What News Once Was

by David Morgan O’Connor

Scary Jailward was a pinball wizard. A bunch of other things too: hoodlum, pot-dealer, brawler, son to single-mom recently arrived in town. His name was Harry which became Scary because he was. His thick pop-bottle glasses and chipped yellow teeth both flared when he smiled. He’d cultivated a Vincent Price laugh from the end of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Scary and his mother had moved from Thunder Bay to a pine-protected lake-view log-shack off the highway bordering the Rez. Rumour circulated they were on the lam which didn’t explain why they did up the place in pink paint and planted trilliums. Loons congregated and choired from their roof. Scary got the lawn under control. Cleared the brush. They put some honey producing hives at the end of the property. Laid corn rows. When summer came, Roberta, his mom, I found out because she’d signed up for The Free Press, which wasn’t free, but on my morning route, started waitressing at Kelly’s Boogie Parlour, the only disco in town.

On May 18th, I remember exactly because the paper I delivered had Mount Saint Helena erupting on the front-page and that’s how I felt after seeing Roberta, sleeping naked on the sofa under soft lamplight. There was a Canadian Club Rye bottle overturned on the floor beside a knot of acid-washed jeans. She had light tan lines and her wild red hair, normally braided, spread all over the sofa like a peacock tail. Her white breasts were big enough to rest on each other. A man’s boot lay by the door, and I could hear the shower. I could have stayed all day looking at Roberta, there in the rising sun, but the news had to be delivered. If not, the whole town would collapse, work wouldn’t start, hearts would attack, people waited for their news, and I delivered.
Yo prick, you Peeking-Tomming my mom? Scary said, from the side porch.
Lake rays blasted the morning dew off his glasses. He looked like the devil’s dog, gnarly, ready to chomp. How could something so ugly come from something so beautiful? I came off the porch and tried to side-step Scary. My bike, kickstood on the path, if I could just reach my handlebars, I’d be away clean to finish my route. His hand went to my shoulder. We squared up. I thought he was going to kiss me. His face leaned so close.
Don’t. You. Ever. Look. At my mom. Again.
Scary whispered in a seductive cinema voice that told you what was coming this summer, then slammed his forehead hard into mine. I felt blood on my tongue. The back of my head landed on lawn acorns. Papers scattered across the lawn. A wind from nowhere, sun rising.

My father gave me six forehead stiches in our kitchen. I never ratted on Scary. Earned his respect. I told my father I’d fallen off my bike. Was cruising down Fisherman’s Hill and boom this baby deer came out of nowhere. I doubt he believed me but Scary never touched me again. We nodded when we passed.

I started collecting my three bucks on Friday evening’s at 5:15 when I knew Roberta Jailward would be showering, getting ready for work at Kelly’s. Once, she answered the door in a towel, I watched her cross the room into the other room and could feel her foot falls on my heart. Lower, too. She returned in a cocktail dress. Handed me three bucks. Once, after paying, she pinched my cheek and called me cutie-pie. Roberta liked her weed. Once, I came to collect and heard Scary and Kelly, her boss, screaming at each other. I didn’t knock. Just went away. Nothing worse than a big nose. More and more, Kelly’s boots were at the door. His truck in the lane, windows open, collecting dew. One Friday, I arrived later than usual, and Roberta was gone. Kelly paid me. He opened the door in boxer shorts, smoking fat Iroquois schwag. Jimi Hendrix cranked. Took him like ten hours to find his wallet. Another two to open it. Even high, Kelly wasn’t friendly. Not like the kids my age who smoked and instantly became your best friend. Kelly was always kite-high, and you still felt he’d knife you in the back for a dime in an eye-blink. He never danced in his own parlour.

On Easter Sunday, 1983, Kelly drove Roberta off the bridge into the river and they died instantly. My father, the local coroner, told me they were too drunk to feel a thing, especially Kelly. Said there was no way to know exactly but Kelly had probably passed out at the wheel unless it was murder-suicide, and no one wanted to prove ugly conspiracies.

