“Gonna get pretty cold. You know that, right? Like you maybe got another six weeks before your drinking water starts freezing at night. Best thing is to sleep with it to keep it thawed out. Travis taught me that.”
Frankie looks around as if he’s expecting to see Travis and I squint into the darkness, also half expecting someone else to show up.
“Are you expecting Travis and Charlene?” Lise asks.
“No way!” Josh shouts. “That asshat is not welcome.”
Frankie and Lise share a knowing look that I can’t decipher and Frankie quickly changes the subject.
“So you were saying your dad’s coming up before winter?” Frankie asks.
“He’ll be here long before then. I’m expecting him any day,” I say with more confidence than I feel.
“You might want to have a plan B, just in case.”
“I’ll be okay. Dad’s on his way.”
When Lise and Franklin exchange a quick glance, a shiver scuttles down my back.
“I mean about living on your boat. The water lines will freeze and you’ll get stuck for a couple of months.”
“I’ll let him know,” I say.
Frankie takes a long drink of the blue liquid before he eats the hot dog Lise offers him. Having a full mouth doesn’t keep him from talking. “I’m just saying, we spent a winter out here and it ain’t no picnic, even for us, and we got a totally sweet set-up. Come have a look.” Frankie unfolds himself from the cinder block he’s been sitting on and gestures for me to follow.
He wobbles when he takes a step and Josh laughs. “Steady as she goes, bro.”
Lise catches my eye and nods to let me know it’s okay, and since I’m curious about what’s inside, I follow Frankie through the hole in the plywood into a dimly lit room that smells like damp earth and dirty socks.
Frankie flicks on a flashlight and sweeps it across a narrow space that’s set up like a dorm room. There are platforms built from stacked blocks and scrap lumber, and on top of that are layers of cardboard and blankets. Beside each makeshift bunk are plastic crates covered in melted wax and items of clothing hanging on nails.
Frankie takes a box of matches from a shelf on the wall and lights a candle. The room comes to life in the soft yellow glow and he turns off the flashlight.
“What do you think? Pretty sweet, huh?”
He jumps up onto one of the bunks and I sit on a plastic lawn chair at the end of the other bunk.
“You guys set this up?” I ask, looking around.
He nods and stretches out. “Actually Travis and Josh set it up. Then Travis and Charlene started seeing each other and Travis moved out. So I moved in.” Franklin pauses. “But I’ve made some improvements. Like these platforms. Josh and Travis just slept on the ground.”
“Travis and Charlene are friends of yours?”
“Yeah, sorta. We used to hang around. But Josh is still mad about him leaving. So now they hang out with Mike more in High Park. It’s too long a walk.”
“So it gets pretty cold in the winter? Even in here?”
“Freeze your balls off.” He pauses and considers me. “Well, really effing cold, anyway. But last year we rigged a wood stove with the fire barrel. Even made a chimney to vent the smoke.”
He points to a round hole in the wall above my head that’s blocked with pink Styrofoam.
“Stove works pretty good for this little space, especially when we cover the floor with cardboard for insulation. There’s some pretty rough nights, for sure. But at least it’s not a shelter.”
“You don’t like shelters?”
The candle flickers and my shadow lengthens and dances on the wall. Frankie shifts positions and lies on his side, facing me, his head propped on his bony hand.
“The men’s shelter is nasty. Full of drunks and bums. The whole place stinks to hell and there’s bed bugs. Plus you have to sleep in shifts to make sure nobody steals your stuff.”
“Lise says the place where she goes is pretty good.”
“The youth shelter. Yep, it’s a pretty sweet deal if you can stick to the rules. But they boot you out at twenty-four. Expect you to get a life by then.”
“I didn’t know they had age limits.”
“They got everything limits. When you can come in at night, when you have to leave in the morning, what you do during the day. No drinking or drugs, that’s for sure. But you’d be okay. You don’t drink.”
