Random Fact

Openings of works-in-progress. Some are reasonably polished, some first draft.

"Tweaking," short story.

The tall man danced past triage.

Keefer Breen looked up from the bracelet tab printer at reception in the Health Sciences Emergency Department. He'd been trying to fix it, not that it fell under the job description for Personal Care Attendant, and not that he knew how. The printer had jammed several times that night, and Darlene, the receptionist was, in her own words, ready to shove the printer up Dr. Morrison's arse and then toss both into St. John's Harbour. Keefer had grinned, then knelt down and tugged at stuck paper. Darlene left a moment to fill her water bottle, and while she was gone, Keefer mentally undressed her, deciding on brown nipples and sparse pubic hair, dark, if her roots were anything to go by. Down the short hall leading to the main emergency entrance, the doors opened; then the tall man danced past, long strides, like he was wearing robes. He was ghastly thin, maybe thirty pounds underweight. His hair was thick but falling out in clumps, and his face, beautiful with flesh on it, was sallow and scratched to scabs around the nose and mouth. Patients in the waiting area, intent on their own untreated pain, ignored him. Darlene, returning, watched him as she might a watch a mime at a funeral: he was lost but enchanting, his performance a ballet impeded by fog. Colliding with one wall, he turned around and strode into a locked bathroom door. Unaffected, he whirled his right hand, casting a spell for navigation, and righted his trajectory, pushing through the fire doors to the care rooms.

Keefer darted behind the triage desks and the quiet room to meet him. —Sir, do you need to see a doctor?

The man scratched, almost tore, at his mouth. He seemed to be scooping material from just inside his lips and dumping it with disgust on the floor. His hands were puffy. Now two nurses were asking the man who he was, reminding him to check in. Policy made no difference; the thin man danced.

Keefer gently took his right arm. —Excuse me, sir.

The man nodded at Keefer as though recognizing him and smiled. Long grey teeth pocked with brown holes. Gums almost black. Tongue fuzzy. His breath was a weapon, a venom, one he didn't want to use. He apologized. —Parasites, darling. Every hole stinkrotted. Mouth is a baitbox, and the worms are strong.

Keefer nodded. —Come back out to Triage now, we get you checked in.

—My God, you're gorgeous. I'm George, George Chaytor. Where did you get those cheekbones? Some Mi'kmaq in you, or Beothuk? Eyes like dark chocolate. My Nan would call you a jackytar. Ever been tied face-down to a bed and tickled up the arse?

—Can't say I have.

—I'll bet your eyes turn black when you come. Or when you're scared. I'd let you do anything you wanted to me. I want to see those eyes go black.

—No good, b'y. I play for the other team. Got your MCP card?

—Fucking Tina. I hate hospitals.

Keefer guided him to the chair in front of one of the reception desks. —Your MCP card. Or your hospital card.

George scooped at his mouth again.

Darlene spoke loudly and slowly. —Sir, what's your name?

—Fucking Tina!

George tore at his face again, at his crotch, at the Plexiglass barrier between himself and the receptionist—she squealed—and fell out of reality, marched away by his parasites. Something hit Keefer's nose twice, and he was stunned on the floor, scrubs spattered in his own blood. Patients watched. Keefer ran back to the treatment area, where George was dancing rapidly, dancing or running. Dr. Morrison took one of his arms, hard, and George panicked: the heel of his free hand went to Dr. Morrison's nose. Another time, Keefer might have found that funny, but right now George was knocking over another patient and set to attack a small nurse. Keefer tackled him; Dr. Morrison yelled orders for sublingual and intravenous Valium and restraints; George still struggled, but Keefer had his knee between George's shoulders and now twisted one arm behind him. A nurse, blue gloves on, tried giving a Valium wafer, but Keefer shook his head.

—Jesus, Steph, he's likely to bite the fingers off ya.

Then George was crying. —I haven't pissed for three days.

Keefer spoke steadily. —George, you need to get calmed down so you can talk to the doctor. The nurses are going to give you something to help you. You got to let them do that. Understand?

—Get the worms out.

His pleas collapsed on lost breath.

—Get the worms out of my cock.

"Balbus," short story.

