Saint of Whales - Chapter V

The withering February air struck Saint as he stepped into the night. Undried sweat turned to ice almost immediately on his forehead while his nostrils stuck shut. The air was cold enough to kill a man in his tracks, but at least it was a dry cold. A shiver ran through him and he burrowed his chin towards his chest and pulled his scarf up further to his nose. He needed his gloves, and he patted himself down with his left hand with no luck. He closed his eyes and let out a slow breath as he pictured his gloves sitting right on his desk exactly where he usually forgot them. With a grunt, he accepted the reality of cold hands and dug them more deeply into his pockets. A quick turn to his right and he started towards the crosswalk at 8th Avenue and 1st Street. The walk sign blinked to a flashing hand and Saint started into a little jog, trying his best to be mindful of pace while also getting across the street. As much as he didn’t want to wait, he also didn’t want to slip on a patch of black ice and end up ass over teakettle.

Making it across the street before the hand stopped flashing felt like the stupidest win in the world, but Saint always felt a charge in his guts when he got across the street with time to spare. With a bit of runway, Saint slowed to a walk from the little jog and continued on his way. It wasn’t very far to the pub he was thinking about. In his mind, he saw a plate of nachos covered in cheese, ground beef, red peppers, onions, salsa and guacamole on the table in front of him, and a cold pint in his hand as he pulled to the right of the sidewalk. Quickly, he halfway unbuttoned his jacket and reached into a pocket along the interior of the right side of his jacket buttons. With numb fingers he fumbled around for a moment before taking out a joint and a lighter. He flipped one end of the joint into his mouth, and struggled flicking the lighter before catching a flame. Within a few puffs, he managed to get the joint lit and the lighter was back into his jacket. 

Winter wind whistled down 8th Avenue, biting and cutting at his Saint’s face. He turned his back and hauled on the joint, hoping he could cook it quickly and not worry about the wind smoking too much of it. However, he also hoped no one else leaving the gym would see him smoking a joint across the street. Philosophically, Saint didn’t really care if someone from the gym saw him smoking a joint across the street from the gym after leaving the gym. However, in practical and everyday terms, Saint cared deeply. As much as he preferred to be alone and to be left to his own devices, he didn’t want anyone knowing him or calling him out. Turning around again, he cupped his hands around the joint, hoping to shield it from the gusts barreling towards him. His attempts were mostly successful, with the joint glowing in his hands while he turned around and walked down the street towards the pub. He had a few blocks to walk and he was certain he could finish his smoke on the way.

He took three smaller hauls on the joint before lowering it and tapping away a line of ash. Flipping the spliff around, he watched the cheap bud burn quickly under the intensity of the wind. Not wanting to waste any more, he lifted the joint up and hauled long and hard on it, inhaling as much as he could before pitching the roach away. The wind, with different ideas of its own, spit the joint back towards him and away with violent speed, somewhat surprising Saint as the effects of the weed settled onto him. 

In spite of the frigid climate, hazy warmth settled throughout Saint’s body, and he felt a wave of calm breathing begin circulating. For just a minute, everything would be okay. His gaze drifted up a few degrees, focusing on the skyline ahead of him, the buildings stretching on for another ten blocks or so before fading into the suburbs of Calgary. Beyond the commuter neighbourhoods, the manicured landscape of the city gave way to the immediate ruggedness of the region and climate. The plains gave way to the foothills and the foothills gave way to the Rocky Mountains that loomed over and above everything around them, their shadows felt even in a city despite only being visible in the distance. The immovable presence provided Saint great comfort at times. So long as the mountains existed as they existed, some degree of certainty could be found in the world.

A breeze whistled through his bones and brought Saint back to the moment and he stopped at 2nd Street. He shot quick looks left and right to make sure the road was clear and hurried across. The warm haze of the joint faded quickly and left him feeling the cold just as he had before. Unfortunately, being stoned didn’t help all that much with the weather. Good news, of course, lay in that he turned to his right and opened the door to the pub and before he knew it he would be sitting down to a hot meal and a cold beer.

