New Canadian Noir Read online

  He chooses his filet knife first, long and slender, and makes a very shallow cut across the stomach, left to right, through the navel. The sleeper’s eyes flutter but don’t open. That done, he changes to his slicing knife, with the granton edge, and starts in earnest at the shoulder. He carves a generous mouthful, a cube of stew meat, but doesn’t lift it out right away. He gives the heart rate a chance to elevate, lets the juices swap around a little. Once it’s coated over, he picks it up in his fingers, pops it in his mouth, and swallows without chewing. Warm and pleasing.

  He feels prickles of sweat at his temples, in the small of his back. The lights are hot but give an excellent view around the whole room. He sees the crowd surge and bulge, though it never comes too close to the tables. The doctor paces from station to station, keeping her distance as well, so as not to interfere. He moves slowly, takes in the moment, the sights and sounds. The smells and flavours. There is some commotion over at Armin’s table, where the sleeper is awake and fighting.

  They are never tied down, the sleepers. That would be cruel. Restraint and control are part of good technique and up to the eaters. The commotion works into the crowd, which roars with excitement and encouragement, but for whom is unclear. Keseberg looks down to see his own sleeper’s eyes open and looking confusedly at the cut in the stomach. He begins to sit up; Keseberg helps roll him onto his side into a fetal position. The sleeper clutches at his belly, tries to press the cut closed.

  “That’s good thinking,” Keseberg says, leaning over him close. He breaks good manners and speaks with his mouth full. “Don’t let anything slip out.” Though the cut isn’t deep enough for that, just a distraction that helps maintain control.

  Armin, on the other hand, has lost that. He is no longer eating at all, only struggling to hold the sleeper down. With every move, the crowd’s reaction grows. After a moment, Armin has no choice but to grab a heavy cleaver and bring it down with a roar.

  “Back!” the event doctor says as she steps to the table. She places her fingers on the sleeper’s neck and, when she doesn’t feel anything, nods to the record keeper who takes down the time on his clipboard. The doctor moves around to read the scale and the recorder notes the difference from the starting weight, which is just over two pounds. It’s a poor showing. Armin swears under his breath and passes behind Keseberg on his way around the counter.

  The far station is suspiciously quiet, by contrast. That sleeper hasn’t woken up at all. It happens from time to time, a miscalculation in the anaesthetic. The doctor checks the pulse. “He’s dead,” she says, and waves the Red Widow away. The recorder comes around to check the scale. Her showing is well over six pounds.

  This leaves Keseberg the clear winner but he keeps eating. The doctor steps closer to his table, watching over the rim of her glasses. The sleeper is so preoccupied with the cut across his stomach that he doesn’t seem to notice what Keseberg is up to. The recorder keeps his pen and clipboard poised and ready. Keseberg eats. He doesn’t stop because he’s full, or even because he’s already won. Just puts his training to use.

  The room is hushed, everyone curious to see how long it could possibly go on. A few at the front, if they strain their ears, can hear lips smacking. They start to whisper; Keseberg strains to hear them. He hears his name, hushed, as though his existence were a secret that they can’t wait to share.

  He almost feels the need to offer whispers of his own, to draw from his favourite words, read and reread for their savoury texture. Those words that inspired his adopted identity, that explain where the name comes from. Those words that describe the fourth team of rescuers expecting to find the last four survivors of the Donner party trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains and finding instead three dead – partially eaten – a wealth of ignored provisions including three ox legs, and only one man alive: Lewis Keseberg.

  Sometimes, he passes strangers on the street, hears them mention with a hush, “They’re called Donner Parties. My cousin said he’s been to one. It’s true, I swear.”

  The doctor has her fingers on the sleeper’s neck but she keeps quiet. There is still a faint pulse, but it’s fading. Keseberg slows but continues to eat. The crowd looks on, the rush ebbing away. The lights flicker. And Keseberg eats. And eats. The real shame is that eventually it will end. He will have to stop. But for now, at least, he sees no reason to.

  UNREDEEMABLE

  Michael S. Chong

  I collect cans and bottles to make money. It is honest, hard work. I am getting older and cannot make money any way else. I do not get government money because I worked with my husband at our laundry, never paying into the system. With my late husband’s gambling and no pension, I needed some way to survive and I would never ask my son for money. I lost much of my savings investing in one of his business ideas that failed.

  Going through the trash of others and collecting cans and bottles is hard work, but I have always worked. I get by with my limited English and have a roof over my head. I know people who do what I do who live on the streets and they are crazy, sick on drugs and alcohol. I have done every job no one else would want to do. I’ve washed dishes in a seafood restaurant, pressed clothes in a laundry and spent a few years picking worms. No one ever took care of me, even when my husband was still alive or even before in China when I was living with my family. I have always had to take care of myself.

  My father left us when I was young to go to America, following his father, who left much earlier. Money was easier to earn in America, the gold mountain. You could work hard enough to make enough money to support an entire extended family back home. I was the last to leave. I was left with my grandmother in China and then Hong Kong during the war. All my uncles and brothers had already left for California. When the Japanese came we hid, otherwise they would have done terrible things to us. We hid in cellars and saw them go through. Some bad things happened to some people but that was in the past.