“Is there, like, a lower age limit?”
“Sixteen. Before that they stick you in care. Talk about a nightmare.”
“You were in care?”
“Everyone out here was in care at some point. Either that or they, like, lost the parent lottery or have some mental issue or something.” He stops to consider his summary, then adds: “And some people just have plain old bad luck.”
“You?”
“Definitely bad luck. I lived with my parents until they were killed in a car accident.”
“I’m sorry,” I say and study his face.
He winces, then falls into a deep dark sinkhole in his mind. “They were stoned,” he says finally.
“How old were you?”
He wipes the hair out of his face. “Ten. I lived with my aunt after that. But then she met a guy and I got too tall and too ugly. I didn’t fit into their plans for a perfect family.”
“You’re not ugly.”
Frankie laughs and dismisses my attempt to humour him. “You need an eye exam.”
“What about Josh?”
“You don’t want to know his story.”
“Why not?”
“His parents didn’t get a very good start in life. They passed that on to him.”
Frankie scratches his shoulder then lies back down and looks up at the ceiling. I follow his gaze, but there’s not much to see besides water-stained plaster covered in smoke stains and cobwebs.
Lise’s head appears through the hole.
“Hey, Harbour, we should probably head soon.”
The tone of her voice sounds urgent so I get up and go outside. Frankie follows at my heels. The fire is blazing and flames are leaping out of the barrel. Josh is piling more wood on top.
“What the hell you doin’, asshole?” Frankie yells and runs over to grab the pieces of lumber from Josh’s hands. “Someone’s gonna call the fire department if you’re not careful. And where’d the rabbit go? Did it fall in the fire?”
Josh slurs something incomprehensible and begins scrabbling on the ground for the rabbit.
Frankie flails his arms and screams. “Jesus, you do this every time! Now what we gonna eat?”
In his quest to find dinner, Josh gets too close to the fire. His hair flares up and then dies down as he stumbles away slapping his head. He trips over the pile of lumber and falls in the long grass. Somehow, in the time we were inside, Josh had transformed from a low-key urban trapper dude into a raging drunk.
While Frankie works to beat down the fire with a two-by-four and Josh struggles to stand up, Lise leans over and hisses at me.
“Let’s bounce. Now.”
She heads across the lot without saying goodbye and I don’t hesitate. Neither does Tuff. We scramble through the hole in the fence just as I hear Frankie say: “You idiot. You scared the girls away. You always do that. How many times I gotta tell you about making the fire too big? You wreck everything. I don’t even know why I stick around. No wonder Travis left. ”
Josh slurs a response and then it sounds like a fight breaks out. There are grunts and indecipherable shouts, and the sound of fists making contact with flesh. I slow down and Lise stops to see why I’m not keeping up.
“It sounds like they’re going to kill each other. Should we go back?”
“We should definitely not go back. They won’t kill each other. I promise. They won’t even remember fighting tomorrow.”
Tuff is lying at my feet chewing on something but in the dim light it’s hard to tell what he has.
“Drop it, Tuff. Dro
p it!”
He drops the object reluctantly and I use the light from my phone to see the burnt rabbit carcass lying on the road. I kick at it with the toe of my shoe.
“How did he end up with this?”
“I dunno,” Lise says. I can tell she’s trying not to laugh. “But I say good for Tuff. Someone might as well enjoy it even though it looks disgusting.”
“I kind of feel bad for those guys. I mean, this was supposed to be their dinner.”
“Don’t lose any sleep. I bet they got a stash of canned goods for emergencies.”
We make our way through the deserted Port Lands toward the busy city streets, loud and crowded with young people headed out for a night in the bars. A car passes with a guy hanging out the back window. His hands are raised in the air and his chest is bare. There are arms reaching from inside, trying to drag him back through the opening while he shouts out at the street. “Screw you, assholes! This world is mine!”
