Radar Love

Summertime. The Celsius is up. The black flies are biting. My convertible is awake.

It has slunk, dusty, in the garage all winter long.

Sulking.

Stashed with life jackets and paddles, camp chairs and hummingbird feeders. 

Emptied of battery, empty of spark, empty of gasoline.

Dead, almost completely.

Even the mice in the glovebox found livelier accommodation.

Now it rumbles.

It bites anxiously at the pavement, ready to roll.

Bling shines.

Open roads beckon like sirens.

Curvaceous lines tremble with anticipation.

We are in lust again, he and I.

I am his lover.

He is my pet.

Together we will move as one.

On a sultry night in late spring.

When the Celsius is up.

We will ride.

Pan Face

EVERY DAY Harold has a fried egg sandwich for breakfast.
This is not the biggest news, not by any means, but it is true.
Harold likes himself a greasy egg, over easy, fried in real butter. He puts butter on the toast, too, and covers it all with a Kraft single which, as the package clearly states, is not actual cheese, just a cheese product.
Harold cares not.
He drapes it over the egg, covers the pan with a lid for a few moments, long enough to rearrange the fruit in his Fruit of the Looms and pick his nose. He flicks the boogers into the nearby scrap bucket and doesn't wash his hands because, well, why would he?
When the blanket of cheese product melts like a teenager's resolve on prom night, Harold slides a spatula under the egg and fwaps it neatly on the toast. He squishes the toast down over the egg so the cheesy stuff and the egg yolk meld together and leak out seductively. Harold tosses the spatula back in the frying pan and carries his sandwich over to the coffee table where a big glass of homo and the TV clicker await him.
Harold's gut rumbles appreciatively as he shoves the sandwich in his gob with force, speed and accuracy. If fried egg sandwich eating was an Olympic sport, Harold would be a gold medalist, no steroidal adjustments necessary. He is a man among men, who doesn't let little things like cholesterol, heart attacks, obesity or his wife's nagging slow him down.
He does, however, wait to make his daily egg after Florine has left for work. He also buys his own eggs and does up his dishes so Florine is none the wiser.
(That's what he thinks. But Florine knows. A wife always knows.)
When he is done and Canada AM has gone to commercial, Harold belches and carries the plate to the sink. He runs some hot water and squirts in some Dawn, the kind that donates a dollar for oil-slicked ducks, and he goes to pick up the frying pan to wash it.
He lifts off the spatula and stops. Dead in his tracks.
There is a face in the pan.
A grease face.
He sees two button eyes, a long Roman nose and sweetheart pursed lips.
He fetches the camera off the buffet table and takes a picture of the face, just in case it turns out like Karen Schindler's famous alien or the face of Jesus on the wall of Tim Horton's down east.
He kinda grins a big loopy grin as he thinks of his picture in the Toronto Sun, right beside the Sunshine Girl.
"You look kinda like the man in the moon," he sez to the pan.
"You look like a fat pig," sez the pan.
"Really," sez Harold.
"Really, really," sez the pan.
Harold feels his blood pressure rising.
He is 53 years old and he is not going to take any flak from any damn frying pan.
"Huh," sez Harold, and he picks it up and tosses it in the hot soapy dish water and he swabs off all the grease and he whistles while he works.
He holds the frying pan up to the light coming through the kitchen window and sees it is clean.
"And what do you have to say now, frying pan?" Harold says, chuckling.
The frying pan is wordless, faceless.
 "I think you're a real arsehole," says the kitchen sink.

***

American Week deadline is fast approaching. To all you American writers, I say send me your stories, approximately 600 words, approximately wonderful, approximately by May 24, 2010. No other guidelines but that. Send them, along with a patriotic photo of yourself, to me at catherinegwendolynne@hotmail.com
Your story absolutely has to be better than this one. So don't be afraid, send them to moi and I'll spangle you with star, stripes and banners.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

How can you not love this scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

You can't help but smile.

I thought of this song this afternoon when Dave and I toodled up the river in our fishing boat, skunked for fish, but way above our limit with sunshine, pretty scenery and good company.

Some days I love my life.

Love every stinking thing about it.

Love it so much that I throw my arms up around it and kiss it soundly and slobbery, right on the lips.

By the time I get done with today, life will need to wipe its face off.

oxoxoxoxox

And since Butch Cassidy is an American movie I will segue into a convenient reminder to all my American friends to please send me your stories for American Week. 
Deadline: May 24. 
Word count: 600 or whatever. 
Genre: Fiction. Or non-fiction. 
Country: America, except for Alan. 
E-mail: catherinegwendolynne@hotmail.com. 
Get 'er done.

