I turned the volume to a level we both agreed on, then eased down onto the floor beside him.

  The commercials were particularly hard to take. Luckily we were immobilized, or in our stoned condition we would have been out buying every bloody product they were trying to sell. It also helped that the commercials were short enough that once the next one came on, we totally forgot about the one that preceded it.

  The trip wasn’t so bad during Walt Disney. It was a movie about a family living in the country with a dog. Just as it started I said, “I hope this isn’t Old Yeller.

  Luckily it wasn’t that classic tear-jerker. We were relieved when all the grandparents, parents, kids, neighbours, horses and dogs remained hale and happy to the end. Somebody pulled away in a horse-drawn wagon and everyone started waving like the Beverly hillbillies. I raised my hand to wave back and the pain shot through my shoulder, elbow and wrist, but it was too late to stop. I waved, moaning in pain.

  “You should have seen that coming,” Wally laughed, and then he moaned too from the pain of moving his jaw to talk and laugh. We both laughed again.

  I said, “I hope there’s no more waving,” and I moaned. Realizing the increased intensity of the stiffness, I made an extra effort to stay still. I lowered my arm slowly back across my aching chest.

  By the time the Ed Sullivan Show came on we were deep in the throes. Any movement of any kind came with a stab of pain. Ed Sullivan looked like a midget from our vantage point on the floor. It was worth the pain for me to point that out. Wally did not respond to my observation. Then some musical act from South America came on. A huge band played salsa accompanied by dancers in skimpy outfits, everyone smiling so wide I thought their faces would crack open. I realized that my face had changed to imitate those big smiles. Still smiling, I slowly turned my head to see if Wally’s had too. Yep. a big hairy Cheshire cat. Then I laughed at how ridiculous he looked.

  “Don’t look at me,” he shouted and then he laughed.

  “Okay!” I said with clenched teeth. It hurt. The dancing TV mayhem ended and it went to commercial break. Relief.

  A comedian came on next, but he talked so fast I couldn’t keep up. He kept saying, “You can call me Joe. Or you can call me Mo. Or you can call me Ray” – not funny. He confused the hell out of me. He was so annoying I fantasized again about the Royal York Hotel, the grateful young women in dresses still smoking from the flames and covered in black soot reaching for me. “Thank you! Thank you!” But their faces kept morphing from colour to black and white. I started to freak out a little. Luckily Topo Gigio came on.

  Topo Gigio was a mouse puppet with huge ears that Ed Sullivan talked to at the end of every show. It spoke with a squeaky Italian accent. Topo Gigio was so cute that, frankly, everything that aspired to be cute in western civilization in the following decade would be measured against Topo Gigio.

  When Ed leaned over and asked Topo how he was doing, Topo made a squishy face, acted shy, raised his huge eyes tenderly and said, “I wuv you, Eddy.”

  Wally said, “Awww,” then, “Ouch!”

  I couldn’t believe Wally had actually said “Awww.” I started to laugh at him and he shouted, “Shut up!” Then he started to cry.

  I laughed because he was crying, and then I felt overwhelmed and started to cry, too. Wally pointed at my tears and laughed and then… We were both hurting badly, but so happy for Ed Sullivan to have an Italian love him like that.

  This outburst must have gone on for at least fifteen minutes because when we finally wiped the tears from our eyes and were able to lie still and focus again on the TV screen, the Bonanza theme had already started. The Cartwright family riding on horseback, smiling and all friendly-like.

  “We should be safe now,” Wally growled through gritted teeth.

  I agreed. Bonanza was an extremely popular family western, a show to showcase the sexiest star on TV at the time, Michael Landon. He played Little Joe Cartwright, the youngest brother on a huge ranch in the old American west. Predictable plots synced with a good Christian moral at the end of every episode. I shared Wally’s hopefulness. I could feel every piece of cartilage attached to my ribs now. My jaw ached. Please God, a break from all this emotion.

  But it was one of those episodes where Little Joe meets the beautiful young widow who just arrived in town to be the new school teacher. At the first commercial break I said, “Oh no. Little Joe is falling in love.”

  And Wally said, “Oh no. You know what that means?”

  “The school teacher must die!” we said in unison.

  I laughed and moaned, then he laughed and moaned, then we repeated. There we lay stuck on the floor unable to get away, trapped in the middle of a sad, sad tale. Little Joe and Betty Lou falling madly in love. Then a crazed ex-con arrived in town to take revenge on the Cartwright family for putting him in prison years earlier.

