Tinker and Blue (24 page)

39

Tinker sat beside Capricorn in the basement of the Human Rainbow Commune and watched him spin wheels of tape, catch snippets of sound and splice them to other snippets of sound, melding the seams into each other like wax. He was fascinated by the process but wondered why Capricorn had asked him down to the basement. Tinker hadn't been playing any active role in the production of Blue Cacophony's bootleg album.

“I was listening to something here,” Capricorn began at last, the tape responding to his hand on the switches, running back and forth between spools as he assembled the results he wanted. “I'm afraid Blue's music doesn't do much for me, well, nothing, actually, so I don't pay much attention to it beyond trying to make it reasonably presentable. But something caught my ear here and I want you to listen to it.”

Capricorn started the tape and the high-speed train crash that was Blue's voice filled the basement, accompanied by Barney's baying and an agony of fiddle and bagpipes. Tinker recognized the words of one of Blue's newest creations, “Failure To Love,” the verses running into a chorus to which Tinker silently mouthed the words. “We can't blame our lives on the stars up above/When we know we are guilty of the failure to love.” Both of them listened to the entire offering, then Capricorn turned off the tape recorder.

“What do you think?” he asked Tinker.

“Between the two of us, it's the first one of Blue's songs that I might actually like to sing, but if I did, he'd take my interest in one song for an interest in learning them all. Blue's my best friend and all that, and the best way to keep it that way is for Blue to think his songs are beyond my ability.”

“Are they?” Capricorn asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I've heard you sing. You've got a good voice, a very good voice, but I've heard you do things with it, too. When you sing ‘Delilah,' your voice becomes Tom Jones's. The same for Jagger. Could you do Blue?”

“Sing like Blue?” Tinker asked, mystified.

“Look, this is a good song,” Capricorn explained. “It has Karma's influence all over it because these thoughts come from an open mind – not Blue's. It may even be an important song for some people, but it's not going to get a hearing in this condition. What I was wondering is, can you sing like Blue and still hold a tune?”

“What have you got up your sleeve, Cap?” Tinker inquired.

“If we could record you doing a listenable version of Blue's voice, I could replace Blue with you, but keep the Blue Cacophony sound. It will actually make an interesting contrast, the song sung in tune to discordant accompaniment. But it still has to be able to fool a lot of people, including Blue and Gerry and Nathan, so they think it happened by accident on stage. Tinker, there are people who will respond to these lyrics, but not to this arrangement,” he said pointing to the silent recorder.

“So you're going to pass me off as Blue on this album,” Tinker said.

“Just on the one song that's worthy of your voice.”

“Well, like you say, Cap, that song may have Karma's influence all over it, but your idea has Blue's influence all over it. That must scare the shit out of you, man. Let's do it!”

—

Blue glumly studied the sandwich in front of him and gave a shake of his head to Barney who was curled up under the table waiting for the ample morsels that Blue always allowed to fall from his plate when they went out dining together. Dining together with Karma, however, severely altered the menu from which they ordered. Hay sandwiches, Blue thought, lifting it to his mouth and taking a bite of sandwich so gritty with unrefined grains that it reminded him of swallowing beach sand. They were sitting in a vegetarian café a long way from the greasy spoon that was Blue and Barney's choice.

“Like it?” Karma inquired. Blue, who usually enjoyed banter as the best part of any meal, chewed faster, trying to get to a place in the process where he could talk as well as chew.

“It's not a matter of liking or not liking, Karma,” he answered eventually. “It's, well, it's a lot of work for very little taste.”

“You're suppose to enjoy it, Blue. Take your time and enjoy it. If you think about every bite you are eating, if you savour it, or appreciate as a gift the very fact that you have something to eat when so many don't, then you can't help but be grateful and enjoy it. The food we eat, like the air we breathe, is what keeps us healthy and alive, although both the food and the air most people eat and breathe may be killing us now instead of sustaining us. Besides, if you clean your plate, you won't get constipated,” she said, half teasing, half ordering him to take another bite.

“Now there's a thought to help me digest this, just think about what it will look like coming out. Wonderful. When do you get anything done, girl? All this thinking about what you're doing, even when you're eating or going to the toilet, doesn't give you time to think about the future, does it?”

“Some lives are wasted by living in the past, some lives are wasted by living in the future. The present is the only place we can be alive. At least that's what the other fellow told me,” Karma said taking a bite.

“Who? Tinker? Oh, I get it, you're teasing me. Well, here's what I think about thinking about what I'm eating. This hay here—”

“Alfalfa sprouts. The least you can do is tell your digestive system what to prepare for before you start to eat.”

