Chapter 2: Brandon

I woke up to the rattling sounds of the torrential rains hitting the cheap tin plated roof of my apartment in a converted cotton warehouse. I live in a poorer neighborhood in southern Beijing and actually safer than most. Most old areas like this are full of poor people and a lot of the elderly and kids. You can be perfectly safe as long as you look poor too and tough enough not to look like a mark. Most importantly get to know the locals.

I get up, shower then shave get dressed and head out to work. I’ve done a lot of things; I’ve got lots of experience and no real degrees to show for much of it. Real life, on the job experience is my schooling.

I’m a construction worker, actually a foreman over here, and in charge of a crew of about twenty guys, some I’ve hired from the neighborhood.

I stop at a sticky dumpling stand just at the end of my street to get a strong tea before taking the bus. I’ll get breakfast at the job site as a half dozen vendors are set up across the street. Once I’m on the bus, I pull down the hood on my slicker. It rains hard here but the rain keeps down the smog. Smog from morning traffic is bad here. Fifth stop and I move again, shifting seats is common here, the men move aside giving the seats to the women, and everyone moves for the elderly. I might be a Quai-lo (Round eye) foreigner but it just feels right with me. I was raised not to be an unmannerly punk.

I get to work and head over to greet the vendors and the guys that I work with. I buy some breakfast and get another tea for myself and a few of the guys. I tip each vendor well; I pay and don’t take back my change letting them have a really good tip. I tell the other imports like me to do the same. Some do, some don’t but this makes a difference for the guys who work these stands.

I take my food over to the job site, grab my tool belt and binder with the day’s orders and changes and head up the outside elevator. I claim a work table and set my stuff down then join the guys at the view over the city from a huge section of unfinished wall. Every working day we do this ritual of the view, breakfast together and then 15 minutes of Tai-Chi before work. Every day is a good day when you have spicy noodles and BBQ pork for breakfast and Dim Sum for lunch.

The day goes well; we spent the entire day between the 122nd and 125th floors of one of these big new apartment complexes for the new Chinese rising middle classes. I love the view, but then again I like scenery from a lot of the places I’ve lived. I spend my breaks and days off playing photographer, I’m an amateur but I got into it shortly after leaving home; it’s a vice and a hobby, as well as a job perk. I don’t spend a lot of time at it but I usually have a camera with me.

Once I get a job and move in some place, I spend most of my days off helping my neighbors. I travel with my tools a lot, or if I can’t have a proper place to lock up my good tools I buy stuff there. Here in Beijing I bought a lot of them but many were swiped from the job site. Hey I’m no angel and they’re making millions on those places. I use them to fix up the places I end up staying in and use them to fix up the poor houses of my neighbors too. I’m the happy useful nice foreign guy.

But once in awhile there are days I get to play tourist. I always try to get a guide from the neighborhood who’s been to where I want to go. It actually don’t cost that much to invite others along. I usually rent a van and take whoever’s been guiding me, and fill the rest of it up with a couple of elders and a bunch of poor kids who might never get to go see places like these. Someone’ll pack food so we don’t have to pay concession stand prices.

Why? I know what it’s like to grow up poor.

Back home in Birchcreek, Nova Scotia I grew up lower middle class. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I’ll never say that. But it left tracks in me that formed my life. My Dad was a good guy but he ran a logging truck so he was always on the road and there wasn’t work all the time. Money was tight but we were okay. We got new clothes once a year and they were for school only and those where on sale too. If we ever wanted to get anything like Jordashe Jeans or Levis or Reeboks or anything like that it came out of our summer job money. We were not the lucky kids who got an allowance for doing chores, chores were chores; you had to do them or we just went without. We all had jobs in the summer even when I was as old as six or seven, you can’t do much then but you can pick berries, rake leaves, pick vegetables my family and others in our financial bracket like most of the native kids were the equivalent of today’s migrant workers.

When we did get stuff most of the time it was army surplus, thrift store buys, hand me downs from relatives and stuff.

We had no well but a spring and gravity fed cisterns for my family and my grandparents. No water heater so we heated it on the stove for everything and all we ever had to cook on and heat the houses were wood stoves. We were poor but not. My grandparents helped us and we helped them, there were pigs and chickens and a couple of cows and we always had a garden. We were kind of the small little red-neck hobby farm with the junk in the yard. That was my Grandpa Frank he could build anything out of anything. He was one of those old guys who lived and grew up in the depression. As a little kid and the man I’m today I’m still in awe of the man.

