Loose End Read online

  PRAISE FOR LOOSE END:

  Ivan’s genius here, as always, is in the composition of a story— like a most accomplished photographer, Ivan knows exactly what to let into the frame and what to crop out, where to center the image and how to pull the most interesting elements into the foreground. Many of the stories in the collection are moments or stories that could happen to anyone, but it takes the miraculous skill of an Ivan Coyote to turn those rough, muddy bits into the collection of jewels in Loose End.

  —gendercrash.com

  With stirring emotional simplicity Coyote lays out adroit observations of fellow denizens...virtually every one of the book’s 48 pieces registers strongly.

  —The Vancouver Review

  [Ivan E. Coyote] is a remarkable storyteller.... Loose End is like Narnia for the bent. To read it is to open a secret passageway into a world that is, well, open.... This is Coyote’s strongest work to date.

  —Herizons

  Some of the most touching and funniest stories deal with the complications of living, as the author does, on the borders of established gender roles. Others simply observe the world, reminding us that the wonderful, the magical, can be found in small things.

  —GLBTRT Newsletter, American Library Association

  NOMINATED FOR THE 2006 FERRO-GRUMLEY AWARD

  Loose End

  stories by

  Ivan E. Coyote

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  VANCOUVER

  LOOSE END

  Copyright © 2005 by Ivan E. Coyote

  2nd printing: 2008

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical – without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  #102-211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, B.C.

  Canada V6A 1Z6

  www.arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for its publishing activities.

  Text and cover design by Shyla Seller

  Front cover and inside photography by Dan Bushnell

  Photograph of Ivan E. Coyote by Mark Mushet

  Printed and bound in Canada on 100% post-consumer recycled and processed chlorine-free paper.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Coyote, Ivan E. (Ivan Elizabeth), 1969-

  Loose end / Ivan E. Coyote.

  ISBN 1-55152-192-X

  I. Title.

  PS8555.O99L66 2005 C813’.6 C2005-904468-3

  ISBN-13 978-155152-192-3

  eISBN-13 978-155152-275-3

  Earlier versions of these stories appeared in Xtra! West. “Fish Stories” and “Older Women” were previously published in One Man’s Trash (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002). “I Like to Wear Dresses” was previously published in Urban Coyote: A Yukon Anthology, edited by Michele Genest and Dianne Homan (Lost Moose, 2001).

  Contents

  Saturdays and Cowboy Hats

  Fish Stories

  Older Women

  There Goes the Neighbourhood

  Handy

  Rumble in the Park

  Off-Leash

  Coming Up Roses

  Emergency

  Act of God

  The Ides of March

  Dear Mom

  Long Live the Difference

  If I Was a Girl

  Dear Dad

  Jake Has a New Handle

  The Femme Test

  Hairy Christmas

  Slip Me a Little

  I Like to Wear Dresses

  Cougar Sightings Make Residents Uneasy

  A Week Straight

  Whip It Out

  The Smart Money

  Catholic Girls

  Butch Like Me

  Mars and My Anus

  I Can’t Answer That

  Single Malt

  Comfort Food

  What I Did to My Finger

  Take That

  Spare Change

  My Dad Told Me

  Fly Right

  Black, Blue, and Green

  My Name is Sam

  Your Mom Told Me

  Battle of the Bulge

  Good Fences

  Game On

  Family Album

  Damage Deposit

  Outdated

  Brave New World

  What If

  For Rent

  Afterword

  Saturdays and Cowboy Hats

  Every Saturday morning all summer long, the parking lot across the street from me is transformed. Friday night, it’s full of sports cars and sparsely moustached, beer-guzzling boys with cell phones and car stereos that shake the glass in my front windows, but come Saturday morning at eight, it’s a farmer’s market. There is the fey fella selling homemade dog biscuits, the family-run fireweed honey corporation, the lesbian cheese makers from Saltspring Island, a grumpy potter, and a sunburnt man selling bundles of organic mustard greens and butter lettuce. You can buy cherries and maple syrup, visit the latte wagon, and get gardening advice. You can sign petitions and join a jam-making group that donates to the food bank. There are face painters and banjo players. People wear sandals and the dogs rarely get into fights, because everyone is too busy saying hello and showing off their new bedding plants. Yard sales spring up spontaneously on street corners.

