NorthWord
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
volume 1 | number 3 | summer 2010 | $9.50
a literary journal of canada’s north
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volume 1, issue 3
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northern canada collective society for writers president Jennifer Hemstock treasurer Suzanne McGladdery secretary Linda Black managing editor Blair Hemstock media director Kiran Malik-Khan ad rate designer Velda Peach members Elizabeth Abel, Douglas Abel, Dorothy Bentley, Patricia Budd, Jane Jacques, Kiran Malik-Khan, Kevin Thornton. e-mail northword@hushmail.com This Issue: Volume 1, Number 3, Summer 2010 ISSN 1920-6313 cover & art Carli Gaudet design, logo, colophon & layout Kathleen Jacques editor Kevin Thornton
contents
4 summer 2010
2
the launch of the previous issue
Kiran Malik-Khan
3
from the library window
Collaborative poem; March 13, 2010
4
the night i died
Natasha Loewen
5
the white rabbit
Ken Haigh
10
pink
Phyllis Smallman
12
taking leave
Jennifer Quist
12
art
Leah Hoddinott
12
through the glass
Rachelle Northwood
13
senior moment
Keltie Paul
14
the hasty highway
Stephanie Werner
17
undying love
Gordon McEachern
20
teenage obsession
Patricia Marie Budd
22
marginalia — a column
Douglas Abel
24
contributors
printing sponsored by keyano college
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northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
he success of NorthWord magazine continues to astonish all of us on the editorial board. We knew the talent was out there but we suspected that it wa deeply hidden. We are happy to have been proved wrong.
Issue three is loosely based on the topic or idea ‘Twist’. It is no revelation to those of us in the North how twisted some people can be; we are after all little communities with big secrets. What has been surprising and, mayhap, a little bit disturbing is how deviant some of the stories of these people are. There are hidden depths at 60 degrees north. Elsewhere we were involved in the community of Fort McMurray with our launch of Issue two. It was… no it will be better from the pen of Kiran. On a special note, the cover ‘Femme Fatale’ is by Keyano College student Carli Gaudet. She surely has a bright and interesting future in the world of art as her work is thought-provoking, stunning and, dare I say it, twisted. To all our readers, enjoy issue three and tell all your friends about us.
Kevin Thornton
third issue editor
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the launch of the previous issue Kiran Malik-Khan
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ill they come? Will they like it? How many people will attend?
The members of the Northern Canada Collective Society of Writers (NCCSW) planned a Poetry Party to launch the second issue of NorthWord magazine on March 13 at the Fort McMurray Public Library. They came, they loved it and there were over 50 visitors on a Saturday afternoon. The smile on our lips and the song in our hearts said it all as we hosted stations like Word Window – look out the window and write what you see. We had beautiful imagery like “listless, waiting for the sun,” “whispers of the work camps,” and “Branches reaching for a cold, soft sky,” as you will see further into the magazine. As participants penned Haikus, deep in thought trying to get the syllable count right, the results spoke to the literary talent of this town. Ashraf Rushdy wrote: You wish you knew joy, You keep doing the same thing. When will you arise? Ransom Note poetry invited everyone to cut out words and see where their thoughts led them. The result amazed and delighted everyone.
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Limericks and Poetry on Demand did exceptionally well with requests pouring in from visitors to both booths. Jeff Hoffman, local poet and film-maker appreciated the event immensely and said he was “thrilled to find out about NorthWord magazine.” “There is not much in town for ambitious writers to show our true colours, so I appreciate this very much,” said Hoffman who has been published by NorthWord magazine. On a different note, as the media director for NorthWord magazine I would like to thank our local media outlets as well. As a relatively new group in town – we started about a year-and-ahalf ago — we need all the support we can get. So when you print a story, broadcast an interview with our members or highlight our events you are helping us function. We need this support to sustain NorthWord. After all it is this community’s, and we are proud to say Wood Buffalo’s first, literary magazine. A big thank you to our community for their support, encouragement and the zeal to see more literary events and here’s to a wonderful future of NorthWord magazine as we prepare for our fourth issue, and hopefully for many more to come, with your help.
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
from the library window Collaborative poem; March 13, 2010
This poem was written by at more than 30 people at the library on the above date. If you can identify your contribution, email northword @hushmail.com.
River-carved hills, rocks, shadow, calmness. The lines of the trees standing so tall, listless, waiting for the sun Branches reaching for a cold, soft sky. Trees, beautiful trees. Beauty Canadian flags. Canada. Silver white flashes of red, a temple made of stones, puddle, snow, gelatinous mud. There’s fall in spring. Cars coming……………………..Cars going………………….Dust-covered cars………..Cars. Wood Buffalo bus; people gathering, whispers of the work camps, a man struggles with a heavy bag. A pinch-hitter for a ghost baseball team, hurried footsteps going nowhere , boomerang, running to keep up with Dad. Embracing. Activity. Missing the past. Listless. Sun rays. The Sunset. Peace.
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the night i died
Natasha Loewen
The wooden slats on the window above my bath give glimpse of darkening royal blue sky— really—royal blue. I tell the truth. It’s turning the colour of a sophisticated woman’s velvet shift dress at cocktail hour. Was the royal blue just a figment of my imagination? I’ve no proof. Only what I’ve written here. The jets punctuate the water, full blast. Bubbles float as round-edged land masses the force of the undercurrent causing continental drift millions of years’ worth of geographic stories before me, fast forwarded, twisting, breaking apart. My knees are mountains, my breasts float the surface, dormant volcanoes. The jets hum, quietly violent. Your white words and my white words swirl and crash together and it’s not clear whether they are making new land or destroying old. They punch at my sides and a tickle of bubbles finds a burned-shorn forest with newest of growth cut through with a narrow valley so I adjust my position and back my head eyes closed a few minutes, reprieved and when I’ve died I open my eyes. The wooden slats are camouflaged. The sky is black. When I stand up in the light of 6:00, the neighbors can see me or they could see me were I not dead.
4 summer 2010
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
the white rabbit Ken Haigh
Sometimes the best tales leave you wanting more, twisting in the wind mayhap?
