Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (12 page)

After that he had taken to jotting reminders on his hand. His left hand at the moment read:
GLOVES! BREAKFAST! DIEFENBAKER/RECIPROCITY
! He stared at the message. Did he somehow owe a breakfast to John G. Diefenbaker? Surely not. He hazarded another guess.
Gloves
—in his coat pocket.
Breakfast
—a French roll to be eaten on the way to the university. And
Diefenbaker/Reciprocity
must refer to the article he had just spent an hour reading, of which he remembered nothing. He reluctantly admitted to himself that he knew the rest of the course material like the back of his hand—which was to say, that it made very little sense to him at the moment. He was blanking out again from the pressure.

Obtaining a master’s in history was more difficult than his family cared to believe, although they were grudgingly impressed that someone who had to keep a copy of his own address—
twenty-four Wessex Drive
, he thought hastily (just checking)—could memorize so many less familiar names and dates. Usually such facts and figures danced about in his head—
what was the importance of a fly swatter in the diplomatic history of the French Third Republic?
(he never forgot that)—but during exam week, his mine of information became a barren tunnel salted with surface trivia.

Milton sighed. Trying to figure out what caused his anxiety was a bit like trying to figure out what caused the German inflation of 1923. Eventually you sit down, and sigh, and admit that
everything
caused the German inflation of 1923.

Perhaps a study break would help to clear his mind. He considered dropping in for a chat with what’s-his-name, the New Yorker across the hall—but that might turn into an all-night debate, which it often did. The New Yorker, Gerald—what
was
his last name? Ford? Probably; it sounded familiar. Anyway, Gerald was specializing in international diplomacy. “You’re studying Canadian
domestic
politics?” he had demanded when they first met. Milton had acknowledged that this was so, and the Yank had grinned facetiously. “Isn’t that a bit like raising dairy cows for foxhunting? I mean, the potential seems hardly worth the effort. All you guys do diplomatically is referee. Now my country …” Milton shook his head. He wasn’t up to debating tonight. Better reread that piece on the Liberal Party of Canada. He groped for the book.

“I am here to demand that you change your vote on the Western Grain Stabilization Act,” said a stern voice from behind him.

For a stricken moment, Milton thought that he had warped out in the middle of Professor Paulsen’s exam,
only to find himself unprepared, but no, this was definitely his room. Cautiously, he turned around and saw that it was only Mackenzie King, who had been dead since 1950 and could hardly be appearing as a guest lecturer at York. He smiled with relief. It was only a hallucination. He’d been expecting them, anyway.

“Don’t sit there smirking at me!” snapped the apparition. “I tell you, the Western Grain Stabilization Act simply will
not
do!”

“Oughtn’t you to be weighted down with a chain forged of old ballot boxes or something?” asked Milton mildly.

“Nonsense! You’re confusing me with a U.S. president! Several, in fact.”

“Very possibly. At any rate, you’re confusing me with someone else as well. I can’t vote in parliament. I’m a graduate student.”

The late prime minister pointed to Milton’s coffee mug. “M.P.—there it is, sir, plain as day!”

“My initials,” said Milton diffidently.

There was a short silence. “Oh.” Another pause. “Isn’t this twenty-four Sussex Drive?”

Milton consulted his wrist. “Twenty-four
Wessex
Drive,” he announced.

“Oh. I haven’t got the hang of this yet. It was easier when I was on your side. Just sit at the table and stay alert: one rap for yes, two for no. Now I’m expected to navigate. Higher plane indeed! Oh well, sorry to have disturbed you. Carry on!”

The figure walked into the wall and began to fade from sight, its features mingling with the roses on the wallpaper. Milton cleared his throat. “Actually, though, there isn’t anything
wrong
with voting for the Western Grain Stabilization Act.…”

The figure ceased to blend. It seemed to seep outward from the wall again, taking on a distinct, even portly
form, which began to walk back toward him. “I
beg
your pardon?”

