Based on a True Story Read online

  They’d tell stories from the old days, from the war and from the Depression, and they’d tell jokes too. My father would always tell the best jokes, and after the punchline, everybody would laugh to beat the band, including my father. And then, as the laughter was dying down, my father would repeat the punchline and everybody would start laughing again.

  The best joke I remember my father telling was the one about the old fellow whose memory was failing him.

  “Did you ever hear tell of the old fellow who’s having trouble remembering things so he goes to the doctor and the doctor prescribes him a medicine?”

  “Don’t believe I have, Lloyd,” said Angus.

  “Well, his friend comes over one day and says ‘Jim, I understand you got some medicine for your memory. Tell me, does it work?’

  “ ‘Oh, yes,’ says Jim. ‘Works like a charm.’

  “ ‘Well, I’d like to get some of that medicine for myself. What’s the name of it?’

  “ ‘Oh, the name of it…’ says Jim. ‘I can’t remember. What’s the name of that flower?’

  “ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Jim’s friend. ‘There’s so many. Is it a tulip?’

  “ ‘No. It’s that flower you take on a date with a woman.’

  “ ‘Oh, is it a carnation?’

  “ ‘No, no. It’s the romantic one. It’s red, and long-stemmed.’

  “ ‘Oh, you must mean a rose!’

  “ ‘Yes that’s it,’ says Jim. ‘ROSE, WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT MEDICINE THE DOCTOR GAVE ME FOR MY MEMORY?’ ”

  Everybody would laugh hard and my father the hardest of all, and then, just as the laughter began to subside, he’d repeat, “ROSE, WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT MEDICINE?” and everybody would laugh harder still.

  I would laugh too, sitting cross-legged in the corner. I loved all my dad’s jokes.

  But the real stories were better than the jokes, of course. They were tales of when these old men were young men, living through the Depression, when there was nothing to be had, and if you couldn’t find work there was no government to bail you out so you just went hungry. My dad became a railroad bum during those times. He owned nothing in the whole world but his own soul and even that, he knew, could be taken from him. He kept busy avoiding people like Kitchener Leslie, an infamous Canadian National Railway cop who was much scarier than the real police. If he found a bum on the property of CN Railway—sitting in an empty boxcar of a train—he would stomp and stomp with his steel-toed boots till the railroad bum was gone and only the gray, still flesh of the bum remained in his place.

  Of course, the men told stories of when war came to Europe and turned scared boys from Moose Creek into heroes at Normandy. Old Jack, he could tell the best stories, because his were the most mysterious. It seemed Old Jack never had a home, that he somehow just sprang from the land itself, full grown, and had been roving his whole life till he settled down with us. He’d been in the war too, just like the rest of them, but he never told a single war story. His tales were about wandering the Canadian byways, filled with drink and song and loneliness and new places and friends, and they always held the other old men in thrall. And me too. I had never made it past Moose Creek and I knew I never would.

  Round about ten o’clock the men would be on their way, taking the happy loudness with them and leaving the farmhouse quieter than the crickets and the frogs outside. Then Old Jack would say “Thank you” to my dad and “See you, Sprite” to me before he trundled out and down the lane to the toolshed that was his home.

