Different Beasts Read online

  “This is a brilliant collection. Here is the human understory, a tour through the internal wilderness of soul after troubled soul. As their maker, J.R. McConvey considers each one with a clear, unfailing gaze. More than that, he does so in language that sings.”

  — Alissa York, author of The Naturalist

  “Different Beasts made me fall in love with the craft of short stories all over again. This collection took me to places — some uncomfortable, others heartbreaking — that I wasn’t expecting to go. This is the work of a writer of beastly talent, vision, and guts.”

  — Brian Francis, author of Break in Case of Emergency

  “In these uncanny stories, McConvey gently pulls at the seams of reality until it frays to reveal the battered heart beneath each tale.”

  — Andrew F. Sullivan, author of Waste

  “Affecting, dynamic, inventive, and inexhaustibly various — J.R. McConvey's debut is a menagerie of remarkable beasts.”

  — Steven Heighton, author of The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep

  Copyright © 2019 by J.R. McConvey.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

  Excerpt from “Skunk Hour” from New Selected Poems by Robert Lowell, edited by Katie Peterson. Copyright © 2017 by Harriet Lowell and Sheridan Lowell.

  Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  Edited by Bethany Gibson.

  Cover and page design by Julie Scriver.

  Cover images detailed from Two Beasts I, copyright © 2019 by Anna Torma, annatorma.com.

  Printed in Canada.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Different beasts : stories / J.R. McConvey.

  Names: McConvey, J. R., 1979- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (ebook) 2019008975X | Canadiana (print) 20190089725 | ISBN 9781773101279 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773101286 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781773101262 (softcover)

  Classification: LCC PS8625.C665 D54 2019 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Goose Lane acknowledges the generous support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of New Brunswick.

  Goose Lane Editions

  500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330

  Fredericton, New Brunswick

  CANADA E3B 5X4

  www.gooselane.com

  To my mother, for reading to me;

  to Amy, for reading with me;

  and to Danica, for teaching me to read again.

  I myself am hell;

  nobody’s here —

  only skunks, that search

  in the moonlight for a bite to eat

  — Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour”

  Contents

  How the Grizzly Came to Hang in the Royal Oak Hotel

  Neutral Buoyancy

  Home Range

  Little Flags

  Sheepasnörus Rex

  Pavilion

  Inquisition (Extended Mix)

  Between the Pickles

  The Last Ham

  Lehaki Sinking

  The Streetcar Goes Sideways Down Cherry Street

  Across

  Acknowledgements

  How the Grizzly Came to Hang in the Royal Oak Hotel

  One day a bear got loose in the Royal Oak Hotel. This was in the early years of my employment there, shortly after my discharge, when it hardly felt real to be out in the world. They were using the lobby to shoot a scene for an action film that featured a grizzly bear attack. While it could have been done digitally, the director was a Hollywood type who insisted on flying in a wild bear from the Yukon for maximum effect. Local animal rights groups filed a complaint with the city and went to the media, calling it cruelty. On the morning of the shoot, news vans from all the big networks came to film the protest being staged out front of the hotel. A few dozen people showed up to chant slogans and wave signs covered with drawings of crucified teddy bears. But the director went ahead with his plan.

  So I guess you could call what happened poetic justice, if you believe justice ever reads like a poem, or that any true poet would take carnage for a muse.

  That day, the hotel lobby was packed. There were security guards, conservation officers carrying tranquilizer guns, bear handlers reeking of salmon jerky treats. None of it mattered. Three days prior, the bear had been plucked from an alpine meadow on the slopes of Kluane Lake, away from the woods and the water and the ambient scent of prey, and herded onto a cargo plane for a quick flight across the continent into an urban nightmare. The drastic change in its environment, combined with a bootcamp training schedule, had finally flabbergasted it into attack mode. As soon as the klieg lights were turned on it, the bear went berserk, storming around the lobby, mauling two guards and a production intern with running swats that almost looked tossed off, just for the hell of it, then stampeded the craft services table and knocked out the lights and began doing furious laps of the perimeter, its huge claws skittering across the polished marble floors. In the chaos someone managed to corral it into Banquet Room C, a windowless auditorium just north of the reception desk, and barricade the doors with a sofa, giving everyone time to tend to the injured and work out what to do next.

  They might have ended up resolving the situation sensibly if the Congressman hadn’t been staying at the hotel. He was visiting from south of the border to gauge support for a new pipeline project, a man known for loud suits and louder opinions. As soon as he heard that the grizzly had run amok, he stormed into the trashed lobby with his sleeves rolled up, grinning and talking at inspirational volume about “the right way to deal with this kind of a situation.” It was as though Palm Sunday had come early and here was Christ preaching his way into Jerusalem, vowing to throw the thieves from the temple, the camera crews trailing faithfully behind.

