The Adirondack Haystack Still Floats

By Nicholas Olson

In these times where success is measured in dollar figures and the remarkable people are those with the most views on a screen, the unexceptional must be examined. Not from behind the glass of a BMW M3 while driving across town, but rather from the bridges under which they live and teach philosophy, from the community centres in which they share lessons of furniture sales, from living rooms in which they build shrine-like robots. From these settings where mediocrity is presupposed, The Adirondack Haystack Still Floats brings fairy-tale realities and surreal episodes to the reader in a dynamic discovery of truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304953315

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The Adirondack Haystack Still Floats

The Adirondack Haystack Still Floats

Stories by Nicholas Olson

The Unknown Collarbone

I ever show you how to break a man’s wrist, thumb, and collarbone at once? Mais ouais, c’est facile. I can show you. I used to get in fights all those times. Haven’t been in a fight in years now, Charles says.

You’re too old for fighting, Sam says. He doesn’t know how to respond to violence. Even talking about violence.

I’m not that old, Sam. I still stand up to those damn crack houses. I’ve broken ribs and been beat up like crazy ‘round here. I’ve learned that you gotta fight through their bullshit and you gotta bullshit through the rest. Stick with me, Sam. You’ll see. Charles says this while nodding his head, looking out along the abandoned steel warehouse across the street.

You wanna beer, Sam? Charles asks. Sam nods.

Charles stands up from his chair, bracing himself against the balcony railing in front of him. He hides a wince behind a cough when his knee passes a certain angle of motion. He does his best to walk to his fridge inside the apartment without showing that his knee is giving him trouble. He swings open the fridge door.

Tabarnak! I’m out of beer. Charles stares at his fridge of cheese slices and pickled eggs. Sam sits on a milk crate on the back balcony and leans on the red brick wall of the third-floor apartment building. He hears Charles swearing as he comes back outside. Sam and Charles are new neighbours. Sam moved in a few months back—an anglophone student from out west with no other friends in the city besides Charles who has lived in the same room for twenty-two years. They share one balcony in the front, one in the back, and one long wall between their apartments. Sam is in his twenties, Charles in his seventies. They both need a beer.

Well, I guess we’re going out, Sam.

What? Why don’t you get it delivered from the depanneur like usual?

No, not today. Charles says.

I can go get it myself, just stay here. Sam was thinking about Charles’ knee, but didn’t allude to it directly. Charles is the only person in Montreal that Sam feels he can trust, so he tries to look after him like he would look after an amnesic, single uncle.

It’s fine, on y va! Charles stands in the doorway and reaches for his cane behind the washing machine. He begins easing himself down the iron spiral staircase that is attached to the back balcony. It bends and sways with every step he descends. The constant vibrations of trucks passing on the adjacent raised highway gently encourage Charles down the stairs and into the alley of his decaying Saint-Henri neighbourhood.

The closest corner-store depanneur is a three-minute walk for Sam. Alone, it would take Charles ten minutes. Carrying a dozen one-litre bottles on the way back will take even longer. Charles reaches the bottom of the spiral staircase and turns the opposite direction of any of the nearby depanneurs.

Where the hell are you going, Charles? Sam calls from halfway up the stairs.

Need to get some money.

I can pay this time, man, Sam answered. Charles feeds Sam more beer than he’d ever be able to begin paying off, but Sam attempts to instill a balance anyhow.

J’m’en fous. This guy owes me anyway. And I want to show you something. Sam hops over the staircase railing from ten feet up and lands next to Charles.

You’re nuts, man, Charles says, and honks a laugh. Charles limps down the lane that no longer serves access to vehicles. It is now used as a backyard and garbage den for the apartment buildings of Rue St-Ferdinand that stand shoulder to shoulder.

"I ever tell you that this street, St-Ferdinand, is the worst street in Montreal? I’ve lived on this street for twenty fucking years. Twenty. Whores, drugs, guns, gangs. C’est vrai. Some people you gotta leave alone, but some people you gotta show that you aren’t gonna take their bullshit. I learned everything I know from Saint-Henri. Including English.

This guy up here, Francois, he’s fucking nuts. Runs this crack house. Sells out of it. Sometimes twenty people pass out there a night. Then he steals their stuff, gives them a small hit and kicks them out when they’re too high to remember what happened. Then he spends the money on things he don’t deserve. The cops don’t know nothing about it. But I know about it, Sam. And I know the cops. I’d never rat on him. But he owes me forty bucks.

You want me to meet you at the dep? Sam asks.

No. This is what I was doing in your age in Saint-Henri and you should learn it too. Someday you’ll be able to back me up. How many years you have, Sam?

Twenty-one, Sam answered.

