Chapter Twenty-Four
I didn’t think it was possible for anything to measure up to my time spent in the flophouses of Winnipeg as far as detestable treatment one to another was concerned. In a way I was looking to Regina to give back to me the faith I had in others, the trust that left me at a point in time that I could not pinpoint. I might have ceased to believe in my fellow man, when he kept trying to dump me off on someone else as though I was a supreme burden. It was possible that my innocence succumbed as I was being tossed around like a human hot potato, from the hospital to the Sally Anne to the Main Street Project and then to where my home was wherever I happened to be standing. As far as my hopes for Regina were concerned, that all other cities would be redeemed by her, it turned out that I might as well have kept right on looking, for Regina had no sympathy.
I was picked up here and there, on the outskirts of small towns, in the middle of nowhere, typically standing though now and then, crouching. Ride by ride I made headway, slowly, in a strange rhythm that made it seem as if I was sneaking up on Regina. Suddenly, coming over a slight incline I saw the city. Cold and alone I arrived; a tangled ball of yarn, one you’d have trouble making sense of. I found my way to the hostel as though I were iron filings and it a high-powered magnet.
I could tell by the man’s youngish face, framed by prematurely graying hair, that I looked bad. “Got any beds?” I asked, hopefully.
He looked at me momentarily with furtive brown eyes, then looked at the counter in front of him, scraped his foot over something on the floor for a few seconds, closed his eyes and then looked back at me. “Yeah,” he answered me, “we got beds.” Surely, he’s seen worse than me, I thought.
Name? Date of birth? Hey mister, all I want is a bed, I don’t want to tell you my life story. My name is cold and my birth date is tired. Everything else about me is hungry. Cold, tired and hungry.
The shelter was in an unsavoury neighbourhood, on Osler Street, just down the block from where the hookers waited for someone to pay them seventy bucks to stare at the ceiling and dream of Barbados and a non-paying gig, putting their kids through university or scoring some really good dope. It was a smaller hostel than the one in, well, that other place.
I was given soap and shampoo and told in a firm way to shower and to make sure I washed my hair. Believing that my acceptance by others would be governed by how clean I was, I scrubbed hard. I didn’t know if it was it was customary to throw new people who were cold under a stream of hot water and I didn’t ask. Maybe I smell bad, I thought, but that was unlikely as I hadn’t thawed out enough to really stink.
After awhile I started to enjoy the pulsating warmth. My muscles absorbed the heat that seeped through my skin in waves as steam rose from the shower floor up, filling the room. Eventually the warmth found its way to my marrow.
The shampoo was a horrid reddish colour, thick and strong smelling. I guessed they were giving me something to kill the bugs that were nesting in my tangled and matted mane, though it would have had to be one tough bug, to have made it all the way from Winnipeg. When I was finished, I looked at myself and laughed, finding it somehow funny that I had rubbed my skin red and raw with the scratchy bar of soap that I had been given. I’m so clean now, I thought, that everybody will like me.
My high hopes were dashed. It took but a few days in that miserable little prairie city for the other hostel denizens to begin complaining about me. I could tell my days were numbered though I really didn’t know why. I supposed they were aware that I had a problem with their reality and that didn’t sit well. I hadn’t even really started settling in or begun to feel at home when I was called to the office. The other homeless men, as I’d suspected, had been sounding off about my behavior. The general consensus was that I didn’t belong and should probably be in a hospital.
When the worker told me I had to leave, I started shaking. I was under a peculiar delusion at the time. I thought I was a very old man.
“You can’t just throw me out,” I argued, “I’ll freeze. A man of my age cannot live long in weather like this.”
“Well Grandpa,” he countered, “Those are the orders I have. You have to go. We can’t have you all over the building.”
I pondered for several days his remark about me being all over the building. I reached the conclusion that he probably thought I turned into some kind of geriatric giant who lounged on the roof of the building in which he earned his daily bread. Something like the Jolly Green Giant, I figured.
“Where will I go,” I pressed, “I’ve only just got here. It’s not right.”
“How did you happen to get here,” he inquired. I thought that if I gave the right answer they might let me stay, but the only I answer I could think of was the truth.
“I hitchhiked,” I croaked, as my throat failed me, suddenly going dry.
“Well,” he said, looking at me, “I suggest you hitchhike somewhere where they’ll have you. Now, leave or I’ll call the cops.”
“Go ahead, Big Man, Mr. Hero, call them,” I replied in a scornful voice.
I left the office and went into the TV room. When the policeman arrived he found me absorbed in watching the TV, though it wasn’t turned on. What I saw in the blank screen was often more intriguing than any program, but I didn’t expect him to understand that.
The cop asked me to step outside. I was incredulous. “You want to fight an old man like me? Okay, I’ve had it, let’s go.”
“Wait,” he said with amused authority in his voice. He may have been entertained by my antics, but I knew that, when all was said and done, he had been given the choice cards long before the deck had even been cracked; I had to do as he bid.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he told me in a friendly voice, “I just want to talk.” We walked to the street and a couple of Native girls were looking at me. One of them laughed and the other scowled. I got in the cruiser and sat up front while he ran a check on me.