  While escaping the war, my grandmother and I took refuge in a bombed-out shell of a building until dawn. At night, there were bandits who knew those leaving carried valuables so my grandmother dressed us poor and we walked during daylight hours. While looking for a corner to rest, we came across a badly wounded Japanese soldier, his uniform red from his blood: legs, in the dark, looked like ruined shards of flesh. Barely in his teens, the Japanese soldier started to yell, thinking we were there to hurt him. My grandmother told me to turn around but I watched her take off her scarf, cover the soldier’s mouth and nose, muffling his screams, then take his life. He might have called others to find us and kill us. It was work that needed to be done, she told me later.

  We made it to Hong Kong while the Nationalists and the Communists battled among themselves in our hometown and the surrounding Big Circle region. I met my husband while we were there. He had been school friends with my older brother and was returning from Canada to look for a girl who had disappeared during the war. He looked me up, and since I had had a crush on him as a child, when he asked me to marry him, I did.

  It’s funny, I remember the past better than I remember things that happened yesterday. My memory is not what it used to be, but the distant past seems clear. I worry I am losing my wits.

  A Chinese friend of mine, Shu Chen, a few years younger, also collecting bottles, seems to be remembering events different than I do. I mean, she mentions mahjong games or dim sum meals and remembers it totally different than I do. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re both wrong. Getting old is not for the weak.

  I first met Shu Chen early dawn, just when it was getting light out, around the time I first needed to start gathering cans and bottles. We met while I was in the northern part of my route, collecting on one side of the street, and she was on the other, working her way toward me.

  When we met in the middle, I spoke to her in my dialect and she understood, being originally from a neighbouring county in China. She looked like she would be. We agreed right away to share the street or let the first person that arrived have the t
akings. We have a system called guanxi that is a personal connection between people where if one does a favour for another they are indebted to them, the opposite of the Western way. We became fast friends, since at our ages most of our friends from earlier in our lives have disappeared or passed away.

  It is good to have friends out there while working since some of the other collectors are not so nice. They yell at you, telling you that the street you’re on is theirs even if you have never seen them before. How can someone own a street? There are enough cans and bottles in the city for everyone, so I never complain. I just walked on.

  For all the bad people you meet, there are many good people. On my regular route, there are homeowners who make sure to leave their bottles out for me so I do not have to go through their trash and get dirty from the garbage. They smile and wave as I walk onto their property to get the bottles.

  Why these people did not walk the few blocks to return their bottles, I could understand. The ten cents for wine bottles and five cents for beer cans and bottles is not enough of an incentive for them to leave the comfort of their homes.

  For me, I make almost fifty dollars on a good day. That is enough to support me for a whole week. My expenses are low. When money is tight, I survive on canned fish, rice and discount vegetables, the ones that are sold for much less because they are wilted. Just like me.

  I know people look down on me or feel sorry for me when they see me out there in the mornings going from garbage can to recycling bin, opening bags and pouring out leftover fluids. I am supporting myself, as one should in this life. If I didn’t collect cans and bottles, I don’t know what I would do.

  Some of the neighbourhoods I work in are rich. I mean the houses are big, the lots are large, and the cars in the drive-ways look expensive. Their trash seems fancy and pricey too. I mean their food is all processed and high-end. I guess to afford lifestyles and homes like they have, they both have to work and that does not allow time to make food from scratch. They all seem to eat a lot of pizza, both frozen and delivered.

  The only food treat I give myself is an occasional dim sum meal with Shu Chen, and even then we go to a cheap restaurant in Chinatown that sells dumplings at a discount if you arrive before 11 a.m. and even cheaper if you are a senior. The tea is free and both of us rarely get more than three dishes each, but stay a couple of hours and enjoy the atmosphere and the company.

  Shu Chen has no family in the city. Her late husband died quite young of a heart attack and her only child, a daughter, lives on the West Coast and never visits. I guess I am her only family. One time in the winter, she did not show up for a day and did not answer her phone. I heard where she was from Bobby, a young bottle collector, who smelled bad, dressed like a bum, and I think was a drunk, but he was always nice to Shu Chen and me, always being respectful of territories. Bobby had found her fallen down with a sprained ankle, called an ambulance, then found me. Rushing to the hospital, I found her sitting up reading a week-old Chinese newspaper. She smiled when she saw me and told me someone was probably getting all of our bottles.

  Recuperating and lucky she hadn’t broken her hip, Shu Chen was off her feet for the next couple of weeks. I took care of her when not collecting. We would play cards and talk about the past, old friends, and all the hearts we broke. She did the same for me when I was out with the flu one spring. We are lucky we found each other.

  Without collecting bottles, I would still be alone most of the time. Even if I did have enough savings for retirement, where I could sit around watching kung-fu soap operas all day and eating sweets, I would still probably collect bottles. It gets me out of my room; I get outside, breathe fresh air, and see the world. Where others see trash, I see money, freedom, and independence. Sometimes, kind people offer me money like I was a beggar but I refuse it. I work for money, and the city is my workplace.

