Jon Hart: Six Tales of the Supernatural

Jon Hart

Six Tales of the Supernatural

by

John G. Paterson

North Door Books

St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

Published by John G. Paterson at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 John G. Paterson

This book also available in print,

first published in 2007

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JON HART

SIX TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL

contents:

The Fortune-Teller's Son

Jon Hart

Wodin's Tale

Inside the Green Chapel

Stag

Charlie and the River God

for my wife, Linda

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;

Lovers to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.

I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn

As much as we this night have overwatch'd.

~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I made myself stop, and for a few minutes it was impossible for me to understand my own feelings in the confusion the sublime spectacle had caused in me.

~Jose Maria Heredia, in a letter to his uncle, 1824

THE FORTUNE-TELLER'S SON

Monday

August 1st, 1983

1

(the magician)

In the ideal life, very little happens: day-to-day transactions run smoothly, tomorrow and the next day are happily predictable, and domestic ritual does not uncover too much excitement. But the real world is not like that at all; it's full of sharp turns, rough rides, and sudden falls — at least where Gary lived!

Gary composed this little homily as he stood on the balcony overlooking the afternoon rush-hour traffic.

The last few weeks had been especially hard on him.

Only today was he able to get away from the Falls. He was now in another city (a good hour's drive from home), and in a new apartment, which he was able to find without too much trouble. Unlike his old place in the Falls, this apartment was air conditioned against the heat of the summer.

Maybe he had found a refuge. — Maybe.

The only person to see him off had been his father, who was having breakfast when Gary entered the kitchen. Mike Johnston was moody and silent that morning. Gary had to be patient as he explained to his father twice that he was planning to stay in Hamilton if he found a suitable apartment; if not, he would be back that night.

Why are you telling me this?

So you'll know where I am

Why the rush? You told me yesterday that you don't start classes until the middle of September. Today's the first of August.

I want to find something close to the university before all the good accommodations are taken, said Gary. Waiting until September would be too late.

He was not being honest with his father; he did not know for certain that there was a shortage of student housing that year, although there had been one seven years ago when he began his fourth year of classes at the same university.

He did not finish his last year. He abandoned his studies at Christmas with what might possibly be called a nervous breakdown, although he did not label it such at the time. He just could not continue in the cold, abstract realm of mathematics, his area of study.

Now, at the age of twenty-nine, he was returning to complete his degree. He knew he was going to find it difficult with the long hours of study he would have to put in just to catch up to where he left off; but to his surprise he had been reading his old textbooks again with a renewed pleasure and an ease of study that he feared he had lost.

His father pushed the coffee pot in his direction and Gary poured himself a cup. He sat in silence while his father finished his breakfast. Mike was not at his best in the early part of the morning; however, that did not mean that he wasn't a man who had nothing to say. — He had strong opinions and could express them at length.

If Kay calls I want her to be able to reach me.

You still haven't heard from Kay? Mike asked as he carried his dirty dishes to the sink.

His father had not asked about Kay since she went out west two Saturdays ago.

No, said Gary, suppressing once again that horrible feeling of abandonment.

Gary's relationship with Kay had been sinking since the end of May. Mike had not been happy when he learned about their problems. His son and Kay broke up after living together for a year and a half. They had plans to get married. Kay was already a member of the family, treated like a daughter.

Then she's not coming back?

I don't think so, said Gary. He could understand his father's confusion, but Mike did not know the whole story.

It's your life, he said, turning away from his son to get his lunch pail. Mike worked at an automobile plant where he had been an electrician for the past twenty-five years.

They made no mention of his mother's absence — her death — just a week and a half ago. (Kay had not even called — although she should have read or heard about it. The international media carried all the details.)

Give me a call tonight and let me know where you're staying, he said as Gary followed him out to the driveway and their separate cars. Gary was behind him as they drove down the street to the highway, then he lost his father in the traffic.

2

(the high priestess)

His apartment building was between the city centre and the university, a convenient distance from the campus. The neighbourhood was a mixture of old residential houses, small apartment buildings, and various retail businesses through which ran one of the city's main streets. There was always a heavy flow of traffic at rush hour. He was, at the moment, watching the four o'clock traffic.

The superintendent had provided him with some furniture until he could rent a van or trailer to bring his own stuff from the Falls — but he was in no hurry to go back home. He would do that later in the month. Besides, he had to talk to Kay about how they would divide their furniture. He now had a bed, a kitchen table, and a couple of old chairs. Good enough. He welcomed the barren setting: all he needed were his math texts, and peace and quiet. — And peace of mind, which he did not have.

Already the room was full of memories that somehow followed him from home, memories that he had not taken the time to sort through. He could see now that if he didn't go over them, at least by reviewing the events of the last few weeks, he would not be able to get any of his work done. It had always been his habit to push away all unpleasant thoughts and memories, with a hope they would stay away. Such repression never works. He now had no choice but to replay them, perform a sort of exorcism. — But he didn't like that last word, even if it was only intended as a metaphor.

Since Kay at the moment was most on his mind, he decided to begin with her.

3

(the empress)

Kay was a minister's daughter from Regina, the only child of Lewis and Marcie Grant. Her father attended to a couple of United Church congregations in some small towns just north of Regina, but the Grant family lived in Regina itself, where Kay grew up and went to school, including university where she took business administration. She completed her degree with excellent marks, but did not get a job immediately. Instead, she went to Europe for six months and travelled through Britain, France, Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy.

In Edinburgh she worked at a movie theatre that showed mostly art films; she liked the work and decided to pursue theatre management when she returned to Canada. The idea of someday running her own movie theatre appealed to her; she wanted a business that brought a sense of satisfaction: in this case she had always loved movies and movie theatres.