“You’re clean,” he said and then he asked, “Just how old are you Pops?”
“I, sir, am eighty seven years old.” I could feel the whiteness of my hair.
“That’s funny,” he observed, “you don’t look a day over nineteen.”
I spent the next two weeks wandering the streets of Regina. I was too confused to attempt finding permanent shelter. In a perfect world no one would roam like that, all systems out of order, vexed by hallucinations, struggling to stay alive in their own little world, their belief system rooted in psychosis.
Typical days were horror filled, half walking, half running the streets, feeling the circle tighten like a noose, the circle being made up of those who wore masks, those who had forced me into a bogus telepathic marriage. They were in my dad’s employ, those whose worst problem was whether to buy premium or unleaded, and to make sure the oil was topped up.
“How’s the circle,” they asked one another.
“Tightening? Ah, that’s good, that’s very good.”
They had resurfaced. Those who had started surrounding me on the highway outside Edmonton and had, without question, continued working against my best interests from behind a façade of industry and normalcy were back. It seemed as if crowds of them had been injected into my life, they were in the way everywhere my freezing feet propelled me. We were all in what I thought of as ‘the stream’ and, I well knew, the longer I was there the harder it would be to get out. They drove and they walked, they jogged and rode public transportation. The ring around me grew tighter and tighter. Everywhere people were masquerading. Every third person bore a resemblance to my father.
Not long after leaving the hostel I became convinced, beyond doubt, that everything and everyone was being filmed. I saw cameras wherever I went, in the yellow headlights of a car, implanted in a dog’s eye, rudely trained on me from the top floor of an office building, in a streetlight as it winked on – everywhere, it seemed, there were cameras.
I started to develop a few ideas. In order to make a movie realistic, I reasoned, the actors should live their roles.
I thought, if that is what this is all about, could it be that I’m only playing the role of a hobo, could life be that strange? Do I get paid? I ceaselessly walked the streets thinking about the depth and mystery of what I believed I’d discovered.
When I wound my way through the glacial streets I would test the waters with little hand signs, subtle nods and the like, all directed at those who looked as though they were in the know. I wanted them to understand that I had figured it out and that it was all right as far as the movie went, that mind control wasn’t necessary.
As night descended it would grow cold and then colder still. The air was like a hungry animal, wild and cagey, one who found sustenance in exposed skin. It seemed the beast was always hungry, always in the mood to bite. My snarled hair covered parts of my face and the best you could say about that is that I was partially protected. The running shoes I was wearing were flimsy things I’d picked up at the shelter. The wind went right through those stale, old sneakers - not only were they poor protection for the cold, they further disturbed me by frequently coming undone.
After night had fallen as far as it could I could be found lounging in the YMCA waiting area, watching the TV that was bolted to the wall. I knew the routine, as did everyone I encountered there. Twenty minutes to get warm and then, sorry, you have to go and come back in an hour or two. So I sat there on a cold night and put the finishing touches on what I told myself I must accept.
Often times any explanation is better than none. By my calculations I was a hobo who had been surrounded by a mind control cult operated by my father and I was being controlled and tormented, as part of a movie-making project. Take it or leave it, that’s what I got when I added two and two.
It seemed that addition was a time consuming task. By the time I’d finally come to understand and fully believe the wherefore and the why, I was politely asked to leave. At least they were civil about it.
I developed an unusual belief in Regina. It all began when I was crouched with my back against a heater in an apartment lobby. I was unencumbered, having nothing but a few cigarette butts to my name.
I was making noises through my teeth. To my ears the sounds I was making were indistinguishable from those a cat makes. The more I meowed the more my brain picked up on the noise and turned it into a highly plausible explanation for why things were the way they were. Of course you couldn’t have a cat wandering around in a shelter for homeless men. If only for the animal’s own good you’d have to throw it out, you never knew what some sadistic bastard might do, who knew, some serial killer in training might get hold of it and God only knows what might happen.
Late one evening I was walking through a park when I felt compelled to get down on all fours. I didn’t know that insanity had me firmly in tow. Well, I thought, you are a cat and that entails walking a certain way. I looked up at the lights and then the cars passing and could have sworn that I felt the sadness and loneliness that only a cat in a human’s world would feel.
I reached a busy intersection and waited for the light to turn green. When it did I crossed in cat style. I believed I was a four-legged feline and I walked the walk. In a further effort to be as my fellow felines, once I’d traversed the street I curled up in front of a bar and tried to sleep. I made a few hapless noises through my teeth. It was cold. Thankfully the better part of me was unaware that my behavior was in any way curious. I wasn’t worried about lying vulnerable on the sidewalk. As far as I knew and for all I cared I was following the rules, as far as the comportment of cats went, I was exemplary.
I must have dozed a bit. At some point in the evening, a man who looked like the Pope put me in a car and then I remember warmth, blankets and more blankets until I stopped shivering. Food, sleep and more sleep. When I woke the next day, I was alone. The room smelled funny. Something seemed out of order - something was twisted. There was a strong smell of antiseptic cleaner and under that a cigar. I dressed hurriedly and with my heart in my throat I fled.