Yams do not exist, page 6
“So you think it’s drugs?”
“Nah, it’s much worse … nightmare … street of elms … the beetles.”
“The Beatles? Then he’s some kind of digital pirate?”
They went on like this for quite a while. Finally, Dutch was able to convey that when he said “beetle,” he meant:
(i) the Native elm bark beetle, Hylurgopinus rufipes; or
(ii) the European elm bark beetle, Scolytus multistriatus; or
(iii) the Banded elm bark beetle, Scolytus shevyrewi.
And when he said “Dutch elm disease,” he meant the plant disease caused by the existence in an elm tree of the fungus Ophiostoma ulmi, also known as Ceratocystis ulmi or Ophiostoma novo-ulmi. Clearly, the plant in question was, in one out of three cases, an American elm, also known as Ulmus americana, which often was in danger. Dutch Mulch had received a tip that the neighbours were burning elm bark, possibly for firewood. Perhaps it was an honest mistake, but that was where the beetles would lay their eggs, and soon the whole block would be taken out. As a self-appointed C.A.T. Investigator, Dutch had a duty to enact preventative justice if it meant stopping “Crimes Against Trees.” Farinata wondered aloud how far he would or could go. Dutch instantly eyed the wiring of a table lamp and admitted that he could not go as far as he used to, following the incident he seldom spoke of. That said, if Farinata believed there was even a shadow of possibility that his neighbours had been storing elm wood or were in some way showing wanton disregard for the more recent release of The Dutch Elm Disease Regulations, then he did not even need to say anything, only make some slight gesture in the affirmative, and at the very least, an undignified scene would shortly ensue.
Under the streetlamp, Mostafa and Trish were aglow, enjoying gelato. If anything, the waffle cones capped their effusions like the proverbial stone fruit on top. Suddenly, the front door of the micro suite burst open and Farinata ran out, seized Mostafa, and gave him a lingering kiss28 for the full benefit of Dutch Mulch. Then Farinata backed away and pointed, his eyes wild.
“I know it was you, Mostafa. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!”
“Whoa. What’s going on, you guys?”
“Quarterback sack!”
The tackle was quite an excellent one. The highlight reel showed that Dutch Mulch certainly knew how to observe boundaries. The two men lay on the grass together, each wondering what would or should happen next. Meanwhile, Farinata waved his arms about and gently shooed Trish.
“Bad news, love. Best leave it. You don’t wanna know!”
“Weird.”
“Drop by tomorrow after work and I’ll fill you in.”
“Pffft.”
Late the following afternoon, Farinata opened the door and was surprised to see the Callipygian Venus, otherwise known as Ashley. She thanked him for lending her a translation of La Vita Nuova, although the seventh season of Vampification, followed by a few games of Interurban Smackdown was more her style, fuelled by good company and a box of wine. His address was (conveniently) written inside so she thought she would bring it by. He invited her in and offered her some fizzy water, scarcely trusting himself to get anywhere near bladdered on such a scorcher in a micro suite with the best booty this side of Dewdney. His suspicions were well warranted. Her sensuous curvature at once began to intrude upon his casual perusal of one of Dante’s sonnets, even as he read it aloud.
Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate,
e non pensate, donna, onde si mova
ch’io vi rassembri sì figura nova
quando riguardo la vostra beltate.29
Trish was about to knock on the front door when Soma saw her from next door and hurried out, once again glad to be in the third person and what is more, entirely untackled. They were closer to understanding what had transpired when it was agreed they could try the skivvy’s entrance and maybe find a clue or two in Farinata’s backyard. The makeshift blind was not drawn and very little mystery remained in that little bedroom. One pair of eyes drank in that lovely man from the mall being repeatedly crushed under the most unquitable entity. Another pair of eyes took in that slightly creepy oddball from the mall deeply mixed up with the business end of hardly the sharpest tool in the shed, although to be fair, that was based on her coursework at the collegiate and not her questionable antics now and then on karaoke contest nights. Diverse sighs had scarcely mingled with beastly groans when a new scene began that was peculiar enough to draw those four eyes away from the free peep show,30 killing their colour commentary on the spot.
