Two-Man Tent

By Robert Chafe

In Two-Man Tent, one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, Robert Chafe, offers his long-awaited collection of short fiction. The individual stories are thematically linked by an interwoven, recurring tale of a long-distance relationship told in the form of text messages, chat sessions, and emails, as Chafe bring his singular talent for dialogue and scripting to work within new forms of communication. The results are stunning in an absorbing and thoroughly contemporary collection that reads like no other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd.
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781550816662

Robert Chafe

Robert Chafe is a writer, educator, actor, and arts administrator based in St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). He has worked in theatre, dance, opera, radio, fiction, and film. His stage plays have been seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and in the United States, and include Oil and Water, Tempting Providence, Afterimage, Under Wraps, Between Breaths, Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down, and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (adapted from the novel by Wayne Johnston). He has been shortlisted three times for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and he won the award for Afterimage in 2010. He has been a guest instructor at Memorial University, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, and the National Theatre School of Canada. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University. He is the playwright and artistic director of Artistic Fraud.

Book preview

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NO SWIMMING

THAT was the summer your mom got sick and we spent most days on our bikes going to and from the swimming hole down in the valley. Our town was one big bore and when summer came and the days warmed up there was nothing to do but sweat it out, or swim in the near freezing water of the brown river. Back in the days before cars I’m sure our town was green and nice, and the river clear, but all we ever knew was brown water and floating garbage and big metal pipes under the roads. North of it all, at the edge of the tree line, where the noise of the cars gave way to the sound of running water, the river was still like something wild. A long dirt road followed it upstream, away from the main part of town, and at a place that was flat enough, they made the swimming hole by building a dam of logs that looked like the wet wall of a cabin. Even farther upstream the river ran past a pig farm and on days when the wind was right you could smell the pigs and even hear them.

We would go down there pretty much every day it wasn’t raining, you with a big towel around your neck and that pink hat your mom made you wear. You said she was afraid of the sun ever since she’d gotten sick and I made fun of you anyway.

I didn’t usually care that you were my best friend and a girl except when you were wearing that hat. You could always pedal faster than me on account of your long legs. I used to ask you to slow down and you always did unless we were passing Bertie’s house. That long stretch of road with nothing but trees on both sides and old Bertie’s rundown shack and his dogs and his boozy breath you could smell for a mile. Bertie was the reason Mom wouldn’t let me go to the swimming hole unless you were with me. She called you responsible which is dumb because you were only two years older.

Mom said your family moved in across the street when I was still in diapers. She said you were only a baby yourself. She used to take care of you because your family was one of those ones where the mom had to work too. She used to work, and then she didn’t. I used to be allowed in your house, and then I wasn’t anymore because she got sick. Her skin used to be tanned and brown, and her white teeth, and those weekend lunches she would make us: tinned tomato soup and cheese slice sandwiches, with bottles of pop from the refill store at the centre of town. We lived on those until your Mom found a dead bumble bee floating in a root beer, complained to the town council that she thought the store must be washing the refill bottles by setting them out under the rain gutter, and it turned out to be true. You used to roll your big round eyes up in your head when you were embarrassed, or when you thought I was being dumb. Your smile was like your mom’s: wide open, full of white teeth, and contagious.

Every kid in town would ride up that old dirt road to the swimming hole, and on hot dry days no matter how early you went you could see the dust kicked up from their bike wheels that was still hanging in the air. We would arrive at the park and hardly be off our bikes before we were in the water, big mouthfuls of the river gulped and spat out in fountain streams. The lifeguard there came to know us pretty well, and he always called you my sister and we never told him the difference. He would let us plant ourselves right next to the dam, stand on the sand bags at the muddy bottom, and let that fast running water take our arms with it. One day some of the smaller kids in the shallow end lost their beach ball, and we could have rescued it but we decided it should wash out to the sea. The sun burned my back that day even though it was mostly cloudy and you said I would have to sleep on my stomach like your mom. On our way home, your dad pulled up in his little car. He was serious and forced your bike into the backseat and you into the front.

I didn’t get to see you much after your mom died. Your curtains were open all the time, but my mom told me not to go over. People came and went in the evening, the glow of lamps in the living room. I was driven half nuts. The sun was out every day and everyone was at the swimming hole except me. I was just riding my bike around and around the outside of my house, waiting for your door to open across the street and you to come out with your stupid pink hat on.

The day of her funeral I got in a fight with my mom because she wanted me to go, and she wanted me to wear the suit that she had bought me for my uncle’s wedding, even though it was too small already and had a shiny collar that I never did like. We got to the church late and me, Mom, and Dad had to sit all the way in the back row. The funeral was really long, and awkward, and there were a lot of people there that we usually only ever saw at the grocery store, and I couldn’t see you anywhere until the very end of it. Everyone was dressed nice, hair slicked back or bunched up or a hat on. Mrs. Stone and that fat lady that worked at the Red Circle, they were sitting in front of us and talking out loud about how bad your mom must have looked because they couldn’t even open the coffin at the wake. When the minister asked everyone to stand, I kept sitting until Dad pulled me up by the collar of my coat.

