Three Scoops is a Blast! Page 7

  Keith was no quitter. After several moments of confusion and doubt, he climbed into the pool and attempted the crawl. The problem was the bottle kept filling up with liquid. This caused Keith to list to the right. He kept crashing into the side wall. Did he let himself show his annoyance? Not on your life. In fact, this gave him a whole new inventory of ideas to pursue.

  For the rest of the month, Keith showed up with ever more elaborate gear. He started with flippers for his feet. Then he added web-fingered gloves for his hands. He topped it all off with a shiny black shower cap. He became quite the sartorial spectacle, draped with all the accoutrements of a well-equipped water baby. Lenny was left feeling both aghast and fascinated.

  In January of the new year, Lenny tried the first of his sexual gambits. He began shaving his chest in front of Keith, back in the locker room after their swim. He’d have been surprised to know how little this bothered Keith. Keith thought Lenny was a bit of a hairy bear anyway. Some curbing of Lenny’s hirsute furry exterior would be no water off Keith’s back.

  Several days later, Keith responded in kind. He showed up in the locker room wearing a hidden costume he had managed, after lengthy explanations, to talk his wife into buying. When he removed his trousers, he was exposed in black lace stockings and a garter belt. To Lenny’s questioning look, he responded, “Out rate rast night.” That was all he said. He knew such a level of inscrutability would drive Lenny nuts. It darn nearly did push Lenny over the edge.

  The next time they were together, Lenny pulled what he thought was an inspired rabbit out of his hat. Just as Keith was changing into his trunks, Lenny dragged a young man into the locker room who promptly set up a camera on a tripod. “It’s for my company’s newsletter,” Lenny explained. “The goal is to encourage other employees to take up an exercise program like mine. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Without skipping a beat, Keith struck a muscleman pose in the background and that’s how the whole session went. When it was over, Lenny hustled his young protégé out the door and was disgusted he’d wasted $50 setting up a fake photo shoot.

  In early February, a certain level of fatigue began to settle in with respect to their battle. Lenny was developing a grudging respect for Keith’s chutzpah and Keith had never been opposed to Lenny in the first place. They began to talk more. Lenny noticed Keith’s accent became more intermittent. When asked about it, Keith said he was a quick learner.

  Furthermore, Lenny had other problems on his mind. He needed all of his wisdom teeth removed. For a week after the surgery, he was laid up and didn’t go to the club. The two men found they missed each other. They both looked forward to seeing one another again.

  On the first day Lenny returned, his mouth still felt like it was filled with cotton batting. “How you feeling?” Keith asked. “I guess you’re still in a lot of pain.”

  Lenny nodded his head.

  “Is there anything you can do about it?”

  “The only wemedy is west,” said Lenny.

  “Just the same, it must be getting on your nerves.”

  “I’m taking twanqwilizers.”

  “Life can be a bitter pill sometimes.”

  “Too twue. Too twue.”

  So the days went by and the bonding between Lenny and Keith grew apace. But contentment and peace are not the lot of man. They, among all people, should have known that their “ideal” could not be enduring. On the Ides of March, their more simpatico world was turned upside down.

  Lenny and Keith simultaneously sensed the new presence that slipped into the space between them in the pool. Cutting through the water with grace and elegance was a young lady of obvious abilities. Bobbing up and down, head and backside alternately in and out of the water, she motored along with powerful strokes that left the other two in her wake. This was a woman with training, experience and porpoise-like talent.

  After returning to the locker room, the two men looked at each other in consternation.

  “What did you think of that?” said Keith.

  “Show-offy and excessive,” was Lenny’s response.

  “I agree, but what can we do about it?”

  “We have to come up with a plan.”

  The Mechanized Sorting Day of the Dead

  December 31, 2009

  Now that he was dead, Norman Watts was in possession of certain information that someone in the living world would have given an arm and a leg to discover. Forget Halloween or Dia de los Muertos or any of those other days of the year when the departed are supposed to be revered. They might have been more meaningful in earlier times, but circumstances had changed. Mechanization had come to the afterlife. With respect to sorting out the good from the bad and those to be rewarded from those to be punished, there was a new way of doing things. Everything now happened once per annum. That day was far more obvious from the back side of the curtain than from the front.

  There is a time of year when it becomes nigh on impossible not to think about relatives and friends now departed. It’s a time of great joy but also deep sadness. When the sense of loss can be overwhelming and memories of moments spent with grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, friends and loved ones can sweep one away in a flood of regret for shared occasions no longer accessible.

