Away From Everywhere Read online

  “Look at ya there, right confused. Sure, I probably changed your diapers, me son!Which one is ya? Owen or Alex?”

  He laughed, perplexed and yet charmed by the lady. “I’m Owen.” He was surprised by the warming effect of the smile glued on his face, how it wouldn’t go away.

  “We all used to call him Mr. Know-It-All, a real smarty pants, he was. Could do it all, fix your truck or talk your ear off about all them books and that. We teased him for being the townie who wanted to be a bayman. Some sweet man he was. Shame what happened. Sometimes I got to wonder why God chooses certain things to happen to the good ones, ya know? Because your fadder was for certain one of the good ones.”

  How rude would it be to tell this sweet woman God is folklore?

  “S’pose you thinks your fadder used to come up here all those weekends to be alone, do ya? Truth is, he used to host most of the weekend parties. Few drinks in him and he was the life of the party!” She laughed and started to organize the tray of Nevada tickets, smiling like she was reliving a great memory.

  “And when he’d flick on Debbie’s karaoke machine, well look out, Owen! The tears from the laughter would be rollin’! Half the town’d be all jealous he was married. Had his way with the women, your fadder.”She winked at him and sized him up, shamelessly.

  “He didn’t even have to try, they was just drawn into him, and I’m s’posin’, just from lookin’ at ya here, it’s the same way with you, I bet! How many women ya got yourself, wha? Three or four?”

  Owen was speechless.

  “Yes, I tells ya, all the ladies up this way thought quite highly of Roger Collins. His missus, your mudder, she never saw the fun in it out this way. Townie, see.”

  Owen couldn’t picture this, he couldn’t summon this image of his father. His family collectively assumed his father came out here to relax. To be alone. To work on his hobbies and articles.

  “Last going off though, he kept to himself. Right, I dunno, right retreated he was. Right withdrawn. Always working away on something, almost suspicious of people that used to be his friends.”

  She was visibly uncomfortable now, and changed the topic. “Anyway, dear. That’s Clyde’s truck you’re asking about. Do ya know where Clyde lives?”

  He smiled and shook his head. No one used street names or house numbers. There’s just Clyde’s house, or Maude’s, or the Noseworthys’.

  “It’s that one there.” She pointed out the dirty, postered window. “The yellow one, with that beast of a white truck parked out front, okay?” She smiled, waiting for a nod.

  “And I doubts you got much of a supper planned for tonight, so if ya don’t, that’s me andTim’s house right next door to Clyde’s. You’re more than welcome for supper, love!” She grew even more excited as she remembered. “Sure, Clyde’s coming over for supper too, if ya wants to wait til then to talk about the truck. I sorta looks after him a bit, ever since his wife passed. So maybe we’ll see you later, dear!”

  Strangers cooking strangers supper. He felt like going home to absorb that conversation, to process this new image of his father, but he headed over to Clyde’s to ask about the truck.

  A kind, weathered man opened the door. His grey eyebrows were freakishly long. They swept up onto his forehead as if they were a clothing of some sort, and his forehead was scoured by deep, fleshy wrinkles, like maybe they sagged a little differently every day. His yellow cardigan was far too big for him, as if he’d lost a lot of weight very quickly. He seemed more interested in who Owen was than in selling the truck.

  “Collins? Any relation to Roger Collins?”He pointed down the street to Owen’s father’s place.

  “I’m Roger’s son,Owen.”He extended his hand.

  “Well, my Jesus, look at ya! Sure, I should’ve guessed it, ya sorta looks like him! Roger’s son, hey?Well, for that, the truck is yours for fifteen hundred. How does that sound, boss? Come in, Jesus, come in, b’ye!”

  He did. The porch smelled like baked potatoes. He took one shoe off, but before he started in on the other, he was told, “Don’t be silly, leave them on. There’s no women in this house to worry about!” Shoes on, he followed him down a hall and into a floral wallpapered living room.

