Boom Town, AB
Hear
the Great Plains groan as the oil-ponies suck out the poison. Their boiling
blood is midnight money. Those steel mosquitoes, those rusty vampires, bobbing
and gasping like whipped robins, like exhausted prostitutes – pumping the
stomach of the vast, dying beast. Each
greedy gulp a cradle-full of cash.
Nearby, etched in the dusk beneath the foothills, an adolescent boom
town struggles to hide its neon amid the din of spoiled, brawling farmers. The rumbling of the great belly goes unnoticed
beneath their boots.
The
well-heeled vultures of industry are corpulent and pleased. They are
undiscerning cannibals, always ready for a long winter.
The
beckoning of this fresh carcass is like a burlesque flash of the inner
thigh. Young men, high with ambition,
low of learning and short on patience travel long and far for a maggoty
mouthful. They are the bacteria that
decompose, that eat and shit and then eat their shit. They are suspicious neighbours and ravenous
shoppers. They are the immigrants who
beat up immigrants for being immigrants.
And they drive on the great transfusion, knowing that each day is a life
eternal.
The boom town bears them all. Kisses are given but more often are stolen,
leaving way to cart-wheeling blades and dancing dogs. The boom town inflates like a birthday
balloon, stretching and creaking while the natives squint and cover their
ears. It is a child star, torpedoing
towards rehab amid rabid applause.
And
above it all, that famous sky, that purple-blue parasol. Each dusk and dawn is a healing bruise over
the mountains that keep out the rain. It
never flinches. It knows but doesn’t
care.
Yes,
there are tumbleweeds and cattle-skulls and cross-eyed daughters and moonshine
– all imprisoned by postcards. They are but
sausages in the abattoir window.
I
know an old company man who lives just outside of town. This land is his land, not your land. He
chops wood but rarely burns it; the stockpile grows and grows, rots at its
core. He drinks twelve cups of shitty
coffee each day and smokes a quarter tub of Rockport. Here is the tire that crushed his shin; here
is the rifle that warns that coyotes; here is a landscape in oil. It was painted by his wife. He says that what’s born here, dies here,
just like her – she was half Cree. His
wisdom is rare, gruff and suspicious. He has cancer everywhere. He is digesting himself.
At
his funeral he’ll wear that wedding suit for the second time. His knuckles, lungs and heart will be
tattooed by violent work and play. He
will smell of diesel and new-born calves.
He’ll
be cremated, right along with everything else.