Specimen & Other Stories Page 5

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Walter said. “Two at a time.”

  “This is amazing.”

  Peter opened his basket and took out half a dozen small jars. One was filled with cotton, another with fluid, the rest empty. He opened the jars, took a cotton ball and dipped it into the fluid, then put the ball in an empty jar. Carefully he plucked a butterfly from the net, examined it and then put it into the jar with the cotton ball.

  “Ether?” Walter guessed.

  “Chloroform.”

  Peter plucked another butterfly from the net, examined it and tossed it away. It fluttered away across the clearing. He plucked out another one and put it in a jar.

  Walter sat at the base of the cliff, reading a book. A bottle protruded from the top of his open rucksack. Peter trudged in from the sun and collapsed on the ground beside him.

  “Anything interesting?”

  Peter caught his breath. “Three new families.”

  With obvious weariness, he prepared the last three jars. He poked around in the net, mauling the undesirables, and withdrew one by one the best three specimens of the catch. He placed each in its jar and put all his jars into his basket.

  “What a day!” he rejoiced.

  Walter offered Peter his bottle. “Celebrate. Have a drink. You’ve earned it.”

  Peter hesitated, then took the bottle and drank.

  ~~~

  Walter stood in the middle of the clearing, facing the stone head. Their expressions were equally grim. Walter dropped his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his foot. He walked to the base of the cliff, where Peter lay curled, sleeping on the ground. Walter picked up the machete. He looked down at Peter, at the carotid artery pulsing in his exposed neck. Walter ran his finger along the edge of the machete. Peter snorted in his sleep, his legs twitching. Walter moved in closer until he was standing directly over Peter.

  Peter,” he called.

  Peter woke up and raised his head. He saw Walter looming over him with the machete. His face convulsed in alarm. “No!”

  “Yes,” Walter said. “It’s time to go. It’ll be dark by the time we get back.”

  Peter lay frozen a moment, then scrambled to his feet. He gathered up his hat, his basket and his net.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “An hour or so.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Getting hungry. Are you ready to go?”

  ~~~

  Peter sat alone at the dining table. He removed the last specimen from its jar and with a long pin mounted the butterfly with the others on a panel of his portfolio case. He sat back and admired them.

  Walter came in from the kitchen, carrying a platter of meat, a bowl of vegetables and a few plates balanced on his arms like a waiter.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Peter said.

  Walter nudged the portfolio cases aside and set down their food. “Yes, but more so when they were alive.”

  ~~~

  Six nights later, they sat in rattan chairs on the verandah. A pair of glasses and a bottle of brandy occupied the small table between them. Walter smoked a cigarette. A full moon hung well above the horizon. The water was dead calm.

  “I can’t believe the week’s gone already. “Peter shook his head. “Tomorrow the boat comes to take me back.”

  “Pity, isn’t it? We barely got to know each other.”

  “I know. We’re still awkward – like strangers.”

  “And there are still so many things I don’t know about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know anything about your personal life.”

  “I have none. I told you I never married.”

  “But with no heirs, then what would happen if...?”

  “Everything goes to the Royal Society.”

  “Really?”

  “Science is my only passion. I want to help support their research. I suppose you might think that’s unfair.”

  “Not at all,” Walter shrugged. “As I said the night you arrived, I’ve made peace with my life. I don’t need your money.”

  Peter squirmed a little in his seat and cast a suspicious look at Walter. He reached for the brandy bottle and refilled his glass. Walter lighted another cigarette.

  “And the business,” Walter asked, “does it take up much of your time?”

  “Not really. Two foremen handle everything in the factory. An accountant takes care of the books, the bank transactions...”

  “A business that runs itself,” Walter mused.

  “That’s right. I have almost complete freedom to devote to my studies and researches.”

  “Admirable.”

  The clock in the living room began striking twelve.

  “Good heavens, midnight already. No wonder I feel half dead. It’s time I retired. What about you?”

  “I don’t usually go to bed until after one,” Walter said.

  Peter stood. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Pleasant dreams.”

