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SAFETY IN BEAR COUNTRY by © Heather Paul 2015 A Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English Memorial University of Newfoundland September 2015 St John’s Newfoundland and Labrador i Abstract Safety in Bear Country tells the story of Serena Palmer’s twenty-second year. At a time when she thought she would be making a living in Toronto as an artist and as an independent adult, the economic times and her emotionally fragile state due to the demise of a romantic relationship, prove obstructive. Instead, she lives in the basement of her parents’ home and works for the town’s largest employer, a mental institution. Here she embarks on an internal quest for meaning and a truer understanding of love. Specifically, as the novel’s action shifts through Australia and then to Northern Canada, ending with her near-death and shamanistic spiritual transcendence, Serena explores the contradictions that exist between love and fear: in order to ever fully love, one must make oneself vulnerable at the deepest level. And, in order to ever make oneself vulnerable, one must conquer fear. In this way, fear and love are inextricably connected. Here in lies the irony of the title: Safety in Bear Country. ii Acknowledgements For generous funding, the author would like to thank Memorial University of Newfoundland. For his diligent reading, editing, mentoring, reassurance and general advice and writerly guidance, infinite gratitude goes to Dr. Lawrence Mathews. To my friends and family, especially my children, many thanks for enduring support and patience. The author would also like to acknowledge the use of partial lyrics from Max Webster, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell and The Waterboys. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Epigraph vi Section 1 The Nature of Bears 1 Barbarians All 2 Fear and Loathing in Euphrasia 14 A Night in the Queen 21 Puddle O’Muck 35 Chop Wood, Carry Water 44 Gravity 49 Clash of the Earthworms 60 The Unknown Winkie 68 Section 2 Avoiding Problems on the Trail 73 Quantas of Solace 74 Up Top Down Under 83 Mid-Autumn Night’s Day Dream 95 Mining, Divining 108 Alice the Camel 113 iv The Red Centre 126 The Flash in the Pan 134 Section 3 Avoiding Problems in Camp 144 Clicking Ruby Slippers 145 Rust Never Sleeps 161 Enlightenment, but First Let me Pour You a Drink 175 Bag of Bones Around Your Neck 179 Honesty is a Shitty Policy 189 S.I.N. 192 Animal Medicine 196 So Long Crapwalker and Good Luck 206 Section 4 Encountering A Bear 218 Drive 219 Motion Picture 233 The Weight of Water 247 Shift 253 The Eighth Time 271 Escape From Prince Georgecatraz 283 True North Strong and Free 288 v Everyone needs a town, a tune, a dream to survive on One to dance to, one to scream to survive on You need a high, a face, a space, a chance to rely on 'Cause you can only drive down Main Street so many times 'Cause you can only drive down Main Street so many times Max Webster, A Million Vacations vi The Nature of Bears 1 Barbarians All Lillian shoves four Winks at me, their innate slowness and lack of gross muscle control causing them to trip over their own feet, wide and large like clown shoes. She divvies the remaining twelve, pushes them into motley line-ups behind Stuart, Tom, herself and me. Try to keep ahead of things so she won’t get pissed, put four identical plastic baskets filled with toothbrushes, paste, deodorant, talcum powder, combs, shaving cream and razors on the stainless steel counter top beside the sinks and underneath the mirrors. The symmetry pleases me. Four Winks, four staff, four prepping stations, four states of matter, four types of human blood, four chambers of the human heart, four Noble Truths of the Buddha, four seasons cycling back on themselves year after year after year. “What a fucking waste,” says Lillian, pointing to the masking essentials of modern hygiene. “Think these idiots know the goddamn difference?” On we carry with this charade, this parody of living that is the Wink Ward. Nod and smile without showing my teeth, squeezing green Crest mint onto a Blue Oral B. “Open up Barney.” Wave the pasted brush in front of his face. He’s done this every day for forty-odd years. I still have to prod him toward the sink. Lillian stands beside me on her step stool scrubbing the inside of Harold’s mouth as though it’s a filth- encrusted toilet bowl. No soft tissue is spared. Can’t blame her-- if there was a seismograph to measure stink factor, morning Winkie breath would bust the scale. Probably from the meds. Who knows what they’re on. Only see a doctor every six months or so, yet every day, three times a day for some of them, it’s a Dixie cup full of pills. 