Short fiction – "A Wing and a Prayer"

Preface

Ed Gillis loves books. As a retirement enterprise, he opened a small store selling books, a few record albums and some quirky odds and ends that people leave with him on consignment. It’s a small business in a small town, but is often a hub of activity for people who like “slow shopping” – maybe we should coin a new movement. Anyway, Ed’s Books and More, on Charlotte Street downtown Sydney, Cape Breton, wants to share the love of books and stories and has in recent years sponsored a short fiction competition. Writers and those aspiring submit their short story and an entry fee, a small jury reviews them, picks three winners, a couple of honourable mentions as well as a set aside for youngsters. All the entry fees go back to the top entries.

In my own retirement, after years of working with other people’s writing, I am devoting no small amount of time to my own. Among casting about to other competitions I entered a story in Ed’s short fiction competition this spring, and it won first prize. Yes, it’s a small prize, in a small contest, in a small town, but I couldn’t be more pleased with the feedback and to share it below. Thanks and congratulations to Ed for this culture-building initiative.

“A Wing and a Prayer” is fiction, a made-up story inspired by something overheard while socializing with other retired folks in the kitchen of the West Bay Road fire hall. I don’t actually remember what it entailed other than someone complaining about snowplowing. Fiction is magic like that – something clicks and your imagination takes flight.

This is one of a collection of stories I’m working on, all set in the fictional village called The Landing, in an otherwise real setting at the western end of Bras d’Or Lake, Cape Breton. The story, the people and their names are a fabrication, though some of the geography and place names – other than The Landing – are real. I aspire to having the collection published, if and when it proves good enough. I hope you'll take a few minutes to check it out (it's less than 2,000 words). Enjoy!

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“A Wing and a Prayer” (now including a few revisions, October 2018)

John Norman MacDonald is a human equivalent of a double-edged sword – at once the most praised and the most cursed man in two counties.

He has the heaviest foot but the lightest hands. He has the biggest truck and the littlest house, the biggest gut and the littlest mutt. He has the biggest mouth and the biggest heart. He’s a redneck and an artist. He works every day and never gets off his arse.

You might expect such a character to be known as “Tiny,” for nicknames are often opposites. But John Norman MacDonald is either known by that – John Norman MacDonald – or as Tim. And not because of his size – you know, as in Tiny Tim – and not just because of a month of emptied Tim Hortons cups on the dash of his backhoe. It’s Tim because he carries with him a donut seat cushion wherever he goes. Get it? Donut = Tim Hortons = Tim.

John Norman, Tim, is a gifted heavy equipment operator with an artistic side. A snow plow driver in winter, a backhoe operator in summer, a backyard mechanic in evenings and a musician on weekends. Thus, he has spent practically his whole life on his ass, and the donut seat cushion protects what’s left of it from torn seats, piano benches and church pews, not that Tim has spent much time in church. Being an entrepreneur and all, he never took much stock in church anyhow – he pretty much gets through life by the seat of his pants.

Not the engineer he could have been, not the fiddler he could have been; from jackhammer to felt hammer, Tim’s delicate touch at the controls and at the keys is a wonder to behold. He can thread-the-needle with a backhoe on a Saturday morning, and “strip-the-willow” at Glencoe on a Saturday night.

Got a hole to fill in? Call Tim. Need a percussionist to fill in? Call Tim.

He can play a tune on anything. Tim feels the rhythm. For a period of about four months every year, that’s a problem. Not a problem when he’s playing, it’s a problem when he’s plowing.

Like I said, Tim finds the rhythm and plays the tune – including behind the wheel. Chugging forty klicks up Cenotaph Road he’s humming “Neil Gow’s Lament”; whistling “The Blackthorn Strathspey” at sixty going down; at eighty, he’s leaving the village to “Sleepy Maggie.” Tim gets that snow plow singing and slinging along, the slush and snow fairly dancing off fence posts, mailboxes, highway signs and guardrails in syncopation punctuated here and there by the sickly ‘ping’ of gravel on a decrepit phone-service box. With the wing down, Tim can Highland fling the snow and ice clear to the treetops, from where it returns to earth as thunderous applause. If the wind is right, you can hear Tim’s playful plowing clear across the loch, depending on which side of the road he’s on. It’s a beauty to behold.