Toronto, not Regina, was where she went looking for work. The big city. She got a job as an assistant manager in a six-screen multiplex in a North York shopping plaza, thanks to her university degree in business. The Canada-Wide Theatre Group was her employer, which owned a chain of theatres in southern Ontario — and one in Halifax; the last somehow justified its ambitious name. Canada-Wide was a Canadian-owned company, formerly American, but still playing only American first-run movies, and never any movies with subtitles (that is, the foreign films she loved.)

With a new city and a new job, Kay even found a boyfriend, an owner of a framing and art supply shop, Toronto born and raised, who liked the nightlife. She did not know which one went bad first, but her love for all three (city, job, boyfriend) went sour within six months. She spent two unhappy years in cold Toronto where she discovered that she preferred to live in a much smaller city.

Then she accepted a new job in Niagara Falls at the Portage Cinemas run by the Ramsey family, who had been showing movies in Niagara for the last fifty years.

4

(the emperor)

His sister, Dale, introduced Gary to Kay a month after she arrived. Kay first met Dale in Edinburgh, so it was with Dale that she was staying until she found a place to live in the Falls. Gary met them by chance that night at a bar in Niagara Falls, New York.

This is my younger brother, Gary. — Gary, meet Kay, said Dale.

Hello, Kay, he said, and he asked her if she liked Niagara Falls.

I like it here very much. The first place I went when I arrived was to the Horseshoe Falls. Just spectacular!

Regina doesn't have a world famous cataract? asked Dale with a smile.

No, just a quiet river winding through the wheat fields into town.

Sounds good to me, said Gary.

Dale laughed at her brother.

Gary doesn't like it here, she said. He hates it, in fact. Too many tourists, psychics, and chemical plants!

Not true, he said. I like it here, wouldn't want to live any place else.

He turned to Kay and asked her if she danced. — He had to get away from his sister before he told any more lies.

He also had another reason to get away from his sister. But his secret had already been revealed. The second dance was a slow one and Kay could not resist asking about what Dale had revealed about her brother.

Are you allowed in the States like this? she asked him. I mean, don't the Americans stop all left-wing, uh, I mean —

You mean communists. — No doubt that's what my sister told you, that I was a member, said Gary. She enjoys telling people that. — I'll show you my card after this dance, but it's falling apart because people keep asking to see it. — But I really don't know if I'm allowed in or not, I certainly won't ask, and nobody at the border has bothered me yet about coming over here.

I don't understand. You have a card? What kind of communist are you? There's so many, especially in Toronto.

A member of the CPC. The ones who support Russia as if it were their own motherland.

Oh.

I think the best way to explain it is that it's a family thing. My grandfather was a member and my father still is a member of the Party. They've both been to Russia; my father's been to Cuba a couple of times, and he even met Castro's brother.

Dale said she was a member once.

Yes, he said. She got thrown out when she started hanging around with a certain group that talked about Albania a great deal. I don't know where she is now. You would know more, having more time to talk to her.

Yes, she's involved with a Pro-Choice group that meets every so often.

I don't get involved with that sort of thing. Too much excitement for me, all that banner waving and screams about baby killers and people losing control of their bodies.

Kay smiled at him. He felt like an idiot. Don't talk politics!

This unique family tradition, which started with his grandfather, had definitely weakened over time. His grandfather arrived in Canada from Scotland in 1927: he was a carpenter, his parents textile workers. He joined the Party in 1928. He would remain a member for more than thirty years, and was even a candidate in the 1945 federal election.

Gary did not know his grandfather very well; he died when Gary was only two years old. There were countless stories about him. When his father told them, he would begin by saying, Now, your granddad believed...

Gary himself had a hard time expressing political opinions, let alone coming to terms with that great body of political thinking and activism that his grandfather represented.

As a communist, I'm certainly not my grandfather, he confessed to Kay, later, when he got to know and trust her capacity for tolerating his contradictions. My father took me to meetings at an early age, and I became a member of the Party at sixteen. The old boys in our group, my grandfather's friends, made a big fuss over me and made certain that I renewed my membership. I simply went along with it. — Not that I don't believe in the eventual collapse of capitalism. It's just that the Cause has never inspired me to any real passion. — Maybe because I'm the third generation. The enthusiasm of our grandparents has usually worn off by the third generation.

His reading had always been indiscriminate. — He never did get through Das Kapital. Mostly, he had gone through Dale's personal library of anarchists, Trotskyites, left-wing feminists, libertarian Marxists, and New Age economists, more fascinated by their elaborately constructed arguments and the use and abuse of logic. After all, he was a student of mathematics. He liked to construct for his own amusement political systems based on one or two premises; the resulting pyramid usually collapsing under its own weight. Anarchism appealed to him the most — the fantasy of collective cooperation that never quite got a chance to prove itself, denied by history (or more likely human nature.)

"It got so that in later years, after all this indiscriminate reading, if I ventured to express an idea at one of our local Party meetings, someone was always ready to pass me his battered copy of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder! he told Kay. My sister is to blame."

What about your father?

Oh, he's very good at expressing a working set of principles that doesn't conflict with the Party line. He believes all of it with a passion. I quite admire him in that regard. He just doesn't play with ideas; he's able to translate them into specific action. He's very much involved in the labour union movement, and is on the local labour council, and is an active shop steward in the electricians union at his plant.

He did not at first know how Kay would relate to all these things in his family. But somehow — maybe because her own family was so conservative — she became fascinated. Gary told her all his grandfather's stories. Told her more about his father, and about his own misadventures in the Communist movement. All within the first few times of their meeting.

And he hadn't yet discussed the other half of his eccentric family: his mother, the fortune-teller. He left that to his sister — and he knew that she had already introduced Kay to his mother. If there were to be any rivalry between the three (mother, son, and girlfriend), he already suspected that