  “You want a drink of tea, or a drop of scotch? A water? I knows if you’re your father’s son, you’ll want a drop of scotch. He loved his scotch, your father. Some people said he never knew when to stop once he started, but what odds when you can handle it, right?”He laughed.“I’ll be right back,Owen, take a seat. You’re at home in my house, and don’t you forget it, for as long as you’re going to be staying with us here in Port Blandford!”

  “Only if you’re putting the kettle on,I’ll have tea.”He could almost taste the scotch. The burning satisfaction of it.

  Owen could only hope the next question wasn’t, So, what brings you here? Someone was bound to ask eventually, if everyone was so friendly and curious about Roger’s boy . Would he lie, or villainize himself so quickly? Well, I kinda slept with my brother’s wife, and if we weren’t sneaking around behind his back, I wouldn’t have hydroplaned and killed her. So, you see, I’m here because I’m banished and belong nowhere else. I don’t even have a profession, or any motivation, I lost all that when … It almost sounded surreal, or darkly comedic.

  “I’m gonna go flick on the kettle and grab a plate of cookies for us, and we’ll square up with the truck. Let me grab the key from the shed, hey? Be right back, make yourself at home, boss.”

  Owen nodded, staring at his hands, and Clyde disappeared.

  Owen was glad Clyde had to go find that key, he needed a minute alone. He knew his father was a kind, benevolent, and lovable man, but never saw him as the life of a town. A man who sang karaoke and loved scotch. He never really seemed to love anything. Owen just got twenty-five percent off the price of his truck because of his last name. Did these people know a different side of his father, or did they just know him better? Maybe his father came up here to be a different man for a few days a month. To escape himself, to live a double life.

  Clyde had been out in the shed for maybe ten minutes, and his sudden and animated re-entry into the room startled Owen out of a daydream.

  “Nice man he was, you should know it’s an honour to carry his name. He knew a bit about everything, Roger did, and he could talk the ear off of you if you talked to him about something he was passionate about.” Owen never knew his father as a talkative man. He was a kind man, a sensitive man, a man with all the right words, but more than anything, Owen remembered his father as a man of few words.

  “He taught me an awful lot myself, actually. I was looking at the world the wrong way, my whole life, but it only took a few conversations with your father to fix that. I thought Roger was a quack at first,Owen, but it turns out I was.”

  He laid a plate of brownies on the table then and bit one in half. His teeth were brown now as he carried on. “And my wife,Cassie, she loved lit-trature. We never got out of this town much, certainly not Newfoundland anyway, and she used all those books your father has down there, in that monstrous bookshelf of his, as a way to vacation, to hear about other people’s lives, cities, and worlds.”

  He grabbed another brownie then, and picked up the plate to extend it to Owen, visibly confused as to why Owen wasn’t helping himself to the brownies.

  “Thing is, she couldn’t read, or write, and I never really knew how to teach her. I mean, how do you go about it, right? Point to every word and tell her what it is? Your father though, he had that way about him. He could help people see things in the simplest and easiest way. A born teacher and preacher, I called him. I s’pose you know that already, hey? How your father had that way about him?” He waited for a nod before carrying on, so Owen felt compelled to nod. A lie.

  “So Cassie would go down there when your father was around, and he’d read to her. She hated having to wait two or three weeks for him to get back and finish the stories they started last time he was in town. I s’pose in hindsight,
I could’ve read them to her, but I never cared for fiction, and I stumble too much when I read out loud. Listening to me read is like listening to some kid in kindergarten still unsure of his words.” He laughed, and quickly turned in on himself and collapsed a little in his chair.

  “He was teaching her to read and write just before she got the cancer. Esophageal cancer, no hope with that one, they say. She’s dead now, died just before your father got sick. It was a bad year, I guess.”

  He pointed to a picture on the mantle, and they both stared at her. She was absolutely beautiful, and reminded him of Hannah in a way, how her eyes seemed not to see the world, but to project it. Everything around her in the picture, the sky and the trees, they seemed to be there solely to accentuate her. She had dusty blonde hair that curled up and off her shoulders, and a coy smile that seemed so unsure of itself, of why she was smiling. From the picture, he could tell she was always smiling. He could tell that she always wore a long summer dress like the white and blue one she was wearing in that picture. Flashy, yet casual.

