Blackstrap Hawco (31 page)

Brigitte Bardot lay down on the ice with the baby seal. She pulled the baby seal closer. She felt the warmth of the baby seal. It was alive. Poor baby. Alive. Look, everyone, see, it was alive because of me. So real. If it were not dead. If I were not god. If nothing ever had to die. Ever. If only the baby seal were hers. Why? Brigitte Bardot felt it to be so. Felt it deep inside. The way the director did. Deep inside. This living thing. She once was. This baby seal she once was. She was acting for a cause. The baby seal was stuffed, wasn't it? Maybe only a rumour, but a real baby seal would have bitten a chunk right out of the fading beauty of Brigitte Bardot's face.

 

When Emily turned the channel, the voice said: ‘Bank of America announced today that all of its credit cards will now bear the name VISA.' She turned off the TV and went to bed.

Outside, icicles hung halfway to the ground from the eaves. Water dripped from them. It was mild outside. Had been mild. Emily was planning her trip to the pole. She was saving money under her mattress. Money they could have used elsewhere, but she needed. The thick snow on the roof had melted underneath, then frozen to ice. Now, when the ice melted it broke away and slid from the roof, rumbled and crashed to the ground outside. Huge ice chunks there in the morning when Emily went out to investigate. Soon, it would be spring. She had to leave before then.

 

(April, 1977)

Annie Hall
, the way the thoughts came up on the bottom of the screen, the things that the two characters were actually thinking, not what they were saying, but what they were thinking. It was really funny. Commercial? No, something someone said to someone else about the movie. It was not a TV commercial. It was something someone heard from someone. It was explained to Jacob. He did not understand. No thoughts coming up at the bottom of the screen because what they were saying was what they were actually thinking. That's what happened when you talked.

 

(May, 1977)

‘Killing for the sake of killing,' a commentator commented.

‘David Berkowitz (aka “Son of Sam”) pleaded guilty to shooting six people with a forty-four-caliber gun. He was known as Berkowitz, the name of his adoptive parents, although his given name was David Falco. His birth mother was named Betty Broder and was raised in a poor Jewish family. Tony Falco, an Italian-American Catholic, was Berkowitz's birth father.'

‘He will be remembered.

‘Whatever his name was,' said a comedian, years later.

 

(June, 1977)

‘I'm Your Boogie Man That's The Way I Like It Keep It Comin' Love Get Down Tonight Shake Shake Shake Shake Your Booty'

 

(July, 1977)

Today, twelve Hanafi Moslems were convicted in Washington on hostage charges.

Today, Mohammed al-Zahaby, an Egyptian minister, was murdered.

Today, the USSR secretly carried out an underground nuclear test.

 

(August, 1977)

Thousands of TRS-80 computers, sold by Radio Shack, were ordered immediately upon the device's introduction. In a press release, issued by Karl Marx, a renowned Mexican luddite, who had absolutely nothing to do with the machine's invention nor sale, the TRS-80 was denounced as a typewriter with a TV screen. ‘It is the end of the beginning,' said Marx (or so he was wrongly quoted as having said).

 

(
September, 1977
)

At the 29th Emmy Awards, the
Mary Tyler Moore Show
, Carroll O'Conner and Bea Arthur were the big winners. TV's Rhoda got divorced. Steven Biko, a South African white neo-Nazi student leader, died laughing while in police custody. General Motors introduced the first US diesel automobile, the Oldsmobile 88. Cheryl Ladd replaced Farrah Fawcett on
Charlie's Angels
.

 

(October, 1977)

Indira Gandhi was arrested for jaywalking. Bing Crosby, singer/actor (
Going My Way
), died of an apparent drug overdose at the tender age of twenty-four. Reggie Jackson hit thirty-four thousand consecutive homers, tying the series record of the fellow who had a chocolate bar named after him.

 

(November, 1977)

President Carter raised minimum wages of $2.30 to $113.35 an hour, effective January 1, 1978. The country prospers for a week. Then collapses. Guy Lombardo, orchestra leader (‘Auld Lang Syne'), assassinated by twenty-seven hits of acid in Houston at seventy-five. Wings release ‘Mull of Kintyre' and ‘Paul is Dead,' prompting everyone to agree that, yes, Paul is dead. President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah of Iran and his band, the Payolas. Egyptian President Sadat formally accepted an invitation to visit the fashionable eastside disco Israel.
Jesus Christ Superstar
opened at Longacre Theater, New York City, for one performance before seven nuns set themselves ablaze in protest, cancelling all future shows and a planned major motion picture. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice were executed before firing squad, while everyone thought: Hey, isn't that Gary Gilmore and the actor who played him?