Some road noise can be irritating in the quiet of the library, the church or the school, and downright annoying when you are trying to have a serious conversation in the Carriage Works Café. But this is Cape Breton. People here tap their feet in time with church hymns and Christmas carols, so a proper sense of rhythm is respected. Here, the whine of snow tires is a tenor drone, chains are sleighbells.

A lesser being would have earned more than one black eye or broken bone in retaliation for decapitated mailboxes and missing highway signs, but John Norman MacDonald is the best damn accompanist in two counties. Not to be blasphemous or anything, Tim was God-like in his command of the keyboard on a Saturday night.

And let’s be serious. Who is going to say something negative to a burly backhoe operator who, if he so desired, could do serious damage to property, life and limb. Roadside destruction is simply part of winter in rural Cape Breton. Not that there is an urban Cape Breton. Snow life includes a dance between shovellers, snow blowers and snow plowers – a good natured test of stamina, usually.

But sometimes a man snaps – a man like now-retired reverend Red Beaton, formerly from Creignish. Time was, a priest could retire in the glebe house while a younger man moved in and took over the parish. Now-a-days, however, with the Church selling off real estate in atonement, retired priests are just like us – struggling to afford a little Cape Cod for themselves and their long-time “housekeepers.”

So it was for Fr. Red Beaton. But, accustomed to having things done for him by parishioners seeking indulgences, Fr. Red, was having difficulty adjusting his expectations to his surroundings. He was used to a modicum of deference and everyone’s lack of respect for the speed limit around his newly acquired resting place was – well, let’s just say Tim’s God-like command of the winter roads was less than holy in the eyes of Fr. Red. He regarded music and dancing with some suspicion, and to him, Tim’s snow plow symphony was the heavy equipment equivalent of the devil’s music.

With neither sense of humour, nor sense of rhythm, and after umpteen years in the pulpit in the fruitless pursuit of balancing good and evil, Fr. Red was in retirement wholly lacking in charity. His first winter on this side of the island, was a fairly easy one – more rain than snow, and less wind, so less drifting. Fr. Red’s meticulous manual clearing worked just fine and, despite their clucking of tongues and shaking of heads, he ignored local advice that he should invest in a gas-powered snow blower.

The next winter was one for the books – positively Biblical. I’m sure Fr. Red thought that hell had indeed frozen over, and him along with it. But Fr. Red feared little less than God and the bishop, much less the weather and, as his “housekeeper” watched from the front window, he often defied the elements to clear the demon snow during the height of a storm. Tim, of course, was in his element in such conditions, and by January he was already halfway to plowing through a new tune. Tone deaf Fr. Red couldn’t get the hang of the tune or the timing. It’s a good thing that lightning storms are a rarity in winter, for Fr. Red might have been struck dead through his upraised aluminum snow shovel as he gestured in Tim’s rear-views in a manner unbecoming a man of the cloth.

It’s not that Tim is the unholy sort, or mean-spirited. He just does his job with a flourish. The priest might have respected that, for he was known for his own flourishes in the pulpit, but he went over to the dark side that winter. If he couldn’t count on Tim seeing the light on his own, he would teach him a lesson.

On the advice of his neighbours – good people who truly understand how things work around here – he could not call on Tim’s bosses to change Tim’s tune. Not waiting for a sign from above, Fr. Red created one of his own, one that Tim, and other speeders, could understand. On a mild day between snow storms – one of those days when the consistency of the snow changes from powdery to sticky – and with the help of his “housekeeper,” Fr. Red built a substantial snowman, right beside the road and at the end of the long row of tall, perfectly spaced red pines to the left of his driveway.

They dressed the snow-priest in an old cassock, topped with a wide-brimmed felt hat. An oversized placard on a long stake had a glaring message for all speeders, cars and plows alike: “For God’s Sake – Slow Down!”

It did not snow for a few days, so it came as a bit of a surprise when the unmistakable beat of an approaching snow plow cum music machine penetrated Fr. Red’s living room where he was settled in for a quiet evening of television. He had failed to take into account two fateful factors: Tim’s dedication to his job, and falling temperatures.

