#i miss drawing silly ass wing rabbit

[kogglyuffs]

victini day!!

[kootenaygoon]

So,

It felt like the forest was holding its breath. 

It was an early Saturday afternoon, and I’d driven out to where hundreds of search and rescue volunteers had combed the Crawford Bay woods looking for a missing school teacher named Alvin Dunic. As I stepped over a half-rotted log, surrounded by god-like trees the size of skyscrapers, my surroundings conjured up visions of the Hundred Acre Wood. It felt like at any moment we could run into Piglet or Tigger or Eeyore. The forest floor was spongy and thick with life beneath my feet, and I could feel the subtle breath of the purple magic that had been permeating my dreams.

I’d only met Alvin once, while walking Muppet and Buster on the train tracks near Chahko Mika Mall in Nelson. He was with his wife, who I knew from elsewhere. It was right around the time of Trump’s election, and he had insights into what happened that hadn’t occurred to me before. While I’d taken the whole debacle as a sign the American populace was bigoted and crazy, he pointed out that the cultural shift was actually made possible by the elitism of the left. The Democrats had lost sight of Middle America, of the working class, and that was exactly who Trump reached. Alvin had a quiet wisdom about him, the sort of smug know-it-all demeanour that so many teachers adopt after years of standing in front of classrooms. His handshake was intense.

When I chose to visit the place where Alvin had gone missing two months earlier I decided to bring Ryan Tapp along so I wouldn’t be alone. Now he was thirty feet ahead of me, whistling the tune to “Zombie” by the Cranberries as we padded deeper into the foliage. He had his grey shotgun slung playfully over his shoulder. The forest sighed with pleasure.

“Doesn’t this kind of remind you of Winnie the Pooh? Like we should be on the look-out for heffalumps and woozles?” I shouted at Ryan, trying to convince him to slow down. I didn’t want us to get lost like Alvin.

“I always thought it was weird how they didn’t really have a gender. Except for Roo and Kanga, they’re all androgynous.”

“What difference does that make?”

“It’s just unusual, when you think about it. Most people think Pooh is male, but what gender is Rabbit?”

I thought about that as I climbed over a fallen tree, the moss sloughing off in my hand to expose a sunburst of scurrying ants. It was propped against another tree, which was leaning precariously as well, so I scrambled as quick as I could to make sure I didn’t dislodge it. There were no paths here, or at least none that I’d seen. This was the definition of bush-whacking.

“We can’t be in the right place,” I said. “He was planning to do a field trip here, he was going to bring a whole class of students. This is way too treacherous.”

“Maybe there’s a path and we missed it?”

I was getting nervous. “I’m really terrible with directions, man. Can you make sure you know which way we came from? The last thing we want is to trigger our own search. That would be the worst case scenario.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, Will. You know what the real worst case scenario would be.”

While writing stories about Alvin for the Star, I’d been primarily quoting the search and rescue commander Chris Armstrong. He had a gruff, no-nonsense demeanour and took his job very seriously. I got the feeling he’d been in the military at some point, maybe. As the search came to a close, I thanked him for making our newspaper a priority. His organization had a mandate to cooperate with local media first, and he was a true professional. Then I found out that he had been hired to be in charge of safety at Shambhala, and would be the point-person running the evacuation if there was a forest fire. I was pleased to have such a well-placed contact.

“It’s hard to imagine a forest like this catching on fire. Everything is so wet,” I said, wiping condensation off my face. “I mean, I’m getting drenched here.”

Ryan laughed. “When the fire comes, that’s not going to save you.”

“Ed has been riding my ass about this forest fire thing. And even though I’ve interviewed all the experts and heard about all the safety protocols in place, I’m telling you — if a fire came to Nelson, it would be bloody fucking chaos. There’s only two roads out of town, and 10,000 people to evacuate.”

“You’re lucky to have him as an editor, eh? He’s really pushing you, not letting you slack off.”

I shrugged. “Most of the time it feels like he’s trying to crash my kite. He takes my prose, when it’s beautiful and unique, and makes it mundane. Like for this youth centre story I wanted to use the word ‘jettison’, like the youth centre was ‘jettisoning’ their staff and he changed it to say they ‘moved on to other jobs’.”

“Man, that’s what editors do. You need to get better at receiving feedback. That’s your problem. You always think you’re the smartest guy in the room. But you’re not.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m serious, man. You’ve got two older, more experienced journalists in your newsroom but you strut around like you’re cock of the walk. Too much confidence is unattractive, man. You’ve got to stay humble.”