A wall of heat struck Saint immediately, and he hurried in removing his toque and unwrapping his scarf from around his neck and face. As he did so, a hostess approached, smiling and waving to him. He always felt a twinge in his guts. He knew the job description. He knew the hostess smiled and waved because her job demanded it, but for someone who spent most of his time alone, he ignored the act and took the energy as though it were genuine. In those moments, he saw through his own facade. He smiled his awkward smile, trying to push past the loneliness bubbling in his guts.

“Hey, how are you? Just for one tonight?” the hostess asked, smiling her perfect smile, all wide and straight with sparkling white teeth, centred between dimpled cheeks and an aquiline nose and broad, deeply cleft chin. The bangs of her pixie cut, all chocolate and amber, sliced severely to the left across her face, the amber showing even more greatly against her pale skin. 

Saint gave his head a quick shake as the hostess looked him, awaiting an answer. “Sorry, the cold has me running a second behind,” he said with half a laugh. “I’m doing alright. How are you?”

“I’m doing well, thanks. Just for one?” The hostess asked again. 

“Yeah yeah, just for one, please,” Saint replied.

“Okay. Follow me.”

Saint nodded and followed the hostess, eyes tracking around the pub. Generally speaking, most restaurants, bars, and pubs did pretty well in Calgary even on a weeknight. The culture of the city was one of gross accumulation, satisfaction, intoxication, and expense. Certainly, in winter months the weather created a barrier for how many people were willing to make a trip out but, for many, cold weather called for cold drinks. The hostess motioned to a high-top table and set a pair of menus down, motioning for Saint to have a seat. He smiled his weird smile and set his gym bag down on the seat across from him before taking off his jacket, throwing it over the back of the chair, and sitting down. He picked up the drink menu and started to skim over it. 

“Your server will be right over,” the hostess said before turning away and going back to her station by the front doors. 

There wasn’t a great deal on the drink menu that interested him. The relative explosion of craft beer over the last few years had everyone and their brother drinking IPAs, always being on the hunt for the biggest, the boldest, the hoppiest beer they could find. For Saint, that was all well and good, though not for him. If others wanted to drink a beer one could smell two tables over, one whose alcohol-by-volume was double that of a standard beer, others could do what they damn well pleased. He only wanted a clean, crisp pilsner. If he could find Pilsner Urquell on draught, that was always his first choice. On a menu full of copycats and breweries trying to push some imaginary envelope, an original was hard to find, making the original pilsner a no-brainer if and when the option presented itself. Unfortunately, at the pub by his gym, Pilsner Urquell wasn’t to be found and none of the local beers interested him at the moment. 

“Hey, how are you tonight?” 

A low, husky voice drew Saint’s attention away from the menu and he looked up to his right at the server. She was tall, close to six feet maybe, with broad shoulders, and long, muscled, tattooed arms coming out of a black, short sleeve button-down shirt tucked into black slacks. In conjunction with dark eyes and full eyebrows, her sharp A-line bangs over top her wispy, flipped out bob presented a severe look.

“I’m okay, thank you. How are you?” Saint answered, hoping maybe he could pick up some conversation. 

“I’m well, thank you. You need a drink while you look at the menu?” 

As always, he felt a twang of disappointment. He hoped maybe for a bit of small talk he could leverage to larger conversation. If the conversation went well to start, maybe he could chat her up whenever she came to his table, and maybe the next he came in she would remember him. Again, he knew there shouldn’t have been any expectation for any woman to like him or want to talk to him, especially at her workplace. Saint knew she probably spent half her shift warding off unwanted conversation and shutting down solicitations. Probably the last thing she wanted to do was talk to someone about something outside of the business at hand. He could understand and respect that, and it still didn’t mean he didn’t want something different. The weed soaking his thoughts always brought him back to a point of desiring connection, wanting something, anything beyond what he already had. 

