 |
| Nibbles. |
Chapter Thirty-Two
Brubaker had developed 12 simple little exercises…
“If I had known I was going to last this long,” Nibbles told Bru. “I would have looked after myself a lot better.”
Bru nodded a trifle glumly. After a few workouts, he began to notice little things. Like the fact that his neck ached, and his shoulders hurt when he went for a walk after supper.
The workouts had their unexpected consequences. Both men were pretty determined to stick with it. Nibbles was focused on chest curls with a lot of stretching, but was only doing about five exercises.
Bru might start off with a different one every day, but he tried to do all of them religiously, every second day, and not before forty-eight hours had elapsed. Bru’s mom had studied physical education at university and confirmed a few things Nibbles said.
Stuff like, ‘globules of lactic acid among the muscle fibres,’ et cetera.
Yet even though he knew the theory, it was Nibbles who showed up every day, and wanted to get quick results. Brubaker was committed to the long term. He knew that if he just stuck with it, conceivably till the day he died, he would reap huge health benefits.
Not just big muscles, or a big chest, or big arms. Bru absolutely wouldn’t consider food supplements, (they cost money,) and wouldn’t do steroids if threatened with death.
Bru hated cheats of any kind. No way. But he figured on avoiding osteoporosis, and a few other things. He didn’t care about body-building.
He saw bodybuilding as a sign of insecurity, in the same way that wrestlers appeal to twelve-year old mentalities. It was the idea of ‘strength,’ the idea of being a ‘strong’ man. It was an immature response to irrational fears. He didn’t need that bullshit. He needed to strengthen his back, to build his aerobic capacity. To lower his resting heart rate and blood pressure. It would help him to use oxygen more effectively, and to lower his blood pressure by blowing off steam. It would relieve stress, and improve self-esteem.
Brubaker wanted to feel better.
Chuck really didn’t need to look like Arnold Swartzenegger, or to get back at beach bullies for kicking sand on him. Bru just sat down and wrote a list after some small consultation. Nibbles had spent a lot of time in jail, and therefore knew the weight training thing, somewhat.
“So, Nibbles, I seem to be doing more of them in the same amount of time.”
Who ignored him for the most part, as he grunted and groaned his way through yet another set.
“Ugh.” He acknowledged, but who can tell how Bru actually knew it was a response.
“Ugh.” Said Nibbles.
Bru hoped the neighbors didn’t have their ears up to the wall.
“Ugh.” Said Nibbles.
Brubaker just sat there smoking, and thinking about all the weird stuff in his head.
His workout complete, he would leave sooner or later for a five kilometre bike ride.
After supper, he took a two and a half to three kilometre walk in the park.
“Ugh.” Said Nibbles.
“Ugh. To you too.” Murmured Brubaker.
Last winter, Bru had walked to the store pretty much every evening after supper. After seven hundred and fifty metres, his right foot would go numb. The ankle would go numb, then the numbness would go up the shin bone. After a while, his foot would flop around like a dead thing on the end of his leg. It wasn’t painful or anything, but he was sort of resolved not to apply for jobs driving a propane truck.
“Last night I went for a walk and my foot didn’t go numb for, I don’t know, maybe about twelve hundred metres. At some point it did go numb, and when I got home the numbness literally went up to my hip bone.”
Bru was suffering degenerative disc disease in his back. Also the T-6 vertebral body had a two-point-five centimetre hemangioma, a benign tumor, growing on it. Certain activities, such as pole-sanding drywall, or raking leaves, could cause him a lot of pain from that. Too much stress would occasionally cause a kind of chest-encircling pain that resembled a heart attack, and kept him flat on his back until it passed.
The doctors had checked out his heart. There was nothing to find. It was just a mild inflammation of something, impinging on a radial nerve right in between his shoulder blades.