s Hugh Barnstaple left his house that crisp autumn morning, he very nearly stepped on a small white rabbit that was crouching on his doorstep. He hesitated, foot poised in mid-air. Then, as was wise for a person of his advanced years, he gripped the railing and stepped carefully over the rabbit to the sidewalk below and turned around. Strange, he thought, as he stooped to pick up the tiny origami creature. Now who could have left that there? He examined the folded paper carefully and noted the spidery black lines between the sharp folds of the paper. He gently unfolded the rabbit and flattened the page on the top of the railing. “ALICE,” was written in round cursive script, and below that “823 57CA.” What could it mean, he wondered, and why was it left on my doorstep? Some child, perhaps? He smiled. He crumpled the paper into a ball, and was about to toss it away, when, for some reason, he hesitated. He flattened the white square and looked at it a second time. What could it mean? It was cryptic, a private message. And he had a strange fancy that it was meant for his eyes alone, for him to decipher. “Humph,” he snorted and stuffed the piece of paper into his overcoat pocket instead. Hitching up his collar against the cold, he began the short walk to his work at the City Library and Archives. His leather-soled shoes clicked sharply against the frozen sidewalk. At his housewarming party in August, it had been Mathilde Proudhon who had first noticed the framed photograph on the mantel. Mathilde, or Tildy as she introduced herself to new acquaintances, was staring intently at the small portrait of a child and moving her head from side-to-
side. Hugh always made a point of being polite to Mathilde, since he knew her co-workers called her “Tildy Pudding” behind her back in reference to her great girth and rather pasty complexion. Hugh couldn’t abide social cruelty; besides it was no secret around the office that Tildy fancied Hugh, and as an old bachelor he found the attention satisfying. Mathilde was squinting intently at the photo through black-rimmed spectacles. As Hugh approached her with a glass of white wine, she twisted her head to one side and then straightened it. She repeated this manoeuvre several times, oblivious to Hugh’s approach. “Wine, Mathilde?” Hugh held out the glass. “Oh! Yes, thanks, Hugh.” She blushed and pushed her spectacles back up on the bridge of her nose. She accepted the glass with one hand and nervously brushed back a lock of rather greasy hair from her pale forehead with the other. “It’s quite spooky,” she observed, pointing to the photograph, after a noisy slurp. “When you look straight at the picture, you see a pretty little girl in a high-backed chair; but if you turn your head to one side, she disappears in a silver haze.” “It’s a daguerreotype,” Hugh explained. “Is she a relative?” “No, not a relative,” Hugh began, pleased to have an audience, “but she is related to this house. It’s quite a curious story…” But Hugh would not have the opportunity to relate his curious story, to tell Mathilde, of whom he was quite fond, as we are fond of people who flatter us and make us feel important, that the young girl in the photograph had once lived in this house, and was, in fact, the daughter of the home’s architect and builder. All this Hugh would have told Mathilde, if, at that moment, a hairy paw had not grabbed his bony shoulder and given it a great shake. “Hugh, Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Well, what can I
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say? You’ve done it.” The hand spun Hugh around, and a bright, glowing furnace of a sherry-fuelled face pushed up to his. “My boy,” said Hugh’s boss, a short, broad hairy man with a haircut like a monk’s tonsure. “You’ve done us proud. You’ve done a great thing here. You’ve done a bang up job on this place, Hugh. I must have walked past this old heap a thousand times and never thought twice. Who would have thought it would clean up so nice? Who would have thought?” A lot of people had walked past the old place for that matter and had not seen anything special, but Hugh had. Beneath the peeling paint, the sagging porch railings, the broken gingerbreading and the overflowing garbage bins, Hugh had sensed something architecturally significant. Elizabeth Terrace, constructed of local limestone in 1855, was unusual even for its day—row houses that did not look like row houses, for each unit was architecturally distinctive, and yet the whole fit together in a well-composed neo-gothic fantasy, much like Walter Scott’s Abbotsford or Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. It had been such a success in its day that the builder himself, Dougal MacDonald, had purchased the first unit, the very house which Hugh had bought and lovingly restored. Hugh had worked hard to raise awareness of his treasure. He had joined forces with the local Architectural Conservancy, and had eventually persuaded City Hall to designate Elizabeth Terrace a heritage building. Now other units were being purchased by young professionals and being restored to a Country Life splendour. “Bang on, Hugh. Bang on. You’ve really done yourself and your city proud. And to think that there was talk of tearing this old place down. Marvellous, bloody marvellous.” Yes, it was marvellous, Hugh admitted to himself. But after all of the hard work—the plastering, the painting, the stripping of old wallpaper, the re-pointing of loose mortar, the cleaning and re-glazing of stained glass—it still hadn’t felt like home. It was beautiful, but he had felt lonely rambling around the old house on his own. A house like this needs two people, he thought sadly, but
6 summer 2010
it was too late in life for him to think of marriage. Who would have him? He had toyed with the idea of inviting Mathilde over, as a kind of trial run, to see where it might lead; but then one day he had discovered the photograph, and the photograph had changed everything. It had begun that day at the Saturday Antique Market behind City Hall. He had been browsing idly through the stalls, looking for something that might fit his new home, when his eye had been drawn to a shoebox full of old photographs. He had flipped through them, slowly at first—photos of baseball teams with smiles of triumph frozen in 1931; photos of forgotten students from schools long since torn down; photos of old shops whose white-aproned proprietors leant perpetually in doorways, waiting for customers who would never come; photos of harbour scenes with excursion boats, their passengers leaning over railings wearing straw hats decked with ribbons, and clutching banjos and picnic baskets—and it seemed to him that his fingers gained a life of their own, flipping faster and faster, drawn to one photograph near the back, a tiny portrait in a cracked and faded leather frame. He regarded the serious little face, and her eyes locked with his own. “It’s a daguerreotype,” volunteered the dealer. “A bargain, at twenty bucks. Taken locally, too.” He indicated the photographer’s seal in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph. The photograph had chosen him, and he hadn’t remembered paying for it or the walk home. When he awoke on Sunday morning, he was almost startled to see it resting comfortably on the mantel in front of the large mirror. It seemed to fit. There was a rightness about it, a sense of coming home, and so it hadn’t surprised him overmuch when, using the resources of the archives where he worked, he was able to track down the photographer and his account books, and to learn that the subject of the photo was none other than Alice MacDonald, age eight, daughter of the architect, Dougal, taken on her birthday, taken in the year that she died of tuberculosis. The girl’s photograph brought life back into the
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
home. He knew it was silly, but there were times when he could sense her presence in the house— catch a swish of crinoline on the stairs or a bubble of laughter from some upstairs room. Some people would have been disturbed, but Hugh was comforted. He had taken to talking to the portrait, sharing interesting items of office gossip or amusing stories from the newspaper. Sometimes he would lean back in the big wingback chair by the fire, close his eyes, and imagine those tiny plump arms around his neck. It was comforting. He looked forward to the end of each work day, and his return to the animating spirit of the house. But when Hugh arrived at work on that crisp fall day, after his discovery of the white rabbit on his doorstep, he was anything but tranquil or comforted. His mind was in turmoil. He had fretted the whole way, unable to dismiss the obscure portent from his thoughts. “What did it mean?” he asked himself. Was it a warning? He had made a few enemies in his fight to have his home designated a historic landmark. One local real estate developer, in particular, had set his eye on the property, hoping to convert the space to high-rise condos. He looked impatiently at the pile of folders and papers on his desk. He could not concentrate on those, not today. He pulled the crumpled square of paper from his pocket and looked at it again. What could it mean? “Alice,” was a name, of course, but whose? And the numbers, what could they be: a code of some kind? A computer password? Then he noted that the first three numbers were set slightly apart from the last four digits. Now what did that remind him of? He scratched his chin. Why, a phone number, of course. The last two letters could have a numerical equivalent. He looked at the phone on his desk. Did he dare? Screwing up his courage, he pulled the phone toward him and dialled: 8-2-3-5-3-2-2. He listened carefully. But there was nothing, just emptiness, a deep well of blackness on the other end of the line, a black pocket that excluded sound. He set the receiver in its cradle in disappointment. Not a phone number then. He shuffled some papers on his desk, then sat up straight and adjusted
his glasses. Wait a moment. Something was not quite right. He picked up the phone again, more gingerly this time, and cautiously dialled the number a second time. He listened. Yes, it was as he thought. There was absolutely nothing at the other end of the line, and that was impossible. He should be hearing the phone ringing, or at the very least, he should have heard some irritating computer-generated voice informing him that the number he had dialled was not in service or that he had dialled a number to which long distance charges applied. But there was just this silence. It was almost as if.… He shuddered and hung up the phone quickly. It’s just your imagination, he told himself. It couldn’t be possible. His phone must be out of order. He picked up the phone again. The dial tone was reassuring. He dialled another number, one he knew by heart. “Good morning, reference desk, may I help you?” “Uh, sorry. I was just…it was nothing. Sorry, to have…”