When I was having twenty-one years a bottle of beer was thirty-five cents at the bar, and a glass was a nickel. But now we need that forty bucks. One time we was in that bar next to the pizza place—Bar St-Jacques, then it had a different name. What was it, Charles? I don’t remember— C’est quoi en francais, Charles? C’mon, not even in French. Anyway, it was a mafia bar. I was drunk and had to piss. Someone was in the bathroom, so I went out the back door to the lane. I started to piss on the wall and looked over to two guys in suits beating up this whore. They saw that I saw and came over while I was pissing. I started crying and crying, you know, ‘Don’t hurt me, I’m sorry,’ mais pas vraiment. But I had real tears. I got on my knees on my own puddle of piss and begged. They turned back to the girl, I found a steel pipe in the weeds against the building and hit them both in the head from behind. I picked up the girl and carried her to the hospital at Verdun. I’m maybe fifty years older now but I can still do that, Sam. Saint-Henri hasn’t changed. You’ll see.

Sam is never sure how much of what Charles says is true, but he follows him in case this story actually is. Like a loyal offspring he follows him to the potential crack house in case Charles’ fragile knee or flimsy cane give out. He follows him because someday Charles might need someone to drag his limp body home and because he doesn’t have a son to do it for him. Maybe he will even learn something.

They arrive at the end of the lane where the only way out is through a narrow passage between buildings that leads to the back door of the depanneur. Sam did not know it existed. Charles steps up to the porch of the ground-level apartment at the end of the block. Cheap yellow light and raspy Quebecois music pour out the open door. Empty transparent-red dime-bags litter the floor and porch. Charles steps in the doorway, holds his cane like a baseball player might, rotating it in anticipation up near his ears. He looks back and grins at Sam who is still in the alley.

Francois? C’est Charles. There is no answer above the music. Charles bangs on the doorframe and they hear movement in the living room. Francois appears in a tank top and track pants and bare feet, holding a purse by one of the straps. He has medium-length oily hair and one eye significantly smaller than the other. He is half the age of Charles but nearly twice the age of Sam.

Quesse tu veux? Francois asks what he wants.

My forty bucks. Ca fait deux mois. Charles claims it has been two months by pushing two fingers in front of Francois’ face, cane still in the air.

J’t’ai deja paye, calisse! Semaine derniere. Francois claims that he paid last week and slaps Charles’ hand out of his face. Sam sees a massive television with stereo system in the back of the apartment where the music is coming from. A woman sits passed out on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the television.

Ta yueule! Stop bullshitting me, Francois! Charles switches to English. I got Sam here to back me up, plus I know the cops have been asking around about your place. Sam looks up from his feet when he hears his name.

La police, eh Charles? You gonna rat on me?

Not if you pay me, Charles answers.

Francois rubs his nose every two seconds. He looks past Charles to size up Sam who looks on innocently at the girl in the apartment. Francois shakes his head as though looking at an idiot dog that a person can’t train, chewing on a $200 pair of shoes.

Ostie de tabarnak, Charles. I paid. You can’t remember. You’re too fucking old, Francois says.

Charles’ bald forehead gets hot and flush. He knows his age but when men like Francois claim that he’s losing his mind, Charles gets ornery. If he has anything, he thinks, it is a sharp mind. Charles swings his cane and hits Francois hard on the side of the neck. Francois cowers and shields his head while Charles repeatedly strikes him above the shoulders. From the ground, Francois throws a fist and lands it in Charles’ protruding gut, then kicks him in his right knee and Charles howls and collapses to the floor. They roll on top of one another for several seconds—a man of seventy years and a middle-aged man high on stimulants—Quebecois pop music scratching in the background. Sam stands outside unable to move.

Soon Charles has Francois pinned to the ground with his cane pressing on his neck. He takes Francois’ arm, straightens his elbow, grips his thumb with his hand. If he leans forward he will break Francois’ thumb, wrist, and collarbone. Charles notices the grey hair on his own arm and liver spots on the back of his hand. He feels a sharp pain in his right knee. He has been fighting this same fight for fifty years. Some lowlife who owes him pocket change. He wonders if he should give up, but he knows that if he stops fighting for what is rightfully his, then he gives up on his entire neighbourhood. For a moment he is not sure where he is or whose thumb, wrist, and collarbone he is about to break. He leans in and breaks the man’s thumb and wrist anyway. The collarbone remains intact.

Francois rolls on the ground and Charles gets up with the aid of his cane, goes into the living room, unzips the couch cushion and takes $40 from a plastic bag and puts it in his wallet. He goes to the girl next to the television and pokes her with his foot. She gurgles a response. Charles comes back through the hallway, steps over Francois, jabs him in the ribs with his cane, and proceeds outside to meet Sam, who hasn’t moved since arriving. Sam stands uncomfortably looking at Francois squirming in pain.

Let’s go, Sam, Charles says with heavy breath.

Should we help the girl, Charles?

C’est correct. She’s fine.

Charles leads the way through the narrow passage, leaning on his cane so as not to bend his right knee. Sam follows Charles closely. He didn’t help Charles any, nor did he learn anything.

As they move through the passage, Charles reaches in his jacket pocket for his handkerchief to wipe blood from his hands. In the same pocket he feels a small plastic rectangle and pulls out a red transparent dime-bag with two $20 bills folded up tightly inside. He remembers that Francois had given him the money on his balcony two weeks before. He won’t bother telling Sam.

You see, Sam. Stick with me. Charles says, even though his body is failing him and he