Chapter 6
Colin: Thanks for showing me these photos. Who's this handsome devil?
Grandma: Your grandfather John Simpson.
Colin: He sure was a looker. I can see why you picked him.
Grandma: We loved each other.
Colin: What happened?
Grandma: John took to the bottle. He was a mean drunk. One night he came home late and started hitting me. I guess the noise woke your father. He was just a boy but he saw John holding a knife to my throat. The look on poor Billy's face.
John Simpson worked for the railway. He drank and gambled with the boys and once he'd lost the family income on a belly of whiskey, he would take it out on his wife Margaret. With four small children in tow, she felt trapped and his tearful apologies sucked her into the lie even deeper.
John stole some tires from the railway and was under investigation when he took another round out of Margaret but this time there was a witness, his oldest boy, Billy. At the end of her rope Margaret reached out for help from her neighbors. A group of neighborhood men banded together and sent John running; making it clear to him that he was no longer welcome in their town.
He spent most of the rest of his life in Edmonton and was sometimes homeless. John Simpson died at Ponoka psychiatric hospital in his eighties.
Colin: Mom I was looking for your baby photo album in the chest of drawers in your bedroom and I found this letter. I think it's from dad's dad. I thought he was dead.
Mom: Why are you snooping around in my room? What letter?
Colin: Here. It's addressed to Billy.
Mom: It's true as far as I know. Your dad doesn't talk about him but I think he sends him money. I think he's been sending him money for years.
Colin: So who was he, my grandpa.
Mom: As far as I know he was a drunk and gambler who beat his wife and made the mistake of stealing from the railway so they ran him out of town.
Colin: And dad never talks about him with you.
Mom: Not to anyone. Worse yet I think he's spent a lifetime bearing the shame of his father. He's worked hard his whole life to provide for this family, to be a good husband and father and supporter of the community. He was not his father’s son.
Bill and Betty Simpson took a much-needed two-week holiday in San Francisco. Colin was working at the butcher shop and fancied himself in charge but it was really Bill's very capable right-hand man, David, who was running the show.
Late one afternoon Colin noticed a small elderly man stumble out of the National Hotel tavern door and head straight for the butcher shop. As he stumbled across the street and his face came into view Colin felt there was something oddly familiar about him. The old man pushed feebly through the glass front door and David stepped forward to serve him. Colin jumped up and said “I've got it. I've got it.”
Colin: Can I help you?
Old man: Where's Billy Simpson?
Colin stepped around the counter and firmly directed the old man towards the front of the store, out of earshot of his fellow workers.
Colin: He's not here. Can I help you?
Old man: Where's Billy Simpson? He owes me money.
Colin felt a flush of anger and then a flood of rage. This was his drunken, gambling, wife-beating thief of a grandfather. This was him.
Colin: Bill Simpson owes you nothing. We owe you nothing. Get out or I'll call the cops.
For a brief moment Colin saw a glimmer of recognition in the faded pale blue eyes of the old man. Did he realize he was meeting his first grandchild for the first time? Blinded with rage Colin grabbed the old man and shoved him out the door.
Colin went straight from work to grandma's house. The police had called. They picked up John Simpson for causing a disturbance down at the National Hotel. She told them she wanted nothing to do with him, that they were divorced years ago. She shed no tears and was firm in her usual resolve that things would work out.
That night Colin was gulping back scotch when he angrily crafted a plan. He would go downtown to the National Hotel and pick up his grandfather. Drive him out to their slaughterhouse. Kill him. Cut him up and dispose of him in the barrels of offal, bones and fat that were picked up each week by a Calgary rendering company. He would just disappear.
Instead he passed out on the couch and the next morning he was horrified to realize that he actually desired to kill someone, to take a life. He shuddered at the thought.
Next morning Colin stopped in to see grandma on the way to work.
Colin: Hi grandma. How are you?
Grandma: The police were just here. They put him in a cell overnight. Drove him to the bus depot in Castor and sent him back to Edmonton. That's the end of it. It was good of the police to send him back.
Colin: Yeah. I guess so.
One afternoon at the butcher shop Colin sliced off the knuckle on one of his fingers in the meat slicer. His dad promptly sent him to hospital.
Colin: Can I watch?
Doctor: Sure. Nurse, prop him up with a pillow.
Colin stared mesmerized as the Doctor injected the inside of his arm making a bubble and then skillfully sliced, with a scalpel, the top layer of skin off the bubble. He then stitched the skin onto the top of Colin’s knuckle with a stich at each of four corners. Colin was impressed. Doctor said that since Colin was a piano player the skin graft was necessary.
Colin: I gotta go to the bedroom for a bit. I’m creeping out.
Friend: Okay man.
He closed the door. The muffled music was calming. Sat down on the edge of the bed everything was vibrating electric patterns of colour and light. He knew he was starting to peak from the Orange Barrel acid he’d dropped an hour before.
He felt a growing throbbing in the finger that had a skin graft a few hours earlier. He held his hand up and saw the bandages on his finger melting away, revealing raw flesh bleeding and he started to freak out.
Colin: Help me you guys. Oh my God my finger is melting.
Mike: It’s okay man, you’re freaking out.
Steve: Yeah man, don’t freak out, you’re just peaking. Breathe deep and slow.
Colin: I think I need to go to hospital.
Mike: Not yet. This will pass soon.
Steve: Yeah man I freaked out last week and Mike talked me down. No need for hospital.
Mike: Let’s go for a drive in the country. Little bit of back to nature will do the trick.
