The top three contained Quebec real estate information, downloaded from my father’s computer: hunting cabins for rent; “renovatable” churches for sale; and a travel piece that described the Québécois people as “proud,” which in the lingo of these things usually means “suspicious, with a persecution complex.” I set these aside and focused on the last sheet, directions from my Uncle Vince.
Vince Flamand was my mother’s half-brother, a six-foot-six southpaw who was a first-round pick of the Detroit Tigers in 1967. At seventeen he could throw a tailing fastball that hit 96 on the gun, and despite his records for hit batsmen in every league he played, he went from high school ball to Triple A Toledo in just over a year. So why did he end up in Canada? Because, he explained, he didn’t want to fuck up his arm in Vietnam.
For about six months, once or twice a month, Uncle Vince would send me postcards or first-day covers from towns in Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. With lines like:
Hey Nile buddy,
Thought you might like this stamp of a grizzly … Just had a tryout with a club in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A nut-freezing twilight doubleheader. Threw two innings of shutout middle relief in the first game and saved the other—struck out the side in the 9th on 9 pitches. 8 heaters and a change. The ball’s not great up here, but it’s not great in Nam either.
Vince ended up playing not in Nova Scotia but in New Brunswick (as did Matt Stairs), pitching and hitting clean-up for the Marysville Royals. You can look up his stats on the Net. After feeling some soreness in his shoulder, he returned to the States, thinking he could con the draft board into a four-F. A few months later he was captured by the Viet Cong and spent several years in a bamboo cage.
He came back from the war with two shattered heels and an asocial gloom so severe that he moved into a shack in the Adirondacks the size of an outhouse, eating his meals from plates of bark, using whittled sticks as cutlery. When his weight dropped below a hundred, my father got him into a VA hospital in Lyons, some sixty miles from Neptune, which he’s been in and out of ever since. If he’d been only one inch taller, my mother told me, he would never have been drafted.
Before leaving Neptune, I e-mailed him for advice and got this reply:
Hey Nile buddy, I was just thinking about you, about the last time we took in a ball game. You remember, you smuggled in a bottle of Jim Beam and the Mets beat the Yanks at Shea? Or maybe the other way round. Or maybe it wasn’t with you. I was tanked, what do I know? You still playing ball? I remember you were one bad-ass third baseman. Bad-ass means good, right? Or was it second base? You could’ve been a pro if it wasn’t for that uppercut swing. OK, here’s what you need: penlight (not a flashlight), compass, black clothes, tar, wirecutters. North on I-87 for about 150 miles, to RT-3. Turn left on Blake then right on 190, then left on 11, right on 189, left on Frontier Road. Number 524 on right. That’s where Lightning lives. You remember Lightning? Don’t talk to him and don’t leave your car in his drive, ditch it some place in the woods. Put the tar on your face, and walk back to his place. In one corner of the backyard is a big STOP sign and a small stone pillar with USA on one side and CANADA on the other. Don’t go anywhere near there. That’s where they put the sensors and cameras. Go to a spot directly in line with his back door. There used to be a dog house there. If the Feds have put a fence in since the last time I was there, that’s why you brought the cutters …
“Lightning” Leitner (I forget his first name), whose nickname derived from his slowness of foot, was one of Vince’s old catchers, a fellow draft dodger. He’s still up there, true, but six feet under. In any case, it worked. It worked in Uncle Vince’s time and it works now, post-9/11.
The night I crossed, as I was trying to find the STOP sign and obelisk, I heard sounds from behind me, from a tangled growth of bushes and stunted trees. Sounds not unlike human whispering. I turned off my penlight and froze.
A quivering beam of light was directed my way, which got closer and closer. And the whispering became louder and louder. I recognized the language.
“Nǐ hǎo,” I said. “Bing jia ná dà.”
I turned on my light and saw the scared faces of two women, one old, one young. I’m not sure what scared them more: the tar smeared like warpaint on my face or hearing words in their own tongue.
“Nǐ shì shéi?” said one of them. (Who are you?)