 

(December, 1977)

Saturday Night Fever
, starring John Travolta, premiered in Bangladesh. The New York Society for the Preservation of American Entertainment in Starving Nations bought 300 movie tickets for 300 dead children who, according to their publicists, ‘weren't up to the event' and sent their regrets. Thirty-six died as a grain elevator at the Continental Grain Company plant exploded, struck by a stray Apollo spacecraft. France performed a nuclear test at Mururoa Island. To the relief of all civilized nations, the test results came back negative. Charlie Chaplin, actor (
Modern Times
), died in Switzerland of apparent sadness. He was eighty-eight. Ted Bundy, serial killer (
Many Young Women
) escaped from jail in Colorado, later found at a video games arcade, venting. Human rights activists issued a statement praising Mr. Bundy for at least trying.

 

The vast number of photographs taken by Junior Hawco are collected in the Newfoundland archives in The Rooms, having been donated by his brother, Blackstrap, shortly before his incarceration. From viewing them, I was able to recreate various scenes from Junior's life. The photographs have been studied by a local gallery owner, Emma Butler, and have been judged to be of an original and highly professional nature. At the time of writing this, Ms. Butler had chosen thirteen photographs to be enlarged and exhibited at her gallery.

1962

I

in the midst of life we are in death

‘do you believe in life after death, mr. hawco,' junior laughing purely to himself, two fingertips sprinkling grass into a rolling paper beneath the dim illumination of a lamp that flickered through light stolen from heaven, energy run rampant, radiating too intensely among the living who never can quite see themselves in that light, it was late at night, he could not sleep, why ever would he sleep, never again, he tried, lay down and shut his eyes, saw only the mirror of before, too freaky to stay that way, sitting up again, with nimble movements of denial, dipping into flakes and picking out a seed, tossing the seed away, unneeded, it landed with a crash, seeds so weighty no longer growing a life, he raised his camera from the bedside table to focus, the seed barely visible in the viewfinder, in and out of blur, like a sleepy eye awakening to practically seeing, and pressed the shutter when sharp and exact,

he was trying not to think, death, no seeds needed, then why all the noise, again, the flicker of a light, neon, houselights, tvs, streetlamps, a camera flash, all of it draining the stars, never bright again, his eyes awash, a photo of himself in time, taken with a background he thought to be,

‘no belief in life after death means no belief in myself,'

‘says who,'

‘me, wasn't it,' a quick peek over his shoulder, in search of a culprit, ‘just then,'

‘why won't you,'

‘what,'

‘face up to your own death,'

‘i don't like the face, painted one way, sure, it can be touched up a bit, but there's no masking it, as they say, life's just death with a wish up its ass,'

‘as who say,'

‘as me say,' a twin on the bed, speaking quietly as he rolled the joint, he thought it might have been another mirror, as in shutting his eyes, such abundance of reflection, ‘we've come from a long line of hardy sea-going characters, haven't we, wrinkled bun faces, with much folksy flavour steeped darkly in an ale and rum brew of superstition, all “buddy” this and “how's she going” that and “not a bad day out dere t'day” this and “what're ya at” that, vernacular never fitting from our mouth, no, not mouths, under isolated lamplight, of course, and the persistent click of capturing, again, you, with the camera,'

‘not so us though, not so ever us,'

‘we're progressive, we can see that about ourselves, dope in hand and all, we don't sound anything like a toothless, gum-smacking, winking, fiddling newfie, particularly now that we're dead, our voice paralleled with our true own, there's no more pretending, no need to fog up the slang to fit in around the house, but we miss them, don't we, we want to be a part of them, so desperately, those outport, outpost people, isolated as they rightly are in sadness and despondency, no lesser or greater than any ruined martyr's life,' licking the thin gum line of the rolling paper to seal it all in,

‘it's all in pretending who you are, i had
nothing
to do with it, born talking this way, inside my head on the outside, not a word ever clipped by dialect, my mother was from britain, she taught me right proper, but this voice was always mine, absent in its purity,'

‘proper way to lord over everyone, and an accent there, too, only different,'

‘hey, i love my mother,'

‘hey, not me, not really,'