  All of this appeals to the increasingly not-so-latent hippie in me. I mean, I still like to wear shoes in the city and I wholeheartedly believe in the frequent washing of one’s clothing, but there is still something of the small-towner in me – I like to know my neighbours, I like to meet the guy who picked the cherries I’m about to eat.

  I usually throw on a pair of jeans and take the dogs with me. We always complete a loop around the lake before we hit the market, to avoid any unsightly squatting in the middle of the town square.

  I saw them getting out of a late model minivan, a young, slender mother and her maybe six-year-old kid. She was in a windblown dress that wrapped around her legs, the kid in blue cords with frayed cuffs, a red and yellow striped T-shirt, and now colourless canvas sneakers. The mom had a canvas shopping bag over her shoulder and the kid had a comic book rolled up and pushed into the back pocket of his cords.

  “Mom, lookit the little dog, he’s sooo wee. . . .” The little boy bent down to pet my Pomeranian, and his mom stood up straight and slammed the door of the minivan shut.

  “Olivia, you have to ask the man if the dog is friendly before you touch it. Maybe it doesn’t like little girls.”

  I looked at the kid again, and she stared back up at me. Her hair was straw yellow, and cut short. She had one hand on her hip, her elbow resting on the comic in her back pocket. The knees of her cords were worn and grass-stained. One shoelace was hanging untied, flattened, and muddied. The only things about her that matched her name were two tiny stud earrings, dark blue and sparkling, out of place with her tomboy face.

  I wondered if Olivia got her ears pierced to make Olivia happy, or her mom. Maybe her grandma took her to the salon in a last-ditch feminine attempt to make up for the striped T-shirts and dirty knees.

  “She’s not a mister, Ma.” Olivia spoke matter-of-factly, rolling her eyes back like kids do when their parents say dumb things. “So can I pet your dog, or what?”

  I nodded, struck as dumb as her mother. I couldn’t make my mouth work, and there were tears in my eyes. I wanted to show Olivia my new fishing rod; I wanted to build her a tree fort with a r
ope ladder. I wanted to make her a belt with interchangeable brass buckles and teach her how to perfect her wrist shot. I wanted to play street hockey with a tennis ball, and get headaches from eating our Slurpees too fast.

  I wanted to pass her a note written in pencil on a piece torn from a brown paper bag that said: YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE. AND ONE DAY EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, I PROMISE YOU THAT. OH, AND LEARN A TRADE YOU CAN FALL BACK ON.

  Olivia’s mom stood next to me on the sidewalk. “She really loves little dogs. She’s always begging to get one, but we live in a one-bedroom apartment.”

  Goliath was flat on his back now, all four legs in the air, working the cute angle. Olivia was scratching his belly with both hands.

  “Come on, honey, we have to shop. You’ve got karate at noon. Say goodbye.”

  Olivia jumped up, wiping her hands on her faded red and yellow shirt. She looked me up and down. Her eyes rested unabashedly on my dusty workboots, then my jeans, my Snap-On Tools belt buckle, the wallet in my back pocket, my black T-shirt, naked earlobes, and freshly shorn hair. She chewed her gum slowly on one side of her mouth and hooked her thumb through an empty belt loop.

  “Thanks fer lettin’ me pet him. He’s real cute, huh? What’s his name?”

  “Goliath.” I could still barely talk, I was still afraid the tears were going to spill over my bottom lids. I wanted her to remember me as being tall and dry-eyed, just in case I was the first one of her people she had met so far.

  “It was really nice to meet you, Olivia.” I extended my hand, and she shook it, her face deadly serious. Her mother nodded a polite goodbye. Olivia just kept shaking my hand.

