THE DEATH AND CHRISTLESS AFTERLIFE OF FRANCIS RAWDON WOLFE

1) previous 2) start at chapter one


Chapter Two (continued)


I pull the old pink woolen blanket tighter around my shoulders. Don’t think so, I say.

He slows down on the gas, grabs my shoulder and squeezes slowly with his big hand.

Happened before, he says and palms the wheel. Driving along, pick this guy up middle of nowhere, take him to town. He was so cold you nearly see right through him. A man- shaped block of ice. Fed him a few beers at The Hamilton. Booked him a room, said I’d send the doctor to check him out as soon as she’s back. She’s out at some accident a hundred kilometers away. Pulls in, gets my note, heads down to The Hamilton, guy’s gone. Man I booked into the hotel had the same name as the guy she found dead at the scene. Nobody’s seen him since.

Cigarette smoke clouds blue against the vents. The tiki doll’s hips sway to the hiss of the heating.

That happens up here, then, I ask. That’s normal, is it, I say. I hate the cold, I say. The blanket feels good against my neck, my jaw. The rough wool traps my body heat and returns it twice over. I say, Can I have one of those cigarettes?

The old man holds out the pack. The smoke stings my eyes and I, too, squint at the dusty radio. George Jones is singing about being a fool. There’s no profit in the business, apparently.

My name’s Woodlock, I say. I work for The Bloody Eagle Limited. You know, you’ve heard. Make OUR good fortune YOURS.

He frowns and says, The whiskey company?

Research and development.

Mostly vodka, he says. That’s what I like. And cucumber sandwiches. That Russian stuff, Moskovskaya, the green label. You know it?

I guess, I said. Sorry, I don’t really know.

He shakes his head. Still, he says, Wouldn’t think whisky would need to advertise. I never needed anyone to tell me to start drinking. Never found anybody who could tell me to stop, either. He leans forward and stubs out the cigarette in the dimpled aluminum ash tray. His hood is down, his face is large and harsh. Canyons of wrinkles around cool blue eyes, axe blades for cheekbones, a stern mouth and set jaw. A cowboy in a sealskin parka. His hands have to be twice as large as mine. I instantly believe no one would dream of telling this man to stop doing anything he chose to do.

We more or less encourage people to buy from us instead of the other guys, I say.

Good at that, then?

I lean against the bench seat and think back. I’m a chemist, originally. Degree at Leicester and an after degree at Christ's. The last job had been simple. Cracking open Shackleton’s scotch came under my mandate, sure, and preferably employing a syringe or two as I went. Sampling the whiskey to make sure it hadn’t spoiled, and immediately analyzing why it if it hadn’t, that was the heart and lungs of my jurisdiction. And Whyte and Mackay would be able to claim to duplicate, if not the aging process, at least the taste of the scotch itself. But directly uncorking one of the ancient bottles was swimming upstream. And downing two bottles meant one might as well swim out and drown one’s career in the current. And breaking international treaties focused on the preservation of Antarctic history wasn’t a move calculated to amuse my employer or his friends. Pissing off the politically connected head of the Antarctic Heritage Preservation Group – by which I mean that the president of the AHPG’s son signed off on every liquor license in Australia – was not a wise move. But the failure to actually analyze the scotch, well, I had a feeling that not doing that might be the proverbial straw. It very nearly might. But, then again, drowning men will grasp at straws. Might also means might not. I felt the need to explain all this to myself nearly everyday. I don’t like the idea of looking at the mirror. Trying to get somewhere else by focusing on where I’ve already been. But, I mean, am I misunderstanding this or isn’t that what psychology is for? I’m just a chemist. A man has to be everything to himself, Saint Paul notwithstanding, before he can be all things to all men, scapegoat included. I was very slowly learning to blame myself. That is, I think I am very slowly beginning to blame myself.

Screwed up, then? The old man’s tough, he won’t shut up.

More like I probably pushed things too far.

Yeah, he says, the ice only holds so much.

THE DEATH AND UNGEHEUERLICH AFTERLIFE OF FRANCIS RAWDON WOLFE

1) previous, 2) back to the first chapter.