Scary stayed in the shack but stopped getting the paper, so I stopped seeing him regular. He took the nightshift at the Esso Station. Worked out. Got buff. More than once I’d pedal by late and he’d be out by the pumps smoking a joint and doing arm curls with jerrycans. He let his hair grow long and wild. Late one May Friday night, some drifter from Detroit tried to rob Scary, who disarmed the unlucky assailant with an ice-scraper before throwing him out the gas station front window. When the police arrived Scary had duct taped the guy to the air-hose and was bouncing a basketball off his face. Made the Free Press and the TV news. They interviewed Scary, who lowered his John Lennon shades, looked straight into the camera, completely ignored the questions, and sang, in a pitch perfect Liverpool accent: why don’t we just do it in the road? No one will be watching us, why don’t we just do it in the road?

Scary got fans. Girls and whack jobs would drive from London or Stratford or Exeter just to get gas from Scary and hear him sing or spout riddles, poetry, improvised lyrics, pot-wisdom. He ordered books by mail. One snow-day morning when the papers never got to town, I overheard Sargent Tinny in the donut store tell Marnie, the baker, that Scary was “getting too big for his own boots.” Old Hayter, who owned the Esso, was happy. Business was booming. Scary was actually helping tourism. He bought pinball machines and set up a make-shift arcade in the garage afterhours. Folks would drive to town from the city, fill up their tanks, buy some pop, some chips, some Mary-Jane, play pinball, listen to Scary, go to the beach, get high, eat the chips, and drink the pop. Scary was moving massive kilos.
No problem, eh, as long as they cleaned up before leaving.

When Scary bought a neon-peach 1978 Iroc Camaro, the end was near.

I was in the donut shop one morning after my route, before hockey. Sargent Tinny was reading the paper I’d delivered. Marnie baking away in the kitchen humming The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Scary parked close to the door and lit a joint in plain sight.
Tinny stared at Scary.
Scary stared at Tinny.
Scary revved the Iroc hard, like he was going to drive straight through the donut shop window and pin Sargent Tinny and all the town’s fried dough to the wall. I moved to the end of the counter to see better, maybe have a barrier to hide behind if time or luck provided. Tinny took the button off his holster, walked toward Scary, who peeled rubber all the way across the lot and onto the highway. His arm flew out the window, middle-finger erect. The Camaro engine could be heard maxing for miles. I watched Sargent Tinny wail his fist, as if in a hockey fight, against the garbage can.
What did that can ever do to him? Marnie asked me, leaning against the kitchen door, as the town’s only cop took all the world’s frustration out on Marnie’s only garbage can.
Just make sure he buys you a new one, I said. Munched my fritter.
Oh, he will alright, Marnie said, shaking her head, squinting her eyes.
I’m more worried about that Jailward kid. His seams are showing. Poor soul.

Three years later, Marnie left her husband and town and eloped with Sargent Tinny, who left his wife and kids and the force. Scandal of the decade, but I was too old to care by then, almost gone, almost free, done delivering the news. I was told and believed that Tinny called the provincial Special Constabulary on Scary. Whatever happened behind the scenes, I know for fact an undercover agent busted Scary for dealing. No secret. Scary did nothing to hide his operation. He’d wall-papered the inside of the Esso station with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Sold surf photos. He’d crank King Tubby into each night. He’d grown dreadlocks and stopped wearing shoes. When the cops showed “to take Scary down,” Scary threatened to blow the reserve-leaded tanks if they came any closer. A natural show man, Scary lit three kilos of the Rez’s finest ganja and hotboxed the garage. The stand-off lasted six hours before they dragged him away kicking and screaming in cuffs. He made the nightly news for the second and final time.

Town got boring after Scary left. He got four years and served them. Now the government are dealing and they ain’t buying indigenous. Scary never came back. Some say he moved out to Whistler to become a ski instructor. Some say he became a grower in Cape Breton. Some say he refurbishes old pinball machines in Whitehorse. Most don’t say anything anymore.

David Morgan O’Connor (he/him) is an Irish-Canadian writer based in Barcelona. He has an MFA from University College Dublin & the University of New Mexico. A contributing reviewer for Rhino Poetry and fiction editor at Bending Genres, his work has appeared in Splonk, A New Ulster, Crannog, Opossum, The New Quarterly, The Irish Times, Best New British & Irish Poets, The Guardian, and more than 100 other publications. He is the recipient of the 2021 Cuirt International Prize for Fiction, the UK Society of Author’s Tom Gallon Award, and is extremely grateful to the Irish Arts Council, Words Ireland, and the Kerouac House.