standing feature
north face
Gangsta rap
It’s been at least a year since you ate Nechako nachos and sang karaoke gangster rap at the Ghostkeeper Pub past the edge of town.
You rapped that ditty, dirty words and all, no time to take a breath, your heart beating fast with the song’s cold small handgun tucked down in its big city raging bass, a place where the sidewalks steam with stink.
You rapped that ditty while the waitress with blonde bangs cheered from a high stool at the bar, until she retied her pony tail and got up to sing a Cher song about love. And later, your husband unwrapped his big hands from a round glass of beer and joined her up on stage. And they sang the Folsom Prison Blues in duet while he tapped his foot on the wooden floor.
It was winter, and your husband was wearing sandals and thick wool socks, the same kind he wore at your wedding. And in the middle of the blues, they jumped up and turned to each other and did a little square dance.
When you drive up the hill to the Ghostkeeper Pub, you’ll see where the river snakes between the pulp mill and the prison, and why you’re forbidden to pick up hitchhikers, although it never stops my husband. Since the night he sang those Folsom blues, a posse of prisoners had already made their getaway from the work brigade at the fall fair.
There they were in their orange prison jumpsuits, twirling pink cotton candy, sweet as asbestos, until they jumped in the back of a fast car piloted by brazen girls, and peeled out, the wind in their hair, stripping down to their socks as fast as they could.
And soon after, out at a wilderness prison camp way out past Willow River, an old convict put on his backpack at dusk, climbed on a bicycle, and started pumping those pedals down a forest service road, never to be seen again.
True, a bloodied man carrying an axe once knocked on the door of your next to nearest neighbour in the middle of the day, asking for a glass of water, after his long hike down the train tracks from town. But in truth, you worry more about the loose-limbed moose that haunt your rural road where the ditches bleed into the darkness of dusk and forest.
When you were younger and alone, you used to play cards at the downtown hostel with men straight out of prison, fellows with extravagant moustaches who sat down at card tables in the dank old basement in a haze of smoke to play Hearts by their own set of rules. Jail rules, they said.
They were men who planned to buy their girlfriends a real bed and mattress set, even if it meant holding up a bank with a hairbrush, a hairbrush with a lock of their girlfriend’s golden hair.
Those days, you were living in a highrise where the elevator smelled like Texas Hash, and old men slept underneath urinals in the park outside, and someone stole your bike and left behind the front tire, and someone else kicked in your door, upended your bed and took off with your VCR in your old grandmother’s suitcase.
The cop said he didn’t want to dust up your place looking for prints and then he sat down in a deep chair in your living room and stayed for a good long while, like he was looking for a wife.
That night, last year, at the Ghostkeeper Pub, your husband sang sweet and off key. And you ate Nechako nachos and wings and poutine, and you said out loud, “I am happy,” because it was a rare and precious feeling that was struggling to escape.
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