  Wally and I had no way to protect ourselves from the inexorable collision of love and revenge as the drama moved slowly toward the predictable climax. We might as well have been in A Clockwork Orange, our eyeballs forced open, listening to the Bonanza theme instead of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while the video horror slowly overwhelmed us.

  Little Joe knelt on the ground and held the beautiful, dying girl in his arms. She had jumped in front of the gunman as he fired the bullet meant for Little Joe. The close-up of a single manly tear leaking from Little Joe’s handsome, manly eyeball pushed us over the edge. Wally and I both started to cry. This time we cycled through weep, holler, sob, scream, sob and moan until the show faded into the closing credits.

  I now floated on a pillow soaked with tears and I ached everywhere. I turned my head toward Wally, trying not to notice the snot in his moustache, trying not to focus on the bright aquamarine fish tank in the background, and said, “I hate the CBC.”

  Wally turned and looked at me, his face red from weeping. “I know. Me too.”

  “I’ll change the channel,” I said. But after the monumental effort of pushing through the pain and rising from the floor, I thought I heard calls for help again from the Royal York Hotel. Lurching heroically toward the bathroom and this new source of urgency, I abandoned Wally for hours to the tyranny of public broadcasting. An oversight for which I have never been forgiven despite the number of lives saved.

  CRITICS’ TAKE

  on the Premier Showing of

  Tank’s Documentary of the Closing Eye

  Leon Rooke

  The entire time! The tension! I was pure poured concrete for four hours and forty-six minutes.

  “Right on. It was so right on.”

  “I don’t dare blink. My attention didn’t wane even when you touched me.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Not even to eat my popcorn? You mean it was the guy on my right? In the raincoat? His hand between my legs?”

  “What a tribute to that movie. That guy could have climbed all over you and would you have known?”

  “Cool. Oh, way cool. Who was that guy?”

  “In the raincoat? The director, I think.”

  “Of Documentary of…?”

  “Yee-oh! The big chief himself.’”

  “Oh God! Say it again! Hank stroked my thighs: Mr. Slow Motion. The king? I swear to you this man has made a film the very equivalent of Proust.”

  “Ah, Proust! Another masterpiece of the first walk was Proust.”

  “Eighty-two hours and forty-six minutes of sheer unutterable utterance. Who can ever forget Proust propped up in his cork-lined bed, that semi-dark room, never the smallest noise save that of ink smacking the page, the single-sustained camera position through eighty-two hours as the dear asthmatic neurasthenic composes the sixteen volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu.”

  “Time! When has time ever been better comprehended?”

  “Yes! And the cup of tea, the bit of cake. The crumbs on his chest. Sheer genius. My heart stopped. It just went pitter-patter and stopped.”

  “Wasn’t Proust a Tank?”

  “Definitely. When he was married to that little red-haired girl in the green shoes.”

  “Whose eye is it in Documentary? Do you think it was the Eye of God?”

  “It was Mel Gibson’s eye, stupid.”

  “Yeah, but like, whose eye was Mel’s playing?”

  “There you got me.”

  “Let’s go back tonight. The Documentary of the Closing Eye is utter rivetting drama played out on a heretofore unrecognized human scale. When that eye finally clanged shut after four hours and forty-six minutes, it was as though eternity had closed its doors.”

  “Closing Eye Two comes out next year. I hear in that one he’s got something in his eye.”

  “Mel? God? You mean like…?”

  “Jesus. That’s so – so…”

  “Biblical?”

  “Yeah. Such a daring treatise on – on…”

  “The failure of philosophy. The phenomenology meltdown. Our moral quagmire.”

  “God, yes. Oh, the agony. I can’t wait.”

  DOUBLE DOUBLE AN’ CHOCOLATE GLAZED

  JAMIE FELDMAN

  Name’s Jimmy Sanders. Occupation? What yas mean occupation? Yas picked me up at work. I’m the friggin’ Chicken Man o’er the Lick-A-Chick up Little Bras d’Or. I wave to the cars an’ stuff, tryin’ ta get ’em in ta buy some chicken. I’m still wearin’ the suit, ain’t I? Can’t we just git on wit it?

  Alright, well, yas see I’s just mindin’ my own business. Ain’t doin’ nuttin’. Well, udder than wavin’ an’ greetin’, ya know, stuff I’s s’pose ta do. So there I was, o’er at the Lick-a-Chick in this here chicken suit just flappin’ away for the customers when this rig pulls up at the Tim Hortons across the street. Now this rig, I ain’t seen nuttin’ like it, least not on the island, anyways. They’s be turists, like mainland turists with those fancy dealerships. Give me an ol’ Chevy any day. Still got my ’97, ya know. Runs like brand new. Have to do a little work to ’er, though. Gotta really giv’er when ya start ’er up. Think the alternator’s goin’.