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“Hugh! Is that you? I was just thinking of you. It’s Tildy. But of course you knew that.” “Oh, Tildy,” said Hugh in embarrassed confusion. “How are you?” “Fine.” There was an awkward silence. “Hugh? What can I do for you?” “Oh. You? Nothing, nothing at all.” Hugh realized immediately how rude that must have sounded and blundered on. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put it that way. It’s just that, well, it’s just that I thought maybe my phone might have been out of order, and so I dialled the first number that came into my head. I didn’t know you were working the reference desk today. I didn’t want to talk with you specifically.” As Hugh put his foot further into his mouth, the whole story tumbled out: the rabbit, the number, the dead phone line, everything. “And there was no one on the other end?” asked Mathilde. “Weird.” “Nothing, or rather there might have been, but that would have been too far-fetched.” Hugh’s voice trailed off. “What? You thought someone might have been listening? Creepy.” “Yes, well I’m sure it was just my imagination. Look, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’m sure it’s nothing. Just a glitch in the phone lines. Nothing more. Bye.” Hugh hung up the phone and mopped his brow. The phone rang again. Startled, Hugh watched it for some minutes before gingerly raising the receiver to his ear. “Hello?” he whispered. “Hugh. It’s me again. I’ve been thinking about your number. Did you say the first three digits were separate from the last four and that the last two were letters of the alphabet?” “Yes.” “Hugh, I’ve just had a brainstorm. It could be a call number.” “A call number?” “Yes, you know, a Dewey classification number, like we use here in the library. Here, give me that number again, and I’ll check it for you.” Hugh thought it over. A call number? The
8 summer 2010
more he thought about it, the more sense it made. “Wait, Tildy. I’ll be right down. We’ll check it together.” He took the elevator from the archives to the main floor and crossed the cavernous reading room to the reference desk of the City Library where Mathilde rose excitedly to meet him. “Oh, I love a good mystery,” she squealed, holding out her hand. “Let’s see that number.” Hugh handed her the crumpled piece of paper. “Odd,” she said, “quite good penmanship. Almost old-fashioned, and the writer used a fountain pen, so I don’t think it was a child.” Hugh looked at Mathilde with renewed respect. She sat down at her desk and faced the glowing computer screen. “This is one of those features you never think you will use,” she began. “Sorry?” “Oh,” she giggled, “all library software has the ability to search for a book by call number, but why would you ever want to? What earthly reason would anyone have to search by call number? Until now, that is.” “Earthly reason…” “There.” She turned the screen of the computer monitor towards Hugh, so he could see the entry. “Here’s your ‘Alice.’” She sparkled up at him. Hugh adjusted his spectacles and looked at the screen. He began to laugh. “Alice, of course. Alice in Wonderland. So that was it. No big mystery, just some kid on the way home from the library with a scrap of paper in his pocket…” “I don’t think it was a kid, Hugh. Look,” she tapped the screen. “See the location code? ‘Rare Book.’ This is a rare first edition. We don’t let kids handle those. The other copies of Alice will be with the children’s chapter books. And we don’t give Dewey classification numbers to those; just file them under the author’s last name.” She wrinkled her brow. “Curiouser and curiouser. Do you want to see it? We can, if you want.” Hugh nodded dumbly. Mathilde opened a drawer in her desk and took out a key. “Follow me,” she said. She led him across the room to a
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
the inscription out loud: “To Alice MacDonald, on the occasion of her eighth birthday. Love, Father and Mother.’ Well, what do you think of that? Hugh. Hugh?” She looked up, but Hugh was no longer there. He had vanished. Mathilde smiled, content, and looked around to see if anyone was watching her. Satisfied that she was unobserved, she grabbed the title page by the corner and carefully peeled it out of the book. Then, with the edge of her thumb, she rubbed away the traces of rubber cement that adhered to the real title page underneath, the one she had photocopied several days ago, dedicated to Hugh’s beloved Alice, and artfully aged with weak tea. It had all worked better than she could ever have hoped, but she was puzzled. The telephone business was a completely unexpected twist. It was somehow too melodramatic and upset her sense of theatre. She shrugged and replaced the volume in the locked cabinet. “Goodbye, Alice,” she giggled. “Good riddance.”
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wall of shelving with locked glass doors. She opened one of the doors, and, from a basket on the top shelf, she took out two pairs of white cotton gloves. “Here. Put these on.” From a lower shelf, she withdrew a slim cloth-bound volume and carried it to an empty study table. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the first British printing, 1865. They were withdrawn from the market because of a printing error and reissued with corrections later that year. It’s extremely rare. There are only 21 known copies in existence. Your kid, if it was a kid, had great taste.” She carefully opened the book to the title page. “Oh, look, here’s an inscription.” Hugh bent closer and read the inscription, then stood up abruptly as if stung. His head was swimming. Mathilde looked concerned. “Hugh, what’s the matter? Are you all right?” She looked at the book to see what had startled him so. “Why, she was an Alice, too! What a coincidence, our Alice was owned by an Alice.” She read
Canada Rocks with the Barenaked Ladies June 29 20th Annual TransAlta interPLAY Festival August 6 - 8 Wood Buffalo SummersEnd September 3 - 5 Alberta Arts Days September 2010
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Wood Buffalo volume 1, issue 3
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pink
Phyllis Smallman Our guest writer is a distinguished member of the Crime Writers of Canada, winner of their first ever Unhanged Arthur award and a brilliant writer with a series of unputdownable books about the best new character in mystery fiction in the last five years, Sherri Travis. From ‘Margarita Nights’, onto ‘Sex in a Sidecar’ to her latest ‘A Brewski for the Old Man’ Phyllis is
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writing great yarns, and we hope she writes many more. This story is specially for NorthWord magazine
he teenage boy wrapped the pink ribbons gently around his mother’s frail wrists to cover the harsh white bandages. “All poets do crazy things. We just have to,” his mother said. “But you won’t do it again will you, Mommy?” “Oh no,” she said and laughed lightly before her pretty face crumbled into sadness. “The blood was awful.” She shivered. “You could have died,” he said. “You already said that.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Why do you go on at me, Mattie? Isn’t it enough that your father and the doctors are always on at me?” “You scared me. I don’t want to lose you.” She lifted her head and the sun came out in her face. “Oh, my darling, you’ll never lose me.” Her jaw hardened. “Your father, on the other hand, isn’t such a sure thing. He’s going to leave us for Sheila McQuire and her son.” Red talons bit into his leg but he didn’t pull away. “You’ve been junior champion three years: this is your last year as a junior, but your father is coaching him.” Mathew moved away from her. “Dad has to work with Dave. Dad is the golf pro, he gets paid for lessons.” “And just how you think she’s paying your father?” He picked at a thread on the coverlet. “When are you coming home?” “You must help me, Mattie. Don’t let Daddy
10 summer 2010
leave me.” Before he could answer the door opened and handsome man stepped into the room. “Hi, Dad.” Beside Mathew his mother lowered her head and slumped back against the pillow, “What’s with the pink ribbons?” her husband asked. “Pink is her color,” Mathew answered. “Including pink golf balls she can never find even on the fairway. Holds up the whole field while she looks for them.” She shot upright. “If all you’re going to do is find fault, you can just leave, Tyner Holt.” “Dad didn’t meaning anything,” Mathew soothed. “He’s only teasing you.” Mathew looked up at his father, his eyes begging him to say something kind. Silence settled on the three people in the small cell like room. Finally, Mathew plunged into the silence. “Have you talked to the doctor? When can Mom come home?” He hurried to add, “She’s fine now. She promised she won’t do it again.” “They want to keep her here for forty-eight hours.” “But I want to go home,” Virginia Holt wailed. “I have to be there to see Mattie play tomorrow.” “You should have thought of that before your latest stunt.” “Don’t be beastly. Why are you always so mean to me?” “Dad?” Mathew Holt cut in, “Please.” The father took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before saying, “I want to understand,
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
Virginia, but this behaviour has grown old.” “Old?” Mattie jumped at her shriek. “Not you,” the father said, “Just this need for attention,” “Go back to your mistress,” she hissed. Tyner Holt’s shoulders slumped. “Give her brat some more tips on how he can beat your son tomorrow.” She shook her finger at him. “You should be helping Mattie.” “Mathew should be helping himself by practicing. There’s nothing more I can do for him.” He turned to his son. “You mother thinks you have a right to that championship but it belongs to the person who wins it.” “That championship is Mattie’s and if you steal it away from him, I’ll never forgive you.” “There’re lots of things you’ll never forgive me for, aren’t there, Virginia?” He was opening the door as he spoke. “If you go now, don’t come back,” she screamed The door shut softly behind him. “Now shooting, Mathew Holt, for Gladstone Country Club,” Mathew said and fitted a golf ball into his sling shot. The soda can he’d placed on the tree stump exploded into the air. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that makes him ten for ten, an incredible run for our sixteen year old champion.” He reached into the plastic bucket for another golf ball, one of his mother’s pink balls. “Mathew.” He jumped at the sound of his father’s voice then smiled tentatively, raising the hand holding the pink ball to wave. The screen door slammed behind his father. His father grabbed the pink golf ball from Mathew’s hand and slammed it down on the patio table. “Pink is for girls. You’re wasting your time fooling around. You should be out on the driving range.” Mathew watched the ball bounce wildly across the table and onto the patio stones as his father told him how worried he was about him. He watched it roll across the grass and under a bush
as his father told him he mustn’t drift through life. The championship was only one example of how Mathew wasn’t trying hard enough. School, friendships, and life in general were added to the list. Mathew could only see a small dot of pink under the azalea bush when his father added, “For god’s sake, don’t waste your abilities like your mother has.” When the screen door slammed behind his father Mathew retrieved the pink ball. Sheila McQuire, on the walking path between the houses and the golf course, called out, “Hi, Mathew.” It was almost dark when Tyner Holt returned home, no longer the picture of health he’d been that morning. He made two false starts before he finally got out, “Sheila McQuire was killed this afternoon.” Mathew didn’t respond. “The police think it was an accident, think she was killed by a stray golf ball…a pink golf ball.” “Pink is for girls.” Mathew smiled sweetly. “Everything will be all right now, won’t it, Dad?”