  4

  SIX YEARS OLD TO EIGHT YEARS OLD

  One day when I was six years old, I came to know a truth, a hard truth that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I was in the farmhouse alone and I happened to look out the screen door, where I saw our cat. She was crouching close to the ground and utterly still, except for her tail, which switched like a metronome, side to side. I could see the cat’s muscles roiling beneath her blue-gray fur. Her eyes shone fire upon a mouse that sat roughly a foot in front of her. Neither animal moved and I didn’t either, but I could feel my heart beating. The standoff ended when the mouse finally moved and the cat caught it with a swift, clawless swat. The mouse stopped. After a brief moment of stillness, the mouse moved again, the cat met it with another swipe, and once again the mouse stopped. This happened many times. Then the mouse began to back up slowly, and the cat went into a deep crouch and then a mighty pounce. The mouse was trapped between the cat’s two paws. It struggled to get away but its efforts were futile, and the cat brought its face close to the mouse, who, in a desperate bid for freedom, bit the cat’s nose. The cat’s face momentarily recoiled in astonishment. Then the cat’s green eyes flashed black like the wing of a crow and her teeth tore into the mouse, and I could hear the tiny bones breaking as the cat’s neck swung from side to side until the mouse was still and limp, but the cat’s neck continued to swing. Then the cat slung the dead mouse into the short hay and strolled away. This last moment was what surprised and frightened me the most. This whole endeavor had nothing to do with food. And this is when I learned that hardscrabble truth: There is a difference between what a thing is and what it appears to be. A thing can appear to be content and happy as it lies with you so close that you feel its purr in your belly. And if you don’t look through the screen door and out into the world, you might never realize that the thing you think you know and love is another, more dangerous thing altogether.

  Once I learned this truth, I began to see examples of it everywhere. A picture hung on the wall of our parlor. In it, a woman was taking a shirt from a clothesline. She had clothespins in her teeth and it was windy and a boy was tugging at her dress. The woman looked like she was in a hurry and the whole scene gave me the idea that, just outside the frame, full, dark clouds were gathering. But that was not what it was.

  It was paint.

  So I decided right then and there to see the picture as it really was. I stared at the thing long and hard, trying to only see the paint. But it was no use. All my eyes would allow me to see was the lie. In fact, the longer I gazed at the paint, the more false detail I began to imagine. The boy was crying, as if afraid, and the woman was weaker than I had first believed. I finally gave up. I understood then that it takes a powerful imagination to see a thing for what it really is.

  That was when I became very interested in magic. A magician can make you believe in appearances even if they are impossible. And, lucky for me, Old Jack was a magician. Also, he was the only one of the old men who paid me any attention. Once I showed my interest in magic, he began to perform his sorcery for me regularly. He could make a penny vanish from his hand and then find it in my ear moments later. He could turn a penny to a nickel and a nickel to a quarter until you couldn’t understand why he wasn’t the richest man alive. Old Jack could do it all. His tricks amazed me but I knew they weren’t real, even at that young age, because I had seen the cat and mouse and thought about the picture in the parlor, so I asked Old Jack to teach me, but he refused. “Can’t do that, Sprite. A magician never tells his secrets.” But when he said that, it was always with a winking sort of smile, and I understood that one day he would tell me.

  —

  Two years passed, and as I grew older I was eager to become a man. On the first Sunday of every month, just before the sun rose, all the men in town would convene at our home to go hunting with my father and my older brother. I wanted to hunt more than anything else, but I was not allowed. In my father’s eyes, I wasn’t old enough and couldn’t be trusted with a gun in the woods, even though I could already hit a can off a fence post with a .22 nine times out of ten. It wasn’t fair, but I didn’t make the rules, so I had to stay home with the women and Old Jack. Old Jack never went hunting. Not once. Not ever. And the men teased him without mercy, but Old Jack, he’d just smile and say, “Wish I could, boys, but I’m getting behind on my work.” But everyone knew that Old Jack was never behind when it came to work.

&nb
sp; One Sunday I asked Old Jack straight out why he wouldn’t go hunting, and his answer made me wish I hadn’t asked. He said that when he was young he was the best shot in the county and he could shoot a squirrel’s eye out at forty feet. And so when he was drafted into the war they made him a sniper. He told me that he had killed and killed for four years, and he said that kind of killing changes a man. He knew they never would have made him kill all those men if he had not learned to shoot so well as a boy. He said when he returned to Canada he felt apart from other men and felt closer to little children, who hadn’t yet learned to hate. And I asked Old Jack if he figured he could still shoot a squirrel’s eye out at forty feet.

  “Don’t know,” Old Jack said. “I love squirrels now. I’ve even trained one. I feed him corn right from my hand and he climbs onto my shoulder. Now, that’s gotta be kept a secret, Sprite, ’cause if another man found that out, I’m afraid that he would kill my squirrel and dry it on the porch till it was ready to eat.”