“I said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with voting for the Western Grain Stabilization Act.’ It will stabilize the whole economy of the region without costing the taxpayers anything. Because, you see, you have to consider the multiplier effect, which in the case of a farmer is a factor of three; therefore—”

“No! No! Don’t give me twaddle about multiplier effects. Have you talked to the farmers? Have you asked them what
they
want? You have to approach this in a spirit of compromise, to—I thought you said you weren’t in politics.”

Milton drew himself up. “I’m a graduate student in Canadian history. Naturally I follow politics,” he said, warming to the topic.

The apparition smiled complacently. “Quite an opportunity for you—talking to me!”

“Uh … well …” Milton hedged.

“Politics. I can certainly set you straight about that.”

“Er—the fact is—”

“Have you read my book?
Industry and Humanity?
”

“I find it most helpful at times,” said Milton carefully.

“Should think you would.” The late prime minister nodded.

Milton forbore to mention that he found
Industry and Humanity
most helpful when his worries about course work had reached such a pitch that he was unable to sleep, and found himself speculating on whether there was an alternate universe in which he
had
returned a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s
Malafrena
to the university library. About the time his musings turned dark and he began to wonder whether one could be digested by one’s bed, he would flip on the light with shaking hands and lose himself in the soothing monotony of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s prose style. This treatment never failed to work: soon he would awake to the clanging of
his alarm clock, the book still in his hands. As an alternative to sleeping tablets, Mackenzie King was without equal. As a political mentor—Milton Palmerston, contemporary Liberal, questioned his value.

“… probably know more about politics than anyone else alive,” the apparition was saying.

Milton blinked at this. “But you’re not alive,” he pointed out.

“Do you think the voters would hold it against me?”

Milton considered the members of parliament presently in office. “Probably not,” he conceded. “Er—you weren’t thinking of standing for North Waterloo again, were you?”

“What? After I got the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act passed and the ingrates voted me out in 1911? I should hope not! I was thinking of my other old job—prime minister, you know.”

Milton nodded, wondering if perhaps reading Mackenzie King had not, after all, been safer than tranquilizers. It seemed to produce its own hallucinations.

“I suppose they still need me,” mused the late prime minister. “How are things going with labor? And the French—are we getting along better internally now? I suppose I’m sorely missed among the Liberals?”

Milton’s instincts toward courtesy to deceased heads of state battled with his pedantic desire to make political pronouncements. God knows he didn’t have much of a chance to do either, but the urge to make political pronouncements proved stronger. With the dim suspicion that he might be following in Cassandra’s dainty footsteps, Milton spoke.

“The fact is, sir, you’re not considered sound. The modern Liberal consensus is that while we respect your—er—place in history and all that—well—as my professor put it last term: ‘You can follow Mackenzie King just so far.’ ”

Having delivered this pronouncement, he looked up to see the apparition rapidly fading in and out—the spectral
equivalent, he supposed, of taking deep breaths. After a few moments, the oscillation subsided, and a very substantial-looking statesman fixed him with a most uncompromising glare. “Indeed!” The apparition began to pace about the room, in the exact spot where Milton’s mound of notes and reference books had been erected; he did not trip on them however, but merely walked through them, as if they, not he, were ethereal. Milton’s eyes strayed to the note posted on his wall:
EXAM TOMORROW
! He really must study, and since the exam did not cover the Mackenzie King era at all, this interruption could do him no good whatsoever. He wondered at the propriety of evicting a deceased prime minister from one’s room. It wasn’t covered in
Robert’s Rules of Order
, he was sure of that.

The unwelcome visitor continued to pace.

He glanced at the clock. Two A.M. Exam in six hours. Milton considered exorcism. What would one use to banish the ghost of a Liberal prime minister? He dived for his Diefenbaker text.

Before he could locate a sufficiently inflammatory passage, the ghost discovered a newspaper that Milton had been saving to line his leaky boots. He bent down and studied the front page carefully: unemployment statistics, a picture of an overcrowded nursing home, an article on inflation.

“I see you’re having another Depression,” he remarked.

“Actually, it’s my nerves,” Milton confided. “I can’t sleep, but I’m taking sedatives and considering lightening my class load.”

“I was referring to the country!”

“Oh.”

“There was a Depression during my term as well,” said the ghost. “I got the country out of it, of course!”