P.S. My future husband has started his own blog. 
Check it out, send him some love - he's a real writing newbie, so be sweet. 

Kiosk

All that remains of the schoolhouse in Kiosk is a cement slab foundation. 
You can see the pattern of the floor tiles that remain.

A silver locket waited in the old man’s pocket.

“Ayuh, right here’s good,” Gordon Kilbride said, leaning forward in the back seat of the Jeep, trying to get the attention of the driver, Jason Thomas, who was listening to somebody named Peas singing something about junk in the trunk. Gordon really didn’t understand what passed for music these days. When he was this age he listened to Hank Snow and Ernest Tubb. You could understand what they were saying and their words meant something. Nothing like this.

Jason and his fishing buddy passenger kept bobbing their heads in time with the Peas, so Gordon reached his gnarled by arthritis fingers over and tapped his shoulder.

“Here’s good,” he repeated.

Jason, a good-natured, fair-eyed hair-shorn buck with muscles on his muscles, said, “Here? Are ya sure, mate? We’re not quite there yet. The park office is on up ahead a kilometer or so.”

“This is just fine,” Gordon said.

“All righty, then mate, here it is.” Jason stopped the YJ, loaded down with camping and fishing gear, in the middle of the dusty dirt road. Gordon wrestled out of the cramped back seat. He shut the door, stood out of the way and said, “thanks for the ride. It was much appreciated.”

“Later,” Jason said with a grin, gunning the engine and disappearing in a cloud of dust.

Gordon watched them go.

“Junk in the trunk,” he said. “Heh.”

He was standing at what passed for an intersection in these parts. Two dirt roads, one of them well-used, one of them barely a road at all, just two narrow ruts with weeds growing up the middle.

He chose the road less travelled and started walking up it.

He barely recognized the place.

Last time Gordon set foot on this road, it was an actual road, with a road sign and houses on either side. The Carmichaels’ white bungalow with the teal shutters and the ornate picket fence was on the left. Mrs. Carmichael always had a garden full of daffodils this time of year, and you would often see her pulling weeds and brushing blackflies out of her hair. Mr. Carmichael would most likely be in the garage, emptying the gas out of his chainsaw and putting it away after a month of getting the following winter’s wood cut and split. Either that or he would be getting his shiny almost-new roto-tiller out, ready to clear a patch for the bush beans the missus loved so.

Across the road was the Robertson’s place, brown wood frame, not as well kept as the Carmichaels’ but then again this house was a busier one, full of four growing Robertson children, two plump golden labs and a skinny yellow cat with a crooked tail. Russ Robertson was a foreman at the Kiosk planing mill, where almost 300 people had held down full time jobs. His wife, Mitzy, volunteered three days a week at the public school, a modern schoolhouse where 181 children spent long days studying phonics and arithmetic.

There was nothing left of either house. No clue that there was ever two homes at the corner.

Gordon stuck his left hand in his pants pocket and fingered the locket with its fine silver chain.

“Things sure are different, Cora,” he said, looking around.

Gordon had been born in Kiosk in 1942, just a few years after lumber baron S.J. Staniforth built a mill at the mouth of the Amable du Fond on the shore of Lake Kioshkokwi. By 1960 there were nearly 600 people living in Kiosk, with 80 homes,a school, a ball diamond, a store and a Catholic church. Gordon was working in the mill alongside his father, planning his wedding to the sweet but homely Cora Pratt, a gangly woman, all teeth and elbows and crooked smiles. He loved that Cora like the good Lord loves a sinner on Sundays, had loved her since he dunked her braids in the inkwells in grade school. Had promised to love her till the day he died.

Gordon knew how to keep a promise.

Only it wasn’t him that went and died first. It was Cora. One month short of 50 years of marriage. Three children, 13 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren later. One day she was putting up jars of chili sauce, talking about the anniversary party the kids were planning for them, yakking his ears off as usual, covered up to her bony elbows in tomatoes and vinegar. One minute she was talking while he was trying to read the paper and then she never said another goddamned thing. Well, just one thing.

He had looked up from the paper when he noticed she was quiet, and she was leaning against the kitchen counter, face as red as the gills of a pickerel, eyes scared. Gordon stood up and pushed at the chair to get it out of his way, and rushed over to Cora’s side.

She fell into his arms and he tried to get her to lay down but she snugged into his side so he held her there, held her close and whispered sweet words and smoothed her gray hair.

And she murmured, “Meet me in Kiosk,” and she died in his arms.

They had been living in an apartment in nearby North Bay when she died. They had lived and worked in Kiosk for most of their adult lives, raising their children, making lifelong friends, doing all the things people do when they love a place and make a nest there. But the good Lord and the Ontario government had other plans and in the early 1970s a grand master plan was announced for Algonquin Park, a plan that would eliminate northern communities like Kiosk, Achray and Brent.

