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By Brendan Weibe

Poetry/Fiction/Essays/etc.

Guardian Angel

I was running uphill on a country road in northern Alberta. It was 8a.m.
on a cool, damp morning in the early spring. The sun was just breaking
the tops of the trees on the East Side of the road, heating the grass along
the West Side until it steamed. The warming black spruce smelled of
spicy mangos.

I was on my way back to my cabin on the highest point of the hill: the
better to see forest fires—my summer job. So after an easy lope down-
hill—I always ran farther than it seemed because it was so easy—I was
slogging my way back up to the top.

Despite the strain, a vivid image came to mind. I was probably 13 or
so. It was lunchtime on a school day. I was sitting at the kitchen table
with my younger sister, Karen, who would have been about ten, eating
Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli or some such culinary crap. We were alone;
mom was still in bed sleeping off the bender of the night before. Quite
spontaneously and without provocation, I turned to Karen and said, “I
hate you. I hate you so much.” And I meant it: I felt utter contempt for
her—pure hatred.

And now, on this spring morning, on a gravel road in the middle of

nowhere, I stopped dead. My whole world stopped. What on earth was

that all about? How could I have been so vile? What could have infect-
ed me and warped me so severely at such an age? Then, in a moment,
my mind spanned the 30 years from that moment to the present. I saw
all the ways that same hatred had ran, and still ran, through my life:
through every relationship, every experience, every judgment and deci-
sion I made. My life was built upon it. After all, here I was, facing five
months of complete solitude in the bush, and I knew it was the only
time I was ever really happy, the only time I ever felt okay. I saw in that
instant how utterly pathetic my life was, twisted in on itself by a hatred
born in me before I even knew who I was.

I’m not a Christian—I have nothing but contempt for their infantile
fantasies—but I prayed like few Christians probably ever do. The words
were out of my mouth before I could judge them. I said, “God, heal me
of this hatred.”

And then a voice spoke to me. | heard it in my mind, but it didn’t
sound or feel like my own thought, or my own internal voice. It was
clear and definite. It said, “Heal Shmeal. Get on with it!”

Well, fuck, eh; what could I say? I put one foot in front of the other
and ran in the sunlight to the top of the hill.

By Bryan Johnson

page 15 © |

 

October 16, 2002