Specimen & Other Stories (7 page)

Succumbing to panic, he screamed, “Walter!
Help!”

Another lantern approached from the far end
of the shed. It was Walter, with one hand behind his back. He hung
the lantern on another beam. Peter looked beyond Walter and now, in
the improved light, saw the lime-caked hulks of several dead men on
wooden frames propped against the wall opposite, each with a wooden
stake in his chest.

Peter fought to find a voice in his dry
mouth. “Walter. Those men...”

“My prisoners, my specimens... As are
you.”

Walter brought his hand from behind his
back, revealing a heavy mallet and a wooden stake. He took the
stake in his free hand and placed its sharpened tip against Peter’s
chest. He raised the mallet over his head.

Peter screamed to no avail. “Please,
no...”

~~~

Walter shaved off his beard and rinsed the
soap from his face. He toweled himself dry and ran his hands over
his smooth cheeks. He picked Peter’s glasses off the sideboard and
put them on. He regarded himself in the mirror. Lovely. He looked
just like Peter.

Walter went down to the jetty, wearing
Peter’s white cotton suit and straw hat. The supply boat bumped up
alongside the dock. The deckhands unloaded a couple of crates and
carried Peter’s suitcase, portfolio cases and net case aboard.
Walter stepped onto the boat.

“Good morning, sir,” the captain greeted
him.

“And to you, Captain.”

Have a good vacation?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Your brother’s not here to see you
off?”

“He’s busy at the moment, tracking down an
escaped prisoner. But we said our goodbyes already.”

“Right, then. Let’s be on our way.” The
captain called to his deckhands. “Cast off, there.”

Walter strolled back to the stern as the
boat pulled away from the dock. He stood there a long while,
looking back as the island slowly receded in the distance. He
picked up one of the portfolio cases, placed it on a deck hatch and
opened it. Dozens of pinned butterflies lay arrayed in neat order
within the case. He pulled the pin from a butterfly and placed it
in the palm of his hand. He tossed it up into the breeze and
watched as it appeared to flutter away towards the distant island.
He pulled the pin from another butterfly and did the same. And
another, and another, as the distant island sank into the
horizon.

~~~~~~~~~

Every once in a blue moon someone pops up
like a demented jack-in-the-box to inflict such havoc in your life
that they become elevated, for at least that short troubled time,
to the status of nemesis. Briefly, many years ago, I had the
dubious distinction of playing that role opposite none other than
the reigning queen of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood.

Nemesis
. For those who lack a
superlative command of Greek vocabulary, look it up in your Funk
’n’ Wagnall’s. A nemesis, from the Greek for “pain-in-the-ass”, is
that worthy opponent who makes life hell for the hero(ine) and, in
the downer ending that rarely cuts it in Hollywood these days,
inflicts retribution or vengeance upon them. As Professor Tarzan
might say,
Me Protagones, you Antagones, now let the drama
begin
.

In the fall of 1975 I was in a Master’s
program at the University of New Brunswick. Thanks to respectable
undergraduate marks and a handful of short stories and poems
published in UNB’s literary quarterly
The Fiddlehead
, I’d
been granted permission to write a creative thesis in lieu of an
academic one.

Unfortunately this did not exempt me from
taking two academic courses of incredible dryness. The only course
of interest was one on Yeats, whose fascination for the occult
resonated with me. But to fill out my program I was stuck taking a
course on 19th Century Canadian poets, an academic field of such
barren prospect (or so it seemed to my 26-year-old mind) that I
feared to die of boredom.

Meanwhile, in lieu of writing a novella or a
dozen short stories for my creative thesis, I was zealously
pounding away at a porn novel, which a writer friend of mine had
assured me was the easiest way to break into the New York
publishing world. In a more-or-less continuous state of tumescence,
I had little patience for Bliss Carman’s “I think that I shall
never see / a poem lovely as a tree”, when what my daily page-count
required was more of “He lifted her skirt and felt her plush
buttocks yield to his probing fingers…” But I digress.

