The Matador in the Bulrush part one

The Matador in the Bulrush

Joshua was twelve years old when his brother died. His name had been Keifer, but we all knew him as “Reefer”, the nickname given without any real reason, except for the license it gave a person to own one and thus be accepted by all. At the time of his death he was eight years older than his younger sibling. The facts surrounding his much too early exit changed with every whisper that escaped the mouths of the adults around us. The truth of it all was bent and tested, guessed upon and tried, and then set forth on each day’s breeze, gaining validity as soon as it was set and printed within the storm of childish imagination.

Small towns are like that, taking some incongruous fact from its closeted secret, its truth transposed to shaky ground where each new element of its story can be added and then repeated, a virus on its way to its amplification. Once repeated enough times it hardens as much as concrete, becoming the unchallengeable testament of all. By the time it reaches the children it has been as kneaded as dough, swollen in its history, and as overworked as any bakers’ oven. It is then, in the tree forts, playgrounds, and Saturday evening sleepovers, that the children make it a legend. It is always a legend larger than its tragedy.

If one were to ask today, “well…-- how DID Keifer, a.k.a “Reefer” meet his unfortunate demise? , the bearer of the query would be answered with a common place, communal stare of confusion, as if to say “WHO?. The sad truth is that all of it, his legal moniker, nickname and his last day are lost to years of stories, painted over by new handed gossip, weddings and births. His death has been lost to the passage of life.

But I was nine years old then, and I can only attest to what I knew. I risk telling you, because it is not my intent to dwell on the passing of “Reefer”, but rather to explain the magical existence of Joshua, and you can’t have one, without the other.

When I first heard of “Reefers” death, I was sitting with three fellow explorers near the forests edge, perched on the rocks overlooking the water. It was the first week in the July owned by 1969, all of us ten days out of schools end, and four weeks removed from the horror of Keifer.  It was a magical year, in more years than one, and remains, for me, as the period when art collided with its own legend.

As we all discussed the crushes of our winters, the newest and scariest movies, the pending moon shot and landing, the day begged of us our childish magic. It came when Karen spoke.

“Did you all hear about Reefer?”

Keenan laughed, “Of course we have—who hasn’t?” he was a slight boy, native Cree and the owner of the blackest hair that you could ever wish for; so dark it almost seemed to absorb the sunlight.  We all were sharing the timelessness of our ages and thus were far removed from that time when our differences would be noticed. Karen, with her big boned frame and scraggly tangle of rusty hair, spoke with a voice low and smooth. Her voice always sounded like it didn’t belong to her, coming into us in a tone that felt old and burdened. “Well…I heard my mom talkin’ with Alvin, that guy at the grocery store who is always yelling and stuff and hates kids and stinks like sour milk all the time. Why do you think that is?

Cody was just sitting down beside me after having spent the last ten minutes hurling rocks as far as he was able, all in the futile hope of one of them successfully reaching the water. He was the ‘Linus’ among us; dirty most days as much as any crown of poverty sullies a person. He was always wearing pants that were many sizes too large for him, hand me downs that slung precariously low on his skin-wrapped bony hips. He had just turned ten, and although in reality he was within a few months of everyone’s age, the fact that he was now ten made him a year older, albeit temporarily. Any nine year old will tell you that the words of a ten year old hold more weight and it was this surety of wisdom, albeit temporary, that made us hush each other as he joined the conversation. “My dad says, “ as he juggled a few rocks in his hand, “ that everything has an expiry date. Even people. So, maybe he smells like that because he is past his expiry date. Old man Freddy, the janitor in school, ya—he smells like that too. All the time. And he is WAYYYyyy past HIS expiry date.”

Keenan was nodding, but you could never tell with him. If he was agreeing or not, he was always nodding as if all his thoughts came to him in metronome pulses and his chin was simply keeping time. “Ohhh HIM….ya….I always thought he smelled like rotten teeth….or….or…Popcorn puke!”

Karen was crinkling her nose while Cody rolled onto his back in a fit of laughter. “That’s great Kee,,,,just greaaattttt. You’re the best. Freaked out Karen and everything” He was pointing his finger at her as a new round of laughter seized him. I waited for Cody to calm down before turning my attention back to Karen. “ Okay, so what did ole’ man Alvin say ‘bout Reefer?”

Karen was glaring at Cody, shooting him one last dirty look before throning herself to the center and attention of us all. “well…he says that Reefer got killed by a drunk army truck driver, ran over and squished so much they had to send him home in an envelope. My mom said that wasn’t the story she heard, but old stinky Alvin says to her that the priest told him, Father ..oohhh…whats his name. Anyway…Priests’ don’t lie, it’s against their religion and they will go to hell if they do. I asked my mom about it later---about the whole envelope and truck and how they buried him at Arc Castle Cemetery, and how they could even bury an envelope and how many stamps it took and if the army paid for it and stuff.” Karen went quiet, seemingly lost to the complexity of too many unanswered questions. Then Cody asked, “So what did she say?”

