In 1990, when I was fifteen, my family moved into the Gordon Head Townhouses. A man named Bob lived there. He was not quite our neighbour, but he was close enough to suck my dad into his world. This story is about Bob, and my dad, and a horse.
The townhouses were laid out in a square, and all of the back patios of the housing units surrounded this malformed, lumpy square of grass. On a summer day every patio wafted out cigarette smoke and grass smoke into the courtyard. The harshest sounds emanated from Bob’s patio: sadistic cackles, homophobic curses, a river of profanity, “fucking cocksucker” every thirty seconds, roadhouse modern blues. Bob was elevated amongst the rough-and-tumbles for sending a revealing picture of his girlfriend to an outlaw motorcycle magazine. It was published.
I never went to his patio, but my dad did. He is much friendlier and less judgmental than I am. I have a sensitive nature. My brother, who was thirteen, was summoned to the patio. He had to run to the store for packs of cigarettes and pornographic magazines and mojo-fries. This exposure, brief as it was, ruined his education. He is only now, fifteen years later, recovering from the corruption.
My dad began spending every minute with Bob. My dad was, at this time, the maintenance man for the townhouses. The maintenance of the units was thrown into abeyance.
In the winter they moved their days indoors and Bob bought a Sega Genesis. They played Sega golf and kept a diary of their wins and losses, an artifact that represents every victory and every indignity that they shoveled onto each other. The record-keeping was immaculate. A page might look like this:
May 17, 2001:
Bob wins. Fuck You Randy. Fucking Cocksucker. No fuck you Bob, I won. No You didn’t Randy go fuck yourself. Get a fucking grip Bob you lost. Eat shit randy I won
This goes on and on. When my brother and I found this diary, immaculately preserved and kept in my dad’s safe, we were flabbergasted. Why? To what end do these two men keep these scores? Will there be an eventual winner? How can a winner ever be decided upon when each and every proclamation is vehemently contested by each participant? And the language: Bob was unable to write one sentence without repeated threats to my dad. A kind of mantra emerges after a close and repeated reading of the text: “I’ll slit your throat and throw you in the drink.”
I think “the drink” is a lake where Bob throws his victims.
2007: Bob no longer dates outlaw motorcycle women. He doesn’t live in the townhouses. He lives in a motel. His neighbour is not my dad. His neighbour is a man named “Bearkat”. One night Bearkat lit his own leg on fire with gasoline.
Bearkat didn’t want to go to the hospital. He just wanted to keep partying around the motel campfire, while his leg smoked and blistered and reeked of charred flesh. He was furious when the ambulance came.
Bob somehow met a young woman named Celeste. She was oddly not repulsed by his neighbor Bearkat, and she was not repulsed by Bob’s years of hard-partying, or his cackle or his homophobia, or the decades between them. She moved in with him.
Celeste was wanted by Crime-stoppers.
Bob was so in love! No more outlaw motorcycle magazines for him!
He wanted to shower her with gifts—but what gifts?
-Steak every night, even a steak occasionally for Bearkat, because the universe is good and celestial.
-Boxes and boxes of Budweiser, even the occasional box of Wildcat© beers for Bearkat, because the universe is good and celestial.
-A horse for Celeste, a beautiful steed…
Bob needed some cash.
He went to the bank. They held their nose, because Bearkat came with him and his leg still reeked of charred flesh. They said “But you live in a motel with Bearkat as your neighbor.”
So he asked my dad.
My dad said “Well, Bob, I’d love to lend you two thousand dollars to shower gifts and steaks and horses on Celeste, but actually I’m not even allowed to talk to you until Celeste is out of the picture, by edict of my wife Cheryl. Wait Bob: I’ve got a great fucking idea man! Turn Celeste into Crime-Stoppers and then you’ll have the two thousand dollars. Then me, you, and Bearkat can just…you know…spend that money on stuff…”
Bob threw Bearkat’s cell-phone out of the motel window. Bearkat spent the night with his wildcats taped to his belt scurrying around the bushes, like a beetle, looking for his cell-phone.
Bob went to Trans-Canada credit. He needed the money. Trans-Canada Credit gave Bob the money, but every week the loan went up 25 percent. Bob didn’t give a shit.
Bob bought some steaks and beers and they had a wonderful week of indulgence. He waited a week to buy the horse because he didn’t know how to buy a horse, and, more importantly, he wanted to stretch out this time of gift-giving. Just when Celeste’s mind was truly scrambled from a week of steaks and beers, he’d call Big Mikey, who has a car, and they could drive out to a farm or a stable or something that holds a horse, and he’ll show her the horse, and then he’ll propose to Celeste and then she’ll be his, and she can change her last name and then maybe Crime-Stoppers can fuck off.
So Bob called Big Mikey:
“Yeah sure, Bob! We can do that. In fact, Bob, I think you can buy a horse on the internet. They have local classifieds where people sell their horses.”
Bob had heard of “classifieds” but not the internet.
Mikey explained the internet to Bob, and Bob said it sounded like a bunch of “fucking cocksuckers”. Mikey protested: he is not a “fucking cocksucker”, and he goes on the internet sometimes.
