#THE HOBO BIRD OF EAGLE STREET

[literarygoon]

“This is how you talk to strangers”

by Will Johnson, originally published in Prairiefire

I’ve been reading the King James Bible lately. I like it so far. Sometimes I sit cross-legged on my roof, smoking cigarettes and flipping through Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy. I haven’t even made it to the New Testament. My favorite book so far is Ecclesiastes. Here’s this guy Solomon with nine hundred wives who can’t even sort his shit out. Everything is meaningless. It’s pretty bleak stuff. Actually, that’s what Hemingway named The Sun Also Rises after, a passage from Ecclesiastes. I read that book about three times a year. If those two were alive, I bet they would be fun to drink with. It would be one of those nights where you end up flipping over a table for no reason. The kind of night where you wake up the next morning and you feel totally humiliated in front of no one but yourself.

I grew up in Labrador City, the Iron Ore Capital of Canada. I was a pretty happy kid, actually. My mother loved us and my father made enough money, which is more or less all you need when you’re little. One day I was sitting on this pier with my two older brothers and this seagull started to pick on a smaller one. It pecked at it viciously and fluffed up its feathers and squawked. We all rooted for the smaller gull, even though it was destined to lose over and over again. My brothers kept throwing them French fries to fight over. Eventually the smaller bird just flew away. I don’t know why I remember that. 

Isn’t the mind terrible?

I never knew how isolated I was until I left. The first time I drove into Toronto I felt like someone was sitting on my face. So many people everywhere. I’ve done a lot of traveling in the last few years—Chicago, New York, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Whitehorse, Vancouver, Tofino—but I never really get used to it. Walking on a sidewalk is a contact sport. In the bar everyone looks like a Viking except for me. I didn’t know how I was ever supposed to meet a girl. Shit, I don’t know how anyone ever meets anyone. It seems so illogical. I dare you to go three or four days without talking to anyone. Consider it a spiritual exercise that leads you nowhere worthwhile. Drive around to random cities, listen to On The Road on audiotape, smoke cigarettes and start thinking about everything that’s wrong with you. Seriously, try it. See what you think.

A few years ago I was walking around Charlottetown, just hating my life, and I was looking at this KFC sign. I thought wow, someone’s responsible for making that. I could never make anything nearly as beautiful. If everyone in the world had my drive, we would be living like hobos. I can’t even parallel park.

The greatest moment in life is when a woman lifts her hips, just slightly, to let you pull off her pants. Like this is really happening to me. The second greatest moment is when your car is all packed with everything you own, and you know you’ve got a lot of driving ahead of you, but at the other end is a job. Last year I was sleeping on my brother’s couch and I had been drunk for an entire month. It was time to move on—I was starting to get the distinct impression that his girlfriend didn’t like me very much. As I was pulling out of the driveway my brother ran after me, and when he came up to me in the street I thought he would say something like it’s been good or good luck with the job, man but instead he just wanted to bum a smoke. I gave him my whole pack because I had no idea when I would see him again. He punched me in the shoulder and it was the first time in a long time anyone had touched me.

I got a job as a sports reporter in the Yukon. Every day I go out to these sporting events. Baseball games and track meets and hockey tournaments. I take pictures and I interview people and I doubt they even really notice. I’m just some guy with a tape recorder and they don’t know anything about me. Their bodies are terrifying. They wear tight spandex or bathing suits and they look superhuman. Most of the time I just want to ask them why? Or maybe how? They drink protein shakes and they bike a hundred kilometers a day or they hike to beautiful places I’ll never see. They’re so fucking healthy it gives me the shakes. I covered a 3-day canoe and kayak race, and this guy told me he wears a catheter so he doesn’t have to stop to pee. I wrote a story about it and thought this is it, the end of journalism as we know it. But no one reads the newspaper anyway. And if they do, nobody cares about the fucking sports section.

My favorite song is “Take it Easy” by the Eagles. One time I listened to it fifty times in a row, while I was driving through the Rocky Mountains. I never get sick of it.

I’m terrified of death. Nobody likes it, sure, but sometimes I sit at my desk at work and all of the sudden my fingers don’t work and I can’t function. No matter how much I hate breathing, I don’t think I could ever convince myself to die. Because I don’t know what’s next. My older brother Trent is religious, and he worked for years as a youth pastor at this church out West. That seemed to make him feel better about things, but none of that ever rubbed off on me. Sometimes I think I’ll end up as one of those empty-eyed senior citizens relegated to their wheelchairs. I’ll have friendly foreign nurses that feed me yogurt and give me drugs. They’ll push me to the window so I can look outside. That sounds pretty good to me.

