ASSEMBLING COLLECTION OF STORIES FOR THE BOOK WITH THE ABOVE NAME
WILD TALES OF THE CANADIAN NORTH
Enter a caption
CHAPTER ONE
RUMOURS OF ALBINO SHARKS – SUPERSTITION IN THE DARK CONTINENT
CHAPTER ONE
Sighting of Blind Jimmy?
RUMOURS OF ALBINO SHARKS – SUPERSTITION IN THE DARK CONTINENT
“I have immortal longings in me.”
“I will praise any man who will praise me.” William Shakespeare
The doctor who lives next door was shouting over into my yard, when he saw me standing naked with coffee cup in hand, gazing off towards the vistas in the East.
*
He was shouting and he’s usually a quiet man, so this was significant. He called: “WHO WAS THAT MANIAC DRIVING YOUR CAR OUT LAST NIGHT AT 3A.M? HE GOT SOME FOOL TO PLAY THE BAGPIPES ACROSS THE BAY!”
*
“THEN HE LIFTED A HUGE STONE OUT OF THE BACK OF YOUR CAR WITH ONE HAND! HE KICKED OPEN YOUR DOOR AND THREW THE BOULDER IN! IT LOOKED
LIKE A HUGE INDIAN HEAD WITH FEATHERS!”
*
Then in a stage whisper he says, “I was going to call – but some things shouldn’t be spoken of… So I’m maintaining silence, as we agreed.” Then he said something disturbing, he said, “He looked like some dark Caliban.”
*
*
People can get up to some pretty strange things up here in the dark, when there’s nothing to do except look at the ducks for entertainment.
*
The bad weather around here often comes suddenly from the east. Quickly lightning begins to strike along the shore, and if you’re in a tin boat floating perilously over this deep lagoon, you’d better get the hell out.
*
Actually, so far the lake is called bottomless. The crew hired by the government shows up every four or five years and they try to find the bottom with heavy measured chains – they have never had enough chains to find the bottom.
*
I’m thinking, “In this ‘modern age’ surely there must be a way to measure depth more quickly.
*
But a family runs the business and I guess they are funded by the federal government, so they keep trying in the old way. I’m thinking, what about sonar? But the chains are too much fun. They provide a Gothic flavor to the whole operation… And who wants to find the bottom anyway?
*
*
*
*
Sometimes sitting the local bar, 1,000 feet down a dirt road from my house, I sit quietly and listen. The people from along the peninsula keep whispering two tables over from me about, “the best place to hide a body.”
*
I already know, but I’m not about to interrupt the good clean fun of my neighbours.
This is the land of 100,000 lakes and a million miles of muskeg. Bodies are lost up here even when no one is trying to hide them.
*
I also hear them talk about the fresh water sharks that come and go across vast distances. After all, the caverns beneath our lake ( as everybody knows) are directly connected with caverns beneath rivers and lakes approaching the Gulf of Mexico.
*
I heard Suzie, a fine looking lusty lass with muscular thighs and knees that can crack walnuts, I heard her whisper to 3 girls from the northern volleyball team, she said: “In the winter, that’s where they go to feed. Those poor Cajuns! Should we warn them?”
(C) 2000-2016 by W.G. Milne
***********************************************************
2nd STORY
_________________
ON THE WILD SHORES OF NIPISSING
BELOW =
STORIES YET TO FIND AND PLACE IN CHAPTERS
3. BLIND JIMMY AND THE WRESTLER ***find
xxx NOVAR STORY
xx John Rock & the women upstairs Wylders rock & ROLL WOMEN
4.flies! FLIES! FLIES! check
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A PICKLED TOWN
story here
BRANDING FETISH —story on this site
5. THE REAL BALL GAME IS THE GAME
TO KEEP YOUR BALLS INSERT
6 THE BELLS ARE RINGING IN THE HILLS
7 BALLS NAKED IN A CHAIR insert
BLIND JIMMY & THE WRESTLER/ plus STORY WHERE I’M HOWLING
2ND STORY FROM FEMALE ORGASM CLINIC
NOVAR!
CHAPTER TWO
ON THE WILD SHORES OF NIPISSING*********
(C)2013 by W.G. Milne
RUMOURS OF ALBINO SHARKS – SUPERSTITION IN THE DARK CONTINENT
CHAPTER ONE
RUMOURS OF ALBINO SHARKS – SUPERSTITION IN THE DARK CONTINENT
“I have immortal longings in me.”
“I will praise any man who will praise me.” William Shakespeare
The doctor who lives next door was shouting over into my yard, when he saw me standing naked with coffee cup in hand, gazing off towards the vistas in the East.
*
He was shouting and he’s usually a quiet man, so this was significant. He called: “WHO WAS THAT MANIAC DRIVING YOUR CAR OUT LAST NIGHT AT 3A.M? HE GOT SOME FOOL TO PLAY THE BAGPIPES ACROSS THE BAY!”
*
“THEN HE LIFTED A HUGE STONE OUT OF THE BACK OF YOUR CAR WITH ONE HAND! HE KICKED OPEN YOUR DOOR AND THREW THE BOULDER IN! IT LOOKED
LIKE A HUGE INDIAN HEAD WITH FEATHERS!”
*
Then in a stage whisper he says, “I was going to call – but some things shouldn’t be spoken of… So I’m maintaining silence, as we agreed.” Then he said something disturbing, he said, “He looked like some dark Caliban.”
*
*
People can get up to some pretty strange things up here in the dark, when there’s nothing to do except look at the ducks for entertainment.
*
The bad weather around here often comes suddenly from the east. Quickly lightning begins to strike along the shore, and if you’re in a tin boat floating perilously over this deep lagoon, you’d better get the hell out.
*
Actually, so far the lake is called bottomless. The crew hired by the government shows up every four or five years and they try to find the bottom with heavy measured chains – they have never had enough chains to find the bottom.
*
I’m thinking, “In this ‘modern age’ surely there must be a way to measure depth more quickly.
*
But a family runs the business and I guess they are funded by the federal government, so they keep trying in the old way. I’m thinking, what about sonar? But the chains are too much fun. They provide a Gothic flavor to the whole operation… And who wants to find the bottom anyway?
*
*
*
*
Sometimes sitting the local bar, 1,000 feet down a dirt road from my house, I sit quietly and listen. The people from along the peninsula keep whispering two tables over from me about, “the best place to hide a body.”
*
I already know, but I’m not about to interrupt the good clean fun of my neighbours.
This is the land of 100,000 lakes and a million miles of muskeg. Bodies are lost up here even when no one is trying to hide them.
*
I also hear them talk about the fresh water sharks that come and go across vast distances. After all, the caverns beneath our lake ( as everybody knows) are directly connected with caverns beneath rivers and lakes approaching the Gulf of Mexico.
*
I heard Suzie, a fine looking lusty lass with muscular thighs and knees that can crack walnuts, I heard her whisper to 3 girls from the northern volleyball team, she said: “In the winter, that’s where they go to feed. Those poor Cajuns! Should we warn them?”
(C) 200o-2016 by W.G. Milne
CAWS AND HOOTS AT FIVE A.M. LOSE YOUR SHINY KEYS FOR HOUSE OR CAR? THE CROW KNOWS WHERE THEY ARE.
f
CHAPTER
CAWS AND HOOTS AT FIVE A.M…. LOST YOUR SHINY KEYS? THE CROW WILL KNOW
The gulls sweep in from the island
at 5:45 A.M. They come especially on
garbage days, when the fat bags are out for pickup…
They beak and claw right through the bags
all right, and chew the tasty morsels. And then
the crows come down and there is a nasty
ruckus – fighting over the tasty bits… dragging
the garbage bags down the street, if there is
a bit of a wind.
They come and wash their beaks in the small pond
on the roof in front of me. I’m not sure of the pecking
order between gulls and crows. I’ll have to watch
more closely.
A hungry or pissed off raven will kill a pigeon
and eat its entrails. It’s not a pretty. Of course,
they don’t do such things in front of me
if they know I’m watching. They might lose their pond
privileges. Not sure what these birds are
thinking, but, trust me, they’re smart. With
fast beaks. They can remember 20 to 200 hiding
places, after they steel your car keys…. the ones you left
gleaming in the sun. You won’t know where they
are… But the crow will know.
