there I was, on a bus, duffel bag stuffed with clothes and books, bad money, playing out my options in my head. How, I wondered, was I going to convince these people that I was in earnest about their religion without sounding like the complete phony I was. Maybe some choked reticence? A kind of constant, tacit, respectably distant fawn? The Gollum slither? I was good at that. Maybe just keep my mouth shut for a change. Now that would be a miracle. Besides, who knew, maybe I might even find Anita Bryant in the process.
But there was more to it than flight, I had to admit that to myself as well. This whole God bidness—evangelical Okie t.v., the money tree. I wanted to check it out, had for awhile. I’d read the GITA, some Rilke, had even spent time arguing with Jesus people at the university.
If there was something there, I wanted to know.
(Six degrees of suck was no way to go through life.)
I looked for the Falls when we got to Buffalo, never saw them. It was funny, I had always complained about America. But now that I was leaving my Bizarro-world home, I had mixed feelings. Would I be back? I thought back to the Ohio, brown enough to walk across. Still, it could sparkle sometimes in the afternoon sun, and when spring came, there was this nice light green that worked its way up the surrounding, polluted hills. I remembered all the rednecks at CJ’s, Linden’s as well, nobody at either place giving a damn about anything except what they had going on in front of them.
That was bully America, but if it walked loudly, carried a big stick, it was a blindness I at least felt comfortable with. This Canada thing would be a whole different slot machine.
I didn’t have too much trouble at the border, wore all new clothes, creases to facilitate my crossing: some new Levis, a lumberjack shirt, a pair of light leather work boots. I even sported a haircut. I tried to keep things light and moving by talking retreat to the guard in front of me, a month long exercise, I told him, in deep breathing. Slowing down, that’s where it was at. I jabbered away, told him I was taking a month off from my job, advised him to stash every penny of his retirement fund into the stock market. Keep talking, I said to myself as he had me begin to unload my bag.
More shirts, brand new heavy socks, thermal shorts. All of it, just out of the wrapper, two dress shirts with pins still in them. Was it all too much, I wondered? Apparently not, because he let me through. Maybe he just got tired of hearing my impersonation. Whatever, I decided. Things could have gotten difficult had we worked our way down to the dour roll of bills.
“Have a nice day, EH?” I said with a wink.
He waved me on, smiling at the cliché. “Take off.”
Toronto was cleaner than I thought possible for a big city. The guard rails on the sides of the interprovince coming in were not banged up; there was no flying debris, no dust working the support posts, no overgrown weeds along the sides of the highways either. And yet the place didn’t have the Puritan feel of America. What made these boys tick, I wondered? I had never been to Britain, so I couldn’t really see how much of an effect it had. “Keep Britain tidy,” I guessed that worked here as well.
And what exactly was a Commonwealth I wondered? A loose confederacy of nations. Share a queen. (Another “Bloody” Elizabeth, every queen since the renaissance, in some way, virgin?) The whole thing struck me as being slightly geeky. What exactly did they expect to get from old marble-bottom anyway? Wisdom? Certainly not her caish. Inspiration perhaps, a sense of who they were?
Oh, Canada, tidy Canada, what bugs are up thy shorts, I wondered? I’d have to sit back in this alien nation I finally decided, that much was clear. Let the robot do the talking.
Everyone was so pleasant. It made for suspicion. The bus drivers looked like nicer versions of Chicago policemen, with their checkered Blue Line Voyager hats. Daley would have rolled over on his graves. I wouldn’t have wished America on anyone, even then, but at first this place gave me the heebie-jeebies. It was way too neat.
The bus station in Toronto was a two-level job, more like a travel agency than a bus terminal. Sculpted concrete, nice, if few, seats. No loiterers here I guessed. Everyone had direction in Canada, or were encouraged to have some. It made me laugh, the imaginative stretch it would have taken to get the uninformed, an Eskimo say, to believe that this place was of the same genre as the Port Authority in New York—or the Greyhound Station in Cleveland for that matter—where every scab-infected unfortunate on the earth pitches a tent in front of the t.v.’s, hits you up for a buck, giving you t.b. in the process.
It didn’t look like diseases were allowed in Canada. But how had they managed it? Socialized medicine? Cold northern virtue? Maybe the whole country wears a wig. It’s respectability, denial. Keep your sins at home. We just don’t do that here. And all the while, beneath that veil, giving license to every “progressive” notion of victimhood. As much as they say they detest American chest-pounding, they fall in line.
By the time the bus had gotten to Peterborough, I was about ready to jump ship. Just what was I doing up here? I didn’t even remember the basic tenants of the Catholic faith. Wasn’t one supposed to do something when going into a church? Sprinkle himself with holy water or kiss, worship at the feet of Mary goddess? Why hadn’t I paid more attention? What if I gave myself away, made some accurate comment?
My anxiety waned, though, as I did a quick hike around part of the town to stretch my legs during the rest stop. Quaint. What were these nice, clean Canadian Catholics going to do to me anyway, throw me to Canadian lions? To Bert Lahrs . . . fur brekfesst?
Peterborough was clean as a spitless whistle. All the funny money, the slightly taciturn, if smiling, folk. I wondered what the insane asylums looked like up here. No need for straight jackets. Just tell the inmates to sit here, go there. Or if they did have jackets on, you could watch them skinny along the ground, humping like cartoon worms, cocoons, obeying your every command. I wondered if they had a test to tell who the insane ones were? Or did they just march up, confess it meekly. “I’m insane, you know. It’s true. I have a paper right here.” In crayon, big tears.
After a quick look through a liquor store, more like a supermarket with rollers than the institutional look you get back in the states, I bought a bigger bag of M & Ms, headed back to the bus. I felt so good that I even talked to some old lady awhile as we rolled up the perfect highway, ever northward.
It got old, the ride. Moose Jaw was a long way. I wondered if they had running water, any summer to speak of up there. I’d find out soon enough, and as late afternoon waned, chilled, I tried to make a bed of the seat. In snatches I watched what looked like virgin forest pass by: more and more birch, pine, fir. Too neat, way too neat.
We stopped for dinner at a restaurant. Kind of a cleaned-up Nebraska, with corn-fed proprietors, friendly, gabby in a local sort of way. The woman behind the register and the driver were old buds I guessed, everyone with that often higher pitched Canadian way of speaking. There was an awful rightness to this place as well, nicely creased napkins and spotless water glasses because it was a place to eat. A fresh bulletin board with notices about Moose Lodge meetings, boy-scout camperees. Not one whiff of dope, unkempt facial hair. I would not take up bowling I decided. They couldn’t make me.
When I finished my cheeseburger, the cheese squarely on top of meat, placed perfectly below the bun, I stepped outside, finally noticed the snow that had put the squeeze in their voices. It was piled high along the edges of the parking lot. It wasn’t terribly cold, but I had miscalculated. Spring up here was not running on the same schedule as in Ohio. I would need a winter coat. No stores between here and Moose Jaw either I bet.
2.
I was the only one to get out at my stop, hours later. The
