Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

“Hope it’s dry enough, Jackson.”

Jackson doesn’t look up, and the scowl he makes is nearly a smile. Dolly steps over to the doorway that leads to the cellar and flicks on a light behind a hanging coat. Jackson attempts to look up after her but winces at the effort, “Ah-yeh. Ah-yeh.”

Dolly looks back, smiling briefly at the HP.

“Harley!”

A nearly orange dog moves off the living room carpet and clicks its toes across the yellow linoleum of the kitchen. Dolly follows the dog to the end of the counter and leans ahead of it, stretching her arm to open the door in the dog’s path.

Harley appears, stripped to the waist, his blond hair towelled up. While directing his appeal to Jackson, he accepts a light admonishment from his mother’s eyes.

Jackson shuffles to rise, with his hands circling an empty plate, and waits for Harley to sit down. The Higher Power watches Harley’s long arms reaching for syrup, butter, salt, pepper. The young man surrounds his plate with condiments before sliding clean fingers under the fifth pancake in the pile halfway up the table. When Jackson has left, Dolly turns to the HP.

“Do you need more toast?”

The HP pushes his chair back. Tossing a napkin from his lap, he reaches for a toothpick. He turns it in the air towards Dolly before dropping it on his tongue, rolling it into the corner of his mouth. All winter the HP has had a fantasy that come haying season he will say “Thank ya kindly, ma’am” often, and he considers this a dry run. As he leaves the table Dolly lays a hand on his back and places a large plastic jug of water in his hands. He moves his shoulder blade under her hand so that she can feel him. He nods, satisfied that one of the reasons he feels so fine this morning is the fact that he feels no compulsion to disclose his good mood to anyone in particular. But Dolly can tell that her guest is happy, that given half the chance he might just get past that terrible state he was in when he arrived those many dark months ago.

“He’s comin’. Aren’t ya, Harley?”

Dolly directs this comment to the HP, who feels a status is bestowed on him by her. The HP takes it as a way of positioning him in the chain of command. Not just a hand, maybe the second man. He senses that one need only be a man here; it doesn’t matter that your demons once got the better of you. You’re a man. And just by being here, assuming a place on haying day, you are ultimately tougher than those demons. Dolly looks at her son as if he’s a man too young to have demons, someone who, like Dolly, follows after those who do. The HP winks and clicks his tongue, thanking the little lady with a deferential nod. He steps out into the backyard, looking over the field on the first haying day.

The farm is relatively small, three twenty-five-acre fields that begin at the base of a slope off the backyard stretch out to the highway. To the south stands a large grey barn and a fenced-in field. The HP notices twenty odd cows gathered in a distant corner. They sit and stand in what must be an uncomfortable fit of bodies, as self-conscious as a family posing for a formal portrait. They turn their heads in unison away from the HP, in response to some invisible stimulus.

The work done on these farms is performed in the old way; unlike government-run farms, these are businesses that have hung close to ruin for generations. These farms are not about preparing animals for slaughter but about preparing families to live with what they inherit. One of the things all the farming families spread across this difficult land inherit is a deep and elaborate stock of stories about each other. Each piece of land is the public log of a private struggle, and for this reason a great deal of animosity is exchanged through the windshields of cars passing each other on rural roads. Most of the stories begin as ammunition stored and distributed against specific hostilities between neighbours. Beneath each story is a forgotten dispute, and above them are cast the loose lines of future feuds. Any given farmer’s day-to-day struggle to survive is interpreted by his neighbours as perverse. Grotesque. Unresolved. Unsuccessful. Story laden.

These stories are also the mark of membership in this community. In haying season all the farms join in a communal pool of machinery and labour. One farmer will cut several fields of hay, and another will bale them, and yet another will come along with a crew and a convoy of wide, flat trailers to haul the bales up onto conveyors that roll them offinto the black, dusty mows. This summer ritual binds the community. It is the counterpart to winter’s bitter collection of tales. The deep-blue ice of dependency and imagination give way to back slaps and bright forgetting in sunshine. All is forgiven. The good families are rising above.

The HP can see a man sitting in a tractor that drags a thresher across Jackson’s field. He has donated his labour and machinery in exchange for the use of Jackson’s combine. This man lost his combine back in ’67 after dishing out huge sums of money to lawyers. It seems that his son had come down with meningitis, and the man had the bright idea that he’d treat him at home with massive injections from the same needle and medicine that he uses on newborn calves. He has kept his son at home ever since, locked in a room that has to be boarded against his freakish strength and mindless outbursts. His wife, who died in ’73, was supposed to have been torn limb from limb by her son one Christmas morning. No one can completely recall this terrible secret, and when the weather’s clear for a stretch in early August they slap their friend gratefully on the back as he mounts his tractor in their fields.

The engine clanks off and the man dismounts his tiny metal seat. In the quiet the HP hears another motor start up inside the barn. Jackson appears on top of a green tractor followed by the baler. They head toward a field that has already been cut. The HP runs toward Jackson, swinging his bottle of water and holding his cap down with his free hand. He has to sprint to catch up with the back of the baler. After two attempts he manages to clear the three heavy bars that drag on the ground. He steps onto the platform that also drags, bumpily, held by chains to the baling chute. The HP barely has time to pull the crisp leather of his gloves over his hands before the first bale rises shaking in the chute. The HP reaches down, forcing his fingers under the twine, and tests the integrity of the bale with a sharp pull. Too sharp. The bale springs into the air. He uses this momentum to assist in tossing the surprisingly heavy bale behind him, into position between the first and second bars. He succeeds in getting the bale in place but can’t recover his centre of gravity and flies headlong over the long block of hay onto the ground behind it.

He shakes the dullness from his face and leaps to his feet. The second bale is already wagging at the sky and getting further away. It falls free of the chute and tumbles sideways. The ground grabs at it, pulling it off the platform. By the time the third bale appears the HP is standing behind it, reaching back again to the first twine. But this time he gives it only a respectful yank to encourage it along in the machine that, he knows now, is fully capable of doing most of the work. He slams the bale down beside the first, shifting his own position twice in order to preserve balance. He looks back at the second bale, now a hundred metres away, and knows that come the end of the day it will look lost and wasted in a field of neatly spaced, perfectly stacked triangles. The next bale is even less of a struggle. With these three forming the foundation of the structure, the HP slaps his full biceps optimistically and reaches over to swing out the fourth bale and begin the critical second tier. It falls on its heavy edge in the v-shape of the bales turned toward each other beneath it. The weight of the compressed hay binds their faces, pulling them towards each other, strengthening the structure. The HP heaves the last yellow obelisk into its slot. This forms an apex from which fall, on either side, the perfect sheer walls of a triangle. The last heavy bale makes the other tiers powerful. The HP kicks a heavy drop-forged pedal at the front of the platform, dropping the bars into the ground. The three edges at the base grip the earth, floating the A-frame off into the field behind the baler.