“Yeah. A pint of Guinness would be really nice,” he said. 

“Pint of Guinness. I’ll be right back with that,” the waitress replied, turning away to put in the order.

“Ex-excuse me,” Saint said, stopping her in her tracks. “Could you tell me about some of the specials tonight? Err, I mean, if you have any specials, I mean. Do you have any specials?”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that. I’m on autopilot right now. I’m closing out a double tonight, and opening tomorrow,” the waitress said, rubbing at her forehead with her left wrist. “Um, what do we have tonight… we’ve got wings on for twenty-five cents a wing until the end of the night.”

“Are… uh, are they big wings?” 

The waitress pursed her lips in thought, the point between her eyes scrunching up, and she wobbled her head a bit side to side, her hair bouncing a little. “Yeah, I mean, for the price they’re a great deal. It’s tough go wrong with them at twenty-five cents a pop, you know?” 

Saint nodded. He did know. “Um, okay. Well, why don’t I just order at the same time as the beer? I’ll get ten hot wings, and ten honey mustard?” 

“Sure. Twenty wings, ten hot and ten honey mustard. I’ll have that beer over to you right away,” the waitress said, turning away to head back to the bar. 

It wasn’t nachos, and he’d thought about nachos on his way over, but a deal on wings was always a good deal. He liked the simplicity wings provided, and he liked the experience. As much as they were deep-fried and that wasn’t good for him, he figured they were maybe better than a plate of nachos. Whether or not that was true, who knew. When he was young, his father had told him everyone had to die from something, and Saint took that to mean he might as well live his life on his own terms, though how well he lived life on his own terms was another matter. In the space of honesty, he didn’t do a very good job and that was of his own design, so he didn’t have anyone to blame but himself. Such was life. 

“Aaaaaand here we are with your pint. Wings shouldn’t be very long,” the waitress said, returning from the bar and setting the beer in front of Saint. 

“Thank you,” he said, trying to smile at her, but only saw her back as she headed off to another table. He knew all the frustration he felt was his own problem. If he hated his job, he could always change it. If he didn’t like being alone, he could make an effort to join a community. If he wanted to eat better, he knew he could eat better. And he wanted to do all those things, at least to a certain degree, he just didn’t have the drive to do them. He lifted his pint up for an imaginary toast and then took a sip, closing his eyes and enjoying the feeling of the cold stout rolling in his mouth before swallowing it down. Taking agency in his life was the thing he hated most, and one of the things he feared the most along with responsibility and consequence. He sipped at his beer again, closing his eyes and rubbing at his forehead with his clawed right hand. Of all the places he could be, of all the places he could have chosen to stay, he chose a city that spent half the year frozen, and the other half dreading the frozen half.

Leaning back in his chair, Saint let his eyes wander around the pub, following the brick wall one way, before shifting up to ceiling of exposed ducts and piping to the beams running over top of tables with individual bulbs hanging down by their wiring. He liked the space well enough and he dreamed at times of owning a loft or a condo with a similar style. A part of him thought a house would be a better purchase, but such an idea seemed so far away and like something he would never achieve. The worry of burden, of being chained to the bank by his ankle struck a nerve deep in his guts. Similarly, deep in his being, Saint knew  the worry and the anxiety of owning a home, whether it be a house or a condo, was tied to his fear of permanence. Obligation and duty terrified him and those fears kept him exactly where he was.

He drew his eyes back to the waitress as she came out of the kitchen with a plate of wings on her tray and headed for his table. He smiled at her, though the action wasn’t reciprocated. It didn’t matter why. She approached his table and lowered her tray down to take his plate of wings off and set it in front of Saint. As she did so, a crash and bang rang out of the washrooms, followed by the sound of spewing water. The stink of sewage quickly began filling the restaurant. Saint and the waitress looked at each other for a moment, each grimacing. Saint pulled the collar of his shirt up over his nose, while the waitress visibly tried to refrain from gagging. The restaurant burst into a frenzy with management buzzing around and staff visiting tables to check on customers and to allay fears.