“Wǒ jiào Nile.”
“Jǐng chá?” (Police?)
“Péng.” (Friend.)
Silence, then a quivery voice. “Hěn gão xǐng rèn shí nǐ.” (Nice to meet you.)
“Rèn shí nǐ wǒ yě hěn gão xĩng.” (Ditto.)
“We follow?” asked the older one in English. “You know place?”
“I think so.” I pointed my flashlight toward a high chain-link fence with barbed wire strung along the top. There was no dog house in front of it, but the spot was roughly in line with the back door.
“We take bicycles?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
They took their bicycles. I cut the hole and the three of us bent the wires back and jammed the bikes through. A dog barked in the distance, but the house remained quiet and dark.
On the other side of the fence was an evergreen jungle and an uphill slope that made for tough zigzag slogging, especially with bicycles that had to be dragged or carried, but we soon hit a well-worn path. A Canadian path. “Where are you two coming from?” I asked as we made our way slowly along it, three flashlights lighting the way.
They were smuggled into the U.S., the older one explained, aboard a freighter that docked in Seattle. How did they end up here, on the other side of the continent? She didn’t seem to know, or didn’t wish to tell.
You have been to China, sir? whispered the younger one in Mandarin. She was quickly reproached by the other.
Yes, I lived there for a year or so. In Shanghai.
We come from nearby! said the older one.
Did you like it, kind sir, in Shanghai? asked the younger one.
I hesitated. The city’s a kiln, a steam-bath infused with oil and gas fumes, with methane and ammonium hydroxide, the way the world might have smelled when life was first being formed. It contains the prototype for the world’s worst air terminal, Hongquia, and a bar where depressed people can go to cry, where you pay an hourly rate for Kleenex, sad music, and life-size dolls to throw around. It was very nice.
Did you go to the countryside? she asked.
Yes, I went hiking in the mountains. And didn’t see a single bird. Or animal of any kind.
Yes, said the older one. They have all been consumed.
What are you going to do in Canada? I asked.
Xíong dǎn, said the younger one, which I didn’t understand. Something to do with bears? The older one slapped her on the shoulder, hard, and nothing more was said.
We walked together in thoughtful silence, the three of us heading north into I knew not what. We reached a cyclable road near Franklin, Quebec, about a four-mile trek, as the sun came up. And then paused, wondering which way to turn. Zài jiàn, said one and Zhù nǐ hǎoyùn, said the other as they mounted their bikes and waved their Chinese maps at me. We parted in opposite directions.
While walking briskly, my duffle slung over my shoulder like Santa, I formulated a plan for breakfast: once inside the first town I came to I would stop at the first restaurant on the left and wait until it opened. Or perhaps at the first boulangerie or charcuterie on the right. But when I reached the first town there were none of these on either side. Wasn’t this a French province? I paused in front of a discount carpet store. There was a bright red notice taped to the inside door pane with a phone number on it, which said to call P. Tremblay in case of emergency. Hello, Tremblay? I hate to bother you at home like this, but I need a rug right away.
On the outskirts of town, a short hike away, I reached a double-wide trailer posing as a diner, whose original name had been painted over with three black letters: TCG. A handwritten sign in the win
dow said it opened at 07:00. When, back in the ’90s? I peered in and saw a light about as bright as an oven bulb. I wiped the last of the tar off my face with a Kleenex, sat down on the steps and waited.
The blinds were eventually rolled up and an unsmiling strawberry-blonde opened the door for me. She was wearing a white apron printed with an anthropoid cat walking erect and the words TOM CAT GRILL. She said she’d be right with me and headed for the kitchen. I sat down in a room with wood panelling and white ceiling tiles with holes in them, as in a suburban basement. The place smelled of paint and mineral spirits, though neither the walls nor the ceiling appeared to have been painted. A defective fan clicked with each revolution. On the table, beside the serviette dispenser where the menu should have been, was a sticky brochure from the Parc Safari in Hemmingford, only a few miles, or rather kilometres, away. I pored over every word, enjoying the heat of the vent on my legs. Among other attractions, it announced the arrival of three White Lions, “rarities found only in the Timbavati region of South Africa, whose survival is threatened.” Two females and a male were brought over to Quebec to help increase their numbers. What a strange destiny for these cats! Maybe I’d check them out one day with Brooklyn.
