The Return of the Sword: A Tale of Betrayal and Loss

By Barry Pomeroy

When I was holding the sword in my hand again, I could only guess where it had been. Its faded, cracked sheath and rusty blade told a story of neglect, but beyond that was another tale of how it had disappeared, how its absence had been explained, and how its return undermined that version of events. When I told my friends the story about the sword’s disappearance, they consistently pled that it was merely a material item and its absence shouldn’t matter. They needed background.
Invariably I would find myself explaining how a foster child’s life is different than theirs, how our grasp on the few material items we have is more desperate, and that our lives are more about loss than replacement. The story of the sword goes back further than its disappearance, however, and like our lives, it is best explained from the beginning, by going through the middle, and stopping at the end.
In order to find out what the sword means to me, or to those around me, we need to dip in and out of my life and theirs. Like any drama, it’s a story with multiple players, and to come to a full understanding of what role the piece of metal plays we have to do more than run a wire wheel over its blade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Pomeroy
• Release date: Dec 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781987922783

Barry Pomeroy

Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

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The Return of the Sword

A Tale of Betrayal and Loss

by

Barry Pomeroy

© 2019 by Barry Pomeroy

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, although people generally do what they please.

For more information about my books, go to barrypomeroy.com

ISBN 13: 978-1987922783

ISBN 10: 1987922786

When I was holding the sword in my hand again, I could only guess where it had been. Its faded, cracked sheath and rusty blade told a story of neglect, but beyond that was another tale of how it had disappeared, how its absence had been explained, and how its return undermined that version of events. When I told my friends the story about the sword’s disappearance, they consistently pled that it was merely a material item and its absence shouldn’t matter. They needed background.

Invariably I would find myself explaining how a foster child’s life is different than theirs, how our grasp on the few material items we have is more desperate, and that our lives are more about loss than replacement. The story of the sword goes back further than its disappearance, however, and like our lives, it is best explained from the beginning, by going through the middle, and stopping at the end.

In order to find out what the sword means to me, or to those around me, we need to dip in and out of my life and theirs. Like any drama, it’s a story with multiple players, and to come to a full understanding of what role the piece of metal plays we have to do more than run a wire wheel over its blade.

Table of Contents

Consumerism and Bad Bosses

Buying a Sword

The Use of a Sword

Bringing a Sword into the Country

Biss' Sword Sleep Disturbances

Crossing Borders

Using the Sword

The Tendency to Fabulate

A Nasty Family

Big Lies

The Changing Face of the Documentary

Tone's Temporizing Personality

The Affair

The Last Summer

Jealousy and Paranoia

The Stolen(?) Sword

Foster Child Losses

Materialism and Loss

Where the Sword Went

The Story I Invented

The Confrontation

A Foster Child's Materialism

Consumerism and Bad Bosses

Holding the faded, cracked sheath in one hand and the rusty blade in another, I was relieved at the return of my sword but I also felt vindicated that I had been correct about where it had gone. I had invented the story of its disappearance from whole cloth, once the original account proved to be a lie, and my story had turned out to be true. The story of the sword’s importance is of an older date, however, and can be best explained by telling how it features in my life and the lives of others.

When I tell my students about the bildungsroman, I often cheekily describe the first line as I was born naked at a very young age. We need not delve quite so deeply to find the origin of what the sword means to me, or to those around me, but we will need to investigate anyone who was associated with the sword if we are to come to terms with its reappearance.

Some twenty years ago, my friend Biss decided rather arbitrarily that he wanted a sword. This wasn’t an unusual desire. I frequently described his consumer habits as a mythological conversation between him and some arbitrary, materialistic, omnipotent power when he was still in the womb. I imagined him being approached by some potent force which declared, I need someone who can get rid of a billion dollars in their lifetime. Biss’ reply, at least in my version of events is, I can do it. In the way that I think about his materialism, I imagine that only such a conversation before he was even conscious of himself could set in motion the yawning pit of consumer desire that nothing could satisfy.

Set on the road where wonder and delight lay just around the corner of every store’s shelf, where happiness could be located if one merely had enough money and the stores were open twenty-four hours a day, he has spent his entire life going through more than his income. He briefly flirted with shoplifting, but either that did not sate his deep-felt desire to buy, or he worried about the legal repercussions, for soon he was back to waving a credit card and casting his avaricious eye over the wares of a dozen different shops.

I once mentioned to him that I thought an electric bicycle would be a good investment for me, situated at the cabin quite a distance from the nearest grocery store, and he immediately bought one for himself. He became interested in buying guns, and amassed a collection of several, until he shot a hole into the neighbour’s adjoining room, and had to stash them with his friend while he waited to be found out. I told him that I thought a bow was a better investment, since it involved exercise and took more skill to shoot. He promptly went to rent bows with his son, and after a fun-filled hour of shooting, bought two compound bows complete with various accoutrements. He never shot them again, but that was scarcely the point. He’d achieved his goal already when the money left his bank account. A billion dollars was scarcely going to spend itself; if he were to keep his fetal promise, he knew he needed to get to work.