  It’s a time of year when popular music playing everywhere features lyrics that squeeze the heart. The whole season is a setup to remembrances of sunny skies past and nostalgic warmth that can never be repeated. The anthem for this instance is Auld Lange Syne and life centres on thoughts of old acquaintances. In newspapers and on television, respects are paid to celebrities whose glow has been extinguished over the past year. Of course I’m speaking of New Year’s Eve.

  Around the globe, at the midnight hour on December 31 and consecutively in each of 24 zones, there is a tear in the fabric of time. That is the moment when the reach-out-and-touch world undergoes a seismic shift to open portals for the incorporeal phantasmagorical world. It serves up moments when the everyday world is pre-occupied with seasonal parties. And the nights are at their longest. This is when the great sorting of souls now takes place. It is most convenient for the bureaucrats of heaven and hell – minions, functionaries and marshalling agents alike.

  Norman had already been informed of the staging area to which he was supposed to report. His essence had been marking time since a fiery car crash six months earlier. Needing the money and anxious to perform at his best, he’d been rushing to a singles-bar gig some twenty kilometres away from home on a Friday evening. A heavy rain was falling. Norman’s concentration wavered and he lost control of his car on the Toronto expressway. It swerved from the middle lane to the outside lane, clipping the guard rail. Then the Impala rebounded back across the whole expanse of asphalt and slammed rear-end-first into an abutment on the edge of an off ramp.

  The car exploded. The hood, glass from the windshield, engine parts and a tire flew into the air. It was a miracle no other drivers were seriously injured. Several witnesses knew they had escaped with their lives by the narrowest of margins. As for Norman, death was instantaneous. He was buried four days later in Cul de Sac Cemetery after a customary period of respect was paid by family and friends. The casket lid remained firmly closed throughout.

  Many times over the intervening months, Norman went back over his life to weigh the pros and cons of his individual actions. Had he been a good person or had he crossed over the line too many times? It was the “on balance” part of the equation that worried him. Through his night-time interactions with others in the spirit world, Norman learned how the system worked. Judgement-Day tests were no longer left to chance. A proper sizing-up was now done according to a scientific set of criteria. There was a check list. Certain items on the left side of a ledger would bring approbation. Other items on the right side would earn accolades.

  Most souls spent their remaining time on earth before New Year’s Eve fretting over the lists. That was all very well, but there were still two problems. First, there remained a good
deal of subjective judgement on the part of adjudicators as to whether or not a certain action was positive or negative not only for the specific individual but also in terms of repercussions for the populace at large. Second, and even trickier to assess, was how much weighting would be given to each course of action. No formerly-human spirit had access to that information.

  Norman looked at the lists. Some of the items were obvious. Murderers, robbers and philanderers were going to be in trouble. Caregivers, benefactors and the charitable already had a step up, as it were. But a number of the other categories were a surprise. For example, emotional button-pushers had a separate and prominent box on the negative side of the ledger. However, this was immediately followed by another box for those who allowed their buttons to be pushed , either in terms of getting mad or becoming despondent too easily under criticism.

  Jealousy, greed and covetousness also figured strongly on the downside and frankly, the list of bad things one could be accused of vastly outnumbered the good things. “Hard working” was a positive. Maintaining a sunny disposition even under adversity was also a winner, but Norman’s confidence was sinking regardless. That is, until he came across an item way down among the pluses he never expected to see. Incredibly, this might be his saving grace.

  ~~

  Much of what I have written so far is based on supposition. But I don’t think I’m far off the mark. I have good reason for drawing the conclusions I have come to. I knew Norman very well and I was there at his apotheosis. Let me explain. When Norman died, I had an especially tough time of it. A light had been turned off. Work was drudgery. Half a year later, when the Christmas season arrived, I chose to spend it in lonely isolation at my cottage on Georgian Bay.

  As the stroke of twelve approached on New Year’s Eve, I was drawn to the beach. I would mark the occasion with a glass of wine outdoors under the stars. The southern rim of Georgian Bay is a region where the waters of the great lakes congregate. It’s the base of a shoreline that sweeps from beachfront on the east to semi-mountainous terrain on the west. Like cupped hands with fingertips touching, it forms an upside-down fulcrum. The water usually doesn’t freeze until mid-January.

  At the midnight hour, to my astonishment, a spectral shape reached slowly out of the dark waters of the bay and stretched skywards. It gradually coalesced into the image of an escalator with a half-empty payload of shining wraiths working their way upwards. Backlighting from a full moon showed the grandstand from which these souls would be able to keep an eye on earth’s events.

  In relatively quick succession, a second escalator snaked downward into the inky void. This was the means of transportation for those on their way to a torturous eternity. I know what you’re thinking, that the second escalator was a reflection of the first. No, there were a great many more souls being transported on the second device and they were clearly in distress.