“Okay, these alfalfa sprouts and the rest of the stuff in here, cucumbers and whatever, my stomach will sort all that out, take a long time to chew. If I take a bite and begin thinking about what I'm chewing here, it tells me a lot more about being a cow than being a man. You chew and you chew and eventually you find yourself looking around bored as a cow in a field watching a train passing by while it's chewing and chewing and chewing. After awhile, the cow gives up chewing and swallows the alfalfa and stores it in her cud, and later on, when she's more hungry than she is bored, she pulls it back up and chews some more. That doesn't happen to a guy eating burgers and fries, or a whole bunch of other human food. Now, when I'm eating a burger, my mind's not on the burger, it's on writing new songs or a way to make some money or what it will be like when I get back home. If the world turns out the way you want it to, then we're all going to be put out to pasture chewing our cuds and thinking about how wonderful the hay is and not even planning for tomorrow. Then along comes the Russians and they put barbed wire on the pasture fence and we're all Communists.” Blue snapped another bite of his sandwich.

“I find it funny, Blue, that you seem to know cows so well and would still rather eat them than watch them.”

“Like I told you before, if you think about what you're eating all the fun goes out of it. A hamburger doesn't remember that it used to be a cow so why should I remind it?”

They chewed on in silence while Barney grew impatient under the table. Then Blue swallowed and began talking again.

“Instead of sitting here thinking, ‘Hey, God, thanks for the hay,' I was thinking about the past. Now I know you're not suppose to do that according to your religion.”

“It's not my religion, Blue. It's a way of trying to be at one with the Universe.”

“If my mother knew I was living with a girl who would rather be at one with the Universe than a good Catholic, she'd have a cow.”

“And you'd probably eat it,” Karma said. “Okay, tell me what you were thinking about in your past.”

“The recent past really, and the near future, all the eating sins, right? I was thinking about Columbus, wondering if we could find him?”

“We wouldn't know where to begin looking.”

“We'd look around Cape Breton when we get home next summer. That was the other thing I was thinking, Karma. Me and you, Tinker and Kathy in the Plymouth heading for the east coast. We'll have some bucks socked away by then, and be crossing the causeway in time for the July first picnic.”

“You mean July fourth,” Karma corrected.

“You Americans! You think the whole world revolves around your history. Well, for your information, July first is the national holiday of Cape Breton. Anyway, that's what kicks off summer, and anybody who spends a winter in Cape Breton deserves the summer, as the other fellow says.”

“You're not spending the winter in Cape Breton, Blue.”

“Well, the other fellow's other fellow says, anybody who has to spend a whole winter away from Cape Breton deserves to spend the summer there. So what do you think, you, me, Tinker and Kathy, the Three Musketeers, headed for home?”

“Maybe, but it's time right now for you and me to head home,” Karma said, picking up the bill. “I'll pay for this.”

“You bet you'll pay for it. I could of bought six bales of hay back home for what they're charging for that one sandwich I ate, so when we get there next summer, I'll treat you to a jumbo pack,” Blue said, and picking up his guitar in one hand and taking Karma's hand in the other they began walking home, Barney chaperoning.

40

“What do you think about Blue's idea?” Tinker asked Kathy, tapping around the engine of the Plymouth with a wrench. Blue's suggestion that Karma go home with him the following summer had expanded to include Tinker, Kathy, the Plymouth and half of San Francisco.

Kathy, sitting on the roof of the Plymouth, her feet over the windshield, was painting the elevated hood while Tinker tinkered under it. Under her brush, an orange and black butterfly slowly spread its wings. Eventually, they would droop down over the fenders. It wasn't Tinker's first choice for decorating his car. Tinker thought that something along the line of King of the Road would best reflect the miles his beloved car and he had travelled. Blue, on the other hand, inspired by Karma's past life in the Tower of London, proposed that they paint the severed head of Mary Queen of Scots on the roof of the car, letting rivers of blood flow in rich red paint down over the rest of the car body. In the end, they settled for the Monarch butterfly that Kathy and Karma proposed because both girls refused to put their talents to work depicting royally crowned hoboes or severed heads.

“I would like to go, Tinker, but I don't want to leave the commune.”

“We'll come back,” Tinker promised. “Just for the summer, Kath. The way it is with us, see, is that we have to go home for the summer. I know a hundred, two hundred, people from my hometown alone who are all over the place working right now, but come next June or July, they'll begin collecting their back-time, packing their bags and heading for home. The same is true for everywhere else on the island. I bet next summer half the cars crossing the causeway will be filled with people coming home. Cape Bretoners and summer are like that, like Arabs and Mecca. We just have to go home. It'll be the first time for Blue and I. We've never got to go home yet and they say that returning to the island for the first time after you've gone away is the best feeling in the world. And if you come with me, you'll learn something about the rest of the world.”

Kathy slid down from the roof of the car to stand beside Tinker while he explored the Plymouth engine with new expertise gleaned from his experience in the tunnel.

