There are a number of things a woman can tell about a man who is roughly twenty-nine years old, sitting in the cab of a pickup truck at 3:37 in the afternoon on a weekday, facing the Pacific, writing furiously on the back of pink invoice slips. Such a man may or may not be employed, but regardless, there is mystery there. If this man is with a dog, then that’s good, because it means he’s capable of forming relationships. But if the dog is a male dog, that’s probably a bad sign, because it means the guy is likely a dog, too. A girl dog is much better, but if the guy is over thirty, any kind of dog is a bad sign regardless, because it means he’s stopped trusting humans altogether. In general, if nothing else, guys my age with dogs are going to be work.
Then there’s stubble: stubble indicates a possible drinker, but if he’s driving a van or a pickup truck, he hasn’t hit bottom yet, so watch out, honey. A guy writing something on a clipboard while facing the ocean at 3:37 P.M. may be writing poetry, or he may be writing a letter begging someone for forgiveness. But if he’s writing real words, not just a job estimate or something business-y, then more likely than not this guy has something emotional going on, which could mean he has a soul.
Maybe you’re generous and maybe you assume that everybody has a soul. I’m not so sure. I know that I have one, even though I’d like to reject my father’s every tenet, and say I don’t. But I do. It feels like a small glowing ember buried deep inside my guts.
I also believe people can be born without souls; my father believes this, too, possibly the sole issue we agree upon. I’ve never found a technical term for such a person – “monster” doesn’t quite nail it – but I believe it to be true.
That aside, I think you can safely say that a guy in West Vancouver facing the ocean writing stuff on a clipboard in the midafternoon has troubles. If I’ve learned anything in twenty-nine years, it’s that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that’s sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift – bad choice of words – is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.
Whuppp…Joyce, my faithful white Lab, just bolted upright. What’s up, girl, huh? Up is a Border collie with an orange tennis ball in his mouth: Brodie, Joyce’s best friend. Time for an interruption – she’s giving me that look.
An hour later:
For what it’s worth, I think God is how you deal with everything that’s out of your own control. It’s as good a definition as any. And I have to…
Wait: Joyce, beside me on the bench seat, having chewed her tennis ball into fragments, is obviously wondering why we should be parked so close to a beach yet not be throwing sticks into the ocean. Joyce never runs out of energy.
Joyce, honey, hang in there. Papa’s a social blank with a liver like the Hindenburg, and he’s embarrassed by how damaged he is and by how mediocre he turned out. And yes, your moist-eyed stare is a Ginsu knife slicing my heart in two like a beefsteak tomato – but I won’t stop writing for a little while just yet.
As you can see, I talk to dogs. All animals, really. They’re much more direct than people. I knew that even before the massacre. Most people think I’m a near mute. Cheryl did. I wish I were a dog. I wish I were any animal other than a human being, even a bug.
Joyce, by the way, was rejected by the Seeing Eye program because she’s too small. Should reincarnation exist, I’d very much like to come back as a Seeing Eye dog. No finer calling exists. Joyce joined my life nearly a year ago, at the age of four months. I met her via this crone of a Lab breeder on Bowen Island whose dream kitchen I helped install. The dream kitchen was bait to tempt her Filipina housekeeper from fleeing to the big city. Joyce was the last of the litter, the gravest, saddest pup I’d ever seen. She slept on my leather coat during the days and then spelunked into my armpits for warmth during breaks. That breeder was no dummy. After a few weeks she said, “Look, you two are in love. You do know that, don’t you?” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but once the words were spoken, it was obvious. She said, “I think you were meant for each other. Come in on the weekend and put the double-pane windows in the TV room, and she’s yours.” Of course I installed the windows.
It’s a bit later again, still here in the truck, looking again at the invitation to Kent’s memorial this evening.
A year ago today, I got a phone call from Barb, your mother, who had married my rock-solid brother, Kent, to much familial glee in 1995. I was driving home along the highway from a Hong Konger’s home renovation at the top of the British Properties, and it was maybe six-ish, and I was wondering what bar to go to, whom to call, when the cell phone rang. Remember, this was 1998, and cell phones were a dollar-a-minute back then – hard to operate, too.
“Jason, it’s Barb.”
“Barb! Que pasa?”
“Jason, are you driving?”
“I am. Quitting time.”
“Jason, pull over.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
“Barb, could you maybe –”
“Jason, Jesus, just pull to the side of the road.”
“Sorry I exist, Eva Braun.” I pulled onto the shoulder near the Westview exit. Your mother, as you must well know by now, likes to control a situation.
“Have you pulled over?”
“Yes, Barb.”
“Are you in park?”
“Barb, is micromanaging men your single biggest turn-on in life?”
“I’ve got bad news.”
“What.”
“Kent’s dead.”
I remember watching three swallows play in the heat rising from the asphalt. I asked, “How?”
“The police said he was gone in a flash. No pain, no warning. No fear. But he’s gone.”
Let me follow another thread. On the day of the massacre, Cheryl arrived late to school. We’d had words on the phone the night before, and when I looked out my chem class window and saw her Chevette pull into the student lot, I walked out of the classroom without asking permission. I went to her locker and we had words, intense words over how we were going to tell the world about our marriage. A few people noticed us and later said we were having a huge blowout.
We agreed to meet in the cafeteria at noon. Once this was settled, the rest of the morning was inconsequential. After the shootings, dozens of students and staff testified that I had seemed (a) preoccupied; (b) distant; and (c) as if I had something “really big” on my mind.
When the noon bell rang, I was in biology class, numb to the course material – numb because I’d discovered sex, so concentrating on anything else was hard.
The cafeteria was about as far away from the biology classroom as it was possible to be – three floors up, and located diagonally across the building. I stopped at my locker, threw my textbooks in like so much Burger King trash and was set to bolt for the caf, when Matt Gursky, this walking hairdo from Youth Alive!, buttonholed me.
“Jason, we need to talk.”
“About what, Matt? I can’t talk now. I’m in a hurry.”
“Too much of a hurry to discuss the fate of your eternal soul?”
I