  Across the water on that frigid night, I heard what I didn’t think I would ever encounter again. It was the voice of an angel singing about heartbreak and tenderness. I recognized it immediately. More accurately, it was the intonation of two voices wrapped in one. Norman was doing his best impression ever. I can speak of this with authority, since I was his booking agent.

  The sound of that singing was moving upward. Salty tears encrusted my eyes until the serenade gradually faded away. I’m pretty sure I know what happened. I must surmise that “Elvis impersonator” is on God’s side of the ledger. And why would it not be? The music of The King has brought joy to millions. Commensurate with the pleasure it brings into people’s lives, its relative importance is immense.

  Catching Up on the Not So Local News

  (a.k.a. Burying Barry in Barrie)

  January 2, 2010

  Spoiler alert: This story is full of Canadian place names that may not be familiar to some or even many. Nevertheless, the fun of trying to weave together a tale from a multitude of disparate strands should come through. And yes, Virginia, there is a Victoria B.C. and a Brandon, Manitoba.

  North of the city and not that long ago, I eaves-dropped on the following conversation in a local diner.

  MAN: Do ya suppose it’s okay to bury Barry in Barrie?

  WOMAN: He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

  MAN: Bad how he bought it, though.

  WOMAN: Yes, busting his back when he fell off his burro. He and that burro made a good team. They traveled all over northern Ontario.

  MAN: So I’ve heard. After a nip of the suds, the burro would sing. It was a legend in Sudbury and Nippissing.

  WOMAN: They didn’t always get along. He called it Scar after it bit him in Scarborough. They were both going after the same burrito.

  MAN: That’s what I was told too. Gary in Calgary gave me a call. People sure get around these days.

  WOMAN: That’s for certain. Did you hear about Gary’s sister, Cathy, in St. Catharines? She was a saint, married to Hal from Halifax all those years.

  MAN: Tell me about it. He had horrible halitosis and no sense of humour.

  WOMAN: You can’t blame her for the breakup. He worked on a trawler, but she caught him wearing highliner eye liner. How heartbreaking.

  MAN: They were married by a monk in Moncton. His superior from Abbotsford didn’t approve. Never knew why.

  WOMAN: I can answer that. Because those Maritime marriages often don’t last. Charlotte from Charlottetown got fed up with Fred from Fredericton in no time at all.

  MAN: I know that story. He took a fancy to Brooke from Sherbrooke.

  WOMAN: So did every other guy. Halifax Harry, Regina Reggie and Edmonton Eddie were chasing her at the same time.

  MAN: They went to university together. If they all show up at Barry’s funeral, it could be interesting.

  WOMAN: Brooke’s mother, Nadia, was the first person to dance the Can-Can in Canada. My grandparents Al and Bertha once saw her perform in Alberta.

  MAN: At the time, they were staying with Lloyd Munster in Lloydminster.

  WOMAN: Munster’s twin boys were always getting in trouble.

  MAN: Remember when Brad borrowed a Ford in Peterborough and his brother Peter drove it to Bradford.

  WOMAN: Then you got conned by them in the Yukon, as I recall. Luckily, I was having none of it in Nunavut when the pair showed up there.

  MAN: They almost took all my money. I gave my wallet to Ron to take to Toronto for safekeeping. Why do we find these people so fascinating?

  WOMAN: I’ve often thought about that too. It’s beyond me.

  MAN: So we have enough money to bury Barry?

  WOMAN: Yes, let’s wrap this up so you can go home to Manitoba, Brandon.

  MAN: And you to B.C., Victoria.

  The Wizard and the Rose

  January 9, 2010

  Liz Stuckey’s marriage to her husband, Brian, was not without its rewards. First, there was their daughter Abby who was a delightful child of eight and accounted for much of Liz’ appreciation of life. Then there was her comfortable existence in the suburbs, with a 3,000 square-foot home and a Lexus in the driveway. Of course, it was Brian who drove the Lexus, but the cachet still enveloped the whole family. Liz drove a serviceable but hardly glamorous Dodge Caravan.

  Brian, however, was another matter. Most nights, he wasn’t home. He either stayed late at work or he was out with the boys, playing in a house-league game or hanging around a tavern watching one of Toronto’s numerous professional sports teams on big-screen TV. Both Liz and Abby felt some sense of betrayal and abandonment, but most of the time, they got by alright.

  Liz had her own pre-occupations buried in her family history. There was a matter about which she felt a weighty sense of obligation. Perhaps there was more she could have done. Liz’ older brother Edward had turned into a troubled young man. Throughout his university years, his professors marked him as brilliant. But he’d been overwhelmed by emotional problems.