The Ravine (27 page)

“Why have you been here so long?” asked Jay.

“That would be because, um, mind your own fucking business.”

“Sure, okay.” Jay twisted the cap off his beer, raised it to his lips.

“Know what a cunt is?” demanded Todd.

Jay raised an eyebrow. “Want to field that one, Phil?”

“Um …,” I began.

“Let’s not,” said Todd emphatically, “talk about cunts.”

“Okay, fine, good,” I agreed.

“Let’s talk some more about television.”

“Were we talking about television?”

“Hey. I’m going to ask you guys some questions, and you have to answer in the form of a question—so I mean, I’ll be giving you some
answers
, right, just like Alex Pretty-Boy Trebek—and you give the answer and it will be fun and have nothing to do with cunts. Okay. Who wants to go first?”

“Jay.”

“Phil.”

“Toss-up! Gloria Winters.”

I waited for Jay to answer (in the form of a question) but it dawned on me that Jay wouldn’t know, Jay would have no fucking idea. He only watched television for two minutes, which was how long it took Mickey Mantle to strike out at bat. So I sighed and muttered, “Who played Sky King’s niece, Penny?”

“Penny,” agreed Todd, nodding wistfully. “She had great tits, didn’t she?”

I shrugged. “I was just a kid.”

“So what?”

I suppose I meant that I never noticed Ms. Winters’s breasts, but that’s not entirely accurate, because when she appeared in a white shirt with the top two buttons insouciantly unfastened, I noticed a quickening within and a tingling sensation along the length, what length there was, of my little dickie. Penny was blonde and wide-eyed with a sort of perpetually goosed wonder, and Sky King had to rescue her from some life-threatening predicament practically every week.

“Okay, so here goes,” said Todd. “This was Peter Graves’s—of
Mission: Imposseebla
fame—anyhoo, this was his first television series. Enhh! Guy with the glasses?”

“What was
Fury?”

“Bingo, goodonya.”

During this session, beer was consumed, not in any great quantity. Even Todd, although drunk and intent on oblivion, did not drink all that much. Mind you, I guess the story on Todd was that his blood was already forty-proof and just required periodic topping up.

After maybe an hour and a half, Jay and I toddled off to our rooms. I was tired, and a little muzzy, and when I stepped inside the motel room I was startled by popping sounds and distant-seeming scratches. I realized that my daughters were snoring, and I was rendered, um, heartbroken. I drew in a breath and began to sing, as quietly as I could…

All right, time for bed. Why this little Todd episode at all, you wonder? Surely not to drive home the fact that I have in my time watched way too much television? It’s true that Todd never stumped me, although once I purposefully misanswered a question because I felt I was embarrassing him. Jay sat silently through the entire proceeding. At least, he was for the most part silent, although over the course of the hour and half he and Todd had the following conversation, which I shall accordion and abbreviate so you get the gist:

And it occurs to me the next morning, as the Dodge Super Bee continues along the Trans-Canada Highway, that I may be obeying my mother’s command, issued after watching that first
Twilight Zone
all those years ago. You may not recall—it was many pages back, although I will confess that my book has not achieved the heft I had envisioned. When I first thought to write an account of my life, I imagined a book of weight, a volume of sheer volume, something that would make even Hooper gulp with envy and awe. Anyway, you may not recall this, but my mother was dissatisfied with the ending of “Time Enough at Last,” even though it is one of Rod Serling’s most splendid plot twists. But not everyone likes plot twists, you know, some people think many writers (including God, the Great Author Above) are too clever for their own good. So my mother rankled at the ending—when Henry Bemis had ordered and arranged the books on the library steps, but then his glasses got pitched off and smashed. She had many ideas on how to fix things—Bemis might be able to grind his own corrective lenses—but her soundest piece of advice
was the one I am trying to act upon now: check all the dead bodies for appropriate spectacles.

I believe I’ll share this nugget of sagacity with my offspring.

“What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Currer, watch your language.”

“Watch
my
language? Daddy, the bathroom in the motel last night had the f-word written all over it.”

“Hey, come to think of it, mine did, too.”

“Yeah, Daddy, the bathroom walls said,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
”

“I saw, Ellis.”

“So what the hell is it supposed to mean?”

“Well, you see, the way the story ended, the way Mr. Serling wrote it, it was about the death of hope. But you should never let hope die.”

“Did you let hope die, Daddy?”

“Well …”

“Answer the question, Daddy.”

“I’m thinking about it, Jay.”

“I’ll answer the question for Daddy.
Yes.”

“There may have been some situations where I have seen the futility of—”

“Did you ever notice, Phil, that the more personal, the more
intimate
a conversation becomes, the way you talk gets poncier and poncier?”

“Um … I
had
noticed, actually.”

“Why did Daddy let hope die?”

“Well … do you guys know who Albert Einstein is?”

“Yes!”

“Yes!”

“Who is he, then?”

“Okay, remind us of who he is.”

“Well, he was a scientist. He was the man who figured out that
e—mc 2
, and while no one knows exactly what that means, it explains everything. Anyway, Albert Einstein said that the most important question anyone can ask themselves is, is the universe a friendly or an unfriendly place? Take it, Phil. And don’t answer in the form of a question.”

“I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Yeah, you know, the thing is, you shouldn’t have to think about it.”

“I think it’s friendly.”

“Why do you think that, Currer?”

“I don’t know. You said I shouldn’t have to think about it, Uncle Jay.”

“Okay, fair enough.”

“I think the universe is friendly, and I know why.”

“You go, Ellis-girl.”

“Because it likes me.”

“Good answer.”

“Daddy?”

“I think, um … Hey, it’s almost two-thirty. Who’s hungry?”

“Me!”

“Me!”

