Читать книгу Condition Other Than Normal: Finding Peace In a World Gone Mad - Gary Tetterington - Страница 7

My reception in G.P. was cold and the good and gracious citizens of G.P. may have let me have a glass of warm water before putting me on the road again.

The long road is a harsh and uncaring bitch and I’ve walked that white line many times and always alone. The road will steal your pride and make you humble and you become aware of how small you really are. On the road, there were times when I despaired of seeing civilization ever again. Not that I’ve ever had great need of organized structure in my life but society’s mainstays, books and beer and other excitables have sometimes been necessary. Hell, at times even people hold me with a peculiar fascination. The long road builds character and strength and courage and allows you to think and imagine your mistakes and alternatives. On that journey, back in ’76, I did all kinds of time inside my head, only to find hordes and legions of barren and broken questions, no answers, just bitter need and longing.

There I was in ’76, charging angrily down the throat of the N.W.T., wholly unprepared for what lay ahead. Had I recognized a climactic ending to a frenzied lifestyle, perhaps I would have fled screaming and screeching in the other direction. But no, that would have been a cheat and the next 100 days had been written and would have come to pass no matter where I ran to. An equal form of adversity would have chased and followed me and nothing I could have done about it. There was no escape. I don’t believe in chance or luck today. There is a reason and a purpose for everything.

A man would have to be seriously disorganized, to want to live anywhere suggestive of the N.W.T. From where I was standing, the N.W.T. was not much more than a flat, scrub – rock wasteland. The N.W.T. is no more than a huge and festering gravel pit. The land was asleep and gloomy, devoid of vitality, not like the jolting and stirring landscapes and scenes capes I had looked upon, in my own small way, in other lands, in other countries and here in Canada.

There was one redeeming feature regarding the N.W.T. Should a man have wished to remain obscure and anonymous, well, the N.W.T was the place to be and I can understand seclusion and solitude. Hell, I enjoy serenity and I delight in being on my own and free but the N.W.T. was a meaningless quiet, dull and insignificant and of no big importance to me. The N.W.T. and I could never blend and flow together. We could never intermingle, contribute to and help each other. In the N.W.T., I could not feel the heartbeat. Of a certainty, I had crossed deserts that had more character and inspiration. Nothing exciting lives in the N.W.T. I could have been watching and listening from beyond the far reaches of outer – space, for all the virtue and rectitude I found between G.P. and Y.K. and no matter I may have run afoul of the law there. I guard myself against bias and preconception. I will not lie.

The rides were lengthy. Hell, human habitat was scattered widely and randomly across the orange rock and moss of the N.W.T. and I came to believe the only creatures endemic to that part of Canada, were those huge and horrible blow – flies, black and hideous slips of nature, which kept attacking me and trying to drag me off and into the bush, where they would have had their way with me. Once or twice, I honestly wished for a shotgun to ride herd on the evil bastards.

Standing on a remote and desolate corner, high above Alberta and I was exposed and vulnerable and truly grateful for 1 ride that is worth mentioning. The man was moving and transporting 10 lbs. of quality marijuana and it helped take the pain away. Also, the young man had recognized my fierce need and want for the 5% and he took care of this craving from the depths of a large ice – chest, which happened to be firmly anchored between us in the cab of his truck. The man’s name was Rennie and he was a prisoner of the white line.

Rennie and I trucked and flew that hi – way for 100 miles and more and then he dropped me off with best wishes, a six-pack of beer and an amazing bag of robust and rowdy marijuana. A kindred spirit and a rare person. I called and bawled many blessings and benedictions at the man and his rapidly departing cloud of dust and then sat back on the side of the road and watched the world go spinning past my eyes.

At that twisted moment in time, I naturally felt like a saint, kiss – tilted and stone – rocked on believing and I was positively crazy and abnormal. I even took to ignoring the occasional vehicle that chanced and rattled on by and to those drivers who did bounce past, I was a mystery. I mean … what was this animal, down in the dirt, drinking beer from an un-sterilized can and laughing at a clear and empty sky? A lost link that had accidentally strayed from out of the bush and encountered a vestige of civilization? A savage? Folks, it was all I could do to find my mouth with a smoking joint or a foaming can of beer.