So crows are smart and gulls are fast. Throw a
french-fry up in the air for a gull, he’ll catch it
as he’s flying by. No muss, no fuss.
I saw a gull eat a dead mouse once. I threw it in the
air. The gull let it land, then picked it up and dipped
it in my rooftop pond. Once he (she?) dipped the
mouse in the water, he swallowed it whole… wet
and slippery as it was. It just slid down it’s throat.
I caught 27 mice in a trap that day…threw them all
to the gulls. Half an hour later, all the mice had gone.
I like their savage caws and hoots early in
the morning. They remind me who I am.
Sitting by my window with a book and fluids
at five A.M.
(C)2016 by W.G.Milne
CHAPTER 3:
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A PICKLED TOWN
FLIES! FLIES!
__________
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A
PICKLED TOWN
_____________________________
(C)W.G.Milne
and John Rock
Corporation
(trademark pending)
(possible titles for this batch of stories…
a foxhole village in the vast Arctic wastes
East of the Mackenzie and West of Great Bear Lake)
______________________________________________________________
Chapter ONE – FLIES
________________________ This is a cartoon ( pencil and ink drawing) a
caricature
by artist Ernie Taylor (North Bay, Ontario)….Working for the “Talk of the
Town” Press, whenever I wrote a strange story (which was basically all the time) Ernie loved to capture the `mad act.`
My first article for the Talk of the Town Press was:
“ROVING REPORTER DISCOVERS FLIES” This story drew Ernie`s attention immediately. A line like – “Your Roving Reporter has ascertained that Flies do indeed exist outside the civilized areas.” This line got his attention immediately.
IF YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT I WAS doing with “moon-blind bitches of a Sickle Town” I was trying to make a rhyme, trying to get a title. Rhyme withwhat? With “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.”.
But that’s where the ressemblance ends – I am working under far more savage and extreme conditions than Leacock ever saw..
You don’t have to feel sorry for the animals
around here – because the animals WILL KILL
YOU– not just the polar bears and the menacing
100 pound weasels. But the wolves howling all around us… and trying to bite my ass when I have a shit!
Here, even the DOMESTICATED animals try to killyou!
THIS STORY IS
TAKEN FROM
TALES OF WAIT-A-BIT
“MOONSHINED BITCHES OF A TOWN
BOMBED-FLAT”
Now I`ve moved farther north. Here in the CANADIAN Northwest Territories, you can`t tie up your horse outside for longer than an hour in fly season… If you stay in a bar too long and your horse is tethered outside, one of two things can happen by the time your return.
(1) Your horse has gone mad and he won`t let you near him… every time you draw near he tries to bite you – and there`s no way you can ride him. In his own crazy, eyeball-rolling way the horse is dead serious about hating you… and he won`t change his opinion about you for 2 years. You`ll notice you can see his ribs now,when you never could before. That`s because the clouds of carnivorous insects have been eating his tenderbits – and now they`re thinking of burroughing thru his hide to start devouring his internal organs…
You can be sure his ass hole will mostly have been eaten out so it is almost beyond repair… this will not have a calming effect on your horse, and it is likely he will hate you for as long as he lives. I leave my smokey burrough and and go outside to talk to the fool. I don`t like being outside at this time of day, but – after all, I`m the reason he`s up here, so it`s only fair that I talk to him….
… I can see in his eyes that he`s a long way from sober… He`s getting that “step n`a lurch” tourists get around here. It`s easy to spot… ((Bertie`s walking past: “Hey, Bertie remember that tourist we had a few years back?” Bertie: “Sure do… Nice fella…. Didn`t say much tho… Funny the way he ran after that plane!”
“Sure was.” Nice to talk to Bertie.Don`t see him much anymore… To tell the truth, I thought he was dead.
I go real quick over the lane to talk to the man. It`s obvious his horse is in distress… “Distress” is putting it mildly.
“Your best plan is to shoot him quickly and use his body for food.”
Fella whirls around on one heel and stares off at me as if I`M in the distance when I`m only ten feet away. Peers in my direction like he`s never seen a man in a hat before. He says,”WHAT?” He`s looking off to the south trying to see the plane. The Plane`s been gone for hours. Won`t see a plane for weeks now, maybe months, maybe a quarter year.
I SAY: “You`re going to need the food for survival in these parts. And nothing stands still here for long…” Just as I say this, a dog goes running past us down the street, as if ten children are throwing rocks at him. And they say God doesn`t have a sense of humour. Well. nobody says that up here. Up here everybody knows God has a sense of humour… Just… not a very pleasant sense of humour…
This guy. He keeps staring at me like he has never seen a hat before, keeps trying to reach up under my screenings…. I swat his hand away and kick his leg a light one. “WHAT?” he shouts at me again.
Spose he`s been down to Artie`s Grill That`s the only place you can get liquor around here. And the man hasn`t had time to make his own.
I say: “YOU`RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT THAT HORSE!” “WHAT!” he shouts at me. He`s not asking questions now. Now he`s getting rude. And he`s standing there unarmed.. He`s sort of a big fella, but I was big when I first came up here, too..
I SAY: “The horses can`t stay out long this time of year…Usually they just run up and down the street a few times and peel right back into the barn. Then we lock the barn door tight.” He`s walking up close to me now. “What do you mean this time of year?” he asks…
“I mean the summer!” It doesn`t last long but it`s NASTY, LONG AS IT LASTS!”
He shouts,”Looking for a man called WILCOX!”
“You mean HENRY Wilcox?” I ask.
“I MEAN ANY KIND OF FUCKIN’ WILCOX AT ALL!”
“Ha! Ha!, Well, you came to the right place! I`m Frank Wilcox. Henry was my uncle.”
“WAS?” WAS? Did you say, WAS your Uncle? YOU MEAN I JUST CAME 5,000 MILES TO SEE A DEAD MAN?`”
“Yeah, that’d be right. But don`t be blaming me about Henry. S`ǹot my fault he`s dead… you can`t just go runnin`off across the muskeg around here! It looks like a field, I know, but it`s got HOLES in it… Just watch the moose they don`t stay on top long…. Course you won`t see a moose this month…”
Once again he made a grab for my hat….kicked him harder this time closer to the knee….This one `hurt-a-bit`. In Jamaica they got a town called “Wait-a-bit?” but that`s a different story…. …… …… Sure as hell wish I was in Jamaica now…. It`s hotter here —- and you can`t get a beer to save your life…
“DON`T GRAB AT MY HAT AGAIN!” i`m taller than this fool when I stand up straight, and you better believe I can choke the life out of him…. God knows, I`ve had enough practice! It`s just not smart to stand up straight around here – you make a better target…
HE SAYS: “You kick me one more time, I`ll rip your nose off!! Right off your face… that`s if you have a nose!!! Under all that screen shit. COME `ERE! I WANT TO GET A LOOK AT YOU””
Artie`s laughing so hard he`s rolling in the dirt… 3 legged dog keeps sniffin at him…
“WHERE YOU FROM, ASSHOLE?”
“Maryland…” he says
“””YOU DON`T TOUCH MY HAT! Takes too long to strap it on! Those screens are real important to me. I`ll tie em up when we get inside… Artie`s buying us a drink.” Artie, get up! You look like you`re enjoying what that dog`s doing to ya!!”…… a little too much.
We go inside and I get Artie to unsnap the back of my hat where it tightens around the neck… I hang the hat from a hook in the ceiling…. don`t have to reach too high for the hook. Ceiling`s only 4 inches above the top of my head
when I`m crouching…. which I do these days pretty much all the time. You get used to walking in a crouch… ask anybody who”s been in the army for about 4 years where people are shootin at yer head.
Now that I got my hat off and the tourist can see my face —- it`s too dark in Artie`s to see yer face…( I can write good english, but not always)
It`s cool in Artie`s Bar because it`s dug in the ground…like every other fukin place around here….after the Joint Canadian-American cruise missile tests… and that dumb NUK (I mean CAN-NUK – I`m not being racist, not that anybody`d notice around here… nobody gives a fuck and I tell ya…after smoking your skin a foot from a wood stove 10 months a year… nobody can tell what colour your skin is anyway… cause it`s too dark to see anywhere you can relax enough to have a drink…..after all, there`s only Artie`s.
