... Drawings on the Sidewalk ...
the only part
It all started because I had heard the shots. I was lying in bed in the hotel room wondering what it would be like to live in Montreal. The hotel room was stuffy and warm, we both smoked and there seemed so little air. It took me several minutes to master the handle on the window and flip out the bottom of the glass pane. The windows have been different in every hotel I've stayed in; they never open completely and always have an annoyingly complicated latch.
The TV was on and it disfigured the light in the room and choreographed the shadows. There was the occasional noise in the hallway; laughter, sections of conversation, keys jangling, a coat rubbing against a door. I heard a door slam, open and close again.
I remember hearing only one shot and remember thinking two things. I remember thinking that the sound that I heard was a car backfiring. It was a sound like the piano music that drifts down through the walls in my apartment building. I can never tell what the tune is but it always evokes some emotion in me as I stand with my ear pressed against the wall.
I remember thinking that the sound that I heard was a gun shot. I must have heard two cracks...but it's not clear in my mind. It's funny. I can't remember how many sounds that I heard. I've heard hundreds of backfires that I've silently suggested to myself could have been gunshots but I've never remembered them for more than a few moments. Now I know the difference. A gunshot makes a resounding crack...like a crack has suddenly appeared in the very earth we're standing on - I suppose that's what it's like. That sound made a marker somewhere in my memory. The beginning of that sound can be found in an instant within my internal record. I will always know the difference in those sounds now. The sound of a car backfiring will never lodge in my brain, the sound of a gun firing will echo of buildings and bring the streets of Montreal back to me.
Several thoughts must have been present in my mind at the same moment. Something made me start moving toward the window to look out. From the opposite side of the hotel room I could see that the night sky was foggy. It was wispy fog not the dense soupy kind.
I remember hearing some car tires squeal and engines rev suddenly and race off down the road. I stuck my face against the window and tried to see what had happened but all I could see was the strange flashes of red and blue illumination from the police car that must have been just outside my field of vision. The window pane was cold and soon my cheek was aching. I briefly toyed with the idea of going downstairs past the glitzy lobby and the French speaking men in para-military uniforms but I decided against it.
I crawled back into the bed that was noticeably higher than my own, pulled up the quilt that weighed too much and was too rough then rested my head on the pillow that was almost a perfect rectangle. Sleep came quickly if I remember correctly. There were no nightmares or dreams or echoing sounds. I do remember waking up when my traveling companion returned to the room and telling him that I heard a gunshot then I went back to sleep.
By the time I met my friend in the lobby of the hotel the following morning we had heard a lot of details about the murder in the park down the street. Three people had been killed. One policeman had been killed. The criminal had been caught. The killer was still at large. I listened silently thinking that I had heard death. My mind had been focused on that very sound, the sound of someone losing their life. The hotel room with the dancing light from the television and the sound of someone dying.
Everyone was vying for attention offering their share of information. One man, I remember had a black baseball cap on and a jean jacket that was far too big, grey sweat pants with the legs rolled up; he said that he was coming back to the hotel from the bar where he'd gone to go dancing. He saw the police, he couldn't see the body because the area was cordoned off.
Someone finally brought in a newspaper. A police woman had been shot twice in the face. The assailant had been shot once. The Montreal Police had tracked the shooter for several blocks by his blood. They had lost him when he reached Rue St. Catherine. That was all there was to the story. The police woman had died almost instantly. There was a large stature in the park right behind where the policewoman was standing when she was shot.
This story was weaving it's way into my mind. Hearing the sound that killed someone made me feel as though the tale had somehow invaded my soul. The sound of the bullet cracking back and forth from building to building started my brain recording. Everything was heightened. I was so aware of everything. The Pepsi on my night table that was popping quietly, the distant white noise of the city...generic to anywhere I've ever been that had more than a million people. It was a dull drone of cars, neon and air filtering systems.
All of the thoughts and sights and sounds stuck in my head. It was inside me and I needed to find an opening to release it. Fingers rooted within me and I could hear the sound again. It was an event like many others I had seen countless times on the news. But...I had heard it. Somehow I felt this time that I was part of it, involved, responsible; there was ownership. I owned part of this death even if it were only the sound.