2 Barney’s the tallest, over six feet. I can reach him, no problem. He stares over my head with an unflinching, unwavering blankness. Is he looking into the mirror, or through it? Is he staring into some alternate universe only he can access, gleaning information from the great beyond? Doubt it. Stare at our reflections, wondering what it’d be like to climb foot first through some reflective membrane portal into somewhere better. Or at least different. Lillian whips a plastic razor up and down Harold’s face with the confidence of a seasoned barber, which she probably is, if her fuzzy upper lip is any indication. I don’t even shave my legs, so pale I hardly have any body hair. Kids used to tease me at school, call me albino. That made me so mad. Made me think of those little white rats with their pink eyes, whiskered snouts, gnashing teeth. Barney squeaks, shifts his weight and rocks on the balls of his feet. Even he knows I have no business shaving a man. Steady my hungover hands and frost his face with foam, dragging the dual action blade down his cheek, around the bend of his chin, cringing at the sound of scrape. “Atta girl, Serena.” Tom flicks my bicep with a hand towel. “Go with the hair.” I started a painting in May after my first show closed at the Galaxy Gallery in Toronto. That makes it sound like I’m some fancy artiste always having shows and selling my work. It was my graduation project from OCAD. A bunch of us showed. I got two red dots. One was my parents’. The painting I started in spring and haven’t worked on for the past three months is enormous. Dark, drippy, half a feathered furred head, half a human face scumbled across textured canvas. Rough. Chaotic. Disjointed. Raw. Unfinished. That’s what my prof said when he saw it. I had it beside my bed til last 3 week. Kept hoping it would trigger some unconscious inspiration and I’d know what to do, but its unfinished ugliness just stuck its tongue out at me whenever I looked at it, which, being across from my bed, was pretty much every time I woke up. Finally had to move it to the laundry room. Now Mom’s bugging me to get it out of there so she can get at the dryer. I hold the end of Barney’s bulbous nose contorting it I realize, but how else are you supposed to get at all those spiky little hairs that surround the nostrils at odd angles? When I first moved in with Jinglenuts a couple of years ago, I would perch on the tub’s edge agog with love and expectation and watch him shave. How quickly it can all go to hell. The big mole in the centre of Barney’s cheek always trips me up. My first few swipes around it are the effortless strokes of a painter, delicate and calculated. Then, I fuck it up, slice the mole. Barney steps up the rocking, taps his fingertips together feverishly as I wipe away pink mousse to survey the damage. “Sorry, sorry, Barney. Just a wee little nick.” I dab at the mole with a tissue and pat his back. What’s sorry to him? He looks right through and past me. Kind of reminds me of the glassy eyes of the taxidermied bears I saw with Jinglenuts at the ROM. We went to there last fall to see this exhibit on bears. He only agreed because I begged him and because he still loved me then. We were kicking along Bloor Street, wet leaves sticking to the toes of our Doc Martens. Tossing the ashes of our joint wherever we pleased and climbing the stairs between lion heads, elbows linked, not a responsibility to rub between us. We were Adam and maiden, young and easy under the apple boughs. 4 And when Jinglenuts was around the corner reading a wall plaque, I swear that something called to me from inside one of those hollowed-out bodies. Imagined tearing the stuffing out onto the museum floor and climbing into that bear shell so I could peer out at the world through the skin of another. Hide like that could be the perfect armor. Lillian, Stuart, and Tom are on their third round of guys, my line is getting antsy, rife with murmurs, belches, farts. Henry Marshall is next. He’s the only one on ward who actually speaks, though he only says one phrase over and over and over again while jerking his head and thrusting his chin up to the left and then to the right as though he has Tourettes.

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