The people of Kiosk fought to keep their homes but on Friday, July 13, 1973 the Staniforth mill burned to the ground. No amount of talk could get the mill rebuilt. People began to leave, seeking work elsewhere. Every time a house was vacated, it was bulldozed by the government. By 1996, every house was gone, every family was gone.

The park was returned to a natural state, for all people to enjoy.

But the people of Kiosk left their homes, left their friends, left their lives behind.

It was the hardest thing Gordon and Cora had ever done. They rented an apartment in “the Bay” and settled into their retirement, trying to like it, trying to feel at home. Trying not to think about Kiosk.

Funny thing, is, after Cora died, Kiosk was all Gordon could think of.

He wondered what she meant. Puzzled over it. Thought about it with increasing regularity. Until one day he decided he had to find out.

He went to his dresser drawer and pulled out the locket he had meant to give her for their 50th anniversary. There were two pictures inside. One of him, all young and scared looking, one of her, crooked smile, bright eyes and happy. Both taken on their wedding day. He had the jeweller inscribe a message on the back: My lady of the lake; my love.

Gordon put the trinket in his pants pocket and started his journey back to Kiosk. He started with a taxi, followed by a city bus, followed by some hitchhiking and finishing with that ride with the Peas boys. There wasn’t any public transportation out that far into the bush. Never was. Never would be.

Gordon clutched the locket and walked up the road to the place where his home once stood. Where Cora had a vegetable garden, where the kids played tag in the twilight, where he and his bony wife kissed in front of the lilac bush on fragrant May evenings when the air was thick and sultry and they were younger and the mosquitoes and flies didn’t bother them half as much as their unending itchy passion for each other.

The lilac bush was in bloom but it had grown out of control, higher than the house once was, wild and spindly and out of place amidst the natural north Ontario forest that was reclaiming this land.

In amidst the tall grass, the young white pines, the balsam, the poplar and the birch, in among all these wild things, were two perfect daffodils, yellow as a summer day. Bold as proverbial brass. Alive amidst the deadfall of early spring.

They swayed together, lightly touching, beautiful and perfect.

Gordon stared at them. Mesmerized.

And then he heard his name.

Cora stood amongst the lilacs, smiling her crooked smile at him, hugging herself with bony arms. She came forward, holding out those long, skinny arms, and she folded him into her embrace, and he wept, wept like a fool, like a child, like a man who has finally made it home to his wife, his love, his heart, his home.

Gordon held out the silver locket and put it around her thin, lovely neck and he gazed into her bright, homely eyes and the two of them faded from sight in a gentle swirl of silvery dust.

These two lonely daffodils still grow at the foundation of the abandoned schoolhouse in the ghost town of Kiosk. 

Dave and I visit this beautiful part of Algonquin Park at least once a year.

Calling All Americans

You always wonder what bloggers look like, don't you?
Well, I do. (Especially the mysterious ones - what are they hiding???)
But it's kinda nice to keep your true identity a secret. Sometimes you can unfairly judge the content of a post when you have a picture of the author in your head.
That's why I was a little miffed when Michael Solender dug up this photo of me (taken this spring on the banks of the Muskoka River) and stuck it up on his blog, Not From Here Are You. Not that it's a bad photo, although I do think the maple leaf makes my patriotic arse look overly round. I'm just afraid my faithful readers will now consider me an erudite airhead with nothing but a sleek, tanned and luscious booty and amazing fashion sense.
The toque is such a good colour for me, though.
Oh well, I can't blame Michael. When you look as gorgeous as me you get used to people wanting to show you off.
Besides, Michael is one of my favourite people right now. He has one of my stories up at the Not for Canadian Week. Not just me, either. He also has some of my best writing buddies. When you're finished checking my picture out, check out the Not.
(You're still looking at that picture, aren't you? It's the maple leaf - it draws you in, like a target.)
To thank Michael, and to pay homage to his Canadian Week idea, I want to host my own American Week.
So many of my blogging buds are Yanks - I vastly admire their skills and would like them to write their own American-slanted stories. They don't have to be patriotic - they should just convey some sort of American styling, whatever that styling happens to be. Make it fiction, make it short (600 words or less but I'm not counting), make it wonderful. Send it to me at catherinegwendolynne@hotmail.com by May 24, 2010 - in Canada, that's the May 2-4 weekend, the first long weekend of summertime and a big, beery reason to celebrate.
Also, send me a photo of yourself. I know, there's no way you're gonna be as good-looking as me but I won't hold it against you.
Unless you want me to.
With an arse like that, I'm betting you will...