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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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Paul, aka "Two Scoop" as he was nicknamed, (a reference to his shape, think Ice Cream Cone), a giant, 300 lbs of redheaded medieval fury, but in disposition docile, calm, 30 years old and like many of his generation living contentedly in his parent's basement.
In the olden days he would have been a blacksmith, capable of ridiculous feats of strength, hauling two gas filled heaters singlehandedly up a frozen mud path, one in each hand, these were jobs that required 4 or 6 temps pushing and pulling together, Paul, he could do it on his own.
At lunch he would devour his Tim Hortons sandwich, watch his phone, laughing to himself at funny videos you could only guess the content of, with his constant companion Joe, you could bust them blowing snow off the decks, leafblowers on their backs, know by their sheepish expressions that they were both caught playing "Ghostbusters"...
He denies it, adamantly, but he looks very much like someone that would spend a lot of time playing dungeons and dragons...
Paul didn't like Magic. Or, he as he claimed, he liked magic, just not my magic, which, to be fair, is more like wizarding than magic, but as wizarding is a somewhat obsolete term I use the more vernacular phrases like "prestidigitation", "illusions", "legerdemain" and "conjurer"...He still disagrees.
"Think of any number between 1 and 100..." I tell him. "Don't write it down.". I make a secretive little note on a pad, shopping list for when I finish work. "What's the number you were thinking of?" I ask him..."71" he replies, I nod knowingly and tap my nose "Exactly the same number I was thinking of ..." I tell him. "You're just agreeing with me" he argues. Joseph, he gets it, acknowledges that I'm a wizard of the first order, doesn't doubt that I knew Dumbledore and Gandalf, Paul, he's not convinced...
"Another one. Think of any number between one and five" I'm holding my hand behind my back...."Four" replies Paul...I remove my hand and show him 4 fingers extended. "Again?" I prompt him, but he's not playing anymore...
***
From my perspective hanging off the towers, 100 feet in the air, I can see the entire pit, waiting for the pour to finish so we can tarp, spot Paul, usually with Joe, they're talking or bumblefuckedly standing about. This is the one perk to this job in construction, you're privy to the big picture, can see what everyone above-decks is doing, Paul, Joe, invariably they're doing nothing, leaning on shovels or wandering about the site...
The Sky-Crane is flying in forms, panels, Paul is standing about watching, I find him, and with grand flourishes and gestures set about trying to convince him that I'm moving them with the force, "Like Yoda Taught Me", the men waiting for the panels, they see me, "Don't stop...left...bring it in...Use the Force", Paul merely shakes his head, walks away in disgust.
***
I've told Paul that I'm also a hypnotist, and when I find him next tending his heaters I make a few passes in front of his face, assure him he's been hypnotized, tell him that he will no longer feel the urge to smoke, that he won't remember a thing, that he'll wake up refreshed...he tells me he can't be hypnotized, I tell him he already has, that he's awake and refreshed, I leave him ...
Over lunch, in the trailer with the other men I boast about having hypnotized Paul to quit smoking. Paul glowers in the corner ... "I never smoked! Ever! Never a cigarette in my life...!". I merely nod in a self-satisfied sort of way..."You didn't Paul, and you won't again..."...The guys, they're impressed that he gave it up, nasty habit, a couple of them ask me later if I'd hypnotize them...
***
I've been given an assistant, Luke, shorter, good looking young lad from Nova Scotia. Classic small town boy, charming, good natured, he's to learn and master the art of Tarpentry so he can take over when I go off prospecting. There's more to learn than this, however, and so I take him off to find Paul, picking up an old discarded work glove, block of wood, pack of katsup saved from lunch, find Paul beneath the tarps, setting up heaters in the labrynthine depths of the parkade...
"I am going to show you a new Illusion...for Easter...I call it "Crucifixio"..."
And I set about laying my hand on on block while Luke hammers a nail through it and I scream and writhe as if in agony...Katsup spurting out...Paul's not buying it, grabs me, tries to grab my hand, we wrestle (and at 300 pounds what are my chances?), Luke, my assistant, grabs the prop glove and escapes while I pop my hand out of my sleeve "Ta-Da!"... He's worse than any five-year old hellion at a birthday party, but I like the challenge...
