Short Circuit And Other Geek Stories

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Book excerpt

The Sea and His Guitar

The pain was electric music in his gut, placated by Morphine. He slept until the friend woke him.

"Your son… the boy you never knew as an adult, what became of him? Your mother's grandson."

"I met him at Brewster's a few days ago. He didn't recognize me. I explained I couldn't help it, the absences, the silence, they were imposed on me by his family."

"He knows that?"

"I don't know. My son plays guitar, too. Electric. My mother bought him his first guitar."

"Too cool."

"The black acoustic and the Godin are mine."

"You have three amps and one is real nice, a vintage 1960s Vox you got from Craig's List."

"No, I got it from Kijiji. I live in Alberta, Kijiji's big here. I took the bus to the guy's place, paid him cash on the spot."

"Nice Vox."

"I see the posters, can peek out the window at the street and the sun when the drapes are open, like now."

"You're miles from the ocean but I see your favorite ocean videos on Netflix, Van Gogh and the Scream on your living room wall."

"Yes, I like the sea and the Scream. I like the stars. My sister lives in Vancouver. We went whale watching a couple of times; took a lot of great photos, and saw the Aquarium. The jellyfish were my favorites, beautiful colors and shapes."

"Did you want to go back some day? Live there?"

"Too much on the fault line and too far from home. I'm a homebody."

"Too bad. The sea is our mistress."

"Yes. Music is our mistress, too. The stars and the Scream."

The cream-colored Vox amp stood in the corner, unused by the grandson after his father surrounded himself with the ocean; the wild dark sea and the music, dived into the night of the underworld and swam to the other side of the Universe where the stars blazed and the Scream was left behind.

"I have my memories," the father's son said and declined a recent photograph of the handsome young man in his forties, face illuminated and eyes wise and humorous.

We all have our memories, the guitar still sang—his black acoustic instrument in particular sang in the hands of the friend, who moderated the dead man's celebration of life when the sea and the Light claimed him again, back to the bosom of Unconsciousness and no more pain.

A Classic Meeting

She was twenty-nine that year, in September of 1974, and early for her first class of the morning. She sat in the front row, toward the right, in which direction the professor leaned coming through the door.

"A woman is like a rose," the professor said, ducking her head at the podium and reading from a Greek work in translation.

Intermittent joy — intermittent despair — ensued for the next thirty-nine years. Intervening husbands, children, wars, and politics. The student valued thought; the professor valued a career in academics. She who valued thought became enmeshed in her feelings. She who valued feelings was ensnared by a profession that valued thought.

Aphrodite (Venus) and Athena ran a footrace to win a golden apple from handsome Paris. Aphrodite won.

There is no escape from Aphrodite, the goddess of love, not even with Athena, who sprang wise from the brow of her father, Zeus.

Both lovely and kind women. The professor and the student.

They each had handsome sons and beautiful daughters. The jewels in their crown of life.

The jewels, as they both aged, and the apple passed to other hands.

A Cowboy in Maidenhead

Under the tilt of his cowboy hat, Ross Graham's Afro-Canadian face was black and rugged. Grey stubble tickled Cynthia's chin as he bent to kiss her cheek. The white apron she wore around her waist made her appear shorter and rounder than usual. Ross liked that. Don't talk to Ross about diets and weight loss, weight lifting and running.

"Just enjoy your meals, woman, and if you come back to Alberta, Canada with me, I'll cook you the juiciest Angus beefsteak you've ever tasted from the barbecue. And Canadian Club whisky with ice."

"Better than the Beefeaters?" Cynthia meant the gin.

"Better than gin and lime." Ross poured them drinks frequently during that first week and he smoked Cuban cigars in the house, with the windows open.

"Better than cocaine," he said.

"Oh, Ross." Cynthia wrung her hands and twittered. "How you talk. Crikey."

The Afro-American cowboy wore faded blue jeans with a huge round nickel belt buckle fastened to one side, beneath his belly. There was a pack of chewing gum in his back pocket. When in Cynthia's house, he took off his boots. The boots were sweat-stained and tooled, with one-inch heels, and so snug that he used a long shoe horn to remove them.

Cynthia didn't believe his droll stories about his ancestors tending cattle in the Hebrides before the Highland Clearances, before his great grandparents had immigrated to Canada. She wasn't daft. She knew about Alberta, Montana and the U.S. His home in Canada was the same to her as Montana or the Hebrides. A cowboy was a cowboy.

What was he doing here in England? In Berkshire? In Maidenhead?

Cynthia had never met a character like the dark man in plaid shirt and boots. Cynthia lived in a council house in Maidenhead, part of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Ross Graham had rented a black lorry at Heathrow Airport and set out for the Royal Borough. He ended up at a pub in Maidenhead where old Tom Squire directed him to Cynthia's B&B. They got along right away and she offered him room and board for the week.

