Killspeak

“For a dollar, who can tell me what’s the world’s best-selling car?”

My brother and I were waiting for our mother outside some store in Old Strathcona. The call had come from just a few metres to our left: a man standing on a folding chair in the shade of a tree. He held out a loonie to passing pedestrians, asking them for an answer, assuring them it was easy. There were a few cautious guesses called out by people walking by, none of them right.

Eric looked at me and asked “The Beetle?”
“Don’t tell me. He’s the one with the dollar.”
“The Beetle!” We turned to see a man walking up to collect his dollar. Eric turned back to me and raised his eyebrows.

The man on the chair asked another question while digging in his pocket for the second dollar. The first winner stood with his back against the window of a store, watching, calling out answers every now and then. To me, it was obvious the two were working together, probably to drum up business for a nearby bar. “Come to Trivia Night,” or something like that.

The sidewalks were reasonably busy, it being the middle of Edmonton’s Fringe Festival; traffic from the Farmer’s Market and Whyte passed their spot. Slowly, people stopped to hazard a guess or to watch the man on the chair and his growing audience.

At first, my brother would tell me what he thought the answers were, but as others began to win with the same answers, he gathered enough courage to shout his answers out. After winning one he became even more eager. We went to stand a little closer. Our mother joined us, and the three of us listened in the shade.

“What restaurant food do Americans choke on most?”

It took much longer for someone to answer that one than it had for any of the others. The man on the chair became nervous, insisting that the answer was worth money, that we all knew what it was. Small, round, not soft. “For a dollar, c’mon.”

“Hard-boiled eggs?” The man who guessed didn’t sound at all certain.
“Yes!”
I could see by some of the faces in the audience that I wasn’t the only one wondering where that bit of trivia had come from.

The man on the chair seemed a little more relaxed. He tucked his folder under his arm and brought out of his pocket, not a loonie, but his wallet. He announced that his next question would be worth five dollars, and that he would need a volunteer. He pointed to a few people in the crowd with the blue bill, asking them whether they wanted to win five dollars.

He hesitated for a half-second when my brother went up. He searched the crowd a moment before asking my brother his name, again after Eric answered. It wasn’t what he had wanted, an eager kid, but he went on anyway.

“Eric, we’re going to find out if you’re a good person.”
Something inside me dropped.
“Do you know the Ten Commandments? Thou shalt not lie? Eric, have you ever told a lie?”
Eric looked back at me, at mom, then at the man in the chair. “Yeah.”
“What do you call someone who lies?”
(“Human,” called someone behind me.)
“A liar,” said Eric.
“You’re a liar, Eric, and that’s not good.”

He kept talking as his audience left, taking my brother down for stealing, for being envious, for being angry at others, concluding each strike by telling Eric he was “not a very good person.” Eric was silent.

I wanted to pull the bastard down off and ask him how he dared to condemn my brother. I wanted to feed him those five dollars. I didn’t. I wanted to lead Eric away, to leave the man without a victim. I didn’t—Eric wouldn’t have received his five dollars. I went and stood next to Eric, between him and the self-righteous jerk on the chair. I tried to absorb my brother’s humiliation. I tried to contain my anger. I whispered into my brother’s ear, “Don’t listen to him. You’re a good person. He’s an idiot, bullshitting.” Eric watched the ground, wounded. The man went into his sermon, saying all men are sinful and guilty, and only through the love of Jesus Christ can one be redeemed.

When he finished, Eric took the five dollars. The man snapped his chair shut and walked off to set his trap somewhere else.