  What makes this job a little hazardous are the creeps who do it for the drug and alcohol money. They have no respect for people. I have had bums physically threaten me when I was collecting. Addicted tourists. They usually slurred their words and seemed crazy and I was not about to lose my life for a few dollars. Shu Chen was different. She took on a few of these bad types, telling me they were weak from their addictions and, if they were willing to beat up an old woman for some change, life would get them in the end. Like a lapsed Buddhist-Taoist, which most Chinese in the West were, Shu Chen thought karma would get the bad ones in the end. Me, I wasn’t so sure.

  Shu Chen told me she had to hit a bum over the head once with her searching stick after he tried taking her cart. Shu Chen and I both used metal fold-up shopping carts. That, good rubber gloves, some garbage bags, and an old broomstick to stir up the recycling bins to uncover the redeemable bottles and cans, were all the equipment we needed. The ones worth money always seemed to be at the bottom.

  Bobby was badly beaten up once. They never caught the punk who did it and I don’t think the police even cared too much. Shu Chen and I made sure Bobby, who lived in a small closet-sized basement apartment, had enough to eat while he got better. Bobby was a little slow, but always smiling, and seemed to look out for Shu Chen and me. He would always tell us when there was some new location that had too many cans and bottles for him to collect and he would always share the day-old baked goods that were given to him by a kindly baker on his route. The Danishes and croissants he gave us were dry but went down well with hot tea, which we carried in thermoses during our working times.

  I don’t think he had any family, any that he kept in touch with; at least he never mentioned any. Sometimes he acted a little off, talking to himself so quietly you could not hear what he said, but you could sense he had a rough life. His face and hands were always a little dirty but his clothes seemed neat, if not a little smelly.

  Bobby was the one who told me he saw some strange man redeeming cans and bottles from Shu Chen’s cart at the local beer store we went to. He waited for the man to get his money and then followed him back to a rooming house in the bad part of the neighbourhood. Bobby described the man, saying he wore black clothes and had a beard, shaved head, and looked middle-aged.

  I left my cart with Bobby and walked Shu Chen’s area, then went to her room in a building not far from the park. I could not find her so I checked the hospitals and even went to the local police station. There was no sign of Shu Chen anywhere.

  Bobby found me sitting in the park near Shu Chen’s apartment. He was pushing my cart and looked as if he had been crying. I had been a little, too.

  “Have you found her?” Bobby asked.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Maybe she’s with family and the guy just found her cart.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe the police can help.”

  “They don’t care.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Show me where this man lives.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We should let the cops know.”

  “No, they don’t care about people like us.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “That time you were beat up, did the police do anything?”

  “No.”

  “They don’t care about us.”

  Bobby stood there with his head down for a while, like he was confused, then said, “Okay, but I’m coming with you.”

  “It is better if I go alone.”

  “No, it’s not safe.”

  “I’m just going to ask him if he has seen Shu. He might not talk if there are two of us.”

  Bobby looked down, lost in thought. “Okay, but I’ll watch from just out of sight. I’ll be in yelling distance.”

  “You’re a good man, Bobby,” I said.

  He shook his head and said, “I just want to help.”

  We walked in silence the ten blocks or so south toward the lake. Bobby insisted on pushing my cart for me. When we got to the house the ma
n lived in, it was late in the afternoon. People were starting to come home from their jobs.

  The houses and the state of them showed a neighbourhood that had seen better days. The house the stranger lived in was a semi-detached. One side was stuccoed, with a well-kept lawn with bleeding heart flowers and irises trimming it, while the other had an empty patch of dirt strewn with weeds.

  Bobby waited around the corner while I walked up with my cart. I did my regular routine: leaving my cart on the sidewalk, and taking my searching stick, I walked up the side of the house where they kept their recycling bin. Bobby wasn’t sure where the strange man’s apartment was but saw him walk down the alley to the back of the house. I did the same, looking into the small basement windows, covered with what looked like aluminum foil. Opening, then looking into the recycling bin and swirling the contents with my stick, I was surprised to see a half-dozen tall beer cans.

  Around the back, beside a small wooden patio and a closed glass door, there was a short entryway down to a door that had a crack haloing the doorknob, as if someone had tried to kick it in or out. Through the small window I could see shadows. I knocked and there was no response. Using my stick, I banged on the door. There were some muffled voices, then the door opened to a crack held taut by the chain. A face matching the one described by Bobby peered out, but it seemed thinner than I thought it would be. His pupils were pinpricks.

  “What do you want?” he said with the rough voice of a heavy smoker.

  “Have you seen an old Chinese woman like me around?”

  “What?” He looked at me with confusion. “You want upstairs. Try the front door.” He slammed shut the door and relocked the three deadbolts.

  I kept knocking until he came to the door again. It took a long time.

  He unlocked the three deadbolts, and unchained, and opened the door this time. The man was skinny with broad shoulders and an indented chest like he used to work out with weights but stopped.