This guy`s name is Hank and he`s not a bad guy – he`s going to have to learn some manners…. He just took the oil lamp off the bar and shone it in my face….
Nearly blinded me: “Relax, just want to see what you look like…see if you`re half mad or if you`ve gone all the way.” Artie laughs: “Oh, he`s gone all the way.. All the way and back!”
“All the way round the moon —— only the dogs up here understand him cause they sing together.”
“SHUT UP, ARTIE!” It`s nice to see him – just not that nice.
” So what were you trying to tell me about my horse?” the tourist asks me.
I was saying…. YOU`RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT THAT HORSE….Artie`ll lend you a rifle and sell you a bullet.
Artie pours us all a double shot of moonshine mixed with water, berry juice and syrop from farther south, flown up from NORMAN WELLS..
“OK, listen to me now: You`ll likely be spending the winter here, because people don`t like cruelty to animals in these parts, so no one is going to give you a ride south. Not that there are any rides south —- unless you can paddle 2000 miles up river….”Ha! Ha! Me and Artie laugh. After all, you`ve just lost your transportation. You`d better shoot him fast before he runs off into a lake somewhere and stands up to his neck in water for days, like the deer do.
“Every once in a while you`ll see a deer duck his head under the water to get the flies off. He`ll stand there in the lake up to his chin in water with his eyes closed and he won`t move.It`s hard to see em after a while – look just like a stump.”
“No, your best plan is to shoot him quick before he gets in too deep and then you`ll never catch him. But first you`re going to have to dig some holes – at least four feet deep, so they`re below the frost line. And don`t you put more than 20 pounds of horsemeat in any one hole!”
“Good God, you`re kidding!” he shouts, scratching all the while, and insisting on scratching repeatedly in several unattractive places. After a while you see newcomers do a dance, hopping from one leg to another – rather like a kid who has shit himself.
“I only wish I was kidding,” I say to him, giving him a sympathetic nod and trying not to laugh. He`s noticed I have a big screened hat on my head – I look like a beekeeper, only crazier and more extreme,(Talking now when we first met) “We got flies and biting insects up here that make bees look cuddly and friendly – sometimes they even look like they can keep your warm.”
“Better have another drink…” I tell the poor man. I remember when the realization first hit me – and I`m not talking about any spiritula Awakening…The spiritual awakening you have up here is that you`re fucked – I mean well and truly fucked. Not fucked by a woman …not good fucked (Yeah we still have women up here, if you know where to dig deep enough)”
“DIG deep enough?” he looks at me ascance, as if I`ve offended womankind. He`s worried about this is he? The poor little fruit? Jesus Christ! He`d better go somewhere else and flap his hands at the end of those limp wrists he has… (OOOOooo, I`m feeling the 200 proof, that`s good. Nothing like drinking out of a tin cup to really taste the stuff! “)
There`s class and there`s class and up here this is class…
“Hey, Artie, fire a blast at Jerimiah!” ( I mean a blast of sound —- bullets are too expensive to waste…. and we really need em in the dead of winter…”
“When`s the dead of winter?” the Tourist asks
“Shit! Was I speaking out loud?”
“Sure wuz,” says Artie…. I stare at him like it`s the first time I`ve ever seen him. I can`t remember ever hearing him talk.”
“OK, Mary`s Land – the LIKKER`S STARTING TO TAKE EFFECT —— that means hallucinations —— I like it when it happens – I think it`s an added attraction, but.it… it takes a little getting used to…. the rule is – DON`T SHOOT ANYTHING UNLESS IT MOVES REAL FAST!”
“I don`t have a gun,” says Hank.
“HEY, ARTIE, GET THE MAN A GUN. He`s gonna need a gun soon as he starts seeing things…Or needs to take a shit. We all start to laugh. I lean over and say to Hank – the outhouses aren`t the safest places around here, either. You really do have to take a gun when you have to go for a shit
“Artie, you`ll have to show him how to shoot!” Artie whips a twelve gauge shotgun out from under his smock and blows the horns clean off one of the mooseheads by the door.
I didn`t think Artie could see that far – twelve feet! Har! Har!…. I just saw somethin skitter real fast acroos the bar… I blast it`s head off quick like lightning with my no stock
sawed-off single-shot boit action Lee and Enfield 303. I keep it as a convenience under my right arm….I` feel naked without it; hell, I can`t walk straight without it. (I probably can`t even relax and take a shit without it resting there under my arm, but you don`t need to know that) ”
“None of that pistol in the pants bullshit we used to see on TV… when we had TV….before that Canadian flyboy blew the jail and mayor`s office, the A&P and our Artic version of the Dixie Chicks right off the face of the map and incinerated 4 fifths of the town in .036th of a second.
” I MISS THOSE GIRLS….”wails Artie and goes outside crying to have a piss.
“Fuck! Did that really happen?” Hank`s starting to scribble in a notebook…. ….. I watch him for a while. I used to scribble in Notebooks, too – it`s nice to see some fool at work – scribbling like the idiot I used to be. ”
“Oh, it happened all right, and that` not all that happened…” After all the corrugated cement buildings turned to powder, the Beasts moved back in. The lowlands here were always the Wolverines` home.
“By the way, how` you manage to have yourself dropped off by a plane that lands here only 3 times a year?”
“WILCOX hired me as a reporter….”
That stuns Artie and me into silence… it takes a long time for us to digest the absurdity of it all.
And the unbalanced strangely tilted technicolour beauty of living in a world ruled by the smiling Trickster God —-The Trickster clearly has gotten us all by the cosmic/comic balls ….
“You were to be my replacement – but Henry`s dead… he ran off into the bush with a hard-on. God knows what he was chasing… they found his socks and his Walkman,that was all -The same song was playing over and over again…and we hope the song had nothing to do with his death.”
The booze was obviously finding a place in Hank… On impulse he rubbed his hands over the wood stove until his hands were pitch black, then he smeared his hands over his face and the back of his neck and in the crack of his ass and he rubbed more of the soot on his balls….
“We`ve got women who will do that for you,” said Artie
It might have been something I said — I told him smoke is the only effective fly repellant in the area, especially when you mix the soot with skunk piss. But then there is always the chance a huge weasel will wait for you in your deep-dug- human-home (in the army it`s called a foxhole)….. and mount you when you enter in the dark. “And you don`t always have to be covered in skunk piss,” Artie says.”If you`re lucky you will have passed out drunk , before the animal has it`s way with you.” Artie knows. It`s happened twice to Artie. The first time he was pass3ed out drunk, the second time, not so much
They tell me, if you happen to be sober at the time, the nightmares persist for many years.
When the missile struck, we were fortunate. It was summer and the people leave any way they can. There were only forty-six of us left in town. Now we have 16, but this is different. This is our busy season.
“Nobody knows where we are. And we don’t know where we are either!”Artie laughs.
“Don’t depress the poor tourist,” I say to Artie, feeling the moonshine
like a strong breeze in my ears already,
“The poor fool will be depressed plenty… when he understands the
sitUation he’s in up here!”
After Incineration Day, all our memories went blank. To tell the truth,
none of us can remember what the town used to be called. In time
maybe somebody will remember the name of our town and exactly where
we’re at. Maybe, maybe not. We gotta wait. This is why we call this joint, “WAIT-A-BIT!”
(C)2000-2016 by William G. Milne
from LIGHTHEARTED TALES OF ISOLATION AND PANIC.
____________________________
***************************************************
CHAPTER 3:
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A PICKLED TOWN
FLIES!
__________
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A
PICKLED TOWN
_____________________________
(C)W.G.Milne
and John Rock
Corporation
(trademark pending)
(possible titles for this batch of stories…
a foxhole village in the vast Arctic wastes
East of the Mackenzie and West of Great Bear Lake)
______________________________________________________________
Chapter ONE – FLIES
________________________ This is a cartoon ( pencil and ink drawing) a
caricature
by artist Ernie Taylor (North Bay, Ontario)….Working for the “Talk of the
Town” Press, whenever I wrote a strange story (which was basically all the time) Ernie loved to capture the `mad act.`
My first article for the Talk of the Town Press was:
“ROVING REPORTER DISCOVERS FLIES” This story drew Ernie`s attention immediately. A line like – “Your Roving Reporter has ascertained that Flies do indeed exist outside the civilized areas.” This line got his attention immediately.