This guy at the newspaper told me to watch Cool Hand Luke. So I did. Firstly, I don’t think there has ever been a more sublimely beautiful human specimen than Paul Newman. His eyes look supernatural. Secondly—damn, is that movie depressing. Not because he dies. More because I’m never going to be that cool. Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand. I wish I had that attitude. When Luke’s getting the shit kicked out of him by Dragline, he never gives up. He just keeps swinging. One punch and I would be curled in the fetal position, probably peeing my pants and begging him to stop. I really am useless. Believe me. I’m incapable of honest labour. Most of the time I feel lucky I wasn’t born fifty years ago during any of the big wars. I would have been drafted right away and I wouldn’t have lasted a week. I watch these war movies like Saving Private Ryan and I thank an imaginary God that I’ve never had to pick up a gun. My greatest hardship in life has been living on cereal for a week. Or running out of clean laundry.

My second favorite song is “Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers.

I met this girl Megan in the steam room at the pool. She was doing yoga on the tiled floor with a pool mat and I was trying not to be a creep. But she was contorting her body into these ridiculous positions that made her muscles bulge and flatten in strange places. I watched the rivulets of sweat. They drew jagged lines down her stomach and dripped off the end of her nose. Sometimes I would wait, holding my breath, while one dangled. Her face was pink and the blond hair that escaped from her ponytail would stick to her forehead and cheeks. She had these elaborate flower tattoos that encircled her arms, purple and yellow and red. The vines were ropy and twisted in chaotic patterns behind the petals. We were the only two people in the steam room but I’m pretty sure she didn’t even know I was there. Her eyes were closed and she took the most relaxed, sensual breaths. It was beautiful. Finally I said something. I asked her if there were any good yoga places in town. Her eyes fluttered open. I said I’d always wanted to learn about yoga, which is probably the biggest lie I told that day. She looked at me, squirted some water into her mouth, and smiled. She said yeah, I teach twice a week at a studio in Whitehorse. You should come out.

Every now and then I realize I have a mother. My mother is a nice lady. And she loves me. If she really knew how I was living my life, I think she would have a heart attack. She’s proud of me for getting a job, but she doesn’t really know me anymore. I wish she did.

My attempts at yoga were pitiful. I spent the whole time wishing I could smoke a cigarette. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. But afterwards, after I had a shower and rolled up my brand new yoga mat, Megan asked me if I wanted to go for beer. I though to myself this is it, this is how you talk to strangers and I said sure, yeah. We walked through the snow to the bar. We sat for two hours and whenever I said something funny she would touch my leg under the table. We bought a six-pack from off sales and walked down to the Yukon River. It was starting to get cold. She told me a bunch of personal shit about her life, but really I wasn’t listening to her words. I was watching the way she laughed, the way she moved her hands, the way her breath hung in a cloud and slowly drifted away.

I was covering this downhill bike race later that week when I broke my collarbone. It was my own fault. I was perched on the side of the trail taking photos, and I was trying to get a follow-focus shot. But everything kept coming out blurry. It was muddy and I was hung over, and as I whipped my camera along with the motion of a passing biker I fell down this embankment. It fucking hurt. I mean, I tumbled and rolled and knocked my head against a tree root. I’m lucky I didn’t break my goddamn spine. My publisher was annoyed and the paper was short-staffed, but it meant I got to sit at home and drink for a few weeks. I felt like Bukowski.

I often fantasize about being productive. I see people jogging around Whitehorse or going grocery shopping and I wonder where they get the energy. One day I want to write a novel, but I can barely convince myself to walk to the gas station for cigarettes. The first time I read The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson I was so relieved. I’m not the only one. I mean, it’s not Tolstoy or Dostoevsky but here’s a person who thinks the world is as absurd and terrifying as I do, and he can actually write something half-decent. When I’m bored I Google stories about Thompson. I rented a documentary about Gonzo journalism from the library. One day I read his suicide note, just because I was curious what was going through his head when he pulled the trigger. Apparently they published it in Rolling Stone. The title keeps repeating in my head, like a mantra: Football season is over.

Megan came over a few times while I was convalescing. She made me a meatloaf and I ate it for every meal, three days in a row. I felt awkward around her. I tried to hide my empties and clean up my house before she showed up, but I didn’t have a phone so most of the time she just appeared unannounced. She was usually in a yoga outfit or her karate clothes. I sat on the couch with her one day and I asked her about the tattoos on her forearms. She looked really sad for a moment, and then she pulled the skin tight in places to show me her scars. They were methodical, horizontal stripes. I wanted to die for a long time, she said. But I didn’t want anybody to know.

