Chapter Ten
It wasn’t long after I was released from jail, had found a room in a hotel, quit taking the medicine I was by law required to take and started drinking, that my thinking started to suffer. I decided I knew best what I needed medicine-wise, stole a prescription pad and began to write my own prescriptions for tranquilizers and sleeping pills. I took these to various pharmacies in Peterborough and was oddly successful. I knew though, that I wouldn’t get away with it forever.
One morning, after drinking all night, I staggered into a drug store. After handing in a scribbled prescription that would have the most seasoned pharmacist scratching his head, I fell asleep in a chair meant for people with bad backs. The next thing I knew, two men in uniform were lifting me to my feet. This time it was straight to jail. I wouldn’t be coddled in a halfway house.
Jail was jail – lots of card games, girlie books, and tall tales, a great deal of smoking and, in my case, sleeping whenever possible. I once again found myself among drug dealers, firebugs and the like. I often felt their disapproval of me but they left me alone for the most part. I went straight from that stint which lasted three months and would be my last such waste of time, to the drug rehab center in Toronto, an afterthought the court had tacked onto my jail time.
In drug rehab I gave a urine sample every morning, ate a lot, played ping pong, read books and dreamed about my next trip to the west. I had no money but that wasn’t a complication as I figured I’d hitchhike and along the way, bum whatever I needed to keep me going.
One day in the Rehab centre, I was engaged in some good-natured griping with the others. One of the social workers decided to make an example of me and asked me why I bothered staying. If I found the way things were run to be so offensive, why not just leave? I replied that I would gladly leave if I could but, the way I understood it I had to stay put. She retrieved my file and showed me that I was in no way bound to bless them with my presence. Enough said. Someone had screwed up the paperwork.
Two days later, I left Toronto. In the still morning, the first light of dawn and the last glow of the streetlamp illumined my path. I only carried one bag. I hadn’t taken psychiatric medication for some time and felt a bit spaced out.
The first day of my journey was uneventful – some old queer making a heavily veiled pass, a drunk whose car veered right a little too often, but mostly just ordinary, short rides. I had a rule that said never turn down a ride. Because of that rule, I wasted time that day on every short ride that came my way; family-filled cars going to market took me six miles up the road and senior citizens out for a ride took me in circles.
When all was said and done, I had only made two hundred miles over a period of eighteen hours. I found myself breathing bleak midnight air near North Bay, on a stretch of highway that was deserted but for one streetlight. I stood in the middle of a mostly black world and pondered the light that seemed to be confronting me. I wondered why it was there and concluded that it was put there so that people like me wouldn’t get run over.
I walked away from the light and heard animals running in the forest. I walked back to the light and felt safe, hearing nothing. It became a game; walking into the dark and then back to the light, taunting Mother Nature, believing I held the upper hand.
Eventually, whispered the trees, the woodland tenants will get you with their sharp teeth. I began to have hallucinations that seemed terribly real. I was afraid in spite of my attempts to reason with myself. I became watchful and alert. The snapping jaws of an unidentified carnivore would not leave my ears alone. I saw eyes shining in the dark. I stood directly under the light and hoped for a ride. I didn’t want to see or hear any animals anymore.
In time the predators in the bush left me with a few parting snarls. It was an hour past midnight and all was still and majestic. Suddenly, in contrast to my now calm surroundings a van that sounded unfit sped towards me and then came to a jerky stop directly beside me, where it sat idling. It was the first vehicle I remembered seeing for some time on that lonely stretch of highway. I’d realize later that my illness had played with me there on that road and though it went beyond reason, I’d think fondly of that event for some time to come. It was late June and the air was just about perfect.
When I climbed into the van the overpowering smell of alcohol told me that whoever was driving was likely drunk. I thought he might have a beer or two to spare. I could have used one in the worst way. Once inside I saw two fellow travelers, members in good standing in the fellowship of the forlorn and forsaken, huddled in the back. I was invited to join them if I wished and I did so.
“Grab a beer,” the driver loudly slurred as if by being loud he could hide his drunkenness.
“Whatever you say, boss,” I replied, helping myself to a cold one.
“Grab me one,” he hollered and I rolled my eyes.
I turned to the guys in the back and asked, “Is this the red eye trip or the white knuckle?”
They looked at me a little longer than briefly and having made their point, looked away and were silent. Presently they announced that they both had to answer the call of nature. They seemed surly as though they were daring anyone to question how it came to be that they both had to go at the same time. When they were exiting the van, I saw one of them put something in his pocket. With haste, they ran into the dark, heading for the bush.
“Holding each other’s hands I suppose, the little turds,” the drunken driver said and then he giggled foolishly.
I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t return nor was I bowled over when the bibulous driver found that his wallet was missing. When the two thieves failed to materialize despite his pleading in their general direction the driver asked me to empty my pockets. I had nothing to hide and so I showed him what I had – cigarettes, fluff, a few quarters.
“Okay, you can go.”
Where was I going to go?
“Well,” he informed me as if he had heard my thoughts, “you can’t carry on with me. You can see that, can’t you?”
“I understand what you’re saying,” I answered, “but I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Goodbye,” was all he said. I watched him gaining speed, moving off into the night, his red taillights watching me accusingly. I shivered and walking off the side of the road a ways curled up in my coat and caught a few hours of fitful sleep. When I woke, soaked in dew it was to an empty highway. The sun was trying to peek over the horizon.
“Jeez,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”
The day had turned a little too warm. I had to roll up my sleeves just to be comfortable as I waited for a ride. Though the farce involving two thieves, a drunk, his van and myself had taken place but a few hours earlier, it was far from my mind, almost as if it had never happened. It was as if it was all a hallucination that I could dismiss, except for one thing – the hallucination had taken me from one spot on the highway to another. While I mulled this over, I was completely unaware of a stroke of good fortune coming towards me at sixty miles an hour.