  ~~~

  Peter lay snoring in bed. The door opened softly and Walter entered with a jar in one hand and a small towel in the other. He sat gingerly on the edge of Peter’s bed and parted the mosquito netting. He opened the jar and poured some liquid onto the towel. Averting his face, he gently placed the cloth against Peter’s nose and mouth. Peter snorted and raised a hand. Abruptly his hand fell back onto the bed and he heaved a deep sigh. Walter remained motionless at his side, the towel still on Peter’s face.

  When Peter awoke, he discovered himself bound by wrists and ankles to a wooden frame propped against the wall of a shed. His surroundings were dimly lit by a lantern hung from a beam. Peter looked around and saw the vague outlines of several large whitish objects propped against the opposite wall. He sniffed the air and made a disgusted face. He struggled against his bonds but couldn’t budge.

  Succumbing to panic, he screamed, “Walter! Help!”

  Another lantern approached from the far end of the shed. It was Walter, with one hand behind his back. He hung the lantern on another beam. Peter looked beyond Walter and now, in the improved light, saw the lime-caked hulks of several dead men on wooden frames propped against the wall opposite, each with a wooden stake in his chest.

  Peter fought to find a voice in his dry mouth. “Walter. Those men...”

  “My prisoners, my specimens... As are you.”

  Walter brought his hand from behind his back, revealing a heavy mallet and a wooden stake. He took the stake in his free hand and placed its sharpened tip against Peter’s chest. He raised the mallet over his head.

  Peter screamed to no avail. “Please, no...”

  ~~~

  Walter shaved off his beard and rinsed the soap from his face. He toweled himself dry and ran his hands over his smooth cheeks. He picked Peter’s glasses off the sideboard and put them on. He regarded himself in the mirror. Lovely. He looked just like Peter.

  Walter went down to the jetty, wearing Peter’s white cotton suit and straw hat. The supply boat bumped up alongside the dock. The deckhands unloaded a couple of crates and carried Peter’s suitcase, portfolio cases and net case aboard. Walter stepped onto the boat.

  “Good morning, sir,” the captain greeted him.

  “And to you, Captain.”

  Have a good vacation?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Your brother’s not here to see you off?”

  “He’s busy at the moment, tracking down an escaped prisoner. But we said our goodbyes already.”

  “Right, then. Let’s be on our way.” The captain called to his deckhands. “Cast off, there.”

  Walter strolled back to the stern as the boat pulled away from the dock. He stood there a long while, looking back as the island slowly receded in the distance. He picked up one of the portfolio cases, placed it on a deck hatch and opened it. Dozens of pinned butterflies lay arrayed in neat order within the case. He pulled the pin from a butterfly and placed it in the palm
of his hand. He tossed it up into the breeze and watched as it appeared to flutter away towards the distant island. He pulled the pin from another butterfly and did the same. And another, and another, as the distant island sank into the horizon.

  ~~~~~~~~~

  The Bassman Cometh

  Every once in a blue moon someone pops up like a demented jack-in-the-box to inflict such havoc in your life that they become elevated, for at least that short troubled time, to the status of nemesis. Briefly, many years ago, I had the dubious distinction of playing that role opposite none other than the reigning queen of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood.

  Nemesis. For those who lack a superlative command of Greek vocabulary, look it up in your Funk ’n’ Wagnall’s. A nemesis, from the Greek for “pain-in-the-ass”, is that worthy opponent who makes life hell for the hero(ine) and, in the downer ending that rarely cuts it in Hollywood these days, inflicts retribution or vengeance upon them. As Professor Tarzan might say, Me Protagones, you Antagones, now let the drama begin.

  In the fall of 1975 I was in a Master’s program at the University of New Brunswick. Thanks to respectable undergraduate marks and a handful of short stories and poems published in UNB’s literary quarterly The Fiddlehead, I’d been granted permission to write a creative thesis in lieu of an academic one.

