Double Talk (25 page)

Ready to go, we stood in the living room doorway, surveying the carnage from the night before. Empty beer bottles and glasses cluttered every surface. Ashtrays spilled their cargo of butts and roaches onto the coffee table and the mantelpiece. The speaker tops were coated with wax where candles, heated at the base, were stuck and then left to gutter. Record albums, looking like Aubrey Beardsley puddles, lay all over the floor, one or two bearing the dusty imprint of a sneaker sole. Both couches were occupied: one by an expensive-looking sleeping bag, its draw-string pulled tight around a protruding scraw of dirty blond hair. On the other lay Frank James, purveyor of medicinal herbs and fungi. Sound asleep, with his eyes showing slits of white and his head angled against the arm of the couch, he looked oddly beatified, transfigured by ecstasy. In the living room, curled up like a tree frog on the green vinyl loveseat, was Peter from Perth. Neither one of us remembered him coming in the night before.

“Should we tell someone we are going?” Violet wanted to know.

“Maybe we should leave a note.”

“Let's not.”

“Ya, let's leave them guessing.”

And then we looked at each other slightly wide-eyed, as if we were acting out the opening scene of some horror B-movie, in which the first two innocent victims make a spontaneous decision that will have shocking consequences.

At the bottom of Hamilton Avenue — both of us feeling a little surreal — we stopped to stare in wonder at the life-sized galvanized tin-man that for years had been the sole ornament in the window of Puddicombe's Sheet Metal Works, before walking the last hundred yards to where New Gower Street turns into the first mile of the Trans-Canada Highway. We made our way in single file along the narrow shoulder between the road and the overpass guard rail, a space littered with thick strips of tire rubber, plastic bags and cigarette boxes that weather had bleached a uniform white. To our right lay the CN rail yard and the Waterford Valley. To our left, the shipyard dry docks, the nearly empty harbour and the waterfront buildings. It was one of the few industrial cityscapes in St. John's.

“Look,” said Violet, pointing to a metal sign that marked the start of the Trans-Canada proper:
Rough Road Ahead
. We crossed the overpass, walking to where the shoulder widened. We wanted oncoming cars to have enough room to pull in; we also wanted to give them the chance to take in the splendour of Violet in her flared mini-skirt and purple Converse high-tops.

The air smelled of exhaust fumes and tar. Now and then the scent of laburnum blossoms drifted up from the gardens of the old Southside Road mansions, built in the late nineteenth century so that merchants and their families could buffer themselves from the fires and diseases that were rampant in the crowded downtown. According to the history books, St. John's was once a bustling capital city, its sheltered harbour so full of schooners that you could walk from one side to the other across their plank decks. A likely story. About as likely as the one told about the first fishermen to come to Newfoundland shores, who, it was claimed, could not drop a bucket in the water without hauling up a mass of squirming cod.

We got two lifts that morning, the first from a Texaco tanker truck heading for the Argentia ferry. The driver, a twitchy, ferret-faced man with a walrus moustache and dark glittering eyes, was none too happy that I sat closest to him on the bench seat. He kept bawling out “Wha? Wha?” whenever I tried to engage him in conversation. At first I thought that he couldn't understand my accent. Then I thought he was deaf. Eventually I copped on that he just wasn't interested in listening to me. He was fatally distracted. He kept leaning over and leering at Violet, saying, “Wass your name, moy duck?”

“Violet.”

“Wha?”

“Violet.”

“Wha?

“Vi-Let!”

“You're some little honey.”

The truck's cab shuddered seismically each time we hit a pothole, the motion causing Violet's skirt to ride back up her thighs. Violet kept pulling at the fabric in a vain attempt to pull it down to her knees, all the while smiling nervously. The driver leered and grinned.

“Vi-Let, that's some pretty name.”

“Thank you.”

“Wha?”

“I said, thank you.”

“Wha?

“Thank you, I said.”

“You got a boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Wha?”

“I have a boyfriend. He's sitting right beside you.”

“You're some little honey. Yes sir.”

And on it went, with the driver slavering and making inane attempts at conversation all the way to the Avondale exit. When he finally stopped to let us out, he almost put his head in my lap to get a better view of Violet climbing down from the cab. Annoyingly, though probably as much from embarrassment as anything else, she smiled and thanked him profusely. I slammed the door as hard as I could, half-hoping I might smash his face.

We barely had time to laugh him off before we were picked up again, this time by an older couple who were going most of the way into Avondale and who knew the whereabouts of the old mill. We were relieved to find out that our destination really existed — we had been told about it by a couple of German backpackers we had met one night in The Ship Inn; they had drawn us a map on the back of a cigarette box.

“It's just up here a ways,” said the middle-aged woman, turning around in her seat. The crepe paper skin under her eyes had the purple-white hue of a new potato stalk. She was very nervous. The man did not speak at all. I took his cue and decided not to speak unless spoken to. The woman was impressed with everything Violet told her, impressed that we were going camping together — the woman didn't like camping. She was impressed that we lived in St. John's. She had lived there once but found herself always afraid. It was too noisy at night for her: “all them sireens” keeping her awake. She said that she was constantly fearful someone would break in through the window of her basement apartment. “There's some lot of queer people in St. John's,” she said.

Fifteen minutes later, they dropped us at the turn off to a crater-pocked road that showed evidence of once having been paved. The woman pointed towards the horizon: “You're close to it when you sees the old church spire. Best if you …” But the car pulled away as she was still speaking, the tires skidding and spraying loose stones over our feet. The woman looked desolate, as though all her conversation with us had been a desperate attempt to communicate something that we had missed completely.