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taking leave
Jennifer Quist
Rachelle Northwood
You hear in baritones now — I’ll tell the soprano section one more time. “Thanks for everything,” will be the last you ever say to me. How can I hear it from you — the satellite around the picnic table, elbows half-sprung at right angles; bones in spare bedding on the saw bench; paper dollars in the mail, with all that’s great and terrible? I am taking my leave. I leave taking.
No eye contact, No. That wouldn’t be right. Watch me. So sad, so bored, watching you so sad, so bored. I will break free you will breakdown, tip me. You will not. Greedy, filthy, money. All the greedy people playing their games. Lonely Greedy Filthy Stench. Why can’t they see? Go home to your family. Ting Tang Doo Doo Doo. Watch the bright lights Make you happy. No eye contact, No.
art
Leah Hoddinott When you see something beautiful and you want to remember it. Or you love something or someone deep enough to write the words or draw a picture; To take the time and make the effort. For it to be good, That Is Art
12 summer 2010
through the glass
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
senior moment Keltie Paul
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Revenge, a dish best served with a twist?
oe Boucher lived in a drafty log cabin down by the river.
I’d do a home visit every Monday morning, accept a cup of tepid tea in an uncertain cup, check Joe’s feet for wounds and make sure he had enough meds. Our visits included the weekly denture hunt, while Joe tisk-tisked about my unmarried status. Near as we could figure, Joe was 84, but that was by his baptismal certificate, which he got when his nomadic family came in for provisions, and that meant he could have been five or six when he was baptised. Birth certificates weren’t available for children born on the trap line. Joe was fairing pretty good until his ne’er do well cousins, Frank and Matthew came back from Fort Saskatchewan. Around dusk they’d come bar-
relling into Joe’s cabin, eat him out of house and home, leaving Joe starving. People were saying what a shame and whispering about elder abuse, but no one wanted to confront the cousins – those two had nasty reputations and worse tempers. Word was they’d done large time for arson, attempted murder and break and entry. Early one Saturday, I noticed Joe heading south. I offered him a ride, but he said be setting snares out in the bush, and it wasn’t far. Seems Joe had good hunting. That night, the cousins ladled stew onto their plates and wiped up every last drop with the last of Joe’s bread. “Hey Uncle”, said Frank, “that’s good stew!! What’s in it? Joe took his cane and opened the bag at this feet just enough to give his nephews a good look at oily black feathers, claws and beaks. Frank hit the door first, but Matthew bolted, crushing each other in the door jam. I tracked a vomit trail from Joe’s cabin to the air strip. We never saw the cousins again. Joe died the next spring leaving a full larder and a safer town.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. John Keats, Endymion (780-715-1641) BREATHEASY.Inc@shaw.ca Upper Level, Thickwood Medical Centre, Fort McMurray
the hasty highway Stephanie Werner
W
Ah amore, that first flush. Sweet yet sour; warm, but also cold. The path of true love has many a twist and turn.
here I grew up it’s not easy to get lost.
The streets are numbered in order from 1 to 6, with Main cutting a slice between 3rd and 2nd. The avenues that run north-south are numbered as well; but 1st Ave. is almost always called “Railroad” because the railroad tracks run right beside it. If you stand looking at those tracks you can watch a train go off into the yellow fields in the distance. Sometimes I would watch the train and dream about leaving, even though the farthest I had ever been was Calgary, an hour away. Ever since the rage of the tsunami was broadcast on the news, it was my dream to go to Thailand. I watched the swirling water swallow up the beaches and buildings, the swaying palm trees bend under the wind’s weight, and sighed that I hadn’t been there before the wave tore into everything. I often heard the train horn mournfully calling me from across town. I could just escape on that train; but it was a freight train and never stopped. It had so many cars that if you are waiting for it to go by, you’d think it would never end. My boyfriend, Kyle Hasty, was the hockey hero of our town. Everyone thought he was the next Wayne Gretzky, they said he would play for the Oilers one day. His father secretly hoped he would take over the farm, but Kyle believed what people said about him. He had his eye set on the NHL. Kyle would sit in his truck with me on the shoulder of the Hasty highway that ran between secondary highways 530 and 528. It was called the Hasty highway because it was his grandfather, Carl Hasty senior, who had built it, or had it built along one edge of his property line. It was a road that didn’t really go anywhere; just a shortcut between roads that went somewhere. My dad
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told me drunks would take the Hasty highway to avoid the Mounties who patrolled the secondary highways, but rarely the side roads. That’s what they thought, since he knew all about it and they kept him and his breathalyser busy most Saturday nights. Kyle loved to drive out there and park beside the Hasty highway; I think he thought of it as his inheritance. “When I’m in the NHL, will you still come to every game?” he would say, leaning back in the seat of his truck with his arm around me, Shania Twain singing “That Don’t Impress me Much” in the background. “Of course.” Then he would sigh and reach over to me, and kiss me slowly, like I had just given him the best gift ever and he wanted to pay me back. By the time we were in grade 11, Kyle and I were the couple in our school. We had been together for two years, and everyone in town knew we were together and expected big things from us. “Kyle will be in the NHL and Sarah will be writing for the Herald,” predicted my father to his fellow officers at coffee break. I know this because the steno, Doreen, repeated it to me and to everyone else in town. It was October, and Hockey season was about to begin. The nights were getting colder, but still as usual Kyle and I went to park on the shoulder of the Hasty highway. That night, the bed of his truck was lined with grey flannel. “I heard there was going to be shooting stars tonight,” he explained, as he helped me climb up. We lay down and stared up at the sky. It was a completely cloudless night, and the wind had the chill of winter in it. The Milky Way lay over us like a blanket, and you could see all the stars in between the stars you normally saw in town. There were no lights around other than the Earles’ place off in the distance. Kyle wiggle-walked his fingers under my neck
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
to put his arm around me as we lay there. “I love you, Sarah.” he said, still looking at the stars. “Really?” I looked at him. “There’s one!” he cried, pointing at a shooting star. “Oh, shoot. I missed it.” I turned my face back to the sky. I felt Kyle’s other hand on my hip, sneaking its way under my fleece sweater. I shivered. “Are you OK?” “Yeah, just cold,” I said. Kyle snuggled closer to me. I stubbornly kept my eyes on the stars, willing them to fly. He nuzzled my neck and started kissing it. I shivered again. “Still cold?” “Yeah.” I chuckled, my teeth chattering a bit. Now his hands were on my back under my shirt, rubbing my back. They were cold, too, which made it so much worse. But the friction warmed me up a bit. I had to keep my eyes on the stars; I had a wish I wanted to make. I remembered when I was a little girl camping with my dad. We stayed up late one night after my mom and brother had gone to sleep and we stared at the stars. That was when he taught me the few constellations he knew: the Big and Little Dippers, of course, and Orion. My favourite was Cassiopeia, the sideways W, just like my last name. In school we learned that the constellations are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. I wondered how they looked from the beach in Phuket. Kyle undid my bra. His warmed hands started inching their way around my sides and up the front of my shirt. He emerged from the warm recesses of my neck and closed his eyes. He started kissing me slowly, that way he did. I kissed him back, straining my eyes to look up, up…out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash. “Was that one?” “Huh?” “A shooting star.” “I dunno, Sarah,” Kyle went back to kissing me, his eyes closed again but I kept my eyes open.