‘frig off then,' slipping the joint between his lips, he let it hang, a macho stance, winked at his twin, tipped up his chin, ‘how's it going, sweetheart,'

‘you know, i always adored you,'

‘screw off, faggot,'

‘hey, you're the faggot, i'm just along for the ride,'

‘tut, tut, tut, book time with a psychiatrist, he'll read to you, one theory after another guaranteed to get resluts,'

‘i never met a shrink who couldn't provoke himself to think, always with questions that i didn't want an answer to,'

‘questions like, where you from anyway,'

‘i was hooked from a dna pool three universes over, us queers always snatch their twin in their final breaths, each gasp a pluck in the pool until the final snagging inhale, and up we come,'

‘says who,'

‘says you, us, we,' junior chuckling, lifting matches from the night table, sparking one, the warm orange glow assaulting his eyes, a flash going off, he blew out the flame with the corner of his mouth, shook the match a few slow times, then cracked it before dropping it onto the table, the flicker of a light, someone stealing, living, trying not to be frightened of the dark, a child's scared face illuminated in bed, fingers clutching the bedcovers, then darkness to confirm suspicions, and sunlight, smiling into breakfast,

‘who would've thought such a meal as this, free dope a fringe benefit of being so succinctly mortalized, ceaseless reaping of a heavenly state, that higher slice of consciousness without effort or concentration, cheers, as they say in some far-off land i can almost remember, the single gene on which the woes of england and ireland are chemically inter woven not bred into me, to look at it now in its bordered meaninglessness,' the smoke deeply into his lungs, he held it there, studying the joint, the ragged burning tip, its fat centre and narrow ends,

‘yum,' squeezing out the word while holding smoke in his lungs, he licked at his lips, then exhaled, watching the thin, smoky wisp stream from his body to clarify itself,
‘so, misters hawco, or is it mister hawcos, this death stone that we're on, it sucks us deeper to the core, aren't we even just a little bit scared, hippy man, not so much of a lark now, to know yourself this dearly and alone with only me,'

‘yes, very much so, thank you,' he fell back onto the bed, a quiet screaming sound as through tumbling from a skyscraper, flailing arms, kicking legs, then, at rest, staring at the ceiling, hearing the fading racket of his actions, now too calm, too still, another draw and clamping out the words with the smoke still in his lungs, and the camera raised, his curved reflection in the lens, the memory of its capture enough, ‘it's true though, you can't stop thinking of your family, like some kind of rugged ragged dark cartoon that's pulling you back there, a magnet in my chest, back to that house on a cliff by the sea…dive from the edge,' shutter clicking, eyes shut, junior exhaled, coming up from under water, smoke gushing from his lungs,

‘they're quite a bunch of characters,'

‘and we love them, right,'

‘oh, yes, deeply and eternally, they're my family, and there's never any end to that,'

‘but we don't fit in, never did, the proverbial black sheep, cute pink faggot skin beneath our overly friendly fleece,'

‘but i have blonde hair,'

‘once a rump rider, dreary dearie, always a rump rider,'

‘now that i've finally got over the chore of living, shouldn't i be normalized and chasing women, why aren't i homo-perfectus, dreaming of linda sue's lovely lacy bonnet and cleverly concealed cans,' junior laughing outright, sitting up, eyelids heavy, eyes puffed slits, smiling with sturdy impenetrable resolve, the air smelling of mothballs, it brought him to his feet and led him to the closet, inside there were clothes stored away, coats and dresses and hat boxes on the floor, the addictive odour of mothballs, he couldn't get enough of them, leaning his head in, sniffing, whispers from within, not only him sniffing, but others, unseen, sniffing through their possessions, turning, he studied the room in awe, was he really dead, he wondered, the tingle not going through him, the fear of the thought absent, the room not such a bad place, if this was where he was to live for all eternity, he hadn't tried the
knob yet, he had found himself back here, his last place of rest, of sleeping,

missus neary had done the room up nicely with doilies and statues of the virgin mary, and a portrait of the lord with a cross made of palm leaves tucked into the frame, and not to forget the crucifix above the bed, junior glanced there, threw his hands up to cover his face, hissed manically, laughed it off, made scratching motions with his fingernails, where was god now, hello, hello, a bad joke, a rotten joke, a sickly feeling that brought tears to his eyes, why the tears, and the regret, please, forgive me, jesus, desperate for a moment, he expected someone to stomp into the room and slap him across the face, maybe a cross nun in a black and white habit, a priest with a strap, a female angel with a machine gun chomping on a cigar, buck up, laddy, er i'll blow ya ta kingdom come, either intrusive body welcomed, he found himself deserving, his eyes settling on the only photograph he ever cared enough about to have enlarged, the black and white he took years ago in bareneed, tacked there beneath the crucifix, a man on his knees with sticks for support, and children gathered around him to watch and listen,