I laughed, then broke out into song. “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way!”

Ryan joined in. “I can’t stand to look in the mirror, I get better looking each day!”

By this point we were nearing Crawford Creek, and I could hear its low hiss. It sounded like a snake, lackadaisical and confident in its next kill. My jeans were soaked up to the knees, and there were scratches on my face and hands. This expedition had become more arduous than I had planned. I just wanted to understand what Alvin had seen last, wanted to feel what he did during his final moments. Though his wife and others were still clinging to the chance he was alive somewhere, Armstrong was nearly certain that Alvin had gone into the water. The run-off was still high, so it would’ve been powerful enough to sweep him downstream. The search parties had scoured the entire forest, now the river was the last place to look. 

Ryan and I broke out into a riverside clearing, the moss sparkling with dew and the sunlight glaring down white and ethereal. On the opposite bank a mother deer was taking tentative sips from the stream with her fawn. It was the sort of scene you could paint on the wall of a hospital’s pediatric wing to soothe the children. Ryan clambered down and cupped some water with one hand, bringing it to his mouth. It cascaded down his chin.

“Holy shit, this water’s delicious. Tastes like its fresh from the glacier. You want some? You gotta try it.”

“You’re going to get beaver fever, man.”

“I’m serious, come taste it. This is some of the freshest water in the Kootenays.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to get too close. I was surveying the scene before me, noting the slimed green boulders jutting from the middle of the stream and the tangled log-jams on either side of me. It was shallow here, maybe waist-high, but it got deeper and blacker further along. We were in the middle of a long crescent which ended up in a sharp right turn. The water was pristine, with rainbow colours dancing prismatic on its surface. 

It didn’t seem menacing.

Standing there reminded me of all the whitewater rafting I’d done in my younger years. Ever since I was a teenager I’d dreamed about doing guide training school and becoming certified. I wanted to man the oars at the back, taking customers screaming through rapids, all buff and suntanned. I conjured memories of floating free in the Thompson, secure in my wetsuit and lifejacket, comfortable as a wide brown swath took me floating past derelict railway infrastructure. Then there was the Nuhatlatch, which was deep in the woods and reminded me of Jurassic Park. I’d seen rafts flipped there, or wrapped around rocks, and more than once I had to swim through crazy sections with my feet in front of me and my arms out like I was being crucified. I used my water shoes to deflect off obstacles, but more than once I got turned around. I took direct hits to my helmet that made my ears bang and sing like church bells.

“He had kids, you know,” I said. “This guy Alvin.”

“Who, the guy that drowned?”

“Yeah, he had daughters. I met one of them at Elephant Mountain during her art show. They’re still young, little teenagers. They need him.”

“Can you imagine if it was all a hoax? If he just ran off for some reason? Like maybe he’s in trouble with the law or something and just decided to lam it?”

I shook my head. “Not this guy. No way. This guy loved his family, his community. He loved being a teacher. He wasn’t checking out on purpose, there’s no way. This was all a mistake.”

Lately I’d been pondering the nature of my mind, wondering if I was truly capable of traveling forward and backwards in time. These visions I had haunted me, especially when they came true. I took out a joint and lit it, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs before exhaling. It was Natalya who first sensed it, first asked me about my purple dreams. Her eyes danced with inspiration as I told her about the spirits that visited me, my imaginary friends, and all the times I seemed to know about things before they happened. It had been going on since 2005, when I had a prescient dream the night before my youth pastor was arrested in Tijuana, Mexico. That morning I’d woken up crying, pleading to God, whispering: “please, please, please.”

Natalya bounced with excitement. “I knew there was something special about you, from as soon as I met you at Power by You. It was that racism article. You had this crazy ability to plug right into other people’s feelings, perceptions.”

“Well, that’s called listening,” I said.

She shook her head, and smiled like I was a silly toddler who couldn’t grasp what she was getting at. “I think you’re clairvoyant, or maybe clairsentient. That means you can see things before they happen, you have this special empathy with total strangers.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe in that shit.”

But now I wondered. Whatever her faults, Natalya did seem to have a supernatural perception. She’d guessed things about me I never told her, and had insights into my life she couldn’t have gleaned from anywhere normal. There was some sort of energy binding us together, whether I liked it or not, and I worried our break-up would be violent. I watched the river flow by me, like a never-ending magic carpet, and wondered what this all meant. When I turned my back on Christianity as a teenager I left my capacity for wonder behind, but maybe the universe had other plans. I let my gaze wander up into the trees until I spotted a proud-looking osprey perched on a naked branch. She seemed like she was waiting for something to happen. Or like she was guiding me somewhere.

