Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I caught the overnight bus from Toronto. It pulled into the Kingston terminal just past three o’clock. A few weary souls de-bussed and wandered into the cold night, traipsing by half a dozen cabs idling at the curb, the air thick with the stench of natural gas emissions. On board, I threw my bag into the overhead compartment and settled next to the window, snoring sounds coming from behind me. The bus rolled back out to the 401. I leaned my head against the damp glass and tried to sleep but I couldn’t, my head busy with too many thoughts, too much caffeine. I sat upright and read for a while. Later, I peered out the window at nothing in particular in Smiths Falls, somewhere off the main road, the bus swerving through yet another silent small town.

     In Ottawa I cooled my heels in the terminal for an hour, fingering deserted newspapers. I bought a coffee from the canteen and wandered out onto the streets of the Nation’s Capital some time after eight o’clock. With the coffee rapidly cooling in my hand, I marched down Bank Street dodging the hoard of civil servants. I met Malcolm and Brian about eight-thirty at the restaurant where they worked. Had a big breakfast, free. More coffee. Some cursory conversation. Then Rachel dropped off the rental car. Ten o’clock, fuelled up with coffee, we veered north-west, Ottawa at our backs.

     I am not sure whose idea it was, but less than an hour outside Ottawa we decided it was going to be an all-poutine weekend. We pulled into a truck stop west of Pembroke and forced a plate-full each of the sticky mess down on top of our greasy breakfasts. Later, in Mattawa, we stopped to piss and buy beer. We loaded the trunk with three cases of Export and then changed drivers. Brian was at the wheel till then. I took over, Malcolm at twenty-five still without a licence. I set the car back on the Trans-Canada, clay-coloured pavement flashing by beneath the tires. In Sturgeon Falls we were ready for more poutine. I bought a postcard that showed the main drag of the town circa 1968. I scribbled foolish thoughts: comparing poutines, describing strange northern towns, trying to transcribe a joke that seemed hilarious to us at the time. I addressed it to Nadia in Hamilton, removed a stamp from the packet in my pocket, and dropped the card in a mailbox.

     We passed the Big Nickel some time after six o’clock. By this point it was snowing; a calm, steady snow that looked like it would last for days. The Nickel loomed large over us from the top of a treeless bluff, Sudbury’s lone claim to fame. Malcolm wanted to stop and take a photograph in the dark. I balked at the idea and kept the car steady on the road, Brian dozing in the back seat.

     West of the fallout from Inco we approached our destination. We each cracked a beer on the dim highway in anticipation, Social Distortion blaring from the tape deck. The entire stretch of road we listened to nothing but Johnny Cash, Social Distortion and Nick Cave, dark, foreboding music filling the car in the dead of winter. Given our location, it really should have been Stompin Tom Connors, The Rheostatics and Cordon Lightfoot. Driving, I sang along with a punk cover of “Ring of Fire”, a bottle of Ex wedged between my knees.

     With a case of beer each jostling against our groins we walked up the drive to Colin’s bungalow, spot-on nine o’clock. Linda, Colin’s soon-to-be wife, answered our buzz, a conspiratorial grin fluttering on her face. We grunted, knocked snow off our boots and pushed into the unfamiliar kitchen, Colin calling from somewhere in the house. A minute later he appeared all housecoated and shippered, totally unprepared, totally unaware. He made a strange noise, offered a few obligatory “What the fucks?” and accepted a frigid beer plucked from an open case. Bottles clinked. Coats came off. Small talk spewed. Linda hovered.

     After four or five quick beers we set out on the town, “town” being the appropriate term. Colin was nervous. He had just been hired full time at the local high school and was wary of being seen drunk in public with a threesome of miscreants obviously from out of town. He chose the most generic bar in Elliot Lake, a franchised place: O’Toole’s or Finnigan’s, somebody’s pub. We hunkered down in a booth in the corner and summoned a waitress. Shots immediately. Tequila. And a round of Export. A few of these, and we were duly pissed. Later, the tequila was dismissed, the salt and lemon ritual beyond our dexterity. We agreed on rye as a substitute. By this point the waitress was wearing a trough into the carpet walking back and forth to our table. She brought drinks and we immediately placed another order. The table was sticky with spilled booze, cluttered with shot glasses and bottles. It was my idea -- to make space -- to pitch shot glasses against the brick wall to our left. They exploded like grenades, glass shrapnel scattering within a few metres of the point of impact. Our bill had easily exceeded three digits by this time, so the waitress tolerated my high-jinks. Colin could have done without the extra attention, however. He drew the shot glasses away from me, sliding them out of harm’s way, disarming me in the process.

