Stone Overcoat - January, 2004

January 2004

As I am writing from my memory now just about 15 years later I hope I am right about the details but I might be a little bit off. I guess since I am not writing this for anyone but myself it does not matter and I guess it does not matter that my spelling is not great or that I am not the smartest person at writing. I am not the best at remembering what people say to me but I am good at remembering the jist of it and how it made me feel. Some times I think I am just writing what I want to remember and how I want every thing to have been and I think about how so much of my life and maybe the lifes other people are the same way. We build up a story to tell ourself and that is what we believe.

Whatever the case is I guess this story of good luk and bad luk started about 15 years years ago. I was still living in Screaming Ridge and still working on my plot of land and still trying to get by in the day to day. I was really lucky in having the little farm I had where I had some cows and some goats and some chickens and where I could grow fruits and vegetables. It was never an easy life and especially not after my brother and mom died. My brother got sick with some kind of bug. I do not know what kind of bug but it was something that came on strong and he withered away and wasted to a skeleton before any one really knew what happened. I think that is what people call bad luk. He had never been sick before in his life really. Maybe he was not happy all the time and maybe he had problems with being moody and he could be a black cloud in the room at times but I never felt that way about him. I never thought he was bad or angry or mad. I always wanted to be friends with him and I always wanted us to be close and I always wanted us to work the farm together. Maybe we would live together. I do not know. Even now I do not know what I wanted back then so maybe I am just telling myself what I want to believe.

Before my brother died and even while he was sick as a dog and barely even able to drive the snowplow he still got up every morning looking grey like water he had bathed in and still put on his pants one leg at a time and his boots one foot at a time and his shirt one arm at a time. He never acted any different when he went into the store and people looked at him and moved away because they worried what he had was catching. I remember him telling me “hey Paul do not ever let people talk bad to you and always have a back and always make sure you stand up for what is right and for people who are not able to stand up for themself.” Maybe I do not have all those words right but he never told me different then that and he always told me being good was the best thing a man could be. Our father was a good man too and I hope I am not writing about him and making him sound bad. It was not that he was bad because he was not. I was very small when he left and I remember him and our mom fighting a lot and I think maybe it was best for them to not fight all the time but it made for hard times when my brother got sick. I think I was maybe seventeen years old or eighteen years old when he got sick and he would have been maybe twenty two or twenty three or something and he was not much older when he died and then mom got sick almost right away and I tried to take care of her but I do not think I did a very good job and she died not much after. 

Mom was a good woman too just like my brother was a good man. She worked hard and she was smart and she was pretty even if it was hard to see through the pain in her eyes and in her face. She looked like a woman who did not have an easy life and someone who probably felt like she had more bad luk in her days then good luk and I wonder if that is the illness that killed her and maybe it was the illness that killed my brother. I know it is hard in Screaming Ridge to feel like there is any good luk at all because there is not much here and there was never very much here but it feels like there is less here then there used to be. There was people who worked in logging and there was people who worked in mines and there was people who worked in the oil patches and there was a lot of good times where the money was good but there was also a lot of times where all the men and some of the women were gone up there to work and that made the town quiet as a graveyard. I saw a lot of folks take to drinking and take to doing drugs and while it was never my thing I never thought any different of people for it because all our lifes give us what they give us and we have to sort through it all as best we can. 

So when my brother and my mom died which was maybe the fall of 2003 but it might have been the summer. I can not really remember all that well even though I probably should. When they died I had to sort the farm out on my own and figured out how to manage the field and how to tend to the animals and find a way to make the money come in and go out when it was supposed to and I have never been good at that sort of thing. I do not rightly know if I have ever been good at anything. I was not good at school and I was not good at math and I was not good at science. I knew how to throw a baseball pretty good and I remember as a kid I hoped I would play for the Calgary Cannons. I never thought about playing in the big leagues but maybe that is because I never really knew how to dream big. I remember as a boy playing a game called dream game with my mom where we would just say what we dreamed of and I always said what I did not want to happen and what I was afraid of and my mom would laugh at me and rub my head and tell me dreams and hopes were what could get us through times when we did not have any thing else. 

That first winter alone I did not know what I was doing. I did not have very many friends and I still do not and I never have but my friend Lotus always made sure to come by the cabin to check up on me and make sure I was eating proper and to make sure I had all the things I might need. I think Lotus and me got along so good because she did not feel like she belonged in Screaming Ridge either. She is a few years older then me and I remember my brother and her being good friends and I kept hearing them talk about what people used to call her. There were all kinds of ugly names I do not want to write down. I do not even want to think about them but if I do not get it out then I will go crazy. I remember Jarrett Kellee who used to always introduced himself by spelling his name — J-A-double RR-E-double T K-E-double L-double E — would call Lotus unnatural and tell her she needed to go back to Vancouver where all the *****s and ******s lived. He told her Screaming Ridge did not have a place for her and her kind and he always called her names about the colour of her skin. My mom always told us growing up it was important to not let people like Jarrett Kellee throw their weight around and that it was important to remember every one is important and every one deserved space and any one who acted like they were better then some one is the one who has the real problem and not the person they are attacking. So I remember my brother and Lotus spending a lot of time together and I remember when he died and it was my mom and me and Lotus who buried him and when it was time to bury my mom it was just me and Lotus and when the time came to mind the farm it was Lotus who helped me. 