“Um, can I get this to go and get my bill?” Saint asked.

The waitress nodded quickly and hurried for the bar. She returned quickly with a to-go container and the tab. Holding his breath, Saint took out his wallet and a pair of twenties , leaving both bills on the table. He gave a wave to indicate he didn’t need any change and received a nod in return. If he would never be the charming, good-looking customer, he could at least try to be the good tipper. As quickly as he could, he set about pulling his jacket on, as well as his hat. He paused to take a healthy chug of beer and swallow it before finishing the beer in another gulp. Slamming back a pint wasn’t what he typically did, but there was no way he was leaving the mostly full beer and there was no way he was going to sit in the restaurant and drink it casually when there was an apparent sewage problem.

As he picked up the box of wings, he looked around and saw most folks had the same idea as him. He didn’t know much about the restaurant industry, but he knew busted pipes and the stink of sewage didn’t make for good business. Once he was secure with his winter gear, he took his box of wings and headed for the door, nodding to staff who ignored him as he passed by. He didn’t expect any different given the circumstances, and he pushed through the doors back out into the frigid Calgary winter. Even outside on the sidewalk, he couldn’t shake the stink of filth from his nose. Cradling the container of wings under his right arm, Saint adjusted his scarf with his left hand and started to head down the street. He would just head to his gym and call a taxi.

With a quick look both ways, Saint crossed over 2nd Street and headed towards his gym. Shouting to his left, however, stopped him in his tracks. 

“Hey! Hey there! You spare anything for an old man down on his luck?” 

Saint turned and walked towards a man sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall, his right leg folded and bent up to his chest, while his leg left extended forward with an awkward bend at the knee. The man did not appear overly prepared for the weather, wearing a long duster over a dirty denim jacket, and a pair of ragged blue jeans on his legs, with a pair of worn moccasins on his feet. In the dim light it was hard to get a good look at his features, though Saint was able to see broad cheeks and a broad forehead with a sharp nose in the centre. In the dim light, he couldn’t get a good sense of the man’s skin colour or eye colour just yet. 

“You able to spare anything to help an old boy out?” The man asked, waving at himself up and down. “I’m on some hard times here, my son. I’m stuck and trying to get home, but I’m stuck.” Coughs racked the man’s body and fell forward, holding himself up from the unforgiving cold of the concrete with gloveless hands. 

Saint frowned and looked from the man to his box of wings and back. All he wanted was to go home and sit down in his underwear and eat some wings, but he knew he had that luxury where the man before him clearly didn’t. He sighed and crouched down. “I just got these wings if you want them?” He asked, holding the box out as the man nodded. “They should still be hot. I only got them a few minutes ago.”

The man gladly took the box from him and opened the lid, leaning in and inhaling the scent and feeling the relative warmth they still provided. “Thank you, my son. I’m stuck and I don’t know how get home. I don’t even know if I want to go home. I’m stuck here.”

“Where are you from?” Saint asked, knowing the least he could do was to provide a bit of conversation. His question caused the man to perk up and their eyes connected. Copper eyes latched onto Saint’s, and he broke away. 

“My feet are so cold and they’re so tired. You got another pair of shoes for me?” 

The question struck Saint and he stood up straight, setting his left hand on his hip. “Man, I just gave you my dinner and you want shoes, too?” He barked, more harshly than intended and without any compassion. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, shaking his head. It wasn’t good enough to reply the way he did. It wasn’t good enough to snap at a man freezing outdoors. “Do you need somewhere to stay tonight? Do you need some help getting to a shelter?” 