Trish and Soma turned around to look across the lane and saw a very large man in a white muumuu shaking a burning wand at the ground. If any good can be salvaged from this comedy of errors, it is that Farinata’s ears were too snugly ensconced in the sublime folds of his visitant goddess to hear a single word of this man’s mooning breed of versification that accompanied each jerk of his wand. The man looked up and saw Mostafa’s sister—he did not even know the name of his own heart’s idoless—and beamed at her. He did not even notice that another man was encircling him with a hemp lasso of truth.
“It’s over, Jed. Drop the elm.”
“Dutch? It’s not what you think …”
“Drop the elm, Jed. Nice and slow. Into the bucket.”
“Dutch, you just don’t come between a man and his Wiccan love charm …”
“You’re pointing it in the wrong direction. Now into the bucket!”
“Fine. There. Happy? By the way, who ratted me out?”
“An anonymous tip. But your family’s worried, Jed. A bit of counselling wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Well, you sure made me look stupid, and just when it was bringing in the young ‘uns.”
“You should have used birch, Jed. Everyone knows that, you sorry son of a gun.”
Jed’s wife—Marnie!—wept openly because she had been the one to call it in, and his two point five children were snivelling because they did not quite know what was happening, or why their beloved father was going to receive a letter of warning from Queen City. Farinata had not yet made manifest his own prideful shame, and Trish decided to follow Soma home to share a doobie they had just found in the backyard and to see where the night would take them because all of this was somehow an unexpected rush, and they were both young with so many amazing adventures ahead of them. Dutch Mulch confiscated the white magic muumuu as a precaution and carried away the smouldering bucket with an air of mild satisfaction—blissfully unaware that he was about to receive more than a warning from Queen City about his profiling methods—still patting himself down in search of a magic dragon that had somehow flown away. Notwithstanding, the neat rows of American elms were each snuggly belted to ward off cankerworms, and in all likelihood, no beetle would pester them tonight.
The nightmare was over. For now …
Ferment/Fermata in February
A white rabbit darted through the fence and disappeared around the other side of the eightplex. Farinata looked out the window at the land reserve and made out two more rabbits doing their utmost to look like snow-covered rocks. They were actually prairie hares, or white-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus townsendii), the least social of all hares except when wooing a female in the breeding season. The resultant young are destined to be born in a “form,” a shallow depression in the ground. They were ordinarily timid but this changed in February, prior to the month of madness that followed. They appeared rather stubborn in their desire to stay put and feed as much as possible on hidden plants and grasses. Best get on with it. One can only look out the window for so long.
By the way, what was Trish up to? Putting it as gently as possible, she and our stoic friend—frail sad sack in some circles—had not yet reached any common understanding, nor perhaps would they in this world or the next one. The situation, if there had been much of one, had slowly tapered off, leaving within Farinata a grim dehiscence he had to salt nightly with the most craven imaginings to keep the bugger alive and kicking, before, out of sheer forgetfulness and abscondence and whatever the opposite of abstinence is, he felt around for the little wound and found it scabbily healed over. Actually, he might have scratched at it afresh, had he not received new intelligence in affairs that were not his. A new profile picture would have been bad enough, but the sizable upload of an elongated banner containing a reclining kiss was a real horror show. The nearly naked cow bone on the table was a surrealistic touch, to be sure. As for the young gentleman receiving his pleasure, the less said about him the better.