I tuck my head deep into my sweater and try to blend in with the storefronts. But Lise flips the guy the bird and mutters, “Talk about assholes.”
A few steps farther a cluster of girls in skin-tight skirts teeter out of a restaurant on high heels. They move over a little too far on the sidewalk when they see us walking past. If Dad were around he’d throw a compliment their way, but I’m too embarrassed to look at their faces and assume their giggles are about us. Lise senses my embarrassment and tilts her chin up in response.
“We got just as much right to be here as they do.”
I nod and wish we were already in the ravine, in the darkness and safety of the tent. But we have ten more minutes before we even hit the trail. Eventually the crowds thin and we turn onto a side street. I sigh gratefully at the emptiness and feel lighter the farther away we get from the bright lights and bustle of a Saturday night.
“Do you hang out with them much?” I ask suddenly, my mind turning over the events of the day.
“Not really. I mean, they’re nice enough until about ten, then they end up fighting, like, ninety percent of the time.”
“What were they drinking?”
“Hand sanitizer and Gatorade.”
“Hand sanitizer? Why?”
“It gets them drunk, faster and cheaper.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Yep. That’s why they mix it with the Gatorade. To cut the alcohol content.”
It takes me a few minutes to process this information, so we walk in step but also in silence. Finally Lise clears her throat.
“Don’t go getting all judgy about it. There’re worse habits. The rest of the time they’re pretty good guys.”
“I wasn’t being judgy,” I say defensively.
“Whatevs. The thing is, you can’t afford to be picky out here. Those guys might be drunks, but they wouldn’t hurt you. I’d rather hang out with a messed-up drunk than a violent one.”
CHAPTER 6
LISE AND I are tidying up the campsite when she drops a bomb. “So how late is your dad?”
She’s breaking branches into short sticks and I’m kneeling in the tent, taking stock of my supplies. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and I freeze mid-movement the same way a hunted animal does when it wants to hide against the backdrop of the forest. She also stops moving and since we’re separated only by a thin layer of nylon, I can hear her breathing and waiting for me to respond.
“He’s not on an exact schedule. Sailing doesn’t work that way.”
I put down the can I’m holding and sit on the back of my legs, hoping whatever point she is driving towards, she will stop when she senses my reluctance to engage in a conversation about my father.
But she doesn’t.
“Then how long since you last spoke?”
“I’m not keeping track,” I lie and focus instead on the twenty-nine cans of tuna stacked neatly in the corner. I pick up a box of crackers to add to the pile of supplies. “But that doesn’t mean anything other than he lost his damn phone again.”
Lise resumes breaking branches and I hear the cracking and splintering as she busts them across her knee.
“Okay, but I’ve been thinking. If he gets way off schedule, like if he doesn’t get here before the nasty weather hits, you’re gonna need to consider coming to the shelter. And it would be better if you made a plan now for what you’re going to do with Tuff if it comes to that.”
My heart goes into overdrive and it’s difficult to breathe. Even if I knew what to say, I feel physically unable to utter a sound. Lise crawls into the tent behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t panic. We’re just talking. We just need to come up with a plan. Nothing is going to happen right away. You’ve got time to get used to the idea.”
“I can’t leave Tuff,” I finally manage to gasp, then suck back a massive lungful of air to make up for holding my breath.
“I know you feel that way but there might come a day when you have to leave him for a night. Like what if you got hurt, or sick or something?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You’re right. Probably nothing’s going to happen. But I still think you should have a plan. So I was thinking maybe you could leave him with Frankie and Josh. Like in an emergency?”
I turn and glare at Lise like she’s lost her mind.
“No way. They’re not capable of taking care of themselves, not to mention a dog.”
“Do you know anyone else?” Impatience starts to slip through the cracks of her calm facade.
I sit silent for a moment while I run through the list of people I know in Toronto. So far the list goes Lise, Frankie, Josh, Erica, and Brandon. Although I can’t really say I know Erica or Brandon as much as they were both kind to me during a moment of crisis.