You really don’t see really poor until you get out of North America. Mexico is bad but it’s rich compared to some places. Unless you have really traveled you have no idea. I have been to Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Arabia, Israel, Palestine, the Sudan, Chile and Ecuador to work. Now I’m in China.

Nowhere in Canada except some really bad spots do you see anything close to the poverty I get to see everyday. Makes me want to share the wealth, you can’t take it with you.

So I help out. Most of my cash is banked anyway; I have been doing that for a long time. It transfers to a branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia where it gets split up into several accounts. You can make good money just being “that guy” you know that guy, the one who’s been everywhere and knows what needs to be done, that’s me I’m that guy. Underground in a mine running a front end loader, on an oil rig in the prairies, or on the water or in the desert, I’ve been a roustabout on all three, driving logging trucks can be big money. For awhile I drove in a long haul convoy over in the Middle East and the Sudan, Insane money in that but really dangerous. I got hurt in three knife fights, shot at in five hijacking attempts, was in a convoy that hit an IED so I said to hell with that and I stopped that all together after being in a fire fight against a bunch of Sunni’s and shooting and killing three people. I never saw the faces and they were trying to kill me but still I’m not that kind of guy. There where easier ways to make money.

Like construction. If you know how to do lots of stuff and have been around the world you get two things. One- this guy’s not reliable and won’t stick around. Or call Brandon he knows what to do and see if he can come and get things running here for us. I collect letters of recommendation from my bosses, cards and go anywhere and do anything. And If I can’t do it, odds are I’ve worked with somebody who can.

But I like doing little stuff while I’m out here away from the home I don’t have. It gives me a sense of community. But home wise, is for me a storage yard in Dartmouth and the airport, a motel when I’m in town and my bank and the post office.

My brother Wade inherited the house and being a druggie basically burned through the money he had and lost the land to the bank when he smoked through the money he got for refinancing it. My Dad died when I was 17 driving and just hit a patch of black ice and rolled his truck. My mom died having a fatal heart attack while I was being shot at. My sister, she killed herself after an abusive marriage. Last I heard my brother was doing life for murder in an attempted robbery for drug money and is in Renuce penitentiary in New Brunswick.

So it’s been just me really for a long time.

Until today; Today I get a DVD sent to me by courier, and it explains to me by this guy in a suit that I’m the soul surviving relative of the estate of one Gerald Ferguson my Grandpa Frank’s half brother. There’s a short letter with it.

Dear Brandon;

If you’ve gotten this letter and video what sit then I’m dead and just as well cause getting old an being old just plain bites. You’re the only family I’ve got left kid that’s worth a damn. I’ve gotten letters from your Grandpa over the years before he passed and said you did well. I worked my ass off for this bit of land and I’m not giving it to any of my brothers or sisters kids but you. The rest of them are all spoiled little cretins or criminals. So it’s all yer’s boy. The lawyer will give you the details on the disc thing.

Great Uncle Gerry.

So now I got a place?

I look at the DVD and it’s a bunch of legalize and a video walk around the property it’s an old cattle and grain ranch or farm that had stopped about 15 years ago and has been idle since. It’s got pasture and woodland on it for about three hundred acres plus a big barn and a big garage and farmhouse. The old fellow was in a home the last eight years so it’s in bad shape.

I’ve got tools.

I own it free and clear.

I’ve got enough money in the bank now for quite awhile really.

And now I’ve got the chance to live in coastal central British Columbia.

Hell I’m thirty-four years old; it might be nice to settle down for a change.

***

I tell my bosses and they’re pretty good guys. I finish out my contract for the year and find them a guy I know that can handle the job. Hell I know Simon pretty well and I even sell him my apartment here so he’s got a place to stay. I stay a week after he’s here getting him up to speed and show him the area and introduce him to the locals.

I make arrangements to get my stuff shipped from the east coast by rail. I’ve kept most of my stuff in a Dartmouth warehouse paying a friend of mine Eddie Stewart to take care of the things I’ve shipped home from all over the world. Eddie’s a good guy but lost an arm fishing tuna a lot of years back so I send him a check every month to do this for me and he honestly needs the cash. And a lot of my stuff here I let Simon have or give it away to my neighbors who need anything they can get. I take a trans-pacific flight after calling around on the internet on the Face blab site seeing who’d be around to give me a hand. There’s a bunch of good guys I know from years back working out of the oil-sands now over in Alberta. I tell them it’ll be some extra quid (money), I’ll pay for the gas and the booze and the food if they can come over and give me a hand for the weekend.