Chapter Two


The reason I was singing was because I was drunk and the reason I was drunk was because I was driving. No, it's different, it's different, I was trying to ignore the danger in driving. Does that logic sound stupid? Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself, I contain multitudes. Walt has my back. So I sang along with the static bleeding from the speakers, I sang, But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plan, does He? And I sang, I ain’t quite the beauty. But I got that part wrong, because what I should have been singing was, I can’t believe in the guns, I can’t believe in the view. So, instead, confused, I drove the old diesel clear off the scraped-ice excuse for a road and whaled into a small black spruce and then into several other black spruce beyond that first tree. These home-made roads they cut on top of the rivers up here in northern Alberta are a joke, and the joke takes me down every time. I’ve driven these frozen rivers before, four years ago when Dermick was convinced that Skarsgard had found something new in the Franklin business. Skarsgard’s little pet theory. Up past Back's Great Fish River, bitter cold weather and then mud and mosquitoes in the thaw. Franklin died around a hundred and eighty years ago, he was an explorer and an idiot, reducing himself and others with him to eating their own shoes, the backbones of deer, and leather. He reminded me of other explorers like Scott, proud, dumb, British. Say those three words aloud, they even sound the same. I didn’t go off of the cut because of the British, though, or because I was drunk, and I didn’t drive into the trees because I started to sing wrong-place lyrics to one of my favourite songs. For quite a few minutes after the truck stopped angeling, throwing the snow, I just propped my chest against the steering wheel, not thinking about anything in particular, least of all those eyes and that broken face for which I had ditched the road and rushed at the little black trees. But it got cold and then it got dark and then it got colder. A small white owl shuffled up the bumper and perched on the hood of the truck. I blinked hello and a fox barked. The door was stuck. I tried the passenger side and fell into deep dry snow. I don’t know how long I lay there.

Well, sweet mother of reason, what happened to you, said a slow dry voice.

Hello, I said. But my mouth didn’t move, the words couldn’t be heard.

You all right?

I thought, Do I look alright?

Stupid question, said the voice. Course you’re not alright. The voice turned critical. Let’s look, then.

A large pair of old blue eyes and a wolverine-furred hood blurred out the morning sky. Must be a tourist, I thought. Tourists always bought into that crap, believed whatever the Inuit told them, garbage even ghosts wouldn’t eat. Like the wolverine’s fur never freezing. There’s one thing everybody learns at the opposite ends of the earth. Everything freezes.

No frostbite, says the old man. Nothing I can see.

I try to speak.

Let’s get you somewhere warm, he says. Anything broken? He looks into my eyes, his eyes are concerned. You can hear me, right? I’m going to try and lift you. He runs his beadwork mittens down my arms, pushes gently at my chest. He says, Your neck feel okay? Blink if your neck is okay.

The rusted cogs above my eyelids move sluggishly in the cold, teeth bite into oxidized teeth, gears lower chains. I blink. Once. Not fast.

I say, Okay.

He smiles, his teeth are yellower than a whale’s and nearly as large. You’re going to be alright, he says. You know that now.

The inside of his truck smells like dogs and cigarettes and Old Spice and the sour blue-cheese bite of whale fat. Dusty burgundy upholstery, a bench seat, and the springs are shot. A grass-skirted Hawaiian dancer shakes her hips in the bright sunlight on the dust-covered dash.

Keeps me warm, he grins. One hundred days, he says. Then it’s white sand, breaded shrimp, and bikinis. You can come with, if you want. Clean you up, first, though.

I fumble the sun visor down, there’s a little rectangular mirror there. Left eye is swollen shut, looks like a dark paw, a greasy animal trying to climb out of my skin. Hairline dark with blood, right cheek split open and old blood like mud down a gutter has dried behind my jaw.

I see what you mean, I say, and collapse into sleep again.

The horizon is different when I wake up. Cleaner, maybe. Larger. More of it. There are no trees watching the dim line between white land and white sky. I realize we are a lot farther north than when I fell asleep. And that we are driving on a river.

Where are we, I ask.

The old man gears up to second. We fishtail and, for a second, I think I am back in the bank. The sun fierce and friendly through the windshield, I am nearly blinded, I look away. My stomach growls. If I don’t have something to eat in a couple of hours I am going to pass out again.