Tim was out pushing back the snow banks to make way for a forecasted storm. The extra shift was a blessing, for winter was rapidly coming to an end and he really wanted to finish a new set of tunes he’d been working on. Lost in his musical reverie, he accelerated toward Fr. Red’s towering perfectly-spaced Caledonia pine trees with anticipation, where his truck’s massive plow wing would surely thump out the transition from slow air to Strathspey, like the quickening feet of an experienced audience.

Out of the darkness sprang Fr. Red’s cloaked snow priest and its glaring invective.

“Jesus!” Tim instinctively yanked hard on the wheel to miss the figure, bringing the tip of the wing in exaggerated acceleration to catch the snow priest square in the midriff. Believe it or not, the mass of the now-frozen-solid structure actually caused the entire truck to snap around, like a guard dog at the end of a long chain, and, despite Tim’s expertise, head straight up Fr. Red’s driveway, charging at the fear-frozen figure of the old priest, snow shovel raised in self-defence.

Having heard the plow in the distance, and wanting to clean up whatever bit of snow would be left behind, Fr. Red had donned the full-length black overcoat hanging beside his back door, pulled on a black, wide-brimmed hat, and stepped out onto the stoop, grabbing his snow shovel as he passed.

On reaching the driveway, he was confronted by two gigantic fireballs from hell bearing down on him with an un-Godly roar, the truck’s glaring headlights high atop the grinning steel plow sparking off his expensive asphalt. Inside the cab of the truck, Tim had yet to regain his composure when he spotted the priest in his headlights, shovel upraised like the one he had already struck. There was, he understandably thought, a posse of snow-priests come to life to haunt him into atonement. And, in the glow of the living room window dead ahead, the silhouette of the “housekeeper” throwing back the curtains in that instant appeared to Tim as a conjurer invoking an incantation.

Tim jumped on the brake pedal with both feet for maximum effect, which lifted him off his seat, freeing his special cushion, which – following the laws of inertia – promptly left the seat and landed at his feet. Almost stopped, Tim slammed ’er into reverse. Without the cushion, Tim was a full six inches lower in his seat, making his rear-views of little use and, wing still extended, the plow backhanded what was left of the snow priest on the way out for good measure. Tim held on for dear life as the truck – still in reverse – hightailed it blindly down Cenotaph Road, back-up beeper keeping time with his pounding heart.

It was a blessing for both Fr. Red and John Norman that there were no storms requiring snow removal for several more days, for they’d no desire to come into contact with one another, possibly reliving their respective traumas.

Fr. Red did knuckle under and buy a gas-powered snow blower when they went on sale that spring, and Tim did finish his tune. When he and the boys played it in a set for the first time in public a few Saturdays ago, he was really pleased with the response. The set starts with “The Cenotaph Air,” followed by “The Pine Trees Strathspey” and, finally, “The Reverse Reel.”

“That’s a new set,” smiled one of the breathless dancers afterward, “what d’ya call it?”

“A Wing and a Prayer, Buddy,” Tim reflected from atop his favourite cushion, “A Wing and a Prayer.”

Fin

Rant – Pet Reno Wars

Sarcasm alert: set your TV remote to “stunned.”

Are we being led down the proverbial garden path, yet again? How is it that so many seemingly disparate entities seem to be conspiring to influence us to previously unknown needs – still?

Three relatively recent media phenomena have me thinking that this is so. They are just three of a litany of reasons to avoid mass communication – and don’t get me going on cloud computing.

First – Cats & dogs. The only thing more frequently shared on social media than POTUS antics and jokes about wine consumption, are pets and other animals doing patently cute things, stupid things, performing tricks, cuddling counter-instinctively (i.e., orphaned puppies suckling contentedly on the teats of pot-bellied pigs), or cockatiels piggybacking Shetland ponies and/or water-skiing squirrels.

Admittedly, I have tittered a few times at the sight of dogs romping in the snow, and marvelled as a pit bull terrier boosts an infant to within reach of a cupboard full of goodies. It’s not the cuteness factor that concerns me, however, it’s the sudden proliferation of related merchandizing.

Think about it. We are inundated with images of pets. A YouTube documentary misses the irony as felons are trained to train service dogs to detect drugs and gambling addicts. I’m being facetious, of course, for it is indeed proven that pets can ameliorate loneliness among seniors, sense illness, predict seizures, calm nerves of sufferers of trauma, and many other benefits.