***
Late at night, a dozen men waiting for the concrete to dry enough that we can tarp, I've packed along a couple of fortune cookies. I hold them out to Paul: "Pick one, either one..." He refuses. The other men insist, eventually he gives in. "Open it" I tell him, "Read your fortune aloud...". He grudgingly complies..."You will meet an influential friend for dinner...". I nod knowingly, "You see?" I tell him, the foreman wants to know how I did it, what my fortune reads, I merely pocket it and smile...
Sometimes it's just conversation, there's no desire to illuminate or elevate him, just the days shit, news, catching up. "I had a friend" I tell him "Who visited Chernobyl and got bit by a spider...afterwards he got real sick but then when he got better he could shoot spider webs from his wrists...". He doesn't believe me, I shrug, it's true, they made a movie kinda-about it if he doesn't believe me...
***
"Have you ever seen the documentary Harry Potter?" I enquire...he just looks at me. Some conversations are shorter than others.
***
I've found him, am showing him my ventriloquist routine, skeptical as always he bears it while I hold a grimace in the shape of a smile and throw my voice.."Hey Paul...over here...behind this pillar..." and "Hey Paul, look down here, it's me, you're hammer talking, we gotta talk buddy". Paul just looks at me, swears he can see my lips move, tells me I'm without a doubt the worst ventriloquist he's ever seen.
I'm not gonna take this lying down. From high above the site, hanging off the forms, I can see him, standing around the heaters, warm, bastard. I pull up his number on my phone and give him a ring..."Hey Paul...it's me, Rod...I'm throwing my voice into your phone right now..."
He looks around, spots me..."No you're not, I heard it ring..."
I reply "Yes I am. I made that ringing sound with my voice because I'm just that good a ventriloquist..."
And hang up. Sometimes you quit when your ahead...
...but idea leads onto idea, and before long I've talked Luke into being my Ventriloquist dummy...we find Paul, I do my grimace and pretend to work Lukes back while he looks side to side and says "Hi Paul...it's me Rod...I'm throwing my voice into Luke's mouth...see, my lips aren't moving at all...", but this fails, Luke can't keep his shit together, Paul starts laughing too, laughter, it's death to Wizards and Sorcery in general, I escape...
***
Paul's removing the heaters from the columns, I'm charged with detarping them, before I begin unwrapping them I tell Paul: "Imagine...whatever you want it to be...it will become. Tell me...my greatest illusion yet. What do you want? An Elephant? A Car?"
Paul just looks at me. "It's a column" he says. "As you wish..." and I begin. Like so many he's the victim of his own lack of imagination.
He's not around for the "Ta-Da".
***
Luke's invented an illusion of his own, magnet in Glove, finds nail, throws it into the distance, miraculously reappears it on the tip of his finger. He's got Paul stumped for a minute or two while he figures it out. So it goes, the pupil becomes the master...
***
Pocket Ninja
We're picking up loose bits of rebar from the site, stray pieces, when I have an idea. Paul's standing near...I've got a 6 and an 8 inch piece...
"Paul, would you be interested in purchasing a Pocket Ninja personal defense device? Me and Luke have been making them...39.95$ for the base model, $59.95 for the Pocket Ninja and Pocket Ninja Pro..."
Paul is unimpressed, so we quote to him the company mantra "Safety first Paul".
He's still not convinced, I explain the benefits, he's trying to argue that these are just a couple of loose pieces of rebar we found on the site...
"Under decks, guy like you alone here in the dark, all these Columbians and Filopinos around Paul, it's not safe, you could be raped..."
He spies his counter arguement, a pile of rebar lying just beyond the reach of the floodlights, finds his own pocket ninja...
"Beware of Cheap Imitations, Paul..." I warn...
We continue like this for a good 20 minutes, I show him all the ninja defense moves he could do, offer lessons, he's not having any of it. Paul, Paul, Paul...
***
We're all waiting in the trailer for the concrete to cure so we can tarp, a cold winter night, they're up there, polishing, scrubbing, we can sit and be warm until we're needed.
