Free Specimen & Other Stories by Alan Annand Page B

Faculty wives. In a less
evolved society they probably would have brought out the tar and
feathers for a brief intermission, but I was fortunate to have been
born in genteel times, and was allowed to slink back to my seat
without anyone throwing more than dirty looks my way.
    The rest of the poetry reading was rather
uncomfortable, like watching a blind person walk barefoot through a
room littered with broken glass. Ms. Atwood, still the trooper in a
situation that only electro-shock or several years of scream
therapy would likely erase from her memory, soldiered on. She read
her poetry just like they must have done in the old days, her naked
voice against the crowd, while back in the upper reaches of the
peanut gallery, people asked her to speak up, please, they couldn’t
hear her. And she would say, I’m sorry but I’m speaking as loudly
as I can, and then she would cough to clear her throat and in a
thin reed-like voice, she would continue to read her poetry.
    There was a lot of applause when it was
over. Mostly relief, I felt, but there was admiration too, the kind
we reserve for marathon runners who come straggling in at the end
of the race, wobbling and half-blind with fatigue, garnering
applause not because they have beat anyone’s time but because they
have, against all apparent odds, finished the job they set out to
do.
    As the crowd evacuated the lecture hall, I
dismantled my equipment and humped it out through a side door to
the car, studiously avoiding the eyes of anyone who crossed my
path. There was a wine and cheese reception in the salon down the
hall in Ms. Atwood’s honor, and although I had played a significant
part in making this a memorable evening, I humbly felt that it was
not the place for me to make an appearance and draw any undue
attention. I walked out to the Bug, released the hand brake and
coasted out of the parking lot. Once I was safely out of earshot I
switched on the ignition and descended into the wintry night,
swallowed up in the bowels of my quiet provincial town.
    For awhile on campus I was quite notorious
for the role I’d played that night at the aptly-named Memorial
Hall. Several of my crueler fellow graduate students, doubtlessly
honing the skills with which they would later denigrate their
associates in competing for tenure, took to calling me The Bassman.
And each time this elicited raised eyebrows among fresh company,
someone would tell the story of how I’d ruined Margaret Atwood’s
poetry reading.
    The irony was that they barely knew a
fraction of the story, but I was in no mood to provide more hoist
for my own petard. Eventually I tired of this teasing and, like a
lion tormented by dogs, in one pivotal week around the time of the
Winter Solstice, announced my withdrawal from graduate school and
burned the manuscript of my porn novel in a desolate section of the
New Brunswick backwoods.
    Since then, I’ve had many occasions to
reflect upon my freshman-like approach to graduate-level
responsibilities those many years ago. Still, it’s spilled milk
under the bridge, and no amount of groveling would suffice to earn
Ms. Atwood’s forgiveness. To broach the subject with her now, even
via an abject letter of apology, might precipitate a flashback, the
magnitude of which could plunge her into who knows what state of
psychological imbalance. Worse still, she might write vilifying
letters to the Canada Council and every publisher she knows,
nipping in the bud any hopes I might have had to forge my own
literary career. No, if I’ve learned one thing after all these
years, it’s best to fly under the radar.
     
    ~~~~~~~~~

 
The Naskapi and the U-Boat
     
    Gulls swept past the barren headland of Cape
Chidley, dipping and whirling, their sharp cries chorusing on the
wind. Only seabirds occupied this granite crag where meager patches
of lichen clung to its summit. At the base of the cliff a hundred
feet below, a cold surf slapped the rocky beach. Further to the
west, Hudson Bay