Some fifteen minutes later, when I could have recited the contents of the brochure by heart, I delved into my bag for more reading material. My Internet travel notes, written by an American from my home state, informed me that the Québécois are restless people. That their first thought is to get away from other Québécois. Here, there, Ontario, British Columbia, Maine, Mexico and Florida—“especially Florida.” Impatient people, always jumping around. Nervous people, something in their DNA. “In all Québécois literature there is not a single novel with a followable plot.”
When the waitress finally returned to my table, I was about to say “No big deal” to her apology, but no apology came. She said they had no menus yet and that breakfast was eggs, home-cured ham basted with cider, beans in maple syrup, and poutine. They had no cereal. When I asked what poutine was, she laughed. When I asked if there was a used-car dealership in town, she laughed again.
« Non, mais t’es fou? Dans ce trou? Mais … tu trouveras peut-être quelque chose au bout de ce chemin-là. » She pointed out the window, her eyes twinkling with mischief. Was I being set up?
After eating her heavenly breakfast I loitered as long as possible, flipping through copies of Boxing Roundup and World of Wheels and a stack of hook and bullet magazines with articles like “10 Best Ways to Hammer Hot-Weather Bucks.” The waitress refilled my bowl with robust café au lait and my plate with stacks of multigrain toast, on which I spooned a complicated homemade jam from a jar with a thick seal of paraffin on top. She had little else to do, apart from her crossword puzzle and filling Heinz bottles with liquidy generic ketchup, as there were only two other customers that morning, both take-outs. One of them, an old man as skinny as a parking meter, told me she was “dans le jus” (busy) at lunchtime. As he pulled away in his huge silver rig, the waitress wiped my table with a pink sponge that had a soggy half-Cheerio riding on the stern. I thought she said they had no cereal.
When I finished the plate of toast, at exactly nine o’clock according to a large institutional clock on the wall, she placed a glass jar on my table. It was a goldfish bowl, filled not with fish but with peanut-butter cookies with corrugations on top where a fork had been pressed onto them. I ate six. And asked for six to go. After paying the bill (only $28!), I folded a crisp twenty in four and slipped it under the bowl.
At the end of the road she had pointed to, a gravel cul-de-sac over a hundred yards long, I reached a vast driveway that dwarfed the solitary house it led to, a shabby clapboard box that wouldn’t have passed for a garden shed in my part of New Jersey. The drive was crowded with run-down or wrecked snowmobiles, two identical turquoise doghouses, as if for twins, two frosty lawnmowers, a motorcycle of the menacing variety, and a mound of something covered by a tarpaulin. Next to the mound, one wheel on the tarp, was a heavily primered VW van with a sign on it: $500. Perfect. A Westphalia with a camper, late eighties. A Vanagon. My dad had one when we lived in Frankfurt.
The buzzer was mute so I pounded on the door’s splintered surface, perhaps harder than necessary. Dogs began to bark. Twinned, echoing barks. I was on the verge of leaving when I heard a death rattle in the lock. The door opened and a man appeared in a leather vest with nothing underneath and steroidal biceps as big as bowling balls. On the left one was a tattoo, a snake with its mouth open, tongue and fangs extended; on the right was a single, unfinished fang, as if the tattoo-artist had been practising. The man’s cornrowed head was tilted to one side and his arms and feet set in a boxer’s stance. Only when I pointed to the Westphalia did his vein-popping arms relax.
Without a word, he grabbed a ring of keys hanging from a nine-inch nail and strode past me, down the steps and onto the mud and slush of the driveway. In big furry slippers. He started up the Westy, not on the first or second or even third try, then told me to take her for a spin. Solo.