All this was ground we had covered before, until he started undoing my jeans. “Whoa, wait a second.” “What do you mean? Aren’t you into it?” I sat up. “I don’t know, Kyle. It’s just so cold here.” I could feel a draft where he had unzipped my fly. “I can warm you up.” “That’s not what I mean,” I said. I had to physically push him off me to button back up. “Come on, Sarah.” Kyle’s voice was whiny, and he pouted a little. I remembered how he used to act in kindergarten. Pouting and using his eyes to his advantage to get his way. His big blue eyes were part of his popularity, I knew. Not only the other girls at school, but half the ladies in town swooned over Kyle. Our kindergarten teacher sure fell for them every time. “It’s just...” “I love you,” said Kyle, as if that settled it. As I stared at him, willing him to listen to me, I spotted another flash. I looked up but it was gone already. “It’s just that I was really excited to see the shooting stars. I’ve never seen a meteor shower before.” “Are you freaking kidding me? Listen Sarah, either you love me and you want to be with me, or you don’t. Make up your mind; don’t give me some bullshit about a meteor shower.” My mom always told me: “you’re a gift: don’t give yourself away,” and I hadn’t. Suddenly I saw Kyle for the first time. His blond hair was perfectly styled, his shirt was Abercrombie and Fitch, and he could have been modelling in one of their ads right now except for the flatbed of the truck didn’t make a great backdrop for a photo shoot. He had dreams of being in the NHL. But if he left, and went to Edmonton, or wherever, he would have to start over. I saw myself in a few years, shackled to him. I saw my dreams flying away in the wind. Not just Thailand — but Paris, Venice, New Zealand. All of the beauty of the world would be lost to the insides of arenas, the smell of the blue ice, and the cold, always the cold.
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As I was thinking this, I finally saw a shooting star, and made a wish. “You’re right, Kyle, just take me home.” “What do you mean? I don’t want to go home yet.” “Well, I do. Take me home now, please.” I crossed my arms over my chest, holding up my breasts which were still loose under my fleece sweater. “Screw you.” Kyle jumped up, taking the blanket with him. “Get out,” he snarled. I jumped down out of the truck bed into the ditch. Without looking back at me, Kyle slammed the tailgate, and walked to the driver’s side of the truck. I scrambled around the other side of the truck to open the passenger side door, but before I could grab the door handle, the truck started, and I heard the doors lock. “Kyle!” I banged on the truck, “KYLE! Open the door!” In response, the tires spun and the truck sped away. I stood abandoned on the shoulder of the Hasty highway like a lonely hitchhiker. The taillights of the truck as it sped away were the only vehicle I could see in either direction. Crossing my arms again, I tried running after him for a bit, but it was no use. Soon the taillights disappeared. Straining my hands behind me, I redid my bra, and started towards the town lights. I plodded through the cold wind that stung my ears and eyes. I heard coyotes howling off in the distance, they sounded lonely and sad. Then came the tears that froze on my wind-chapped cheeks. The wind bent the weeds in the ditch until they bowed away from me, avoiding me as I passed. Stars flashed overhead as I watched my feet
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trudge, one in front of the other. Finally I saw headlights approaching from the other direction. I tried to ignore the car, looking down at my runners and the dust they kicked up from the gravel. Everything was grey in the darkness. I heard the car pass, then the tires screech as they did a fast u-turn. I cringed, wondering which townsperson I would have to face. Then I looked up and saw the lights, dim but present on the top of the white Crown Victoria, familiar red, blue and yellow stripes along the side. My dad stopped the patrol car beside me on the side of the Hasty highway. He leaned over and opened the front passenger door. “Your mom said you were late. I figured I’d go for a ride, see if I spotted you. What happened?” “I don’t want to talk about it.” My dad sighed. “Fine, get in.” I climbed into the cruiser, my left leg pressed up against the shotgun in its metal brace. The police radio static and dispatcher’s nasal voice mumbled softly. My dad drove me home in his warm police car, and we never spoke about what had happened. A few years later, as I looked up at the stars upside-down in the sky from the beach in Phuket, I thought about Kyle Hasty, and silently thanked him for leaving me on the side of the Hasty highway. I hadn’t given him my gift, but he had, in a sense, given me one. I had to chuckle a little, too, since I knew that he was married right after high school graduation to Kendra Stevens. They lived in a trailer on Railroad Ave. with their two kids, and the only Oilers jersey he wore was one with the famous number 99 on it.
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
undying love Gordon McEachern
“J
From the Stephen King guide to true romance?
ordan, don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic?”