  “So what is it you do,Owen? You got your father’s brains?”

  “I’ve been leading a modest life as a starving writer–”

  “Oh!” he cut him off. “For the papers and that, like your father?”

  “No, no. I lack my father’s persuasion in my writing, or for that matter, his gifted way with words. My father’s diction could’ve been used by the military as weaponry, it was really that powerful.”

  Clyde looked a little confused, so Owen carried on.“I write fiction, mainly. I embed my own life into fictitious stories, or build fictitious stories out of things I see in everyday life around me. If I overhear an odd conversation in a grocery store, I find a way to plug it into a story. If I like some mannerism I see in a waitress, I’ll build a character out of her. I don’t care much about plots, because I think real literature is about more than just telling a story. The story should just be a way to comment on the world somehow, on the human condition and what it means to be alive in today’s world. But I guess I’m just babbling here now, am I? Sorry.”

  “No, not at all. And good for you, boss.”He reached out to slap Owen’s knee.“Because that is a profession that comes from the heart.”He tapped his chest with a closed fist as he said the word heart.

  “Not many people are working from the heart nowadays, Owen. They’re just burning themselves out so they can buy more stuff and things and lose their identity trying to be like everyone else, and exist in a world whose only goal seems to be to stay on top of your bills and make ends meet. Your father would be proud of you, I think. He’d rather see you poor and happy than on top of your bills, trust me there, kid.”

  Clyde stopped talking for a minute. He stared at Owen, into him, and smiled. A sympathetic smile like, I am sorry for your loss.

  “To be honest, I couldn’t get the names right, because it was so long ago, but I do remember your father joking about how he was fathering one Einstein and one Thoreau. I’ve got three kids of my own, so I know a parent doesn’t have a favourite, but we both know who your father would be more proud of, and I’m guessing you were the Thoreau.”

  There was another pause, not awkward, just a moment of silence and some shuffling of feet. Owen appreciated the comment.

  “It’s a goddamn shame what happened to your father, Owen, and we all heard about your mother too. But for what it’s worth, you’re still intact, and seem like a man your father would be proud of.”

  You don’t know me, old man.

  He jammed another brownie into his mouth. His sixth. “I got to confess, I didn’t know much about schizophrenia, but when the neighbours told me that’s what it was that got your father,I had to go over to the library in Clarenville and get myself some books on the topic.”He pointed to the left, in the direction of Clarenville.

  “What I was more interested in than anything was the treatment process, whether he could be cured or not. I mean, how does a man just lose himself like that? And from what I read, most people are diagnosed by their mid-twenties, so how did your father escape it so long? One of the books I read, Owen, was more like a novel than a textbook, and I read it twice. I’d recommend it as a good read to anyone. It was a bunch of case studies by different doctors, and they put an interesting spin on the disease.”He grabbed another brownie then. Every time he licked his teeth from brown to white, he’d grab another brownie.

  “The way they portrayed some schizophrenics, and in a way schizophrenia itself, was that it was just as much an escape from reality as it was a disease. In certain cases anyway. I mean, like any disease, it comes down to physiological causes, but some of these schizophrenics had created people, like imaginary friends, I suppose, out of a subconscious need for something they were lacking in their real life. These imaginary people helped the schizophrenics feel safer, happier, saner, or whatever. Whatever the schizophrenics were needing, they came up with delusions and hallucinations to fill that need.”