I threw my duffle onto the passenger side and paused to adjust the mirrors with hands that were trembling. Why so nervous, Nile? I backed up with a lurch and heard the crunching sound of tire on tarp, then a metallic clang as I hit what I think was a lawnmower handle.
I drove the van back down the road with clumsy violence, grinding its gears, bouncing through ruts and puddles. Screws on the dash were backing out of their holes and the glove compartment flew open. I stopped in front of the diner and waved through the window at the waitress, whose face looked startled under the unnatural neon glow. Did she think I’d come to get her? Was Fang her boyfriend? I sped off, in rubberly fashion, and opened her up on the highway. In kilometres: 100, 110, 120, 130. Runs like a cheetah. Sounds like an elephant.
I was feeling good, which speed often does to me, and found myself waving or grinning at everyone I saw. At oncoming motorists heading for work, at pedestrians bent on their errands, at a blue-and-white aircraft gliding low. I am an American of good will in a German vehicle. I will try to observe your Québécois customs.
Cars passing me threw a slushy spray up from the road. I turned on the wipers, which made things worse. Where was the lever for the spray? Couldn’t find it.
Back on the owner’s driveway, after a blurry ride home, I inspected the interior. Absolutely foul. Dark brown stains on the passenger seat, filters smashed into black smudges on the floor mats, McDonald’s plastic filling both footwells. Red carpeting in the back like the sham upholstery put in coffins. And a battered wooden tool box with a nightscope sitting on top.
I jumped out and looked over the exterior: the hood was held down by bungee cord, the side door dented, the front bumper wired in place. The body had been repainted, seemingly by a child, with wide brushstrokes. On the door were letters, faint ones, barely visible beneath the army-green latex paint: CLOUD 9 POTATO CHIPS.
I banged on the door again, and again had to wait. From my father’s valise I pulled out a slab of twenties and counted out twenty-five. Then banged again.
Fang eventually opened it, but with his back to me. A strand of turquoise beads now circled his neck like a dog collar. And a Q-Ray bracelet, for energy and vitality, circled his wrist. Were these put on for my benefit? He was bent over, struggling with something adhering to the heel of his slipper.
« Do you want to keep this? » I asked in French, holding up the army-surplus nightscope. « Or the toolbox in the back? »
Without looking at what was being shown to him, he shook his head. He was more interested in what was clinging to his slipper. Something made of clear plastic. Or perhaps vinyl. He looked up only when I held out the roll of bills, which he accepted and then counted, lips moving, to vingt-cinq. He handed four back.
« Did I … miscount? » I asked.
« Exchange rate. »
« Forget it. »
He nodded. « Tell you what. I’ll throw in a plate, a good one, on the house. »
&n
bsp; He crammed the wad into his tight hip pocket without another word. He spoke so few words, in fact—gravelly monosyllables for the most part—that I thought he might be laryngitic. Or perhaps a death metal singer. But after handing me a blue-and-white licence plate with the province’s motto (Je me souviens), he began to form full sentences in a clear voice, explaining that he was a welder who ran with the Hells, Châteauguay chapter, and that a stoolie had been shot in the van’s passenger seat.
PART TWO
CHRISTMAS
Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither …
XVII
On the 22nd of December, in pre-dawn darkness, I began loading up the potato chip van. Not only with things that belonged to Céleste and me, but with things that belonged to our neighbour. I put on his forest ranger parka, in case we ran into trouble along the way, slipping his badge into one pocket, his U.S. Fish & Wildlife business cards into the other. Wrapped in an elastic band, they had no name on them, just a blue, orange and yellow logo. I also took the ranger’s portable red flasher and stashed it under the driver’s seat.
“Are there any books I could read?” I called out to Céleste, who was putting on her own uniform in the bathroom. “Like Forest Ranging for Dummies? Or … The Bluffer’s Guide to Wildlife Detection?”
Her reply through the door was muffled. She opened the door and limped out, wearing a ski-mask and my black suede coat with the collar up. She was quite a sight, like she was Halloweening as a terrorist.