I've never physically been standing in the exact same spot as someone who's died. It's sort of a mystery...a chance to get close to something I've never been close to before. It's like being able to ride on a roller coaster while it's going really slow; you can benefit from the view and appreciate what it must be like to run at full speed but you don't have to feel the fear. It happened so close to me that I couldn't, even with my tendency to believe in the autonomy of human nature, accept that there was no reason for it. I was supposed to hear that shot. I was supposed to know that someone had died so close to where I was trying to sleep.
Death was like a magnet to me. I wanted to know what it was and what happened. I asked Lyle if he would walk over with me to see the park. He wanted to know what was so interesting about some blood, wanted to know why I wanted to be out there when it could be dangerous. He told me that he really didn't want to see anything but he walked along side me. He didn't really try to change our direction. The city smelled of carnival; sweet, metal, exhaust carrying each other along through the air.
There was a church just before the park. It had beautiful gold statues along the roof that were lit with flood lamps. They stood there in splendor peering down from the roof of the Church watching us as we walked by. That light from their golden casings was a safe warm light, and even I with, my enthusiasm, was reluctant to move away from that shelter of bright.
We walked around the park at first, not wanting to immediately walk into it. he worried that there might be someone lurking behind the large monument. I remember something about the statue in the park. The head was gone. The wound at the neck was not fresh, the ragged edge was darkened by the breath of the city. I don't know if it had anything to do with the murder or if it was always like that. It seemed odd, so close to the beautiful church with the golden statues around the top. Those statues I couldn't identify but felt certain were very important people. He said he thought it was pretty crazy to wander around downtown Montreal in the middle of the night. We walked all the way around to the opposite side of the park. It was a cool night. It had rained in the afternoon. The concrete was dull and damp.
"It doesn't do anything for me. It just doesn't feel right. Why would you want to be around death?" He kept glancing behind him and looking around the park. I think he was more wary of being there than I was. We didn't talk very much as we walked down the street. There was no irreverence to our silence just guard.
I've known a lot of people who've died but I've never been there right at the moment that they died.
"Which direction would you have run if you were the murderer?" He walked toward the last drop of blood circled by the police paint. "I would have jumped onto that bench over there", a wrought iron park bench with the stain flaking off of the wood, "jumped over it and run straight across the park and down that alley."
"I would have circled around the statue and run down the street into the middle of the crowd."
"But what if you had blood on you. He was shot wasn't he?"
"I think I'd get far away from here first and then blend into the crowd. It would be too risky to be this close."
"...that would depend on how much I was bleeding. Wouldn't you have to go to the hospital sooner or later?"
"How could anything else enter into your mind when you had just killed someone?"
We must have looked strange. He looked very casual in his camel colored jacket and jeans. I was wearing a wool blazer and purple pants - new black shoes that hurt my feet, gave me a blister the size of a quarter on my left heel. My only physical remembrance of that weekend in Montreal is a slightly raised hard scar on the back of my heel where that blister was. Funny, while we were walking around in that park I don't remember feeling any pain in my foot.
Lyle led me around the crime scene; a small chalk circle with the letter g beside it where the gun had been; two small circles marked with the letter c showing the spent cartridges...and the blood. It seemed strange to see that the rain hadn't washed the blood away. He reached down and touched the blood as if he expected it to tell him something. He was more hesitant to go to the park but more curious about the tangible things now. Things he could touch and feel.
I wondered why the police didn't drive up out of nowhere and ask us why we were there. What were we looking for? I wanted to know what had happened. I had heard a shot from my window in the hotel. I remembered one shot but remembered thinking that I had heard both a car backfiring and something that didn't sound like that. I still hear the echo.
How would this help? We weren't actually seeing anything as it happened but could only begin to reconstruct the event in our minds. Was our imagination a rival for the reality that we had been so close to the night before.
I wanted to be the one who bent down and touched that dried blood but somehow I couldn't. I could only walk across it and wonder if any of the flakes were now stuck to the bottom of my shoes. How far will that blood travel with me?
story and words and photos Copyright Charlotte Kinzie 2009.
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