     A few hours later, outside in the frigid Northern Ontario night air, a cab appeared. Malcolm puked before we climbed in, his brown puddle steaming in the snow. I puked out the back door of the moving cab a few blocks later. Brian puked outside Colin’s place, standing calmly in the centre of the street, spitting first, testing the theory that spit freezes before it hits the ground when it’s minus thirty degrees or worse, and then followed with a torrent of booze and poutine. Colin held steady, guiding us into his home. Inside I tackled a houseplant, spilling potting soil on the plush beige carpet. Malcolm fell asleep immediately on the nearest couch. Brian found some tapes and slapped in the Cowboy Junkies, something Canadian for a change of pace. Colin groaned, arranging our boots on a mat by the front door, before vanishing upstairs. He was pissed but I was unsure of his humour. He worried the entire evening: about his public drunkenness, about Linda at home, about tomorrow morning’s bonspiel. That’s right, bonspiel. Three years in the Northern Ontario hinterland and he had already taken up curling.

     Colin was gone when we woke the next morning around eleven. He answered the nine o’clock bell, broom at the ready. We forgot to plug in the rental so we had to hoof it to the nearest restaurant. It was probably just as well, our blood still thin with alcohol. We ordered poutine and coffee at Pierre’s Family Restaurant. Sunshine riveted through the front window, scalding me in my seat, gnawing at my dehydrated brain. I played with the mash on my plate, sipped painfully from my mug, observing the complete absence of families, just idle French chatter from ball-capped men. They ignored us and gestured to some sort of rally-car race on the TV behind the counter. We suffered in silence over our breakfasts.

     That night things were decidedly less frantic. The bonspiel was a disaster and Linda was genuinely upset. But we took in the post-tournament festivities anyway. A big roast beef, baked potatoes and frozen peas extravaganza. We supped Export and gravitated to the pool tables as trophies were awarded to giddy middle-aged women in thick sweaters, logos emblazoned over their heavy breasts. I lost money playing pool with some guy named Gus who had just wandered in out of the cold and wanted to know what all the fuss was about. He scoffed at the curlers as I racked. He shattered the balls, cursing loud enough to lure a few glares from men more ridiculous looking in their curling attire than the women. Twelve o’clock and we headed back to the bungalow. We watched the west-coast hockey game from Vancouver, ordered a pizza, snubbing the poutine pact, and eased back with a case of Export open on the floor. Colin disappeared half an hour after the pizza arrived. He made more strange sounds before slinking off to bed to snuggle up next to Linda. We finished the food in silence and watched the Canucks drub the Flames in a laughter.

     The next day the temperature gradually crested above minus twenty and the car started. The Trans-Canada beckoned and we headed off, a few hundred kilometres separating us from Ottawa. When we climbed into the car, Colin was wringing his hands in the drive, from the cold, and from his new creeping nervousness, some peculiar small-town affliction. Linda waved weakly from the doorstep as we skidded up the street, thrilled, it seemed, to see the backs of our heads. At the wheel I watched Colin in the rear-view kick at a clump of snow with his slipper, before skulking back into the house, ready to re-embrace normality.

     The wedding a month later was down in Hamilton: Colin’s hometown. It went off without a hitch in my opinion. At Nadia’s urging I danced with the bride. Colin got good and drunk, the nervousness abating on his home turf. We danced to old favourites like a bunch of high school kids: the Clash, the Jam, the Pogues. The Northerners, in suits and dresses instead of curling sweaters, looked pensive on their side of the room, nursing rum and Cokes, mumbling amongst themselves, waiting for Billy Ray Cyrus to pump from the speakers. We wished Colin and Linda off later, the lights on, “Waltzing Matilda” playing for the second time that night, and then set off to our hotel room upstairs. A bunch of us carried on for a couple of hours longer. Got high and played cards. We finally settled into various positions on the beds and the floor about four in the morning, eight of us scattered across the room. Breakfast out the next morning completed the ritual. Caesars and club-house sandwiches all around, the perfect hangover remedy. We tossed about idle speculation concerning Colin and Linda and their impending week roasting on a beach in the Caribbean.