“Ryan, look! It’s Nel, the osprey I wrote about for the paper,” I said, reaching for my camera bag. “The one I put on the front cover.”

He glanced up, confused. “Where?”

I ran along the bank, pulling my camera out of its bag, desperate to get photographic evidence of her return. They’d told me back in 2014 that she had a tracking tag, but it would probably be years before she returned from her trip south. Why had she chosen this moment, of all moments, to appear to me? I couldn’t believe it.

Then my ankle rolled, and a small patch of grassy riverbank gave way under my left foot. My chest hit the ground with a wet thunk, while my camera smashed into my chin and crunched. I blinked for a moment, winded, as my body surfed the chunk of riverbank down to the shore. Ryan stood, alarmed, but couldn’t reach me before I log-rolled into the water and submerged. It was definitely glacier temperature because it sucked out all of my air in shock. My leg hit something sharp underwater and the pain rocketed through my entire body. This was such an ironic turn of events, I thought. I’d been a lifeguard for over ten years and now I was about to drown.

My camera was still tangled around my left arm as I turned on to my belly. Ryan was running along the riverbank shouting, but all I could hear was the slosh and churn of water all around me. A large sweeper was approaching, its skeletal fingers reaching down past the water’s surface, and I kicked feebly at the branches as I crashed through them. All those years of competitive swimming hadn’t prepared me for this. 

“Will, grab this!” Ryan shouted from behind me. I twirled in the current and saw him on a rocky outcropping, reaching down with a severed branch. “Grab on!”

With one hand I got ahold of the branch and for one terrifying moment I thought I was going to pull Ryan in with me. He collapsed to his chest, so that he was laying belly-down on a cleft about four or five feet above me. Already the shoreline was starting to crumble, and I didn’t know how long I could hold on. I coughed and spat, whipping my hair out of my face and trying to pull myself up out of the water. My leg was dangling useless behind me, and I could see a steady stream of blood issuing from my shin. This stupid goddamn body. Why had God made us all so fragile?

I looked up at Ryan, his face pink from the strain, and our eyes locked. He knew just as well as I did that I couldn’t hold on much longer, and neither could he. We both looked downstream to where a deadly-looking logjam had choked off a chunk of the river. The current was speeding directly towards it. A feeling of calm washed over me as I realized that this was it, my fate. I’d been on this planet for 33 years, just like Jesus, and now it was time to achieve ascension. This was all pre-planned, I realized, now I just needed to do my part. I felt my body go slack with acceptance. I looked up into Ryan’s eyes, which were full of fear, and then he understood too. He clenched his jaw and shook his head, not wanting to believe it. Why would the universe choose me of all people for this meaningless sacrifice?

“Listen, man,” he said, as my grip began to go. “I’ll meet you on the other side, okay? You’re not alone. I promise this will make sense when you see me next.”

And with that he released the branch. I rolled on to my back gasping and saw Nel flying across the white sky above me. She was circling, and her wings made her look like a guardian angel. Tears flooded into my eyes as I realized there had always been a higher power all this time, watching over me. Religion had failed me, and so had science, but imagination had become my salvation. My shoulder blade clipped a rock as I squeezed my eyes shut and began to pray. I knew I would only have a moment to give thanks.

When I first hit the log-jam, it kept me at the surface for a moment as I tried to catch my breath. My breath came out in laboured wheezes. The logs were slimy and sharp, nearly black. The current tugged at my feet, one boot on and the other lost to the river. This was all so senseless, so unfair. I wanted to fight but I knew that I couldn’t. I was over-matched. I felt a mighty yank and then I was underneath the log-jam, my face bashing against the tangled underbelly. Water forced itself into my throat, surging down inside of me, until my consciousness began to haze. With one fist I punched uselessly against my killer, despondent, until a new vision appeared before me: my family, all ready to pose for a portrait, smiling benevolently in my direction. I screamed and clawed, hoping to break through the fabric of reality that separated us, but it was no use. They faded into blackness and I was left alone, underwater, surrounded by the pulsing purple magic of it all.

When I opened my eyes next, I was laying on the leather couch at Brendan’s house with Roxy between my legs. It was a gorgeous afternoon and I could see families lining up for Dairy Queen. I blinked away the strange dream and went looking for my phone, which had been buzzing. I found it on the floor and clicked it on, blinking away unconsciousness. On my home screen there was a single text message from Chris Armstrong.

We found Alvin, he wrote. Call me. 

The Kootenay Goon