King. Tanya Chapman
‘You know, Hazel, when you lie down here and all you can see is the top of the flowers and the stars, it’s like we’re the only two people in the world.’
‘I wish we were … I wish the caps girl didn’t exist in the world.’
‘Ahh, the caps girl.’
‘Why do you do it, King?’
At first, I think he’s not going to answer or that he’ll pretend he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I think if he does that, I might have to hit him. I’ve been waiting a long time, all night almost, to let the violence reign, and now I have the person who makes me the maddest in the world right here. But I have no chance.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything. You just get so mad. Sometimes the biggest thing I do is make you mad. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to exist and the only thing that reacts to my trying is you. Maybe you are the only one who knows that I’m here. I need to see that sometimes. You know?’
‘Over and over?’
‘Maybe.’
We lie there for a while. King smooths the hair from my forehead, and I can feel the anger leaving me with every stroke. I remind myself that he was here all the time. I remind myself that my anger is really all because of me. I relax and let King hold me and make me feel comfortable again.
‘Hey, King, you know that girl who lives three doors down, she’s kind of slow?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, she has a friend now.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘They ride their bikes together. He comes by her house, waits in the driveway and rings the bell on his bike until she pokes her head out the front door. And then he says to her, “Want to go for a bike ride?” And she runs right out the door with two cans of pop that she’s been holding behind her back since she heard his bell. She gives one to him, and they take off down the road together.’
‘That’s beautiful, Hazel.’
We look at the tops of the flowers and the stars for a while.
‘You know, Hazel, there’s this girl who wears flowered dresses all the time, even in winter, because she wants to bring a little something magical into the trailer park where she lives. Only, I want to tell her that there’s always a little something magical following her around whatever she wears. And sometimes when I look at her, I can’t believe that she’s with me. It’s like I have to shake it into myself. And when talking to her and touching her doesn’t make her any more real, I have to wreck shit up so that I can watch the fury and know that she cares about what I’m doing. It’s a shitty way to go, but sometimes I think it’s the only thing I’ve got.’
‘Does that mean you’re sorry?’
‘Only if you’re sorry for whatever it was I heard you do to my guitar.’
‘I don’t know if I’m sorry for that yet.’
‘Close enough.’
He laughs and holds me tighter, and we fall asleep in the flowers.
King and I live in the Evening and Morning Star Trailer Park. There is a sign above the entrance of the park that spells out EVENING AND MORNING STAR TRAILER PARK in wooden letters. Or used to spell it out – half of the letters have fallen into the ditch so that now the sign just says EVEN MOR T ARK. The creepy thing is that if you know a bit of French then you can see that the sign says EVEN DEATH ARK, which makes me think of a Noah and a million doomed animals. But I don’t want to think of a Death Ark every time I come home, so we just call it EVEN MORE, as in even more fun and even more life.
King is not King’s real name and Hazel is not my real name, but that’s what everyone calls us. We live in a trailer park and not a real nice one either. But this is the park that found me by fate so this is the park that belongs to me.
I remember exactly what happened the day I found Even More. I was driving down the road in my ‘71 Duster. I had nothing to do and nowhere to go and I was getting a full dose of that real and true freedom. I had been driving around for two weeks already looking for I don’t know what, and I was getting kind of tired and excited like I might be close to the end of my trip. I had a feeling that anything could happen and I was ready for it. Do you turn at the next crossroads or go straight? And then what? You turn one way and you become one sort of person, turn the other way and you become another. Who knows? The freedom is that it’s all up to you.
And that’s how I found this place. I stopped here. I was tired of driving away from things and not towards anything in particular and I was ready to take a break and then there it was: Even More. Right in the middle of nowhere, just sitting there ready to be found. And in front of the park was the trailer, my trailer, with a For Sale sign stuck on the door. Well, how can you turn your back on that?
There’s some cool people here but there could be more flowers on front lawns, if you know what I mean. I wear a dress every day to combat the lack of glamour, and I have a fantastic repertoire of hairstyles. Last week I discovered liquid eyeliner. Much better than the crayon kind, so every day I wear a little bit more. I can’t help it. It’s an unstoppable beauty progression.
Today I’m doing my magic on the flowers since I didn’t really get to water them properly last night. I have the most flowers in the park, which isn’t much of a challenge, but I have by far the most flowers in the park. I like the wild kind.
I found these wildflower seeds that come from Newfoundland. Newfoundland flowers grow everywhere, they’re not picky – they’ll even grow in ditches and other places where they should never be able to survive. I admire them for that, so I bought fourteen packages and scattered them out front. So now the whole yard looks like a Newfoundland ditch.
You have to walk right through the flowers to get to the door – I never thought of a path. The flowers are almost three feet high so you can’t step around them – you have to walk right through. But you don’t have to worry that you’re going to crush them, because they’ll just keep on living no matter how often you go to the door.
My favourite thing to do is sing and water the flowers. I love how the sun hits the shoots of water from the spray gun and makes little rainbows. Everything is shiny. The spray gun is one of the best things around the house. I’ve got a sprinkler, the kind that goes back and forth and makes little waterfalls, but I love the gun because it gives me total control. I can get every last flower and not worry that the sprinkler has left anyone out. King got me the sprinkler and the gun. Every time he’s in the hardware store he looks for a new water toy for me. I’ve got about ten different kinds of sprinklers in a pile out back. That’s the kind of guy King is: if he knows you like something, he can’t stop himself from getting it for you.
Sometimes I water too much. I can’t help myself. I just kind of zone out and go somewhere else for a while. I get lost in all that water. It’s like almost remembering something – like that feeling when a name is on the tip of your tongue or like you are just one teensy mental jump away from a really great discovery. It’s that feeling exactly. The great idea hovers in front of you like a bubble and if you are ever going to understand it properly you have to climb on inside. And that’s where I get lost.
One time King came home and found me standing in a lawn full of mud. I was just turning around very slowly, watching the spray. He said he waded through the lawn, eased my fingers off the water gun, unwound me from the hose and carried me inside. I was soaked and covered in mud and humming some tune. But I don’t remember any of that. He said I just smiled and touched his face and went to sleep.
We figured out later that I was watering for two hours. The next morning, I was sad because I had trampled some of the flowers and also because I lost the discovery and the day. The losing-time thing happens now and then. Once I went out for a walk and never turned around to come home. King found me on the side of the highway. It was no big deal, but I wish I could remember those big ideas that I get stuck inside – you could change the