The shovel dug into the earth again. Schuk! He was up to his ribcage, now. He’d been digging since morning. Schuk! Schuk! Schuk! Jordan Caskill was digging a grave. “Are you ignoring me?” asked Danielle. “You’re actually ignoring me. A twenty-five year old man.” She folded her arms across her purple tank top. “You are such a goddam baby.” Schuk! The earth he’d exhumed slid off the shovel in a metallic grind, the pebbles and stones dribbling together like fistfuls of coins. The mound beside the grave was large. Embarassingly large. Soon to be humiliatingly large, which is what this manboy wants Danielle thought. Still... Schuk! “Jordan!” “You judge me, you tell me what I’m feeling, you care about dick all but yourself.” He dug again. “That’s you, Danielle.” “Can’t we go in and talk about it?” “I am talking,” he panted. He still wore the blueand-yellow coveralls he came home from work in. “I’m talking with my shovel.” Danielle flipped her mousy brown ponytail and pouted─a high-school ploy that rarely, if ever, worked for adult women. But it was hard to let go of something that used to be so successful. “What are you trying to prove, Jordan? If you’re trying to make me feel like shit, it’s working, ok? Mission accomplished.” Schuk! “I’m not trying to make you feel anything,” he said. “I no longer care how you feel. That’s the point
of this exercise. You think I’m digging a goddam grave for the fun of it?” “Why, then?” Jordan shrugged. “I’m saying good-bye. This hole is my good-bye note. I’m writing nice, big letters so you don’t misunderstand.” It was three o’ clock and the sun over Wood Buffalo was blazing. Summer in Fort McMurray, Alberta was not a season. It was a respite. A brief, blessed window of warm yellow before cold white returned. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other and bit her lip, feeling the dandelions against her smooth brown legs and playing out the dramedy of this morning─the same sitcom they’d staged a dozen times since intertwining their lives a year ago in the form of a new F-150 and a shared Mastercard and an $850,000 dollar home and an English pug named Petro adopted on a Sunday afternoon at the Gregoire SPCA. Schuk! Schuk! 7:00 A.M. – His shift ends. Another bleary night waves farewell. Watch the pumpkin dawn over drab, endless boreal. 9:00 A.M. – Front door squeaks open. Petro barks. Chunks of tar sand roll across the clean linoleum. 9:15 A.M. – Kettle whistling. Windows bursting with sun. He’s going to cover the bedroom windows with aluminum foil and hears his girlfriend pad across the landing. 9:30 A.M. – No breakfast, she slept in. Why didn’t he separate the laundry yesterday, all her La Senza stuff was mixed in with his work clothes and her three pairs of dress pants lying misshapen in the dryer were Dry Clean Only? Go back to fucking bed, he shouts and instantly regrets it but, Christ, he’s tired and that foreman Neil is such a prick. 10:00 A.M. – He feels spun in the carousel of the shift-work fatigue circus. Being this sleepy in
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the morning light is how he imagines an out-ofbody experience must feel. The tension is razor wire. The pretty house a tinderbox. Why can’t you appreciate how tired I am after night shift, Danielle? Why can’t you accept you’re not the only one who works hard, Jordan? Dagger words masquerading as discussion. Accusations. Child’s play. This is what I have to come home to? he shouts. This is what I moved to Alberta for? she shouts back. 10:15 A.M. – She takes his work clothes, all of his work clothes, and throws them in a garbage bag and puts them on the curb. It’s a petty act─she’s on a roll now!─but it’s a breaking point. 10:20 A.M. – He stands statue-still in the dining room, watching her, becoming drowned by an awful negative sea. Petro, please stop barking. This game isn’t fun, anymore. 10:25 A.M. – Jordan walks to the shed and grabs a spade. A brand new spade. Still has the price tag on the handle. He goes to the backyard and begins to dig. Schuk! One hour later he climbed out of the rectangular hole, completely covered in clay and sweat and tiny bits of roots. Danielle bit her lip again, she couldn’t cry, she would not cry; would not validate this argument with tears. “Jordan, do you want some lunch?” He looked at her as if she’d sprouted horns. Softly, he said: “I’m going to pack.” Now her lips began to quiver. This is real. It’s not real! People fight, then make up. Hug. Smile. Fuck. This is real. The veranda door slid shut. A bus revved into the hot afternoon. Somewhere, in some yard, a Pomeranian yapped. It really was a beautiful day. Danielle shuffled to the edge of the grave and peered inside. It was quite well done for his first grave. The sides were very straight. The grave was very deep. Near the bottom an earthworm wriggled. Jordan came back outside and strode towards her, bits of dirt tumbling from his legs into a trail. “Did you track that all through the house?” His face was set and silent. He had covered him-
18 summer 2010
self with Axe body spray. “What are you planning to bury in your grave?” she asked petulantly. Jordan grabbed her wrist, pulled off the diamond promise ring and tossed it into the hole. “Us,” he said. Danielle’s legs went weak. She suddenly felt extremely hot, burning hot, as if stricken with fever. Their once-pretty yard began to spin and a sharp pain bloomed inside her chest. Schuk! All Danielle could think was: what will I tell the neighbours. Then she heard Jordan’s voice: screw the neighbours! Could two compatible people warp over time and become something misshapen, like Legos in the microwave? Or did lust, loneliness and social norms force a square peg into a round hole? The pleasant Thursday afternoon pressed down on her sweat-frizzed hair. Danielle could hear the shower running through the open bathroom window. Numb. Sick. Bee. Bus. Cloud. An hour later she was still standing, perspiring, beside the hole. Jordan came around the side of the house in Nike tee and shorts. The jumble of house keys hit her in the butt. “It’s yours now.” Then he added, “Bitch.” Danielle replied with one scalding tear, only vaguely registering her boyfriend and partner was graciously handing her not just the house keys but an eight-hundred thousand dollar mortgage. Thanks, baby, have a nice life. Jordan walked away with his possessions in a big orange garbage bag. How. Could this possibly. Happen? Danielle attempted to be rational but an emotional voice answered. Love is blind, sweetheart. But so is heartbreak. The tears cascaded down in great sobbing heaves but Danielle fought them. She picked up Jordan’s shovel and began to fill in the grave. The moon was up by the time she wobbled the last spade of earth into the hole. Danielle’s mind functioned on the kind of half-numb auto-pilot
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
usually reserved for paper-boys and check-out cashiers. Her muscles ached. Her bones throbbed. Her joints were seized with rust. Wood Buffalo lay quiet all around her – this network of pretty yards hung here and there with Chinese lanterns, green and blue and yellow and red, lighting up patio blocks with thistles in between the cracks and assorted Snoopy doghouses and open, extinguished barbeques whose embers still glowed the faintest red, smelling of grease and charcoal. The stars were out. The house was empty. Jordan was gone. But Danielle wasn’t crying anymore. She stumbled into the house, following Jordan’s cookie-trail of bitumen, and pulled the Jack Daniels from the cupboard. “You really are the best therapy.” She tipped an inch into a glass, added pop, then another inch of JD. The sweat on her skin began to cool. Upstairs, Petro whined. Is he coming back? No, the whiskey answered, he ain’t coming back. So fill ‘er up again and we’ll drink a toast to loneliness. Then you and I can spend the night together. Danielle drained the glass in a single swallow, then floundered zombie-like through the silent house. The LCD flatscreen was off, its screen black and silent, the living room painted in broad strokes of shadow. When she was home – when they were both home – the TV was always on. The TV, in fact, was never off. How could you fuck this up? “You can’t have a partnership only in the good times,” Danielle confessed to the LCD. “A partnership has to kick-in in the bad times, too.” The emptiness in her veins was ugly. And already she recognized it – a big, fat post-partum depression, rolling up its sleeves and grinning like an imp, preparing to eat her heart alive. Danielle went to bed.
It was a warm night and she slept with the window open. Danielle lay in the cute spare bedroom she and her mother had decorated with Newfoundland mementos and yard-sale treasures. She hated the cold but the combination of toasty comforter and fresh room was pleasant. Around one AM a scratching from the backyard woke her up. Danielle lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and thought: Jordan, you sonofabitch, you’re sneaking around the yard trying to scare me. She flung back the quilt her grandmother had stitched, went to the window and stared down at the moonlit back yard. The scratching came again, clear and sharp, but it wasn’t Jordan. It was a hand crawling out of the buried grave. Danielle blinked. Blinked again. The hand was now a hand and a wrist, then a hand and a wrist and a forearm, then an elbow – thin and grey and rotted in the moonlight. One arm was quickly joined by another. Something was trying to extricate itself from the soil she had filled-in with her own hands only hours before. Danielle glanced at the glowing red numbers on the bedside clock-radio. By the time she looked back, head and shoulders had joined the arms twisting up through the dirt like an earthworm. The shoulders were gaunt, the head a hideous knob sporting a few wisps of awful hair. Now a chest and torso appeared, grains of clay sifting through exposed ribs (ribs! Am I really seeing ribs?). The thing crawling from the hole was almost free, using its hands, its claws, for leverage as it hauled forth bony hips and narrow legs that resembled spindles on a chair. Danielle couldn’t move, her mind in a paralyzed nightmare but her body terribly awake. The thing that crawled from the hole rose and
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began to shuffle towards the house, its gait clumsy and stiff, as if the proper tendons and nerves were rotten and no longer worked. At last, her legs began to carry her away from the window, then to the doorway, then into the hall. Before she understood what she was doing, Danielle ran down the carpeted stairs, got halfway, clutched the banister and retreated, then ran down again. Past the lifeless flatscreen, through the pantry nook with its smells of bread and coffee, into the kitchen. The thing had beaten her. Danielle couldn’t see it clearly as the backyard remained gloomy while the kitchen lights were bright, but she could see enough of the skeletal monstrosity to know it was the world’s best cure for heartbreak. She felt light-headed with horror when the exhumed thing came right up to the kitchen window and pressed its face to the glass. The eyes of the creature were watery and bright, floating in a mask of flaking skin. Its eyes blinked,
blinked again, and Danielle shuddered with the terrifying certainty those grey-white orbs recognized her. The monster nodded, its lips stretched across rotten teeth and Danielle felt warm pee fill her pajamas then ripple down her leg. Upstairs, Petro howled in an awful way she had never heard before. Danielle shut her eyes tight, squeezed them – just like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz – and when her eyes re-opened the window was empty, the backyard was peaceful and Wood Buffalo lay bathed in moonlight. The doorbell nearly made her die of fright. Bewildered, Danielle drifted through the house to the front door, her warm, wet pajamas now cold, wet pajamas. Jordan stood on the step, sheepish and exhausted, still wearing his Nike tee. She had never loved him more than at this moment. “I’m sorry, baby,” he offered, dropping the orange garbage bag. “This relationship is kinda hard to kill.”