Two weeks after the funeral, I had just about had enough of not going swimming and I told Mom I was old enough to ride down to the river by myself and that you weren’t responsible at all, just tall. Something about me being so mad made her smile, but she still said I couldn’t go. She tried to hug me, which was weird, and told me I shouldn’t be afraid. Then she started going on about dying being just like going to sleep, even though that wasn’t even what we were talking about. I asked her again and she still said no, and when she did that I said a bad word and your name, and went and slammed as many doors in the house as I could find. I lay there on my bed then, waiting for Mom to change her mind, and watching the afternoon shadows stretch and grow. Dad wasn’t home yet and Mom was working in the garden, her knees in the dirt and her big gloves on, and so I turned on the TV in my room and I went out the front door. When I got to the swimming hole I had a crust of dust on my forehead and I just wanted to put my whole body under water so bad but the pool was empty and everyone was standing around looking at it. I thought there might have been an accident, because Mom was always saying it was only a matter of time before there was an accident the way some of the kids got on when they were at the swimming hole. Everyone was so quiet and creepy, and then I saw that they were looking at this thing. There was this thing floating in the middle of the swimming hole and I thought for sure there was an accident until one of the kids threw a big rock at it and the thing bobbed up and down in the water really slow and heavy.

I knew it was a pig for sure, but only when I saw its feet. Its skin was grey and blue, not pink like it was supposed to be. The moving water twirled it in a slow circle and tiny bubbles burst up and around it. The sun was hitting a swarm of flies buzzing above. No one knew exactly what to do, and neither did the lifeguard, but he said no one was allowed to go swimming. He wondered if maybe he should call someone, and I guess he did, because he was gone then for a while and when he came back there were these men in dirty clothes and big boots. They parked their green van all the way on the grass and they lay on their stomachs next to the water with long poles trying to hook the pig through its skin and bring it in. I thought they should take off their pants and go get it, and I must have said this out loud because Kelly Blunt from down the valley said no one was allowed in the water at all now and she pointed to a sign on a stick they had driven into the ground. So all of us sat there in our swim trunks on the grass in the long shade of the van and watched the men fishing for a pig.

And sitting there I was thinking about school and how long the summer was, and how it felt like it would never end. And I suddenly wanted it to. I wanted to be back in school because at least I would get to see you on the bus, and maybe in the cafeteria, even though you couldn’t sit with me because that would be ridiculous.

Two of the men finally managed to grab the pig by its front feet and pull with all their might until it slid out of the pool and onto the grass. I could see its nose and face then, its eyes rolled up and white. Its mouth was open and some dirty water ran out through its teeth. It was big and bloated and smelled really bad, so the men covered it with burlap. I asked one of the men how it ended up in the water in the first place and he didn’t hear me or didn’t know because he didn’t answer. Maybe it was getting a drink, or maybe it was swimming too. I was looking at the pig and its blue skin and its yellow teeth and its bad smell and I was wondering if this was why they had to keep your mom’s coffin closed.

I rode home on my bike, still dry, and the sun was moving fast across the sky. The green slime of the ditch was glowing like an alien thing and I was so hot from biking that the sweat was running down into my eyes. It felt like everything was going down the tubes and I was so upset I thought about driving my bike right into that ditch, and lying there for as long as it took to see if anyone would even notice. But that would be bad news and Mom had said that everyone had had just about enough of that already. As I passed by Bertie’s house, some of his dogs were out and on the road. I wanted to pedal harder then, but that’s what you would have done so I didn’t. I was so mad at you that I slowed down and stopped, I didn’t even really think about it, and that dog of Bertie’s, the biggest one, he stayed over on the other side of the road looking at me like he didn’t know what to do with himself either. We just stared at each other, the buzz in the power lines above and a giant black beetle on the road between us. And then Bertie himself came out of his house tucking in his shirt like he had just put on his pants, like he was only now getting up even though it was getting set to be dark soon. His dog was named Jack, and he called Jack so low I could barely hear him and Jack went running to his side and hid behind him like I was the one to be afraid of. And then Bertie and I looked at each other for a second, like Jack and I had done, and I didn’t know what to do so I said hello and he didn’t say anything like he hadn’t heard me so I said it again. There was a wind in the trees and then it was in his hair, blowing his hair and his beard around so you could see how long and dirty it was. A car was coming down the road, and Bertie looked up and saw it and then looked back at me. I said hello again, trying not to sound like I had said it twice before, and he did nothing but look at me. And when that car reached us it slowed down until it stopped right in the middle of the road between Bertie and me and rolled down its window. It was the man who