His spending habits have meant he has played a bit fast and loose with other people’s money on several occasions. He hid arbitrary loans at one place he worked until he was able to move the money back into circulation, and borrowed over twenty thousand dollars from me only to refuse its repayment. Perhaps I am at least as much to blame, as he explained to me. He told me on one occasion when we were arguing about how he wouldn’t repay the loan, that I knew he was bad with money, and therefore I should never have loaned it to him. He had initially promised to remortgage in order to repay me in full if I found some land I wanted to buy—for I was looking for property at the time—but several years passed before I needed my money.

I had been teaching at the university and my boss Snave suddenly and rather arbitrarily decided that he would interfere with my teaching schedule. He ensured that I would have so few courses that I could barely pay my bills. That didn’t matter to Snave, for his six-figure salary was unaffected when his employees were worried about buying food. Snave’s predilections first came to my attention when it was time to select courses. When I asked about classes for the fall Snave said that I hadn’t filled out the requisite paperwork. Although the department under Snave had never fulfilled its responsibilities to the union—which it required each instructor to fill out an activity report—he suddenly and arbitrarily decided that the paperwork was crucial. The report itself was fairly straightforward, and all I needed to do was list the courses I had been teaching. I downloaded the form—for I was out of the province living at my cabin in the woods and had to run back and forth to check my email—and filled it out.

Since I wasn’t in the city, Snave began to use the strategy that I have seen many immature students use since. Some students will email the paper on the day it is due, but make sure they archive the file with a password. They know I won’t be checking my email for at least a day, and even more time will pass before I find out the document can’t be opened. By the time I tell them I can’t see their paper, they can pretend that it took them a day or two to check their email, and then reply with the paper they have been completing in the meantime. I’m sorry, they often write. I sent the wrong file. Such strategies are transparently fraudulent, for the size of the file gives away their scheme. They never consider that a word file with content is over a certain size, so they start a new document, write nothing since they know I won’t be able to open it, and then password it. That means the file is merely thirty kilobytes in size, although their essay should be more than triple that. With students, however, I can merely dock them marks for the late essay. As a precarious worker with a deceitful boss, I could only note Snave’s dishonesty, and then later, many years after the fact, write about it here.

Not surprisingly, Snave’s reply was another delaying tactic. He told me I’d put too much information on the form, and that I needed to delete some of what I had written. Accordingly, I opened the file, deleted the excess information and sent it back. He waited to read the email, and then waited to answer it. Finally, after several days had passed, during which he’d hired the offspring of his friends, he wrote back to say the forms were in order, but that he could not hire me until the committee met to examine what I’d written. I knew there was no committee, and he was stalling to see if he could hire someone else instead. Obviously, he’d developed some kind of antipathy to me. I wrote and asked if—based on my past performance and the years I’d given to the department—we might take the committee’s assessment as written. He didn’t want to go against the forms, however, as he told me in his delayed answer.

I waited another week, and then emailed him to ask about progress. The committee had yet to meet, and in fact would not be meeting until another month had passed, he told me. Also, even when they approved my report, they would need to sign it, and then I would need to look over their report and sign it as well. Then, he explained mock-regretfully, he could hire me for a few courses. There was nothing I could do about his nastiness, so I began to look for other places to work.

While I was lining up some other possibilities, Snave must have had one or a few employees break their promises, for he was suddenly solicitous, and all talk of forms and signatures disappeared. If it were me, I would have at least pretended to go through the motions if I’d made an initial request, but Snave was so assured of his power that he merely hired me over email for fewer courses than I would normally have.

Although I was dreading the low income year, for I was only going to make around eight thousand for the twelve-month period, I took the courses. Then I thought about how I was suddenly in a circumstance I had described to Biss. I needed him to follow through on his promise to pay back my money when I required it. I called him and explained the situation, and he told me he didn’t have the money. Because I knew about his rather flagrant materialism, I hadn’t lent him cash; instead, I had deposited it into his mortgage. I wanted to hide my money, to have him pay me interest on the loan, and to help out the family.

Biss and his wife wanted to apply to a government scheme in which families who had children with disabilities could sign their house over to the government and the government would set up a group home. The child could come to adulthood in their own home, the parents were assured of their child’s future well-being, and the government assumed responsibility for the care of their offspring after the parents died. Many parents of children with disabilities worry about their children after they are gone, and my friends were no different. Of course, given their spending habits, they used their mortgage rather like a bank. They paid the required monthly payments, and just when they were starting to reduce the principal, they would remortgage so that they could enjoy the free money they’d suddenly gotten their hands on.

I thought I would be able to help them by paying down their mortgage, and they might be inspired to pay enough of it off that they could take advantage of the government program. Instead, they had used my payments as a sudden windfall, and remortgaged straightaway. When we discussed it in person not long after, they laid out their eventual goals. They wanted to buy the house next to theirs, pay off their own home, and then take advantage of the government program. In none of their plans did I hear about paying me back, and when I said that, they became sheepish. My friend’s wife was embarrassed that they’d not even factored in repaying me, but Biss said rather gaily that my money had disappeared into the black hole of their happiness.

I asked where the money had gone, and he said they’d used it for a stair lift. His tendency to lie was not balanced by his ability to be consistent, however, for I remembered him bragging a few years earlier about how the lift had been paid for by a government grant. I mentioned that, and his wife became uncomfortable enough to leave the conversation. Finally, he admitted—a bit angrily after I’d put him on the spot—that they’d used the money to pay down their credit cards, and