  Unfortunately this did not exempt me from taking two academic courses of incredible dryness. The only course of interest was one on Yeats, whose fascination for the occult resonated with me. But to fill out my program I was stuck taking a course on 19th Century Canadian poets, an academic field of such barren prospect (or so it seemed to my 26-year-old mind) that I feared to die of boredom.

  Meanwhile, in lieu of writing a novella or a dozen short stories for my creative thesis, I was zealously pounding away at a porn novel, which a writer friend of mine had assured me was the easiest way to break into the New York publishing world. In a more-or-less continuous state of tumescence, I had little patience for Bliss Carman’s “I think that I shall never see / a poem lovely as a tree”, when what my daily page-count required was more of “He lifted her skirt and felt her plush buttocks yield to his probing fingers…” But I digress.

  As a grad student I had an assistantship and a monthly stipend from the English Department to perform menial labor for an assigned professor. It was academic feudalism but it helped pay the bills and, until my porn novel breached the gates of the Big Apple smut kingdom, I was resigned to my fate. I was assigned to the Professor of Creative Writing who was responsible, along with teaching the usual academic load, for managing UNB’s Visiting Writers program. My role in the big scheme of things was to help him however he deemed suitable.

  Thus far in the fall semester, I’d been obliged only to plaster the campus and a few select downtown locations with posters advertising the October visit of poet Al Purdy. Plus ensure there were two bottles of Scotch waiting in Purdy’s hotel room when he arrived. Purdy had been in great form the night of his reading, bellowing his poetry in a robust voice to a crowd of aficionados. After the reading a bunch of us trailed the literati force majeure back to the bar of the Beaverbrook Hotel, like a school of remora all wanting a ride on the shark. There Purdy commandeered a corner table and, flanked by a couple of blondes too old to be students, too provocatively dressed to be professors, and too many to be his wife, proceeded to drink everyone under the table.

  In November the Professor placed all his trust in my faint abilities to be the “handler” for Margaret Atwood’s visit to UNB. A daunting and prestigious assignment! Aside from the poster campaign there were only a couple of other duties – arrange for a PA system the night of her reading, and pick Ms. Atwood up at the Fredericton airport. Unlike Purdy’s voice, conceivably strengthened in noisy bars drawing the attention of busy waiters, hers was apparently rather delicate, better suited for genteel salon discourse over tea and Peek Freans.

  November passed quickly. Deeply immersed in my porn novel, I’d lost track of the date. Luckily, I remembered to get the posters up in time but neglected to deal with the PA system. The day before her reading I checked with the campus office that handled such things and was told that their only portable PA system had already been loaned out to another function. I called a downtown music store and learned I could rent a PA system for $50. I laid out the alternatives for the Professor’s executive approval – spend $50 on the PA rental, or at no cost, I could set up a microphone with my guitar amplifier. The Professor stroked his goatee, trying to dislodge some fleas he’d harbored there since the Cuban missile crisis, and said it was my call.

  I tested my amplifier that night. It was a Fender Bassman tube amp that required a 10-minute warm-up before each performance. Its 100 watts were capable of driving two 15-inch speakers in a cabinet the size of a steamer trunk. I plugged in my bass guitar and gave it a fierce workout until the next-door neighbors started pounding on the walls. Philistines, they had little appreciation for the hypnotic bass riff of Iron Butterfly’s Inna Gadda Davida played over and over and over again. I plugged in my microphone, which I’d bought at Sears a few years ago for $19.95, and tested it. Aside from an annoying tendency to squeal like a butchered pig when I stood directly in front of the amp, it was good to go.

  Friday morning it started snowing. I was driving a 1965 Volkswagen Bug at the time and like most students I had little money for automotive maintenance. The battery was in a fragile state and most nights I brought it to bed with me to keep it warm. The heating channels that ran from the rear engine to the front vents were rusted out, and on most winter days I had only a small space of clear window in the lower left corner of the windshield to see through. For a broader vista of the road ahead, I kept a scraper handy to clear the hoar-frost from the windshield.