  Them tourists, they had a Kia. One of those ones advertised on the Tee-Vee that city folks buy. Ya gotta git all the parts shipped in from China or some place. Now a Chev, though, I just git the parts o’er Rick’s garage an’ do the work myself. These tourists didn’t look the type to know their way ’round a rig. Bet the ol’ man couldn’t even change the oil. An’ his woman prolly wouldn’t be able ta cook his dinner neether. Anyways, they’s a couple, one a them retired couples that go drive ’round the trail in summer, an’ they pulled into the Timmy’s across the way. The woman gits out an’ stops dead, just starin’ like at the wall. The ol’ man doesn’t know what to make of it, right, but then he sees it too an’ they both drop to their knees, right, religious like, right? So they both start sayin’ a rosary or somethin’ like that an’ a customer comes out an’ he nearly drops his double double on the sidewalk when he see it, too. Soon there’s a whole crowd a folks an’ the managers tryin’ ta essplain they just changed the lightin’ an’ it’s just shadows on the bricks but no one’s lisnin’ .

  It was the friggin’ Jesus! Youse know that. Theys all thought they seen the friggin’ Jesus himself in the pattern on the bricks on the side of a Tim Hortons. Now I wouldn’t think Jesus would drink coffee a-tall, but if he did I’d s’pect he’d show up at one of them fancy Starbucks places up on the mainland. I went an’ crossed the street, though, ta see what all the fuss was aboat an’ it did kinda look a little like the Son of God, ya know, like how he appears in people’s toast an’ stuff down south. I saw that on Tee-Vee once, ’boat how some ol’ biddy in Alabama thought she saw Jesus in her burnt toast. So it all started escallatin’, right? Like folks leavin’ flowers an’ candles an’ shit at the Tim Hortons, an’ turists were comin’ from all over. They’s all kneelin’ an’ prayin’, holdin’ up the line for anyone lookin’ for their coffee. I use ta go o’er every day ’round my mornin’ break an’ order a double double an’ chocolate glazed, but now fifteen minutes ain’t time enough for that sort a thing! An’ I’s jist across the street! I tells ya, with all that flappin’ an’ shoutin’ they’s doin’ ta that wall, put ’em in a chicken suit an’ theys coulda been doin’ my job. I hear it’s a blessin’ that blasted Jesus went away. Tim Hortons was losin’ money, ya know, even with all them turists. ’Cause ya see none of them drank Timmy’s, they just came for the Jesus an’ ta hold up the line for the rest of us! Well, we all just started goin’ ta the one down George Street by the Casino. Definitely no Jesus there. Not great parking, though, that’s where them bikers hang out showin’ off their bikes, but them b’ys not gonna hold up the doughnut line, are they?

  As for me an’ Rick’s Garage? I don’t see what me workin’ there has ta do with anythin’ ’cause I ain’t workin’ there a-tall. See, that’s what I’s aboat ta tells yas. The last time I went o’er to the Timmy’s, the one with the Jesus, I saw my old woman, well ex old woman. Sees I normally take my chicken head off, but I had ta leave ’er on that day so she wouldn’t find out. I was s’pose ta be workin’ o’ver Rick’s place but me an’ him had a fallin’ out. That friggin’ fool says I was stealin’ sockets but I wasn’t. What would I be doing with his sockets? Then his weldin’ kit got all messed up. The tip’s worn out. But I ain’t got nuttin’ ta do with that. I got my own kit out the country. What would I be needin’ his fer? So he says I can’t work there no more. Can’t trust me. I can’t trust him! He’s right some shifty, that fella is. Rick’s been talkin’ ta Lorna anyhow. Lorna my ex, yeah. Rick an’ Lorna used ta date back before Sandy was born, back before Lorna was with me.

  Yeah, Sandy’s my kid! What youse getin’ at? You sayin’ she’s Rick’s? She ain’t that arsehole’s. That’s fer shore.

