What is Left When Everything is Gone (19)
The Cotter Kid
This is the 19th of 21 instalments of my Spiritual Künstlerroman: What is Left When Everything is Gone.
The Cotter Kid
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I just got home from school, and I am watching TV. I hear my mom coming down the stairs. It takes her a long time.
She shouldn’t be coming down because she has cancer in her hip now, and she is going to have an operation.
She is standing at the corner, looking at me. She is angry and she is in her nightgown. I can see the scar.
She is saying, I am not a crazy thing. Did you ever tell them about how you speak to your own mother? Did you ever tell them about some of the things you say to me?
She has been listening to my phone calls with Kathleen and Lambrina. She is saying she will phone them herself. I tell her she doesn’t even know their numbers.
She is working up for a big one, so I’m getting out of here. I grab my coat and head out to the car. It won’t start, not even an en-en-en.
She is watching me from the window so I think she knows something. I open the hood and see plugs have been pulled out of their sockets, probably by that Holy Joe she had round today, who she no doubt told I was the crazy one, not her. Did she ever think to tell him about the things she says to me?
The car is started and I gun her, and then I am reversing onto the road. She is at the door shouting, You will not take that car! I feel bad for her in her room all day watching those stupid church shows, but I have to get outta here.
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She is up there, quiet now. She’s got someone to do something to the car and I can’t figure it out. I’m trapped here. I keep walking round the house dressed to go out, waiting for Kathleen or Lambrina to call. I am staring at one black window, and then at another in another room. I keep noticing myself in the black glass. There are hand prints on some of the windows. Memories of someone once placing a hand there.
I hate waiting. I look at the clock and only two minutes have passed since last time I looked. When you are just inside you are always thinking, and so time goes so slow. Always thinking gets you tied up and worried when you could be just feeling relaxed.
My mother is upstairs. I wonder does she know how much she hurt me by getting someone to sabotage the car?
I am thinking about how if you could stop yourself from thinking about anything, you could just be standing here like you’re standing any place, it would all be the same because you would be wherever you are, and you wouldn’t be sitting here in hell waiting for someone to call.
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Kathleen and Lambrina are going to Whitfield’s party with other people. I needed a lift because my mom still won’t let me use the car. I have to walk over, which means I have to wear my heavy coat.
I know they’re not my girlfriends, but I need them so much. My mom is dying. Couldn’t they just give me this time.
No one gives a shit. If my mom knew how the only thing I have to hope for is being with Kathleen and Lambrina, she wouldn’t have said you can’t take the car, or maybe she would have, because she sometimes seems to hate me. I am always going around and around in my head.
I am ready to go. I am in the bathroom in front of the mirror with the cabinet. I look at myself and think it is so weird to be a person in a body.
Why do we have to be stuck in bodies?
I unscrew the clip for the blade in my dad’s razor. I pull the blade across my cheekbone, just once, with anger. It hurts, and wakens you. There are beads along the line beneath my eye looking back at me. They are starting to run down.
None of this is mine. I punch the beads along my cheekbone. I pull back my right fist, and do it again and again. It is good to be able to do this. You are not controlled by your body, in fact you hate it. It’s easy now. I am smudging the beads into knuckle art.
As I trudge knee-deep through the snow in the field at the top of Edworthy, then past Woodcliffe United Church into Wildwood and Whitfield’s house, I keep punching this cheekbone. I can see my cheek bulging up beneath my right eye.
When I get to Whitfield’s party, I tell everyone that I got jumped outside of Mac’s, but Kathleen and Lambrina don’t have much time because they are interested in other guys, and maybe because I have told them that I am going to kill myself too many times.
I think they are good and normal girls who should find all the happiness they can in the world. That’s only natural.
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Our football team is pretty crap this year. We haven’t won a game. It is especially bad now that Alex is in a cast for the leg he broke against Bowness, and Norb has a broken collarbone after the game with Central. They took him off the field on a stretcher, and everyone stood up clapping.
This season I’m just focussing on my own game. I don’t pad or tape my arms any more. I like when they bleed. I am mainly going for the record in unnecessary roughness penalties. I am a couple of fields’ worth of penalties by now.
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We are on an away trip with the basketball team. We’re somewhere in BC because of all the mountains, and because we were drinking Kootenay beer in the hotel. We are in the van now, just behind Coach Hesse and Norb up front. I am beside Steve Blair.