A far-away thing in a field of snow is watching us. A dull figure, there, witless, arms hanging like weights. Snowpants, muddy white dress shirt, rolled up sleeves, dark hair across the forehead and a dark beard. I can’t see the eyes.

Who’s that, I say.

Where?

There, I point. Over there. But there’s nobody there, a white field, nothing else, not even trees. I twist on the seat and look behind. The empty road, looking like the fields of snow except for the banks piled on each side, and patches of marble-grey ice. Listen, I say, There was a man right there, I promise.

Alright, says the old man. He fishes a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. Benson & Hedges, silver, which, in my opinion, is a cigarette mostly smoked by women.

I say, What’s the temperature? I think about those shirtsleeves.

The old man lights up and squints at the radio. Thinking maybe thirty, thirty-three out there, he says. Warming up but still cold enough to freeze your face off. Wind’s picking up, too. Not really sure how you made it back there. You’re not dead, are you? He turns his head and looks at me. Did you die out there? Be honest.

THE DEATH AND VILE AFTERLIFE OF FRANCIS RAWDON WOLFE

1) previous, 2) back to the first chapter.


Chapter One [continued]


How much shinola do you think we’re gonna be in, says Carter. He’s American, south of Atlanta, but right now his voice is rougher than the ice. Probably the scotch. Do you think Randolph’s gonna fire us?

I’m flying out in three hours, I say. And Randolph never hired me, anyway.

My flashlight crystallizes on the splinters of ice in Carter’s glass. We chiseled that ice out of the pack three kilometers north, me thinking there might not be anything but bare black volcanic around Shackleton’s hut. It’s my first visit.

I say, Listen, Scott would have insisted on drinking that with soda.

Shackleton’s the man for me, says Carter. Scott wanted to look good and that was that, he says. Scott deserved to freeze to death, he was an idiot.

He didn’t plan ahead, I say.

He didn’t bring enough whisky, says Carter.

Criminal.

Carter looks serious for a second, or he tries to look serious. He fails. The light bounces off the wooden wall behind him and halos the fur around his hood. His face is all black shadow. No, that would be us, he says. International, too, he says. This scotch is a thousand dollars a bottle if it’s a dime. Sotheby’s could probably reach for twice that. Not to mention the historical interest. And the treaties. Heritage is gonna have a baby.

Ari Mackenzie Carter is severely understating the case. The Antarctic Heritage Trust, together with the current holder of the Mackinlay & Co. label, is not under any possible present or future circumstance going to be pleased with us or with our drinking habits. They are in fact going to be furious. Stamp a capital F on that word. They are going to carve out and then fill a large hole at a lonely desk with the corpse of Carter’s career. And they are going to succeed. Me, I’m not going to be around to witness that funeral. Three more hours, and I’m on Cape Royds’ lone propeller out of here.

Like the dark side of the moon, this place. A flinty wedge of black stone stolidly hunches against the Antarctic Ocean. Whiskey can freeze at minus thirteen. Here the temperature often drops to minus fifty, and the wind drags it even lower, and so much lower than that, too. A few months out of every year, the fat chin-straps and the macaronis gather by quarreling thousands on the black piles and stay faithful to each other until eggs and offspring happen. Waiting for the penguins, under-water leopards twist through the icy shallows between the shore and the cold blackness. And, out to the sea of open ice, underneath the ships, if ships remain, enormous wide-mouth blackfish hang side-by-side for the leopards. Except for a lonely research team four kilometers away, and except for two asses drunk at midnight on hundred-year old bog scotch, the rest of the year is empty. If there’s one place on this planet that makes the rest of the earth look easy, makes the barren deserts look inviting, makes the stone city slums of Axum look palatial, the Antarctic is that place. Anywhere, everywhere, is better than here. Except one lone place. Better a live donkey than a dead lion, Shackleton told his wife after he abandoned his Nimrod expedition. I raise a glass to asses, mules and donkeys throughout history and decide I agree with the commander. Heritage can capital eff themselves. I’m out of this place. I’m leaving the Antarctic. Email came in a month ago today. They need me at the North Pole.