Farinata, having not dared to peep at her profile for over a month, reeled back and rolled about with a few hammy paroxysms of self-loathing. A friend of his would have called this occurrence “old cabbage,” relegating the present to the past, although this situation looked like the starting point for a fermentation process he knew only too well. Rotten lovers and their rotting mouths, the decay of long-standing decorum and dying courtesy become cabbage at the mercy of salt urging out the precious moisture after a period of two to three weeks. She would no longer be haughty goddess of the ground beans or furtive mistress of the night—the constituent body was now from dermis down to essential tissue an uncooperative collective of cabbage layers. The size in the nearest retail outlet a size “cabbage.” The feet and hands round as cabbages. It was almost too much to bear and that is why he took another breather to look out the window at rabbits, chewing something rather like cabbage.
It would have been convenient for the fated sauerkraut to arrive, large as life, on the side of a bus that failed to pick him up, with his frustrated rage converting into passionate expression on the spot, which is to say in the parking lot of Southland Mall, but that was much later. The glamorous image of Alma Smatterson was not unknown to him. Farinata had first clapped eyes on her in a baggy T-Shirt in a pie eating contest one summer’s evening, but he had been too preoccupied to notice how truly snoutfair she was, and besides, it had not been her finest hour—she had not obliterated the competition. He had only pursued her because of a faint mercenary streak that usually kept his bread buttered on the side he most preferred. Then, after accidentally catching her breathless finish of a local marathon at the end of the wooden footbridge we have immortalized in our minds and hearts, well, the truth of his feelings would have been obvious to us, although they looked in absolute ignorance at one another, in a manner akin to the rabbits in February who cannot yet fathom the rapidity of March. We must forgive them, even when calling them out, as it was rather cold and they were relatively indistinguishable faces lost under various layers. His light-hearted pronouncements reached her easily enough, and she did not balk at the prospect of helping him enjoy his own fifteen minutes. Promises were made in the heat of given moments, before they evaporated just as quickly. Each of them—they had a lot on!
Hang on—no, this will not do at all. We can’t just topple our potluck Lucien de Rubempré, elbow him out of his airy concerns, and plunge him into new nether-danger. He has been through enough, for a start. To shoo the rabbits when they are most preoccupied and to pluck a tuber out of the ground, hoping to stick it somewhere else, well, that is sleight of hand we do not really condone. Since the baleful affair at Readerz, he had been offered the chance to read his tuneful writ at better venues, including a restaurant lounge in the downtown core, which had been packed to the gills. There may not have been the amount of swooning found in eighteenth-century novels, but it is fair to record an evanescent flutter that passed through the room, especially through a table of ladies sympathetic to a touch of musicality now and then. Never in his life had he heard so much feedback in terms of musical canvases, lyrical cadences, staunch fermatas, and arpeggiated breathings, whatever those might be. Indeed, through the minus fifteen reprieve of that January evening, a light murmur suggested that it might be worth keeping him alive after all. A local MLA and his friends, slightly tipsy on the night in question, made promises, and a few offers for a sporadic capful of tuppence came his way. This was fair to middling stuff, and certainly not the kind of local backstory that would bowl over the new incarnation of Alma Smatterson, once a quiet girl with a penchant for linguistics who had struggled daily with her indifference to small animals and children.
This is a new century and we like to think we can do what we like. Let us say there was a wanton splash of mud—finally, a touch of Zola-worthy realism—and for fear of its conquest and undeniable ruination of his day, Farinata sidestepped the glamorous image of Alma Smatterson, who put her feet up on a cluster of neurons, tidily cushioned behind another cluster of neurons, well out of reach of his latest emotional outburst. It was the last day in February—with no leap year to trouble us—when the bolt out of the blue arrived, meaning a response from Trish to his anonymous campaign of notes in shoes and aprons, not to bring up all manner of scrambled messages in the middle of the night. Yes, she read them, only not in a leap year, waiving her right by his substantial percentage of Celtic blood to propose and be irrevocably accepted.31
Ever the pragmatic mule-trader, she wanted to know who he was. This sucker punch threw Farinata for a loop, alluding to an endless supply of hyperliterate suitors playing Cyrano from behind the shrubbery. Since last century’s introduction of your garden variety Homo absurdus in literature—for some, about as historyless and plentiful as faceless dads and their boys scratching themselves as they purchase bags of potting soil at self-checkouts that may or may not accept some of the polymer bills that ignite for no more than a dirty look—it was impossible to answer that question to anyone’s satisfaction. Sometimes he had a funny feeling that everything had happened before, with only slight differences, in another place, or that other selves were conducting themselves in outrageous fashion, as if on the other side of a thin wall he had only to claw apart to glimpse a vision of how life could be, or even was, without his conscious knowledge. There was surely a dimension in which he and Alma Smatterson were embracing on the side of a bus and splashing everyone else with mud for a change.
