Part Four2003: Reg

Jason, my son, unlike you, I grew up amid the dank smothering alder leaves of Agassiz, far from the city. In summer I could tell you the date simply by chronicling the number of children who had drowned in the Fraser River or been poisoned by the laburnum pods that dangled from branches and so closely resembled runner beans. I spent those summer days on the Fraser's gravel bars, watching eagles in the tall snagged trees browse for salmon, but I wasn't in the river just for the scenery - it was piety. I believed the maxim that should I lose my footing, God would come in and carry me wherever the river was deepest. The water felt like an ongoing purification, and I've never felt as clean as I did then. That was so many decades ago -the Fraser is now probably full of fish rendered blind by silt from gravel quarries, its surface pocked with bodies that somehow worked themselves loose from their cement kimonos.

Autumn? Autumn was a time of sorting out the daffodil bulbs with their malathion stink, brushing their onionskin coatings from overly thick sweaters knit by two grandmothers who refused to speak English while they carded wool. Winters were spent in the rain, grooming the fields - I was raised to believe that the opposite of labor is theft, not leisure. I remember my boots sinking in mud that tried to steal my knees, its sucking noise. And then there was spring — always the spring - when the mess and stink and garbage of the rest of the year were redeemed by the arrival of the flowers. I was so proud of them - proud, me . . . Reginald Klaasen - proud that they loaned innocence and beauty to a land that was never really tamed. Proud from walking in the fields, inside the yellow that smelled of birth and forgiveness — only to stare north, out at the forest and its black green clutch, always taunting me, inviting me inside, away from the sun. Hiding something - but what?

Perhaps hiding the Sasquatch. The legend of the Sas-quatch has always been potent in my mind - the man-beast who supposedly lives in the tree-tangled forests. It was the Sasquatch I'd always identified with, and perhaps you can see why: a creature lost in the wilderness, forever in hiding, seeking companionship and friendship, living alone, without words or kindness from others. How I hoped to find the Sasquatch - hoped to bring him out of the forest and into the world! I planned to teach him words and clothe him and save him in as many ways as I could. My mother encouraged me to do this, to save the soul of this damned beast, bear witness to him, make him one of us, force him to gain a world while surrendering his mystery. I sometimes wondered whether gaining the world and losing one's mystery was such a good deal, and I felt ashamed of thinking this. The world is a good place, rain and mud and man-eating forests included. God created the world - I believe that. No theory of creation satisfies me, but I have this sureness in my heart.

I remember finding out that the world was actually just a planet, in school in the third grade, and I remember hating the teacher, Mr. Rowan, who discussed the solar system as if it were a rock collection. It's so hard to balance in our minds the knowledge that "the world" is, mundanely, "a planet." The former is so holy; the latter merely a science project. I walked out of class, indignant, and spent a week at home as the school and my father tried to negotiate a meeting point between the rock-collection creation theory of the earth and the more decent and spiritual notion of "the world." None was reached. I was put in another teacher's class.

My father was an angry man, you know that, but he was also a man of little faith, constantly angry because - because why? Because he took over his father's daffodil farm and forfeited whatever life he might have created for himself. My father was fierce, and I was fierce with you, Jason, and when I became fierce with you, I was appalled yet unable to stop myself.

My fierceness with you came not from any desire to copy my father, but instead from my desire to be his opposite, to be righteous, and to be strong where my own father was weak. My piety galled him, and when he was furious, I was driven out of the house and fields with threats of the leather strap he used for sharpening his razor, out into the forest, away from home, for hours, sometimes days (yes, I ran away from home) spent contemplating a God who would create an animal like my father, a religious man without faith. A fake man - a human form containing nothing.

I never told you about my childhood. Why would I have? I told Kent, but never you. I suppose I thought you'd twist the words and use them against me. You never said much around the house, but you were a formidable opponent. I could see it in your eyes when you were a year old. You were competition. Children are cruel in their ability to instantly identify a fraud, and that, especially, was your gift and curse. I was so insecure about my beliefs that I feared being exposed by my own child. That was wretched of me.

Your childhood: as an infant you were a crier, a creature of colicky squalls that frightened your mother and me until we went to a doctor and he asked some questions and it turned out that the only time you ever cried was just before or after sleeping - that technically you were asleep, sleepwalking, and what we were seeing was your interior life -screaming in your dreams! Good Lord! As the years wore on, we thought you were mute, or possibly autistic; you didn't start speaking until you were four. That is family legend. Your first words weren't "Mama" or "Dada," but rather, "Go away." Your mother was devastated, whereas I heard your words only as a challenge to my authority.

Listen to me, already - the words of a lonely broken man in his little apartment somewhere on the edge of the New World. Let me change tactics. Maybe I can see myself better that way . . .