By the time my collarbone healed, it was starting to get dark. It scared the shit out of me. Don’t listen to the people who live here. The Yukon is a scary place in the winter. The snow blankets everything and it’s freezing cold and all of a sudden leaving the house is like living in a Jack London short story. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. The reporters made fun of me when I showed up to work wearing a parka, but I needed that fur against my face while I smoked cigarettes in the parking lot. Megan was starting to sleep over, and I liked watching her muscular back rise and fall while she snored. I couldn’t believe I’d convinced someone to sleep in my bed.

She showed up at my house crying one night. I tried to talk to her but she just cried into my chest for ten minutes. Finally, when I asked her what was wrong, she said its nothing, you’ll think its stupid. I told her no, of course I won’t think it’s stupid and then she drew her head back and looked at me. There was a huge pink pimple between her eyebrows. I have a bindi, she said. I have a fucking bindi. I usually tuned her out when she started talking about all that eastern mysticism stuff. She tried to convince me to read the Bhagavad Gītā but it just stayed on my bedside table. Whenever she talked about her spiritual beliefs it sounded like she was regurgitating these antiquated phrases she had learned in yoga school, or wherever. I didn’t want to seem insensitive, though, so I listened. She told me she was scared the universe was telling her something. She said the universe gave me a bindi to send me a message.

My favorite poem for a long time was Invictus by William Earnest Henley. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. But then Clint Eastwood took the title and turned it into a goddamn rugby movie.

I was covering this karate competition one weekend when a guy came up and shook my hand. I didn’t recognize him. He said his name was Eiji Matsumoto, and told me he was Megan’s karate instructor. What a cool name. She’s a very gifted student, he said. I nodded like this was something I had given some thought. I realized that we had been dating for months and I had never seen her fight. I had abandoned yoga after a second try. It made me feel like a bad person, knowing there was this huge part of her life I didn’t know anything about. This guy Eiji was easily a foot taller than me. He looked like he could lift me up and break me in half over his knee. He had the most luscious brown skin and beautiful dark eyes. It made my balls shrivel up into little prunes. Suddenly I wanted to shave.

It was a Thursday morning when I crashed my car. My windshield wipers weren’t working and I was trying to light a cigarette and all of a sudden this truck was stopped in front of me and I swerved off the road. I remember hurtling along. The whole car was shaking and I was wrenching the wheel around like a goddamn child playing with a video game and then I was upside down. One of my windows shattered and glass was everywhere and then everything stopped. All I could see was white, stretching out as far as I could see. People were calling out to me hey, hey are you all right in there? Are you okay? I thought about that bible verse where Jesus says he’ll come like a thief in the night. Some blood was drooling up my nose and I realized I was suspended over the ground, held by my seatbelt. I don’t know where my cigarette ended up.

My older brother Trent was arrested a few years ago. They found child pornography on his computer, and there were rumors he even molested some kids at the church he worked at. I didn’t know how to respond to that information. I still don’t.

For a week after that Megan drove me to work and back. She seemed really impatient, so I tried to spend time with my friend from the newspaper. We sat in the bar and drank too many beers. He kept saying embarrassing things to the waitress, and then we started arguing about Hemingway. He was saying Hemingway would drink beer and I told him no, Hemingway liked drinking Mojitos and bagged wine. We did some whiskey shots and then went out in the snow for a bit. I wanted to go down to the Yukon River, but my friend said it was too cold. We finally wandered into this dingy pub on Fourth Street, and the first thing I saw was Megan. She was sitting with her back to me, having dinner with Eiji. Eiji Matsumoto. My friend said what’s wrong and I said nothing, let’s just get out of here.

Whenever I’m feeling sorry for myself, I think do you know how old the universe is?

My father called me around that time. My mother was in the hospital in Winnipeg and he wanted to buy me a plane ticket. We don’t know how serious it is, he said, but she would like you to be there. I told him I would need a couple of days to arrange things with work, and he said that would be okay. I thought about Hemingway and Thompson, each of them perched over their shotguns. It seems cruel that not everyone gets to choose when they’ll die. My father told me my brother was already driving out from Edmonton with his girlfriend. The others were coming out from Halifax. He told me my mother had been sick for a while, but he didn’t want to worry me. I wandered around the twilight streets and I tried not to think about how fucking scared I was of everything. Relax ­– this won’t hurt.