If he were a Lepus absurdus, it would be almost nothing to rise from his “form” and dirty his face over prairie forbs in the vicinity of a female counterpart, no questions asked. But this was a young century, and it was entirely possible he would never again leave his own shallow depression that vibrated slightly whenever a jet plane or snow plough made its morning rounds.
Farinata after the Flood
The plane tilted its nose upward and quickly vanished. Farinata cast his eyes away from the disposable headline. Almost a hundred towns declared to be in a state of emergency. The headline guy or gal had to keep it going, the fear and the sense of infinite chaos. A job well done. Of course, he couldn’t complain. The consensus was that he was staying in a place built on a slough that would sink into the gooey clay soil before too long. Eighty to ninety millimetres had fallen and he had experienced a mild scare. The water in the storm drain had kept rising, and Farinata had regressed back to his sorry origins, even to the exact instant when the trauma had first formed. Then, out of a cozy, wet nook he had been heaved—screaming—out into a world that probably did not have his best interests at heart.
Farinata sat on the live and dead grass and looked down into the shimmering brown water. Some kids had been wading in the impromptu pool only yesterday, terrified of eels, but was he adult enough to give them two bits worth of advice? After the mild scare, a raven had tired of flight and had walked around instead, picking up bugs and worms. During the rains he was not a threat but a red-winged blackbird didn’t split hairs—or feathers—and dive-bombed the bigger bird repeatedly. Often, the same bird could be found warding off iridescent Brewer’s blackbirds on foraging missions. Farinata thought the red-winged blackbird an exemplar of fatherhood, but that thought only brought back the trauma, or more accurately, its harbinger like some unidentified but almost fathomable speck on the horizon that was approaching at top speed. Farinata felt it approaching and turned away, turning his mind to anti-matters. He remembered the celebrated painter from these parts who had striven so hard—all her life, in fact—to think of nothing. Most folks didn’t have to try quite so hard but that judgment was only another mood coming on, or so he reckoned, like a funny cloud floating into view. He need not heed its shape nor pore over the prospect of its future outpourings. No, the sun was shining and for the moment, he was happy. Not too happy, as that could knock him off balance just as easily. Climb no mountains and you will find no valleys. The hot hard flat of the path, that was for him, and in his estimation, long and substantive and relatively commaless. Vast sections of this dry, unforgiving place were submerged, but that did not matter. The landscape could not all become ardent aquarium because he knew that was only a misquoted line in his head. He knew that sun and land were altering him, too.
You couldn’t run from your problems and yet, he had done so, or so he figured, and that was quite all right. He was a different person and that was also quite all right. He felt that he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, the (stupid) need for money, other needs he dare not name lest he disrupt his fine equilibrium under the sun. Various problems had stowed away with him, but they were friendlier once afloat, and besides, they had nowhere to hide amid all this openness. The trick was to give up everything, to live a life that most folks on two-thirds of the continent would consider a life not worth living, and to no practical purpose, living that “crummy” life for its own sake and somehow deeming it none too shabby. Indeed, he was pacing himself, and taking in things very slowly. Feel around—fumble if you must—for the present, then grab hold gently. That was the best he could do and that was quite all right.