The man waved the question away as he sucked the meat off a wing and threw the bones to the ground beside him. He wiped his face on his sleeve. “My feet are so cold right now. They’re so cold and I’m so far from home. I’ll trade you these if you have another pair. I’ll trade you. I’ll trade you if you have another pair I can have.”

Saint sighed and nodded, sliding his gym back off his shoulder and opening it up. His gym shoes might not do much for warmth, but given that the man’s moccasins had most certainly seen better days, the gym shoes had to be an improvement. Crouching down again, Saint held the shoes out. “You think these will fit?” 

Dropping the box of wings to the ground, the man grabbed the shoes from Saint’s hand and kicked his moccasins off. He stretched forward as best he could and slid the right shoe onto his right foot before looking back up at Saint and nodding. “Thank you, my son. You’re a real beauty. Thank you, my son. You take those old ones of mine. They need some work but they’re good still. There’s still a lot to get out of them.” 

“Uh, I don’t know. I think I’m ok—”

The old man moved far more spryly than Saint would have figured, especially given the cold and the bend of the man’s left leg. The quick movement, knocked the box of wings to the ground, spilling a few though the old man didn’t notice. He managed to grab Saint who couldn’t get away in time and pulled him in close. 

“Take them from me, my son. Get them out of here. Get them away from me. I don’t want them anymore. Get them away from me.” 

Saint broke quickly. He didn’t do well with conflict of any kind on the best of days and after the day he’d already had, he didn’t need any other headaches. “Alright, alright. I’ll take them from you,” he said, standing up and backing away when the man released his grip. With a step to his left, he crouched down and picked up the moccasins, holding himself from lurching when he saw the condition of the man’s feet, largely black from frostbite. “I think you need to see a doctor there, old-timer. Your feet are—”

“I know about my feet, my son. There’s nothing no doctor can do for me. I been running so long it don’t matter. You just leave me be now. Let me eat and leave me be.” 

Shaking his head and sighing, Saint couldn’t look at the man. “Sure, whatever you say, buddy. I hope you have a good night,” he said, though his words went unheard as the man shuffled himself into an alleyway, pulling himself with one hand and pushing himself with his legs so he could try and eat the wings with his free hand, sucking noisily and throwing the bones to the side as he finished them. Saint sighed again and threw the moccasins into his gym bag and turned back to 8th Avenue to head to his gym. He just wanted to get home and go to bed now. He didn’t care about eating and he didn’t care about drinking, though he figured he would stop at the liquor store in front of his place. If he was going to eat whatever leftovers he had in the fridge, he might as well have something to wash them down with.

The gym wasn’t that far and Saint kept walking, head down and trying not to think about the temperature. A white, full-sized van rolled up beside him, its side and rear windows all newspapered over. A few peeps of the horn startled Saint. He didn’t have much of an opportunity to compose himself as the driver’s side window rolled down. Straight away, something didn’t sit right. The man’s eyes were pinched so close to one another they almost seemed to cross the bridge of his nose, with their startling blue colouring bursting out from the sallow, papery skin stretched across a perfectly round skull sitting atop a pencil-thin neck, one seeming about half the size it ought to have been to support any person’s head.  

“Hey, you. Come here,” the man ordered with a voice that crackled and vibrated. 

Saint cocked his head back and scrunched his noise up, squinting at the man while watching his head shake gently side to side and up and down without ever stopping. Saint tried not to stare, tried his best to look at the man and not the physical actions, tried to avoid pausing to look at the totally hairless look of the man’s face and forehead.

The man snapped his right fingers before speaking again. “I’m looking for someone in the area. He might be sleeping outside. I want to find him and get him back somewhere safe. I really need to help him. Have you seen him around?”

Saint cleared his throat and shrugged. “Um, I’m not sure I know who you’re talking about. I don’t think I can—”

“You haven’t seen anyone around? Anyone looking like they’re down on their luck?”