To: woodlock@mandc.uk
Fr: makris@mandc.uk
Re: No subject

Woody, I don’t know how far along you’ve gotten with Shackleton’s booze but it’s not far enough. Dermick is furious. Randolph has been giving him the business about you, really sticking it in. What are you doing, old man? We’re all a bit surprised about you here. I know you’ll just set your jaw at that, of course. Whatever. Skarsgard has been on the RAMUNDSEN expedition up north here, and he’s got some interesting business he sent to Dermick. Details I’m not allowed to write down. Not even in an email. But people are dying, Woody, or disappearing, or gone missing, anyway. Nothing sinister is suspected, just puzzling. How can anyone die of the tropics up here? We need a chemist and this is probably your last chance. You are immediately recalled from Cape Royd’s. Dermick wants you up here ASAP. Whatever you’re doing, or, God help us, drinking, you’re to drop it and file a flight to Edmonton. The company will have someone meet you at the airport and you'll be given my car. It's winter here, so there should be roads. By the way,don't be boring, that’s Edmonton, Alberta, not Greater London. I know how you think and I don’t want you drinking tiny bottles of first class armagnac back to England. Save those bottles for Canada. I’ve stuffed the car with maps in case your phone breaks down or the net isn’t working. Drive as fast as you can and come and talk to me. I’ll be holed up in the hotel with a hundred stories. Talk to you in a few days, then.

Yours,

Asher

PS If you see Ari Carter down there, tell him I hate his guts for ever leaving the tribe and that his sister and I are getting engaged. He better take a leave of absence and hike himself back to Cotswold for June. Or Asya will never forgive him. Tell him she heard about his promotion and that their parents are especially proud.

PPS I saw Emily last night at The Coast, she looks great, had nothing good to say about you obviously.

>>>

THE DEATH AND DEEPLY VIOLENT AFTERLIFE OF FRANCIS RAWDON WOLFE

There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.

⎯Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1945


Chapter 1


That country is nothing but its own bare bones. Where’s my solitary neighbour? No, not now, not here, not Cape Royds, bad as this place is, godforsaken, inhuman cold. Talking where I’m going to be. Forty days and then the wilderness. Prepositions be damned, I’ll say it again, where I’m going is bones, nothing for square thousands of miles, or nothing except death, of course, and more ice and more freezing cold and more myself, which are all the same thing, and a killer of a common denominator in there.

So not a lot of people know Shackleton buried two crates of scotch in the ice down here at the South Pole. Fifteen people, maybe, maybe up to twenty by now? Make it twenty-one, then. This is good scotch, of course, because Shackleton never pared his cheese, and its golden-shouldered stuff, stronger than a century, strong and equal to the men it was to help. Say what you want about Shackleton⎯and there’s a lot to say, isn't there, the usual hemorrhaging catalogue, what with the drinking, what with the adultery, what with the arrogance, what with the whoring for anyone who would pay him a pound, what with the failure to find any task he, our man, Shackleton, explorer, gentleman, was successful at, what with the hypocrisy, what with the petty fraud, or, in other words, what with the behaviour of someone more or less shaped along the same lines as you and I⎯listen, the man, Shackleton, gentleman, explorer, he knew quality. And, even though he wasn’t a doctor, psychologist, name your term, he understood the principles and he knew what heart-strong substances would keep a man standing week in and week out in sub-zero temperatures nine thousand kilometres from home. He knew what spirit could build up the shape of a man's heart. Wasn’t the dogs, alright? Wasn’t the stiff upper lip. The explorer bought the stuff-of-life with some of the money he had raised for the abandoned expedition of 1907. Twenty-eight shillings’ worth of Mrs. Arthur Constantine Godfrey’s husband’s California liver-pill fortune, and the rest was donated at the British National Antarctic Expedition’s Debutantes’ Escalated Charity Ball, was poured into twelve bottles of Chas Mackinlay & Co’s finest and shipped below the decks of the HMS Nimrod along with twenty-three other straw-stuffed crates of Rare Old. I’ve got a copy of Shackleton’s 1907 letter to prove the pedigree, but Carter and I, we don’t need a letter of authenticity, not with a couple of cheap champagne flutes of Shackleton’s best beloved in our hands and a staved-in crate in the far corner. This is not even to mention, of course, not to mention the half-empty bottle, half-full, whatever, and the old Scottish straw on the floor, and our current address, which is not ours and not warm. But at least we have the whiskey to keep the flesh on our bones.

