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Issue # 40 Spring 2019

Prose

 

 

 

Kelly Watt

mad dog:

 

It is the summer of 1964 -a summer of race riots, mini-skirts and Motown radio hits. Precocious, fourteen-year old Sheryl-Anne MacRae, dreams of fleeing her home on an isolated apple orchard in Southern Ontario to search for her long-lost mother. But her uncle and adopted father, Fergus, a charismatic pharmacist with utopian ideas, brings home a handsome young hitchhiker. The guitar-toting Peter Lucas Angelo bears an uncanny resemblance to James Dean and Sheryl-Anne falls in love. However, life in Eden Valley is not as idyllic as it seems.

By day Fergus is a well-mannered pharmacist, but at night he's a photographer. As summer progresses, Peter is pulled deeper into Fergus's bizarre underworld – a world of sex, drugs and porn - fueled by Fergus's obsession with the coming apocalypse and New World Order. Days are spent in the orchard, while nights descend into hell. Gifted with the "sight," Sheryl-Anne is tormented by visions of her own. She longs to run away with Peter, but before she can convince him to escape with her, she will have to face some frightening truths about herself and life on the farm.

Excerpt from Mad Dog by Kelly Watt

 

 

Prologue

 

In the dream it is the girl's birthday. She is three. It has only been a few months since her mother got into her blue car and drove away. To celebrate the girl's birthday, the grey mare is saddled up. The girl struts about in white cowboy boots like a cowgirl. Her hair is in pigtails and tied with pink ribbons. She wears a matching pink dress with white butterflies on the front that her mother will never see.

The mare stands quietly by the fence in the sun, her tail rhythmically thwacking flies, skin twitching. A tall man hoists the girl onto the saddle and walks her around the riding ring while the girl chatters to Eponey. It is spring and the fields glow emerald in the sunlight. The sun is hot on the girl's raven hair and the smell of spring flowers mingles with the mare's sweet horsy smell. A window is open and a breeze blows the lace curtains lazily in and out. The record player has been pulled up to the window and the man hums along to a song by Nat King Cole. The trio circles the ring again and again. It is a happy day, the happiest day in a long time it seems.
Afterwards, the man takes their picture. For a moment, the picture is frozen in the girl's mind: the snapshot of the horse and herself as a little girl with the apple on her palm. Everything in black and white.

 

 

July

 

Nauta agricolae cancrum dat; agricola, malum nautae.
[The sailor gives the farmer a crab;
the farmer (gives) the sailor an apple.]

 

 

The first time Sheryl-Anne saw Peter Angelo was in the summer of 1964. The Summer of Freedom and race riots, the summer everyone argued about the maple leaf. That summer Sheryl-Anne MacRae was fourteen.

He arrived one hot afternoon in July, while she was lying in her favourite tree, listening to Motor City's Motown Hour. All day long the cicadas had been whining in the heat. Sheryl had dozed off momentarily and dreamed, awakening to Dr. Beat crooning into her ear: Now here's a witty ditty from our favourite high school girls from across the border ... and Diana Ross, the queen of all girls that summer had come on singing, "When the Lovelight Starts Shining in his Eyes."

Then her uncle's Pontiac came up the drive. Sheryl hung her transistor on a branch and pressed the binoculars to her eyes. The orchard zoomed into view along with the weathered cedar grey barn and the gardening shed with its metal corrugated roof, where her eleven-year-old cousin Joshua crouched in the dirt playing war, mimicking explosions and gunfire. Sheryl could see the Victorian house with its steep gables and gingerbread trim, its wide white veranda with the rickety porch swing and frowning gargoyle of the god of the wind.

Sheryl watched her Uncle Fergus get out of the car, then the passenger door opened and out stepped a young man. He carried a guitar and stood nodding his head like one of those little crushed-velvet dogs in the back windows of cars. He was blond and willowy. He had a red bandana tied around his neck, worn the way cowboys did in Westerns. He took it off and mopped his face as if surveying the future writ large in the landscape in front of him.

Dr. Beat introduced a gospel tune by Ray Charles, the brother who touches all our hearts, who was blind, and therefore in Sheryl's mind, somehow closer to God. The background singers broke into a harmony that sounded like a heavenly choir, and Sheryl-Anne thought to herself that she was dreaming, surely she was daydreaming again.