teenage obsession Patricia Marie Budd
And remember the step from twisted, to kinky, to downright perverted, is a small one. This excerpt is from local author Patricia Marie Budd’s new book, Hellhounds of the High School… due out in the summer of 2010.
As Mrs. Bird plops herself down on the ratty old couch in the staff room, she declares, “I give up!”
Kicking her feet up on the coffee table she throws her head back in a desperate attempt to relax. Wood looks up from the photocopier. “Aw, Birdie, don’t do that.” “I mean it!” Bird exclaims, sitting upright and swilling her body around so she can look at Mr. Wood.
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“Give up on what?” Miss. Payne inquires. She has just entered the staff room. Seeing Bird in a state of distress, she sits down next to her on the couch. “Trying to teach those little—” Bird pounds her fist on her thigh to avoid swearing. “you-knowwhats some manners!” Bird is on another rant. “What is it with teenage boys and their penises?” Wood, laughing, joins them by sitting in the armchair across from the couch. “This could turn into an interesting bitch session.” “My goodness,” Bird laments, “women are con-
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
stantly accused of penis envy if they so much as show a modicum of strength in the workplace—: “Turn around, Payne commands,” came the order — teachers, they never know how to ask nicely. Bird complies, allowing Miss. Payne to begin rubbing her shoulders. She groans a sigh of relief before continuing on with her lament. “But, when it comes right down to it, penis envy is way more prominent in the teenage boy!” Payne bursts out laughing. Even Wood smirks. “One can’t even begin to count the number of phallic symbols boys draw all over my tables—even all over each other’s faces.” “What?” a stunned Payne inquires. The massaging stops and Bird turns to face her again. “Yeah,” Bird nods her head up and down in rapid succession. “Yesterday I went to the bathroom only to return to Greg drawing a penis on Damien’s face.” “And Damien let him?” Wood asks. “I know the kid is stupid, but come on.” “I guess he told Damien to close his eyes and guess what he was drawing.” “Yup,” Wood confirms, “Damien is that stupid.” Bird pauses briefly to reflect. “Why did I ever show them 10 Things I Hate About You?” “Behind on marking again?” Wood asks. “I wish I still taught English,” Payne laments. “I miss being able to show all those movies.” “Yeah, it’s kinda hard to justify a movie in math,” Wood adds sympathetically. “Hey, it’s curriculum based!” Bird replies in defence of her curriculum. Then shaking her head violently, “No, no, get off the movies, people. I had a crappy day!” Emphasizing the severity of her distress by pounding two fingers into her chest. “What did McAsshole do this time?” Wood inquires. Everyone knows that, whenever Bird complains about a crappy day, she is really complaining about Gregory McGregor. “He was drawing phallic symbols all over his table.” Wood starts to sing, “Here a penis, there a
illustration: Tara Nakano
penis—” Payne follows his lead and joins in on the song, “everywhere a penis, penis. Old McBirdie had a class, ee-eye, ee-eye, oh.” Completely ignoring their warped sense of humour, Bird rambles on, “You haven’t heard the best of it. On one of his penis drawings, the scrotum had eyes and the shaft had a runny nose.” Wood cackles, “This kid’s creative.” “Oh, he is a creative little wisecracker. Another penis spanned the length of three tables. And, of course, they were all erect. Well, I finally had had enough, so I asked McGregor what he was trying to prove by drawing all these penises.” “What did he say?” asks Wood. “Well, look at you,” Bird comments sardonically, “you’ll never talk about the state of education, but mention one word about the crazy antics of students and suddenly you’re all ears.” “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Wood rolls his eyes. “Just answer the question.” “Nothing,” a distressed Bird replies. “He just laughed.” Wood and Payne laugh too. “What did you do next?” Payne asks. “I crossed over to my desk and grabbed my hand sanitizer—” “Good thinking,” Payne adds, “that’s stuff’s like acid—it’ll cut through just about anything.” Without even a pause, Bird carries on with her story “—then marched back over to Greg’s table where I started to squirt gobs of the stuff all over
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his graphic penises.” She mimes every action as if she were still in the class with her arms pumping at her side for the marching, her right index finger pumping up and down for the hand sanitizer. Then, suddenly, she puts her hands up on each side of her head with palms open. Her jaw drops open. “What does that look mean?” Wood asks. Bird drops the stunned expression—and her hands—to explain, “The hand sanitizer goop looked like semen!” Wood and Payne burst into raucous laughter, Wood starting to show his age by rasping and coughing. “To make matters worse,” says Bird, also enjoying the humour, “I started frantically rubbing away at the penis as fast as possible succeeding only in animating Greg’s art work and increasing the vociferous laughter in
the classroom.” “How the hell did you keep from laughing yourself?” Wood asks, practically in tears. “I couldn’t.” Bird admits defeat. “I ended up laughing with the rest of them.” “No doubt that only made matters worse,” Payne suggests. “Well, it certainly didn’t help.” Bird agrees whilst shaking her head. “So, Greg looked up at me and smirked, ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you Miss?’” All three teachers burst into laughter. Bird winks, “Susie topped the whole thing off, though, when she stated most emphatically, “I am never using hand sanitizer again.” Wood and Payne resume laughing, this time at Bird’s imitation of the prissy young woman.
marginalia by Douglas Abel
the end of the book? My title does not refer to the last page of a written work, with the anticipated “final words”—“And they lived happily ever after;” “I knew it was the Butler in the library;” “God bless us, every one.” Instead, I’m talking about the possible end of the “written work” itself as a tangible physical object. I feel strongly that the disappearance of books as objects would be a bad, or at least a sad, thing. However, even as an avowed bibliophile, I’m not exactly sure why I feel this way. Certainly, the book as physical object has three distinct disadvantages: size, weight and bulk. My wife and I recently moved and “downsized” considerably, and faced the physically and emotionally painful task of winnowing the contents of twelve full-size bookcases down to four. The source of the physical pain was obvious: books are heavy! Packing them up and then lugging them around to the local library (as donations), our workplace (free to anyone who wanted them), the local used book store (that would take almost none, even for free, because of space limitations) or, sadly, the dump (only the most outdated, decrepit and tattered vol22 summer 2010
umes) was exhausting work. More surprising was the emotional pain associated with every decision to “keep” or to “kick” a particular work. Am I likely to read this book again? If so, will it be readily available elsewhere? This book was a gift; can I dispose of it and be thankless to the giver? This book was bought at a crucial time in my life; when the book is gone, will the memories go with it? So two points for e-books and e-readers. If I’d had many of those discarded books in electronic format, I wouldn’t have had to make painful decisions, or nurse a sore back. The inconvenience of books as objects also becomes evident when we travel. We always pack several books each—not too inconvenient when we’re voyaging by car, but definitely so when we’re flying. Inevitably, we run through our reading material before the holiday is over, and have to find a bookstore to feed our bibliographic appetite. This is little more than a mild annoyance when travelling in North America, but can become problematic when journeying abroad.