>>>

THE OUZO EFFECT

Sharon Van Etten + "Much More Than That"

Wake up on this red couch after midnight, and the lamp light glows on the hardwood floor. Was that a long day at work? Stand up, close the novel, run a bath, change my mind. Linger in the kitchen. Old paint is thick and white on the cupboards. Scramble three eggs into a glass bowl on the tiny teak table. And a long day coming, too. Two ice-cubes, then, and the chilled alcohol clouds quickly. Paprika, rosemary, cube some tomatoes, the sharp bite of grated twelve-old old cheddar. Turn the music to shuffle and sit down with an aluminum fork in my right hand. Maybe tomorrow I’ll meet the love of my life.

I don’t think I need much more than that.

"GOLDEN UNWORLDLY SILENCE"

Gojira + "The Heaviest Matter Of The Universe"

What God wrote, when He reviewed this single, was "This is SO FLIPPING GOOD." And as He wrote He continued the business of saving mankind's souls, He directed archangels, He buried Atlantis a little deeper, He gave Dan Brown another free ticket, and He pondered the impenetrable mystery of the existence of flaccid donuts served through a brick wall in cities and villages across Canada. And He hasn't even heard the rest of Gojira's album yet.

Business is going to blow His mind.

POPE SLOAN

Sloan + "Ill Placed Trust"

Most obviously there are the the big blocky henges of sound making up "Who Taught You To Live Like That?" and then, of course, there's Jay Ferguson's solidly AM tenor on "Right Or Wrong," and it would be awkward, and impossible, to duck the flashily-baited hooks of "I've Gotta Try" and "Can't You Figure It Out?". But for me, the smooth opening confessional followed by the jarring choruses of "Ill Placed Trust" are the reason I love Never Hear The End Of It and the reason I listen to Sloan. The group has always been a milk-and-cerebral Beatles band, but hardly more so, and more pleasingly, than on an overlooked gem like the twenty-first cut off their 2006 release. Yes, I realize that singling out a song from a concept album of this calibre is like playing king's jeweler to the Hope Diamond, but spare me your curses, I've got to try.

"Ill Placed Trust" is one of the very few power-pop songs on a mainstream release to use a chorus that reflects and advances the narrative of the song. The drums punch out the opening beat. The guitars are right there. Around 0:22, Patrick Pentland's voice rises up and pulls the music along with him. "People tell me that I take it too far." Which, ironically, fittingly, is when the chorus breaks up the forward train of the music and the song staggers back and starts to chug. Let's say Lutwidge is talking to Alice. You don't know Lutwidge, I don't know Alice, but why not? Everything Alice does, Lutwidge is also planning on doing, he's got mirrors, he's writing her down in a book, he's making her out to be ten feet tall. Alice is appalled, she starts backing away from the obsessed narrator. Ludtwidge feels betrayed, he doesn't realize that he's responsible for Alice's reaction, he lapses into paranoia, his openness gives way to a vicious call-out: "Can you feel it? Ill placed trust? I can feel it." Alice backs away faster. The sad truth is that the obsession only grows, and as the song crashes into repeat, the voice of the narrator is continually out-chorused by his failure to realize what he's singing about. "Ill Placed Trust" is about self-delusion. "Promises rust"? No promises were made. So the sound must seem an echo to the sense. The smooth wailing opening and the continual turn-away response perfectly mirror the compartmentalized heart of the narrator. Sloan is making more than music here, dammit, this is seamless, this is art.

MESSIER, NOISIER, BURNING

So Bert says, he does, he says, "In the past, we've always kind of brought pop sensibility into heavy rock, but this is going to be all that much more tantalizing and brutal. Our songs are ten times messier and noisier than they've ever been." And then he and the boys release a cover of the only single the Talking Heads ever cracked the Top 10 with and that would be "Burning Down The House," so, yeah. No doubt about it, the next three bands or singers to be covered by The Used will be The Jackson 5, Hall & Oates and, of course, Kelly Clarkson. BAD ASS!