Through the binoculars she could see the boy looking around, smiling and showing all his teeth in a grin that said he couldn't believe his good fortune. Sheryl saw the valley too for a moment through his eyes: the purple-singed hills and the blue craggy face of the escarpment, the green-drenched orchards and the silent trees in orderly rows like obedient children lining up outside in the schoolyard.

He moved, walking over to the front window of the Bonneville and then a strange thing happened. He leaned a shoulder onto the hot car, and the sun tilted off the chrome and showered his golden head with a sudden blinding metallic halo. Sheryl felt her heart beat in her throat. A wind came up, sneaking through the collar and arm holes of his white shirt and filled the cloth like a sail, and the sleeves billowed with light behind him. In a moment he moved away and was just a boy again but she already knew that everything was about to change in her life. And she got down from her perch and flew down the hill like the wind to meet him.

------

 

Peter Angelo, this here is our niece, Sheryl-Anne, her Uncle Fergus said introducing her, and the young man grinned.

Sheryl stared at him, her dark head cocked to one side, one hand idly scratching a mosquito bite. He had a small girl's nose, thick dirty-blond hair, a little bit of stubble on his chin. He was older than Sheryl, but he wasn't too tall and still boyish looking. His eyes were hazel with little flecks like small blue fish swimming in them. At first glance he looked a bit rough, but then he smiled and his face lit up and he was beautiful.

Pete here was just hitchhiking to Toronto when I gave him a lift, her uncle said. Looks like he's going to stay with us for a few days, maybe help out a little.
Sheryl stood drawing circles with the toe of her sneaker in the dirt. Something was not quite right. It was too quiet, and all at once she knew why. Their dog Lupus was silent. On any other day he would be hoarse by now, but there was nothing. No barking. No rustle of the chain.

The screen door whined and Sheryl's Auntie Eleanor called her in to help with dinner.
Nice to meet you, Sheryl said, and smiled shyly.

At supper later there were introductions all round, hands offered and shaken, names traded and repeated out loud, ample smiling with lots of teeth showing. In the kitchen Sheryl's Auntie Eleanor had laid out a big country spread with a ham casserole, Paul Newman's favourite, mashed potatoes with gravy, waxed beans and baby carrots. There were candles on the table and hors d'oeuvres like they had only at Christmas. Eleanor fussed about the kitchen, glamorous in a shiny blue shirtwaist, trilling, Welcome, welcome, seat yourself, in her special party voice, wiggling her hips and humming along to CFRB, bossing Sheryl around, who rolled her eyes but did as she was told, passing around a plate of little blocks of ham and pineapple on toothpicks, saying: Cigars, cigarettes.

Peter Angelo seated himself where Eleanor indicated and sat looking around the kitchen, taking in the yellow-flowered wallpaper, the sparkly silver faucets, the white counter and endless family photographs that checkered the walls.

At the head of the table sat Sheryl's uncle, Fergus MacRae, his hair jet black and Brylcreem slick, his large blue eyes magnified by coke-bottle glasses. He sat smoking, his hors d'oeuvres untouched, long lanky legs crossed.

Peter here is from Sault Ste. Marie where his father has an automobile repair business, Fergus said. He pronounced it, otto-mow-beal, making it sound like the Rolls-Royce of garages.
Peter nodded, a trifle bashful. He told them he had a mom and dad and a little brother named Anthony and a German shepherd. On weekends he fished Lake Superior and on weekdays he helped his Dad out in the garage.

I guess I can fix most anything under the hood of a car, he shrugged.

Sheryl stared hard at his hands, the long fingers lying inconspicuously on the good tablecloth, and was convinced they could work miracles.

I want you all to know we have a very talented youngster in the house, Fergus announced. Peter here is going to be a fine musician one day. I think we should celebrate, he added, ordering a beer for Peter who blushed and said, Thank you, sir, in a breathy shocked voice as if he couldn't believe his good luck.

Sheryl watched his beaming, sun-kissed face and swore she would marry him if he let her, in her mind they were already holding hands and hurrying down the drive.