My first stop is the airport in Vancouver. Then a cab ride to the Bank of Nova Scotia. It’s an hour of getting some cashiers cheques to pay for the freight charges for my stuff and my two cars 1970 chev chevelle all stock restored and in black and my red 1969 dodge superbee. I get my accounts squared away and stop by the local Harley Davidson dealer in the city and buy a brand new 2010 in cash after talking the sales guy down a bit I get a good deal with it being an outright purchase and commissioned sale and all that. I still end up paying out about half of my life savings by the time I’m done paying for everything. It’s the most cash I’ve ever spent in my life. I’m half excited like a teenager again and half sick too. Even as I meet the guys back at the airport on their bikes and with the guys from the freight company we pull out getting out of town and taking the coastal highway their all driving behind me like we’re a gang. For a good part of the morning I’m freaked a bit and I repeat to myself. “You don’t have a mortgage, you don’t have a mortgage.” Given the housing markets now days I’m freaking rich. Not really; but I’m really well off considering.

It’s a good bit of fun getting up there we take two days getting there or well rather we drive most of the way there and get a motel in some small town just off the highway and we hit the local pub and get chatted up by the locals. The cars and the bikes are a big draw for some people. The RCMP makes an appearance and kind of patrol near us without actually stopping. We’re not breaking any laws and they seem to think we’re all bikers. Well we are we’re part of an online club of motorcycle enthusiasts and we know each other from working together but two of the are pipe-welders, Bobby and Steve, One’s a carpenter up at Fort Mc Money(Fort McMurray), Chris and Chuck’s a chef at some high end place in Calgary. It’s kind of funny, hell it is funny. They even follow us out to the end of their patrol limit and we’re good until the time we get into Bridgeview.

It’s actually a nice town if a bit screwy. You come to the town and there’s a big suspension bridge that spans the bay as it opens up from two large cliff like hills that flank the mouth of the bay. The main bridge is part of the provincial highway. It’s actually very nice one of those big graceful arching bridges with the big pillars and everything even the rows of cables and these huge sidewalks used for the tourists and the walking trails. There’s an off ramp to pull into town on inside edge of the bridge and taking it you drive down the cliff sides into this big bay with the town meeting the bay. There’s another bridge that’s made for the railway about halfway to town and the tracks lead down to the water were you can see tree and lumber barges on one side of the shore with a large mill and what looks like the private and fishing docks on the south side of the bay. The town itself is about 25-30 thousand people and goes front the inside edge of the bay area out into and up the valley. Lots of surrounding evergreen forests but lots of leaf trees planted in town.

It’s a pretty typical place. I see the typical places like Wall-Mart, Zellers, The Bay, Costco., Mc Donald’s, Burger Queen (yeah All are (TM.) of their respectful companies.) Etc. It’s a typical town. I find the address for the law firm and use a pay-phone to confirm my appointment to meet him at city hall to take care of everything there and register myself as the new owner and pay off any taxes owing. We pulled into the parking lot drawing stares as we do look like a bunch of bikers and there’s a bunch of us and the trucks. I see a guy in a suit with a light beard and a pony tail getting out of a town car. He walks up with a brief case and extends his hand, we shake. “Mr. Hunter?” He nods. “Mr. Page?” I nod. He looks at my friends but doesn’t say anything and says. “Shall we get this done then?” I follow him into the building. “Lets.”

I won’t bore you with the technical legal mumbo-jumbo about the actual reading of the will and then going through the taxes and assessments and stuff. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one there. I saw a few of what might have been relatives that argued with the lawyer for awhile about the probate stuff. It turns out not only was I chosen to inherit but Uncle Jerry had left letters for them as well that basically said they were shit out of luck. Most left mad and complaining about the waste of time and gas for this.

There was some guy there staring at me giving me a dirty look the entire time. I ask the lawyer. “Do you know who that guy is and why he was staring a hole through me?”

“That’d be your sixth cousin Henry Wade; he’s been trying to get a hold of the property and trying to find a reason to get you into probate court.”

“Is he going to be a problem?”

“More than likely, he wants the ranch for a new golf course, he’s got investors.”

“How much for to put you on retainer?”

“You sure, I’m not cheap?”

“How much?”

“Three thousand a year without any action.”

“You’re hired, can I pay you now?”

“With?”

“Cashiers cheque.”

I take out the cheque and endorse it over to him.”

“This is for ten thousand dollars.”

“Yeah I had a lot of expenses moving back here and getting things put together, I took out a bunch of those to pay customs and the freight charges, the shipping company, the back taxes. It’s the last one though.”

“You want change?”

“No keep it and deduct it off my account as you go.”