“I want to go to Canada, Tinker. I want to go there very much. You and Blue are always teasing us about being dumb Americans who don't know anything about anywhere else in the world – and sometimes I think you're not teasing at all, that you mean it. Well, maybe we don't know where the capital of Canada is, or what city it is, but we do know something more important about Canada. That it's there. I'm female. I'm not going to get drafted. But I know lots of boys who have been. A few of them went to Canada instead of into the army, but even those who decided to be drafted, who are in Vietnam right now, thought about it, Tinker. Canada gave them a choice. I don't know if you understand what that means. If Canada refused to take our draft dodgers, then they would either be in prison or in Vietnam. Maybe they'd be dead. Instead, they're free. They can't come home, but they're free.

“I don't know anything about Canada, but I know what it means to people like me, and I want to go there. I want to go there with you, but I'm scared. You're not the only person in the world with a home, you know. This is my home. The commune and the things it's trying to do is my home. I'm afraid that if I go to Canada with you, to Cape Breton with you, we won't come back. You'll have me skinning rabbits or something for the rest of my life,” she said, lightening her tone.

“No rabbit-skinning, I promise, but how about this idea? We go home and start our own commune. Monk, this old guy I know, lives on this overgrown farm where he makes moonshine. You and me, Karma and Blue could move in with him and he could teach us his trade. And Monk's just as holy as Capricorn. We could call it the Hangover Heaven Commune or something, and save the world from there. Or how about The Pot of Golden Glo at the End of the Human Rainbow Commune?”

“You sound just like Blue,” Kathy told him.

You have no idea how much I sound like Blue, Tinker thought, tempted to tell her about the recording, but instinctively felt it needed to be kept not so much from Kathy as to himself. “We got all winter to think about next summer and what we're going to do,” he said.

“What about staying here, Tinker, or going back to Colorado when it's safe?” Kathy, expecting no answer, left the question hanging in the air and walked around the car to climb over the trunk and across the roof, repositioning herself in front of the elevated hood, picking up her brush again.

Under the hood, Tinker was a still-life-with-wrench, paralyzed by Kathy's question. By suggesting that he not go home, she had conceived the inconceivable.

—

The Plymouth, travelling back toward San Francisco, looked very unlike the car that departed from Cape Breton. Kathy's butterfly on the hood had been joined by other works of art; on the trunk, Karma's paint had converted the mock wheel rim into a peace sign composed of interlinking doves, and Tulip had decorated the four doors with an abstract mural which, Blue told her, looked exactly like a work “by Henry Bruce, this artist we got back home.” He didn't mention Henry Bruce's medium. On the roof, in lieu of Mary Queen of Scots's head, a calligraphic “Peace & Love” transmitted the message of the times to any low flying aircraft or UFOs.

With the wind whipping through his rolled-down window, it occurred to Blue for the forty-fifth time since the weekend began that they had broken the bonds of urbanization and were now in a world where ocean and landscape replaced skyscrapers and subways. “Look at that, Tinker, we're right in the middle of miles and miles of nowhere, just like home.”

“This reminds you of home?” Karma asked, studying the way the continent sheered off in steep cliffs to a rocky shore-line hammered by the pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean. “Does Cape Breton look like this?”

“What makes it remind me of home, Karma, is how much it's not like home. Know what I mean?”

“Probably not,” Karma said. “It reminds you of home because it doesn't remind you of home? Is there another way to explain that mystery, oh, Master and Wise One, a way that a simple-minded girl like myself can grasp?” she asked, placing her hands together and bowing slightly Buddhist-like before a spiritual master.

“It's like when you see a woman who doesn't look anything like your mother so you say, ‘She doesn't look anything like my mother,' and just by thinking she doesn't look anything like your mother, you're reminded of your mother. Well, that's why this place reminds me of home, because it's not like home at all. Isn't that right, Tinker?” Blue asked, leaning ahead from the back seat, where he and Karma and Barney were sitting, to solicit confirmation of his logic by speaking into Tinker's ear against the roar of wind.

Tinker shrugged, his thoughts closer to the landscape around him than the one he had grown up in. Going to Big Sur had been his idea, the seeds of the trip planted by one of the books Kathy had given him to read, and in reading it, he realized that Big Sur was part of their geographic neighbourhood. He had never been anywhere that people wrote about. In school, all the stories and poems in the English books were from England or the United States or other places far from Cape Breton. Home was a good place to live, he had concluded, but not a great place to write about.

It took very little to talk Kathy and Karma into taking the trip, but when Tinker told Blue he wanted to go to a place called Big Sur because a guy had written a book by that name, Blue borrowed the novel. He returned it to Tinker's room an hour later, throwing it on the bed and informing Tinker that the guy didn't even know how to punctuate “and if you meet him up there, tell him Sur is spelled s-i-r.” When Tinker mentioned that his pay cheque was going to pay for the weekend away, however, Blue made certain that Blue Cacophony was gig-free, since neither him nor Barney would be available.