Milton nodded. He decided not to mention that Mackenzie King’s solution to the Great Depression was called World War II. There was always the chance that even an
oblique reference to the Führer might bring him goose-stepping into the room to join the debate. There were the neighbors to consider.

Mackenzie King plodded to the laundry-laden armchair and sank down on—or rather, through—the pile of clothes. He put his head in his translucent hands. “What a disaster!” he moaned. “I am the only one who can possibly save Canada—and I’m dead!”

Milton considered the problem; perhaps he could profit from providing assistance. If there were such a thing as ghosts, then perhaps spirit-writing was also possible, and he could persuade a grateful Mackenzie King to get his impending exam ghost-written, as it were, by Diefenbaker. Unless, of course, the Liberals’ imprecations had been correct, in which case Dief was now residing in a much more tropical region than Ontario.

“Do you see much of Diefenbaker?” he asked casually.

“What? Old fellow? Rides a unicorn? That’s not important! Pay attention. I am trying to save the country!”

“Well,” said Milton doubtfully, “perhaps you could do it in an advisory capacity. Are any of your favorite mediums still alive?”

“I’ve tried that. I’ve spelled out messages on the Ouija board until my head spun, but my contacts couldn’t even get an appointment with—” He waved his hand. “You know—what’s-his-name.” The apparition shook his head dolefully. “Once I even appeared at a government reception. They mistook me for Larry Reynolds.”

Milton sighed. He supposed that he would have to help: saving the country took precedence over passing History 604, but he didn’t expect any gratitude for it. Nothing ever went right for him; he’d known that at the age of six, when he bit into his chocolate Easter Bunny and broke out in hives. How could the Dominion of Canada possibly be saved by a shortsighted, mild-mannered, pedantic, mediocre—He looked again at Mackenzie King. Then again …

“Could I suggest a compromise?” he ventured.

The ghost brightened visibly upon hearing the magic word. “Compromise?” he said eagerly.

“Yes. I was thinking that instead of meddling—er—intervening directly in domestic policy, you might tell your ideas to me, and I could see to it that someone in Parliament hears them.”

“You have influence?”

“A certain amount.” Milton smiled, wisely deciding not to mention that his parliamentary contacts consisted of his presence on the mailing list of the M.P. from Moosejaw.

The late prime minister tapped his fingers together. “Well … I suppose you’ll have to do,” he said grudgingly.

“I’m better than nothing,” Milton reminded him.

“Humph! Well, I always did have a fondness for ruins. All right, then. Pay attention. Get a pencil. I shall begin.”

Milton ferreted out a pencil from the debris on his desk, turned to a clean page in his course notebook, and looked expectantly at the speaker. This would be easy. Graduate students in history are able to take down lecture notes in their sleep. Unfortunately, this is what Milton did. The sonorous cadence of the William Lyon Mackenzie King political address was even more soothing than his literary efforts. Milton’s hand diligently jotted down the words, but his mind had warped out to blissful oblivion. Occasionally a phrase like “social credit” or “contra-cyclical financing” would penetrate his stupor and reverberate through his own reveries, producing nightmares of political farce. The Western Grain Stabilization Act became a circus performer from Manitoba who juggled loaves of French bread.… The Western Grain Stabilization …

Milton returned to consciousness to see that the late prime minister had indeed worked his way round to that topic. Suppressing a yawn, he forced himself to listen.
After much rambling and personal digression, Mackenzie King began to outline his political plan. A few minutes later Milton was wide awake. This fellow’s ideas weren’t so ridiculous after all. Quite sensible, really. But what was this bit in his notes about prostitutes? He must have dreamed that part.… What was he saying now? Soon Milton found himself leaning forward, saying excitedly: “Yes! Yes! That would work! What else?”

“Well, it’s quite simple really.…”

Milton suddenly noticed that the clock, whose alarm he had forgotten to set, said 7:30. He was due in class in half an hour! It seemed a pity to interrupt such brilliance, but he had his academic career to think of.

Milton ventured to interrupt. “Excuse me, sir,” he said timidly, raising his hand. “I have to be getting to the university now.”