Living with the hawk

L
IVING
 
with the
H
AWK

Praise for Robert Currie's Writing

“ . . . he has a sense of the particular that constantly surprises, and he makes the dilemmas of his adolescents fresh and specific . . . Robert Currie has created a portrait of a place and the people living in it that is very real.” —
Toronto Globe and Mail

“Currie, who taught in Moose Jaw for 30 years until he retired, brings to Mr. Cutler a feeling of authenticity and a love of teaching that you know is real . . . You care about the teachers and the students, even the bad ones. This is the sign of a true storyteller.” —
Regina Leader-Post

“
Teaching Mr. Cutler
is [Currie's} first novel and it's a dandy . . . Currie is most impressive in showing what goes on in Brad's English classes. It's one thing for a teacher to make a lesson exciting for a class of students, but it's quite another for a writer to make a lesson exciting for a reader, and Currie succeeds admirably.” —
Winnipeg Free Press

“Just like real classrooms, this tale offers moments of crackling tension as well as flashes of high drama and high humour. Currie's deft touch with dialogue eases the story along as the hapless but dedicated young teacher lurches from crisis to crisis.” —
Saskatoon StarPhoenix

L
IVING
 
with the
H
AWK

R
OBERT
C
URRIE

©Robert Currie, 2013
All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit
www.accesscopyright.ca
or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Thistledown Press Ltd.
118 - 20th Street West
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7M 0W6
www.thistledownpress.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Currie, Robert, 1937-

Living with the Hawk [electronic resource] / Robert Currie.
Electronic monograph in HTML format.
Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-927068-56-4

I. Title.

PS8555.U7L59 2013            jC813'.54             C2013-900962-0

Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie
Author photo by Larry Hadwen
Printed and bound in Canada

Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing program.

L
IVING
 
with the
H
AWK

This book is dedicated to Gwen — with love.

CONTENTS

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

P
ROLOGUE

W
hen I was in grade nine, two friends and I tried out for the football team. Man, if I had known how that would change everything, I would've joined the stupid yearbook club, or volunteered to clean chalk brushes after school, beat the snot out of them day after day. And told everyone I was an only child, an orphan. See how well my brother and my parents managed by themselves.

So many memories from that fall are bad. And not just bad, horrific. I'd forget them if I could, but I'm afraid they're always with me, at night especially when I lie in bed, twisting and turning, the dark ceiling above the bed like a screen where the same scenes play themselves out, again and again, whether my eyes are shut or open.

Memories have a sly way of inserting themselves between the lines of text books, of hiding behind gruelling homework assignments and leaping out when you've dropped your guard. They can come at any time, I know, in any order, and maybe what I really need to do is lay them out in the precise sequence that they happened, lay them out and examine them, try to find a way to deal with them, see if it isn't possible to have whole days go by without those memories stirring.

The nights, of course, may be another thing.

O
NE

O
n the first day at football practice, all the players spread out across the field and slowly walked through the scrubby grass from one end zone to the other, our eyes on the ground before our feet. Every time we spotted a rock, we picked it up and heaved it off the field. After that there were calisthenics and drills, then blocking and tackling. When I was the only grade nine who made the team, I was ecstatic. I liked to think my success was because I was faster than any other kid when we drilled at running backwards, a perfect skill for a defensive back, but there might have been more to it than that.

What I always remember was Todd Branton, one of the hotshot grade twelves, saying, “Rookie, you are such a lucksack. You made the team because your brother's the quarterback. And that's the only reason.” His voice low and sarcastic in the murmur of the locker room, exhausted players on the bench beside him raising their heads to stare at me, wondering what I'd do. And oh no, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

“Sure, Branton, and you made the team because every time the coaches want to take a dump they know you're there to wipe their butt.” The other players still stared at me, a few of them grinning, though you could see they didn't want to.

