“From page one Bryson’s prose had me scribbling words of praise: ‘clean,’ ‘spare,’ ‘pure,’ ‘enters the mind like thought.’” – The Globe and Mail
“Showcases Bryson’s disparate reach and contemporary voice.” – Quill & Quire
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WANDERING THE EARTH:
A SELECTED STORIES SAMPLER
by
Michael Bryson
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PUBLISHED BY:
Wandering the Earth:
A Selected Stories Sampler
Copyright © 2011 by Michael Bryson
Cover image © 2011 by Kate O’Rourke
ISBN 978-0-9866206-3-8
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WANDERING THE EARTH:
A SELECTED STORIES SAMPLER
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Table of Contents
Boys and Girls, Girls and Boys
Beginnings and Endings
Running with that Indian
Border Guard
Watching the Lions
Book of Job
Six Million, Million Miles
Yes, I Wanted to Say
Niagara
My Life In Television
Bonus Track: Hercules
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Boys and Girls, Girls and Boys
Bob called last week to say that he’d been dumped by my grandmother. I said that I was sorry, it was the first that I’d heard about it. I said I hoped that we would still be able to see each other. I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t like we were pals or anything. I didn’t want him to feel too rejected, is all. Bob said he was glad that I felt that way because he had enjoyed meeting me. “Just because your grandmother doesn’t want to see me anymore,” he said, but he didn’t finish the sentence. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Maybe we can, I don’t know.” “Go to a movie,” he said. And I said, “Why not? It could be fun.” Then Bob suggested Tuesday would be a good night for him, and it so happened I was free that night, and I didn’t feel like lying to this old man, who was feeling depressed and rejected already, so I said that I was available and we arranged to meet at a theatre downtown. Then I called Grandma.
“Grams,” I said when she finally picked up the phone. “What happened? Bob’s a nice guy. What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk now, sweetheart,” she said. “There’s someone here. He’s in the bathroom right now. I’ll call you back, okay?”
And she hung up.
Just like that.
My grandmother’s seventy-three and she’s had five boyfriends since my grandfather died. That was five years ago. You do the math.
The first time I met Bob was at my grandmother’s place. She’s got a small apartment in a seniors’ building in Scarborough, a one bedroom with a kitchenette off the living room. I went to visit and Bob was sitting on the couch sipping tea and enjoying a batch of my grandmother’s cookies. He said that he had met her when he came to visit a friend. My grandmother said it was nice to meet someone who didn’t live in the building. She often complained about that, about how she didn’t like her neighbours. “Why should I like them?” she would ask. “Because they’re old like me?” I could see her point, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I was glad she met Bob. Also I knew that Ernie, her boyfriend at the time, had gone to Florida for the winter, so I thought she might be feeling lonely. And Bob seemed real nice, and he seemed nuts about Grandma. I remember the way he talked. Your grandmother this, your grandmother that. It was actually kind of embarrassing, but grandma ate it up.
Tuesday came before I could do anything about canceling my appointment with Bob. I had a talk with my grandmother, though. She said Bob was nice. There was nothing wrong with Bob. But life is short, you know. And you have to enjoy yourself. Imagine my grandmother saying this to me and me trying to decide if I should tell her that she had hurt Bob’s feelings. As if she didn’t know. As if she cared. Bob was starting to bore her, she said.
So Tuesday came and I prepared to meet Bob at the theatre. We were going to see some Hollywood comedy. I don’t mind them every once in a while. I’m not nuts about them, you understand, but Hollywood’s good at making stupid comedies, so you have to give them credit for that. This one was about a waitress who gets a lottery ticket instead of a tip and the ticket turns out to be a winner.
Bob showed up right on time, wearing an overcoat and a fedora, looking very old. He said he had a hard time finding a parking spot and I was suddenly afraid for the city’s drivers. I’m sure he’s a fine driver, but it was supposed to rain later, and I was equally sure that Bob’s reflexes were in less than top form. We made our way to the theatre and Bob said he couldn’t remember the last movie he’d seen. He thought maybe it was Singing in the Rain with Bing Crosby. I nodded and asked what that was like, but he hit me on the arm and said that he was joking. Singing in the Rain came out years ago. He said that he went to movies all the time, but he usually went by himself. He used to work in the movies, he said. He’d been a film editor in Burbank before moving to Toronto with his second wife. She was from here and she wanted to be closer to her family.
“I’d been thinking of retiring,” Bob said, “so we moved up here.”
Then his wife died from a quickly spreading cancer. Now he was alone.
“You could go back,” I said, but he said he didn’t have anything to go back to. “We never had any kids, and we never made too many friends,” he said. He also said my grandmother would only agree to watch videotapes with him, but he said he hated watching movies on a small screen. “I guess I’m old fashioned,” he said, but I said, “I’m with you,” and then he winked at me and said, “Glad to hear it.”