I say that a lot, “Who’s hungry?” One reason is that I usually am, another perhaps is that the endless kilometres of the Trans-Canada allow too much time and space for thought. I am not entirely comfortable with the notions that come to me, unbidden, even hostile, wearing great big berky boots and eager to kick out the jambs. Jay often falls silent for long stretches of time. The Dodge Super Bee has an eight-track tape player and Jay has managed to acquire—I can’t
imagine how, other than by an odyssey through lawn sales that should have lasted years—cartridges containing the music of the French masters he so adores. Satie, Fauré and Ravel fill the cab, inducing an atmosphere of meditation and melancholy. The girls have long since stopped demanding that popular music be found on the radio. They have found whatever charms they can in the
Trois Gymnopedies
, the austere
Requiem
, the
Pavane for a Dead Princess.
Mind you, this has its downside, in that they are both often lulled into deep torpor. Ellis, it seems, is especially susceptible. She is small enough that she can stretch out along the big bench back seat, provided of course that Currer scootches to the side and presses her own face against the cool window. This Currer is willing to do maybe seventy per cent of the time.

She has done it at the time of which I write. It is nearing five o’clock, which, given the time of year and our longitude, means that the sun has begun a rapid descent. A plummet, really, as though the sun had been standing by a conveyor belt for eight hours performing some mindless task, and now that it was quitting time only wanted to go somewhere and have a few drinks. It sat on the horizon briefly and bubbled with an orange fury. Jay and I both lowered our visors, but we couldn’t block it out. Signs had informed me that a service centre was coming up—thirty-seven, twenty-three, a mere five klicks away!—so I decided we needed a pit stop. That would use up five or ten minutes, during which the sun could complete this ridiculously beautiful thing it was doing. And at any rate, I had to piss rather badly. Mind you, I often, even usually, have to piss, the price I pay for caffeine addiction. So I said, “Who’s hungry?”

Jay said, “We just ate four hours ago.”

“I’m not following.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said, simplifying for my benefit.

“Neither am I,” said Currer, “and anyways, Ellis is asleep.”

“Wake her up.”

“Phil, we’re going to be in T’Bay in like three hours.”

“Well, I can’t wait three hours. I have bodily functions to attend to.”

“Maybe if you didn’t drink so much coffee…”

“I don’t drink as much coffee as you!”

“Yeah, but you don’t have my metabolism. Just because we’re brothers doesn’t mean we’re the same or even similar.”

“This is kind of a theme or motif you’ve developed for this trip.”

“I’m just saying. We’re not the same. Our histories are different. Our perspectives couldn’t be further apart.”

“Fine. I don’t know why you think I think—”

“Excuse me, Phil. Point of clarification. I
don’t
think you think.”

“Curry, wake up Ellis.”

“Daddy, she’s really flaked out here.”

“Just wake her up.”

“Ellis? Ellis. Ellis!!”

The service centre arrived before the waking up could be done, so I said, “Well, fine, okay, don’t wake her up. Jay’s gonna stay in the car, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t mind grabbing a pop or something.”

“Yeah, and I need to go to the bathroom too, Daddy.”

“Okay, just pull the car over beside the pumps there where we can keep an eye on her.”

This was done and we dispersed. Currer and I headed around the side of the gas station and found two doors brandishing cryptograms, two genderless stick figures. After some study, one was determined to be wearing some sort of traditional Slavic skirt, so Currer went through that door and I pushed through the other.

“Oh, geez, sorry!”

I’d opened it enough to see two pale thighs, blue jeans crumpled around work-boots.

“Hey, no, bro’, that’s okay!” He’d managed to call out before the pneumatic device allowed the door to close completely. I burped out a startled “Huh?”

“It’s a double-header, bro’. If you just wanna take a leak, come on in.”

“No, that’s fine, I can wait.”

“Come on, what’s the big deal? You’re not a faggot or anything, are ya?”

“Oh, no. No, that’s not the issue here.”

“The
issue.
That’s a good fucking laugh. Come on, funny boy, get on in here. It’s okay with me, we’re both guys.”

“Well …”

“No fucking biggie.”

It’s true, the architects—if indeed architects are responsible for service centres in Northern Ontario—had designed the washroom so that it contained both a toilet proper and a urinal, as though they anticipated that at some point two gentlemen would share the facilities. I guess. At any rate, I pushed through into the gloom.

“Ignore the fragrance. I’ve kind of been on a toot.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Such is fucking life.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She gives me nothing but grief about it. Did you see her out there?”

I took up the position in front of the urinal, pulled down my zipper, extracted the little fellow. “Who?”

“Selma.”

“No.”

“She is fucking pissed off. Says she’s gonna leave me.
How’s that
,
Selma?
That’s what I say.
How are you gonna do that? I have the keys to the fucking pickup.
What’s the matter?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re not whizzing. What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I… I’ve been sitting down for a long time, that’s all.”

“Right.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“That makes no fucking sense at all.”

He was, I’d guess, in his late twenties, although I had not studied the man with any thoroughness, certainly not with the thoroughness with which he was studying me.

“Are you sure you didn’t see her out there?”

“Selma?”

“Yeah. Blonde. Good-looking girl. Nice set of jugs.”

“I can’t say I noticed.”

“Well, you would have noticed. Niagara Falls.”

“Excuse me?”

“Try thinking about Niagara Falls. Or firehoses, shit like that.”

“It’s coming.”

“Sorry about the fragrance. I haven’t been eating anything, so I don’t know what this shit is. Sure smells, though.”

I tried thinking about Niagara Falls, but being me, I hadn’t really stored many images in the memory banks that dealt with vast walls of cascading water. I remembered a heart-shaped hot tub, and I remembered cavorting in it when Veronica and I were naked young people, but that didn’t help my situation.