  I knew Old Jack was right about that. The men in our town loved to eat squirrel. “Where’s the squirrel, Old Jack?”

  “He lives in the toolshed with me; falls asleep right on my belly. I guess I’m the only fellow on this blessed earth who has a squirrel for a pet.”

  “Will you show him to me, Old Jack?”

  “I can’t do that, Sprite. He might get spooked and bite you. Maybe I’ll just teach you a magic trick instead.”

  So Old Jack finally showed me how to produce a nickel from behind a boy’s ear, and once I knew how it was done, once I knew the trick for what it really was, I became angry. I made Old Jack promise that from now on he would only perform his magic tricks and never tell me the truth behind them.

  Things were changing fast for me. The night of my eighth birthday was a night like any other: I was sitting, listening to the men, when Angus Macgregor started talking about the war. I could tell Angus had uncorked the jug early that day. He looked drunk as a boiled owl, and his story didn’t make much sense. He said how much he hated the Krauts and that he had once shot a surrendering soldier in the back, and he told us he wasn’t sorry for it neither. None of the men said anything for a while after that, and finally my father broke the silence. “I’ll get us another round of beers.” When I looked over at Old Jack, there was a tear in his eye. I’d never seen that before—a tear in a man’s eye. He got up and quietly left the house and I chased after him. When I found him he was sitting under the blighted maple tree.

  “You sad, Old Jack? You thinking about the war?” I asked.

  Old Jack just sat still for the longest time, like I wasn’t even there. It was like he couldn’t hear or see me. Like he was hearing and seeing different things. So I just stood there, and after a good long time, Old Jack looked up and seemed surprised that I was in front of him.

  “Well, hello, Sprite,” he said. “What’s the matter? You look kinda down.”

  “I just didn’t like Angus Macgregor’s story, that’s all.”

  “Say, Sprite, I know what’ll lift your spirits. I know the very thing. How would you like to see a trained squirrel?”

  I was very excited. “But you said you could never show him to me, Old Jack.”

  “I haven’t got the money to get you a true birthday present, Sprite. This’ll have to do.” So we walked down the lane together, toward the north forty. The beneficent moon hung low and shone bright, leading us to the shed. When we arrived there, I was so excited I couldn’t wait; I pushed the door open wide and rushed inside, looking for that squirrel, but I couldn’t find him. I realized my mistake—that he’d only come out for Old Jack—so I glanced back at the open door, where Old Jack stood, but his back was to me now and it was blocking out the light of the moon. I suddenly remembered that I’d read somewhere how the light of the moon was just an illusion and the moon was only a cold, cold stone. I watched Old Jack look from side to side before he turned his gaze on me, and his eyes flashed black like the wing of a crow. He closed the door and the inside of the shed went black. Then I heard the bolt.

  I forget what happened next.

  5

  EIGHT YEARS OLD

  TO THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

  I forget.

  6

  THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

  Those lost years of mine sure made for a lot of teasing from my family, I’m here to tell you.

  “Hey, Norm,” my father would say as we ate our supper, “tell us a story from when you were nine. Or ten. Or even twelve. Don’t matter which.”

  And I’d think just as hard as I could, narrowing my eyes and clenching my teeth, anything to try to force a memory to the surface. “Can’t remember, Dad,” and the whole table would laugh and laugh. And then my father would tell a story about me from that time, a story about me losing a tooth playing hockey, or me dropping a coal-oil lamp in the toolshed and damned near burning it down, or me getting ahold of my father’s 12-gauge and shooting six holes into the toolshed like it was some sort of dangerous beast. They would always be great, funny stories and I knew they were true. I had just forgotten them, that’s all.

  When I finally woke up from my five-year walking sleep, it was as if no time had passed from that moment in the toolshed looking at Old Jack and thinking how his eyes looked like the cat’s. The very next moment I was sitting in the back of my father’s car with my two brothers. My father was at the wheel and he was telling my mother that when it was his turn, he’d be grateful to go the same way as Old Jack. And my mother agreed and said that the doctor had told her that Old Jack’s was the most peaceful death he’d ever witnessed.