It is ironic, though, that social media has promoted furry friends as a panacea for the chief malaise of our times: social isolation resulting in part from technological mediation—social media. And it (social media)—to get to my point on this point—is the tidal wave on which a flood of big-box pet supply stores has ridden.

We live a couple of hours from Sydney, Nova Scotia, once a thriving industrial centre, now in a state of decay brought on by politicians and dreamers who think they can simply recreate the prosperity of that bygone era by signing on with the very Chinese investors who now control the world’s industrial output. I digress.

Aside from umpteen veterinary clinics, grocery stores and Walmarts that sell pet supplies (even Winners has two aisles of doggie duvets and cat castles) there are, at last count, five major national pet store franchises there—in a town of 20,000 or so people, a high percentage of whom live in poverty, barely able to afford to feed their families, let alone a 40 kg Rottweiler. I am at an age where time seems compressed and rushed, but I’m going to estimate that these four large pet stores—no ma & pa corner stores these—have become established over the last 3-5 years, about the same length of time I’ve been enduring cat videos.

Closer to home, in Port Hawkesbury, one of these franchises recently appeared in a near-empty shopping mall, right beside that other harbinger of economic collapse—a payday loan store—and a Dollarama, about a year ago. Port Hawkesbury serves a catchment area of fewer than 10,000 people.

I’m telling you—beware of social media trends, for therein capitalist conspirators create needs you didn’t know you had. Conversely, embrace your inner inventor; immediately establish a Facebook account and start posting viral videos plugging your pet-dung disposal service.

Second. We love home reno shows at our house. When we adults have had it with the swamp dwellers, bushwhackers, gold diggers, death-highway tow trucks and river monsters on the Discovery Channel (where we thought we’d discover life-altering, planet-saving knowledge), and now that we’ve watched every episode of Murdock Mysteries, and since recently selling our home and moving to one new-to-us, family time often centres around home renovation ideas.

Leaving aside the lifestyles consumption conspiracies that media studies classes taught us were at the root of television commercials (we simply must have open concept kitchen/living spaces, and a walk-in shower large enough for a three people and a Rottweiler), I am a little freaked out by the scripted heteronormativity.

Oh sure, one in about twenty airings portrays a wealthy same-sex couple as clients—and the minimum obligatory number of families of colour or mixed marriages. And to be sure, there are reno-teams of colour. What I’m ranting about is the hetero arm lock.

There are umpteen husband-wife designer-contractor teams with starring roles in these pseudo reality shows—HGTV is wall-to-wall home renos right now. Remember when it was called the Home and Garden Channel? The only gardening now seen on this channel is sod makeovers by quirky landscapers who’d give Christopher Lloyd a run for his money. And how about those elfin design consultants?

Anyway—when posing for their explanatory cameos interspersing staged decision-making, “surprise”  construction flaws that threaten the entire neighbourhood with mould or termites, and fake conflicts over farm sinks and non-smudging stainless steel wine coolers, the couples are locked in an embrace. With the possible exception of Tarek and Christine, whose marital status is the source of speculation in the tabloids, the couples can’t keep their hands off each other. Dave has his arm around Kortney (they are so in love), likewise Chip and Joanne, and Ben and Erin, and, and, and.

What’s up with all the hugging and hand holding? Does HGTV have a “make America hetero again policy? Look, I’m straight, and heaven knows we still need breeding pairs, but what’s going on here? Is this a cable TV survival strategy lest evangelical building suppliers mount a social media smear campaign demanding more conservative programming? Wouldn’t it be better to aim their laser pointers at gratuitous violence on the networks, and at sexual impropriety among stakeholders behind the cameras? Or is it just that sexy appeal of a man with a tool belt and big hammer jealously guarding his mate?

Maybe it’s nothing of the sort—it’s all anecdotal and maybe it’s just something that feeds my growing cynicism, but you see it too, right? The connections?

So, why are they still trying to find Adolf Hitler? Odds are that unless he found Ponce de León bathing in the fountain of youth, he’s long dead. More elusive even than Oak Island gold, the quest to know whether Adolph Hitler was assassinated, escaped, or won a free makeover and retired to open a plastic surgery parlour in Patagonia, is the subject of a series on the History channel.