"Where's this Prince of Wales?" Ross asked Cynthia the day after he had settled into his new digs. "I came all the way to London to meet the guy who's going to be king." They were sitting on a pink satin settee in her living room. She was working on a MENSA booklet.

"You mean Prince Charles?"

"Yes. The guy who likes trees and old buildings. Charles, Prince of Wales." Ross took a pencil and added a flourish to the equation with which Cynthia struggled. "There. That completes a logarithmic solution to the problem, Cynth."

"Elegant," she said. "That was the only question I didn't get."

The smoke alarm screeched. Steam issued from the stressed pressure cooker in the kitchen.

"Oh, damn." Ross put down the pencil.

"It's going to blow." Cynthia settled deeper into the 19th century settee.

"Probably." Ross grunted and admired his solution.

Cynthia peeked at the answer. "Oh, look, luv. They say we're in the top third. That's ace."

Sustained whistling came from the kitchen and the pot rattled on the old stove. "Yep. It's gonna blow," Ross said. "Never did trust them pressure cookers."

"Potatoes, corned beef, swedes everywhere," Cynthia said. "It will be a real mess."

"Rutabagas," Ross said. He selected a Cuban cigar from a wooden box and chewed off the end, then struck a match and lit the cigar.

He drew deeply on the stogie. Cynthia opened a window. The smoke alarm continued to shriek. She took out the battery and attempted to rescue the stew. There was a burst of steam from the kitchen, another piercing whistle, and the pot exploded.

Swedes, potatoes, meat and gravy oozed down the yellow walls and ceiling. It was visible even from the next room. Ross took another puff of his cigar. The smoke alarm stuttered and stopped. Cynthia wailed.

Ross drawled, “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse.

Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music…”

"…wherever she goes." Cynthia wiped her hands on her apron and untied the strings from behind her back. "I could have been killed," she said.

"Well, let's go out for a meal, shall we?" The tall Afro-Canadian got up and began to pull on his boots.

"Good idea," Cynthia said. "Just give me a minute." She swiped at a brown viscous blob of meat sliding its way down the wall next to the electric meter. "Your lorry or my car?"

"My truck. Don't like your puny little tin can." Ross contemplated the gravy on the wall. "I'm taking the truck out tomorrow. There's a herd of wild horses in Kent, I heard. I've been meaning to check it out. Came all the way to England to check out the wild horses here and talk to the Prince. Seems to me a fella could make a few thousand pounds taming horseflesh here. Maybe rent a horsebox for transporting them if the truck ain't big enough. I do love wild horses. Not a lot of 'em left at home in Alberta. I hunted them all down near Lethbridge one summer, in a canyon there, magnificent animals, Cynth. I broke a few."

"Broke?" Cynthia adjusted her hair in front of a cracked mirror in the hallway. Ross sucked on the stump of his cigar. Stew began to drip from the kitchen ceiling. He could see it from where they stood chatting.

"That means I tamed them for riding," he explained.

"Oh. Cowboys break horses, milk cows…"

"Cowpokes don't milk cows. We run thousands of head on open ranges, round them up in the fall, sell them at the market for beef. Farmers milk cows, eh." Ross ran his hand over a neat thatch of wiry salt and pepper hair.

Cynthia smiled at him and twisted a strand of his hair between her fingers. "I don't think you're allowed to break these wild horses in Kent. They're protected by conservationists."

"Such as the Prince?" Ross ground out his cigar in a half shell which served as an ashtray by the settee.

"Yes, I suppose so. Well, yes, Charles is interested."

"I want to see the Prince of Wales." Ross scratched the back of his neck. "He's gonna help me cull that herd."

"Cull the herd?" Cynthia brushed a piece of lint from his lapels.

"Take out the feistiest of them. Thin the herd and take the ones I want."

"You'd come all the way back here from Kent with a herd of wild horses in a lorry?"

"Do it all the time at home," the cowboy said.

"How are you going to make money off that?" Cynthia asked.

"Oh, a good piece of broke horseflesh will fetch a tidy sum at the auction."

"Blimey," she said. "That's brill. Is it lots of work?"

Ross laughed. He tipped his hat in the afternoon sun as they left the red brick council house. "No more than shearing sheep," he said. "A well-trained pony can do many things."

"Such as?"

"Oh, horse racing. Sheep or cattle herding. Amusement. Riding. Carousels. Fox hunting? I've heard of that. Don't tell me there's no 'do ye ken John Peel'." Cynthia glanced again at the mess behind them before they left her house.

Ross opened the door of the truck and Cynthia clambered in. She adjusted her hair again, looking in the rearview mirror.

"That's debatable," she said. "Fox hunts anyway. But if you say so."