Nothing seemed right to Saint and he gave a shake of his head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. Best of luck,” he said, and started to head towards his gym. The driver of the truck, however, followed beside him at a snail’s pace. 

“Hey, you have to be able to help. I think he’s in the area,” the man said. 

Saint tried to ignore him, but a honk of the horn stopped him and he turned to face the driver. He cleared his throat and wiped at his nose with his wrist. A funny smell hung in the air. Burning plastic, maybe? What sounded like sparks jumping sounded in Saint’s ears. He gave a quick look up and down the street, but didn’t see anyone, not even standing in front of the restaurant with the burst pipes. On the one hand, it seemed odd the place could have cleared out so quickly, but, on the other hand, the weather had taxis out en masse for once, so who knew. Murphy’s Law in Calgary always said the colder the temperature, the fewer the taxis, but Murphy’s Law also said Murphy’s Law would never be right when one needed it to be right. 

“Hey, you need to help me. You have to help me. He’s lost.” 

Saint blinked a few times and tried focusing on him. His eyes slipped off the man’s features, no matter how much Saint tried to get a good look. The man’s head moved almost in a similar fashion to a strobe light, as though it were only visible every other second. His skin seemed to flicker, with its unhealthy jaundiced complexion crackling to a somewhat healthier pale shade of pink. The way the man’s lips pulled back from his mouth showed off perfectly square teeth, even where they met his gums.  

“Look, I think you’re better off going to the cops if you really need help finding this guy. I just want to get home from the gym,” Saint said. He gave a bit of a wave. “So, uh, good luck, I guess.” 

The man held his left hand up out the window, palm towards Saint. “You need to help me. He’s dangeruzzzzzz—” He stopped talking abruptly as his head began shaking rapidly side to side, while a whining, whirring, buzzing sound started to come from the van. At the same time, midway up his forearm to his fingers began rotating medially until the back of his hand faced Saint, and then rotated out laterally again the palm faced outwards. Normally, rotation of the arm wouldn’t have been that big a deal, except for the rotation began midway up the forearm with the bottom half of the arm remaining stationary. 

Saint scrunched his nose and sniffed at the air. He definitely smelled burning plastic.  The man’s eyes began flicking open and shut at different intervals, right eye faster than the left, and the colouring fading and intensifying without rhyme or reason. 

“Uh, are you okay?” 

The man’s jaw dropped open and he slouched forward, a deep buzz droning out of his mouth while his skin flickered faster and faster, now presenting more like a damaged monitor. Saint rubbed at his face and shook his own head. He bought the same amount of the same weed from the same guy on the same schedule. Outside of mushrooms, he didn’t touch anything harder than grass. Saint rubbed at his eyes again and shook his head. 

Slowly, the man straightened up, clenching and unclenching his hand. His fingers moved in mechanical, segmented fashion with each finger moving independently until all his fingers were closed before stretching out one at a time. The whining sound started dying down, and the colouring of the man’s eyes evened out while his blinking resumed a more normal pattern. The smell of burning plastic persisted, however. “You need to help me. He’s dangerous.”

“Are you okay? Do you need to see a doctor?” Saint asked. He wondered if he just call 911. The downturn did a lot of funny things to people and he wondered if the man driving the van was on some kind of drugs. He didn’t know very much about drugs other than what he read in the news, but he saw something a little while ago about bath salts and about krokodil, something about someone biting off someone’s face while under the influence. He wondered if the man’s twitching, his creaking voice and weird blinks could be the sign of the drugs. He also wondered if his own drug use wasn’t causing some confusion. Saint shifted a little bit and rubbed at his arms. “Listen, buddy. It’s freezing out and I’m going to get going here. Good luck to you in finding whoever it is you’re looking for,” he said, turning away from the man and starting back towards his gym. 

The window rolled up and the van accelerated by him, taking a hard right and heading south. Saint picked up his pace to his gym. Getting home was the priority, and once he called a taxi, he would be on his way.