Eleanor refreshed her cocktail with its miniature umbrella and brought the boy a beer, and they all clinked drinks across the table, Josh and Sheryl holding out their tumblers of milk.

Eleanor asked Sheryl to put on some dinner music. Sheryl was the official family disc jockey so she trotted happily into the living room, but stopped abruptly when she reached the doorway where the air shimmered in a veritable wall of heat, and she stood for a moment holding her hair off her damp neck. The room seemed suspended in time, painted with dust and fuchsia evening light. The picture window looked out onto the parched front lawn and she saw summer stretching out before her, full of new possibilities with a beautiful boy in the house. She had a headache from the heat and closed her eyes and when she opened them again she saw something stir on the lawn….

A mare stumbles over as though drunk in the hay. By the light of a kerosene lantern, two men tie her front hooves together and pull her back hooves apart, fastening them with rope to stall posts. The mare bellows and snorts, struggling, her eyes rolling about in the whites, huge with fear….

Sheryl pressed her small hands to her eyes until the sight went away. When she had recovered, she went to the glass and mercifully the horse was gone, there was only Lupus lying in his doghouse licking his dirty front paws. It had happened twice now in only one day. She calmed herself by remembering what her Uncle Fergus had told her. It's only pictures, he had said, just the mind running wild, kiddo. Maybe it was all the excitement of the day.

She looked around. The house was a maze of faded floral walls untouched since the forties. Off to one corner was a standup hi-fi with records stored in a built-in cupboard below, and she got out a stack of 45s starting with "Hello, Dolly!" and positioned the arm for continual play.
Back in the kitchen, Eleanor was talking with Peter in her flirty party voice, her cream-puff beehive bobbing.

Fergus is the town druggist, he works at Wallcott's Drugs. He's one of the most important people in town now, you know. He went to pharmacology college in Toronto and did his internship there, and then Mr. Walcott hired him on when it was over, just a few months ago. It's hard to find regular employment ... her sentence petered out, heavy with blame and disappointment.

Yes, I was a wanderer in the desert of the soul for a long time, Fergus said philosophically, but I'm home to stay. The MacRaes have been in this part of the country for generations now. My great grandfather came here for free land for the working. He sent his whole family, wife and ten children, to Cedar Hollow from up north in two boxcars with all their belongings, farm equipment and livestock, which consisted of twenty-three cattle, a sow, two horses and a dog.

They had a little collie named Woebegone, Sheryl added.

That's my girl, Fergus said and Sheryl smiled proudly.

Fergus reached into the black medical bag at his feet and pulled out a bottle of pills and took one capsule with water, smiling at the guest and saying, Hay fever. It's why I didn't go into farming.

My grandfather and my father after him had pigs, chickens and cattle, Fergus continued with his story, lighting up another cigarette. Until one day the local marketing man gave my father some advice. He said: Arter, you never make money from anyting dat eats.

Fergus chuckled. We've specialized in apples ever since, kiddo. Tending to the fruits of Eve.
Say something in Italian for us, Josh interrupted, but Peter protested he didn't speak Italian, he was Canadian like everybody else, his mother was Irish.

Irish! Fergus and Eleanor sang out in unison, relieved, and Sheryl thought Peter got better with every passing minute.

My Mom used to work at Pearl's Beauty Parlour in Toronto, Josh said, but there was no one named Pearl there.

Yes, Eleanor smiled, I was the main colorist.

The screen door slammed and Fergus's younger brother Eammon entered the room, wearing a T-shirt, a pack of Exports rolled into a sleeve. He had a troubled handsome face, the MacRae raven hair, but when he opened his mouth there was a gaping hollow where his two front teeth had been. Everyone said that he had lost them in a barroom brawl over a woman, but he had never confirmed this. Eammon helped himself to casserole in whopping spoonfuls and then stood leaning against the sink, eating noisily.

Eleanor introduced Peter as their handsome young guest and gave him a wink, flirting again, and Sheryl stared daggers at the older woman. Eleanor explained that there were three MacRae brothers: Earl and Fergus and Eammon. Fergus worked in town while Earl and Eammon took care of the orchard, she said. Although Earl had just built an abattoir across the road with his buddy Jimmy Garrick.