  “One more thing . . . ” she said, squinting up at me, the sun bright over my shoulder, “I need to know, where’d ya get that cowboy hat?”

  Fish Stories

  I don’t know why I love fish stories, but I love fish stories. The one that got away, the one that didn’t, how big it was and how feisty, and how you cooked it and how everyone said it was the best fish they ever had. I love fishing, that combination of true relaxation and every cast could land you a big one excitement known only to the angler. I love how your sweater smells like campfire, fish blood, lake water, and wind when you get home. And, after all that, you get to tell fish stories.

  They call him Joe Fish, although I do not believe that is his legal name. Joe Fish is what they call him, on account of how much he loves to fish. I met him telling fish stories in that little corner store sandwich bar place under the Skytrain cut, between the Vietnamese hair salon and the drop-off laundry place. It’s an unlikely strip in an unlikely spot, but it is where I most like drinking coffee, even though Jeff the proprietor refuses to get an espresso machine (in order, he says, to keep the film guys from coming in). It is my drip coffee hangout of choice, mostly on account of the old men and their fish stories.

  Fish stories are not always only about fish, you see.

  Joe Fish is a soul fisherman, like I was when I was a little gaffer, rain or shine, war or peace, starving or stuffed; any fishing is better than none. By the time most of our alarm clocks go off, he is on his way back into town with the catch of the day, just in time to drop by the old sandwich bar for a bowl of tomato vegetable and black coffee with half a pack of Sweet ’N Low, and a few fish stories.

  Joe and I, we’re in the morning crowd. Round about coffee time, all the male nurses who work at the old folks’ home next door parade in for BLTs and quick smokes, and when the talk turns maybe to politics or taxes or what a freak George Bush is – how his eyes are too close together like some kind of warthog or something – that’s about when Roger the Rascally Rabbit shows up. At first I didn’t know how a seventy-nine-year-old man would land a nickname like that, but then I sat down next to him at the sandwich bar, and we got to telling Roger’s version of fish stories. He has shrapnel in his head and his right hip, and the pills take care of the grand mal seizures he gets since he fought in Korea, but he gets these little ones, smells weird things, gets fuddled up, gets lost in places he knows where he is, stuff like that, but not since he started taking the pot.

  “Here I am,” he says, pulling out two baggies he got from the Compassion Club, “two bags of medicinal grade weed in my pocket, and all I feel like doing is popping home for a shot of rye. Go figure.”

  Roger the Rascally Rabbit used to be an electrician. He has outlived both of his children and his marriage. Fish stories.

  The other day, Joe Fish brings this buddy of his in. I had just got back from the Yukon and had some new fish stories of my own, and so we all got to talking. Joe’s buddy is named Mike. He’s seventy-eight but looks maybe sixty, a real spry fella. I told them I was on my way back from camping in Squamish, where the springs are running.

  “Which river?” Mike asks. “The Cheakamus or the Chuckanut?” Mike knows the country. Paradise Valley. He figures I’m okay, he likes me all right; I know his stomping grounds.

  “The best whore that ever works in Squamish lives out near there.” Mike says. “I should take you to meet her. She’s retired, but she makes the best apple pie I ever had. I always had something of a soft spot saved for her, a real good old gal.” He winks at me.

  I think he thinks I’m a young guy, but I’m not sure. I smiled and winked back, sincerely, thinking of all the whores I’ve loved, and we drank coffee for a minute.

  Mike looked kind of sentimental, so I had to ask him: “What was her name, Mike? The best whore that ever worked in Squamish, what was her name?”

  Mike wrinkled his nose and shook his head slowly. “You know, I cannot for the life of me remember her name. That’s the thing about getting old that fools you. You think you’re only going to forget stuff that doesn’t really matter, but that’s not what happens at all. You just forget.”