“Well?” Her tone is almost taunting and it makes me want to prove her wrong.
“I know Erica. She works at the library and she loves dogs. She might take him overnight.”
“There you go, then,” Lise says. “Let’s go ask her.”
Lise backs out of the tent on all fours and stands up so that I can’t see her face. Then she waits, without even trying to pretend she’s not waiting.
“What? Like right now?” I resist the urge to pick up a can of tuna and hurl it at her shins.
“Sure. No time like the present, right?”
I’m pissed at Lise for bullying me into doing something I don’t want to do, but I have too much pride to admit she’s right about my lack of resources. So I crawl out of the tent, zipping it closed behind me, and drag the evergreen branches over the sides as camouflage.
We head in silence up the trail that leads out of the ravine. Tuff must sense the tension between us because he keeps returning to our feet, looking from Lise to me, then barking. It’s like he’s scolding us for acting like a couple of children, or like Frankie and Josh. When we finally step onto the streets of Cabbagetown, some of the anger has drained out of me and I turn to Lise.
“Are you coming to the library with me?”
She nods and says sheepishly, “I’ll wait with Tuff outside.”
I’m nervous about seeing Erica because I know she’s going to think I came to get my permanent library card and expect me to produce a piece of mail displaying my home address, complete with postal code, which I won’t be able to do. And after the morning of tension, I’m not in the mood for lying. Still, I don’t have much choice — Lise has me backed into a corner. So I walk into the library trying to look confident, and end up feeling smaller than usual in the gaping lobby.
I take a deep breath and cling to the small hope that Erica isn’t working, but she is. When I glance over at the information counter she’s the first person I see and her sixth sense must have had a recent tune-up because she looks up at the same moment I spot her.
Her face breaks into a smile and she watches expectantly while I drag myself toward her. My legs feel heavy, like my veins have been filled with hot lead and I’m wearing cement blocks
instead of running shoes.
“Harbour!” She greets me brightly. “Did you bring in a piece of mail?” She doesn’t say it, but implies the word finally. Or maybe I’m just imagining a hint of impatience.
I glance at the floor and pick at my cuticles. “No. I’m sorry. We rerouted our mail from Florida, but nothing’s come yet. I promise I won’t forget, though.” I add weight to the word promise and muster as much false optimism as possible.
Erica leans forward and peers over the counter.
“Not checking out any books today?”
I shift my feet uncomfortably. “No, still on Yogananda’s The Bhagavad Gita. It’s taking me longer than I expected.”
“I’m not surprised,” she says. “That’s a complex book.” She taps at a computer keyboard lightly with her fingers. “So what can I do for you?”
“Actually, it’s about my dog,” I say reluctantly and look away again, this time behind the counter at a trolley of books waiting to be shelved.
When I glance back at her, her brow is furrowed with long deep lines. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s great. But I have a bit of a favour to ask. I mean, I hate to impose, but I don’t know anyone else in Toronto yet and you said you liked dogs. So I just thought maybe you wouldn’t mind watching him for a night? My dad and I have to go out of town and we can’t take him. It’s just this once. I’ll bring food and his dish and everything.”
Erica’s shoulders fall. Her eyebrows pinch together, and she presses her lips into a grim line. It’s obvious she has disappointing news she doesn’t want to deliver.
“I’d help you out if I could. He’s such a lovely dog. But I live in a very small apartment and the landlord has a strict ‘no pets’ policy. I can’t take the chance. I’m sorry.”
I can tell she really is sorry and I feel ashamed for lying to her, especially when she was so generous about letting me have the temporary library card in the first place. She’s been nothing but kind to me and how have I repaid her? By cutting bar codes out of her books and lying to her face every time we speak. I force myself to smile as radiantly as I can.
“That’s okay. We’ll figure something out. I’m sorry I even asked.”
Safe Harbour Page 6