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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Ken, back at the restaurant full time - his town job, the dive pub run by the Village Idiot and his wife, didn't work out.
I'd worked there a couple of years ago. They were without a doubt the Village Idiots. When someone looks like they're the village idiot, talks like the village idiot, acts like the village idiot and then shows you they're the village idiots it's a pretty safe guess to say they're the village idiots.
They've a bit of a reputation, but in a town where no one wants to speak ill of anybody else you have to read between the lines. They'd lobbied to get the the spouses of Selkirk College students work permits - ostensibly so they could have a lower paid employee pool. Poor Ken was a victim of that, the "Browning" of the kitchen, a certain nationality working minimum wage jobs at 7-11 and Pizza Hut (and driving Cadillacs and Mercedes...) had taken over and didn't want Ken there anymore.
This is funny. They said that Ken is too slow.
And - you know, he is slow - but - go into any of the minimum wage jobs they've taken over and find one working passably hard - I dare you - double dare you. The 7-11, you'll find one person ahead of you in line, an 7-11 employee just off shift, and you'll wait 10 minutes for service.
Anyways, the Village Idiots gave him they're condolences and let him go. "Wasn't their problem..." the owners said. For a locally focused business they have surprisingly few locals working for them.
They're the kind of people that complain that nobody wants to work, when in fact nobody wanted to work for them, at the wages they pay and the hours and conditions they offered...they took the Covid relief from the government and used it to build a 3 story patio that if either the owner or her husband had to run up and down it 3 times they'd be dead of a heart attack.
They have political ambitions, and while easy to refute - the sort of Alberta Conservatives that believe that speaking louder than their opponent wins the argument - they're a pretty toxic bunch.
Back to Ken.
As we've a whole new contingent of under-aged child staff this year, pretty 14 year old girls and such, certain of my topics about Ken will have to remain off limits.
It kills me.
So I've renamed him "Mister Tickles" and introduced him to the young girls.
They're young but they're not stupid and they get the implicit caution, and I'm free to elaborate with the aid of certain therapy puppets I've acquired...skits performed for the benefit of those staff sitting at the bar to eat their staff meal:
"Mister Tickles You can untie me now...noooo, Mister Tickles I have to go home...Mister Tickles that hurts...."
While on that bent I've taken the liberty of elaborating upon Sean: "I thought I heard Curtis still screaming in your basement..." and Ankush- a likeable & harmless (albeit Useless) kitchen Helper hired under the same "Selkirk College" umbrella, chosen specifically because the owner liked the fact that he was taking women's studies "The Butcher of Bengal...He took women's studies!!! WOMEN'S STUDIES!!!"...
And suggesting to Ken that we take the 2 kitchen helpers to DQ on a double date, Ken's denials that he ever goes to DQ somehow implausible given his appearance, his laughing "Shhhhh's" aren't fooling me...Ken's arguments they're "too young" is irrelevant, they're saved from him not by his better judgement but by his own bumbling incompetence, the inept aspiring pedophile...
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Talking to JR, explaining to him that the homeless, they've more or less accepted me as one of them. I'm on the same schedule, up too early in the morning, scrounging for coffee, I'm the better dressed homeless guy with money for coffee and cigarettes and then disappears with places to go...
...but the café owners, they know, I'm fooling no one, and JR is joking as we pass a few of them on the street and they greet me and after they pass he begins the low chant..."One of Us...one of us..." and I'm laughing, my fate appears inescapable...
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Sunday, Monday, Tuesday the weather is muddled. Thunder, lightening, light rain, downpours.
Sunday, Monday the library is closed, Monday the Gym is closed.
Tuesday, a nap in the park between showers, after an hour abandoning all efforts, heading back to the car for a better sleep in from the wind and showers, and who should I run into on the edge of Lakeshore Park but Stormy.
He's been let out by his sister. It's been a while, and my guilt about not visiting him has only aggravated my not visiting him. He's not bearing a grudge, and it soon becomes apparent why.
We're talking, he recognizes me from the restaurant. But he doesn't remember how long it's been we've known one another, and he's guessing 2 years. He doesn't remember my name, and is asking about the town where the restaurant is, and the other place, just up from us..."Ainsworth" I tell him, "...the hot springs..." and he takes a minute to think about it before smiling, that's right.
He's in his second infancy, the days pass and are unmemorable, just a sequence of impressions, memory has abandoned him.
It's good to see him, even like this, he's gotten a new set of false teeth, last week, he shows me, they pulled the last of his top teeth (tooth?) and replaced it with a nice line of dentures. He's happy enough, tells me where he's living and to come & visit him. He's too young to be this far gone, but, so it goes, and I can't take more of an interest in his health than he does himself. Eventually, visit done, load him into the car, his wheelchair into the back, and he's back to the home.
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At Share, looking for a few things. Reading glasses (on my last pair), a few odds and sods. 10:00 AM, as soon as they open, and I run into S*, who a few years ago I worked with at the D&D. She was overweight then, lost a ton of weight on the crystal meth diet, was posting swimsuit modelling pictures of herself every day on Facebook.
And then she started rebutting accusations she lost the weight thanks to a diet of largely crystal meth, and then started posting daily how many days and weeks she'd been sober, and then about abusive boyfriends and landlords. In the end you snooze her.
So, here she is, rough as nails, homeless again, apparently shaved her head into a full Mohawk, she's starting to look like a late-stage meth-head.
She's zoodled, she's talking to me, can't make eye contact, going on a mile a minute, she's got to get out of Nelson, needs a place to camp, get it together, had it with this town, someplace off the grid, I must know? I would know, of course, but she's too busy talking to heed any recommendations, going off, trying to conceal the fact that she's still high as a kite through a superabundance of inane chatter and diatrebe and don't look at her, don't look at her, she's hiding in shame and righteousness
This girl needs to learn to Fentanyl and Chill. In any event, mid thirties, recovery unlikely, scraping by on disability for her ADHD, which I find ironic, how do you diagnose ADHD in a meth-head...
Anyways, mentioned her before, a few more mentions I'm sure and she'll be off to her forever home.
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And Chris, prospecting buddy who'd come with me to Crystal Mountain, now growing more than a little painful, he's irate I didn't buy him a ticket to Amissa, irate that I charged him for an extra chip-mayo at the restaurant, he's become a bit too-much the dog-gone begging, always broke and so you pay, for gas, food, spot him a hundred bucks that disappears into the void. It's just another drop in the bucket with Chris.
He's always broke, for the record, because he just bought a snowmobile for the winter, used it once, and then sold it at a loss. He's broke because he just bought himself a new Motorcycle. He's broke because he bought himself a motorcycle outfit. He'd spend money but we're too expensive. He's expecting money to come in from his sister/mother/father for his birthday/Christmas...
In short, his whole lifestyle is based on being a dollar short and a day too late, and he does very well for himself in this perpetual poverty and I've grown more than a little tired of subsidizing it...