Pamela Porter - The Crazy Man

PAMELA PORTER Copyright 2005 by Pamela Porter
Published in Canada and the USA in 2005 by Groundwood Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the authors rights. 416-363-4343
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Porter, Pamela Paige.
The crazy man / by Pamela Porter
eISBN: 978-1-55498-055-0
I. 416-363-4343
Fax 416-363-1017
www.groundwoodbooks.com LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Porter, Pamela Paige.
The crazy man / by Pamela Porter
eISBN: 978-1-55498-055-0
I.

Title.
PS 8581.O7573C73 2005 jC813.6 C2005-903001-1 Cover design by Michael Solomon
Cover illustration by Karine Daisay We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. For Rob, Cecilia and Drew,
who love that great, flat land
with its enormous sky

HALF THE TOWNS DRIVING PAST OUR FARM today, churning up dust on the road just to stare at a man driving a tractor. Ive gone upstairs to my room. Going to try to figure out this whole big mess. The Saskatchewan suns pouring down in a bright rectangle on my floor, and dust is dancing in the sunlight. Im making a new mark on the wall behind a corner of my mattress, hidden so only I know its there with all the other pencil lines. Every four crossed catty-cornered to make five.

My arm gets tired and lets the mattress slip. But I got it counted. Thirty-two days since that day my daddy dragged Princes body to the burn pile and set it afire, then walked away from the farm. And us. THAT DAY BUILT A ROOM INSIDE MY HEAD where we all live Daddy, Prince, Mum and me. I want to build a door for that room so I can shut it off, and if I think about it real hard, maybe I can build that door.

Because that days living in my brain now, and its all colored red. Theres me, walking home from Haig School at the very end of April, nineteen sixty-five. Our first hot spell. At the edge of town I have to pass the mental hospital which looks like a castle behind a long line of caragana bushes towering way over my head. Joey and Jamie, twins from down the road, they run past that place every time. But me, I dont mind it.

I just imagine Im in England me, Emaline Bitterman and the queen lives there, and I walk by, calm as a cabbage. Then my feet hit the dirt road and our white house is there and Prince barks and runs up, and I hear our tractor running in the field behind our house. And I see Dads discing the field. Well, I drop everything and run up to that tractor and hop on. When Dad works the fields, I like to ride standing right behind the seat. So I do.

And Im smelling the churned-up dirt, and Im feeling the spring breeze with a promise of summer in it, and all of a sudden Prince starts chasing a big snowshoe hare thats run out of its hole from the noise and rumble of the tractor. That hares scooting zig-zaggy in fear, and its running right where the discers coming. And Prince isnt watching the discer either. Hes after that hare and hes chasing that hare right into the discer. And Im scared that Prince will get his paws cut off in the discs and I yell, Prince! and jump off the back of the tractor to save him. And my foot lands right in front of the end disc.

Then everything gets fuzzy. Dads yelling and Prince is barking and somehow Mums there and my foots dangling below my leg red foot, red leg, red dirt. And now I remember Dad, Prince, the tractor, everything, in red. I DREAMT ABOUT PRINCE, his hot breath in my ear. The prairie wind blowing my hair. I lay on my back on the cool ground in the middle of the field.

Prince lay down beside me, his fur warming my side as I watched the sky. When you lie on your back in a bare field and look straight up, all you see is sky. But when I tried to stand, one leg was gone. I only had one leg. I WOKE, FELL BACK ASLEEP and woke again. And I could see my leg and foot wrapped in white and propped on top of the covers.

But I didnt remember. Not yet. Heard voices coming closer, fading away. Her father let her hanging on the back of that tractor imagine When I opened my eyes, my head was turned toward the window. And all I could see out that window was sky. WHEN I WOKE UP ENOUGH to look around, I knew I was in hospital, and it was a couple days later.

In that time my daddy tied Prince up to the tractor shed and shot him with his hunting rifle. Daddy blamed Prince for the whole thing. Not the hare. MUM DIDNT TELL ME RIGHT AWAY about Prince and Dad. But the nurses knew. I could tell by the way they looked at me they knew something I didnt.

I pestered Mum with questions. When was Daddy coming to see me, and couldnt Daddy bring Prince so I could talk to him out the window? But Mum just tightened her lips and changed the subject. Until finally she told me the truth. Every time I think about this, the blood color from that room in my head pours down into my stomach and I feel sick. After he shot Prince, my daddy walked off the farm and didnt come back. He didnt take the car.

He didnt tell anybody where he was going. Now, whenever things are quiet as quiet as can be that rifle shot goes off in my head, just like that. Boom. DOCTOR CAME IN, SAW ME AWAKE, said, You gave your mum quite a scare, young lady. Nurse came in, said the same thing. They never mentioned Dad.

Mum spent all her time with me. There wasnt anybody at home for her to take care of. We were everybody. Thank you, Reverend Douglas, Mum would whisper to herself. Whos Reverend Douglas? I asked. And she said, Tommy.

Tommy Douglas, the preacher who got elected Premier of Saskatchewan and got a law passed so we dont have to pay to go to hospital. If it werent for Reverend Douglas, wed surely be in the poorhouse, Mum said. I didnt know what the poor house was, or if there was one here in Souris. But I learned soon enough once Mum drove me home in the car and rattled my wheelchair over the dirt and gravel to the back door, and there was no Dad banging in the shed, and no Prince running up to meet me. I STAYED MORE THAN A WEEK IN HOSPITAL before Dr. Phillips even mentioned going home.

Then one morning he woke me up early, flipped on all the lights and said, Congratulations! You get to go home today. The nurse took the tube out of the back of my hand right then, slapped on a bandaid and said I should eat breakfast before I go. By the time I started to put on some clothes and get myself out of bed, the pain medicine from that tube had worn off. Whenever I started to move, the bones in my leg tried to move, too. The pain shot up my leg and back down again. Finally the nurse brought me a blue pill and a glass of water.

Just to get you home, honey, she said. THAT HOT SPELL WE HAD DIDNT LAST, and the day I came home was wet, half snowing, half raining. Daddy loved that kind of weather in spring, said it soaked right into the ground and made the seeds sprout. Only thing was, Dad walked out before we could get any seeds in the ground. Mum made up the chesterfield as a bed for me. I couldnt climb the stairs to my room, and those first days I just lay real still trying not to make the bones mad.