Karen looked contemplative and confused, shaking her head side to side, “She said it was a mail thing.”

Cody started laughing again, while Keenan was concentrating on the ground in front of him, waiting for Codys laughter to abate. Finally Keenan said, “That’s not what I heard, not even close.” His serious change of character had us all mesmerized and waiting for his version of Reefers demise.

``I heard,`` he began, in his best Rod Serling spooky voice, `That Reefer bought it over in Viet Nam. And I heard it all from Smarty-( a nickname for one Derick DeNiro, whose constant high grades made him an enviable outcast, at least until exams rolled around and he found himself in the company of a number of new, albeit temporary, best friends), whose dads that crazy cop always complaining about the bikes with no lights and curfews and stuff``. We all nodded our understanding, knowing that we each had experienced, at one time or another, the wrath of constable D. ``Smarty says that Reefer was on a night drop over some place that isn’t on the maps. Smarty says that it was a top secret attack, past midnight, and really dark. Anyway, his chute didn’t open, but that didn’t stop Reefer. Smarty says that his dad said that Tappenden the pop man, whose friends with Joshes dad told him that Reefer probably wanted to make everyone in town proud, so even though he knew he was gonna die, he was firing his machine gun all the way down, lightin’ up the ground for his friends and taking out as many enemies as he could. Smarty also said that Reefer was yelling all the way till he hit, TAKE THAT YOU BASTARDS…AND THAT AND THAT. Anyway, Smarty says there wasn’t much left of Reefer, after falling from so high, so after finding what they could, they sent him home in an envelope….like his dog tags…and one sock I think…and oh ya…his teeth. Smarty says his dad told him that Reefers dad was probably happy to get those teeth back, considering how much he paid for them.``

We all sat back, taking in the facts according to Smarty, and at the same time trying to come to grips with the horrific idea of receiving teeth in the mail. After the appropriate homage of minutes had passed, all of us giving our pretended respect to our lost hero, Cody spoke. “Remember Dee Dee?  I heard her brother talking with some guys over by the MaCloads parking lot. They were all smoking and stuff, trying to look tough. As if. They were all acting cool, like it didn’t matter that I saw them. I hate those guys. Anyhow, they were saying things about Reefer, ‘bout how he weren’t no hero and how the towns full of shit. Her brother said that he was walking by Joshuas house and saw an army truck there. He said he saw a general get out of the truck, walk up the stairs and knock on the door real soft. He said he saw the general and Reefers dad shake hands like they knew each other, and then the general gave him an envelope, and when Reefers dad opened it he fainted. Seeing teeth wouldn’t make a dad faint, and I don’t know any body’s dad who knows a general. So ‘there it is’.”

I waited as long as I could for him to expound on his story before asking “What? What –‘there it is’?”

Cody looked around, making sure there was no one was close enough to witness his yet undisclosed facts. “Don’t you see? Those guys smoking and stuff got it all wrong. The General, the truck, Reefers dad---no funeral, no body---the secret envelope. C;mon. “  Cody watched, waiting, and when none of us spoke he raised his hands in exasperation. “Sheeshhhh you guys.” He leaned forward, looking side to side for effect as he whispered, “Reefer was a spy. Killed somewhere where no one can ever know. His dad knew it, and the general probably was coming to tell him how good a spy he was. But he was a new spy….probably made some new-spy mistakes that got him uncovered, then captured and tortured. I just bet that cuz he never gave any one up, and died when he bit that pill they put in spies teeth. Ya…I bet that’s why it took a General to show up, and tell his dad the facts. As much as he could anyway.”

We all nodded with Cody, unanimously agreeing that this version of fact made perfect sense, and was to be accepted as our gospel. The truth as spoken, when I was old enough to form the proper question, was that Reefer HAD  been a soldier. A short month into training he had broken an ankle while rappelling over the planked walls shared by his cadets’ camp. He had been administered a prescribed pain killer, but had foolishly went to a beach, partied with his fellow greenies, and had over medicated himself, right up to the point where the combined combustion of both liquor and pill eventually exacted its price. He died on a beach that was not Normandy, not even close to Cambodia, and in fact was a mere four hour flight from everyone who knew his name. 

