by Laurie MacFayden
Every day I show up promptly at eight and start pushing the rock.
Every day at ten I pause for a vanilla maple latté, then resume the push.
Every day at noon I secure the rock in a lay-by and step off the trail onto a small patch of soft grass. I unwrap the baloney sandwich my wife made me for lunch, sit with pulsing legs crossed, and stare at the vista below. I think about how diamond is technically the strongest rock in the world, but this fucker breaks me every day.
I do not look at the rock until my lunch break is over. At half-past I rise, wipe crumbs from the corners of my mouth, tuck my napkin into the pocket of my tunic, and push again.
This is the longest segment without a break. The longest segment without a brake.
I push and push and continue to push until it feels like I cannot take another step. My calf muscles are about to burst. My shoulders will split and my brains will explode out my temples.
Three-thirty brings another brief union-mandated rest. I sit, wipe my brow, sip mineral water and pluck a pebble out of the tread of my boot. The view is very different from this spot. On a clear day I can see my house, my child’s school, my favourite fish and chips shop. Sometimes I see a strange car in my driveway. Sometimes it’s cloudy and I see nothing except the occasional red-tail hawk. I hear nothing except the vibration of the rock. It has a sickening hum I can’t shut out.
When I resume my task, the thought of greasy hot wings and a bucket of cold beer keeps me going through the final hour. I sing Peace Train in my head. To distract myself, to pass time. Like when I worked graveyard on the factory assembly line, popping out plastic cosmetics containers that held lipsticks and bronzers and fancy powders before ending up in a landfill. We’re all just passing time, passing time on The Big Push until we die and the rock wins.
Peace train, holy roller
Everyone jump on the peace train
My rock is almost at the plateau. I can tell by where the sun is in the sky that I have five more minutes to steady it, maneuver it onto the flat. To secure it where it will remain, motionless. Ugly, untethered, and meaningless.
Every day at this point I somehow summon an extra boost of intention to get those last three yards behind us. Behind me and the fucking rock.
And then, every day, the slip happens. Sometimes it’s the left hand, sometimes the right shoulder. Sometimes both knees give out.
The rock groans as if expelling a pillar from its concrete esophagus. And then it begins to roll back. I brace against it but it grunts and growls and that sickening hum becomes a great, crackling belch.
Before I can even check that all my limbs are intact, it is halfway down the hill. As the whistle blows signaling quitting time, the pink-grey sphere crunches into the ground miles below and fractures into thousands of brittle pieces.
I stumble down the trail, eyes nearly swollen shut, feet blistered, lungs and hips on fire. I limp past the boss, nod, and punch my timecard. I get into my car and drive home. There’s some kind of idiot knock under the hood, the same knock I heard yesterday, I swear, but the guys at the shop insist they can never find anything.
My wife is at the door, scowling. She asks about milk and toilet paper. Didn’t I get her message? Don’t I ever think of anyone but myself? I say I didn’t forget; it’s just that the traffic was bad, I am exhausted from talking to idiots on the sales calls all day; I need to lie down. To just close my eyes for ten minutes. Maybe have a hot soak.
“You’re so useless,” she glares, stomping towards the kitchen.
“I’m slaving over a hot stove, changing your kids’ diapers, and plucking soggy Fruit Loops out of the living room carpet … while you sit in your fancy-shmancy cubicle playing solitaire on the computer all day. Then you have the gall to come home without groceries and whine about being tired?”
She has no idea. I want to explain about the stupid rock, but I am too sapped to speak.
I hang my head and shuffle to the bedroom. I fall into a stone slumber and dream my usual dream of dancing with a river sprite. The waltz twists into a sweet, liquid tango but then slams me onto boulders that gash.
I hate the rock. The rock is my purpose. Everyone jump on the peace train.
When the morning alarm sounds I can taste rose quartz. Just like every other day. My lungs are granite. My teeth are splintered glass.
My wife puts the coffee on and makes me a baloney sandwich.
Laurie MacFayden is an award-winning writer, visual artist and journalist who has lived in Edmonton since 1984. In addition to three books of poetry published by Frontenac House, her work has appeared in Alberta Views, The New Quarterly, FreeFall, and DailyHaiki I, A Daily Shot of Zen; and been performed in Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Cabaret, the Skirts AFire Arts festival, and Calgary’s Queer the Arts cultural festival. Her short story Haircut won the Howard O’Hagan prize at the 2017 Writers Guild of Alberta literary awards. Her debut poetry collection, White Shirt, was a finalist in the 2011 Lambda Literary Awards. She continues to write poetry and fiction.
Capital City Press Anthology 