By Deborah Blenkhorn
From uneasy dreams she woke, into the early morning summer sunlight filtering through the trees outside her window, with a laser-focused thought and a question. What was the name of that movie? Every other detail of recollection, evoked by the nightmare she had just before waking, was clear. Except it wasn’t really a nightmare, was it? Nothing bad happened, did it? It was just a feeling of dread, tinged with regret. The covers felt like a dead weight as she realized where she was–banished to the guest bed, again. Self-banishment though. Was she destined to be a guest in her own home? What was home, now? And what had it been, back on the farm?
In vain she sought her memory for the title of the movie they’d been going to town to see, all those years ago, she and Shale and Ash. How old had she been? Not more than fourteen (when she ran away to live with her godparents in the city), so the movie would have to have been released in 1979 or 1980. It seemed to her that the movie, whatever it was called, was dark, scary; was it something starring Rutger Hauer? In vain she scanned his filmography. Nope. Clint Eastwood? Nada.
No choice but to take a trip down that rabbit hole and fill in the surrounding blanks. Maybe it would come back to her as she poured her morning coffee and sat alone on the big porch overlooking the forest. Thousands of miles away from the farm. Dozens of years.
Why did it matter? As every survivor knows, the tricks of memory are polymorphous and perverse. Sometimes you just have to test yourself to see what you really remember. Sometimes that’s the only way to know if you’re still sane. Because you start to wonder if you imagined it all, and if you did, what a transgression to yourself and others… But if it’s real! Then at least you know that, and you can work with that, and you can hope to move on.
So there she was, as she recalled, her fourteen-year-old self. Travelling from her Island farm home to the mainland, to attend a restricted movie with two men in their thirties. It was a treat to be in the truck and go to town; hardly anyone ever left the farm, let alone the Island, for a pleasure trip. Once or twice she’d been allowed to go along to the laundromat or the bulk supply store–but most clothes-washing was done by hand, and most food was produced on the property. Starting grade nine on the mainland the previous year had been an eye-opener, but it was a very controlled exit and re-entry each day, from the Island world to the bus to the regional school to the bus to the Island.
On the way to the movie that day they stopped for gas and bought, of all things, chocolate bars, a rare and forbidden pleasure. She could taste even now the peanutty chewiness of the Eat More. No chocolate bar had ever made an appearance in the farmhouse: such pseudo food was in the same realm as cardboard (processed) cereal or rubber (white) bread.
The truck, green and rusty, sputtered along the highway. She sat between the two of them on the worn, taped seat: Shale (the driver) on the left, Ash on the right. The summer wind felt nice as it blew through the open windows. The talk was all about whether she would be stopped at the ticket booth because it was a restricted movie. Could she pass for eighteen? Not with a group of other kids, for sure: but with a couple of grown-ass men? Not likely to be a problem.
They parked the truck on the street, where it was less of a sore thumb than she would have thought, but still seemed to identify the three of them as country bumpkins. All had chosen the newest-looking, least-scruffy items from the Community Clothes room at the farm–trying to look as normal as possible so they would fit in when they reached their destination.
Entering the darkened theatre without incident, again they sat in formation: Shale on the left, Ash on the right. What if they were in a movie? Would she be the hero, and these guys (who were heroes to her, in their way) be her supporting cast? She could feel her shoulders touching them as the credits began. The movie itself was a blur. Action, adventure, fear: these were general impressions that fixed themselves in her memory. Nothing specific.
The night before the movie, though, this was the dialogue in the Common Room at the farm.
“I’m exhausted from haying today. Any chance you could help this young lady with her math homework?”
“Certainly.”
“On one condition, though. You’ll have to give her a goodnight hug.”
“I will.”
She’d been apprehensive but strangely excited at the exchange between Shale and Ash.
The same tingling sensation preceded the ride home from the movie.
On the ferry, in the dark, Shale put the seats back as far as they would go and she lay there, holding hands with both of them. Then the screen went black.
And now, more than four decades later, she searched for the movie title as if it would yield the answers her memory of the journey could not. She typed “1980 movie” plus each letter of the alphabet in turn until she got to S. The Stunt Man.
For goodness’ sake, it was a comedy. Also satirical/psychological/anti-war/action.
Quite a lot to unpack there. And she’d have to do it without the help of Rutger Hauer. Or Clint Eastwood. Or Shale. Or Ash.
A solo trip.
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Deborah Blenkhorn is a poet, essayist, and storyteller living in British Columbia, Canada. Her work fuses elements of memoir and imagination, and has been featured in print and online literary magazines and anthologies in North America, Britain, Australia, and India.