It was fun trying to explain that one to a doctor. Bru had learned to be careful. Bru learned that to stand in front of the drawing table would cause his legs to go numb. To sit for too long at a desk made his back hurt. To walk too far caused back pain. To bend and pick up a penny could cause a lumbar spasm that might go on for days or even weeks.
After years of this life, Bru began to experience recurring problems with severe and chronic depression. The man had lost every job he ever had, going back to May 4, 1989, after all. Yet at some point he had kicked the pain pills and the tranquillizers, the cocaine, the muscle relaxers, the whiskey. He had carefully avoided alcoholism.
He could enjoy a beer once in a while, without having to stay on some wagon for the rest of his life, or watch that life go down the tubes. It was a tough way to live. Bru had never sunk so low as to inject drugs into his veins, and considered himself lucky to have never even seen methamphetamines.
He figured he wasn’t missing anything he needed. All he really wanted from life was to be a writer, and maybe even find a girlfriend and a home someday. He wanted to be left alone.
In some ways, reflected Nibbles, as he stretched this way and that, Bru was trying to save the world when he really couldn’t even save himself.
Maybe that’s why he did it.
Twelve simple little exercises...
“I saw a good one on the news the other day.”
“Really?” Brubaker was only half listening.
Bru was thinking again. You could always tell. He got this faraway look on his face.
“Some wise guy was scoping out a business, somewhere down in Florida, Georgia, or somewhere.” Nibbles, as he sat on a steel folding chair for a moment and took a breather. “He was doing a bacon and eggs and he tripped the alarm. Anyway, the cops were coming, sirens going full tilt, so he ran around behind the building, jumped a couple of fences and hid in the long grass…”
“Oh, no.” Bru laughed. “No.”
“Yep.” Agreed Nibbles.
“No.” Said Bru while Nibbles just grinned.
“So what happened?” Prompted Bru.
“Alligator took off his head, his shoulder and his arm, apparently.” Came the reply.
“Holy, fucking…Jesus. Man, it’s just not worth it. How big was this thing?”
“The TV showed them dragging it out. It looked about fifteen feet long.” Nibbles estimated.
“Yeah. They’d cut it open to get the body parts. Give the man a Christian burial.”
Nibbles saw that Bru was off into la-la land again. He got up to begin another set of chest curls.
“The guy must have thought it was a fish farm or something.” Nibbles mused aloud.
“Some of them exotic fish are worth the big bucks to a collector. Should have read the sign. Them fuckin’ crack-heads. But I heard something funny on the news last night.” Began Bru.
It was show and tell time. They did it every day. Nibbles knew everyone in town and had all the gossip.
“What’s that?” Nibbles asked.
“Lennox is supposedly the most livable town in Ontario.” Chuck had a note of wonder, a kind of disbelief.
The unspoken question hung there.
How bad are all them other places?
How much did they pay the editor to put that in the magazine?
Seated there at his desk, Bru began to feel a million tiny pin pricks all around the central, fleshy part of his back, mostly below the shoulder blades, going down to his buttocks. He got up and began to move around a bit.
“Well, I suppose I’d better go for my ride.”
It was better than being bored to death. It was better than going down in the basement, turning on the TV and watching sharks eat meat off of a hook. Better than being needled to death by back problems.
“Did you see that thing on TV about bedbugs?” Reminded Nibbles. “Holy, shit. They’re all over Canada, and when you get ‘em you got to fumigate the bed, everything.”
Bru sprinkled flea powder on his bed sheets once in a while, after getting a few bites that seemed to itch and burn for up to a week. He woke up with them. The idea of Big Frank or anyone spending money to fumigate this place…hah. It was ludicrous. He had made Big Frank buy his cat a flea collar in mid-September. He prayed it was just a couple of strays. Hopefully, they would die off as the season advanced.
Otherwise he’d have to put the bed out by the curb and sleep on the floor.
Well, that’s poverty.
That’s what it means to be on ODSP.
The catch on his helmet strap clicked in and he mounted up. The side door was held open by a green plastic garbage can.