  But these were minor inconveniences compared to my clutch, which no longer worked. To start the car I needed to coast downhill or get a push. Once going I was able, with a skill equal to a Formula One race car driver, to shift gears, crunching and grinding as I expertly matched the engine revolutions to the transmission. Since the UNB campus was built atop a hill and I myself lived in a house whose driveway sloped to the street, gravity was on my side in most cases.

  Just as nature abhors a vacuum, my VW feared the straight and level, and recently I’d declined to become involved with an attractive grad student of apparently relaxed morals simply on the grounds that she lived in an apartment complex situated in a gulag of flatness. However much I appreciated field work for my porn novel, I didn’t need the embarrassment my clutch-less car promised.

  That afternoon I carried my battery out to the car, gave it a push down the driveway and headed off to the airport to fetch Margaret Atwood. En route I cleverly gauged the flow of traffic approaching intersections and managed to slow or speed up as the situation required, such that I never came to a dead stop and risked stalling my vehicle. At the airport I was relieved to see the parking lot built on a slight incline. Although snow was still falling, I figured that with a push I would become mobile again.

  Inside the terminal I checked the flight schedule. Ms. Atwood’s plane had apparently just arrived. I wandered around the arrivals lounge, her face still fresh in my mind after all the posters I’d put up. But all along, I’d imagined I was looking for someone of considerable stature, as befitted the Queen of CanLit. Probably five foot nine or ten, I figured, she was that BIG. I kept looking, but nowhere did I see her. Finally, there was no one left in the Arrivals lounge but me and this petite woman with curly hair, who finally came up to me and said, are you from UNB?

  Ohmygod! The light went on with such a blinding flash that I must have stood there stunned for several seconds, immobilized like a moose on a dark highway when two drag-racing tractor trailers come tearing around Dead Moose Curve, bearing down on him...

  She must have snapped her fingers. I yanked my consciousness back to the here and now, and saw her standing there with her paisley suitcase, looking very impatient like she had somewhere to
go in a hurry. Probably forgot to use the facilities on the plane, couldn’t go to the washroom when she arrived because she was afraid she’d miss her ride, and was now just plain anxious to get to the hotel. I offered to carry her bag but she wouldn’t let me touch it.

  We went out to the parking lot where I explained the situation. I would put the car in neutral and we’d both push until it got a bit of a running start down the inclined parking lot. Then I’d jump in, hit the ignition and, God willing, the clutch-bone connected to the tranny-bone connected to the wheel-bone would turn at just the right speed to allow the engine to start with the stick-bone in first gear. She stared at me like I was kidding. She soon found out that wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

  I had to give her credit, she was game. A lesser woman would have said, to hell with this backwoods horseshit, I’m taking a taxi into town and sticking UNB with the fare. But no, she was cool. She put her suitcase in the back seat of the car and pulled on her gloves like she really meant to get a grip on things. Now that’s a poet. You could tell just by the color of her gloves, red like boxing gloves, that she was a fighter and Governor General’s Award material to boot.

  We got the Bug rolling in short order, and I was thinking we probably looked like the Wright Brothers trying to get their first plane airborne. But when I jumped into the car, Ms. Atwood didn’t have the horsepower to continue its momentum. Before we ran out of incline, I hit the brakes and we changed sides. I’d push from the rear and she’d push at the driver’s side with one hand holding the door open and the other hand on the steering wheel. Off we went. When we were up to speed, I yelled at her to jump inside but she yelled back it was going too fast and she was scared, and I yelled back at her that she’d better, or we were walking to Fredericton, and she’d be late for her poetry reading.

  At that, she jumped in, hit the ignition, and the engine caught. I ran to catch up with her. We couldn’t stop the car for fear of stalling the engine so I had to yank open the driver’s door and stand on the running board while she climbed over the gearshift into the passenger seat. As I slide behind the wheel I grabbed the gearshift to shove it into second gear. She gave a little yelp and I realized that I’d grabbed her knee because her dress was still caught on the gearshift and I couldn’t see, honest, what I was putting my hands on. She struggled to get her leg over and I heard a rip and then the gear dropped into fourth and we almost stalled before I could get my hand on the gearshift for real and pull it back into second where it belonged.