We’re Just Bozo’s On This Bus

Old fossils never die, do they Sonja Wood ? – pt. 4

Living with someone like Sonja Wood is like fishing through a giant toy box you didn’t know was there. This not just a story populated with highlights and milestones, like the stuff discussed in the first few blogs: life is simply not going to be a glamour-filled succession of civil disobediences, nor an endless fantasy of rock-n-roll shows and big city lights, but you sure do get to know some curious people along the way. There’s a lot of hilarious stuff in there that has never yet been recorded for posterity, much of which will prove to be just as important as any milestone or achievement in our ongoing efforts to illustrate the many sides of Sonja (the recurring theme of all the crazy people you get to know; the way everything can go from cool and collective one second, to circumstances next that strain the limits of imagination, or I daresay, the fabric of belief).

If you ever wind up hanging out in the Maritimes with Sonja E. Wood (which I most certainly have), you will probably come to witness something you’d never conceive or predict. When this happens, it will likely be so weird and improbable you’ll agree with this much at least; this kind of thing could never happen twice on the same planet…

As you read the following story, note that sometimes people become absolute legends in their own minds. The two McCluskeys are (or were) very real people from our neighborhood, and I have to explain them in this context. Oddly, while the events relating to the two men took place in the same small town, these two shared not a sliver of common ancestry. Both collectively fell under that ‘crazy’ category, with no wiggle room. Today we are mainly concerned with the matter of McCluskey number one.

The first McCluskey is a large man. I met him for my first time a couple years ago. He was back in the province for a short time, I’d guess visiting his old haunts. He pulled up to the fossil museum in a curtain of dust, shutting off the very loud and noticeably overheated motorcycle at once. He climbed down off the smoking bike, and with these thick, black leather chaps creaking stiffly, and with size-thirteen Civil Army War Boots in the gravel crunching ominously, he approached and stood in the doorway.

At this point, several parties inside the museum who were innocently roaming around the displays develop this common goal: to extricate themselves out that door and back to the cars. That’s enough adventure time for today, they must have been thinking. He bore a resemblance which immediately struck me: he compared to either the grim-reaper after his makeover (trying to look like a biker, or even a hit man); or maybe some real leather-cutout, b-grade, attention-starved pulp-fiction guy. I’d swear he was sensing our apprehension for a moment longer, savoring it, before finally speaking. “Is Sonja here ?” This he says without showing the faintest trace of a smile.

Okay, this is when I need to vet the solicitors. Out comes my most effective and time-tested response: “She is, but she’s in a meeting right now”, (share a sad moment with him while he grasps this). “Who may I say is calling ?”

That’s when he told me his name was McClusky (number one). I got it the first time, and immediately associated all of the dubious legends with the man himself. His appearance, on the whole, managed to live up to his reputation, and it is hard to say with certainty which one was more extreme. As if I were a hapless idiot, like nothing bad could ever happen in the world today; (as if it was perfectly okay to treat this guy like some lost kitten that needed milk), I marched him into our humble home.

I learned this response a long time ago: don’t be surprised who comes calling up from Sonja’s past. She knows a lot of people from all over the place, but when the first fact they add habitually goes something like “I’m an old friend of Sonja’s”, no matter how unlikely they may seem at first glance, you know they are just like the rest of us. You know they l.o.v.e. Sonja and would follow her to Mordor and back if that’s where the next gig was scheduled. So I walked him straight to the kitchen door and never gave it another thought.

This particular McCluskey had been a professional wrester for years, but he was also a drummer, and had filled in at times with Sonja’s band. On one occasion, they were playing the tavern Friday night in Wolfville, and he had been ordering drinks all night. After they had played three sets, the bar was absolutely hopping, and by then he had run up one hell of a tab. When the bar manager brought the band its pay, with the big tab deducted, it was pretty obvious (especially to look at him), most of it was McCluskey’s doing.

Sonja divvied-up the money and gave him twenty bucks. He looked at her with a stunned expression. “Where’s the rest of my pay ?”

“You drank your pay. What do you want me to do ?”

McClusley one went from Mr. Happy to Mr. Flippie in a second. For at least the next 15 minutes as the band was packing up their gear, he stormed around like a thundercloud, ranting constantly; getting pissy with everybody. He never relented, right up until they were leaving.

Sonja was just in the process of maneuvering into the van through side door, when the drummer ended up doing something very regrettable. As Sonja started to get in the van, he reached across and grabbed her two little wrists into his massive hands. Each went all the way around her arms like a clamps, and she couldn’t do nothing. He was holding her arms so she could not even grab at a wheel to move herself, or even to stop her chair from rolling back out of the van.

Sonja saw there was this one fraction of a second, as his momentum came forward, she knew just what to do. Perhaps you get used to using that second sense. It probably comes from twenty-seven years of living in a wheelchair, when you deal with your own poor center of gravity and physics doing everyday mundane tasks. She jerked her arms back in a quick but effective move.

The former wrestler (a man who had gone to Russia to fight with very big men, but who Sonja says probably used to get his head rubbed into the mat too often), wasn’t ready for all 130 pounds of her. He smacked the doorframe with his mouth, and his tooth flew off to one side in a very graceful arc. He released her immediately, and he never got around to asking about that money thing again.

Years later he would still recount, even after all his fights in the gym, that the only time anyone ever knocked out one of his teeth, it was by a woman in a wheelchair.