About the only thing I remember of my last ride north to Y.K., was stepping out of a battered old car and dumping the sand out of my pockets. I had arrived in Y.K. I was dizzy and dazed from the booze and the dope and bent badly from the road. It had been a long haul and drag. Journeys end.

Even though I was garbled and off – centered, I wasn’t overly bothered or concerned, as being nuts in the North Country was a man’s private affair. Not for the first time had I been worn and wasted in a friendless and foreign land. No worries.

No money either and not much for it other than to do my hocus – pocus routine and convince someone innocent of the wisdom of buying me a beer.

This I did, by targeting the Gold Range Hotel, a nom de plume I thought entirely auspicious and there, to my great delight, I came upon an even dozen miners, drinking their wages. I may have been a homespun union representative on that particular occasion. No matter. In return for my having to listen to their gripes and groans, they were, in their own casual and friendly way, willing to buy me drinks all day long. I do have an affinity for caging a brew.

I needed a place to sleep. It became my lot to hook up with an American, a sportsman, a man who had materialized in the north country behind the wheel of a complete R.V., stove and fridge, shower and sauna, guns and rods and a wallet stuffed plumb – full of 100 dollar bills.

The man was prepared to do battle with any bear or moose or fish or fell beast that could be taken safely and without getting his Yankee ass thrown in jail and deported. To further bolster his image as a rough and rugged hunter and in the ever-likely event he met a girl of the high – country, he had rented a suite of rooms in Y.K.’s best hotel.

Therefore, I thought it only right and proper to jump in and stake my claim before a pretty northern girl picked and pinched him clean. ‘A wonderful opportunity,’ thought I, ‘I belong at this man’s side.’

It was appropriate I pass myself off as a backwoodsman of the northern lands, a skilled and proficient guide, who reverently guarded and protected and knew of every secret location, where the most dangerous and ferocious and wiliest of wildlife could be found waiting for a keen and sharp challenge, one such as my American friend clearly possessed and offered.

Actually, I did look the part, a week’s growth of whiskers, a face set deep with inquiring and intelligent eyes, patched and faded shirt and jeans, a standard hermit appearance, a man who had left his shack in the outback, after a hiatus of several years and returned to civilization to write the Great Canadian Novel. Ho! Ho!

It was a good cover and the man bought it hook, line and sinker and together we became a competent and capable team and nothing moving in the bush was safe for the next 2 weeks.

The man was pleased and thought me a wizard and gave me leave to sleep on his hotel carpet. No way he wanted to be rid of my accomplished services, not for a spell.

Captured all the prizes and told all the stories, did all the sights and drank all the beer, the only safe and sanitary beverage fit for human consumption in those healthy northern climes, so I told the man and was constantly insistent and on about. I cost the man a small fortune before I was discretely cut loose. Hello America!

Owing to my American friend’s generosity, I led an easy and carefree life of affluence for a week but then had no recourse other than to become a gentleman of the streets of Y.K. and had been reduced to the status of beggar before managing to connect with a band of relaxed and at large inhabitants of Old Town. I had plugged into this group of sundowners with my usual flair and the accommodating nature of the Gold Range Hotel. “Hi there. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you a story. How do you like me so far?” I needed a place to sleep once more.

Now, while these folks couldn’t quarter and shelter me themselves, they claimed to know people in O.T. who could, a speculation roundly acclaimed and applauded at the 20 beer mark, a point at which everything was serious and made perfect sense and was sane and even if I thought their batty allusions to knowing people alive and well in O.T. as being so much hokum, I was trapped and desperately needed to believe there was a place for me in Y.K.

Which in itself became a curious item. The people of O.T., Y.K., were naturally cautious and my next 2 nights were done in a glass building, a plantation, surrounded as I was by 50 – 60 mature marijuana plants. This was the resting place my northern friends had found for my spent and weary body. It was a safe place to bed down until my further and soon to be told adventures with alternative living and lifestyles.