  I see. You jist need me to say it, fer the statement, like. All right then. Sandra Marie Sanders is my daughter. Born 2004 o’er at the General. That good? Good. So I was awful sour seein’ Lorna o’er the Tim Hortons that day, ’specially after havin’ ta deal with all them Jesus worshippers holdin’ up the line. They were somethin’ fierce, I tells ya. They don’t move for nobody, well, other than the Jesus I s’pose. Anyhow, I couldn’t let Lorna see me since she thinks I’s still working o’er Rick’s. Though I wouldn’t put it past him ta have told her I couldn’t work there no more. Prolly just ta piss me off. Prolly made some stuff up about me too. Cruisin’ for a bruisin’, he is. Ya can’t trust that arsepick, ya know. He’s the one’d steal the eyes out the back a yer head if he had the chance. But I was tryin’ ta get custody of Sandy an’ the courts, they’s always give custody ta the mother even if she is a lyin’, cheatin’ witch if there ever was one. Couldn’t even make a decent stew, neether. I tells ya, if I ever git another woman she’s gonna know how ta cook. But Lorna wasn’t s’pose ta find out I’s been workin’ o’er the Lick-A-Chick ’cause we’ve got another court date comin’ up an’ that prolly wouldn’t look too good, not if I’s gonna try an’ git Sandy back, even if it is jist every udder weekend.

  Aboat Sandy? Well, she’s got blue eyes like mine. Rick don’t have no blue eyes. Oh, that’s not— What you gittin’ at? Sandy’s a good kid. She’s already got her grade eight, so ya know she’s smarter than her old man. That’s me I’m talkin’ aboat.

  Security cameras, eh? Wouldn’t think they’d have put somethin’ like them in out here. We’s good folks out here. An’ ain’t nuttin’ inside a Timmy’s cost more than a couple loonies or toonies. You sure it was Sandy on the tape? I bet it was one of them mainlander turists that come in. Youse questionin’ them too, I ’spect. Besides, the way I heard it, the security cameras were taken out. They’s gone an spray painted o’er the lens part. The first thing they did. Real smart, if you ask me.

  What ya mean how’d I know a thing like that? The whole town’s talkin’ aboat it! Everyone knows everything an’ even if youse did get someone on the tape takin’ out the camera, that don’t prove nothin’. How much could yas have seen? A few seconds of someone in a hoodie walkin’ up ta the building? No way youse are gettin’ Sandy for this. She’s a good kid. She don’t deserve it. Ya know when all this first happened, the Jesus I mean, when I went o’er in my chicken suit that day? A man sees a lot a things from inside a chicken suit. I saw Lorna that day. Sandy was there too. See, I saw her from across the street an’ bein’ in the suit an’ all I could go see her. No court’s gonna say the chicken man can’t talk ta a kid. I brought a flyer with me too, just in case, so I could say I was passin’ them out if anyone asked. I just wanted ta see her, ya know? She’s got them streaks in her hair now like them girls that walk around on the Esplanade. That was her mudder’s doin’, that was. I never woulda let her do that. Looks cheap an’ Sandy’s not a girl like that. Ya know I taught her how to use the dozer out the country? That was back before the divorce. Ain’t got no dozer now. But back then I’d sit ’er on my knee an’ let ’er use the lever that lifted up the blade. Took right to it. She got a head on her, that one, that’s fer shore.

  I tried to hand Sandy the flyer that day but she didn’t want it. Called me a pervert for tryin’ ta touch her. Gave me a kick in the crotch. Luckily the chicken suit offers pretty good protection for the family jewels, ya know. Guess I deserved it for lingerin’ so long before tryin’ ta talk to ’er. But she was whisperin’ like, an’ even through the crowds a folks I could make out what she was sayin’. She’s sayin’ she missed her Daddy an’ wanted me to come back. She said it, I swear! I ain’t makin’ nuttin’ up aboat that. A girl misses her fadder, that’s just how it is, but if she’s wantin’ me ta come back, then she better talk ta her mudder aboat that. I couldn’t believe it, though, nearly shit a brick when I heard her actually prayin’ ta it, the Jesus I mean, askin’ it stuff like that. She’s sayin’ stuff like me comin’ back home an’ wantin’ ta drive the dozer again. Okay, maybe not that bit aboat the dozer, but yas know what I mean. I don’ think that the Jesus on a Tim Hortons is in the business of grantin’ wishes or nuttin’, so she musta been awful desperate. I guess she figured that out, ya know, ’cause a couple nights later when I’s getting off shift across the street I saw her, ah – someone again. That someone had some cans of spray paint in ’er pockets an’ was all cursin’ up a blue streak. Sayin’ things about how Jesus ain’t grantin’ no one’s miracles these days, even if the newsman said it on the Tee-Vee. This was after they had sent down that Bruce Frisko from the city ta put it on the Live at Five. Well, that had all the rich mainlanders down here after that. Ya could hardly open the doors ta the place then, there was so many offerings ta it. One night I thought the place’d burn down from the candles. Thought aboat callin’ the fire department on account of hazard but them boys’d prolly just blow ’em out so they could get their double doubles an’ be on their way, an’ them there candles’d be lit again before ya could pick up the phone ta dial the 911.