“Tell me a story about growing up in Ireland,” Violet asked, as we began our walk into the wilderness. So I told her about six-foot-three Alice, from the old people's home, who spent all her days walking back and forth to Bridgetown. Tall as Big Bird in her brilliant white sneakers, she wore a knitted hat and always carried under her arm an Aer Lingus sports bag. If the traffic prevented her from crossing the road to greet me, she would shout out over the noise of passing cars. Alice asked questions, and I answered. She then repeated my answers. In the months leading up to my departure from Bridgetown, we improvised on a familiar script:

“Tell me now where you're going again?”

“To Newfoundland.”

“To NewFOUNDland.”

Or she gave me yesterday's answers as questions, which I answered again, and then she repeated my answers, completing the loop.

“And will you go to university there?”

“That's right.”

“That's right. And you'll be studying marine biology there?”

“That's right.”

“That's right. And will you be staying with your Uncle Wallace?”

“I will be.”

“You will be. Isn't he good to take you, your Uncle Wallace?”

“He is.”

“He is. And will you not be lonely?”

“I won't be.”

“You won't be. And will you come back again?”

“I'll come back to visit.'

“You'll come back for a visit.”

“I will.”

“Musha, God bless you.” Her talk was always a patting down, an attempt to make sure that everything was in its place.

When I had finished I asked Violet to tell me a story about her life in Victoria, but she didn't want to — she never did — telling me that my stories were so much more interesting. Flattered, I told Violet about lame Mickey Joe in his newsagent's shop that was as murky as the inside of an old tin teapot. Enthroned on a stool behind the counter, wings of hair sticking out, a spot of orange-yellow egg yolk dotting his shirt-front, Mickey Joe gestured and gabbed. An ambidextrous smoker, his fingers and fingernails were mahoganied and ebonized from cupping and tapping sixty Benson & Hedges a day. His voice was a wheeze that expanded to a bray when he called out over the shop full of heads on Sunday morning: “Make way! Make way for young Baby Power!” I was never sure if he was being cruel or just teasing me. When the shop was empty, he was always nice. If anything, he seemed desperate to talk. Interested in everything, especially history and geography, he said he had been all over the world, and sometimes he would pull out atlases as if to prove his point, circling Moscow or Budapest or Lichtenstein with the yellow horn of his fingernail. I listened politely. I knew that Mickey Joe had lived all his life with his sister and that he had worked shunting rail cars for C.I.E. until most of his toes were clipped off by a passing express train. His walk since that day was part penguin's rocking gait, part top-heavy metronome in motion, part doo-wop back-up singer. Hurrying to mass on a Sunday morning, he was a sight to see, under the lime trees' shade and dapple. I thought of him whenever I smelled creosote or whenever I felt the bite of steel toe-caps.

We walked and I talked, interrupted only once when a thin red fox, its tongue lolling, appeared on the road ahead of us. Purpose threading it from snout to furze-tail tip, it gave us one sidelong glance as it crossed the asphalt and disappeared back into the brush. It moved so quickly that we barely had time to register the thrill of seeing it before we were distracted by the hoarse barks of the dogs, a pack of beagles, which a minute later burst through the dusty roadside alders to snuffle the blacktop, turn pirouettes around a hub of scent. Flop-eared and harried as suburbanites in their white sweats, white shirts, white shoes and socks, with their black and tan sports jackets loosely slung over shoulders — their round brown eyes saw us, looked through us. We stamped our feet, shouted, stooped and pretended to pick up stones, but there was no distracting them. They spun clockwise across the road in a pack and burst a way through the spruce wall. We listened fearfully, half expecting to hear their excited yelps as they closed in, half expecting to hear the fox squeal as it was rendered limb from limb. But we heard no such thing.

We walked on, still listening, until Violet broke the silence, shouting out, “Over there! Look.” I looked to where she pointed, towards the crest of the hill, and what seemed to be the triangular tip of a wooden structure. I broke into a half run, the straps of my knapsack cutting into my shoulders with renewed vigour.

We walked hand-in-hand downhill through a meadow heavy with summer flowers: daisies, yarrow, fireweed and loosestrife. My shoulders were raw. My lower back was aching. I had a headache. I was looking forward to dropping my stuff. But there was still one more obstacle to surmount. The obvious campsite was on the other side of the river, and there was no easy way to get across. We would have to get wet. No problem, I thought. And yet, as we stood surveying the river's ripple and run, I began to feel a growing tension. I heard an unspoken request in Violet's hesitance to commit to a plan of action. As well, she kept glancing coyly at me. It suddenly occurred to me she was expecting me to carry her across. Thundering Jesus! The mild resentment I had been biting back on all day — about having to carry the bulk of our gear — suddenly flared.

I looked away, imagining what would happen if I turned the tables and asked her to carry me across. How often had she and Nancy professed women's superiority, not only in terms of mental capacity, but also in body strength and stamina when it was measured pound for pound against a man's? I imagined the look of shock on her face turning to anger. I imagined her lips tightening to a hen's hole, as they always did when she was peeved. Once challenged, I knew she would not back down; how to carry out the task would become the only question. I would insist on riding on her back, but she would insist on cradling me,
Pietà
-like, in her arms as she stumbled across, her face getting purpler with each step. I imagined looking down and watching the current break into white foam against her shins. I imagined I could feel the force of it through her body, a thrum distinct from her laboured breathing, her racing pulse. I would maybe lighten the situation by making a joke: “You are my caddy,” I would say, as we stumbled ashore on the opposite bank. “I have just lifted a perfect seven iron to within inches of the hole.” Oh, but she wouldn't be amused.

“Earth to Brian, come in, Brian.”

I snapped out of my reverie.

“Man, you had the weirdest look on your face.”

“Sorry, I'm just tired, still a bit hung-over from last night, maybe. Want me to give you a piggy-back across?”