William Deverell - Kill All the Judges

He swivelled back to Cud. “It seems that the chair of the North Shore Arts Council saw you take care of her neighbour. Maybe you ought to go back to Mr. Pomeroy and apologize.”

Brian clicked Widgeon open, hoping to find a help file for lost writers. Search for “mental.”

Do not mentally exhaust yourself. Before chance (and whatever small talents I possess) favoured me with literary success, I, too, had a day job, as inspector for Her Majesty’s Customs, and I would often arrive at work exhausted after scribbling till three in the morning. Many a smuggled item must have slipped through on my watch! So please, when you see nothing but rot on your page, take a deep breath, pack your pages away, and make a soothing cup of Earl Grey while you climb into your pyjamas.

Brian didn’t have Earl Grey, and his pyjamas were in the Good-Luck Wash’n’Dry.

The tough-dame-assistant was rot on his page-if he couldn’t rewrite Rosy Chekoff he’d have to scrap the hackneyed big-hair hoochie. There was no model to draw her from, he’d looked everywhere, all the bars up and down Main Street. Brian felt stymied in his effort to create credible female characters. He’d never given the concept of femaleness much thought. Generally, he was having trouble making people up, making things up.

Widgeon, Chapter Two. The beginning author will be forgiven if he or she commits minor theft, stealing premise, plot, even characters from real life. But do not become wedded to reality; do not copy life. There is no point in writing fiction if you have no imagination.

Fair enough, but it’s so last year, as his older teen daughter might put it. Widgeon isn’t hip to the trend. This is creative non- fiction, history pretending to be fiction. Write what you know, they say. But it was getting harder to cling to the remains of reality, especially when potted on cactus juice, harder to maintain a window to the world of sanity. It was a task just keeping the pigeons out, the shitting pigeons that haunted his imaginings…

After going through the pockets of his bomber jacket-two broken cigarettes in a crumpled pack-he went out the side window to the fire escape, clanging down it, avoiding the ground-floor saloon, avoiding the dopers in the lane, pretending he was sober, pretending he was normal, and in this way making it to the street and across it.

Harry the Need nodded, recognizing him, the mouthpiece gone bonkers at the Ritz. All the street people knew, his breakdown was all they talked about. They were waiting for him to do it finally. To self-destruct.

Walking carefully so as not to stagger, he made his way past the Golden Horizon Travel Agency, across the street, past the recessed staircase to the local bookies, upstairs from, appropriately, a second-hand bookstore that was open late, always busy. “Books! Books! Books!” Beside it, a honky-tonk bar, the Palace. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” A muscular black man out front, the doorman. He knew. The doorman knew.

At the corner was the New Consciousness Head and Smoke Shop. Brian bought two packs of A’s there and was waiting for a walk sign when, right in front of him, a dish got out of a taxi, almost a Rosy, and went into the strip bar. He forgot what his plan was. The sign said, Walk , but he didn’t. Then it said, Wait . A passenger door of the taxi was open, beckoning. Brian wasn’t sure if he should go into the strip bar, take the cab, or wait. He got into the cab. He gave his previous address, on Mountain Highway in North Vancouver.

“Would you care for more toast?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah, I guess, thanks.” Young Nick made no motion to rise, though the toaster was five feet away. Perhaps he thought it operated by remote. The boy had slept till nine.

Arthur got up, slid two more slices in. It was Wednesday, December 19, a week after the hall burned down and three days before Nicholas Senior was to come by to fetch his son. Arthur and his grandson were strangers, that was part of their problem-the boy’s parents had lived in Europe and Australia, there’d been no chance to bond.

He supposed the young man was still feeling the aftershock of his parents’ split-up-one becomes thoughtless when angry. To add to that, he and Nick had got off on the worst possible footing-as Arthur was helping him unpack, he’d come upon a baggie of marijuana. Coals to Newcastle, but he couldn’t pretend to ignore it. He’d delivered a lecture that made him sound, even to his own ears, like an old fart: sorry, son, there’s a no-dope policy at Blunder Bay. Hey, he tried grass a few times himself, but at a mature age. Psychedelics can stunt emotional development. Be smart, alter your mind with learning. Nick stared at the floor, resentful.

Arthur was not equipped to handle adolescent trauma, cared not to remember the pain of his own growing up, his cold, indifferent, intellectual parents. He was getting only limited help from Margaret who, currently, was on Vancouver Island. Politics, schmoozing with Green Party members, lining up support for a nomination. Amazingly, Blunder Bay Farm was running smoothly despite its mistress’s many disappearances. Thanks partly to the four resident woofers, hard-working kids from overseas. Willing Workers on Organic Farms. They travel the world on the cheap: a half-day of labour for room and board.

“Your father phoned, Nick. I didn’t want to wake you. He said he’s not able to make it over this weekend. Things have piled up, he said, a pre-Christmas rush in the markets.” Nicholas managed two high-risk mutual funds. He was always on edge.

“Yeah, okay.” An alarming catch in Nick’s voice. Then he said, “I don’t think I want any more toast, thanks.” He got up and left the kitchen with troubling haste.

Disquieted now, Arthur jumped when the toaster popped. He’d relayed Nicholas’s message with consummate ineptness. The boy’s emotional barriers were breached, and Arthur was alarmed. Leave him alone a while if he’s in turmoil? Seek advice?

He phoned Deborah’s school in Melbourne. A machine responded, instructing him the school’s hours were eight-thirty to three-thirty. He slapped his forehead. It was two in the morning in Melbourne.

Through the window he watched Nick go up the steps to the woofer veranda, sit on the swinging chair, plug a phone line into his laptop. He regularly dialed the Internet from there, to avoid tying up the house line. Arthur finished a third cup of coffee, poured a fourth, then walked over there, jittery.

“Your dad wants to clear the decks so he can take you skiing at Christmas.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

“Told me to give you his love, and he’ll call later.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, let’s give that computer a rest. Why don’t you give Lavinia a hand in the corral?”

Arthur had struck the right note. Nick closed his laptop. He’d taken a fancy to Lavinia, who teased him. Lavinia was twenty-three, a woofer from Estonia, a pretty blonde with an earthy directness. She and three agonizingly polite Japanese bunked in the former farmhouse of the former neighbour, Margaret Blake, just behind the apple orchard.

They found Lavinia carrying pails of feed for the cow and goats. She set them down, examined Nick critically. “You cute guy. How old you?”

“Almost fifteen.”

That was varnish, he was born in July.

She squeezed his biceps. “We make you bigger muscles. Come. After, we will fixing fence.”

Nick grabbed the heavy pails. Clearly, he preferred her company to that of old gramps. Arthur was grateful to leave him in her charge while he dealt with the headache of Cudworth Brown, who was clogging Arthur’s answering machine. Brian Pomeroy was not returning calls, and no one, even his partners, seemed to know where he was.