And don’t get me started on how they can call themselves the history channel when most programming is Hollywood war fiction and tarnished snuff boxes worth 60 pence to an antique dealer from Plockton.

Actually, Hunting Hitler is not my point here; like I said, he’s dead. It’s just a symptom and a lead-up to more serious matters. It takes only a cursory scan of the program guide for the History and Smithsonian channels this past two months to see that we are being bombarded with militarism—the First and Second World Wars in particular, I suppose because we have just been through two years observing significant centenaries, and 2018 is the 75th anniversary of the siege of Stalingrad. My worry is that there is some sort of intentionality here—collusion.

At the height of Canadian military action in Afghanistan, there was a radio drama series on CBC Radio One—daily, I think. It was thirty minutes of high drama. I was convinced at the time that if CBC broadcasted the names of sponsors, the Canadian Armed Forces would have been at the top of the list. There was no doubt in my mind that the drama was more about recruitment than art. The current proliferation of cable channel drama is akin to the recruitment reels of the 1940s, either to normalize global conflict or to harden us to it, a distraction perhaps from the ongoing tragedies of localized moral conflicts.

Speaking of Stalingrad, apparently there stands an 85-metre angel of death—Motherland Call —brandishes her sword over the graves of a million or so soviets sacrificed for the defense of mother Russia against the marauding hoard of German soldiers likewise deployed on a suicide mission. That statue, like the so-called Mother Canada statue at Vimy, France, was almost mimicked (and may yet be) to dominate the pristine Cape Breton coastline in the name of, in the name of what?

Think how often “war” as a metaphor has been evoked in recent years – the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on terror. Like furry pets and reno petting, creeping militarism is working us over, and it’s no laughing matter—so be aware, be very aware. I for one am monitoring Jeopardy for more signs.

I’m going to ease up on the sarcasm meter on this one now, lest some retired general seize the opportunity to view my rant as that of an ungrateful and unpatriotic bleeding-heart liberal.

And don’t get me started in the Liberals.

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Rant - Spams, Scams and Paint Cans

Rant – Spams, Scams and Paint Cans

Every Saturday afternoon, at about 2 o’clock, our phone rings. Call display informs that it’s a toll-free number, so we don’t answer. We already know the outcome – well, we think we know, and therefore predict the outcome.

It’s some vulnerable underpaid worker, maybe an immigrant student on a temporary visa being exploited by a telephone trolling centre under contract to (a) a chartered bank, (b) a political polling firm, or (c) a criminal organization posing as the Canada Revenue Agency.

It’s true that it could be someone offering a Mediterranean cruise in return for the purchase of a lifetime supply of lightbulbs, or a lifetime supply of sidewalk de-icer in return for answering a few simple questions about our pets. But, we’ve made a conscious decision to take a chance and not take a chance.

I have always resisted signing up for the so-called no-call list. First, I believe that too is a scam; but my main reason is that I believe that call centres are full of vulnerable people who really need the employment. When we do pick up the phone, we are always polite until forced over the brink of civility by someone who doesn’t seem to see where the conversation is going.

Personal and professional ethics are subsumed in favour of survival. Capitalism requires that we need employment to survive, so we succumb to selling anything at all, to anyone and at any cost including dignity.

But it strikes me as odd that the telephone scam continues to exist as a business model. Isn’t it weird that there is a group of people who think this works as a revenue stream? Likewise, how is it that we still get pleas from nearly illiterate scammers sitting in Internet cafés in Siberia offering to transfer their family fortune to us if we simply share our banking information?

It reminds me of a story I heard about a slightly inebriated bootlegger trying to get an easier-to-remember phone number for his “friends.” “Just how stupid are your friends?” asked the telephone salesperson.

My point here is not that I am upset with spammers and scammers, per se, but I’m concerned for the future of humankind as indicated by lack of imagination. I mean, who falls for this stuff anymore?

Which leads me to the subject of graffiti. Trestle tagging. Racist, fascist, hate-motivated vitriolic vandalism is nothing to joke about. I am writing about run-of-the-mill aerosol – the “Kilroy was here” type of graffiti, graffiti that longs for peace and love.