LAST WEEKEND I WRESTLED

1) a very large dog—four in the morning—in North Edmonton
2) saw A-TRAK at Starlite UNBEREEVABLE
3) was filmed, by my room-mate, sleeping slash crawling in the stairwell of my apartment building—only the hamburger was missing in THAT video—
4) strolled behind a shirtless man who walked an albino pitbull and wore a gold watch and a boa constrictor
5) swam in the pool at the Legislature with two girls
6) and then ran with them in the sprinklers while the rain poured down and lightning crackled
7) so I guess August long will have to go far to match last wknd
8) but that's EDMONTON for you!

I HEART EDM

Northern City + Amy van Keeken

I live in. A north-ern city / I live in. A north-ern city / I live in. A north-ern city / WAH LIVE IN AH NORTHERN CITEE-EEEEE!

PLZ NOTE: I have been listening to this song nearly everyday since that one blistering Sunday afternoon with the hipster girls running in front of me and you—NOT YOU AND I—in their perfect sundresses and big glasses, YES, and not only is this song perfect for hot helter-skelter days, it is good on rainy days and windy days, too, and days where you go to the store and buy Double Bubble for the first time in maybe ten years, or days where you don't, or days up, days down, or days where the highways around town sparkle with cars finding homes, with friends laughing in the front seats, with pretty girls on the sidewalks, with people going to movies, picnics, work, and finally, yes, finally, at last, in the warm evenings or rainy afternoons, each other.

HAPPY CANADA DAY

to you, Canada.

CRAZY SANE IN A SANE CRAZY WORLD

Kneel Knaris + "Two Women (Night And Day)" The chorus hits at 0:57 and it's gold, or maybe pyrite, not quite gold but shiny shiny shiny. "I'M IN LOVE WITH TWO WOMEN." And I love the end, I can't figure out whether this guy ad-libbed in the studio or not, "It's okay, it's alright, Starbucks Guinness all day all night. I got it all worked out now!" He doesn't stop there, you can see him moving through the crowd, bobbing his head, sometimes he throws his free hand up, invents gang signs on the spot, he's harmless but that doesn't mean he's not on his game. He's probably wearing a Brewers jersey, but don't worry about it, his rules are straight as the lines between the bases, this is his game and he's speaking the truth in rhymes, he's so pyrite now, so gold.

Don't this make you just wanna like move in place? But, you know, gotta be careful though, can't spill my drank, nah, don't spill my drinks, nah, don't, can't, don't, can't, yess, yess.

Love the Big Willy style intro. Will Smith + Snoop Dogg = Kneels Knaris. In the best possible ways.

I HAVE BEEN WRONG

about most things and will likely continue in my mistakes. I see no way of acting rightly or of ever reaching the place where I can be more or less certain that my acts and thoughts will not be regrettable.

LITTLE GURUDWARA ON THE PRAIRIE

And we left the EDM around four in the morning and St. Albert a little before then, of course. My shirt had been nearly torn off at Black Dog a couple of hours before, maybe it was time to call it a night. I dropped my friend off at his house and, since her shift had just ended, picked up another friend. Lake doesn't mind the random, she's a fan, she's smallish and darkish and she likes to wear hats that are too big for her, tams, newsboys. I remember "Chessboxin" dubbed over Warren Zevon pushing through the car stereo—"I'm makin' devils cower to the Caucus Mountains"—and it's a rough stereo in that car, no lie, U-God sounds like he can't speak unless his throat is choked with smoke. I remember John Darnielle giving it his bitter all with "No Children" and I remember Wilco and also Marina And The Diamonds, "Shampain Sleeper" exactly matching the grind of the wheels. Also, of course, Prince and then Hot Chip and then Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. I palmed the wheel and headed into the country-side and we rose and fell over the highways around Edmonton for hours. My car is a bag, no disguising, acceleration is more like an adjective, an idea, than a verb in that vehicle. I remember bumping the car into a ploughed field a little bit after sunrise and, looking around, realizing I didn't have the damndest clue where we were. A few minutes after we got back on the road, I saw a Disney castle, solid as a dream, standing in the middle of the plains. Lake said she would stay in the car. On the other side of the largest room in the world inside that castle, a man sat behind a low desk, four hundred feet of carpeted floor between him and me. He raised a turbaned head when I entered but he didn't move, he didn't speak. I ran back outside and realized my shoes were in my hand. The tires on the car are a little low, the car squealed hard as we left, I looked back to see if I could spot the other men I had seen coming toward me out of the sides of my eyes. It was seven-thirty when we finally entered St. Albert. I dropped my friend off and watched her drive away and then parked the car and fell asleep. No disguises, two empty two-sixes of Plymouth are still rolling around the back seat and the car reeks of Player's, I suppose that's maybe not such a good better best thing.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