“Alright Mr. Page.”

I extend my hand to him. “You can call me Brandon.”

“Good I’m Dash.”

“Dash?” He blushes a bit.

“It’s an old family name short for Dashel.”

“Musta been hell around Christmas?”

“You’ve got no idea.”

We’re both having a chuckle as we leave the building. He looks at me. “Henry will try something.”

“I know, I’ve been around and seen guys like him before.”

“You want me to do anything.”

“Yeah get my property relisted as a farm because that is what it’s still going to be. And find out who the investment group is and get a restraining order ready for them to desist their attempts to attack the financial status of my farm. Get me a listing on the better business bureau and the Bridgeview merchant’s association as well as a farming and business license.”

“You have been around these guys before.”

“You work enough construction and you see a lot of really crooked developers.”

“So what are you going to be farming?”

“For now I think it’ll be organic produce.”

“Alright.”

“Oh and get me some information about the local farmers market or whatever it is here.”

“You don’t do anything by half measures do you Brandon.”

“Never.”

I sign off on a contract he’s got with him and another series of drafts for everything he’s going to do. I get his contact information and drive to the local hardware place and open an account with my credit card. “I’ll need delivery most likely too is that alright?” after a credit check and a good look at my ID and gold card the guy is all smiles. “Not a problem at all sir.” I leave with the guys out to find my new organic produce farm. Not ten minutes later we’re being followed by a pair of RCMP in their 4-Wheel drive truck. They follow us all the way to the ranch and park in my next door neighbor’s lane.

I start to check the place out with the guys and we start unloading things and paying the guys off with the flat beds and stuff we celebrate a bit. It’s when I first see her; it’s easy to spot her with that long golden blonde hair. I’m watching the girl sitting in the old ford pick up. She’s watching us and the RCMP and she looks upset.

I can see she’s had a mess made out of her yard and somebody spray bombed the side of her house. She’s upset by what’s been done and the lovely bit of nastiness written in bright orange. She’s very upset. Enough to come down and give the cops a piece of her mind. She’s tall and blonde with long hair at least to her shoulder blades. She’s well built, there’s muscle there, and she’s got strong shoulders like a female boxer might have and…It all kind of clicks into place. She’s a trans-girl, sorry, woman.

I’ve absolutely no problem with any trans or gay or lesbian person. I’ve worked enough around the world I’ve seen a lot of different kind of people living very different kinds of lives. I’m of the opinion everyone should be free to be whoever they really are. Life’s far too short to not to. I’ve even been with a couple of these girls in the past. Living in China I’ve been to Thailand and met a few nice Khatoei girls. I went on a vacation once in French Polynesia and met a very nice Rei-Rei? And knew three really wild Brazilian girls that used to hang at a bar with me and the guys I worked with hung out at while down in Ecuador. Actually getting to meet one here in a small town like this was the most surprising.

I’ve never “been” with a trans-girl but I’ve known lots of them. Besides, she right now looks like she could use some common human decency.

Another RCMP cruiser pulls up into the yard and a woman about my age gets out with a tote of stuff. They’re busy so I go back at looking the place over with the guys and pretty soon Eli Taylor a Mic-Mac native from down home pulls in with three of his cousins and a U-haul of stuff?

Eli and I went through school together and even though we spent a lot of years apart there’s those friends that you can just pick right up where you left off at with. We spent a lot of summers together in the berry fields or harvesting apples, potatoes, corn and everything we could as teens to make a buck. Turns out he came out west and married a Haida girl and he does carpentry building log homes and making furniture.

He brought food too; elk steaks and west coast salmon, some on ice some smoked, and his tools.

Overall the house is a wreck, it needs new roofing and new boards on the outside and inside walls are out of date and all the plumbing and wiring need replaced. There are some great things here too. Irreplaceable hardwood floors, staircases and moldings for the inside of the house. A huge Riverstone fireplace that’ll need a steel flu installed but it’ll be worth it. There’s an old claw foot bathtub and matching sink in the master bathroom and the place is full of old stuff. There are tons of old books and a study that goes with it. Old antique furniture some is one of a kind stuff it’s all over the place from his stuff and his guns and his wife’s clothes and silverware and china to the vintage stuff in the kitchen. My favorite is a stand with three really old acoustic guitars.

The barn and the garage are the same thing really old tools and older farm equipment still in good working condition. Both structures need work especially the barn but I can handle that. The garage is fine except for the wiring and the old cement floor needs leveling. We start to move the old equipment out into the yard or rather the closest bit of pasture this is where we can put the stuff we’re going to need to take out of the house.