Until Lady Luck arrived I sat on the side of the highway. I had started out standing but after six hours or so I dejectedly sat on my bag. I wasn’t looking at the cars any more, no more hopeful smiles or sly winking. By the time the highway had shown me to my seat I was no longer entertaining the idea that I could make people stop by making certain movements with my thumb.
By two in the afternoon I was pretty well asleep, the sun having had its way with me. I was startled by a car horn that sounded impatient. Looking behind me I saw a large, golden car.
“Your chariot awaits,” I muttered.
I began growing happier with every step, as I closed in on a shiny Cadillac. It was icy cool, its air conditioner in excellent working condition. I was in for a tailor made ride in a beautiful car that was going within two hundred and fifty miles of my destination. It was a lucky, lucky day.
After five miles of silence my friend, who must have vaporized into my life along with his beautiful car from a lamp belonging to Aladdin, told me to help myself to the cold brews in the cooler. Cracking a pint and taking a healthy swallow I hoped that I if I was somehow dreaming that no Herculean effort would be made to wake me and if I was in fact awake, well, then I had to relax and admit that being so could be surprisingly good.
So we drove and were quiet at first. I began to go into myself, becoming lost in my somewhat fragile thoughts. I thought he was going to speak a couple of times but he didn’t. After awhile I began to feel secure and somehow lazy. The contented hum of the Caddy, the beer I had done away with as if I were born parched and the lack of conversation had all combined to make me gradually sleepy. As I often seemed to do, I fell into the ample bosom of slumber. My siesta was refreshing, like the first winds of autumn blowing the summer cobwebs from my perception.
The trip was pleasant, but a blur, not much in the way of talk but for the odd sentence, or two or three strung together taking on the form of a complete thought. The modus operandi was simple: sleep, drink beer and drive. I drove my share, disregarding what the lawmakers would say. Along the way, we picked up another guy and he quickly fit into the simple plan.
I was dropped off four days later at a truck stop near the provincial border of Saskatchewan and Alberta. I was still bewildered by the change of fortune I’d been blessed with. Looking at the truck stop I felt my stomach growling. I fingered the twenty dollar bill that my traveling buddy had given me as we parted ways.
“Don’t spend it all at once,” he had said with a wink and a nod and then he was gone.
He had become smaller and smaller until he was a miniscule toy from childhood. I looked away and back and he was gone over a rolling hill in the distance. Turning to the truck stop, I shook off the sadness that I felt, picked up my bag and, having no choice, stepped towards the future. As I walked, I wondered why people who gave you money always told you not to spend it all at once.
After grabbing some breakfast I hit the road again. I’ll be there in no time, I thought, as the odd car meandered by, slow moving, driven by people who seemed content and in possession of knowledge that I lacked. Happy, knowing people passed me for a few hours. In due time I concluded that maybe a bit of the medicine I was sure I’d brought with me would take away the peculiar shroud that was draped over everything.
I had the familiar feeling of being transparent. Coming and going, this way and that, people were seeing right through me. Coaxing them from where they hid, I popped a couple of pills after going back to the truck stop to get a Coke to wash them down with.
Oh God, I thought, I really hope I am not schizophrenic; they could be wrong, those bastards. I considered that they might have made me sick for the rest of my life as part of my punishment for breaking the law. Suddenly I was angry; outraged at the loss of perception I’d had to endure. It had only been a matter of a few hours earlier that I had exited an excellent ride so very close to my destination of Edmonton. I had then been elated and thinking back, I wondered what had happened
Frustrated by the foul mood that had crept up on me so quickly, I started to walk and eventually happened upon a small park adorned by picnic tables and benches. I opted for a table, as I didn’t want to risk falling asleep on a bench like the stereotypical bum.
Yes, I was angry because I was ill, but the salt in the wound was that too often I figured I had no one to blame but myself. It was somehow my fault, I’d been handed exactly what I deserved. It was dished up hot and I was told to swallow. Such a big slice of humble pie, I was sure, was never so nauseating. I took another pill. I felt like crying and in order to block it all out I willed myself to sleep with my head on the tabletop. There was a rainy day feeling stuck in my throat.
When I woke the sun said it was half past one. I was calm, serene and I felt pliable in the sense that most anyone could bend me to suit his or her designs. Maybe, I mused, that’s what psychiatry had in mind, when they rearranged me.
The drugs would tranquillize me for a few days. By then, I would have built up a tolerance to the calming effect and I would stop taking the sweet tablets prescribed to me. You are a slug with an incredibly dry mouth and a perpetual yawn, I told myself, a piece of dead meat that can’t get up for anything, a loser who has to be looked after by Social Services. If at some point in my normalcy I had foreseen my days of sickness and knew they would last throughout adulthood unto death, I may well have tried to permanently resolve this dilemma.
I had yet to experience my illness when it was fully wakened to an excruciating, acute state of full-blown psychosis. I took medicine sporadically and could not for the life of me figure out why anyone would take it all the time. It would be some time before I figured that out, but eventually and regrettably I would understand. At the time, as I stood, stalled, on my way to Edmonton, it was unacceptable to me that I would need the pills every day for life. It was my belief that the doctors were sorely mistaken and that they had misdiagnosed me.
I liked to second guess the doctors, to blame them and the other health care workers for the state of things. I did so frequently in my mind, yet no one was really to be blamed. Though I was far from believing it, I too was blameless in the matter of my sickness. I couldn’t control the onset or course of a disease whose roots were biological.
Eventually I was picked up by some kind soul and then others of similar ilk and was in Edmonton that same day, in time to see the push, shove and hustle of its nightlife, played out on a concrete playground under the luminous pinpoints known as stars.