IF YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT I WAS doing with “moon-blind bitches of a Sickle Town” I was trying to make a rhyme, trying to get a title. Rhyme withwhat? With “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.”.
But that’s where the ressemblance ends – I am working under far more savage and extreme conditions than Leacock ever saw..
You don’t have to feel sorry for the animals
around here – because the animals WILL KILL
YOU– not just the polar bears and the menacing
100 pound weasels. But the wolves howling all around us… and trying to bite my ass when I have a shit!
Here, even the DOMESTICATED animals try to killyou!
THIS STORY IS
TAKEN FROM
TALES OF WAIT-A-BIT
“MOONSHINED BITCHES OF A TOWN
BOMBED-FLAT”
Now I`ve moved farther north. Here in the CANADIAN Northwest Territories, you can`t tie up your horse outside for longer than an hour in fly season… If you stay in a bar too long and your horse is tethered outside, one of two things can happen by the time your return.
(1) Your horse has gone mad and he won`t let you near him… every time you draw near he tries to bite you – and there`s no way you can ride him. In his own crazy, eyeball-rolling way the horse is dead serious about hating you… and he won`t change his opinion about you for 2 years. You`ll notice you can see his ribs now,when you never could before. That`s because the clouds of carnivorous insects have been eating his tender bits – and now they`re thinking of burrowing thru his hide to start devouring his internal organs…
You can be sure his ass hole will mostly have been eaten out so it is almost beyond repair… this will not have a calming effect on your horse, and it is likely he will hate you for as long as he lives. I leave my smokey burrow and and go outside to talk to the fool. I don`t like being outside at this time of day, but – after all, I`m the reason he`s up here, so it`s only fair that I talk to him….
… I can see in his eyes that he`s a long way from sober… He`s getting that “step n`a lurch” tourists get around here. It`s easy to spot… ((Bertie`s walking past: “Hey, Bertie remember that tourist we had a few years back?” Bertie: “Sure do… Nice fella…. Didn’t say much tho… Funny the way he ran after that plane!”
“Sure was.” Nice to talk to Bertie.Don`t see him much anymore… To tell the truth, I thought he was dead.
I go real quick over the lane to talk to the man. It`s obvious his horse is in distress… “Distress” is putting it mildly.
“Your best plan is to shoot him quickly and use his body for food.”
Fella whirls around on one heel and stares off at me as if I`M in the distance when I`m only ten feet away. Peers in my direction like he`s never seen a man in a hat before. He says,”WHAT?” He`s looking off to the south trying to see the plane. The Plane`s been gone for hours. Won`t see a plane for weeks now, maybe months, maybe a quarter year.
I SAY: “You`re going to need the food for survival in these parts. And nothing stands still here for long…” Just as I say this, a dog goes running past us down the street, as if ten children are throwing rocks at him. And they say God doesn`t have a sense of humour. Well. nobody says that up here. Up here everybody knows God has a sense of humour… Just… not a very pleasant sense of humour…
This guy. He keeps staring at me like he has never seen a hat before, keeps trying to reach up under my screenings…. I swat his hand away and kick his leg a light one. “WHAT?” he shouts at me again.
Spose he`s been down to Artie`s Grill That`s the only place you can get liquor around here. And the man hasn`t had time to make his own.
I say: “YOU`RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT THAT HORSE!” “WHAT!” he shouts at me. He`s not asking questions now. Now he`s getting rude. And he`s standing there unarmed.. He`s sort of a big fella, but I was big when I first came up here, too..
I SAY: “The horses can`t stay out long this time of year…Usually they just run up and down the street a few times and peel right back into the barn. Then we lock the barn door tight.” He`s walking up close to me now. “What do you mean this time of year?” he asks…
“I mean the summer!” It doesn`t last long but it`s NASTY, LONG AS IT LASTS!”
He shouts,”Looking for a man called WILCOX!”
“You mean HENRY Wilcox?” I ask.
“I MEAN ANY KIND OF FUCKIN` WILCOX AT ALL!”
“Ha! Ha!, Well, you came to the right place! I`m Frank Wilcox. Henry was my uncle.”
“WAS?” WAS? Did you say, WAS your Uncle? YOU MEAN I JUST CAME 5,000 MILES TO SEE A DEAD MAN?`”
“Yeah, that’d be right. But don`t be blaming me about Henry. S`ǹot my fault he`s dead… you can`t just go runnin`off across the muskeg around here! It looks like a field, I know, but it`s got HOLES in it… Just watch the moose they don`t stay on top long…. Course you won`t see a moose this month…”
Once again he made a grab for my hat….kicked him harder this time closer to the knee….This one `hurt-a-bit`. In Jamaica they got a town called “Wait-a-bit?” but that`s a different story…. …… …… Sure as hell wish I was in Jamaica now…. It`s hotter here —- and you can`t get a beer to save your life…
“DON`T GRAB AT MY HAT AGAIN!” i`m taller than this fool when I stand up straight, and you better believe I can choke the life out of him…. God knows, I`ve had enough practice! It`s just not smart to stand up straight around here – you make a better target…
HE SAYS: “You kick me one more time, I`ll rip your nose off!! Right off your face… that`s if you have a nose!!! Under all that screen shit. COME `ERE! I WANT TO GET A LOOK AT YOU””
Artie`s laughing so hard he`s rolling in the dirt… 3 legged dog keeps sniffin at him…
“WHERE YOU FROM, ASSHOLE?”
“Maryland…” he says
“””YOU DON`T TOUCH MY HAT! Takes too long to strap it on! Those screens are real important to me. I`ll tie em up when we get inside… Artie`s buying us a drink.” Artie, get up! You look like you`re enjoying what that dog`s doing to ya!!”…… a little too much.
We go inside and I get Artie to unsnap the back of my hat where it tightens around the neck… I hang the hat from a hook in the ceiling…. don`t have to reach too high for the hook. Ceiling`s only 4 inches above the top of my head
when I`m crouching…. which I do these days pretty much all the time. You get used to walking in a crouch… ask anybody who”s been in the army for about 4 years where people are shootin at yer head.
Now that I got my hat off and the tourist can see my face —- it`s too dark in Artie`s to see yer face…( I can write good english, but not always)
It`s cool in Artie`s Bar because it`s dug in the ground…like every other fukin place around here….after the Joint Canadian-American cruise missile tests… and that dumb NUK (I mean CAN-NUK – I`m not being racist, not that anybody`d notice around here… nobody gives a fuck and I tell ya…after smoking your skin a foot from a wood stove 10 months a year… nobody can tell what colour your skin is anyway… cause it`s too dark to see anywhere you can relax enough to have a drink…..after all, there`s only Artie`s.
This guy`s name is Hank and he`s not a bad guy – he`s going to have to learn some manners…. He just took the oil lamp off the bar and shone it in my face….
Nearly blinded me: “Relax, just want to see what you look like…see if you`re half mad or if you`ve gone all the way.” Artie laughs: “Oh, he`s gone all the way.. All the way and back!”
“All the way round the moon —— only the dogs up here understand him cause they sing together.”
“SHUT UP, ARTIE!” It`s nice to see him – just not that nice.
” So what were you trying to tell me about my horse?” the tourist asks me.
I was saying…. YOU`RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT THAT HORSE….Artie`ll lend you a rifle and sell you a bullet.
Artie pours us all a double shot of moonshine mixed with water, berry juice and syrop from farther south, flown up from NORMAN WELLS..
“OK, listen to me now: You`ll likely be spending the winter here, because people don`t like cruelty to animals in these parts, so no one is going to give you a ride south. Not that there are any rides south —- unless you can paddle 2000 miles up river….”Ha! Ha! Me and Artie laugh. After all, you`ve just lost your transportation. You`d better shoot him fast before he runs off into a lake somewhere and stands up to his neck in water for days, like the deer do.
“Every once in a while you`ll see a deer duck his head under the water to get the flies off. He`ll stand there in the lake up to his chin in water with his eyes closed and he won`t move.It`s hard to see em after a while – look just like a stump.”