was the only novel I read the summer I turned seventeen, I said, and I read it nine or maybe only eight times, it's a very big novel, a bible. And that was a hot summer, and kids with baseball bats drove around the country-side sabotaging picnics and bbqs, and the gunslinger sun pistolled and raked the baseball pitches in Centennial Park into acres of burnt bristling grass and, not stopping there, no, baked the earth so hard you could see your reflection in the dirt. And the scuffed balls bounced high across the hard yellow fields. Eleven old people died in their homes around our town if you count the dusty farms over to the east as part of the city. Later that summer I saw a seagull drop out of the sky. The bird’s wings had simply stopped moving, it must have believed itself to be an albatross. Or maybe it was just heat exhaustion. Trying to cool off in the basement, I watched a television adaptation of Crime and Punishment. I was in love with a dark-haired girl who had spent the spring sitting on the front steps of her parent's verandah, but the heat had driven her indoors, and there was no point in me being outside. My favourite song that July was off a compilation album from Asthmatic Kitty. "Go To The Crossroads" is two voices chanting tags from Dostoevsky over clashing piano lines and static, it's beautiful, it fades to black with the repeated diminishment, "Blood on our hands," four words circling high and away and falling down again. I got a tattoo at the end of August, lanky copperplate reading CHRIST IS RISEN across the top of my chest. Three hundred dollars on my body forever. Must have been the heat. I’m not saying this was a good decision, me getting that tattoo, but the sun had seared Rodion Raskolnikov into my brain and I was only seventeen and mostly missing the point of Crime and Punishment.

NO, WAIT A MINUTE, SAID EARLY.

He took his glasses off and rolled over to scoop up a set of ironwood knuckles on the night table. A dark-eyed friend of his had bought them in Thailand or Malaysia or some small jungle-black island in the South Pacific. The wood was as warm as honey, but pointed, four little pyramids of pain or panic on a clutch of bunched fingers. Early turned and launched himself at Ben like a small boy jumping off a dock, a dark lake and a hot summer sun.

Wait a second, I said.

The first backhand knocked Ben’s glasses into a pile of laundry. The second backhand drove up his nose, tossed the keys back into the car and strolled through the front door, shouting for a steak dinner. Ben snorted and shook his head and clutched Early close but Early managed to keep his right hand free and laid into Ben like a surveyor zoning a field, mathematical, precise, mapping out future suburbs of bruises. I lunged and grabbed Early’s right as he drew back and managed to pin his hand down on the bed, Early and Ben piling mountain and mountain on top of me. I tried to wrench those wooden knuckles off Early’s hand, but he balled his fingers up and started lashing out with his legs. His knee angled hard and bashed me across the bridge of my nose. I shook the sting off and twisted those wooden knuckles hard as I could, driving them into Early’s own hand until he shrieked and lay still. Ben staggered to his feet and pawed around for his glasses. They were unbroken, a miracle, tipped into a rank pair of Calvin Kleins under the plush chair in the corner. We were all breathing hard, Early most of all, pressing his injured hand underneath his arm.

Early, said Ben.

Early screamed and rushed Ben, bundling the blond giant into the doorway. But the bedroom door had been knocked shut during the fight. Ben let himself be pinned for a moment and then pushed Early away, maybe pushed a little hard. The man straightened and pirouetted, he half-danced half-flew into a short bookshelf. A trade paperback of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction fluttered to the hardwood floor.

Get out, Early screamed again. Get the fuck out of my room.