  “Yeah, well, in my father’s case, I guess it was a need to feel more relevant in his field. Last going off he thought he was working for some top-secret newsp–”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I s’pose we’ll never know. Any of us. All we can ever do is assume things about each other, boss, we can never really know each other. Because I think we wake up as a different person every day, based on what happened in all the days before the one in which we are living. You know what I mean? We’re an ever-changing product of yesterdays, not rigid, static people. At any given moment who we are can change. Hell, to a degree, every new person you meet changes you, every conversation. So, I don’t think anybody knows anybody.”A few seconds of silence.“I don’t think anybody knows themself, either.”He laughed. They both did.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, letting that mutually agreed upon statement bond them. Clyde caught Owen staring at a bottle of scotch and a look of acknowledgement was exchanged. A lot was said in that look, a lot more than either of them was willing to say, yet. Clyde had clearly seen a dark past in Owen, and to have seen it so quickly and so easily could only mean he had one of his own.

  “Anyway, we can talk anytime, Owen, but I got to head over to Clarenville before dark and pick up a few things at the Walmart. I don’t trust my eyes in the dark anymore.”

  He shot up out of his chair, pressing a wrinkle out of his pants. “Clyde Noseworthy is the name, and you know where I live if you need anything, or have any problems with the truck.”

  Turning towards the window. “My eldest son, Bradley, he bought me a new one.”He pointed out the window at a new white Ford pickup. “He lives up in Alberta now, like half of us Newfoundlanders, I s’pose. He’s an electrician. Anyway, the tank should be full in your new truck, Owen. We can square up about the damned paperwork next week sometime. It’s been nice meeting you and chatting a little. I don’t know how long you’re staying, and I know better than to ask a man about more than he’s offering, but isolation is good for nobody, your father taught me that much, so if you get bored or need something while you’re here, a cup of sugar or a game of pool, we’re neighbours and I’d love to chat.”

  He followed Owen to the porch.“Don’t ever assume an old, lonely widower doesn’t want to hear about it!”

  The town talked of Roger Collins, still, as some kind of legend. It distorted Owen’s view and knowledge of his father, but it was all good, all praise, and that made up for Owen’s declaring him a hypocrite earlier, when he saw that picture of him and Alex and remembered his father’s words. Life isn’t about finding the answers to your questions, it’s about not needing them. The man this town described sounded like the kind of man who would utter those words to his children, and mean it.

  He put his supper in the oven: a bag of McCain French fries. He hadn’t taken the truck over to Clarenville for groceries yet. Leaving them to cook, he headed for his father’s office, with hesitation in his step, afraid he’d find a room full of “coded flyers,” or something
even worse. He flicked on the light and leaned on the door frame. He took the room in; it looked exactly as he remembered it: red walls, white borders, and an absolute mess, yet neurotically organized. There were piles of papers and boxes everywhere, but similar things were bunched meticulously together. He had to choose his steps carefully to walk through the room, or he’d trip over one of the stacks. There were piles of his father’s publications, piles of old, yellowed newspaper articles he liked, piles of literary journals, piles of photo albums, two “miscellaneous” piles, and a pile of his father’s prose.

  You wrote too?

  To scour this room was to learn about Roger Collins, the man, not “Dad.” He made his way through the maze imposed by the stacked piles of paper, and sat at his father’s desk. It was a mahogany desk, covered in a thick film of grey dust. Owen sat and looked around the room, out the window. He traced Roger into the dust with his finger, not realizing he was doing so until he was rounding the top of the second r. There was nothing on the desk except for a monstrous, ancient, army-green typewriter. There was one piece of yellowed paper tucked into the typewriter, bowing back down over its keys. He tore it free from the grip of the typewriter and read what his father last typed. What were essentially his father’s last written words: If I could go back in time, what would I take to this day and what would I leave behind? What would I take to this day, and why?

  Owen nodded, he would borrow it. He would start his new novel with that as an opening line. The new novel he’d been trying to start since Hannah died.

  The desk had two drawers, each locked and the key nowhere to be found, so he ran out back to the shed, still remembering the combination to the lock, 3-6-9, and got a crowbar. The aged locks snapped with surprising ease: the crowbar seemed like overkill, like using a hammer to crack an egg, and he laughed at himself. In the first drawer, he found two time capsules. One labeled, Owen, ten years old , the other, Alex, ten years old.