“No, your best plan is to shoot him quick before he gets in too deep and then you`ll never catch him. But first you`re going to have to dig some holes – at least four feet deep, so they`re below the frost line. And don`t you put more than 20 pounds of horsemeat in any one hole!”
“Good God, you`re kidding!” he shouts, scratching all the while, and insisting on scratching repeatedly in several unattractive places. After a while you see newcomers do a dance, hopping from one leg to another – rather like a kid who has shit himself.
“I only wish I was kidding,” I say to him, giving him a sympathetic nod and trying not to laugh. He`s noticed I have a big screened hat on my head – I look like a beekeeper, only crazier and more extreme,(Talking now when we first met) “We got flies and biting insects up here that make bees look cuddly and friendly – sometimes they even look like they can keep your warm.”
“Better have another drink…” I tell the poor man. I remember when the realization first hit me – and I`m not talking about any spiritula Awakening…The spiritual awakening you have up here is that you`re fucked – I mean well and truly fucked. Not fucked by a woman …not good fucked (Yeah we still have women up here, if you know where to dig deep enough)”
“DIG deep enough?” he looks at me ascance, as if I`ve offended womankind. He`s worried about this is he? The poor little fruit? Jesus Christ! He`d better go somewhere else and flap his hands at the end of those limp wrists he has… (OOOOooo, I`m feeling the 200 proof, that`s good. Nothing like drinking out of a tin cup to really taste the stuff! “)
There`s class and there`s class and up here this is class…
“Hey, Artie, fire a blast at Jerimiah!” ( I mean a blast of sound —- bullets are too expensive to waste…. and we really need em in the dead of winter…”
“When`s the dead of winter?” the Tourist asks
“Shit! Was I speaking out loud?”
“Sure wuz,” says Artie…. I stare at him like it`s the first time I`ve ever seen him. I can`t remember ever hearing him talk.”
“OK, Mary`s Land – the LIKKER`S STARTING TO TAKE EFFECT —— that means hallucinations —— I like it when it happens – I think it`s an added attraction, but.it… it takes a little getting used to…. the rule is – DON`T SHOOT ANYTHING UNLESS IT MOVES REAL FAST!”
“I don`t have a gun,” says Hank.
“HEY, ARTIE, GET THE MAN A GUN. He`s gonna need a gun soon as he starts seeing things…Or needs to take a shit. We all start to laugh. I lean over and say to Hank – the outhouses aren`t the safest places around here, either. You really do have to take a gun when you have to go for a shit
“Artie, you`ll have to show him how to shoot!” Artie whips a twelve gauge shotgun out from under his smock and blows the horns clean off one of the mooseheads by the door.
I didn`t think Artie could see that far – twelve feet! Har! Har!…. I just saw somethin skitter real fast acroos the bar… I blast it`s head off quick like lightning with my no stock
sawed-off single-shot boit action Lee and Enfield 303. I keep it as a convenience under my right arm….I` feel naked without it; hell, I can`t walk straight without it. (I probably can`t even relax and take a shit without it resting there under my arm, but you don`t need to know that) ”
“None of that pistol in the pants bullshit we used to see on TV… when we had TV….before that Canadian flyboy blew the jail and mayor`s office, the A&P and our Artic version of the Dixie Chicks right off the face of the map and incinerated 4 fifths of the town in .036th of a second.
” I MISS THOSE GIRLS….”wails Artie and goes outside crying to have a piss.
“Fuck! Did that really happen?” Hank`s starting to scribble in a notebook…. ….. I watch him for a while. I used to scribble in Notebooks, too – it`s nice to see some fool at work – scribbling like the idiot I used to be. ”
“Oh, it happened all right, and that` not all that happened…” After all the corrugated cement buildings turned to powder, the Beasts moved back in. The lowlands here were always the Wolverines` home.
“By the way, how` you manage to have yourself dropped off by a plane that lands here only 3 times a year?”
“WILCOX hired me as a reporter….”
That stuns Artie and me into silence… it takes a long time for us to digest the absurdity of it all.
And the unbalanced strangely tilted technicolour beauty of living in a world ruled by the smiling Trickster God —-The Trickster clearly has gotten us all by the cosmic/comic balls ….
“You were to be my replacement – but Henry`s dead… he ran off into the bush with a hard-on. God knows what he was chasing… they found his socks and his Walkman,that was all -The same song was playing over and over again…and we hope the song had nothing to do with his death.”
The booze was obviously finding a place in Hank… On impulse he rubbed his hands over the wood stove until his hands were pitch black, then he smeared his hands over his face and the back of his neck and in the crack of his ass and he rubbed more of the soot on his balls….
“We`ve got women who will do that for you,” said Artie
It might have been something I said — I told him smoke is the only effective fly repellant in the area, especially when you mix the soot with skunk piss. But then there is always the chance a huge weasel will wait for you in your deep-dug- human-home (in the army it`s called a foxhole)….. and mount you when you enter in the dark. “And you don`t always have to be covered in skunk piss,” Artie says.”If you`re lucky you will have passed out drunk , before the animal has it`s way with you.” Artie knows. It`s happened twice to Artie. The first time he was passed out drunk, the second time, not so much
They tell me, if you happen to be sober at the time, the nightmares persist for many years.
When the missile struck, we were fortunate. It was summer and the people leave any way they can. There were only forty-six of us left in town. Now we have 16, but this is different. This is our busy season.
“Nobody knows where we are. And we don’t know where we are either!”Artie laughs.
“Don’t depress the poor tourist,” I say to Artie, feeling the moonshine
like a strong breeze in my ears already,
“The poor fool will be depressed plenty… when he understands the
situation he’s in up here!”
After Incineration Day, all our memories went blank. To tell the truth,
none of us can remember what the town used to be called. In time
maybe somebody will remember the name of our town and exactly where
we’re at. Maybe, maybe not. We gotta wait. This is why we call this joint, “WAIT-A-BIT!”
(C)2000-2016 by William G. Milne
from LIGHTHEARTED TALES OF ISOLATION AND PANIC.
____________________________
************************************************
CHAPTER_______?
PICTURE GALLERY
A GREAT TRIP – TROUBLE WITH THE REF
STORY TO JOHN:
I remember one game I saw you play,,,,The other parents were getting nervous about sitting with me.. (Like I cared!)
*
You tripped a guy right in front of me. I was delighted, and I wasn’t quiet about it. The day before I was shouting insults at the ref… (working on just a mickey of rye). The next morning when I showed up….I was in the front row… my nose pressed against the glass….
The ref skated over to me and said: “You’re back?”
*
I gave him a shit-eating grin and said: “Yes, I am.”
We both laughed a little. Then he buggered off to do his job.
A TOUCH OF TRUTH, A TASTE OF THE OCEAN
The earliest Christians were called Gnostics mostly in an attempt to dismiss the Christ’s emphasis on “knowing”. “Know yourself and you shall see me.” “HE WHO DR…
A TOUCH OF TRUTH, A TASTE OF THE OCEAN
The earliest Christians were called Gnostics mostly in an attempt to dismiss
the Christ’s emphasis on “knowing”. “Know yourself and you shall see me.””HE WHO DRINKS THE WATERS FLOWING FROM MY MOUTH
SHALL BE AS I AM
AND I SHALL BE HE
AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM”GOSPEL OF THOMASThis message is very simple. It describes a mirror-like confrontation between
master and student. And the master is urging the student-seeker to question the nature of his identity and being.*Again I ask you for your strenth, for I have no
strength of my own, only the strength that you have
have given meO holy one of Israel and Albion, thank you for your
grace, thank you for your gifts, thank you for the truth
that you have given us. O Father, you who ride the clouds
and pierce the clouds with the brightest light of
illumination, I greet you again.
I ask you to fill us with your light, as
you have done before and fill this room again
with you Grace.
O Lord of the Meeting Rivers, Lord on high,
you have given us love of the Mother and the
Earth, our mother; you are aware that our
adoration of the Mother is the love of
you, the most high. Help me teach your
mysterious message to your children
You are the Lord of the Indus plains,
the red earth; you are Father of the islands
and Lord of the sea. You are the incandescent
light at the core of me; you are the mystic
star of all the tribes.
Thank you for your gifts, thank you for
your Grace: thank you for the strength
you give to all of us.You pervade all things and teach me
my own intelligence. Help me teach
the difference between reality and the
lies that have been told.
