This All Happened(96)

            Oliver, Maisie says, is a guy who plays both sides. She says this with admiration. He’s a lawyer by day and a hound at night. He’s up at seven every morning and out till four every night.

            4 Two cats in a tree. In the taller branches a brilliant blue jay. With a seed propped in its thin black beak.

            Beyond them a barge docked in the rain. A man operates welding gear. Acetylene torches under a blue tarpaulin, flashing in the fog.

            The smell of brewery as I jog past Lydia’s.

            I watch a man operate a Taylor down at the dockyard. He is lifting a blue Ace container off the back of an eighteen-wheeler. He turns (his rear axle turns) and lays the container onto a stack three-high. I know the hoister is called a Taylor because I’ve called up Oceanex.

            What is that loader called?

            Theyre called hoisters or tailers, either one.

            Which is better?

            Depends how much you want to spend. I prefer tailers. How much would one cost?

            About $700,000 Canadian. What do you want to lift? Oh, about the same thing youre lifting.

            You get them through Materials Handling, Bernie Faloney, he’s the man to talk to. He used to play for the Hamilton Ti-Cats. The hoisters are French-made and theyre good, except when they break down, theyre a you-know-what to get parts for.

            And who makes tailers?

            Taylor makes them.

            Oh, it’s Taylor.

            The eighteen-wheelers wait in line, snorting exhaust, the Taylor operator does not hesitate. He spends less than five seconds at the side of the transport truck, his hydraulic front end (at least forty feet high) clamps onto the container is it magnetic? lifts, the rear wheels pivot, he swings towards the neat stack of blue containers awaiting an Oceanex vessel. He pivots the rear wheels, returns to the next truck. The previous truck now making a slow loop around the stacked containers.

            5 I attend Boyd’s trial. I sit with Lydia and we share a look. That beyond it all life is peculiar, we’re healthy and blessed, and we are curious. We are not going to be mean to each other. Oliver Squires allows Boyd to confess to taking 114 items from eight houses in the neighbourhood. His neighbours are all present. Boyd says it wasnt personal. He just needed things now and again and he was tired of waiting in line to pay for things. He says he’s sorry.

            The judge sentences him to three years.

            6 Alex says things tailored for me. The ideas seem to be performed or moulded to what she thinks I’d like to hear. It’s flattering but annoying. Because I want her to be herself. Lydia never did that, unless she was talking to Craig Regular. Perhaps we do it to those we have crushes on. I hate seeing it in Lydia, because it implies the person she is talking to is out of her reach.

            7 Alex says, Have you ever been to the synagogue? Come on, let’s go.

            It’s Hanukkah. A wall of windows made from Stars of David.

            Alex: You might be expected to wear a keepah – there’s a box of them at the door.

            Is that the same as a yarmulke?

            Yes.

            Does this one fit?

            It’s fine, Gabe.

            In a cold room plaques of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, proclamations during the Yom Kippur War. In 1931 Hymen Feder donated three dollars. A Chagall print of Moses with the Torah.

            Alex says all synagogues smell the same. A mixture of must and stale seeds. She says only five people attend Friday meetings. It’s outport Judaism, she says.