I tell Luke that I'm going to show him how to hypnotize Paul, loudly, Paul's sitting across from us, I tell Luke I'm going to make Paul cluck like a chicken and behave ridiculously, Paul, he won't catch my eye, I'm puzzled, and I figure it out...he's genuinely afraid of being hypnotized, and for a brief moment I feel for him...
***
When I left construction they threw me a party. I think in their fucked up way they thought they'd miss me. The foreman made attendance mandatory. From Paul I got a child's magic kit, full of illusions he felt that I could master. From Joe, a rubber inflateable sex doll to keep me company on the lonely roads ahead - "Mylie: Daddy's little stoner just can't wait for you to bone her..." (That astonished open-mouthed gaze peering through the cellophane...). From the others, gold pans, samples of gold, a rubber fist (and my mind immediately thought of the illusions I could do with this, an extra hand?), various other trifles, I'd never in my life had a party this good. But these guys could drink, could they ever drink, and before the night was over astonished Mylie was blown up and raped with a pool cue in front of an astonished bar full of non-constructions workers.
That was when the bar owners asked us all to leave.
Ever-after my constant companion, and ever after uninflateable, I was denied my conjugal priviledge. Didn't matter, it was time to go, pack up, find the happier trails...
***
I've often thought of Paul since then, thought of sending him post-hypnotic suggestions to keep him non-smoking, or videos of the new tricks I could do with a rubber fist, with Mylie my assistant (levitating an inflatable assistant is far easier to do than with the more solid flesh and blood counterparts), waving hula-hoops over her gossamer clad form, her perpetual astonished look at my every illusion, but she was deflated, unwilling to cooperate, punctured, the rape had left her breathless, I thought of inventing flyers to promote my travelling conjuring show, performances across BC, tagline "What Unholy Pact with the Devil has given Him these Powers? One Night Only, No refund on souls", but all these plans remained sadly unformed, I wasn't going back to construction, and I wasn't going to get Pauls' hopes up...
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Returning from prospecting, invariably having spent every last nickel in the field on food and gas, my finances needing repair, time to find roomates...
Presumably this is better than being homeless, I never found it so, it was more grueling by a long shot, listening to the opinions of others and the gross conformity of imbeciles...
The one, an old alcoholic, brilliant, an engineer when sober, but something had went wrong with his life, he lost his wife and his kids, and I, not knowing, would offer him a drink and he'd go completely off the rails, find my bottle, finish it up, trying to wake us up at nine in the evening to tell us it was time to get up, I was already up, still up, hadn't yet gone to bed, the other roommate, Homunculus, he wasn't so impressed, he'd tolerate it to a point, he was just hoping to get his over-unity machine built.
Homunculus, regaling me with his endless plans to improve the world, he's got the alcoholic engineer working on his over-unity machine, I tell him it's a fraud, he disagrees "How do you know?" I ask, he explains "...because it's how the Americans are powering their anti-gravity machines...".
The engineer, he'd tell him the same as me when he's sober, "can't be done...", but he's giving up trying to reason with him, takes the money for the magnets and wires and uses it to get drunk. I understand.
Homunculus, he has everyone on his side, people learn just to play along, the owner of the local Chinese restaurant tells him long stories about how they never use MSG and how everything is free range and organic, that's enough to cure his imagined allergies. Complaining to me that the Prime Minister hasn't answered his latest letter requesting the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or to stop spraying contrails overhead, and I'll dryly reassure him that doubtless the Prime Minister has responded, only the reply was tied up with Canada Post. Checking his phone, he tracks the weather, lets me know the 'morrow's forecast, he won't leave the house, I've a 12, 18 hour day to look forward to working outdoors in a 40 below blizzard.., And if he was up when I got home he'd be watching William Shatner's "Weird World", which he took to be fact, concluding every episode with his own pet theory "It was probably Bigfoot...". And I could think of no better answer...
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He's the new village idiot of sorts, 19 years old, wanders aimlessly about the kitchen between the dishwashing and salad station, hardly working, you'd need a time-lapse camera to actually see him in any way contributing to the workload...lives at home, spare time spent on the X-Box or computer, editor for 4Chan & Reddit, not exactly stupid, but something's missing...