After the movie we were walking through the lobby of the theatre when Bob asked, “You want to go watch the girls?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Don’t go stupid on me,” he said. “The girls, you know.”
“Okay,” I said.
“It’s been a while,” I said.
“Me, too,” he said, and he winked again. He was starting to look better, I thought. If you were to ask me, I’d say he looked five years younger, at least, if that is even possible.
We got to the club soon enough and passed through a door covered with mirrors. Inside a raunchy rock song filled the place. We passed between the tables and found a seat off to the left of the stage. A stripper was in the middle of her routine, swinging around a pole.
“What do you think?” he said, after a waitress in a halter top took our order.
“Nice,” I said. “Very nice.” That seemed to sum it up. What a terrific looking woman, I thought. She was on the stage now, rolling around on a blanket. I sat up in my chair to watch her.
The waitress brought us our beers and set them on the table beside Bob’s fedora. When the stripper finished her routine, Bob leaned over and tapped me on the arm.
“What did your grandmother tell you about me?” he asked.
“She said it wasn’t your fault,” I said.
He waved his hand in the air. “I know that,” he said and gave my arm a little squeeze, real gentle, like he wanted to emphasize his point without being threatening, you know, real subtle. “But what did she tell you about me?”
I couldn’t think of anything. “Not much,” I said. “She said she was glad to meet someone from outside the building.” But this didn’t seem to satisfy him. I think he was after something specific, something maybe he was worried about, like a secret or something, because he turned away from me and leaned back in his chair. If it was something bad, I hadn’t h
eard about it. My grandmother hadn’t said anything, nothing that stuck out in my memory anyway.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I was suddenly thinking how crazy it was for me to be sitting in a strip club with my grandmother’s ex-boyfriend. It took me ages to find the bathroom, and then I just locked myself in a stall and sat there. What did he want from me anyway? Information, friendship, someone to see movies and strippers with? He was an interesting enough guy, more interesting than some of my friends, I had to admit. He’d had a life, worked on famous movies, met some stars. Dated my grandmother. But I didn’t see why the companionship role should get passed down to me. I thought I could probably come up with a hundred other places that I’d rather be than sitting off to the left of the stage with this old guy in a fedora, but then I thought hanging out with me probably wasn’t his first choice either. I sat on the john for a few more minutes then went back out into the music.
“Not feeling well?” he asked when I got back to our table.
“No,” I lied. “I probably should have stayed home tonight. Something’s been going around my office. I probably should have stayed home. I don’t want you to catch anything.” That’s it, I thought. That’s how I get out of here. I started to collect my things. I pulled out my wallet and left ten dollars on the table. “Let me get it,” I said. “My treat.” He just sat there and watched me put on my coat. “I hope you don’t get sick,” I said as we shook hands. “I hope you don’t catch what I’ve got.” It seemed like he was going to stay.
The next day I told my grandmother a story about me running into Bob at the mall. I wanted to see what she would say.
“He’s not well, you know,” she announced. She hesitated, then continued. “He’s dying.”
“So that’s it,” I said. “That’s why you don’t want to see him.”
She turned away from me. “Do you have time to stay for tea?”
I looked at my watch. “Yes.”
“Oh good,” she said. She’d done a batch of baking.
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Beginnings and Endings
Dave
Where did I meet her? At the coffee shop around the corner. Why did I let her come home with me? I don’t know. She had the look of someone who needed something, and I was able to give it at little cost to myself. She was assertive; she was persistent; she made it seem the logical, humane choice. It felt good hearing myself say, “Okay. Come if you want.” I only had a floor for her to sleep on, I told her. I told her she had to leave in the morning when I left to go to work.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s a deal.”
I don’t have a big place, and I don’t often have guests, but I wasn’t thinking about those things when she asked me.
“I’ve seen you here before,” she said.
I had gone to the coffee shop to get away from a short story I was writing. Trying to write. I had been stuck at what I thought was the halfway point for over a week.
She was sitting at the next table, a paperback in front of her. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I later found out.
“You look familiar,” I said.
She was wearing a green canvas army jacket over a black t-shirt and a baseball cap turned backwards on her head. Familiar like any of a couple hundred others.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Dave,” I said.
“Hi, Dave,” she said. “I’m Darlene.”
It seemed we might be at an impasse until she said: “I need a favour. I need a place to stay tonight. Could you put me up?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s just me,” she said.
“No,” I said again. I say no three times to most things. I’m not an impulsive person to say the least.
“It’s just one night,” she said.