You are God of the mountains,
the shepherd of the valleys. Little
children are born knowing you.
Trailing clouds of glory do they
come. *I ask you to bless this wine,
O Lord Jesus Christ, soul of my soul,
heart of my heart, One day I
had my communion bathed in you.
And what had been my mind
dissolved in your eternal Knowing.
I have never been the same.
*When you want to sell something,
you make it very special. So the rulers,
organizers of the monopoly, made you so very special,
so miraculous and exceptional, that
no man could be like you.
All we could do is worship you from
afar for being so utterly above us. But this
was not your purpose, your purpose
was to dissolve into the seeker and
have the seeker dissolve into you, until
there were not two identities
but one only.
This is the meaning of communion,
it is the meaning of the Eucharist,
as well.
*
“FOR GOD IS A DYER. AS THE GOOD
DYES, WHICH ARE CALLED TRUE, DISSOLVE
WITH THE THINGS DYED IN THEM, SO IS
IT WITH THOSE WHO GOD HAS DYED.
SINCE HIS DYES ARE IMMORTAL,THEY BECOME
IMMORTAL, BY MEANS OF HIS COLOURS.”
*
On earth, in darkness and ignorance,
you see things but you
do not become like them. You see the sun,
you do not become the sun.
*
But in this place, the place of realization,
the place of redemption, “it is not possible
to see anything of the things that actually
exist, without being like them. “You saw the
spirit, you became the spirit; you saw Christ,
you become Christ. You saw the father,
you shall become the father. In this place,
you see everything and do not see yourself.”“But in that place you do see yourself – and
what you see you shall become.”
For example, in that place (oblivion)
you see something or someone
you desire, you become that desire”.This is the gospel of the one who
is searched for, and the seeker,
once enlightened, can no longer
be found.
The one who is searched for
was revealed to those who are
made complete, perfect through
the mercies of the Father, the
hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ
enlightened those who were in darkness,
the darkness and the fog of oblivion.
He gave light to their darkness;
he cured their blindness: he enlightened
them; he showed them a way, and the
way is the truth which he taught them,
the fruit of the tree which was Christ ,
the tree of the lineage of the Lord.
*“AND HE DISCSCOVERED THEM IN HIMSELF,
AND THEY DISCOVERED HIM IN THEMSELVES.”
*
This is why the Bridal Chamber contains a
mirror. For the seeker reflects the one
who is sought, and the one who is sought
reflects the seeker. And a merciful God
is the relection of the man.
There the man is baptized with water. light
and fire, in order that the Chrism may take
place. For no impure woman or man may enter
the Bridal Chamber, for there the marriage
takes place between the Lord God and the man
who has pursued the truth until he has
disappeared into the sanctuary, made chaste
by the Son.
*
There is no describing these things, but a
roadmap can be made – with signposts
along the way, so that the seeker may
not be lost completely.
I was lost in the early days, and when
realization occured I had no idea what
had happened. I had no idea which way to
turn. I had to go to a zen temple, where
the monks knew of such things. In fact
realization was the aim of all their
zazen.
in the early days , then as now.
the Christ’s emphasis on “knowing”. “Know yourself and you shall see me.””HE WHO DRINKS THE WATERS FLOWING FROM MY MOUTH
SHALL BE AS I AM
AND I SHALL BE HE
AND THE HIDDEN THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED TO HIM”GOSPEL OF THOMASThis message is very simple. It describes a mirror-like confrontation between
master and student. And the master is urging the student-seeker to question the nature of his identity and being.*Again I ask you for your strenth, for I have no
strength of my own, only the strength that you have
have given meO holy one of Israel and Albion, thank you for your
grace, thank you for your gifts, thank you for the truth
that you have given us. O Father, you who ride the clouds
and pierce the clouds with the brightest light of
illumination, I greet you again.
I ask you to fill us with your light, as
you have done before and fill this room again
with you Grace.
O Lord of the Meeting Rivers, Lord on high,
you have given us love of the Mother and the
Earth, our mother; you are aware that our
adoration of the Mother is the love of
you, the most high. Help me teach your
mysterious message to your children
You are the Lord of the Indus plains,
the red earth; you are Father of the islands
and Lord of the sea. You are the incandescent
light at the core of me; you are the mystic
star of all the tribes.
Thank you for your gifts, thank you for
your Grace: thank you for the strength
you give to all of us.You pervade all things and teach me
my own intelligence. Help me teach
the difference between reality and the
lies that have been told.
You are God of the mountains,
the shepherd of the valleys. Little
children are born knowing you.
Trailing clouds of glory do they
come. *I ask you to bless this wine,
O Lord Jesus Christ, soul of my soul,
heart of my heart, One day I
had my communion bathed in you.
And what had been my mind
dissolved in your eternal Knowing.
I have never been the same.
*When you want to sell something,
you make it very special. So the rulers,
organizers of the monopoly, made you so very special,
so miraculous and exceptional, that
no man could be like you.
All we could do is worship you from
afar for being so utterly above us. But this
was not your purpose, your purpose
was to dissolve into the seeker and
have the seeker dissolve into you, until
there were not two identities
but one only.
This is the meaning of communion,
it is the meaning of the Eucharist,
as well.
*
“FOR GOD IS A DYER. AS THE GOOD
DYES, WHICH ARE CALLED TRUE, DISSOLVE
WITH THE THINGS DYED IN THEM, SO IS
IT WITH THOSE WHO GOD HAS DYED.
SINCE HIS DYES ARE IMMORTAL,THEY BECOME
IMMORTAL, BY MEANS OF HIS COLOURS.”
*
On earth, in darkness and ignorance,
you see things but you
do not become like them. You see the sun,
you do not become the sun.
*
But in this place, the place of realization,
the place of redemption, “it is not possible
to see anything of the things that actually
exist, without being like them. “You saw the
spirit, you became the spirit; you saw Christ,
you become Christ. You saw the father,
you shall become the father. In this place,
you see everything and do not see yourself.”“But in that place you do see yourself – and
what you see you shall become.”
For example, in that place (oblivion)
you see something or someone
you desire, you become that desire”.This is the gospel of the one who
is searched for, and the seeker,
once enlightened, can no longer
be found.
The one who is searched for
was revealed to those who are
made complete, perfect through
the mercies of the Father, the
hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ
enlightened those who were in darkness,
the darkness and the fog of oblivion.
He gave light to their darkness;
he cured their blindness: he enlightened
them; he showed them a way, and the
way is the truth which he taught them,
the fruit of the tree which was Christ ,
the tree of the lineage of the Lord.
*“AND HE DISCSCOVERED THEM IN HIMSELF,
AND THEY DISCOVERED HIM IN THEMSELVES.”
*
This is why the Bridal Chamber contains a
mirror. For the seeker reflects the one
who is sought, and the one who is sought
reflects the seeker. And a merciful God
is the relection of the man.
There the man is baptized with water. light
and fire, in order that the Chrism may take
place. For no impure woman or man may enter
the Bridal Chamber, for there the marriage
takes place between the Lord God and the man
who has pursued the truth until he has
disappeared into the sanctuary, made chaste
by the Son.
*
There is no describing these things, but a
roadmap can be made – with signposts
along the way, so that the seeker may
not be lost completely.
I was lost in the early days, and when
realization occured I had no idea what
had happened. I had no idea which way to
turn. I had to go to a zen temple, where
the monks knew of such things. In fact
realization was the aim of all their
zazen.
in the early days , then as now.
(C) 2015-2016 by W.G. Milne
CHAPTER 3:
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A PICKLED TOWN
FLIES!
__________
MOONSHINE SKETCHES OF A
PICKLED TOWN
_____________________________
(C)W.G.Milne
and John Rock
Corporation
(trademark pending)
(possible titles for this batch of stories…
a foxhole village in the vast Arctic wastes
East of the Mackenzie and West of Great Bear Lake)
______________________________________________________________
Chapter ONE – FLIES
________________________ This is a cartoon ( pencil and ink drawing) a
caricature
by artist Ernie Taylor (North Bay, Ontario)….Working for the “Talk of the
Town” Press, whenever I wrote a strange story (which was basically all the time) Ernie loved to capture the `mad act.`
My first article for the Talk of the Town Press was:
“ROVING REPORTER DISCOVERS FLIES” This story drew Ernie`s attention immediately. A line like – “Your Roving Reporter has ascertained that Flies do indeed exist outside the civilized areas.” This line got his attention immediately.