The weekend had been a literary and literal washout.

By the time they discovered that Big Sur was south of San Francisco they were cold and wet and in Oregon arguing whether it was Tinker, who had read the book, or Blue, who had read the map, who was to blame. Both lacked the innate wonder that Karma and Kathy expressed over finding themselves amid mountains ranges and mile-high trees, noticing instead only the stinging needles of rain riding in at an angle on a bitter wind. “I guess it's November all over the world,” Blue observed while fighting a mild war with Karma over fair and equal shares of a sleeping bag that was too small to hold them both, but large enough to cover them, Barney between them like a nun at a high school dance.

They spend two days among monster trees that attracted rain clouds the way metal rods on barn roofs attract lightning, and slept two nights in the Plymouth after being turned down at two motels. Eating hamburgers from a tray hanging on the window of the car was the best part of the whole trip, according to Blue, Tinker and Barney. Tinker and Blue had enough tact to apologize for the pleasure they took in not having a choice. Barney didn't. Karma and Kathy nibbled at lettuce and cheese melted on their “hold the meat” hamburger buns and delivered to the car for the same price as a cheeseburger.

It was when they turned the car around to bring the sad adventure to an end that Tinker and Blue stopped sniping at one another about their navigational problems, realizing simultaneously that they had been heading north, heading home. Although the car zipped toward San Francisco, their imaginations were still driving a phantom Plymouth in the opposite direction.

“You see what this road was telling us, Tinker? We didn't get lost. No, buddy, we were on the right road all along, just like the smelts making their way back to the Big River after being gone from Cape Breton all winter. I don't care what the other fellow, says, you
can
go home again, and the next time we drive up this road there won't be any turning around, I'll tell you that. Vancouver, then east to the Canso Causeway. Big Sur's got nothing to do with us, that's why we never got there. Hell, if the five of us had any sense we'd still be travelling north, right Barney, old buddy,” Blue asked, scratching the dog's ears and wrestling him around the back seat.

“Do you believe there are no wrong roads?” Karma asked, her question generally directed at Blue, but inviting the participation of all. “If you were standing at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, which way would you walk?”

“Didn't you think this was a wrong road?” Tinker asked, pointing to the highway that had led them away from their destination. “We couldn't find a place to sleep, we barely found a place to eat, and we've been wet all weekend.”

“You make it sound like Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem. Good thing you girls weren't pregnant,” Blue said.

“But what Karma is asking is, do all those things make it the wrong road?” Kathy said, drawing them back to the question. “If I was standing at a crossroads, I would blindfold myself and twirl around until I lost all sense of direction, then I would start walking in the direction I'd be facing when I stopped. What about you, Tinker?”

“That's easy,” Blue said. “He'd just follow you down that same road.”

“Are you saying I don't have a mind of my own?” Tinker asked, a mild edge to his voice.

“No, you have a mind of your own, but what I'm saying is that that's not necessarily what does a guy's thinking for him.” The remark brought a nasty glare from Kathy, a head-shake of disbelief from Karma and, in the rearview mirror, Tinker's eyes flared with anger. Sensing that he was taking the conversation down a wrong and unwelcome road, Blue began extricating himself from the mire of his own words. “I don't mean anything dirty, that's just your own minds at work, so see, I'm saying you have your own mind, after all, Tinker, but what I really meant is all these books you're reading, they're changing your mind faster than I can argue with you. You read a book and it changes your mind. You read another one and it changes your mind again. So I guess it takes Karma's question right back to where we are, right? On the wrong road. Myself, I'd say we're not on the wrong road, just travelling in the wrong direction.”

“Then let Tinker answer the question,” Karma said.

“I guess I like the road less travelled by, like the poem says,” Tinker said.

“There's a perfect example of what I mean,” Blue countered. “When did you start reading poetry?”

“In grade nine, remember. That's where I know that poem from. I've heard you quote it yourself, except when you did it was the other fellow who said it, not Robert Frost. So I suppose I would look at all the paths to see which one had the fewest people using it then go down that one to see where it took me. That's exactly how we got out here to San Francisco, Blue, by picking a road nobody else we knew was on. What about yourself, Karma?”

“That's an easy one,” Blue said. “She'd just send three of her lives down the other roads and take the one that was left,” his remark ignored by the rest.”

“It wouldn't matter to me,” Karma answered. “Oh, I might pick a road that was lined with buttercups, or choose another one because it was going into the sunset, or it's opposite because it was going into the sunrise, or one that goes up into the mountains. Eventually, they would all bring me to the same place, myself.”