Immediately upon viewing my lush and luxuriant shelter from the storm, I was seized by the greenhouse effect and temptation came over me, to tug those bushy pot plants up by their scraggly roots and run away but a power stronger than me declared, “Don’t do it! Don’t steal from these folks! They’re helping you!” While being an admitted scoundrel and even though I was encircled with solutions to my problems, there are certain things a man can’t do and robbing a friend is one of them.

I backed off but not before selecting an ounce of choice buds, for personal use and that oz. of sly appropriation may have been a prime and contributing factor in exiling me to a barge, a low - slung craft, adrift and slumbering on the waters of the Great Slave Lake. Which never bothered me much, considering as I had the Northern Lights for dancing and my Mary Jane for dreaming.

After and odder still, I found myself being constantly shunted to stranger and more remote locations. Those northern folk and their keenly – honed senses were aroused and they were carefully suspicious of the hazards and dangers of wandering gypsies like me. I had begun to feel like Carlos.

I am a lazy man. Always was. Always will be. As mentioned at the beginning of ‘the book’, these very words seem shyly like forced labor. To be correct and factual, the tally of my life’s drudge and toil can be measured and recorded and contained within an uncommonly diminutive time – frame.

I have forever had a fixed and rigid aversion against work of any persuasion and labor especially, even the thought of it, I generally consider to be a figment of my imagination or an unreasonable delusion. For me to actually perceive and approve of my being an element of the work force is beyond my powers of definition to accept and explain. The image of me moiling and toiling and getting dirty makes me giddy and faint. I cannot comprehend the idea of me having to work. The concept does not belong and has no significance in my world. Physical labor and the circumstances which would force it upon me, would have to be bizarre indeed.

Many has been the time when I have been in dire straits regarding rent, food, booze and other issues yet I would near die and trust in merciful providence to deliver me, rather than plug away and punch a clock. At certain drastic and catastrophic moments in my life, the work had been there, had been available but I had never been wise and humbled enough to waste my precious time and talents on such unreasonableness. An example? Fine.

It was the year of ’73 and I was living in a hovel, a basement, one room, a door, a bed, a table and 2 chairs, a high window a thin cat might have squeezed thru and a 3 burner open – flame gas stove, a firefighter’s worst case scenario. The only sure way out was to die. Wretched burrow though it was, the place reeked character. The residents were as different as the house. The junkies lived on the top floor, the speeders were on the main and us juiceheads controlled the basement. It was a comfortable and congenial arrangement. No one living there had ever been anxious to talk to a lawman or an authority figure of any description. Everyone abided and adhered to a basic policy, a natural order and design which advised each and every individual to keep his mouth shut and do his own time. It was a practical and sensible scheme and approach and it worked well and everyone was content.

Best of all, for me, was the convenience and close proximity of a liquor store. I had only to bump and grind a half block thru the alley, to purchase my daily ration of bargain – counter wine. A good thing.

Rent was $35 / month and I was 3 mos. down and behind and hadn’t eaten a morsel in 5 days and was confined to bed with the early stages of starvation and in walked the Rock. Rocky was the landlord and a serious as a judge sot and drunkard. Rocky had himself a slow look around my room, glanced briefly at my sickly condition and he understood and he knew the answer to my plight. The remedy to my infirmity was a short bottle of vodka which had been discretely hanging from his back pocket. He offered me the bottle. I took a hit. It was the ticket and a vulgar guarantee and amidst curses and cautions, gags and chokes, I shakily dressed myself. “Look at me Rocky! I’m dying!”

“Before you do, you owe me 3 months back rent. Come along.”

“Go away Rocky!”

“You’ll do fine. Let’s go.” Rocky needed me. To be his nigger. To work for him. And to convince himself and prove to the Interdenominational Association of Slumlords that his 4 – star tenant wasn’t a total dead – beat and no – account bum.

An hour later and I was splashing cheap paint on another of Rocky’s claptrap tenement rooms. Somehow, between the squalor of tawdry surroundings and the delirium tremens, I managed to slap a token coat of pink wash on the ceiling and walls of that damned room. It was a struggle and a contest.

