Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

On the surface of the white cupboards a scroll of light marks fly rapidly from left to right — the stories released by the machines behind their doors, and Ellen memorizes each one. Some days they are the long, incomprehensible speeches of angels. Sometimes they detail the death of a child. And other times they list all of the things that Ellen hasn’t said yet. If these marks were to stop moving and rise in relief from the cupboards, and lift off like a new wall, slipping through the floor to line the banks of a pond in the dark, then Ellen would be looking at them over the shoulders of busy zombies. She strokes the head of a giant fish banging against her knees and opens her legs. These poor people have all suffered strokes. A zombie approaches the pool carrying a large, full garbage bag. She empties the contents out onto the surface of the water behind the working zombies. They reach, without looking back, to scoop up eggshells and plastic bottles.

What is an autobiography? What can fairly be said to lie within its bounds, share in its purpose? Is there someone hidden in Les Reardon? Was he a garbage truck driver who had a psychotic breakdown? Did he then become a drama teacher? Did a woman one month pregnant leave him in the middle of this career shift? Did he battle zombies across Ontario in a stolen car with his son wailing in drug withdrawal beside him? Are these little autobiographemes inserted into imagined lives? Probably. But still, that’s not autobiography. Not really.

Is this an autobiography?

Yes.

Twelve years ago you were living on the streets of Vancouver. You panhandled every day on Robson with a partner named Tommy. Those were miserable days — the good ones spent on the nod, the bad ones spent in a Lysol induced aggression. You had come to these dire straits in the usual way — an enduring dependence on substances and a persistent holocaust of personality. Usual, yes, but very difficult to survive. You tell this story not to mark yourself with it or to gain sympathy — it is, after all, only the story of a stubborn little bastard. You are telling this story, or at least just enough of it, so that you will never have to mention it again.

This one day you stirred to life beneath a shrub in Oppenhiemer Park. The shirt you were wearing had a light green fuzz growing across the back. You remember it because it was pretty. You had a sharp pain in your right forearm. You made your way across the park to where you knew Tommy would be waiting. You noticed you were getting a lot of attention from people who had, like you, spent the night in the park. There was something wrong with the way you looked. You remember someone saying to you, “In the first month you get stabbed; in the second month you’ll stab someone.” You had the feeling that somehow you were entering one of those months when people pay their last respects. Tommy grabbed you by your good arm and hurried you towards Robson. He was excited about something that had happened. At the best of times you can’t understand him and this morning he’s so stimulated by something that you can only grunt back at him in the language you share. You know that you have been barking at people lately. In fact, that’s why you got thrown out of the Columbia Hotel. “Do you know you’ve been barking at people in the lobby?” You shrug miserably at this kind of question. No, I’m afraid I didn’t know.

You notice people staring at you while Tommy pantomimes a little war scene. You smile and feel something warm drip off your chin. You cup your hand against your face and watch it fill with fresh blood. Oh dear. Sometimes you can’t help notice how sick you’re becoming. You look over your shoulder, but nobody’s looking. They have stopped staring. Tommy drags you into a public washroom. You throw up in the sink. It’s a dry heave, productive only in the spray of blood it forces out of your face. You look up into the mirror. You have two black eyes, cut deeply, and a missing eyebrow. Your bottom lip has fallen free of your mouth and is lying in the fresh blood on your chin.

You can’t pretend that you don’t feel very sorry for this man and his self-portrait. He has completely lost the ability to take care of himself. He will die soon, and the fact that that is merely all he ever wanted doesn’t make you feel any less protective of him now. You remember looking in the mirror and feeling awe: the self-portrait is complete. You think that you have found the face that can finally say goodbye.

That’s when Tommy slipped, unconscious, to the floor. You stepped over his body to find him a coffee. When you returned a few minutes later an ambulance was pulled up on the grassy hill that sloped down to the men’s washroom. Two attendants were putting Tommy’s body in the back of the vehicle. You attempted to stop them, dropping the coffees and yelling what you can’t say for certain now wasn’t barking. You tried to tell them that he was fine, that he just needed coffee, that he’d be OK. You tried to tell them that you needed him. As the ambulance drove off you felt an idea throbbing in your forearm. You’ll meet him at the emergency. You’ll tell them about your arm. They’ll let you in.

No one at the hospital had seen or heard of Tommy. You waited for three hours to see a doctor. Every time a door opened or a gurney banged through swinging glass you’d look up for your friend. One of the effects of the wait that you hadn’t counted on was that you were beginning a fairly complicated process of withdrawal. Your legs began to hurt. Your arm began to shake.

When the doctor finally takes you in she searches the holes and bruises in your head. It’s not your head, however, that you want her to look at. It’s your arm and you hold it up. She holds it gently and lays cool fingers on your wrist. She disappears, and soon a technician appears to take you to X-ray. It takes him a few runs to get a good shot. Your arm is jumping around. You feel miserable about this because you like working with people. He is impatient — with himself you think — and when he gets a satisfactory picture he puts a hand on your shoulder, including you in the success.

“Well, there’s three hairline fractures on your fibula.”

The doctor supports your hand by the palm with three of her powerful fingers.

“We’ll have to put it in a cast.”

She lays your arm on your thigh and it jumps up across your knee. She watches this and then turns to a cabinet. She pulls a gauze sleeve over your wrist and your fingers catch on the fibre, each one snapping out independently. She stops. You can tell that she’s looking at your face, your self-portrait. You don’t look up. You hold it as still as you can.

“You’re going to have some trouble with this. I’m going to get a Valium for you, maybe two.”

When she leaves you hold your forearm up. A long, white glove. You let a falcon land on it and draw it closer, allowing its hooked beak to close on your lips. The bird flits a tiny brown tongue along the rip of your bottom lip. By the time the doctor returns you have an erection. You fold your wrists in your lap and as she unties the swollen arm from the thin one she sees your cock standing against the filthy fabric of your crotch. It’s confusing to you. Clear to her. She places two powder blue pills in your good hand and you pop them across your mouth and down your throat. She leaves again; to let the benzodiazapine have its effect, you think.

Your arm softens in your lap, your erection subsides, and you feel the emotional catchbasin of interrupted withdrawal back up, clogging your pores, drying your forehead. More of a wreck for the abating anxiety. There is an opiate drizzling weakly across the agony in your back.