Wendell's day had begun with the final shift at his part-time job: watching a downtown parking lot. The six-by-six wooden hut that served as the office was a miniature sweat lodge. Wendell had brought the lopsided chair outside, circling the hut, trying to stay in the shade. The humidity raised the stench of garbage and oily asphalt, intensifying his Category Two hangover: flypaper tongue and fatigue.

"Ooh, I got the skeels!" Two black ladies stepped out of a blue Coup de Ville.

It was mostly Detroit bingoers who parked here. From them Wendell heard the most intriguing pronunciations of ordinary words: satisfaction became sastification. Beers were Bs. Life fluctuated between having "the skeels" ("skills") or "the pro'lems," as the case may be. Days when there were no winners, someone might complain, "I got none of the skeels, and all the pro'lems. Ain't no sastification in losing." Wendell relayed these stories to his friend, Sean, who termed this Detroit dialect "The Speak." Sean quickly became conversant in Speak. One night at a gig, when his band was in rare form, Sean declared to the audience: "Them's funkified nastifications!"

Standing, shading his eyes, Wendell said, "You sound happy."

One lady smiled. "I got my lucky charm that's gonna bring me the jackpot!" She held an old baby shoe. The other woman handed Wendell money for the parking. He waved it away.

"It's his last day," he said.

"Where you leaving to?"

"Actually, I'm moving to Ireland."

"I-land? What in hell you gonna do in I-land? Work bingo parking?" The ladies laughed.

"I'll figure something out."

"I bet you weel." As they headed for the bingo hall, the woman with the baby shoe turned. "If we win, you gonna get a sweet tip."

Ireland in three days. The fact was never far from Wendell's thoughts, often pouncing without preamble: the realization of time running out. Some days it surfaced like a shark fin. Other days, it gave him a handhold on hope that he would escape the toxic familiarity of his hometown.

What in hell you gonna do in I-land?

It wasn't a matter of prospects, but a need to strip away the layered camouflage of Windsor, Ontario, from himself to see what remained underneath. There was no explaining, only the knowing. How the voice of Windsor bellowed through him the words God used to banish Adam and Eve: "Gird your loins, and get the fuck out!" Which meant going away. To Ireland, half his family's homeland. To Dublin, where Wendell had traveled the last three summers. Someplace foreign, yet familiar.

When his shift ended at five o'clock, he drove to Sawney's House, where Sean and the band lived. Two weeks ago, a note from The Adversary—the landlord—arrived there: notice of eviction, neither expected, nor unexpected.

"Ain't that the pickle on a shit sandwich?" said Sean. "We always figured he'd come by, see the place, and just give it to us."

The band had lived there less than two years, but the intensity of their tenure magnified time, making it seem longer. After twenty months of parties and riotous rehearsals, the band—Sawney Beane, named after a tenth century Scottish cannibal—had turned a respectable residential home into a masterpiece of shabby chic, minus the chic.

It wasn't so much a dwelling, an address, or even a geographical location; Sawney's House was an entity. It was as much a living system as a shoreline, where new and fascinating debris washed up weekly. Street and highway signs were nailed to the walls. An Elvis Presley clock, which kept the wrong time, hung above the slanting mantel. The King's swaying legs acting as the pendulum. CDs cluttered the base of the battered stereo. Guitars and mandolins, tambourines and tin whistles, fiddles and pieces of a drum kit were scattered everywhere. A glittering carpet of beer caps covered the floors.

And then there was Fiona: a six-foot long fiberglass hammerhead shark that lay by the garbage-choked hearth. She seemed as natural a fixture as a new chair or coffee table in a more conventional setting. Nights following gigs, a crowd of revelers would retire to Sawney's House. As the battered stereo bellowed, Fiona would become the center of attention as one drunken lout after another danced with her.

Switching on the car radio, Wendell had caught Smokey Robinson singing about the tracks of his tears. Wendell rolled down the window and sang along. Halfway along Peter Street, a police car pulled in front of him. He followed the cruiser to the corner of Peter and Prince Road—his destination. The police hung a left just as Wendell intended to do. As he rolled to the STOP sign, the cop car pulled in front of Sawney's House. He gaped at the scene:

Fiona hung by her tail from a rope off the porch roof. Her teal skin shimmering as she turned in the breeze. Dozens of people gathered on the front porch and lawn. The band's equipment was on the porch: amps, drum kit crammed in the far corner. Sean crossed the lawn, and spoke with the cops.