But in the aftermath Joshua’s reputation grew. We all watched him come and go, quiet and stoic, never acknowledging anyone’s presence and keeping to himself all the secrets of his most private life. At Julys end, in the time of 1969, a mere eight weeks after the loss of his son, Joshua’s father died. We never had a chance to even catch our breath, knead the story of Joshua, nor build our exaltation of him to its proper pedestal. The passing of his father had us all in fear, recognizing for the first time that tragedy held no boundaries. We gathered and played, but in each sunset of that summer our collective thoughts would turn to Joshua. Although we had agreed that his father had been assassinated, taken out by foreign spies after having read the contents of the envelope sent home, somehow it all felt false. We knew that Joshua was alone, after never having seen his mother in all the time we knew him. The fact that his father and brother were now lost to him left us all pondering for the rest of that summer, whether he would be the next one on the assassins list, and if not, what was to become of him. As September bled its days to the rote of school, we found a rhythm that allowed him to walk among us as the ghost he was.

 It took us a full two months to discover he was living with the ‘ancient ones’. The discovery came quite by accident, the kind of accident that comes when a dare is met, and regret follows.

In our town, at the far end of Clavell Avenue, in a house that was always dark, lived two witches. They were sisters, so it goes, either as old as or older than religion. Their house was void of paint, its exterior long grayed and weathered, with visible cracks that surely must have made its inside rooms whistle with the drafts passing through them. We thought differently of course, seeing the cracks as a way to whisper their spells to the careless passerby. In the summers you could find them both on their porch, always in the early evening, rocking in the chairs given to them as gifts from the warlock who had been beaten by their knowledge of the dark arts. Later, when their porch was empty, the only light of life one could see when walking by, was a fiery orange luminescence dancing behind their curtains. In the winter, there was no such light, no cackling voices on porches and certainly no spells cast through the cracks. In the winter we felt safe, just not safe enough to ever speak their names while passing their house, lest our voices be heard and stir them from their hibernation.

And so it was; all of us ten years old, daring and double daring each other until all escape routes were cut off. Someone, it was decided, was going to have to walk up to that door, on Halloween, and knock until the ancients woke. It was also decided that  someone was me, and no matter how much I protested at the unfair vote, how I had been sandbagged and tricked, and how my idea of two people going made better sense in the fact that a witness was needed, it all fell on unanimously deaf ears. I was doomed.

October 31^st of 1969 was a Friday. Normally any Halloween that falls on such a day, in such a week, would be perfect for the schedule of children.  But that week holds for me, more than any other since, a time of trepidation. It didn’t help that the days approaching Friday were spent listening to our teacher Mrs. Fallon, speak on the history and folklore of All Hallows Eve.  With each new fact she presented, my friends would glance over at me, nodding somberly as if the words she spoke were tickling the key loose from my emotional grenade.

It was also during that week that we first heard Joshua speak. We had all been assigned the task of writing a story, the subject of which could be about anything we wished, so long as it was about magic. Mrs. Fallon had chosen what she considered to be the three best, and after handing the three winners their trophies of small bags of hard candy, asked them to read their stories to the class.

We were all stunned to silence when Joshua strode to the front, spilling his riff of papers before gathering them in front of him, slowly beginning to speak in a voice so nervous it could have moved the needle on Richter’s scale.

He had written a story about a matador. In his story a boy had graduated from a school where they train bullfighters, but was disliked by his fellow Matadors because he refused to hurt any of the bulls. He was laughed at and teased, left behind by everyone because he was kind when everyone was trying to teach him not to be. In Joshua’s story the new Matador finally made his debut in front of a hundred thousand people. He described the dirt and dust of the bull ring and had us all on his cliffs edge when he spoke of the gate opening and the bull charging out. And the bull slowed. And the Matador smiled and dropped his cape and swords. And he sat down, just as the bull reached him, snorting and staring at the calmness of the Matador. The bull then stopped, laid down and rolled onto its side, and as the Matador stroked its head it casually went to sleep. Thirty seconds later Joshua’s hundred thousand were screaming and cheering like they had never done before. In Joshua’s story kindness had won and at the end of it we also cheered, clapped and whispered our affection for the Matador. Mrs. Fallon then asked him, “Joshua, why did you choose to write about bulls?” As Joshua was walking back to his seat he was grinning, “ Because M’aam, maybe its braver to do nothing.”

On that Friday I wished for school to never end. After the bell I walked home, wishing for an illness, a strike of lightning, an alien abduction or anything that could absolve me of the upcoming dare. The weather had eased, and by dusk the air had stilled, holding the new snows steadfast in its solid grip. I dressed in a parka too big for me, and waited on the couch for the phone to ring.  I still don’t know what made me answer it when it did. When a rendezvous point was decided upon I gathered my plastic wolf-man mask and made my way to the corner of Jones and Clavell Avenue. It took a full twenty minutes of slow saunter and stuttered steps before I finally met up with the toque wearing vampire, the princess with her tiara pointing crooked from her ear muffs and a small snot-sickle hanging from a nostril, and the Zombie undead who