IF YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT I WAS doing with “moon-blind bitches of a Sickle Town” I was trying to make a rhyme, trying to get a title. Rhyme with what? With “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.”.
But that’s where the ressemblance ends – I am working under far more savage and extreme conditions than Leacock ever saw..
You don’t have to feel sorry for the animals
around here – because the animals WILL KILL
YOU– not just the polar bears and the menacing
100 pound weasels. But the wolves howling all around us… and trying to bite my ass when I have a shit!
Here, even the DOMESTICATED animals try to kill you!
THIS STORY IS
TAKEN FROM
TALES OF WAIT-A-BIT
“MOONSHINED BITCHES OF A TOWN
BOMBED-FLAT”
Now I`ve moved farther north. Here in the CANADIAN Northwest Territories, you can`t tie up your horse outside for longer than an hour in fly season… If you stay in a bar too long and your horse is tethered outside, one of two things can happen by the time your return.
(1) Your horse has gone mad and he won`t let you near him… every time you draw near he tries to bite you – and there`s no way you can ride him. In his own crazy, eyeball-rolling way the horse is dead serious about hating you… and he won`t change his opinion about you for 2 years. You`ll notice you can see his ribs now,when you never could before. That`s because the clouds of carnivorous insects have been eating his tenderbits – and now they`re thinking of burroughing thru his hide to start devouring his internal organs…
You can be sure his ass hole will mostly have been eaten out so it is almost beyond repair… this will not have a calming effect on your horse, and it is likely he will hate you for as long as he lives. I leave my smokey burrough and and go outside to talk to the fool. I don`t like being outside at this time of day, but – after all, I`m the reason he`s up here, so it`s only fair that I talk to him….
… I can see in his eyes that he`s a long way from sober… He`s getting that “step n`a lurch” tourists get around here. It`s easy to spot… ((Bertie`s walking past: “Hey, Bertie remember that tourist we had a few years back?” Bertie: “Sure do… Nice fella…. Didn`t say much tho… Funny the way he ran after that plane!”
“Sure was.” Nice to talk to Bertie.Don`t see him much anymore… To tell the truth, I thought he was dead.
I go real quick over the lane to talk to the man. It`s obvious his horse is in distress… “Distress” is putting it mildly.
“Your best plan is to shoot him quickly and use his body for food.”
Fella whirls around on one heel and stares off at me as if I`M in the distance when I`m only ten feet away. Peers in my direction like he`s never seen a man in a hat before. He says,”WHAT?” He`s looking off to the south trying to see the plane. The Plane`s been gone for hours. Won`t see a plane for weeks now, maybe months, maybe a quarter year.
I SAY: “You`re going to need the food for survival in these parts. And nothing stands still here for long…” Just as I say this, a dog goes running past us down the street, as if ten children are throwing rocks at him. And they say God doesn`t have a sense of humour. Well. nobody says that up here. Up here everybody knows God has a sense of humour… Just… not a very pleasant sense of humour…
This guy. He keeps staring at me like he has never seen a hat before, keeps trying to reach up under my screenings…. I swat his hand away and kick his leg a light one. “WHAT?” he shouts at me again.
Spose he`s been down to Artie`s Grill That`s the only place you can get liquor around here. And the man hasn`t had time to make his own.
I say: “YOU`RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT THAT HORSE!” “WHAT!” he shouts at me. He`s not asking questions now. Now he`s getting rude. And he`s standing there unarmed.. He`s sort of a big fella, but I was big when I first came up here, too..
I SAY: “The horses can`t stay out long this time of year…Usually they just run up and down the street a few times and peel right back into the barn. Then we lock the barn door tight.” He`s walking up close to me now. “What do you mean this time of year?” he asks…
“I mean the summer!” It doesn`t last long but it`s NASTY, LONG AS IT LASTS!”
He shouts,”Looking for a man called WILCOX!”
“You mean HENRY Wilcox?” I ask.
“I MEAN ANY KIND OF FUCKIN` WILCOX AT ALL!”
“Ha! Ha!, Well, you came to the right place! I`m Frank Wilcox. Henry was my uncle.”
“WAS?” WAS? Did you say, WAS your Uncle? YOU MEAN I JUST CAME 5,000 MILES TO SEE A DEAD MAN?`”
“Yeah, that’d be right. But don`t be blaming me about Henry. S`ǹot my fault he`s dead… you can`t just go runnin`off across the muskeg around here! It looks like a field, I know, but it`s got HOLES in it… Just watch the moose they don`t stay on top long…. Course you won`t see a moose this month…”
Once again he made a grab for my hat….kicked him harder this time closer to the knee….This one `hurt-a-bit`. In Jamaica they got a town called “Wait-a-bit?” but that`s a different story…. …… …… Sure as hell wish I was in Jamaica now…. It`s hotter here —- and you can`t get a beer to save your life…
“DON`T GRAB AT MY HAT AGAIN!” i`m taller than this fool when I stand up straight, and you better believe I can choke the life out of him…. God knows, I`ve had enough practice! It`s just not smart to stand up straight around here – you make a better target…
HE SAYS: “You kick me one more time, I`ll rip your nose off!! Right off your face… that`s if you have a nose!!! Under all that screen shit. COME `ERE! I WANT TO GET A LOOK AT YOU””
Artie`s laughing so hard he`s rolling in the dirt… 3 legged dog keeps sniffin at him…
“WHERE YOU FROM, ASSHOLE?”
“Maryland…” he says
“YOU DON`T TOUCH MY HAT! Takes too long to strap it on! Those screens are real important to me. I`ll tie em up when we get inside… Artie`s buying us a drink.” Artie, get up! You look like you`re enjoying what that dog`s doing to ya!!”…… a little too much.
We go inside and I get Artie to unsnap the back of my hat where it tightens around the neck… I hang the hat from a hook in the ceiling…. don`t have to reach too high for the hook. Ceiling`s only 4 inches above the top of my head
when I`m crouching…. which I do these days pretty much all the time. You get used to walking in a crouch… ask anybody who”s been in the army for about 4 years where people are shootin at yer head.
Now that I got my hat off and the tourist can see my face —- it`s too dark in Artie`s to see yer face…( I can write good english, but not always)
It`s cool in Artie`s Bar because it`s dug in the ground…like every other fukin place around here….after the Joint Canadian-American cruise missile tests… and that dumb NUK (I mean CAN-NUK – I`m not being racist, not that anybody`d notice around here… nobody gives a fuck and I tell ya…after smoking your skin a foot from a wood stove 10 months a year… nobody can tell what colour your skin is anyway… cause it`s too dark to see anywhere you can relax enough to have a drink…..after all, there`s only Artie`s.
This guy`s name is Hank and he`s not a bad guy – he`s going to have to learn some manners…. He just took the oil lamp off the bar and shone it in my face….
Nearly blinded me: “Relax, just want to see what you look like…see if you`re half mad or if you`ve gone all the way.” Artie laughs: “Oh, he`s gone all the way.. All the way and back!”
“All the way round the moon —— only the dogs up here understand him cause they sing together.”
“SHUT UP, ARTIE!” It`s nice to see him – just not that nice.
” So what were you trying to tell me about my horse?” the tourist asks me.
I was saying…. YOU`RE GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT THAT HORSE….Artie`ll lend you a rifle and sell you a bullet.
Artie pours us all a double shot of moonshine mixed with water, berry juice and syrop from farther south, flown up from NORMAN WELLS..
“OK, listen to me now: You`ll likely be spending the winter here, because people don`t like cruelty to animals in these parts, so no one is going to give you a ride south. Not that there are any rides south —- unless you can paddle 2000 miles up river….”Ha! Ha! Me and Artie laugh. After all, you`ve just lost your transportation. You`d better shoot him fast before he runs off into a lake somewhere and stands up to his neck in water for days, like the deer do.
“Every once in a while you`ll see a deer duck his head under the water to get the flies off. He`ll stand there in the lake up to his chin in water with his eyes closed and he won`t move.It`s hard to see em after a while – look just like a stump.”