Alright, I said, We’re going. We’re leaving right now, okay? Ben shouldered his way up the stairs, I followed him.

Who expects that, said Ben. His voice was a bit raggy at the edges, blue eyes bewildered. He tweaked his glasses and brushed back the flutter of hair across his forehead. Just wrestling, right? He exhaled stertorously.

Whatever, I said. Early doesn’t have any brothers, so no one ever told him not to be insane. Or beat him when he was.

My hoodie lay on the edge of the sofa, its hood caping, zipper flickering. I fished a pack of Craven A Menthols out of the pocket and went outside. The light was grey and fading, a smell of rain in the air. A black bank of clouds crept doubtfully over the edge of the city, the autumn early in their darkening shadows, and the dark branches of the trees in the street looked like a thousand hands warding off a slab of piano. The girl across the street banged the door shut behind her and pitched down on the top step, bringing her legs together tightly as she sat. A slim white cigarette glowed in her fingers. I put a cigarette between my lips and flicked the lighter.

By now, of course, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t always believe what you read in the newspapers, you know I haven’t been telling the whole truth. You might even think, damn you, that I’ve been lying. I won’t say you’re wrong. I’m not a particularly honest man, as far as honest men go, which, let’s face it, is not very far. But in the photographs I have from those days, the slick film bruised by the sticky weight of the magnets on the fridge, you can barely see the marks on Ben’s cheekbones, small red shadows like flowers on a mountain, or tiny hoof prints across his face.

IF U CAN BOUNCE HIGH, BOUNCE 4 HER 2

The newest numbers on the page, three pages before the airbrush seduces Dushku, say that 66% of the women who responded want the penetration part of sex to be from 6 to 11 minutes or from 11 to 15 minutes. Somebody buy a stop-watch because THIS romantic heart is on FIRE. So 34% of the willing females out there are either bored but willing or well and truly bored. So this means that the usual rules apply. Endurance is overrated and speed is for rabbits and addicts. And no one's gonna drag you up into the light where you belong. The performance is the thing. We are all players, as Shakespeare once wrote, but what are wanted, it seems, are performers, someone who can turn blank wurst into potent force. Is enough enough?


The Mountain Goats + "The Sign" Not because this is one of my favourite pop songs of all time, but because this is a great performance by John Darnielle. Not because this is a great performance of this song, or even a good one, but because Darnielle is himself such a good performer, so entertaining, building laughs and good times out of the most trivial unhappenings, that I have been listening to this recording for about two weeks straight—

And on the way from Columbus into Chicago
We heard "The Sign" on the radio.
Somebody got ready to turn the station and I said,
What is wrong with you?
Does God hate you or something?
Has he not taught you how to love?

It was hot as blazes as we drove through the south side,
Pullin up at lights,
All the people laughin at the white kids doin their little dance in the car.
It was really rad.
I opened the set with it that night.

[photo source]

SHE SPENT $689.00

on items which included a small stencil spelling out LIFE IS TOO SHORT NOT TO DRINK WINE and a nubbly paint roller which, when properly used, creates the effect of old and badly painted walls.

Her hair was about as convincingly blonde as a redheaded pickle. Her honeys were too large to squeeze except together. She was about sixty years old. She was walking a small child who was walking an angry white ferret

The ferret squealed and the child said, "Shut up, kitty."

"Isn't that a ferret?" I asked.

The child said, "KITTY IS ITS NAME."

And the three of them trotted out the door.

"WE NEED YET ANOTHER," SAID AKELA

First there was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and then, later, Fox N'Wolf and then Wolves In The Attic and then The Wolf Sisters and also Peanut Butter Wolf and also AIDS Wolf and also, um, let's see, Wolf Parade and also We Are Wolves and also Wolves In The Throne Room and also Destry Hampton And The Wolves From Hell and also Wolfmother and also The Good Wolves and also Raised By Wolves and also Wolf'n'Wax and also Wolf & Cub and also Peter And The Wolf and also Wolf Eyes and also Teen Wolf and also Cry Wolf and also Guitar Wolf and also , yes, don't forget, me, also Among Wolves and also James King And The Lone Wolves and also Le Loup.

I'm not at all certain that Le Loup are French.

[photo source]