I remember in January I think of the first winter Lotus came to visit and she brought chili with her. I think it is funny how I might not remember the date or the time or what month some thing happened but I can remember the food I ate. I think that is what I meant when I said I do not always remember what some one said but I always remember how I felt and I remember the chili sticking to my ribs. I do not remember it being very good but that sort of thing is not ever what I have concerned myself with. If some one is making dinner for me and I can eat it then I will eat it and I will be grateful for it. There are too many people in the world — even in my town of Screaming Ridge —who are hungry and if I am throwing out food that can be eaten then there is something wrong with me. Any way there is very little I remember like yesterday and even yesterday is faded but I remember Lotus coming to visit. She was wearing a heavy black parka and one that was her pride and joy. Her grandma gave her the coat and I remember her saying “Paul when ever I put the coat on I can feel her with me.” She told me she avoided washing it because she did not want the smell to fade any more then it already had. There have been times where I have wondered if a smell has already faded so much how we can remember if what we are remembering is the real memory or if it is just what we are telling ourselfs it was. I do not know how to remember a smell unless I am smelling a smell. But again I am not very smart and I do not know much about anything. 

The conversation we had that night over chili was a long one. “What are you going to do do with the farm?” Lotus asked me and I remember saying to her that is a good question and I am not sure. I suppose I wanted to work the farm the way my family had and to grow what I needed to grow to live and to tend the animals with love and to be a good steward of the land around me. I know it was an answer Lotus respected but I am not sure it was an answer that held a lot of root in what the real world demanded of me because Lotus told me the oil companies and the gas companies even our own goverment would come knocking one day and tell me my land was valuable and there was a lot of money to be made. I told her I would decline any offer they made to me and I would stand my ground because this is the house where my brother and mother died and it was the house where I was born and I lived on the land. 

My answer did not seem to land with Lotus and she shrugged at me. In a way I felt like she pitied me in that moment and like she knew something I did not know and I now know she knew what I did not know or at least what I did not want to know. Whatever the case might have been the conversation moved along. 

“Do you think you will ever leave Screaming Ridge?”

Outside of playing baseball in Calgary I had never thought about it. I thought I would live and die where I was born just tending the farm and maybe having a family. In a way when my brother and mom died my thinking of a family died too. I did not know where or how I would meet someone and I did not know how I would start a family or raise children. I did not know what I would be able to give children especially if as Lotus had said every thing I knew was taken from me. 

“Well?”

I told Lotus I was not  sure if I would leave but that I hoped I would stay in town for as long as I could because it was the only home I have ever known. I remember her sighing a little bit at the answer and I suppose there is nothing I could do about that and the conversation seemed to move on from there. We talked long into the night that night and Lotus gave me a lot to think about when she left. What would I do when I was old? What would I do when I could no longer work the farm? What would I do when I could not clear the driveway or mow the lawn? What would I do when I could not dress myself or when I started to be unable to hold in my piss or my shit? These were things I had never spent a great deal of time thinking about and I do not know if it was Lotus intention to get me thinking about them but she had me thinking about them and I knew I was something I needed to spend time thinking about. It would be many years before I was too old to clean up after myself or at least I hoped it would be a long time still. 

After Lotus left that night I found myself looking around the cabin and thinking about how quiet it was and how empty it was. Maybe I had been ignoring how vacant it all seemed since my brother and mom died and tried to keep it filled with memories and with ghosts. Maybe I would get a dog or a cat and hope they would bring some light and energy to the place. Maybe a dog or a cat would give me some extra spirit I was lacking or would provide me with the insentive to come back in at night and not wander off into the wilderness and I have to admit the thought passed through my mind at times. As much as I told Lotus I wanted to live and die in Screaming Ridge and that I wanted to stay in the home where I had been born some piece deep in my guts cried to wander off into the darkness and leave behind every thing I was connected to. I knew less about surviving in the outdoors then I did running a farm so in many ways my destiny was to stay put and be where I was. A dog or a cat might keep my heart and mind from wandering until my body followed. I do not mean to say a little animal would keep my mind and heart from travelling on there own but at least my body would stay and have purpose and have reason. Maybe a dog or a cat would be a good idea.