“No, your best plan is to shoot him quick before he gets in too deep and then you`ll never catch him. But first you`re going to have to dig some holes – at least four feet deep, so they`re below the frost line. And don`t you put more than 20 pounds of horsemeat in any one hole!”
“Good God, you`re kidding!” he shouts, scratching all the while, and insisting on scratching repeatedly in several unattractive places. After a while you see newcomers do a dance, hopping from one leg to another – rather like a kid who has shit himself.
“I only wish I was kidding,” I say to him, giving him a sympathetic nod and trying not to laugh. He`s noticed I have a big screened hat on my head – I look like a beekeeper, only crazier and more extreme,(Talking now when we first met) “We got flies and biting insects up here that make bees look cuddly and friendly – sometimes they even look like they can keep your warm.”
“Better have another drink…” I tell the poor man. I remember when the realization first hit me – and I`m not talking about any spiritula Awakening…The spiritual awakening you have up here is that you`re fucked – I mean well and truly fucked. Not fucked by a woman …not good fucked (Yeah we still have women up here, if you know where to dig deep enough)”
“DIG deep enough?” he looks at me ascance, as if I`ve offended womankind. He`s worried about this is he? The poor little fruit? Jesus Christ! He`d better go somewhere else and flap his hands at the end of those limp wrists he has… (OOOOooo, I`m feeling the 200 proof, that`s good. Nothing like drinking out of a tin cup to really taste the stuff! “)
There`s class and there`s class and up here this is class…
“Hey, Artie, fire a blast at Jerimiah!” ( I mean a blast of sound —- bullets are too expensive to waste…. and we really need em in the dead of winter…”
“When`s the dead of winter?” the Tourist asks
“Shit! Was I speaking out loud?”
“Sure wuz,” says Artie…. I stare at him like it`s the first time I`ve ever seen him. I can`t remember ever hearing him talk.”
“OK, Mary`s Land – the LIKKER`S STARTING TO TAKE EFFECT —— that means hallucinations —— I like it when it happens – I think it`s an added attraction, but.it… it takes a little getting used to…. the rule is – DON`T SHOOT ANYTHING UNLESS IT MOVES REAL FAST!”
“I don`t have a gun,” says Hank.
“HEY, ARTIE, GET THE MAN A GUN. He`s gonna need a gun soon as he starts seeing things…Or needs to take a shit. We all start to laugh. I lean over and say to Hank – the outhouses aren`t the safest places around here, either. You really do have to take a gun when you have to go for a shit
“Artie, you`ll have to show him how to shoot!” Artie whips a twelve gauge shotgun out from under his smock and blows the horns clean off one of the mooseheads by the door.
I didn`t think Artie could see that far – twelve feet! Har! Har!…. I just saw somethin skitter real fast acroos the bar… I blast it`s head off quick like lightning with my no stock
sawed-off single-shot boit action Lee and Enfield 303. I keep it as a convenience under my right arm….I` feel naked without it; hell, I can`t walk straight without it. (I probably can`t even relax and take a shit without it resting there under my arm, but you don`t need to know that) ”
“None of that pistol in the pants bullshit we used to see on TV… when we had TV….before that Canadian flyboy blew the jail and mayor`s office, the A&P and our Artic version of the Dixie Chicks right off the face of the map and incinerated 4 fifths of the town in .036th of a second.
” I MISS THOSE GIRLS….”wails Artie and goes outside crying to have a piss.
“Fuck! Did that really happen?” Hank`s starting to scribble in a notebook…. ….. I watch him for a while. I used to scribble in Notebooks, too – it`s nice to see some fool at work – scribbling like the idiot I used to be. ”
“Oh, it happened all right, and that` not all that happened…” After all the corrugated cement buildings turned to powder, the Beasts moved back in. The lowlands here were always the Wolverines` home.
“By the way, how` you manage to have yourself dropped off by a plane that lands here only 3 times a year?”
“WILCOX hired me as a reporter….”
That stuns Artie and me into silence… it takes a long time for us to digest the absurdity of it all.
And the unbalanced strangely tilted technicolour beauty of living in a world ruled by the smiling Trickster God —-The Trickster clearly has gotten us all by the cosmic/comic balls ….
“You were to be my replacement – but Henry`s dead… he ran off into the bush with a hard-on. God knows what he was chasing… they found his socks and his Walkman,that was all -The same song was playing over and over again…and we hope the song had nothing to do with his death.”
The booze was obviously finding a place in Hank… On impulse he rubbed his hands over the wood stove until his hands were pitch black, then he smeared his hands over his face and the back of his neck and in the crack of his ass and he rubbed more of the soot on his balls….
“We`ve got women who will do that for you,” said Artie
It might have been something I said — I told him smoke is the only effective fly repellant in the area, especially when you mix the soot with skunk piss. But then there is always the chance a huge weasel will wait for you in your deep-dug- human-home (in the army it`s called a foxhole)….. and mount you when you enter in the dark. “And you don`t always have to be covered in skunk piss,” Artie says.”If you`re lucky you will have passed out drunk , before the animal has it`s way with you.” Artie knows. It`s happened twice to Artie. The first time he was pass3ed out drunk, the second time, not so much
They tell me, if you happen to be sober at the time, the nightmares persist for many years.
When the missile struck, we were fortunate. It was summer and the people leave any way they can. There were only forty-six of us left in town. Now we have 16, but this is different. This is our busy season.
“Nobody knows where we are. And we don’t know where we are either!”Artie laughs.
“Don’t depress the poor tourist,” I say to Artie, feeling the moonshine
like a strong breeze in my ears already,
“The poor fool will be depressed plenty… when he understands the
sitUation he’s in up here!”
After Incineration Day, all our memories went blank. To tell the truth,
none of us can remember what the town used to be called. In time
maybe somebody will remember the name of our town and exactly where
we’re at. Maybe, maybe not. We gotta wait. This is why we call this joint, “WAIT-A-BIT!”
(C)2000-2016 by William G. Milne
from LIGHTHEARTED TALES OF ISOLATION AND PANIC.
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POEMS
SPIRAL POEM
_______________
Darkness is absolute
In the black night of my soul.
She is dark, so dark she
Absorbs the depths of me,
She who is my love.
I enter her body,
Body which is my rest,
Body which is our heart
When the spirit becomes flesh;
Realization is clear
This azure morning
In the bright darkness
Of my lover’s breast.
Embracing inter-galactic distances…
Tide that makes the streams flow,
That wakes the burning spear
In the flowering buds
Bright and warm it makes the womb glow;
The mystery of the Mind beyond
Birth and dying grows
With a child who digs his toes in the mud.
I fully accept the soul
As ultimate and final reality:
That the spirit and flesh
Are born with the same breath
A wind that blows
From beyond the grave.
I touch the Soul which is here always
Lit with suns that rise
And waters that float
An unseen dream…
Present horizons suffice now.
All we see will always be
Unfolding in the light of the stars,
Moving at the heart of galaxies.
(C)2016 by W.G. Milne
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| OUR LADY OF THE LAKE
the buds are yellow in the treetops nowspring is here I can scarcely believe it 12 feet of snow has melted from my roof the rivers flow, do they know something we don’t?
the hunting dogs of Orion are bright and shining in the night the crimson sun with many fingers lights the sky I love you by the lake where illumination sent me like the new god coming, I swear and hope to die
all my life I have been blind about the real things the kind words and answers… like I’ve never heard the angels sing
what else can I say? about my lady by the bay? a true friend is remarkable and hard to find I didn’t know a gal could be this kind I didn’t know a woman could be this way.
(C)2016 by W.G. Milne
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CRAFT SAILING TO THE SEA
Many stories I have told,
So many that they seem to be
Many children, young and old
In sailing crafts towards the sea
But one thing I have not said
For none can see or search or reach
Th’ divinity that greet mens’ end
No one can bespeak
Divine forces all around
Light the jeweled axel tree
Perchance some wonder you have found
Grants an inner ray of peace
Armies in the crimson earth
March with elephants and chimes
The valley of the Indus palms
Before beyond and after time.
(C)2013-2016 by W.G.Milne
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(C)2016 by W.G. Milne
No duplication of these materials without written permission of the author
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