  Suddenly, Jeff the proprietor jumps up and unplugs something, just as Connie the junkie comes in for her smokes. Du-Maurier King Size. Then she goes over to the pay phone, picks it up, listens, slams it back down. “Jeezus, when they gonna come fix this thing?”

  Jeff shrugs sympathetically. “I called ’em, told ’em it’s broke, but who knows with those guys.”

  Connie leaves. Jeff waits a bit until he’s sure she’s around the corner, and then plugs the pay phone back in again. “Hey, I feel bad sometimes, but I can’t have her sitting on the edge of my sandwich counter doing business, now can I?”

  “You are perfectly right. A fella can’t eat his sandwich with that kind of activity sat right beside you.” Roger the Rascally Rabbit is shocked by Connie and her scabby legs and bruises, as are we all, in our own ways. “Besides, she should know better. This is a family establishment we got ourselves here.”

  We all nod into our Styrofoam cups, drink more coffee, and watch the traffic. Tell stories.

  Older Women

  The old guy on the corner has the nicest yard on the block. Ours has the tallest sunflowers, and the lilacs, but Anton has the time to really prune his shrubs. His grass is always cut golf green short, he has one of those ice cream cone flowering trees, and wisteria vines around his windows, and cherry trees, both pink and white in spring. He also has the veggie plot, with tomatoes in rows like soldiers and beans all at attention, tied up with bits of blue jerrycloth towels. Even his broccoli looks organized.

  Anton was a tough nut to crack. I’ve lived two houses down from him for nine and a half years now, and he only started to like me last January, when I bought a Ford Taurus station wagon just like the one he has, except his is white.

  I was okay enough to nod at before, when I drove the beat-up van, mostly because we kept the yard up and he saw us leaving for work early in the morning and dutifully walking our dogs at night. But never in nine years had he actually spoken to me, until the Taurus.

  His wife had always chatted over the fence to everyone when he wasn’t around, but she had passed on about two years ago. I remember the red lights swirling on my wall and ceiling when the ambulance came, and how he kept all the blinds d
own for a couple of months after she was gone, and all their kids’ cars with Ontario and Alberta plates were parked on the street for a while.

  “Nice looking car,” Anton said when he saw my Taurus. “Good shape. Good car. She a ’93?”

  I nodded. “It’s not the sexiest ride, but I travel a lot. I can still sleep in the back, room for the dogs. I still miss the Valiant.”

  He scoffed and shook his head. “That piece of garbage. I wanted to throttle you some mornings, listening to you trying to get that thing started. Getting where you’re going on time is sexy. You get a little bit older, son, gas mileage will become what is sexy to you. You did a smart thing, to buy yourself a decent car for once.”

  No wonder he didn’t talk to me for nine years. All this time he thought there was a sixteen-year-old boy living nearby with no apparent parental guidance. He was probably concerned about his car stereo and the tools in his garage.

  He started to salute me after that, fan rake at his side, as I walked by on my way to the park or unloaded my groceries. We started to bitch about nobody following the thirty-kilometre-an-hour zone signs, and how crazy drivers never slow down to let even baby carriages or little strings of ducklings cross safely these days. Last month, he gave me some pears from his tree in a Safeway bag when I walked past with the dogs. I gave him a jar of peaches my aunt had sent down for my birthday, because an exchange of fruit seemed in order.

  So last week, my girlfriend from Montana was in town. I introduced her to Anton when we were all dressed up and getting in the car to go out for dinner. She was wearing a velvet dress and tall black boots. Anton made exaggerated movements above his head with one hand, like he was removing an imaginary feathered cap, and bowed deeply to her from his side of the chain link fence. “A pleasure, miss. Have a lovely evening, you two.” He winked approvingly at me as I opened the car door for her, and smiled and waved when we drove off.

  The next time I walked by, he motioned me over to the fence conspiratorially. “Come, come,” he said.

  Anton seemed excited, and there was a new spark in his watery eyes. “She is beautiful.” He smiled widely, his chest and arms still powerful under his cardigan and grey T-shirt. “She is maybe a little older than you, no?”