Kyle B. Peters, the Baraby Airdale, is a music teacher and writer in Saint John, New Brunswick.
Some samples:
Denny nudges the door open. “Don’t,” I hiss at him, but when Denny makes up his mind to do something he doesn’t back down. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and really, anything could be in that shack. A psychopath, rabid dogs, dead bodies … The door even creaks the way you’d expect it to, with a slow moan that climbs in pitch. The paint is almost gone from the front of the building, but the bit that’s left is a dark rusty red colour and it makes me picture Denny’s insides splattered across this tin shed on a lonely dirt road in rural Alberta. “God, Denny,” I whisper. He smirks at me like a kid about to do something bad and then slips into the blackness. For a couple seconds it’s silent, and I think that’s the last I’m ever gonna see of Denny. I’ll have to explain to his parents how the son of a bitch got himself killed backpacking through the Canadian prairies. Then from inside I hear him say “Ho - lee - shit,” real slow like that so you know he found something crazy. I creep forward to peek inside, expecting to see I don’t know what, a two-headed cow or something, but instead the widening light from the doorway falls on a family, two dirty parents and their three dirty kids, huddling in the corner. They look at us with fear, hunger, and sorrow showing right through their faces. My tailbone shivers and I just about throw up, because I realize right then that the truth on the inside is always scarier.
She is my favourite strange woman
Sometimes she looks Muslim but she isn’t. She wraps her winter scarf over her head and across her mouth on cold days. I tell her it’s offensive and she laughs. She loves flowers and hates grass, and when the birds sing she chirps back at them. In the summer she plays her accordion in the park. I hate the accordion but I love her for playing it. She’s interesting and everyone who sees her knows it. She wears sweaters in the autumn that match the leaves: September is green, then red, yellow, orange in October, and her November is brown and black like the dead ones. I often don’t understand her and I think we will sometimes fight. I’m okay with that.
Sometimes I say what I think
Tyson’s palm pressed my face firmly into the rainy mud and held it there until my kicking boot connected with a bodypart and dislodged his bulky aggression. I choked out the wet barky soil and scrambled to my feet, wishing I didn’t live so far away from town and everything else. I ran to Tyson’s red truck for reprieve (it’s an asshole truck with big wheels), but he caught up and flattened me against the door. I felt a tooth chip when it hit the driver side window. He turned me around to face him, and it seemed that the mud on his face made his expression more pronounced. When the anger was outlined in mud, it looked more like sadness, which was probably closer to the truth, and which made me feel a little bad for what I’d done to him. He lifted his fist to smash me to bits, but he turned to tears instead and called me garbage and drove away. I watched his asshole truck disappear down the road and then went inside and cleaned myself up, thinking that assholes must have feelings too.
I always studied there
The library was solemn, but across the table, a long-haired kid glared at me hatefully. His eyes said, “Stop reading and look at me. Drink up my hatred.” I mostly kept reading. “Look up at me,” said his eyes. “I’m hating you right now.” His hair was greasy and his skin pale, which gave him the aspect of a homeless ghost. I looked around the table to see if anyone else had noticed him. They were all deeply absorbed in their textbooks and daydreams. “Hate hate hate,” hissed his narrow eyes. My eyes whimpered back, “Why me?” His eyes were having none of it. “You know why,” they shouted fiercely across the silence. And it was then that I recognized him from grade five, and guilt weighed my gaze down to the book in my hands. I packed my bag and walked past the others, undisturbed in their study, conceding the table to the eyes that remembered.