‘crucifixion,' in reverence, he thought of norman, the canadian, arousal still buried deep in his pants, who would have figured, what would happen if he masturbated, frozen in climax, jaw agape, would he shoot a stream of feathers, poof, poof, poof and poooooooffff, ta-da, poofter, the godly canadian had given him the marijuana, they had smoked together, shared similar thoughts, but junior hadn't dared to cross the line, to touch his friend, that was what they were, friends, junior convinced himself, don't ruin it, although having now passed on, he could undoubtedly overpower norman, take him in his sleep, junior wondered if he might be able to travel across countries at will, if he might be a succubus or…what was the male equivalent of a succubus, a vampire, was that in the same league, he hadn't watched enough horror movies to piece it all together, there was an upside to this after all, this damnable deadness, it was not the heart that stopped, each chamber still opening and shutting to let in the let out, but the body that went like forget fulness, there was something to norman's mannerisms that implied he leaned that way as well, although it might just have been close friend ship, he should know the difference, those mothballs, hell, they
were good, he turned to pull in another whiff, noticed toward the bottom of the closet, dead moths, he bent and looked closer, the vein-like wing designs, glowingly transparent, not moths, but flakes of skin, his skin, he rose and shut the door, what door, and the skin fluttered to rise, always enter and leave by the same door, otherwise, bad luck,

‘we're just so gosh-darn confused,' another draw, the narrow end of the joint pinched between fingernails, he licked two fingertips on his other hand and smothered the flame, staring down at his bare feet, his long toes with fair hair, the veins and concealed joints, they began to bother him, make him squeamish, he covered one foot with the other, then decided to pull his socks on, why the body still with him, he didn't like his, never did, why not simply his essence, golden and floating with a choir hitting a magical combination of sustained high notes, tugging at what might have been thought of as the soul, how feeble his imagination now in recollection,

‘what's the matter, junior,' whose voice now, not his own, a woman's,

‘junior,'

‘that's not my dead name,' said he or his twin, ‘what's my dead name, call me by my dead name, expliticus, i have grown too vivid, no longer junior to what,' a gentle knocking on his door, he froze where he was sitting, concerned now, looking for his twin, face to face, they stared, the presence of another man, just like him, what would people think, two of them alone in a room, identical, both sets of eyes on the camera casing, how much film left, how many shots, the proper settings for exposure to let the light in,

‘yes,' called out perhaps too loudly, he could not tell, the meekest sound bursting out of him,

‘hello,' missus neary's whispering voice, younger, childlike, ‘hello,'

‘yes,' he coughed lightly, clearing his throat, was she dead, too, in what manner, or did she, living, know how to converse with the dead, perhaps there was no difference to her, junior waved his twin toward the closet, ‘hide,'

‘oh, come on, the closet, of all places,'

‘get,'

‘there seems ta be a waft of smoke coming from yer room,' a caring
soft statement, not meddling, but concerned kindness, child no longer ungrown, the voice maturing with worry,

‘only a candle, missus neary,' he lit a match, coughing to cover the sound, then brought the flame to the wick of a holy, baptismal candle, ‘just a second,' he wanted to see her face, her lovely face, perhaps younger than he remembered, by the sounds of what was spoken behind the door, he fanned the lingering smoke from the air, then checked to see his twin safely concealed, opening the door, amazed when his eyes locked with hers, enthralled by the startling beauty of sight alone, they were pale blue and gorgeous, her face old and truly magnificent, such sweet-smelling, benevolent antiquity in her powdered skin, such simple good humour evident there, a candle in her wrinkled hand, even though there was electricity in the house, the light against her lined face imbuing the image with softness, the sentiment mingling with the scent of fragrant powders, the scent reminding him of his grandmother catherine, who she obligingly became, in her other hand a small clear vial of holy water, she leaned to the side, tossing a sprinkle into the room, the candle flame flickering, the bulb's filament quivering the same, the light beyond the window in darkness, lightning,

‘too much light down dere,' she said, ‘dimming da t'rob o' da sacred heart,'