Wendell parked on the side street, and grabbed a case of beer from the trunk of his car. The moment he entered the house, he felt the change, the fast-gathering unfamiliarity, the sense of time waning. It had nothing to do with the usual contingent of hippie/gypsy hangers-on, all in generic carefree form. No, the sense clung to him like cold sweat. There was no explaining—only the knowing.

"Them's rancified remonstrations," Sean said, entering the house. He spotted him.

"No Front Porch Woodstock?" Wendell said, opening a warm beer.

"You can take the boy off the porch," Sean said, already drunk. "But you can't take the porch out of the boy."

It was a day for endings, and the beer-fuelled barricades were already going up. Wendell guessed that Sean began drinking first thing that morning. Much as Wendell didn't want to admit it, he knew that by sundown they would all be isolated within their drunks. He already felt claustrophobic among the extended entourage. Final nights called for rituals, not parties.

Amid the shifting, multiplying debris in Sawney's House, there was a silver goblet nicked from the priests' residence of their former secondary school. Some nights a bottle of Teacher's scotch materialized, along with the goblet. Gathering in a circle in the living room, each of them knelt as their turn came. The scotch-filled goblet was presented to the penitent, and a blessing given as everyone traced the sign of the cross in the air: "In the name of the Bs, in the name of the Whiskeys, in the name of the Skeels, and in the name of the Pro'lems. A-men!" At which point the penitent downed the scotch.

"The Ritual," Wendell said to Sean, but at that moment a handful of people called him from three different rooms. It seemed that Sawney Beane was readying for an acoustic set in the living room. Wendell drank his warm beer.

In utter contravention of previous experience, Wendell spent the evening pursuing a neo hippie chick in tight jeans and a half shirt. He was intrigued by the waist-chain she wore, and the tattoo on her hip, peeking over her low-slung belt. She didn't even speak as she turned him down, just shook her head whenever he approached with a new line. It was an endless sore spot with him: the hippie pose was only skin deep. When it came to free love, these girls were as wanton as Barbara Bush. However, his case was probably not aided by his beer breath and the stains under his arms.

His final feint toward her was interrupted by a loud commotion outside.

Fiona lay on the front lawn. Two band members beat her with bats, a petrified, beached piņata with no prize inside. So, there would be no ritual this night, only sacrifice. As the carcass was smashed apart, it was doused with lighter fluid and set ablaze. Onlookers cheered and danced in the firelight. The billowing smoke soon rendered them mere silhouettes.

The police returned within the hour. And Wendell ventured to Finn's.

~

He pulled up to the mall's entrance. The parking lot and surrounding streets were deserted. Stepping from the car, he was hobbled by his bladder's urgent burden. Lurching into the shadows, Wendell leaned against a pillar, unfastened his jeans, and urinated. Relief was immediate and immeasurable. The puddle ran toward the car like a blind thing searching for its way back into the earth.

The humid imprint of the day's heat pressed against him, wringing sweat. A layer of his drunk peeled away. Cold cognition began to assert itself as he performed his transaction at the ATM.

What in hell you gonna do in I-land?

Looking over the vacant parking lot, Wendell said, "Gird your loins, and get the fuck out!" Nothing in the night responded. The traffic lights at Tecumseh and Huron Church switched through their cycles, indifferent. A strip bar's neon sign across the street glowed with garish delight. The moon shone like a coin on a dead man's eye. There was no explaining, only the knowing.

Left with his thirst and hunger, he went to Burger King next to the mall. As he pulled into the drive-thru, Wendell looked across to the University Mall parking lot-at the vacant lot across Huron Church, at the strip bar's neon sign-and wondered how long he would have to be away before he missed such a place.

© Matt St. Amand 2004

Matt St. Amand's mother's family originates from County Kildare, Ireland, and his father's family is named after St. Amand, patron saint of bartenders, beer makers, vintners, and wait staff. He has been writing for 15 years, and his work has appeared in The Toronto Review, Eyeshot, Pindeldyboz, FRiGG, and Opium Magazine. His first book is a collection of short fiction titled As My Sparks Fly Upward, which is being re-released by Murphy's Law Press. He lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife who is a visual artist and photographer. His collection of poetry, Forever & a Day, is now available from Murphy's Law Press.

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