I didn’t say anything to that, I just looked at her and blinked. People afterwards asked me if I wasn’t afraid of her, afraid she might steal my stuff or worse. I didn’t have any thoughts like that. There had been a number of reports in the newspapers about homeless kids. The mayor had declared “war“ on them, saying he wanted to “clean up the streets.” It had mostly been background noise to me, part of the evolving urban narrative. I didn’t feel connected to the mayor’s battle in any way, but I have a natural tendency to identify with the underdog, so I think the mayor’s war opened the window that Darlene crawled through.
“My pimp’s looking for me,” she said, “and I need to stay off the streets.”
“Okay,” I said then. “Come if you want.”
Then I gave her my conditions.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s a deal.”
Darlene
He looked clean. He looked safe. He looked like the best option at the time. I thought that I might have seen him before, but I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter much anyway. I was beat, man. I was tired.
We went back to his place. He said it was small, and he didn’t lie. The place was a one bedroom with kind of a hallway with a TV and a futon couch in it. He pulled the couch away from the wall and unfolded it into a bed.
“I thought you said there was only the floor,” I said.
“I didn’t want you to come,” he said.
“Oh. Good one,” I said.
He went into his bedroom and came back with a sleeping bag and a pillow.
“Just don’t try to sleep with me,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“I mean it,” I said.
He nodded. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “If you try anything, I’ll hurt you.”
That made him think.
“Darlene,” he said all serious. “If you say one more thing about that, about us not sleeping together -- I’ll ask you to leave.”
“Just don’t,” I said.
“I won’t.”
“Okay,” I said. Then I laughed. It was strange, because mostly it goes the other way. I get thrown out for not having sex.
I was feeling really tired.
Dave said he put an extra towel in the bathroom. He got me a glass of water and put it on the table beside the TV.
“Good night,” he said, then he went into his room.
“Good night,” I said.
I unzipped the sleeping bag and threw it over me like a blanket. I slept with my clothes on. I didn’t want him to touch me. I really didn’t.
Dave
Okay, so now you know how it started.
The next day when I got up for work Darlene was in the shower. She had already folded up the futon. I went to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. When she came out she had her jacket on and her backpack thrown over her shoulder.
“Okay, thanks,” she said.
She walked past me and started putting on her boots.
“Don’t you want some breakfast?” I asked.
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” she said.
“Come on. Eat something,” I said.
“Toast and coffee,” she said.
I pulled a couple of apples out of the fridge and handed them to her. “For later.” She put them in the front pockets of her coat. I poured her a coffee and threw two slices of bread into the toaster. I turned on the radio to listen to the news.
“Big plans for today?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You?”
I shook my head. She sipped her coffee.
We sat in silence for a minute.
She stood up. “I gotta go,” she said. “Thanks for everything. Really.”
Then she left. I didn’t try to stop her this time. The toaster popped. I poured the rest of her coffee into the sink.
I didn’t think too much about her after that. I was working towards a deadline at work and putting in a lot of overtime. I had a vacation coming up, and I was looking forward to that. I had booked a hotel room in New York City. I had never been there. I wanted to check ou
t some famous watering holes, some of Dylan Thomas’s last stops. I wanted to spend my days in art galleries and my nights in bars. I had a friend doing graduate work at Columbia, Kerouac’s old stomping ground, and he had promised to scare up some women. My friend was a bit of a Beat himself.
I would like to tell you that I forgot about Darlene after she left, but that’s not true. I just thought I’d never see her again. I’m the kind of guy who remembers a lot of things and wishes he didn’t.
Darlene
I left. I thought he was trying to make a move. “Big plans for today?” You know how it is.
I usually hang out downtown with the squeegees. I’m not a squeegee. Okay, sometimes I’m a squeegee. I’m not a prostitute, though. Really and truly. That line about my pimp was just a line. A line and a line only. I needed a place to sleep and, hey, it worked.
Where do you live, Darlene? I don’t live nowhere now. I used to live in a squat on Spadina, but the police cleared us out. I stayed a few nights in High Park after that, but I found it creepy. Also, there was this boy there who wanted in my pants. I don’t sleep with anybody, okay. Why do you think I left home? I don’t want to be touched.
I’ve been on the streets for about six weeks. Last summer I lived on the streets, too. That was the first time. Then I got put in a foster home. Then I got put in a second foster home. I left there six weeks ago. It was summer and I had to leave. I couldn’t not leave, you see what I mean? I had to go. I had itchy feet. Otherwise I would have gone crazy. I felt like that. Like I was going crazy, like I was going to explode.
I went to see my counselor after I left Dave’s place. It was the first time I had gone to see her since I left my second foster home. Her name is Carole, and I think she’s all right. Mostly she just sits and listens to me. She’s about the only person I know who doesn’t tell me what to do. Well, she does tell me what to do sometimes, but she leaves it up to me. “It’s your decision,” she says a lot. “Your life.” Man, that’s nice to hear sometimes. You wouldn’t think that would be hard to understand, but people always want to be the boss.