“Up yours, dirtbag,” said Branton. “You smile and I'll rub it off with my jockstrap,” but he was too tired to act. Or so I thought. There's something about this Branton — I don't know exactly, but if a fart had a face it'd look just like him.

The next day, getting ready for practice, I had stripped down to my jockey shorts when they came for me, a bunch of them grabbing me at once, lifting me off the bench, pinning me into a metal chair, my brother standing by, grinning — nervously, I thought. He didn't make a move to help me. The screech of duct tape unrolling, and they were tying me to the chair, binding my legs to the chair legs, wrapping tape around and around my arms, securing me to the metal frame. Behind me, I heard my brother say, “This must be a new one. Makes one hundred and ninety-two uses for duct tape.”

“And here's number one ninety-three,” said Jordan Phelps. He always looked stern — preoccupied, maybe, but he was smiling now. “We can tape his pecker down — so it won't rise up and stand at attention when he sees all those hot bodies bouncing around the gym.”

Braying laughter until four of them lifted me and carried me down the hall, opened the door to the gym where the girls' volleyball games were being played. They set me inside and left me there.

Some memory that. I used to lie in bed at night, muscles aching, shins and shoulders bruised, remembering how the cheering petered out, fans one by one noticing me, starting to point, snickering at the naked kid covered only by his skimpy gotch. I knew I was blushing, my ears blooming red, the colour spreading like wild rose petals unfurling in a fast-frame nature movie. There was laughter now, guffaws, one fat kid laughing so hard he was hiccupping and gasping for breath. The volleyball players stopped their game to see what was going on, a tall native nudging the girl beside her and pointing at me, the two of them grinning, the referee finally blowing a whistle, trotting into the gym office, returning with a pair of scissors to cut me free.

When I think about everything that happened, it's kind of ironic that my brother and I started playing football to please our father, then discovered we liked the game, the physical contact, the sudden bursts of exertion. Our father is Paul Russell, a father in more than the usual way, for he served as the Anglican priest at St. David's Church in Palliser when I was growing up. Still does, in fact. Palliser, of course, lies along the Trans-Canada highway on the Saskatchewan prairie, a city of thirty thousand, too short of industries and too near Regina to ever hope to grow. My father claimed it was a nice city in which to have a parish, a good place to raise a family. At least he used to make that claim.

My father always wanted his sons to play sports. When I was in elementary school, he put together a softball team from all the boys in the parish. Even then, I knew that he loved taking off his white collar, rolling up his sleeves — his biceps thick and hard — hitting flies for us to shag in the outfield. Once, when my mother had been using the car and came to pick us up from practice, I saw her behind the backstop, watching him toss balls into the air and slam them out to us. I wondered if she was impressed with the way he hit every ball so high and far that we always had to run to make a catch. Later that night, when they were in the living room and I was sitting at the kitchen table, having a bedtime snack of cinnamon toast and milk, I heard her tell him, “You know, Paul, sometimes I swear you're proud of having hairy arms.”

He laughed. “Well,” he said, “I've never heard you object to being held in these hairy arms.” He must have moved toward her then because I heard the springs squeak in the couch.

“No. I'm serious,” she said.

“Well, Barbara, I guess you've got a point to make.” I knew at once that something was up; he usually called her Barb. “You going to tell me what it is?”

“Oh, I don't know, but when you're out with the boys like that, playing some game, it's . . . well, it's as if you're showing off.”

I was surprised when I heard my father's answer. “Maybe, I am,” he said. “Maybe that's exactly what I'm doing.”

“Paul!”

“Listen, now,” he said. It was what he told Blake and me whenever he wanted to make a point. “About once a week you tell me that being a preacher's wife is no easy task. People always watching your every move. Okay — maybe once a month, but you know what I mean. Being the preacher isn't a whole lot better. Oh, I know, most of the women are all right. It's the men — sometimes they're the ones who get to me. A man of the cloth, they seem to figure, he's hardly a man at all.”