As a grad student I had an assistantship and
a monthly stipend from the English Department to perform menial
labor for an assigned professor. It was academic feudalism but it
helped pay the bills and, until my porn novel breached the gates of
the Big Apple smut kingdom, I was resigned to my fate. I was
assigned to the Professor of Creative Writing who was responsible,
along with teaching the usual academic load, for managing UNB’s
Visiting Writers program. My role in the big scheme of things was
to help him however he deemed suitable.

Thus far in the fall semester, I’d been
obliged only to plaster the campus and a few select downtown
locations with posters advertising the October visit of poet Al
Purdy. Plus ensure there were two bottles of Scotch waiting in
Purdy’s hotel room when he arrived. Purdy had been in great form
the night of his reading, bellowing his poetry in a robust voice to
a crowd of aficionados. After the reading a bunch of us trailed the
literati
force majeure
back to the bar of the Beaverbrook
Hotel, like a school of remora all wanting a ride on the shark.
There Purdy commandeered a corner table and, flanked by a couple of
blondes too old to be students, too provocatively dressed to be
professors, and too many to be his wife, proceeded to drink
everyone under the table.

In November the Professor placed all his
trust in my faint abilities to be the “handler” for Margaret
Atwood’s visit to UNB. A daunting and prestigious assignment! Aside
from the poster campaign there were only a couple of other duties –
arrange for a PA system the night of her reading, and pick Ms.
Atwood up at the Fredericton airport. Unlike Purdy’s voice,
conceivably strengthened in noisy bars drawing the attention of
busy waiters, hers was apparently rather delicate, better suited
for genteel salon discourse over tea and Peek Freans.

November passed quickly. Deeply immersed in
my porn novel, I’d lost track of the date. Luckily, I remembered to
get the posters up in time but neglected to deal with the PA
system. The day before her reading I checked with the campus office
that handled such things and was told that their only portable PA
system had already been loaned out to another function. I called a
downtown music store and learned I could rent a PA system for $50.
I laid out the alternatives for the Professor’s executive approval
– spend $50 on the PA rental, or at no cost, I could set up a
microphone with my guitar amplifier. The Professor stroked his
goatee, trying to dislodge some fleas he’d harbored there since the
Cuban missile crisis, and said it was my call.

I tested my amplifier that night. It was a
Fender Bassman tube amp that required a 10-minute warm-up before
each performance. Its 100 watts were capable of driving two 15-inch
speakers in a cabinet the size of a steamer trunk. I plugged in my
bass guitar and gave it a fierce workout until the next-door
neighbors started pounding on the walls. Philistines, they had
little appreciation for the hypnotic bass riff of Iron Butterfly’s
Inna Gadda Davida
played over and over and over again. I
plugged in my microphone, which I’d bought at Sears a few years ago
for $19.95, and tested it. Aside from an annoying tendency to
squeal like a butchered pig when I stood directly in front of the
amp, it was good to go.

Friday morning it started snowing. I was
driving a 1965 Volkswagen Bug at the time and like most students I
had little money for automotive maintenance. The battery was in a
fragile state and most nights I brought it to bed with me to keep
it warm. The heating channels that ran from the rear engine to the
front vents were rusted out, and on most winter days I had only a
small space of clear window in the lower left corner of the
windshield to see through. For a broader vista of the road ahead, I
kept a scraper handy to clear the hoar-frost from the
windshield.

But these were minor inconveniences compared
to my clutch, which no longer worked. To start the car I needed to
coast downhill or get a push. Once going I was able, with a skill
equal to a Formula One race car driver, to shift gears, crunching
and grinding as I expertly matched the engine revolutions to the
transmission. Since the UNB campus was built atop a hill and I
myself lived in a house whose driveway sloped to the street,
gravity was on my side in most cases.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, my VW feared
the straight and level, and recently I’d declined to become
involved with an attractive grad student of apparently relaxed
morals simply on the grounds that she lived in an apartment complex
situated in a gulag of flatness. However much I appreciated field
work for my porn novel, I didn’t need the embarrassment my
clutch-less car promised.