How do you do? Peter offered, but Eammon ignored him and went on to talk farm business with Fergus. He'd planted Cortlands all week, finishing only today. The last fifteen acres were now all new dwarf root stock, Eammon said, picking up a piece of bread and folding it whole into the damp hollow of his mouth.

Fergus turned to the guest, That's progress for you. This year we're planting little trees, dwarf trees no bigger than a man, that can cut picking time and production costs in half. Eammon snorted, I just do what the boss tells me. Beats running up and down a ladder all day.
Fergus smiled and declared it was a fabulous time to be in farming. In a few years, science would have a remedy for every pest.

Sheryl thought of Eden Valley's infamous orchards with their large standard trees and luxurious green canopies. In comparison, the dwarf seedlings looked pathetic and spindly.

Turning to Eammon, Fergus asked if he had a job for their new house guest. Eammon sighed, clearly irritated, but said he'd speak to Earl. There was a lull in the conversation.

Mrs. Johnson is down with the cancer, Eammon said.

Terrible scourge, Fergus nodded. One day there'll be a cure for that too.

Still no sign of that missing McDonald boy, neither, Eammon added.

Shame, Fergus said.

Well, no rest for the wicked, Eammon concluded, excusing himself, the screen door slamming behind him.

Sheryl's aunt and uncle fussed over Peter, asking him if he'd had enough to eat, offering him another beer. When he said yes to the latter Sheryl and Joshua fought over who would go until

Sheryl pinched her cousin and won. The fan whirred overhead. Their shirts were damp under the armpits.

Fergus pushed his meal away, having barely touched a morsel, and adjusting his glasses, he squashed his cigarette in the ashtray.

So, kiddo, Fergus said to Peter, tell everyone all about yourself.

Peter put down his fork and told them he had plans to become a folk singer, play guitar, travel the road. His folks had said he was a dreamer and a layabout, but that was the thing he wanted most. He'd run out of cash when Fergus picked him up and offered him a job so he was grateful for work. He looked up at Fergus with awe and Sheryl understood. For when he wanted to her uncle could make a person feel like the only one in a crowded room.

My Uncle Fergus helps a lot of people, Sheryl said proudly.

He's a photographer, Josh added.

Maybe you'll be famous one day too, Sheryl told Peter, and I can come to your sing-alongs.

Peter shrugged noncommittally, bashful again. I suppose, maybe. He took a swig of his beer and said that in Toronto they had cafes and bars with little red tablecloths, where people sat around and drank coffee and played guitar. Yorkville was where it was at. The drink seemed to have loosened his tongue and he slurred a little.

Shangri-la! Fergus declared, his eyes shining blackly in the yellow kitchen. Landing here you're halfway there, kiddo, he said, we'll take you when the apples are all in. Music is the language of the heart. I hope you'll find the faith and encouragement here you need to foster your singular talent.

Yes, sir, thank you, sir, Peter nodded.

Here's to new friends, Fergus said, holding up his drink, and everyone toasted Peter again while he grinned from ear to ear.

After dinner Sheryl's Uncle Fergus asked her to take the guest on a tour of the farm, so she took Peter through the barn, pointing out the old Ford tractor and the big nine-foot mower, the orchard trailer and sprayer and grader sitting like hulking ghosts in the summer heat. She showed him her rabbit room, leading him along the row of cages introducing him to the Netherland Dwarfs, Mop Lops and Mini Rexes with movie star names: Greta Garbo and Vivian Leigh, Grace Kelly and Clark Gable, thrilled to have a guest interrupt the lonely monotony of her days. She even offered to let him hold one of the rabbits, but Peter just shrugged and said, no thanks, unimpressed.

They drifted back outside to stare at the white dog, part wolf, part hound, short-haired and lean, with his oddly powerful upper body and his crippled hind feet. The dog watched them with cool blue marbles for eyes. He growled and the sound was chilling.

She told the hitchhiker the story of how she had gotten him as a gift when he was a puppy only three summers ago while they were at the farm visiting her grandmother. Lupus had been hit by a truck that August, and his hind legs were paralyzed afterwards. That's why they stuck up in the air like that, she explained. He had bitten her Uncle Fergus so they were forbidden to pet him, and Lupus had been tied up in the old riding ring ever since. Over the last while he had grown vicious,

Sheryl told Peter.

