Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

“Hello, Parkdale Crisis Hotline. My name is Peter, how can I help you?”

“Hi… uh… Peter. I got a strange question.”

Grant sits up on the couch and scrapes the label wrapped around a cigar. He flicks too forcefully with the back of his thumbnail and tears through the outer layer of tobacco.

“Oh… I’ve heard it all. You can’t shock me. Hey, first of all, what’s your name?”

“Uh, Warren.”

“OK, Warren, how old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Eleven, eleven… I spoke to an eleven-year-old girl yesterday morning who wanted a sister so bad that she was pricking holes in her father’s condoms. So, Warren, I know all about you eleven-year-olds.”

The boy laughs and clicks his tongue. Grant can tell that, right now, this troubled little man can’t understand anything that isn’t directly his problem.

“Warren, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me, exactly, what you called to say.”

“Mmm. OK… I think I got the dog pregnant.”

Grant presses a finger on the edge of an ashtray, tilting it up off the table.

“Warren… that’s not possible.”

“I took the dog down into the crawl space and I poked it between the legs.”

Grant lifts his finger and the ashtray clicks on the glass.

“What do you mean you poked it?’”

“I went inside it. You know.”

“OK. Warren. No matter what you did. No matter what happened, you can’t get a dog pregnant. It’s physically impossible.”

The boy breaks in, crying and talking furiously.

“I’m so scared. I keep looking at her. She comes to me at the dinner table. What if she’s pregnant? What if? I don’t want a little dog brother! My parents are going to kill me! Shit! What if she’s pregnant?”

“Whoa boy! Slow down there, Warren. First of all, I wish you’d listen to me. Are you willing to listen for a second?”

“Alright.”

“Are you listening, Warren?”

“Yes.”

“OK. This is big news. This is important. Here it is: you cannot get any animal pregnant. None. Not a dog, not a squirrel, not an ape. Not ever. Ever. Never. Are you listening, Warren?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Now that’s fine. That’s definitely not your problem. But. But you still have a problem, don’t you?”

“What? What’s my problem?”

“Well, Warren. What you’ve done has made you feel bad, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a good thing. It’s right that this makes you worry.”

“It is?”

“Oh, yeah. The important thing here is simple. Simple. Just listen to your feelings, Warren. What are they telling you?”

“Uh… I don’t know.”

“They’re telling you not to do it again.”

“I won’t. I won’t. I promise. I won’t.”

“There you go. No harm done, right Warren?”

“No?”

“No. You have just become a little boy who thinks sex with animals is wrong.”

“I have?”

“Do you think it’s OK to drag the family dog down into the basement and give it a poke?”

“No.”

“Me neither, Warren. And that makes us both pretty decent guys, dontcha think?”

“I guess so.”

Grant smiles and tilts the ashtray again. He applies a tricky pressure with his finger, rotating the ashtray on its edge.

“Everything else OK, Warren?”

“I guess so.”

“OK, buddy. I’m gonna go now. You call anytime, OK?”

“OK.”

“Goodbye.”

Grant pulls his hair back and stands up from the couch. He spins two invisible pistols off his hips and says, “Fuck the dog.”

By the time he makes his way across the carpet to the refrigerator a charge of electricity has built up and it snaps between his finger and the handle. He jerks his hand up and blows on the finger, then shakes it out and returns it to the invisible holster.

Behind him the phone rings. An angelfish in a clear bowl sitting beside the couch turns away to face the dark hallway. It raises its hind end slightly and fans its tail, catching the pink glow of choral in the transparent ray of its anal fin. A thin beige spiral swings in the water and the angelfish shudders it free. Grant trips against the coffee table as he grabs the phone. He picks up the receiver and places the phone on the table, careful not to touch anything metal.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Parkdale Crisis Hotline. Who am I speaking to?”

“Hello. My name is Greg.”

“Hi Greg. My name is Grant. What’s on your mind, buddy?”

The Future Bakery at the corner of Tecumseth and Queen is the beehive, the recovering addict’s caffeine spunk house. Men who have spread their knuckles up to their elbows hitting women sip Turkish coffee and design their Higher Powers, informing each other about how to surrender, sharing affirmations in their collective exile. None of them will ever be what is commonly called a good person, but now that they have stopped being so actively bad, they chart together a course to the hereafter. Chosen and marked for this, they hug each other lustily.

When women venture near, sit at an adjacent table or assess them from the line-up, the New Men close off distrustfully. They welcome the amend-making process. They would love to say “I’m sorry” and stand in that unforgiving flak, in the pain of being wrong. But those days are gone. Feeling useless to either gender makes them merely pray. And prayer has made them different, gentler, sure. They really don’t beat women any longer. In each of their imaginations a new place has evolved, a place that loops off the side of their personalities.

Here they picture God.

In between Greg’s pierced ears, and under his pretty curls, lurks a Higher Power. The Higher Power stands near Greg while he jerks off, waiting patiently. He’s a Higher Power who doesn’t look away, but furrows his brow, knowing that sex is when you’re waiting for better behaviour, not guilty, not shameful, just not quite holy. As Greg wipes his semen from his palm, the Higher Power points at the cuff of his pants: you missed some, there, no right there on your pants. And then he smiles slightly as Greg says, “Fuh-huck!” and flips the white dollop into a Kleenex. When he’s shaken out his hair, Greg makes room for his Higher Power on the couch. He sits with his elbows on his knees and says, “Greg, I’m going to let you live forever.”

Greg already knows this, and his Higher Power never seems to tire of saying it; however, it’s supposed to mean something slightly different each time. Greg pinches his moist pant cuff and wonders what exactly it means this time.

Finally Greg says, “Are you saying I should accept that Jojo never liked Hogg?” Hogg is Greg’s recently deceased rat, and Jojo is his recently estranged girlfriend. In truth, the Higher Power thinks it’s a bit amusing that a dead rat and a relationship well-lost are persisting as “issues” in Greg’s recovery. The Higher Power is very aware that his own sense of humour is always inappropriate. He looks across at Greg, straining to keep his poker face, while he nods in a way that looks important. Greg suspects for a second that his Higher Power is mocking him. But he also knows how inappropriate his suspicions are, so he pretends they are not true.

Greg’s Higher Power cannot look him in the eye right now, so he lowers his gaze and spots another dollop of semen on the young man’s socks.

When Jimmy was very young — not that he isn’t now, but a few years ago, when he was seven — an event occurred that would predispose him to silence.

In the backyard of his parents’ house, hanging on a cliff over-looking the high-way, lived Jimmy and his family. This house was peculiar for several reasons. One was its dramatic placement on a cliff at the end of a street in an old suburb of Toronto. At the base of this cliff was a scrappy bit of wilderness that was screwed up tight as a jar, between the house’s backyard and Highway 401.