Coach Hesse is very cool. He is young and he is also my psychology teacher. He isn’t like other teachers, he isn’t some kind of alien teacher machine. You can actually relate to the guy. He helps out a lot of kids who have trouble, even heads. He takes his own time to talk to them about their problems. He’s the only one who does what you’d think the guidance counsellor should be doing. He is almost seven feet tall, and he talks like a California guy, walks with a groove. Very cool.
Now, he is trying to roll us a joint. It is dark except where him’n Norb are sitting with a little light on between their heads. You can see the black mountains from the windows.
I don’t know why he needs it but he says, Does someone have a knife? I hand him my switchblade. He holds it, turns it in the light. It is white pearl. He doesn’t know how to open it so I take it back and open it. It isn’t a real a switchblade, but it looks like one. You have to click it at the bottom though, and then fold out the skinny blade yourself.
I got it in the mall with Strelow. I couldn’t believe he didn’t want one. When I walk around I cradle it in my palm in my pocket, and you know nobody can mess with you, even a bunch of heads. You would just need to show it, you wouldn’t have to use it.
Hesse snaps the blade shut and passes it back to me. The light is off now and he is smoking the joint. I am talking to him about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. That he taught us about. He says, personally, he is working on self-actualisation now. I am saying that even though I am obviously very low on the totem pole, still worried about food, security and love, I am also working on self-actualisation.
Blair is hogging the joint as usual so I just pluck it from his fingers gently and take a nice big toke. I am waiting for Hesse to reply to what I said, but he is just complimenting himself now on what a great teacher he is because I can talk about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Everyone lives in his own world.
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Patricia and Allison have come to stay with us. Allison is sleeping in Ralph’s room, and Patricia is sleeping in Deane’s. I told her she could sleep in my room because it’s bigger, but Deane has bunk beds. I would have been happy to sleep on the floor.
It is strange seeing them again after all these years. They seem to be totally different now, but also the same. They don’t ride horses anymore. They mostly like to party.
Patricia brought a crystal that she hung in my mom’s bedroom window, and it scatters rainbow light around the room. She is talking to my mom now and she looks like my mom would if she was younger.
They are very cool, especially Patricia, who leads everything. They are not exactly heavy metal, maybe more like hippy. Patricia also has a lot of Debbie Harry about her. She really is herself, assembled out of so many things.
Big Ange is in love with Allison. He says that she shouldn’t live in Ireland because of the war, and that he would look after her and get her a Canadian citizenship. He is always trying to get a chance to talk to me about this, as though I could help him strike a deal.
Ed Buchan is in love with Allison too. Must be her flashing blue eyes. When she calls him Egg Bucket, he chortles like a little kid. It’s funny how the really tough guys fall for Allison. They think she could be the Bonnie to their Clyde.
Patricia and Allison both wear a lot of eyeliner and they are always laughing about things. I have brought them to a basketball game at Manning, and they are bored but cool sitting there in the stands among all the Calgarians.
I thought Blair would be over sniffing round Patricia, but with the black eyeliner, she is probably too scary for him. Only Skinny Don is making any headway with Patricia, because he plays guitar and knows a lot of bands. Skinny Don, again. Man.
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I am over at Glenny’s with Alex and Ange and we are talking to Pete Tse. They call him Old Tse Biscuit. I knew about him, but I never talked to him before. He is a kickboxing guy who was one of the toughest kids in school. He’s the same year as Ange but he doesn’t go to school anymore. He is the manager of the amusement arcade in the mall. Alex and Ange both have jobs giving out change at the arcade. You can go in there and find Alex with his folder open, planning how to become an entrepreneur. He wants to be a rich guy.
We are drinking beer and talking about fighting. Pete is explaining how leg kicks can incapacitate a guy. Alex and Ange want him to demonstrate on me. I say he can, if I can demonstrate a throat spear right after. Ange tells Pete I am a pretty tough guy, and he should give me a job at the arcade.
Pete says I can have a job if I want one. I can come in tomorrow morning and get started.
I like Pete. He is super tough, but he isn’t like Alex and Ange, he doesn’t have to keep talking about how tough he is, or say he’s going to beat the ever livin’ shit out of some guy for looking at him wrong. He is modest and he has good manners.
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Pete collected me this morning in his little Toyota, because I still haven’t figured out what they did to the car. I told him he didn’t have to collect me because it isn’t far to walk, but he said he’d pick me up anyway.
He has two big German Shepherds in the back of his car: Kai and Kujo. They are like thugs. He is training them so he can sell them to the police.