They stood watching the white mongrel, dusk creeping over the escarpment, mosquitoes whining in the grass at their feet.

We used to have a horse too, Sheryl added.

There was still time before bed so Sheryl showed Peter her secret place in the hayloft, where she'd constructed a small fortress out of old bales. She produced a tin can and a crumpled Rothmans package.

Don't tell nobody, she said, offering him a cigarette and he smiled wickedly. I always have a puff up here at night after feeding the rabbits.

They sat in the hay smoking, dust motes drifting in the fading light from the window above their heads, while Sheryl looked at him and pretended not to look. She figured he was a runaway like that McDonald boy who had disappeared.

Her Uncle Fergus often played the good Samaritan, picking up lost souls, hitchhikers and strays and bringing them to the farm for a night or two that became weeks and months. Most of them turned out to be layabouts who ate too much and stayed too long, before they were dropped at the roadside or voluntarily left town. This boy was different somehow.

So do you ever have dreams? she asked him, trying to wipe that bored look from his face.

Nah, he said, well, sometimes, I guess I don't remember them.

I do. Usually they're in black-and-white, but every once in a while, there will be something in colour. Like a colouring book where the kid only filled in the lawn green or the apple red, she said.

Black-and-white like television? he snorted.

I guess. My Uncle Fergus told me I have so many dreams because I have the sight.

The sight? he asked.

Yeah, you know, pictures in your head. Dreams of things before they happen.

Cool, he said and blew a smoke ring. He was quiet for a moment as though thinking on all this.

So, he said, if Fergus is your uncle, where's your parents?

She told him she wasn't sure, her mother had left her with her grandparents when she was only three. Sheryl had watched while her mother lifted a gloved hand and waved goodbye, then slipped into a blue car and disappeared down the drive.

Her Uncle Fergus told Sheryl her mother worked as an airline stewardess and a model. She had been Miss Home Hardware when she was a teenager. Sheryl had never met her daddy and she didn't care to. She told Peter that her mother was planning to send for her soon as she got more settled. She sent letters every month. Sheryl was waiting for the day when she turned sixteen then she was going to go live with her mother in Toronto. I'd walk out of here right now if I had someone to go with me, she said.

That so, Peter answered, taking the cigarette back again.

Sheryl said her mother was going to buy a big house with a white picket fence and a gold door knocker with a horse's head on it. And although this was a lie and she knew lying was a sin, the house was one of those things she had wished for for so long, the story felt like it was true and just flew out of her mouth before she could think better of it.

Sheryl had lived for a long time with her Uncle Fergus and Auntie Eleanor, who were kind enough to take her in after her grandmother died. She told Peter her uncle was like a father to her. Before he went back to school, they had been in one town after another, Elora and Sudbury and Hamilton and Toronto, and just about every place in between, Fergus being a Renaissance man and all.

What's that? Peter asked, and Sheryl shrugged. She wasn't sure but she thought it was someone who found it hard to stay put. She had come to the farm every summer when her grandparents were alive, but they had been back here in Eden Valley for a year now since her uncle got the job at the pharmacy.

She changed the subject to ask him if he had a favourite song and had he heard of The Supremes and, by the way, did he have a girlfriend where he came from?

You sure ask a lot of questions, he snickered. Peter took a puff of the cigarette and let the smoke curl outside his nostrils. They sat watching the light fade, blowing smoke rings. He seemed like an ordinary boy, preoccupied and moody and not easy to talk to, and Sheryl wondered about her vision from the lookout. Her Auntie Eleanor was forever telling her she was imagining things.

Monday morning, Uncle Earl came over to show Peter Angelo the ropes. Sheryl was dunking Cheerios, watching the rabbits on the bottom of her bowl cavort, wondering who ever thought of rabbits wearing dresses anyhow. She sat across from Peter who ate scrambled eggs with his mouth open, while Josh ran his toy truck through a puddle of spilt milk on the yellow vinyl tablecloth.
Well, if it isn't Mary, Mary quite contrary, Earl said, giving Sheryl a wink, coming into the kitchen, taking off his cap and smoothing back his thinning grey hair.