  When I heard Old Jack’s name, I couldn’t find my breath and I snatched my older brother’s sleeve in a panic, but he just looked annoyed and swatted my hand away.

  When we got to Coleman’s Funeral Home, Lyle Coleman, the undertaker, was there to meet us. “Is your boy all right, Lloyd?” asked Lyle. I was shaking in an awful way.

  “Well, everyone loved Old Jack,” my father said. “My middle boy’s just more sensitive than most.”

  “Lloyd, this is the only funeral we’ve ever had here at Coleman’s where there’s no family. Surely Old Jack has some kin still alive?”

  “Wouldn’t know, Lyle,” my father said. “All I’m sure of is that for the last twenty years we were Old Jack’s family and that’s how we’ll mourn him.”

  My brothers were talking and one said to the other, “I’ve never seen a dead man before. What do you think he’ll look like?” And, hearing that, I ran down the dirt road as fast as I could.

  My father found me under an old tree that was sick with Dutch elm disease. He sat down and told me that when a man is born, he is born with a great debt, and that one day the debt must be paid. I said that it was unfair, that others should have to pay before Old Jack, but my father explained that the rain falls on all of us, the wicked and the righteous alike. He told me that a man would be judged by his works, and that made me feel better because I knew Old Jack had led a fine and good life. My father told me I had to be strong, that Old Jack would want it that way. I reckoned he was right. So I got up and walked, and my father walked behind me with his right hand on my left shoulder, guiding me back to the funeral home to say goodbye to Old Jack before Lyle Coleman took him under.

  The room was filled with folks who talked to each other about Old Jack and what they remembered of him, which wasn’t much. He worked hard and he stayed to himself, never complained or had a bad word to say about anyone. The reverend got up and said what a great man Old Jack was, how he had fought bravely in the war and lived the rest of his life serving God and working the fields.

  I got in the line with my father and we inched solemnly toward the pine box that would be Old Jack’s house from here on in. Suddenly I was next, and fear grabbed my throat and squeezed and I gasped and pulled my tie off. “You okay, son?” my father asked.

  “Sure I am,” I said, but I was lying. I wasn’t okay at all. My brothers were okay, that’s for sure, and were alrea
dy in line to view the body for a second time, as if they were going on a ride at the state fair.

  A wild fear seized me: that as soon as I looked into the casket, Old Jack would grab me and pull me into the pine box with him and nobody would see and I would be trapped forever, like a squirrel in a pitch-black shed, a squirrel trained by a magician to perform unspeakable tricks. And then I felt my father’s hand gently on my back and I knew it was my turn and I wasn’t going to run, so I stepped, alone, to the coffin and looked into it.

  And when I looked inside, a curious thought struck me, a thought that made my fear evaporate and my tears dry. You see, Old Jack wasn’t lying in the casket; why, it wasn’t him at all. It was just something that looked like him, the same way a suit lying on a bed resembles the man once wore it. Old Jack was the best fellow I ever knew and I’d been with him as often as anyone, but I wasn’t with him that day, not there in that room, where a line of people stood waiting to look at a thing in a box.

  7

  DRIVING TO LAS VEGAS

  The stories of my youth are working wonderfully and Adam Eget is awake. Annoyingly awake. He suddenly can’t stop talking long enough to shut up about how his girlfriend broke up with him just last week, and how he lost his BlackBerry, which has his sponsor’s phone number on it, and how they don’t appreciate him enough at The World Famous Comedy Store. And me, I’m riding shotgun, listening to Billy Joe Shaver on the radio and thinking about the plan. I stare out at the black starless night. I only have two hundred dollars to my name, but I have a plan. And the good thing about the plan is that it’s foolproof, so I decide I’ll get some shuteye now that Adam Eget is exceptionally awake. I close my eyes and turn the car radio way up and Billy Joe Shaver’s voice drowns out Adam Eget’s—“The Devil made me do it the first time, the second time I done it on my own”—and I smile as I fall asleep.