The next time you see “peace” tagged on a dumpster behind Sobeys, or “class of 2020” on the underbelly of a decaying concrete bridge, or “DRK LRD rools,” signed by “RMK,” take a look at the typography – if I can use so grand a term for it – and use of graphics. The font, the flowers, the doves, haven’t changed since the 1960s, for heaven’s sake, and not because those boxcars were on forgotten Detroit rail siding for forty years. It’s because the creators are, creatively speaking, stuck.

Is it not a worry that this stuff hasn’t changed? Should we be concerned that three out of five broadcast radio stations are playing the hits of the 1980s? And that the other two are either looping Celine Dion and Harry Connick Jr., or the incomprehensible machinations of disaffected thirty-somethings? (Sorry son.)

Geez, when my parents were my age they complained that everything was changing too fast, and it’s beyond my ken that I should now find that things are not changing fast enough. For goodness sake, it’s 2018 and they still let Don Cherry on TV!

Graffiti, generally anonymous, is a form of expression without commitment – a dark figure darts from the shadows, waves their instrument, and returns, leaving a mark to which only they can lay only silent claim. Don’t we hate graffiti, though. Municipal officials go apoplectic over the defacement of all those empty and condemned buildings they have yet to remove.

On the bathroom wall, graffiti exposes the lack of understanding of basic poetic forms such as the limerick, but social media encourages all manner of digital graffiti, exposing a diminishing number of literate social progressives to increasing numbers of insults and threats.

It may not be coincidence that Facebook wants me to “tag” my friends in their picture posts from the weekly coffee klatch at the local Tim Hortons. Social media encourages tagging – quick in-and-out commentary, insults and threats created for all to see. They may be fleeting, but they have the consequence of accumulating a negative charge, like dragging knuckles on the carpet and touching the doorknob – spark! Why is everyone so angry – and all the time?

Like the subterranean slime in Ghostbusters II, digital trolls have emerged from under the bridges and beds of the nation to become shape-shifting, uber-conservatives coughing up the vitriolic mud of their dark haunts to stifle debate – an ungodly sucking sound matched only by the collective intake of breath on the part of a mass of witnesses. Ironically, it’s safe for liberal-thinking people to cross bridges now, but not to be seen in public.

As bad or worse, even the even-tempered are lashing out, caught up in a downward spiral of negativity. (Hey, just thought of a new 21st-cetury theme for holiday worship: the negativity scene. Oh, and how about a new digital fox hunt: “Tory-baiting: Trawling for Trolls.” But that’s another rant; just remember, you read it here first.)

I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw in my youth – a soldier brandishing a smoking gun, peering into the distance. “Who went there,” read the speech balloon.

Now, we can approach this in two ways: we can feed the trolls, or we can kill them with kindness. Here’s my new approach. I have on my desktop a document template that I can draw on whenever I see unfair, unwarranted, or just plain rude behaviour on Facebook. I can edit the template to suit the occasion. So, when a friend comments positively about our Liberal Prime Minister, and is immediately attacked with all kinds of venomous verbiage, I hit reply and paste something like this:

“We don’t know each other, but I feel compelled to respond to your comment about our Prime Minister. I know nothing of your accusations (insert rancour-of-the-month subject here), but while I have been disappointed in our PM at times, those times are far fewer than during his immediate predecessor and many of those before him. And, while I have you, along those lines I also feel that all of us need to temper negative rhetoric in Canada, lest we succumb to those forces who would have our politicians behave in the manner of those presently holding power over our neighbours to the south.”

Or, when so-called Christian leaders lash out in a non-Christian manner:

“It seems contradictory for a leader that identifies as Christian to continually incite violence against others and the planet. The 13th century is long behind us and Crusades-like rhetoric ought to be as well. In fact, that is something a practicing Christian might seize upon to protest, rather than rail against social values that reflect the charity that is, I think, at the heart of Christianity. Please, find it in your heart to recognize how decidedly un-Christian are your recent remarks and in future strive to consider your beliefs before contradicting them.”

I have a great idea for a ball-cap slogan: “Make graffiti great again.” I'll sellmillions. Wait for my call.

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