungry, not having brought food, he opened a can of peaches from the pantry, thawed it on the stove, dipped biscuits in the sweet juice and made coffee. Afterwords, he dressed and headed back across the lake towards his truck. He drove into Sioux Narrows and to the grocery store there. He bought bacon, flour, sugar, both evaporated and powdered milk, syrup, tea, coffee, yeast, and fishing line, and returned to his sled and across the lake to his new home. For two weeks he did little. He knew the pain of not working. Not working is man's hardest job in this Puritan world. Then he grew accustomed to the routine of living as he pleased. He set up traplines. He hunted. He fished. He ate and slept. This is how he lived the rest of his days. Wiley never returned to the dullness of city life again.

          

.

Spirits

Spirits

        by Douglas Three-fingers

Pow-wows came slowly into their being in this region. Pow-wows did not used to be pow-wows. They were only what happened after the war party returned victorious from some event of revenge, expansion, protection or assimilation. The liberal consumption by a community at one and the same moment of sweet grass, tobacco, pemmican, dog meat, horseflesh and other "sweet meats" indicated the event as an event. It happened much like other things happened. Stars came into view that had long that year lain underneath the horizon. The sun clouded over from the smoke of forest fires. Beaver gave up thick coats in wintertime. Men grew listless and asexual in springtime. Pow-wows were not one of these knowns. 

          When pow-wows first came into existence they were the continuation of these other events that already were. The same "sweet meats" under use and in exercise faced the event's motions. Males grew listless. Females aspired. Old ones felt the greatness of their years. Nothing seemed different from the old days. But all of it was. None of it was the same. Now the event had a name. Now it was an event to be spoken of. Now it was language and not thing. No war party had returned victorious. No warriors were missing among a returning raiding party. No women wept for lovers or husbands recently sent bravely on their way. No wise man sat speaking or thinking or dreaming, and upon whose spoken judgment death or life for the group would depend.

        The stone rings above the pictographs at Dryberry Lake showed them, the pow-wowers, the very being of the pow-wow's past. The hieroglyphs and pictographs held out to them, like food to a hungry coyote, the real existence of their ancestors and the fact that they were the descendants of a strangely foreign people though coloured like and set like and haired like those who had them preceded. Yet, they were now doing a pow-wow, not a war. They only looked at stones, not hauled huge ones into concentric rings. They spoke the, and wrote the, old codes, not lived them. 

       Do you wish to know who I am, to speak of these things? Do you wish to see where I sit, writing of such matters? And have you a wish for me to clarify my view of these items of thought so that my biases may be named? I am Douglas Three-fingers. I derived that name from my tendency to consume Seagrams or Jack Daniels or Glenfiditch or any  such fine liquors in notable quantities. I sit In a messy room above the Royal Albert Arms where I have been confined these many years. I am without ambulance since my legs were shot off at the Battle of Iwo Jima. I have no more visual view of the world about me than did that pathetic Bartleby, the Scrivener. A brick wall immediately outside my window keeps returning my thoughts to my reflections on love and life more so than on nature. As for my perception of such matters as pow-wows and past realities of First Nations peoples, I am not a clairvoyant, nor do I deem to understand social formations well enough to expect to influence thinkers about the ramifications of meditation on these same formations. I learned what I know and so see what I see as a result of having mostly no one to talk with these sixty years.

        The government through veterans' affairs provides a home service of sorts, and thus I receive the means to live.  Books arrive frequently from a public home reading program. The library willingly provides such materials as I request, if they themselves don't carry them. My drink comes from the government liquor store two blocks east on Main Street. A bottle a day is all that is required to keep up my spirits. (Once, however, when for a period of time my means insufficiently covered my expenses, I made my refreshment at home in the form of wine from kits purchased at a nearby wine-making store.) My hair has remained surprisingly dark. At seventy-eight I look fifty. I know that. My atrophied extremities notwithstanding, I am a man of handsome proportions and features. Though no woman has entered these rooms now for twenty years. The last time that I saw what a woman looked like underneath her apparel I was a fifty-eight year old man (looking forty!) dressed to the nines. Now, that is another story with which I shall regale you some day if you should choose to visit me again, my dear Agatha.