     My wedding four years later Colin showed up without Linda. She stayed in the hinterland, their second child -- newly born -- swaddled in her arms, the older one yammering on the floor around her swollen ankles. Colin explained to me on the telephone a week before the wedding that a drive south for the entire family in the dead of winter was ill advised. The children had been sick. The roads were bad. And who gets married in February anyway? At the reception Colin hung out with Malcolm till about eleven thirty and then left. I heard nothing from him. At one point, I saw Colin leave the bar before his drink arrived when Nadia approached him. He was sober and grim the entire night. Malcolm had no explanation for his behaviour and was equally mystified. We shrugged it off as best we could and pounded back Scotch till three in the morning.

     Two years later at Malcolm’s wedding reception in the backyard of his newly acquired house in the depths of a temperate August afternoon Colin again showed without the clan. Brian flew east from Vancouver for the event. He had not seen Colin in five years and tried to joke with him and feed him beers drawn from a plastic children’s swimming pool filled with ice, but Colin would have none of it. Colin ate heartily from the buffet and vanished before the sun went down. Again we searched in vain for explanations, before savouring a night of drunkenness and fine dining, smashing crabs with a mallet, getting silly on seafood.

     Six months ago I saw Colin for the first time since Malcolm’s wedding in 1996. Malcolm called me in Montreal and told me that Colin’s twin brother Andrew had been killed in an industrial accident. The funeral was in Hamilton. Nadia did not want to go, having only vague recollections of Andrew from high school. This, and she was still pissed about Colin’s behaviour at our wedding, and at Malcolm’s wedding. Nadia spoke out loud what had been bothering me since that weekend in 1992 when we rented a car and drove seven-hundred fucking kilometres each way in the middle of February just to get pissed one last time with an old friend, ushering him into married life in the traditional fashion: how do you turn your back on your friends so completely, so callously, so coldly? I did not have an answer for Nadia but I had a long drive in a rental car back to the Golden Horseshoe to contemplate the situation.

     There was a reception at Colin’s sister’s house in Ancaster following the funeral. Coffee, small sandwiches without crusts, squares and cakes. I lingered in a corner with Malcolm, silly teacups and saucers dwarfed in our hands. Together, after eating, we offered our condolences to Colin’s mother, a widow, and now a mother outliving one of her children. She held back tears and thanked us for coming. She seemed only vaguely familiar with who we were. A minute later, we stepped cautiously into the kitchen to find mugs for a coffee refill. Colin was there, feeding peanut butter sandwiches without crusts to his youngest child. His eyes narrowed when he looked at us across the room. He spoke only to Malcolm, his voice quavering, his hands quivering. He thanked Malcolm for coming and for spreading the word. At this, Colin’s eyes darted towards me momentarily. Otherwise, he spoke as if I was not in the room. I opened my mouth after Malcolm grunted something inaudible, only to find that I had nothing to say. I had bandied the situation around in my head for hours on the 401. I wanted to diplomatically ask Colin what had led to our estrangement. I wanted to know how I offended him. Who offended whom. What had I said, what had I done, way back when, that led to the collapse of a friendship that dated back to pre-school days? I was truly mystified and needed some help from him. I had no answers, no insight. When I offered none of these queries, Colin just stepped towards the sink, adding another plate to a stack of dirty dishes. He ran water over his hands and then dried them on a tea towel. He turned to face us again, scooped up his son and passed wordlessly between us, back to the living room. I stared at Malcolm for a second, palms up by my sides. He shrugged and shook his head, placing a hand on my shoulder. He asked me if I wanted a drink. I nodded. It seemed like the only thing to do. Together we walked out the back door, around the front of the house, and climbed back into the rental car. With me at the wheel, we headed back down the escarpment into the city, none the wiser, the radio mute between us.