northword: A Literary Journal of Canada’s North
I faced that problem two summers ago in Japan, when I went through my stock of books. Where and how do you find English books in Japan, when you can’t even ask for them in Japanese? I thought I’d been rescued when I discovered a bookstore in the town square, with an immense neon sign that declared, in English above the Katakana characters, “BOOK!” I looked up the Japanese words for “book,” “buy” and “please,” I entered the store. I “conversed” for several minutes with a polite but confused sales clerk. They had no English books. Apparently, the Japanese just think large signs in English are trendy status symbols. So, two more points for e-books. I could have loaded up enough e-texts to keep me busy throughout our holiday—with a better Japanese phrase book thrown in as well. Yet I still cling to the book as object. I find that attachment especially curious because it does not apply to other artistic media. I have no problem with the increasing dominance of music by electronic formats, where people browse, buy (sometimes) and listen with no actual intervening physical objects—vinyl, tapes, CDs—whatsoever. From website to earbuds with nothing specifically physically tangible in between. During the downsizing I mentioned, I also recorded digitally, and then purged, my entire vinyl collection. Not a single record was brought to our new home. Yet memory, and history, and nostalgia, clung to almost every one of those albums. I remembered sliding specific records out of their sleeves for the first time, recalled admiring the cover art, could travel back to the specific university party where a scratch and a skip had been inflicted on Cut Three of Side Two. Why was it so easy to part with these objects, media not actually required to hear the music, just as a printed book is not actually required to read the story? Could the difference be no more than the fact that records, CDs and tapes require an intervening object—the player—to be enjoyed, while the book requires only the eyes of the reader? You need to play a CD on something; you need only open a book—the player and the recipient of the playing are the same.
Ultimately, however, I don’t believe that the answer lies in some “intervening medium” difference. An avowed vinyl lover would be as appalled by my discarding of my record collection as I was disturbed by my purging of my physical library. The attachment to the book as physical object lies in me, the specific reader, rather than in the nature of books themselves. Those objects are an essential part of so many of my best experiences. I can give one personal example. Our family owns a cherished, battered copy of Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon.” It was read to each of our children in turn, dozens of times. At some point one of the children turned a page too energetically, and tore it. The page was still in one piece, but the rip was there. One night a visiting uncle decided to read to one of the kids. “Goodnight Moon” was the book the child chose. The uncle quickly learned the game that was always played with this book: the reader would prompt, “Goodnight . . .” and the child would complete the line: “room,” “moon,” “cow jumping over the moon.” When he got to damaged page, the uncle demanded, “What’s this?” “A ripped page.” “Well then, you need to say ‘Goodnight, ripped page.’” That became the family tradition. At every reading of that copy of that book, of that printed object with its particular flaw, at exactly the same place, would come “Goodnight, ripped page!” As I contemplate a possible world without physical books, even with all the advantages of convenience, portability, easy access and effortless storage that e-texts and e-readers provide, I wonder what would happen to the mutual experience of that particular book, that shared family object. Will a future uncle sit with a child on his lap, a Kindle or iPad in front of them, and make a game of “Goodnight, smudged screen”? For that matter, what will happen to the butler in the library, when there are no libraries to buttle in?
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contributors douglas abel is an actor, director, writer, and drama instructor with a keen eye on the world around him and an appreciation of the needs and feelings of the people he comes in contact with. patricia marie budd is the author of the historical fiction A New Dawn Rising. Patricia spent three years researching slave law and life in Georgia in the early 1800s. Patricia is currently working on her second novel Hell Hounds of the High School. This soon to be released work is a comical look at the ins and outs of high school experience. Patricia moved to Fort McMurray in 1991 and teaches high school English. Check out her website at: www.patriciamariebudd.ca. carli gaudet is an artist who was born and raised in Fort McMurray. She is currently enrolled in the Visual Art and Design program at Keyano College. Her artistic influences come mainly from African and Japanese art. She hopes to continue her studies in art after Keyano and to one day live in Japan. ken haigh has lived in Alberta, Bhutan, China and on Baffin Island. His memoir of life as a teacher in eastern Bhutan, Under the Holy Lake, was published by the University of Alberta Press in 2008. He lives in Clarksburg, Ontario, where he works as a freelance writer and librarian. leah hoddinott is a lifelong resident of Fort McMurray. Home educated from Grades 1–11, her passion for writing started when, at the beginning of grade 6, she was handed a notebook and told to write one full page per day of anything she wished. The rest is history. natasha loewen is originally from Northern Ontario and is now settled in Alberta. The mother of four young children, she is just now pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in English through the University of Calgary. She writes for various online publications. gordon mceachern, was born in Windsor, Ontario, grew up on Cape Breton Island and has been a resident of Alberta since late-2004. He has published work in the Cape Bretoner magazine, Pottersfield Portfolio and Innovation. Presently, Gordon is compiling an anthology of short fiction as well as completing a manuscript of historical fiction set in northern Alberta. He resides in FortMcMurray with his wife, Lauren.
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rachelle northwood was born in Winnipeg and now resides in Selkirk, Manitoba where she graduated from Lord Selkirk High School in 2006. Her career interests lie in the Health Care field and she has excelled at various sports. Rachelle was a member of the Selkirk Royals Volleyball Club that won the Provincial AAAA Volleyball Championship in 2005 and she has won numerous Judo tournaments as a junior competitor. She also enjoys playing Ringette and Baseball. This is Rachelle’s first published work. keltie jean paul has lived most of her adult life in Northern Alberta. A self-described “found-time writer”, she crafts short stories that explore legend and legacy. Her environment provides the basis of stories that evolve into snapshots of lives and experiences in rural and urban communities. She and her husband live in Fort McMurray, Alberta. jennifer quist is a freelance writer, researcher, and poet displaced from Fort McMurray and now living in central Alberta. Along with a previous contribution to NorthWord, her work has appeared in The Prairie Journal, filling station, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, CBC radio and dozens of other North American publications. phyllis smallman’s debut mystery, Margarita Nights, won the first Arthur Ellis Unhanged Arthur in 2007 and was short listed in 2009 for best first novel by the Crime Writers of Canada. Other Sherri Travis mysteries followed — Sex in a Sidecar, A Brewski for the Old Man and Champagne for Buzzards, due out in 2011. Phyllis worked in libraries before becoming a potter. In 2007 she moved Salt Spring Island, B. C. and turned to a life of crime. www.phyllissmallman.com stephanie werner is a poet, teacher, writer, and mother of two formerly of Montreal, Quebec; Three Hills, Alberta; and Fort McMurray, Alberta. Currently, she lives in St Albert, Alberta. “The Hasty Highway” was inspired, in part, by her experiences living in Three Hills — where there is a real Hasty highway.
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Political philosophy is a systematic discourse about the nature of politics. It inquires into human nature, justice, political associations and law. In so doing, it seeks to bring to light the nature of the good regime or way of life best suited to man. The aim of this course is to introduce the students to the major political thinkers of the past.
POLSC 210E: History of Political Thought Wednesday Evenings 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. Starts September 1, 2010 Ends April 13, 2011
keyano.ca CALL 780-791-4801 TO REGISTER.
Northern Canada Collective Society for Writers’ Statement of Purpose: To publish and support the work of writers in northern Canada.
call for submissions: Calling All Writers Issue number 4 of NorthWord will be published in Fall of 2010. We are looking for short stories or excerpts from current projects, fiction or non-fiction (3000 words maximum), verse of no more than 50 lines, along with anything surprising, original, evocative or interesting. If it can be published, we’re interested. Your work does not necessarily have to be about the north, but preference will be given to those that are. • •
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The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2010. Please submit to The Editors, northword@hushmail.com