emails haven’t been bounced back, and so I figure you’re still out there — lurking, as the kids like to say — so I am going to proceed as such. I’m going to clap my hands and shout, like I’ve been doing all along.
I do believe in you, you big fat fairy. I do. I do.
Now let’s get you caught up.
I get this phone call the other day — the same day I wrote to you about Kyle. Young guy — young voice. “Oh, hello there — Gordon Rankin?” Which nobody I know actually calls me. So I’m immediately thinking: telemarketer.
“Who’s this?” I demand in my best belligerent-psycho grunt.
“Might I speak with Gordon Rankin?”
“Identify yourself!” I yell. Because I hate how these assholes will try to reel you in, get you off-guard, happy to be chatting to a friendly soul, meanwhile the second you’ve done something as innocuous as cop to your own identity they tick a box, press a key and forward your digits to a million assholes exactly like themselves, all in pursuit of your credit card number. I never make it easy, or pleasant, for them.
“Owen Findlay,” said the voice, after clearing its throat, “gave me this number.”
I sat down then. “Okay,” I said after a moment.
“So, now . . . Would this be Gordon Rankin Junior?”
And that’s when I noticed the accent. And that’s when I sighed, realizing what kind of phone call this was going to be.
So Gord fell off the roof is what happened, and broke his collarbone and his right ankle. What was he doing on the roof? He was being an idiot, characteristically, replacing the shingles by his seventy-five-year-old self. Fortunately someone happened to be driving past and saw him plummet. He was lucky — it’s not a busy road in particular. He might have lain there trapped on his back like a turtle, obscenities rising feebly from the overgrown lawn, for the next twenty-four hours if this had not been the case.
“I’m Father Waugh,” said the guy on the phone.
“Father wha?” I said.
“Yes.”
So, Jesus, the priest was calling. It was like getting a call from fifty years ago — from a time when the parish priests called their communities “flocks” and wandered around town bringing the Host to seniors, praying with the sick and making sure no one was dancing to rock and roll. It was so old school. Of course, I hadn’t been back home for years, not since that time with the born-again girlfriend. But back home didn’t change.
Except for the fact that the priests were younger than me now.
So, as young Father Waugh tells it, he was wandering around the hospital — as apparently priests still do — visiting seniors, sorting out who was going to need communion from who would need last rites, when this student nurse rushes past him purple-faced and a shout follows her down the hall along the lines of (and needless to say the priest relayed this line in euphemism): “I can handle my own goddamn wanger when I piss thank you lady!”
My dad.
Handling his wanger was one thing, sure, but what about everything else? Like feeding himself for example? Here was a laid-up senior citizen with no family on hand — Father Waugh took an interest, naturally. Social Services was called, of which none other than coach Owen Findlay is now grand poobah. Gordon Rankin, you say? Findlay got out from behind his desk and drove to the hospital himself.
And apparently they would never have been able to dig up my number if it hadn’t been for Findlay. Gord refused to give it up. “Don’t bother the boy,” he insisted. But Findlay had my address from the occasional Christmas card — when I remembered to send them — and looked me up.
This is what passes for bureaucracy in my home town. The priest contacts the head of Social Services, who goes home and digs through his old Christmas cards.
“Listen, Father,” I said to Waugh, feeling ridiculous — I don’t think I’ve ever called another human being “Father” since my confirmation. “If Gord doesn’t want me, you know . . . that’s fine.” I knew how lame it sounded, how bad-son, but in my defence I hadn’t quite digested the severity of Gord’s injuries at that point. I had forgotten how stubbornness and irrationality can mingle so potently in my father.
“Well, whether he wants you or not, Mr. Rankin, he’s going to need some assistance above and beyond what the public health nurse