He doesn’t know anything about music. His favourite song is Beat It, by Michael Jackson. He gets how uncool this is, but he’s proud of it, proud of being a simple man.
I’m talking to him about kung fu and he says he did this too when he was younger, but that when he started kickboxing he realised that traditional kung fu doesn’t work as well in a fight.
In a fight with gloves and rules, you mean, and he just laughs at me, and says nobody mess with the Cotter Kid, in a pleasant way.
When we get to the arcade it is early and there is no one around. He opens up and we go in. We go around all the machines and he shows me how to turn them on. He tells me that if a machine has a problem I should just turn it off and on again. That will probably fix whatever’s wrong. If not, I should put an out of order sign on it.
He asks me to vacuum the crappy orange carpet, then goes out to his car for something. When he comes back, he stands watching me vacuum. Then he is laughing, and he says I can’t believe it. The Cotter Kid doesn’t even know how to vacuum. He takes the vacuum from me and shows me that the emphasis should be on the backward pull, and that you shouldn’t just shove it back and forth.
He asks me if I know how to clean windows, and I have to admit that I haven’t a clue. My lack of cleaning skills is becoming a running gag for Pete. Now I am rubbing at the glass doors with newspapers and vinegar, wiping away all the ghosts of yesterday.
Pete leads me into the booth and opens the till full of quarters. He tells me to put on a red belt-pouch dealie to keep quarters in when you are not in the booth. He explains to me how to calculate the float for when I hand over to Alex this evening.
Then, he looks me up and down again with his excellent Bruce Lee face, laughing kindly. I really like him. And respect him. For the way he is tough, but also kind and modest. Which I usually don’t respect anyone to be honest.
He leaves me on my own and I sit in the booth. The machines go on and do their little songs to remind you they are there. There is no one in the arcade. Alex advised me to bring a book because he said there would be a lot of time sitting around on my ass.
I am reading the third book of the Thomas Covenant Trilogy. Deane’n Dan are reading the first ones. The whole story is sort of in a dream. Covenant has leprosy, and he goes into another world that is really his body. He needs to heal his body by defeating Lord Foul, the Defiler.
After a while, little kids start coming in. Their parents must be shopping in Safeway. They give me dollar bills for quarters that they stick in the machines to play the games. In the afternoon, the heads start strolling in with their hands in their pockets, greasy long hair, little dusty moustaches, shabby denim or leather jackets. The way they talk in slow motion, as though they are always stoned. Hilarious.
They all do a double take, pulling their heads back when they see me in the booth. Dave Cotter? Whoa. King of the jocks in his bright green rugby pants, orange muscle shirt, and New Wavey spring jacket with little red hand of Ulster pin.
Some of the heads chicks are super sexy. You can imagine them being a lot wilder than the jock chicks, with their feather earrings, black eyeliner, and tassels everywhere.
Everything is very diplomatic between me and the heads until Rob Scott moseys in. He’s Pete and Ange’s age, but he hasn’t been in school for a long time. He’s supposed to have stabbed a guy. He has a full on beard and long black hair with green eyes. He wears a red and black plaid lumberjack shirt tucked into his jeans, and a big belt buckle, trapper style. He has a knife clipped to his belt. He is taller than me and heavier. Even Alex wouldn’t want to fight the guy.
He just says, I want that poster. It’s from some dumb movie about Russians. He goes over and reaches up to pull it from its blue tack, but I take his wrist and hold it. He is looking at me like he is about to kill me. Right there in my face.
I am ready to go though, completely sunk into my body. With my eyes I let him know that I’m a psycho too, but he probably knows we are psychos for different reasons. He’s dangerous because he’s not afraid, and I am dangerous because I am.
I let his wrist go and he relaxes his face and stands examining me. I will go for his throat if he makes a move. He turns and walks out of the arcade. If Rob Scott won’t mess with me, no one here will. Most of the heads are skinny little wimps.
Alex shows up and I hand over the red pouch-belt dealy. He checks that I have done the float correctly. Then, he starts bugging me about how Pete was saying I don’t even know how to fuckin’ vacuum.
God damn it, man, he chortles.
I walk out of the arcade into the light and let Alex get to work on planning his empire from his leather folder. While I am walking home, I am feeling happy because now I am earning my own money, but when I get home, it feels so dark and dreary.
I can see the flicker of TV light on the wall outside my mom’s bedroom.
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