Here:

Reg, always thought that God had a startling revelation to hand him, a divine mission; that's why he always seemed so aloof and arrogant and distant from the people and events around him: he was the chosen one. And of course, Reg's mission never came. Instead, he was in his lunchroom one afternoon, eating an egg salad sandwich, when his secretary burst in and said there was a shooting at his son's high school. This father of two drove across town, listening to the AM radio news, which only got worse and worse, and the world became more dreamlike and unreal to him. Reg hadn't even crossed the Lions Gate Bridge yet, and newscasters were already counting the dead. And here is where Reg's great crime began: he was jealous that God had given a mission not to him, but to his son. To his son, I might add, who was, according to the several Spanish Inquisition members of his youth group, having intimate relations with a young woman in his class. Jason's relations with Cheryl were, to the mind of a smug and wrongly righteous man, like lemon juice on a stove burn. Of course, in Reg's mind his son's crime wasn't as clearly defined as this. That sort of clarity comes only with decades. Instead, he was simply furious with heaven and God and had no idea why. So once home, in a flash he seized upon his son's act of bravery as an act of cowardice and the devil. He held a two-second-long kangaroo court inside his head, and rejected his son.

When Reg's wife heard this and crippled him using a lamp powered by an astonishingly hard blast to his knee, he was confused and had no idea why the world had turned on him. But it was the other way around - Reg was in La-La Land. He was expelled from his own home, where even he knew he was no longer master. In the hospital, nobody, save for his firstborn son, visited him - why would anybody want to visit such a miscreant? The only other exception was the complaining and hostile wraith that his sister had become, who drove in once a week from Agassiz. She demanded gas money and shamed Reg by pointing out how few flowers he'd been sent in the hospital - only some limp gladioli in yellow water, supplied by his office.

When Reg was released from the hospital, he moved into a new apartment in a new building owned by his boss's brother-in-law. He went back to work, but no one spoke to him much - there were condolences and expressions of gladness that Jason had been exonerated, but his coworkers knew he'd been abandoned by his family, that he lived alone, and that this was all, somehow, connected to his pride and his vanity.

Vanity.

When Reg was courting his wife-to-be, he thought he should spiff himself up a bit, so, being frugal but optimistic, he went to Value Village, a former grocery store now filled with mildewed socks and blouses and plastic kitchenware. He found a pair of mint condition - unworn! - black shoes in his size for a dollar forty-nine. Whooee! He was so proud of those shoes, and he wore them out of the store, into the rain where he was to meet his gal, just getting off her shift at Nuffy's Donuts. He walked into the donut shop, where even ugly yellow fluorescent tubes couldn't diminish her complexion. She was putting a jacket over her work uniform. She looked down and said, "What the jeez happened to your feet?" His feet had turned into bundles of soggy paper. The shoes he'd purchased were mortuary shoes, designed only for open coffins, never to be worn by the living. Cheapness and vanity.

Your mother.

She's technically alive, but she isn't really here, she is far gone in her alcoholic dementia, her liver on its final boozy gasp. I take the blame - I liked her drunk, because she was a quiet and amiable drunk. When she was drunk, her eyes lost that accusatory look. When she was drunk, she gave the impression she'd ride life unchanged right through to the end, that her life was spiritually adequate, that she wore a crown of stars. This drunken look absolved me of all the guilt I felt regarding the slow-motion demolition of the once pretty girl who always saved two Boston creme donuts for me, and who unashamedly loved color TV, and who (and this is the hard part) seemed spiritual in a way that didn't make me want to preach to her. She could have married any man she wanted, but she chose Reg Klaasen. . . . Why? Because she thought I was spiritual, too. I don't know when it dawned on her that I wasn't, that I was merely someone whose vocabulary was slightly old-fashioned, and whose ideas were stolen almost entirely from dead people. I suppose that would be when she started drinking, just after you were born and she had a hysterectomy. It must have been devastating to her, to realize she'd hitched herself to a religious fraud. And I led her on - that's my own disgrace. And now her life's basically over. I visit her twice a month at the facility near Mount Seymour Parkway. The first time I went there I was unsure whether I should go. I was convinced she'd throw an IV-tree at me, or go into hysterics like Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer, but instead she smiled and said she had some donuts tucked away for me, and then she kept on saying it, with no OFF switch, and that was the worst rebuke of all.

Kent.