Then Rocky fed me, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee and 3 more shots of miserable vodka. After this restorative nostrum, it was the street, a 5-dollar bill tucked neatly and deeply inside my blue – jeans pocket, enough for 2 bottles of rotten wine and a dollar to spare.

“And I’ll be seeing you next month. Have money.”

“Right.” I waved and walked away.

Now, at any time leading up to my having become halt and lame, I could have searched and found the work which had assuredly been mine for the asking and risen above my deformities but chose not to. Gracious providence has always sustained me and come to my rescue whenever the screws of mischance and misfortune have tightened down securely upon my person.

Work is slavery. The wages of work are the same as any slave ever received. Ignoble survival and inglorious existence. Work done solely to survive and exist is a twisted misrepresentation and a deprivation of living your life on your terms and in close harmony with your creator. Your remarkable gift of life, on this beautiful planet is short, too short to waste on empty work and futile labor.

When I think of the important matters in my life today, the necessities, shelter and food, books and booze, laughter and loose women, I have absolutely no need of foolish complications. Such as work. Work would only be a distraction and get in my way and bring me down. I do not need work and for the record, here I am, a bit crazy from all the years but here just the same.

I like money. Yes I do. Money is good, to pleasure a man, to please his friends, to help others and to make everyone smile. However, I’m not willing and ready to debase and demean myself to acquire and hold money. Hell, I can’t understand finances past or more than a hundred dollar bill. A C – note will get me a bail of ‘Drum’ tobacco and a packet of ‘Zig – Zag’ blue rolling papers, be my entrance fee into the Regis Hotel, buy drinks for myself, a round for the boys and hopefully leave me with a few spare dollars scattered loosely on the floor of my bachelor loft the following frightening morning, for me to take and place carefully and gently on a Tight Squeeze beer table, at 7:30 A.M., to relieve the agony and put out the righteous fires inside my head from the night before. I will never be a rich man.

People no longer puzzle me. Square – john, working people, I understand real well. Someone, at sometime and to a ridiculous purpose, told them they had to work. From this belief they developed an entire philosophy of having to be responsible and this could only be attained by working hard all their lives. These people have the bitter and cheerless excuse of having to work, the fever of having to work. They lead such senseless and superficial lives. Such a waste, of such a gift. But the way it is and the way it has to be. For the squares.

Hell, I’d skedaddle from worthless and contemptible work in a N.Y. minute. I do not believe in being a slave to another man’s guilt and greed. I refuse to bow and serve any man. I will not sell myself. Any work I have ever done, for wages, has always been a well – rehearsed act of panic and consternation.

I have never presumed to be responsible with regards to the work ethic and with a credence and conviction like mine, pity on the man daft and balmy and ready to give me a job. The man deserved his reward or punishment.

I have the word, ‘notwithstanding’, in front of me, not a pretty word but I’ll deal with the bastard. Notwithstanding and only as an extreme, there are certain considerations which would force me or inspire me to labor and work, here in Canada. Certain mitigating factors could include, a long ways from home with no money in my pocket, lack of a roof over my head and the last hopeless phases before starvation. I had all 3 of these circumstances in great abundance, the summer of ’76, in Y.K., N.W.T.

Not much else will be an inducement for me to work hard, not the need or ambition to be someone extra special or superfluously important, not the idea of affluence or materialism.

I try to maintain a line of credit, always, to pull myself out of the low spots. I’ve ever cultivated a fine balance between what I want and what I need and the wisdom to appreciate the difference and to be satisfied with what I do have. I am a simple man.

Down easy with a struggling and stray thought on this sordid and distasteful topic. In Y.K., back in ’76, I could have handed any passing itinerant swagman an ax and a pouch of stale tobacco and pointed him in the general direction of the bush and more likely than not, the brave stranger would have put up a cabin and been quite comfortable. Not I. No. I would have chucked the ax into the Great Slave Lake, sat myself down on a log and smoked the tobacco and thought on my next clever and crafty move.

Further and lastly, any man who takes and hires another man into coin is a pimp. Any man who takes coin for his hire is a whore.

The only safe and rational conclusion I can draw upon, is, I was never put on this planet with the intention I do any labor, for any man.

