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Reprinted from Banjo Lessons, a novel by David Carpenter Some time after two in the morning he has to pee. Pepper follows him into the bathroom, sits and watches. Pepper yawns. Tim yawns. He has the faintest memory of a dream about Janey Bream. Dream a dream of Janey Bream. From Charlie Bream you get your cream. Charlie smelled of milk and horses. Small world.

He goes back to bed and Pepper follows, her nails clicking on the hardwood floors. He climbs into bed and is about to turn out the light when he sees Pepper sitting at his bedside. Pepper looks at him as though Tim is about to do something entertaining.

Tonight Pepper thinks Tim is Mole Sharp’s TV set. Any second the Gypsy Woman will leap out of Tim’s head, shaking her tambourine.

The house is so quiet he can hear his alarm clock ticking. He can even hear the sound of his father’s breathing. Every so often the air whistles past his father’s gullet in a slow drawing in of breath. It never quite becomes a snore and it never seems to awaken Tim’s mother. Whenever my head hits the pillow, she is still fond of saying.

And now Tim is massively awake. Why awake? Is he depressed? No, not very. He is just wakeful. Pepper yawns, her head is sinking, but still she sits by Tim’s bedside. Waiting.

Is it Janey Bream then? Is he falling in love with Janey Bream? No, he is in love with Nancy. No? No. With Rita Symington. No, wait wait wait. With the memory of Rita Symington. But he will phone Janey Bream before too long. She’s as unlike Nancy or Rita as a girl can be. He and Janey might get along pretty good. As long as she doesn’t expect him to be a jock, he won’t expect her to read his favourite books. William Faulkner? she said. Didn’t he star in Born Yesterday or something? Well, didn’t he?

No, it’s not Janey Bream. His mind is unleashed, roaming fitfully through some sort of jungle. He should probably write this all down. Small world. He should write about his own small world. Pepper obviously thinks so. He reaches over and scratches Pepper’s head. She allows herself to be petted, but she is obviously not in her sucky mode. And she is not begging to go out. Nor is she hinting to be allowed up on the bed. She is there to watch the action. What action?

No action around here, Pepper, he whispers to the dog. Pepper looks away. If ever there was a guy born to inaction, he is lying in this bed. Hamlet with a live dad and nothing much rotting in the state of Denmark. Twenty-one years ago he lost a battle to stay forever in his mother’s womb. And then he tumbled out into the river of life.

He whispers the phrase to Pepper: Out into the River of Life. It was late October when he was born. The river might have been frozen.

Yes? Pepper seems to say.

Once upon a time in the steaming jungles of the Amazon a baby was dropped into the mighty river to swim with all the piranhas. He had to learn how to fight with his brother (who couldn’t wait to get into the River of Life, who was still swimming downstream), he had to learn how to hide his fear, how to drag himself off to school each day, how to talk to girls, how to lose his virginity, how to co-exist with the unbearable Altrogge, how to contend with a thousand illnesses, how to write poems to impress women, how to live in a world run by the people Out There, how to keep…how to keep…

He wants to say out loud how to keep everything from disappearing, but he doesn’t really understand what this means. Maybe he just got it from a book. What is disappearing, after all? The haloed world of his golden youth? Big hairy deal. Except: you don’t have to swim with all the piranhas if you can swim somewhere better. You could leap over the nanaconda’s lair, you could paddle up to the source of things where the trout were rising. A long time ago the Irish kept trout in their wells because it was said to purify the water.

Pepper extends her nose to the bed, sniffing. A moment ago her nose was dry; now it glistens with moisture.

Pouring out of your mother’s womb was like going from a rearing pond to a river. Reverend Mountjoy’s miracle. Roderick Haig-Brown’s miracle. Thoreau’s miracle. Izaak Walton’s miracle. God’s miracle.

Yeah, says Pepper. Now you’re cookin.

Always, in his father’s stories, they would go up the Amazon to find the emeralds of the Ucayali warrior or whatever. Always up. Because if you went down the Amazon things would get murky? You’d have to contend with civilization? Questions you can never ask your father.

But upstream, that’s where the action is. Treasure troves, crystal caves, good fishing, clean water, a girl with a banjo singing of Mount Abora, happy endings, Blue Skies, God, the wine of God, Artemis, birdsong, the mountains, no nanacondas, lots of brook trout and brown trout, the women of the great master Stufflebeam, which rhymes with Charlie Bream, from whom you get your cream.

Where you get your cream.

Pepper is all attention. Pepper is lapping it all up. Milk from the tits of the Great Mother Springer.

He should write this all down. There is a pen and his new green spiral notebook in his desk drawer. There’s nothing written in it yet, not a word. But where would he start? I was born in the month of the scorpion, in the year of the serpent, 1941, the darkest days of World War II, and I was christened Timothy. Timothy, son of Pug. Which means Honouring God.

Unfortunately you seem to be striving for high literary effect, says Pepper, lowering her head once more, lowering her body to the rug.

In the beginning God created the trout streams-no?

No, sayeth Pepper, who lyeth on the rug now, sniffeth the air, waiteth patiently for Timothy’s overture.

It was the best of times, it was-

No, sayeth the world.

No?

No. No. No.

His novel would be magnificently sad. Something to do with unrequited love, like a song in a minor key.

Blue skies, smiling at me, Nothing but blue skies do I see.

Such a happy message, such a melancholy tune. Like the courting song of the chickadees. Sad rapture.

Blue skies, singing a song, I love you dearly, Rider Wrong.

Timmy Fisher, age three, tractor driver and song stylist.

Get on with it, says Pepper. I haven’t got all night.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was-

No, says Pepper. Earlier. Go back. Upstream.

Once-ta pon-ta time-

Earlier.

He really should get up out of bed and get a pen and his green sprial notebook and get this all down. All it takes is the right work, the first trout in a pool of Uncatchables, the first… On the other hand, it must be three o’clock in the morning and he’s got an eight-thirty class. Pepper moans, lowers her head onto her paws, yawns mightily.

Her master follows suit. He turns off his bed lamp and curls up into a tight captial G. G is for goodnight. G is for God rest ye. G is for God’s wine, G is for G is for…is for ghosts. G is for gone, with Nancy’s pink delights in the owl grove. G is for G is for G is for go to bed. G is for getting up early. G is forgetting. So is Tim. He hears his mother clearing her throat in sleep, his father pause in breathing, his dog sigh, his clock tick. Sleep. That is the only answer.

After all. It’s three o’clock in the. Morning and he has an eight-thirty. And the clock won’t stop. And when that machine goes off goes off when that thing goes off he will. Plunge out of bed he will plunge out of bed and be and be he will have to be wide

Reprinted from Banjo Lessons (Regina: Coteau Books, 1997).
Used by permission.

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