A Crowbar In The Buddhist Garden
By Stephen Reid
Thistledown Press, 133 pp., $18.95
It seems strange to consider that readers might require a reminder of just how good a writer Stephen Reid is.
After all, Reid, a former member of the infamous Stopwatch Gang, came to public recognition with the publication of Jackrabbit Parole, the 1986 novel he wrote while serving time in Kent Institution in Agassiz. When he sent the unpublished manuscript to Susan Musgrave, who was then writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo, the book also formed the initial foundation that led to the formation of one of this region’s literary power couples: Reid and Musgrave were married the same year his novel was published.
The literary light was overshadowed in 1999 when, struggling with the addiction to heroin and cocaine that had plagued his entire life, Reid robbed the Royal Bank in Cook Street Village at gunpoint. Arrested in a nearby apartment after a short chase, Reid was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was released on day parole in early 2008.
Things had come full circle: Reid, bank robber turned celebrated writer, was a bank robber once more.
As he had done previously, however, Reid spent his incarceration writing. The result is A Crowbar In The Buddhist Garden, a slim, powerful collection of essays that chronicles Reid’s experiences as an addict, a criminal, a writer and a prisoner. It is harrowing, and breathtaking.
Another writer might have used the opportunity to attempt to rationalize his actions, to justify his addictions and the criminal life to which they led him. To his considerable credit, Reid never does. There is not a self-pitying word in A Crowbar In The Buddhist Garden, nor any attempt to explain away his crimes. Rather, Reid lets his experiences, and his choices, shape the narrative, leaving it to the reader to find connections and understanding.
Reid’s prose is at once muscular and beautiful, clear and plain, but informed with the vision of a poet. There are no wasted words here, but the language is rich and full almost to bursting nonetheless. It is this style, coupled with his candid frankness, that separates A Crowbar In The Buddhist Garden from the dozens of addict-memoirs cluttering the shelves.
He writes unflinchingly of events in his life that most authors, and many readers, would turn away from. In the essay Junkie, for example, Reid describes the roots of his addictions:
“The blood broke into two rivulets along the smooth skin of my inner forearm. My head sank back into the new leather of the bucket seat and my body went limp. Paul returned the glass syringe to its coffin-like case and dabbed at my arm with a soft cotton ball. His face swam up to mine, as if to steal a kiss. I felt such a hopeless peace I would have kissed him back, had I known how. On that warm Indian summer day in northern Ontario, I had just been given my first taste of morphine. I wouldn’t turn twelve until the snow fell and melted again the following spring.”
Paul, who introduced 11-year-old Reid to morphine, was “a grown man, a doctor, and a pedophile. The morphine, of course, was a prelude.”
Reid documents his history of abuse with a steady, clear eye, and precise language that neither obscures nor sentimentalizes the horror that he faced. His descent into crime and full-fledged addiction follows in relatively short order, all of it similarly documented. The clarity, the plain-spoken detail, create a subtle, transfixing force.
Similarly, The Last Score, which describes Reid’s return to addiction and to crime in 1999, will add a level of understanding to a story many of us followed in this newspaper and on the radio as it was happening. Again, he doesn’t attempt to justify himself or rationalize his actions:
“He knocked, two haircuts and a shave, and we entered a small airless junkie apartment smelling of toadstools and cat urine. A slow-lidded woman in a housecoat bid me be seated on a sagging couch. It seemed the perfect place to unmake my life, just for this afternoon. Just for today.
“I smoked the heroin and got a go flap.”
To be clear, A Crowbar In The Buddhist Garden isn’t all harrowing darkness. There are passages that are laugh-out loud funny, including a description of Reid’s views on women’s changing pubic stylings, and tender, including accounts of his family life and his relationships behind bars. Whatever the tone, though, the book is a stunning read, a gift from the dark.
Robert Wiersema is a Victoria-based bookseller and author. His latest books are Bedtime Story and Walk Like a Man.