He walks, lumbers, shuffles, slowly, a psych patient in a psych ward, arms hang by his side, bent 90 degrees at the elbow and again at the wrist, reminding you of the T-Rex toy from Toy-Story, he's painfully slow at whatever he's told to undertake (and that's the only way they'll be undertook, in 4 months he hasn't figured out what exactly his routine should be), he meanders without a speck of motivation whatsoever, is happy to stop and chat and catch up, he's good natured enough, takes our ribbing, laughs, how could he not? Little Ralphie Wigham, this was the kid that got his tongue stuck to the monkeybars every recess, every winter until Grade 12. Not surprisingly, this is the longest he's held a job. He corners me as I'm outside trying to have a cigarette...explaining to me:
"You know, often people who try and blow their brains out recover and find that they managed to get rid of whatever it was that was bothering them..."
He knows this, he saw it on the internet, a thread on reddit or some-such...
Essentially, it's curing themselves through suicide. I can't believe he's telling me this, and I'm torn...
"Did you try this?" I ask, "Because if you did, it would explain an awful lot...Otherwise, I think you're just tempting me to recommend it to you..."
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He's introduced by the other temps, their awe comes through in the introduction, he needs no introduction...we've met him already.
It's Benji, King of the Temps. Benjamin - Benji - the classic temp, missing his front teeth, but in a charming way, Native American, off the reserve, he'd done time in Montana, 10 years or so, couldn't quite explain why, assault, etc. Short, muscular, built in the upper body, the top 2 1/2 feet, but spindly in his legs and with slight and delicate little hands for such a pugilist. He speaks 12 languages, Cree, Ojibwa, Navajo, Cherokee, more even, none you'd know, he knows the Sioux, thinks I might have a claim, but they're from the US,..
"...They were sentenced to be hanged. No attorneys or witnesses were allowed as a defense for the accused, and many were convicted in less than five minutes of court time with the judge..."
Beni's lazy, he shows up for work, on the Temps Bus, every day, and it's his regularity and bullshit, not performance, that recommends him. He's become King of the Temps. He can be found cleaning up the site, gesturing towards the work that needs to be done with an empty magnet, he's the air of authority and knowledge that the other temps respond to, it seems absurd, really, but he's got an elevated status with the other Native-American temps, a sort of god-king thing going, like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse now...you can find him anywhere, everywhere, bullshitting about what he's doing, what he's done, but always the empty magnet, or the empty garbage bag (if he's been off collecting bottles & cans...), he directs the other temps towards the nastier jobs and walks himself in the other direction, he knows them all, when the regulars go missing he tells us on what charges and for how long.
He disappears, weeks on end, he's been charged with assault, punching a police officer, hard to reconcile with the Benji we know, Drunk & Disorderly, well, that's easy, passed out on somebody's lawn and he's woken with a start and punching blindly, we all know the feeling...
Over lunch he's on the phone with "his attorney", business concluded he sets up a golf date, he wants to play chess with me, a bit of an intellectual as well, and so I try him on the mental chess, his response is to shout out the name of the pieces he knows, "Horse" or "Castle-thingy", he's got a whole host of middle class aspirations, the company was dangling the temp-to-perm carrot in front of him, he's lurching for the bait, can't wait until he gets on permanent, he's going to buy a truck, a Mustang, a Camero, a Harley Davidson, he's gonna make the temps work, too, put them into teams, give them deadlines, he's got it all planned out, if they don't perform they get DNR'd (do not returned) on their slips, he's a born leader. If he doesn't go back to jail, the hearing's in a few weeks, there's a possibility given his abundant priors that he might be away for some while...
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"What do you think of Nenshi?" she asks, and I'm stuck for an answer. He hasn't been much in the press lately.
Now clearly the man is a lunatic. To expect corporations, especially in Alberta, the dead-end for most migratory birds, ( & here, & here, & here), to in any way bear liability for the destruction of the environment? Where would the Oilsands be? Where would Syncrude be? (or, perhaps a pun on "Crudely Sinning"?).