It was simple, not talking. For Peter Spelling, it was the simplest thing in the world. Not that he desired silence. Peter asked questions of the twin statues of Captain Reddenburn and Colonel By, and the statues were tactful enough to gaze back at some obscure vision hovering above the Rideau Canal. Their lips were shut, Colonel By's tightly so, and their eyes, like the eyes in Greek statuary, were curved blind: no pupils — Demosthenes looking down past his fist and toga, past his toes to a writhing problem on the senate floor, perhaps studying Cicero's toes: yes, perhaps Marcus Tullius had hairy toes, like Peter's father, and the orators each gazed across the mere inconvenience of time — what were a few centuries between ancient Greeks — arranging their bodies to best support their words, and both sets of eyes rose, in unison like Colonel By and Captain Reddenburn, pupils narrowing in bright sun, and Cicero smirked, for he'd not been orphaned, not been fleshy detritus for spendthirft guardian relatives, not tasted iron and salt as he struggled to articulate round sparkling rock and past spasmodic tongue, not roared at the waves while facing the sea. Marcus Tullius turned from Demosthenes, muted now by history, and Demosthenes grasped his toga and frowned, each man ready for the next tyrant, the next menace, each man striding towards truth, exile and death.

Peter frowned. He'd forgotten the nuisances of exile and death. He sighed — even that was quiet — and turned away from the twin statues. His bicycle lay on the ground, heat shimmering off it, and sweat fogged his glasses. Peter was thin, small and eleven. He was on his second full reading of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he stuttered. Severely. Spit flew. One cheek reddened. The other eye watered. Breath clicked and stodged. Lips strained and twitched, and the tongue, the slow and hopeless tongue, defeated by Peter's own name. P, B and M, stubborn bilabials, they were his malcontents, his Catilines. Sibilants betrayed him too, stringing out their own art, and the vowels stifled themselves somewhere behind his tonsils. When asked in Sunday school at age 5 who created the world, Peter raised his hand and stood up straight, knees firm beneath his short pants: God, of course. The G was flawless. An excellent G, smooth as song, out before it was even thought of, but the O ... Peter gagged. Choked. Struggled soundless. Even prayer stodged, and the teacher pounded his back, not in punishment at Peter always thought, but because she feared the boy would smother. Forty days and forty nights standing there in a recurring dream, light steady, words stuck, only Peter and a teacher whose face he could never see, and recognition of the lesson: In the beginning was the Word.

Sky Waves, novel, in progress.

Precisely why Robert Jackman Wright had stashed eight gold coins from the 1700s, most of them French, in his Studebaker's trunk just before driving to the airfield where he kept his Tiger Moth, which he then took up to scout over the woods near Port au Mal and Riordan's Back in search of a lost child — Wright being wretchedly nearsighted but also colour-blind — and precisely why Robert Wright disappeared from the foggy air, the search for the lost child later expanded to look for him, was not clear for many years. But it had a lot to do with Richard Fahey and Angel O'Dea.

It was July 12, 1954. The child, a girl who'd fled her father — this was one of many secrets about the incident — was found by John O'Dea and Rupert Ginge and Lat, a Newfoundland bitch on her third litter. The girl stood at the edge of a small but very deep pond, dropping sticks poked into turpentine bubbles on a fir tree into the water, peering at the rainbows. She was cold, she was hungry, and she was silent. She turned to look at Ginge and O'Dea, who stood some feet off, distant and still as they might be on sighting a caribou. She looked and looked, and the men did not move. Lat barked, tugged at her lead; John O'Dea let the dog go. The lead dragged over needles and moss, over rocks and exposed roots. Lat nudged the girl, and the girl climbed on the dog's back, head down on the dog's strong neck, sticky fists deep in the Newfoundland's hair. Rose Fahey rode out of the woods on her small mount, Ginge and O'Dea on either side, and it was dusk, and there were no lights, no camera, no mics, because Robert Wright had instructed the news staff at VOIC radio to wait until the girl was home, leave the story until the morning, above all leave him out of it. Now Robert Wright was not there to countermand his order. It was July 12, 1954. Robert Wright, aged 53, a pioneer of radio communication in Newfoundland, had disappeared; a lost child, aged 11, had been found; Newfoundland had five years before voted Responsible; and it was getting too dark to see.

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