If the guys from Antiques Roadshow walked through this place they’d have an aneurism of pure joy. There’s three quarters of a century of life’s treasures here. “God…Thank you Uncle Gerry, I’m not sure I deserve any of this but I’ll try to make you proud and do right by it all.”

I look out the window to the neighbor girl having coffee with the cops. Maybe some good Karma to start with.

I walk myself over to the neighbor girl’s place after the Mounties leave. The yard actually the whole place needs work not just getting things fixed up from what was done here. Nobody has lived here at least for a couple of years and the place has a look that says this is not the first time that stuff like this has happened. She must have either moved in or moved back recently.

Someone drove up her lane and over this nice looking hand painted flower boxes breaking them. I can fix those, it’s mostly just breaks and bent nails.

It’s a nice house, 2 stories plus attic and basement. A nice glassed in front deck and sun porch, probably four bedrooms, two bathrooms; I can see a laundry room in my mind out back. The front yard looks like a front garden that got turned into a lawn and has not been kept up. There’s probably a nice backyard and a clothesline off the laundry room. The place needs painting badly and repairs.

I keep looking it over and see an old garage done in the style of a gable barn it needs work a dirt yard and lane that’s about fifty feet long setting the house well away from the road. Both sides of the property have a line of blue spruce trees at the edges of what might have been pasture. If I’d guess it was a 1940’s to 1950’s small farmhouse converted into a residential home at some point in the 80’s by the look of things. Her family or she bought it as a fixer upper.

I’m looking all of it over when she nervously comes out. I can see her sort of reaching for something defensive, maybe?

“Can I help you?”

“Looks like you had some trouble?”

“Uhm…”

I take off my sunglasses and slide on my normal ones, yeah near sighted and my sight’s not the greatest anymore. Bad eyes to start with and too many things like welding flashes over the years. I can’t stand contacts either, Hell I have trouble putting in eye drops. “Look.”

I start over now that I can see her better.

“Look, miss I’m just moving into the neighborhood and I’m fixing my place up so I just thought I’d offer to fix some of this up for you, seeing as I’m just doing the same thing over home.”

I check out the spray job, that’ll have to be sanded out. I look back towards her and see her get this look. It’s one of the sexiest looks a woman can have. TG or GG you have to have the soul of a woman in my opinion to be able to have that look, and it’s all in the eyes.

Fragile Strength…

I see it in her eyes as she’s talking to me. I’m still a woman, sweet, loving, caring and needing in my soul but watch it because I’ve been through hell…That look. “Yeah you might want to reconsider that..”

There’s hurt in those eyes mixed with pain and fear and other things. I know what’s coming but I’m curious. “Why?”

“Well it’s just I’m really not all that well thought of…”

Oh…She’s warning me off. The whole don’t like me, stay away because I’m a freak thing some people do. I like who I want to and she’s been making that decision for other people a bit too much I think, I but in and introduce myself. “Brandon, Brandon Page.”

And I get the entirely womanly stare for a second of …We are not amused. She get’s pissed a bit and let’s me have it, both barrels. That whole stay away I’m scared you might like me.

“Yeah, okay look, I’m a transgendered girl, so you might want to uhm, not want to bee seen over here and stuff, you know people might get the wrong idea.”

I walk over a bit and she’s backing off a little, okay she’s been through some stuff definitely. I stop well out of reach and look her over just for a second. TG or not she’s very pretty in that; Pretty more than cute or beautiful, hurt but strong, independent but lonely. It’s her personality, her aura I react to first, then her eyes. Icy mountain top blue eyes. She’s lovely, not beautiful but lovely, even in her sweats and after the morning she’s had, she’s lovely. “Hmn, good choice.”

“Are you gay!?” She blurts it out in shock to what I just said to her. She definitely blushes nicely. I smile at her in my weird sideways way. “Nope”

“Uhm, what?”

“You say that a lot.”

She goes into another red flush and it goes pretty far too. She gives me that shy girl look/peek from behind her hair. “I’ll be over in an hour or so to get this stuff fixed up.”

I turn and head for home, hands in my pockets. “It was nice meeting you miss!” I yell out over my shoulder. I’m already really into this girl. I meet different people in different ways all the time but this was one of those meeting somebody special moments for me. God I know she’s TG and I’m already feeling turned on by her, if that’s not a sign I don’t know what is.

“Sam!, my name’s Sam!” she yells back when I’m about halfway there. I can’t help but smile at hearing it and the way she says it, shouts it even.

Now to explain what we’re doing to the guys.