  It was evident that the Congressman intended to shoot the bear. A tentative call had been made to try and tranquilize the grizzly, cage it and drive it to a compound outside the city, where the handlers could recondition it. The Congressman, though, sensed a moment he could leverage. Speaking to an array of cameras, he emphasized the ongoing threat. He asked, if a city couldn’t properly defend itself against a dumb animal, what chance would it have against terrorists or an invading army? In his opinion, as long as it was alive, the bear presented a significant danger to the public. Waving his arm out over the lobby, he insisted that his number one priority was safety for the people.

  There were objections, of course. The conservation officers questioned the Congressman’s jurisdiction, protesting that he had no authority outside his own borders. The handlers, who were responsible for the bear and would legally own it after the shoot, threw fits and threatened to sue. An animal rights activist who’d managed to sneak in shouted that he would cut the Congressman’s balls off, but security dragged him away. I watched the various parties’ faces fall into numb horror as they came to understand that the Congressman would simply ignore their protests and do as he liked. There might be some settlement later, suits filed and money exchanged. But the show had to go on.

  It more or less closed the matter when the Congressman pulled the vintage Colt single-action .357 Magnum revolver from the holster under his vest and told the cameras that with the expansion bullets he was using, he could drop the bear at twenty paces, no problem, before any innocent bystanders were maimed or killed. By that point, with the question of the city’s weakness at sta
ke, its ability to protect its own citizens, it was impossible to deny him outright. Besides, he had reporters following him, which shored up the impression that his opinion was gospel. Even the director, a maestro of self-importance, deferred to the authority of the cameras.

  His clout aside, it was clear that the Congressman couldn’t be allowed to just kick down the banquet room doors and open fire. The optics wouldn’t work. So the manager of the hotel stepped in, ostensibly to express further outrage, yelling righteously and pointing out that it wasn’t even legal for the Congressman to be carrying a handgun up here. But you could tell from the outset that there was more to it. He felt he was being upstaged. As manager, he said, it fell to him to make decisions about the hotel. Furthermore, the Royal Oak promised the highest-quality luxury hotel experience, and he insisted on taking full personal responsibility for the gross inconvenience to his guests.

  The two men chirped back and forth for a while, and my attention wandered, as it often did at work. I don’t remember how long it took them to decide. But I can remember the exact moment when I saw the manager turn and point at me.

  The manager knew my situation and enough of my history that, although there were plenty of more qualified people there, I guess I was the politically expedient choice. I stayed quiet while he laid out what was expected of me. It was nothing unusual; I knew how to follow orders. I thought about my sister, Sara, how she’d pulled every string she had to land me this job. I remembered the look of uncertainty on her face when she told me they were willing to give me a try. Taking advantage of his moment with the cameras, the manager explained how the hotel’s reputation was at stake, and how of course they couldn’t have an esteemed guest like the Congressman carry the whole burden of this errand on his own. I knew better than to protest when he started talking about heroes and casually dropped a reference to Afghanistan, as though it were a dash of spice, something to sprinkle on his speech for flavour.

  It was in what he didn’t mention — Kandahar and the tribunal, the detainees kneeling with black sacks pulled over their heads, the famous photograph of me that tells a story I don’t remember, my time in the psych wing of the veterans’ hospital — that I knew I had no choice in the matter.

  I remember thinking how this was just another day to them, the manager and the Congressman and the media, as though the hotel lobby was the scene of such spectacles all the time, and if they just put their heads together and stayed the course, everything would turn out all right. They believed, without question, in their own truth. You could see the fever in their eyes, though, the tremor in their hands — the seething need to take the violence they’d cooked up and feed it to someone else. Distance themselves from the threat and get a better story out of it, to boot.

  They needed a soldier, and here I was.

  The beginning, at least, was all worked out beforehand. I would accompany the Congressman into Banquet Room C as an official representative of the hotel. My stated role was to cover the Congressman while he took down the bear, and to intervene only in the event of an emergency. I was issued a shotgun, a Remington 870 pump-action twelve-gauge, personally delivered by a VP from the GamePro Outfitters Group of Companies, who had generously offered to provide whatever aid they could to help end the crisis. The manager got the local TV news to film me holding the gun with my arm around the GamePro rep, who joked about how it was the best choice for getting lead into a bear that was coming at you with a chip on its shoulder. I thought about asking for protective clothing but gave up on the idea as soon as the manager stepped in and thanked GamePro for the donation of this excellent weapon, saying how the Royal Oak was a place that had a long and dignified tradition of service and of course I’d be perfectly safe in my trademark bellhop uniform, which was emblematic of the hotel’s commitment to quality. After all, the Congressman was wearing nothing but a western button-up, a leather vest and a pair of old Levi’s — regular-person clothes — so why should I expect preferential treatment? Taking the cue, I pushed my bellhop’s cap to a rakish angle before shaking the manager’s hand to seal our contract for the cameras.

  The media would be allowed to stay in the lobby to report on the operation, but for obvious safety and insurance reasons, no cameras could accompany us into the banquet room. Grizzly down; all clear! would be the signal that we’d achieved our objective and that it was safe to open the doors.

