Jim Oaten - Accelerated Paces. Travels Across Borders and Other Imaginary Boundaries

Accelerated Paces:

Travels Across Borders and Other Imaginary Boundaries

Travels Across Borders and Other
Imaginary Boundaries

Jim Oaten

Copyright 2008 by Jim Oaten

Anvil Press Inc.
P.O. Box 3008, Main Post Office
Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3X5 CANADA
www.anvilpress.com

First Printing.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages in reviews. Any request for photocopying or other reprographic copying of any part of this book must be directed in writing to access: The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Oaten, Jim
Accelerated paces : travels across borders and other imaginary boundaries / Jim Oaten.

ISBN 978-1-895636-93-2

I. Title.

PS8629.A84A73 2008 C813.6 C2008-904947-0

Printed and bound in Canada
Cover design: Derek von Essen
Interior design & typesetting: HeimatHouse
Author photo: Gavin Lynch

Represented in Canada by the Literary Press Group
Distributed by the University of Toronto Press

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

For Sheena

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Previous versions of some of these pieces have appeared in subTerrain, The Vancouver Sun, Pacific Rim Magazine, and The Peak.

Grateful thanks to the crew at Anvil Press, and to all my family and friends for everything.

Even as a ghost
My Spirit will want to roam
The fields of summer.

Hokusai

I am young, and we are driving. Where, I dont really know. At that age, such things were never my concern. Destinations lay in the adult world; I was just along for the ride.

As always, my father holds the wheel. My mother plays her role, sending out an endless stream of cheerful chatter, none of which we really need respond to. Top-40 hits from days gone by quietly slide out from the oldies station my father always seems to find, no matter how often I surreptitiously reprogram the radio.

Black and white flashes by. Oh look, cowsarent they lovely, says my mom to no one in particular. Frank Sinatra sings yet another song about love.

Love is now the stardust of yesterday. The music of the years gone by.

Beside me, my brother. He is even younger. I am belt-less in those carefree days of solid-steel cars and rust-induced obsolescence. He is strapped down, and wriggling against the booster seat like a fur seal straining out of Arctic ice. I like it when hes belted tight: it keeps him away from my toys.

Back home, the cows were never that pretty. They were hairy, werent they Bob? My father hisses agreement as he hunts for a spot to overtake the crawling car in front.

A triumphant yawp from my brother. Hes managed to get one of my toys after all: a Hot Wheels that unwisely skidded across the seat when my father finally eyed his chance and accelerated onto the other side of the road. Its an old one, not a favourite and I let him have it. He chews happily.

Car, he says, smiling at me. Drool drips from the Hot Wheels hood.

Wheatfield, wheatfield, wheatfield, truckstop. Wheat-field, wheatfield, wheatfield. Tires hum and drag the scenery by.

Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights dreaming of a song, ponders Frank.

And they were mostly brown, too. Nasty things. Remember? asks Mom.

Are we there yet? I inquire.

Cookie? wonders my brother, lips crammed with car.

My father hisses in answer to all as we speed through the flatlands of Alberta.

We settle back, satisfied Dad has responded. I stare out the window, wondering why on earth anyone would need so much wheat.

It seems almost a shame to eat them. They look so peaceful, says my Mom.

Its growing dark as Sinatra signs off in my heart you will remain. My stardust melody. The memory of loves refrain.

My father snaps on the headlights. Sheena, give me a cigarette. Im out.

I dont have any. You must have them.

You opened a carton this morning. They must be in your purse.

Theyre not in

Just look, would you.

I can see the moon rising, balanced above the crimson farewell of a dying sun.

Beside me, my brothers struggles to free himself from the hated seat, always heated, become Herculean. A tiny hand bashes against my shoulder.

I turn and sneer. Lose your car?

His face is blue.

Dad, theres something wrong with David!

Wary eyes widen in the rearview, and the car slams to a stop. My mother plunges over the backseat, tearing my brother from his belt, her face savaged by fear. She holds him upside down by one leg, and he swings in pop-eyed shudders, dying right in front of me.

Hes choking!

My father slams his hand against my brothers back. Flat blows echo as Dad pounds at the frantic pendulum and Davids face contorts in an airless shriek.

A desperate punch, full force from my father, and a tiny car door shoots from my brothers throat and onto the seat.

And I knewas my brother sputtered and wept, and my mother soothed and caressed, and my father massaged his hand and fumbled for cigarettes, as trucks pulled past and the stars brightened on those endless fields and I recovered my car and clutched it to my chestthat nothing would ever change and we would all be together forever.

When I told my four-year-old son I was leaving, that I was moving out of our house, and that I wouldnt always be there all the time any more, I cupped his face to comfort him.

It was like laying my hands on heaven just so I could scratch out the stars.

X/Y. A chromosome jokethe yellowed sign above the inset buttons, in that hallway between two locked doors. X for the womens ward, Y for the mens. But I have not been here, or even in Canada, for close to half a year, and that part of my brain where Grade 10 Biology resides has slipped into the trough of unneeded information. I hit the wrong button, buzzing Male instead of Female.

And I know Ive made a mistake almost immediately because the buzz brings a cry from behind the door beside me on my left. Hoarse, insistent, and unmistakably a mans. Unintelligible, yet in its rhythm approaching what was once a word, the voice is full of rage and the sudden pained reminder of a large and wider world. I listen, push the other button and wait.

Its 1969, and all of us gathered in that small apartment in Calgary are straining our eyes, trying to make out something significant from the pocked black and white pictures scrolling across the television screen. My parents and their friends are quiet now, eyes and ears intent on image and commentary, glasses of wine untouched. They sit frozen in ray and flicker, stirring only to hiss an occasional shush at the small boy crouched on the carpet beside the couch. Neil Armstrong is about to walk on the moon and I have the hiccups.

Like the lunar voyage, my hiccups have lasted an eternity and I can tell from the increasingly irritated glances of the grownups that Im about one more diaphragm shudder from expulsion. Hic. It comes. And I am out. My mother gathers me up, and, brushing off protests with whispers and kisses touched with soft perfume, leaves me alone in my bedroom, well away from the Age of Aquarius and the march of history.