Benjibopper

I don't remember the year after the accident very well, other than sitting in Aunt Chelsea's kitchen listening to talk radio. Those deep-voiced shock jocks made me laugh. They were verbal bullies and I was a safe bystander, unseen and unheard, too young and unknown to ever be their prey.

One day, in summer I think, because the sun through the window was making me sweat, they got on about drugs in the north.

"Here's a story from today's Herald," one of the jocks said - and that's how most of their segments started. "Says half of all teenagers in Frobisher Bay are addicted to alcohol, gas or glue."

"What are the other other half addicted to?" the other jock said.

I laughed.

Aunt Chelsea whipped her head around and shot me a look with her shoulders still squared to the counter, where she was working on her latest batch of sweets. "This'll cheer you up," she'd say to me, daily it seems, handing me a heaping plate of hot cookies or a steaming piece of pie.

"Dan," she said now. "That's not funny you know."

"Yes, Aunt Chelsea."

"I told you to drop it with the aunt stuff. No titles in this house."

"Seriously," the first jock was saying. "And if half of them aren't hooked yet, why aren't they doing something to stop the other half? Y'know, exert a little of what the social workers would call Positive Peer Pressure?"

"Here's what, y'know, ticks me off," the second jock said.

Aunt Chelsea and I stared at the radio as if it was a charismatic guest in our home.

"These so-called experts, these social policy wonks, are so fond of reminding us every time some special interest group tries to do the rest of us a favour and do itself in, about systemic this and that. Never is there any accountability on the part of the community or the family. What I'm saying is, these kids up north are all killing themselves with drugs. Where does the buck stop, y'know?

"I mean, we gave these people their own government, for cripes sake, and they've only made things worse for themselves, which anyone with any common sense could have predicted. And the same is true - and I know we'll get mail about this but to hell with it, it has to be said - the same is true of the African states post colonialism. So, my question is: what system do we blame here? Huh? I'm sure the socialist liberal media will blame the system, or the white man. But hey, are we the ones drinking Frobisher Bay's babies into oblivion every night?"

I looked away from the radio to Aunt Chelsea. She had stopped mixing whatever she was making in her bowl and stood still as a photo, except her mouth was opening and closing like a slow motion silent film. I noticed for the first time she had the phone held to her ear. Aunt Chelsea still had her old rotary phone but it had a long chord.

"I'll hold," she said.

She turned to me. "Go listen to this in your room."

I ran up the stairs and flipped on my ghetto blaster.

"Anyway, moving along, the city is facing yet another shortfall thanks to the big spenders we for some reason elected to City Hall."

"Wait a minute before we get into that I'm told we have a Chelsea MacDougall on the line from Halifax who wants to talk about this Frobisher Bay situation.

"Holy shit, Aunt Chelsea," I said to my G.I. Joes and Transformers.

"Uh, yes, Mrs. MacDougall, go ahead. What do you know about it?"

"It's Ms. MacDougall," Aunt Chelsea's voice said through the radio. "And I dont' know anything about it. I've never been there, have you?"

There were a few seconds of dead air. "Well no, Ms. MacDougall, I haven't. But why would you call in about something you don't know anything about? I mean we get a lot of, y'know with all due respect, morons calling us with two-bit opinions and we're always happy to tear them a new one. But most of them at least have an opinion, Ms. MacDougall."

"You a little bored all alone at home today, Ms. MacDougall?" the other jock said.

"If you've never been to Frobisher Bay," Aunt Chelsea said, "who should possibly give a tiny little shit about anything to have to say about it? The answer is nobody. Your opinion about the place, like mine, amounts to absolutely nothing, you pompous asses."

There was a loud click and another few seconds of dead air, followed by an outburst of deep-voiced laughter. "Well, sir, it looks like we have been told by the bored spinster set," the first jock said.

"Dan! Come have supper," Aunt Chelsea hollered.

I switched the ghetto off and ran back downstairs to the kitchen, where a tenor's bombastic voice filled the air. It was the first time Aunt Chelsea had changed the radio station on me since I'd moved in after my parents' death.

"There's goulash on the table," she said.

I smiled at her, sat down and took a bite. I hated goulash.

Labels: 2011, Fiction, nova scotia, politics