  Bow-legged, the Congressman led the approach. I flanked him on the left. The hotel manager followed to shut the doors behind us. At the threshold, the Congressman paused, took off his vest, unholstered his Colt, and gave a little wave and a yip to the cameras, to scattered applause.

  As soon as we stepped into the banquet room, everything got quiet. The stink of the bear was everywhere — piss and shit and fur and woods, the musk of a creature that had no business being within the walls of the hotel, within any walls. The Congressman had dropped back so that we were shoulder to shoulder, and I could smell the fear coming off him, too, the eggy stink leaching out under his cologne. He was walking in a crouch and holding his gun at a downward angle, as though he’d forgotten it was there and what it was for. If I’d barked at him then, I think he would have shat himself. Instead, I asked in a low voice if he’d locked on the target.

  In the far corner of the room, in a nook behind the stage drapes, the bear sat, squat and huge amid stacks of red plush chairs, pawing at a lectern it had knocked on its side. Its fur was bristled and greying around the neck. Its eyes were beady and black. In its size and strength and capacity for damage, it was a monster. But as the Congressman remembered the pistol in his hands and raised it to take aim, the thing just looked dumbly back, as though it simply wanted fish and couldn’t imagine why none were available, or how the river from which it drew its meat had disappeared — but understood, instinctually, that its fate was beyond its control.

  From where we stood, the shot was too long, and the Congress­man knew it. He looked back at me, expectant, and I gestured to stay low and move in toward the bear, to take cover behind the dining tables scattered around the room. He nodded, cocked the hammer of his gun and put a grim look on his face.

  “Let’s show this motherfucker who’s boss,” he said, though his stammering gave him away.

  He grunted as he crept forward. I stayed behind him, shotgun ready, wondering how fast the bear could spring to life and barrel across the room and break both of our necks with a swipe of its mitt. Grizzlies aren’t typically aggressive animals, unless they feel threatened. But you can’t really tame them. The chances of a cornered one lashing out and committing casual murder are high. This one stayed put, though, prying splinters from the lectern, its head lolling back and forth. We crept from table to table to take up a shielded position around twenty paces from the bear. It didn’t so much as snuffle in our direction. It was only when the Congressman rose with his back straight and held out his Colt with both hands — and just stood there, shaking, while seconds ticked past — that it finally looked over at us, raised a paw to swat at the lectern, and gave a stupefied roar.

  When the Congressman’s knees buckled, I knew. He collapsed back behind the table, his whole body quaking. The fear was like jaundice on his face, yellow, inflamed.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”

  “Have you ever shot anything before? Sir?”

  “We’re not looking at a fucking duck, are we? Goddamn it, son!”

  Whatever he summoned then to convince himself must be that quality all important men possess, which allows them to focus without distraction on the absolute present, their certainty distilled so its purity can’t be questioned when others are asked to drink of its cup. That, or it was just the potency of his fear — some rarefied version of the bone-shaking terror I’d known so intimately that this face off with a cornered grizzly played like an exercise, a routine chore.

  “Look, we all understand our roles here tonight,” the Congress­man said, and held out the Colt. I gestured at the shotgun. The
Congressman waggled the Colt at me and said, “No, it can’t go down like that.” I took the heavy old piece that it was known he wouldn’t even let his wife touch, and stood to take a bead on the grizzly.

  I wanted so much for it to stand up. I wished for it, willed it, to get indignant and extend to its full height, flash its teeth and pound its chest and charge me at full run. I took a few steps toward it, sights lined up right in the corner of its glassy eye. The damn thing didn’t move. The urban environment had cloaked its senses like a burlap cowl; mentally, it was lost somewhere among the ghosts of brothers and sisters fumbling through phantom woods, a weightless echo of the real ones it had been torn from and knew it would never see again. The grizzly understood that it was alone, and that the creatures who’d brought it here did not wish it well.

  I would say that’s what allowed me to do it, finally — the anger I felt that, after its burst of terrified rage, this fearsome thing had become so useless, so neutered and disoriented by the environment of the hotel, that it stopped knowing how to defend itself. That it had ended up in such a stupid situation, such a mighty beast so easily brought low by human pride.

  I would say that — except that I would have killed it anyway. As it happened, it just took a little less effort.

  In fact, I had no trouble at all walking ten paces and planting two quick shots into its face, one into each eye, the expansion bullets taking the whole crown off the skull and throwing fur-flecked bone and pink splatter all over the velvet stage curtains. Once the bear had slumped over in its mess, I put another round into its heart, to stop it from twitching. I knew the animal was dead — knew well enough what dead looked like — but for good measure I leaned over and held my hand in front of its nose to make sure the breath was gone. The smells of sulphur and metal and gamey blood filled my nose, and I thought, as I often had, how it was all the same — bears or warriors or children, all just a tangle of pink meat and brittle bone under a thinness of pleading skin.