Bob said that, in fact, he was a “fucking cocksucker”, and that the fact that Mikey was on this internet was proof positive that this internet is only for fucking cocksuckers.
Then he cackled.
There was a line of poor people behind Bob, outside of the Gorge corner store pay-phone. Bob couldn’t care less. Bob is pretty wiry and he is probably psycho in a fight. The people behind him waited in the rain for the payphone, and they listened to Bob laugh and argue with Mikey about how he is indeed a fucking cocksucker for a long stretch of time. There were mothers in line who needed to call their young sons and remind them to cook up some Mr. Noodles© because they had to work a double shift. There was a boyfriend who needed to apologize to his girlfriend. The rain intensified.
Bob settled down and stopped calling Mikey what he was calling him and he let Mikey boot up the internet. Mikey had a portable phone—not a cell-phone—and he could easily talk to Bob and scroll through the classifieds for used horses.
“Here’s a good one—it says ‘good horse, good spirit. Lots of fire in his belly.’ Kind of like Celeste eh?”
Big Mikey was smiling. He didn’t really like Celeste but he did like that Bob seemed a bit happier recently.
“I’d be happy to come pick you up and drive you out there Bob.”
Bob agreed that Big Mikey should do exactly that.
They bought the horse. They reeked of ancient beer. They borrowed a trailer and everyone coaxed the horse into the trailer. The horse looked upset—Mikey got the impression that the horse didn’t like Bob. Like it was depressed that Bob was its owner. Every time Bob called Mikey a fucking Cocksucker or threatened to slit Mikey’s throat and throw him into the drink, the horse seemed to shudder: like it was really depressed that Bob was its new owner.
They drove through the country: two friends. Even Bob admitted that the greens and the setting sun and the fields of grass and eggs and chickens were quite beautiful. Bob looked into his rear-view mirror. He looked at the trailer. He marveled at what he had done: borrowed a trailer: bought a horse: used the internet. It was awesome. He looked at the brown trailer in his rear-view mirror and he felt an enormous pride in his own capability, and a brotherly Platonic love for Mikey, who had been far more useful in the procurement of the horse than Bearkat could ever have been.
Just then the horse stuck its head out the window. It too wanted a taste of this new country air. It looked at the fields and it seemed happy. Bob was happy for it.
Then it saw Bob. It stared into the rear-view mirror. Its eyes narrowed.
It puked a bunch of carrots out into the ditch. It bared its teeth at Bob. Carrot hunks were wedged into its chompers. It shook its head viciously at Bob, letting its puke-covered tongue whip about in the wind. It was apocalyptic. Bob rolled up the window and looked straight ahead. He tried to think about Celeste. When he looked back again the horse was in its trailer.
The next day dawned, and Bob and Celeste had steak and eggs for breakfast, and they each drank three Budweisers waiting for Big Mikey to come and pick them up and drive them to the stables. They sat in lawn chairs outside, on the grassy strip where Bob and Rand and Mikey and Bearkat had their fires. Bearkat came out and joined them—he ate cereal and drank a Wildcat. Bearkat was really excited: he snorted like a horse and giggled, and Bob gave him a look like “you are one step away from going in the drink with your throat fucking slit Bearkat”, and Bearkat stopped his snorting.
Mikey pulled up. Celeste ran to the car and yelled “shotgun!”
Bearkat took that pronouncement literally and pulled a nail from underneath his lawn-chair and shot-gunned a beer.
Bob got in the back. Bearkat got in the other door. Bob was pissed but he couldn’t not invite Bearkat. The smell of Bearkat’s leg invaded the car immediately.
They screeched out of there—Mikey was trying to get some air moving through the windows. Celeste clapped her hands and yelled “Drive fast—speed turns me on!”
Bob had no idea what she was singing.
Bearkat’s phone rang. Bob grabbed the phone—it was always for him. It was probably my dad, wondering how it was going.
“Hey Randy you fucking cocksucker.”
“Oh, pardon? Um…Is this someone named Bob? Umm…did you just call me—“
“This is Bob. I thought you were something fucking else—I mean someone fucking else. Who the fuck is this?”
“Oh—sorry—it’s…”
There was a huge pause.
“I’m….from the stables. The stables where your horse is--was—the stables—oh, I am from the stables and there’s—something’s happened.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? We’re coming to the fucking stab—”Bob caught himself before he said stables.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Bob’s horse had…Bob’s horse had…I can barely even type it…
Bob’s horse had gone mad in the middle of the night and jumped its stall. It had jumped into another horse’s stall and chomped another horse to death with its murderous teeth. The other horse was murdered by Bob’s horse. This was a Macbeth-style-Universe-is-inverted kind of tragedy. Murder: By a horse: To a horse. This had never happened before. This was a first for the stables.
The stable was demanding that Bob pay for the other horse. He also had to pay for the damaged stable. He still hadn't really paid for the first horse. The murdering horse.
He chucked the cell-phone into a ditch, the same ditch on the same stretch of road where Bob’s murdering horse had puked its last meal. The cell-phone exploded. Celeste was still singing her rap song. Big Mikey was silent; he’d had a feeling that something really fucking weird and dark was going to occur.
Bearkat was silent. He had his eyes closed. He had made up his mind to go to the doctor finally. He’d finally smelt himself.