“See you later.” He nodded to his buddy and departed with his bike through the opening thus presented.
Bru had suffered through six or seven weeks of back pain during the months of September and early October. He was starting afresh. The weights seemed to be helping, but he would have to be careful. He planned to go only four or five k’s on the bike.
Bru had been saving up again. But, he knew what he wanted and what he had to do to get it. Less than eight blocks later, he dismounted and hung the helmet over the handlebars.
The Wilderness Guy was a little shop on Minton St. Opening the door, he ducked his head to clear the frame and moseyed on in. He knew the guy behind the counter, but hadn’t seen him in almost twenty-five years. The black-haired, clean-shaven, middle-aged, blue-eyed man behind the counter looked up, puzzled for a moment.
Looking for some new bowstrings.
“Bru. Holy shit, man.”
Bru grinned. This must be Jerry.
The two attended school together at Lennox College.
“Hey.” He stood, looking around.
The walls were covered in displays of fishing rods, reels, lures, line, but he didn’t see any guns or archery equipment. Jerry came around the corner and they shook hands in glee. Grinning like idiots, searching the memory banks for something to say. He remembered the last time they partied at Jerry and Maggie’s place out on McGillicuddy Drive. He’d been pretty much engaged, perhaps not officially announced, to marry her.
No pain anymore.
He’d come to terms with it long ago. She was gone. She wasn’t coming back.
“What can I do for you?” Asked Jerry.
The two men talked about old times for a while, but Bru finally got around to asking about archery.
“I’m looking for a quiver, a wrist guard, and I need a bowstring, although it’s been many years. It’s a sixty-four inch, sixty-pound draw.”
He looked around the four walls again.
“Not selling any guns or bows this year?” He asked.
“No. I’ve been getting a lot of work through my union, but I could make you up a bowstring for twenty-five bucks. I’m not too busy. It might be two or three days.”
“Oh, really? My old man used to make bows. And arrows, and strings. Do you have a string? Do you loop the ends and tie them up with thread, around and around?”
Jerry took him into the back room, where coincidentally a black crossbow lay on a table top. He dug around and found an old crossbow string to look at. Jerry’s work was fine, certainly more professional than Bru was likely to do the first time out. The end-wrapping was neatly done, and his old man probably couldn’t have done much better.
“So what have you been doing?” Brubaker asked.
Hard to sum up the last twenty-five years, Bru realized.
“You remember Maggie?”
Bru nodded.
“Well, she threw me out because of the drinking,” Jerry said with a big happy grin. “Whatever happened to you and…?”
“I think she married a Lennox cop,” admitted Bru with a grimace. “I don’t even really know for sure.”
“Ooh, that hurts. Maggie’s with a fireman now.”
And they both laughed.
“You want to know the truth? It’s probably for the best.” Brubaker, with a shrug. “I was just a big dumb kid at the time.”
Jerry just grinned.
“She earned a good man if she can find him.”
“…and the cops probably deserve it…” Put in Bru and both men laughed again.
It was amazing how easy it was to reconnect. It was almost like the intervening quarter century didn’t exist. But mutually, it didn’t. The two men had simply picked up where they left off.
“I actually have four bows, three of them made by my old man. I have a couple of dozen arrows he made as well.” Bru told his buddy, who was an avid sportsman, judging by the photos on the walls. “Some guy he sold a bow to back in the fifties, he told the old man he shot a moose with it. The smallest one is a real work of art.”
“Tell you what.” Offered Jerry. “I’ll make you three strings for forty bucks cash.”
“Some hobbies are more expensive than others.” Noted Bru in a generalized comment to Jerry and for the benefit of the four square walls. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll drop off the bows in a couple of days.”
Then Bru got on with his day.
END
Rumor is that Hammy the Hamster is writing his memoirs.
Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.
Louis has books and stories on Kobo. He also has some art on ArtPal.
Thank you for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment on the blog posts, art or editing.