The fear was on me in Y.K., in ’76. I had no money and no prospects of getting any soon, from any complimentary direction. Food, beer and cigarettes were becoming urgent and impossible. I was a long mile from home, as I imagined a home to be. I could have been standing at any point on the compass and I still would have been distant and lost. I had no home.

I had done in and exhausted the mooch and hustle and life was rapidly becoming a mite intolerable. I was tired and weary of being moved from one ridiculous and absurd sleeping place to another. I was dirty and ragged and I desperately needed a shave and a shower. The greatest fear I had was falling ill and infirm. Dying I could have handled but, ‘Please God, don’t leave me crippled,’ was my ritual prayer, mornings and evenings.

The rarity of my box and fix had come home to me. The awful enormity of a set of nevertheless conditions, a lively blend of unique stimuli, forlorn though they were, had come upon me like sufferance from above and I would have to go to work. Not good. No.

By the time this solemn configuration came along, I had heard tales and talk of Giant Y.K. Gold Mine. A camp! A bunkhouse and a bed! A cookhouse and a kitchen! Get clean! Get healthy! Be as silent as possible when called on to do a stitch of work. Cheat the company. Get even.

To further and finally convince myself that work was a no choice option and no avoiding it and that labor had become a necessity and beyond my control to deny and to ease the burden of unnatural duty and obligation, I charged my head with a glimmer of positive reinforcement. I persuaded myself of the fantastic and industrious idea of a touch of larceny. Perhaps I could somehow appropriate and swing with enough and to spare of the noble metal. Why not? After a dastardly thought of this nature, the cloud and confusion of hard - labor was easier to manage and helped put the issue to rest. Anyhow, what did I know about working in a mine? Not much.

Now, a speculation such as me absconding with the gold was fine, save for the true fact that there was only 1 road out of Y.K. and the town coppers would surely have tripped and fell over each other, hootin’ and jeerin’, at any man fool enough to be scampering down that gravel road, dragging an illegitimate sack of loot and treasure behind him. The man would be going to jail.

Was in mind of a vicious rumor. Idles’ gossip alleged a bright individual, maybe someone much like myself, had made off with 2 bars of gold, many years before. Story was, burnished and buffed, the gold had been sitting in a satchel, on the edge of a runway at Y.K. International, awaiting a plane that would have taken them to the Canadian Mint, when a devious and enterprising person had come along and seized and usurped the damn things and walked away. “Possibly,” I thought or fable and folklore, to keep fools like me interested and intrigued. Whatever, it was an intoxicating expectation on my conscious being.

Truthfully though, what attracted me most, was the inkling and inspiration of that pie in the sky camp kitchen. I know my stomach was digesting itself at that point in time and I know I looked like a wraith and an apparition. I needed nourishment.

I stalled some more. I searched for leaks and openings but couldn’t find any and the argument was over. End of break and delay. I was determined to grind and plug, to work and survive. So…

One clear evening, after all the reasoning on the subject of struggle and endeavor was in and done, while sitting on a moon and starlit chunk of driftwood and drinking sweet wine on the shore of the Great Slave Lake, I resolved to just do it. For me and my natural inclination towards sloth and shiftlessness, it was something of a staggering bolt and revelation. It was to become a pleasing and promising triumph and victory.

The following early and misty morning saw me standing bare – assed naked in the shallows of the cold, cold, Great Slave Lake, scouring and scraping my squalid and slovenly body. Wet but washed, I pulled on my crusty blue jeans, my threadbare T – shirt, my cracked and blunted boots and set off for the mine.

It was a 2 mile troop and tramp, down a dry and dusty road and while walking that road, Tennessee Ernie Ford’s, ‘Sixteen Tons’, kept playing over and over inside my head and I could be in error but it could have been a fateful and baleful sky, hanging above that road, up in Y.K., N.W.T., back in 1976.

Standing meekly in front of the Giant Y.K. Mine Manager, in his office, chatting and natting so convincingly, so earnestly, as to why Giant needed, yes, needed me. I was able to deliver a performance and stunt like that one effortlessly and smoothly because I was true and genuine. I was also some kind of whore. The man gave me a job.

All is well.

G.B.T.