That afternoon I carried my battery out to
the car, gave it a push down the driveway and headed off to the
airport to fetch Margaret Atwood. En route I cleverly gauged the
flow of traffic approaching intersections and managed to slow or
speed up as the situation required, such that I never came to a
dead stop and risked stalling my vehicle. At the airport I was
relieved to see the parking lot built on a slight incline. Although
snow was still falling, I figured that with a push I would become
mobile again.

Inside the terminal I checked the flight
schedule. Ms. Atwood’s plane had apparently just arrived. I
wandered around the arrivals lounge, her face still fresh in my
mind after all the posters I’d put up. But all along, I’d imagined
I was looking for someone of considerable stature, as befitted the
Queen of CanLit. Probably five foot nine or ten, I figured, she was
that BIG. I kept looking, but nowhere did I see her. Finally, there
was no one left in the Arrivals lounge but me and this petite woman
with curly hair, who finally came up to me and said, are you from
UNB?

Ohmygod! The light went on with such a
blinding flash that I must have stood there stunned for several
seconds, immobilized like a moose on a dark highway when two
drag-racing tractor trailers come tearing around Dead Moose Curve,
bearing down on him...

She must have snapped her fingers. I yanked
my consciousness back to the here and now, and saw her standing
there with her paisley suitcase, looking very impatient like she
had somewhere to go in a hurry. Probably forgot to use the
facilities on the plane, couldn’t go to the washroom when she
arrived because she was afraid she’d miss her ride, and was now
just plain anxious to get to the hotel. I offered to carry her bag
but she wouldn’t let me touch it.

We went out to the parking lot where I
explained the situation. I would put the car in neutral and we’d
both push until it got a bit of a running start down the inclined
parking lot. Then I’d jump in, hit the ignition and, God willing,
the clutch-bone connected to the tranny-bone connected to the
wheel-bone would turn at just the right speed to allow the engine
to start with the stick-bone in first gear. She stared at me like I
was kidding. She soon found out that wasn’t going to get her
anywhere.

I had to give her credit, she was game. A
lesser woman would have said, to hell with this backwoods
horseshit, I’m taking a taxi into town and sticking UNB with the
fare. But no, she was cool. She put her suitcase in the back seat
of the car and pulled on her gloves like she really meant to get a
grip on things. Now that’s a poet. You could tell just by the color
of her gloves, red like boxing gloves, that she was a fighter and
Governor General’s Award material to boot.

We got the Bug rolling in short order, and I
was thinking we probably looked like the Wright Brothers trying to
get their first plane airborne. But when I jumped into the car, Ms.
Atwood didn’t have the horsepower to continue its momentum. Before
we ran out of incline, I hit the brakes and we changed sides. I’d
push from the rear and she’d push at the driver’s side with one
hand holding the door open and the other hand on the steering
wheel. Off we went. When we were up to speed, I yelled at her to
jump inside but she yelled back it was going too fast and she was
scared, and I yelled back at her that she’d better, or we were
walking to Fredericton, and she’d be late for her poetry
reading.

At that, she jumped in, hit the ignition,
and the engine caught. I ran to catch up with her. We couldn’t stop
the car for fear of stalling the engine so I had to yank open the
driver’s door and stand on the running board while she climbed over
the gearshift into the passenger seat. As I slide behind the wheel
I grabbed the gearshift to shove it into second gear. She gave a
little yelp and I realized that I’d grabbed her knee because her
dress was still caught on the gearshift and I couldn’t see, honest,
what I was putting my hands on. She struggled to get her leg over
and I heard a rip and then the gear dropped into fourth and we
almost stalled before I could get my hand on the gearshift for real
and pull it back into second where it belonged.

We didn’t talk much until we were downtown,
coasting into the driveway of the Beaverbrook Hotel. Because I
couldn’t really stop, not on a little incline like that, we had to
circle through once and she opened the door and tossed out her
carpetbag suitcase like a UNICEF plane doing a supply drop for some
culturally-starved hamlet deep in the interior of a third world
country. Then we went around once more and she opened the door and
perched on the passenger running board, her beret cocked over one
eye like a French Resistance fighter parachuting behind enemy
lines.