You don’t really know much about yourself until you try to share space with a woman. Megan complained about crumbs on the counter, my unmade bed and how I always left empty packs of cigarettes everywhere. She kept pestering me to quit, and even convinced me to try the nicotine patch. She played this weird, mystical music and she meditated in our living room when I wanted to watch TV. I felt like Neal Cassady, always hiding things from his wife. I hadn’t brought up seeing her with Eiji because I didn’t want to be that guy. I’m not the jealous type. I kind of liked to see her angry, though. She never seemed like she was in control of her actions, and her moods would jackknife back and forth. One night, while we were having sex, she slapped me. Then she slapped me again. It turned me on so much she just kept slapping me until she was clawing at my chest and pulling my hair. The only ones for me are the mad ones.

I often wonder what would have happened if I never saw Eiji kiss my girlfriend. It was midday and they were coming out of a sushi place on Main Street. I had just bought a magazine and I was standing across the street smoking a cigarette when they emerged, pulling on their jackets. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. It looked like a goddamn coffee commercial, like there should be music playing or something. I don’t remember crossing the street. I don’t even remember what I screamed at him. Maybe I took a swing, maybe I didn’t. All I remember was the way he looked as he reared back and kicked me square in the sternum. I flew backwards like you see in movies. My lungs felt like they were going to collapse. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk, struggling to breathe and panting when he leaned over me. Football season is over. I looked up at him and Megan while I lay there in the slush. I think I need to go to the hospital, I said. I think I’m really hurt. Help me.

I got drunk on the plane to Winnipeg. They just kept bringing me gin and tonics. I brought the King James Bible with me, but it was starting to lose my interest. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. The New Testament sounds too much like those corny televangelists. I’m not too keen on Jesus, either. But there’s a poetry there, like Shakespeare. By the time we touched down the words were starting to mix together on the page. When the stewardess came to check our seatbelts I held out my empty cup. One more?

My father picked me up from the airport. It was the first time I noticed the deep wrinkles around his eyes. His handshake almost crushed my fingers. We drove through the grey streets for nearly an hour before we got to the hospital. I asked him if Trent was going to be there, and he reminded me that Trent was in prison and probably would be for a long time. We barely spoke after that. I didn’t even really recognize him anymore, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Neither did he, I guess. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. He led me up the stairs, someone gave me a coffee, and then I was standing in the room with her. Machines were beeping at me and she looked so small. I came to the side of my mother’s bed and her eyes fluttered open. It’s you, she said. It’s my son.

You can’t go long in the Yukon without hearing a Robert Service poem. They’ve got him painted on walls. They teach him in elementary schools. Sometimes you’ll walk into a bookstore and someone will be reciting his poems over the loudspeakers. There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men that moil for gold. The first time I visited Dawson City, I went to the bank where he used to work. It’s right on the main drag, just a stone’s throw from the river, this saggy, dilapidated eyesore. One night I saw kids break into it to get drunk. I peeked in the windows and inside it looks like a warzone. There are spider webs clinging to the heaps of garbage on the floor. I hear there’s talk of restoring it, maybe building a heritage site, but chances are they’ll just eventually tear it down.

My mother reached out to me with these wrinkled hands. A long tube trailed out from her wrist. She touched my face and then she held my neck. I thought she might cry, but she didn’t. I leaned down and kissed her. She smelled like cleaning products. I wanted to tell her all my stories. I wanted her to pull me into her lap and rock me while I fell asleep. I thought about this time, when I was a little kid. My brothers had gone on a trip with my father and left me home sick for the weekend. She took me to the new shopping mall in Labrador City to see a movie. Afterwards we walked through these towering empty halls like we were in a cathedral. She bought me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a cinnamon bun. She told me this is our little secret. Don’t tell your brothers or they’ll be jealous. On the way home I fell asleep in the passenger seat.

Do you know how old the universe is?

My mother was discharged a few days later. I went back to work. Megan had already moved her stuff out of my basement suite. The snow was starting to melt, finally. Most days I sat at my desk and listed to John Prine or Willie Nelson. I stood on the sidelines of soccer games. I took pictures of people playing hockey. It cost me an entire paycheck to get my car fixed, so for two weeks I ate nothing but microwave popcorn and scrambled eggs. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. On the weekends I walked down to the Yukon River and watched the ice slide into the water. One afternoon a giant chunk tumbled down the riverbank. 

It flowed slowly downstream until I couldn’t see it anymore.

The Literary Goon