When Kent died, I found that physically leaving earth was a desirable notion. I was at work when I learned of his death, out by the front reception area trying to unjam a roll of fax paper. I was irritated and I'd told the receptionist to put me on speakerphone, and that's where I was when Barb's mother told me. I fell to my knees and I saw a wash of light, and then I saw a fleet of dazzling metal spaceships, like bullets aimed at the sun, and I wanted to walk toward them and get inside one, and leave everything behind. And then the everyday world returned. I'd had that vision, the only vision I've ever had, but it told me nothing and offered no comfort. So, what good was that? And what was left in my life? At the funeral you shunned me, as did your mother. I can't say I blame you. My family in the Valley? They're junkyard dogs now, what's left of them. And then last year you vanished, and all that remains are the twins - the spitting image of you, I might add. And there's Barb, grudgingly, and (I'm not stupid) only at the behest of Heather. Heather is a fine woman, a woman you're so lucky to have had enter your life: a heart as big as the Hoover Dam, and a soul as clear as ice cubes.

I sound maudlin here. I don't want that. I'm not striving for effect, and I'm not drunk. But to spit things out in a list like this is humbling. Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words.

Ruth.

There. And she's gone, too. She was the trumpet that returned me from the dead. I know you must have seen her photo that day when you came to fetch things at my apartment - you never missed a trick of mine. So you know what she looked like, large but not fat - you'd never describe her as plump - with hair the color of rich soil and - Cripes, listen to me discuss this woman like a 4-H Club sow.

By the time you saw her photo we'd been dating - what a silly word - for years. We met at an insurance seminar downtown, where she gave a short speech on insuring the elderly, and I liked her because she had a sense of humor in the face of that day's technical blathering. I also learned from her that I have a hint of a sense of humor myself. Yes, I can already see your face puckering with disbelief. So be it.

I lost Ruth for two reasons, the first of which was the seed of the second: I didn't want to take her to Kent's funeral; why, I don't know. I could plead crazed grief, but even still. She said I was ashamed because I was still married to your mother, and that I had a schoolboy's shame that people would stare at us and imagine the two of us making love out of wedlock. How pathetic. And she was right. Ruth was always right. But she was a deep believer, too, and willing to endure my crotchety trespasses.

When you went missing, I fell apart, although I doubt you'll believe that. Two sons gone - how is a man supposed to feel? Ruth was a help at first, but then she learned I was still going to visit your mother twice a month, and she told me it was time I divorced your mother and married her. I ought to have hired a skywriting jet to say YES. But no. I said that marriage was until death - this from a man who went for a decade not communicating with his wife. Such a hypocrite.

We were in the Keg at the foot of Lonsdale when she told me her stance, and I told her of my counter-decision. For the first time since I'd known her, she froze me out. For Kent's funeral she'd showed me forgiveness, but that night in the restaurant? She went crazy with a calm face, justifiably so. We'd shared so much, and to have our bank of memories turned against me? Ruth had no idea that even though I was sitting there with zucchini sticks and dipping sauce in front of me, blinking my eyes, in my mind I was already dead, and I was standing at the gates of heaven, the way I'd always imagined the first part of death to be like, being shown a film clip version of my life - a naïve vision, but one common to men of my age. Even after all I'd been through, I'd still assumed I'd sail through those gates; such presumption is itself a sin. But as Ruth listed smaller reasons for leaving me, I knew I was further away from the gates than I'd ever dreamed. I had always believed I'd been leading an upstanding life, immune to all forms of interrogation, but among other things, Ruth told me I thought like an infant, that I was confusing what I thought was right with what God thought was right, and that I was harder to please than God, and who exactly did I think I was? And then she told me that she was leaving, and that once she was out the door I would never be loved by anybody ever again, and that I'd brought all of this upon myself.

Have you ever known what it's like to be loved by nobody? Maybe you have, but no, that's not possible, because your mother never failed you. Me? I didn't know what to do - I was shattered, and in a moment of weakness I phoned your Heather. I arrogantly assumed that because her family all lived far away, she must feel equally unloved from her side - and in this I was correct, but she said I didn't have to feel guilty for calling her for that reason.

It's strange, but once you begin to confess your weaknesses, one confession leads to another, and the effect is astonishingly liberating. At my age, it was a little like having food poisoning - all that bile and poison sprayed out of me in every direction - a process that took a few weeks as Heather and I tried to find you. It wasn't until I felt emptied of lies and weaknesses that, as with recovering from a poisoning, I felt mending begin.

Heather.

I want to discuss that false psychic you paid to bring Heather messages from the dead. It was a thoughtful idea, but one that backfired and then, ultimately, in its own way, frontfired, giving Heather more hope than you'd imagine. But, Lord Almighty, did that psychic woman pull a number on Heather! Right from the get-go she began extorting money - thousands. People like that woman make it clear just how asinine it is to believe that human beings have some kind of built-in universal sense of goodness. These days I think that everybody's just one spit away from being a mall bomber. People say sugary nice things all the time, but believe none of it. See how many weapons people have stockpiled; inspect their ammo cache; read their criminal records; get them drunk and bring up God; and then you really know what it is you have to protect yourself from. Forget intentions - learn the deeds of which they're capable.