Earl is Fergus's older brother, Eleanor said by way of explanation to Peter.

Earl helped himself to coffee, chuckling, Yep, got a phone call at seven this morning from Fergus saying he'd picked up a hitchhiker on the highway, did I have a job for him.

Earl shook his balding head from side to side and chuckled. I don't know how he does it. The guy's a magnet for kids. Teenagers, Earl scolded, looking at Sheryl, I don't trust em. They're too smart for their own good. They have a rebel streak in them at least five years long. Isn't that right,

Mary? he teased.

Sheryl studied the dressed-up bunnies and said nothing. Her Uncle Earl was always calling her funny names.

Josh said, I'm not a teenager.

Of course, you're not, darling, Eleanor said, rubbing his carrot-coloured brushcut with painted fingernails. Sheryl rolled her eyes at Peter.

Earl settled himself at the table and took a sip of coffee. He was so close Sheryl could smell him, he stank of the abattoir, a ripe animal stench that reminded her of cows and pigs, piss and fear.

Looks like another scorcher, Eleanor said, fanning herself with her magazine. She told Peter that Earl lived in the bungalow across the road, beyond the abattoir he had built with his friend Jimmy.

Uncle Earl has a lawn like a golf course, Josh boasted.

I'll be damned if there wasn't a clump of dandelions on it this morning. Lordy. Swear I sprayed every godforsaken inch of that sucker with D.D.T. There's not an insect with sense will alight on it,

Earl sighed.

Eleanor gathered up her cigarettes and magazine and excused herself, her furry high-heeled slippers clicking daintily out the door.

So, lookin' for work, are ya? Earl asked.

Yes, sir, Peter said.

Well, I think we can arrange that.

The boy nodded, chewing.

Sheryl gave up on her Cheerios and padded about the kitchen making herself useful, her blue seersucker shorts making a crisp no-nonsense sound as she walked. She gathered the dishes, while

Josh talked to his dinky toy at the table.

Where's your mother think you are now, son? Earl asked, suddenly.

Sheryl shut the water off and wiped the plates noiselessly, eavesdropping over the tap with its thin drip, drip, dripping into the dirty dishwater.

Toronto, she heard Peter say, his voice cracking nervously. Told everyone I was going to look for work.

Really? Earl returned, unconvinced. Was that in person or in a letter you left on the kitchen table? I bet she's worried sick about you. Probably got half the RCMP in the province of Ontario out looking for your hitchhiking ass.

Sheryl turned around and saw Peter put down his toast and slowly wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. She held her breath. The fan was whirring overhead.

Sir? he asked.

Don't sir me, the older man said. I just want to know what we're gonna say to the cops when they come knockin' on our door lookin' for ya.

I'm nineteen, Peter blurted out, in a couple of weeks, he added.

Sheryl bit her lip.

So why did you run away?

My old man, Peter said, studying his empty plate.

Did he throw you around?

Sometimes, Peter said, memorizing the vinyl tablecloth. Mostly my mother, he mumbled. He broke her arm.

He glanced up at Sheryl and looked away. She scratched at a mosquito bite on the back of her leg with her bare foot. She saw the endless stretch of highway, the hot sun on asphalt, Peter hitchhiking alone. If Earl sent him away it would be another long dreary summer.

Well, I'm glad we got that straight, Earl said. He told the boy finally that if the cops came he would have to leave but in the meantime Peter was to tell everybody he was a distant cousin helping out for the summer.

And this conversation never took place, or you're out on your ear, Earl warned.

Yes, sir, Peter said, sounding relieved.

Sheryl sighed and went back to the dishes.

Earl stayed at the table studying Peter. I'll be damned if you don't look like somebody. He snapped his fingers and turned to Sheryl. Slim, who does Peter here look like? What's the name of that dead kid, movie star, what was his name?

Jimmy Dean, Sheryl grinned, grateful for the change in conversation.

Yes, quite a resemblance to Jimmy Dean in that rebel movie. Pretty as a girl, Earl chuckled. Lord help you.