Anyway, in the end, Heather twigged onto this psychic's game plan. In doing so she told me about your characters; I had no idea you had this other world inside your head, and if you ever read these words, I imagine you'll blush as you do so, but don't. Froggles! Bonnie! Gerard! The characters are pure delight - they're lime sherbet and maraschino cherries -they're almost holy. Your characters - that was the sort of thing I ought to have been telling you at bedtime rather than squeezing out of you your daily list of trespasses. God, I was a grim old sucker. Just so you know, Heather quit her job at the courts, and she's now working full-time making children's books using your characters. They're good little books, and one might even be published locally. Heather and Barb allow me to read them to the twins, so I come out of this a winner. And again, I have to say how much the twins resemble you. I wonder what Kent would have thought? He's fading from my memory, you know. Sometimes I have to work to conjure up his face or his voice. I oughtn't be telling you that, because it means that I'll forget your face and voice someday, too. (But don't take it that way.)

I'm in a Kinko's writing this. I haven't said that yet. It's downtown and open twenty-four hours. It's maybe one A.M. and I'm the only customer here on this side of the store. Two other people - homesick German tourists, I'm guessing - are across the room trying to send a fax.

I think heaven must be a little bit like this place - everybody with a purpose, in a beautiful clean environment. They even have those wonderful new full-spectrum lights that make you look like you've just returned from a stroll in an Irish mist.

Why am I here? I'm here because I still don't have a computer, and I'm here writing this because today I got a call from the RCMP out in Chilliwack. They called to say that they'd found your "highly weathered" flannel shirt, and in its pocket, your Scotiabank debit card. It was tangled in some bulrushes in a swamp beside a forest out there, found by some kids shooting BB guns. I asked the RCMP if they were going to organize a manhunt, and while they didn't laugh aloud, they made it clear that one was not being planned. How dare they. All they gave me was a map.

And so I'm typing this letter out. I'm going to print it and make a thousand copies, and come sunrise I'm going to go out to that swamp and its surrounding forest and I'm going to tack these letters onto the trees there with a pack of brightly colored tacks I saw up by the front desk when I registered to use this machine.

I know that kind of forest so well, and at this time of year, too: spiderwebs vacant, their builders snug inside cocoons; sumac and vine maples turned yellow and red, smelling like chilled candy. The hemlocks and firs and cedars, evergreen but also everdark. The way sounds turn into shadows, and how easy it is to stay hidden forever should that be your wish. You're the Sasquatch now, searching for someone to take away your loneliness, dying as you live with your sense of failed communion with others. You're hidden but you're there, Jason. And I clearly remember from when I was growing up, the Sasquatch was never without hope, even if all he had to be hopeful about was bumping into me one day. But isn't that something?

You might ask me whether I still believe in God; I do - and maybe not even in the best sense of the word "believe." In the end, it might boil down to some sort of insurance equation to the effect that it's three percent easier to believe than not to believe. Is that cynical? I hope not. I may sell insurance, but I grieve, I accept. I rebel. I submit. And then I repeat the cycle. I doubt I can ever believe with the purity of heart your Cheryl once had.

Cheryl.

We never once spoke about her. We never even spoke, period. I never told you that her mother phoned me about eight years ago - I'm listed in the book - and she said that

until that day she'd always believed you were involved in the shootings, but then, "It's the funniest thing. I was making coffee this morning, I went to put an extra apple in Lloyd's attaché case, because the apples are so good this time of year, and inside his case, between two folders was a paperback about the massacre, and it was open to the page with Jason's photo - I hadn't seen that image in years. I don't know why, but I finally realized Jason was innocent." Stupid, stupid woman, but a woman whose daughter was lost in the worst imaginable way. As you were never a father, you can never imagine what it is to lose your child. That's not a challenge -how grotesque if it were. It's a simple statement of fact.

But I haven't lost you, my son. No no no. And you will find one of these letters. I know you will. You never missed a trick of mine, so why stop now? And when you do find this letter, you know what? Something extraordinary will happen. It will be like a reverse solar eclipse - the sun will start shining down in the middle of night, imagine that! - and when I see this sunlight it will be my signal to go running out into the streets, and I'll shout over and over, "Awake! Awake! The son of mine who once was lost has now been found!" I'll pound on every door in the city, and my cry will ring true: "Awake! Everyone listen, there has been a miracle - my son who once was dead is now alive. Rejoice! All of you! Rejoice! You must! My son is coming home!"