Steel Animals

by SK Dyment

  In a heartbeat, Wanda is at his side, slapping Ben once across the face. Determining he is unconscious, she calls an ambulance to rush to their home. Unsure what to do, she reaches for the little watering can that she keeps by the window and waters Ben frantically with a vitamin-enriched plant fluid. To her surprise, he begins to stir, a smile beautifying his face. She pops a small device in his mouth that measures the pH balance of his soil.

  It hangs from his lips like a cigarette and Ben begins to speak: “I saw it all so plainly, Wanda. I was wearing a backpack full of math books, and Rudy was at my side. We had borrowed some things from his father, some things Rudy always wanted but never had the nerve to take. He wanted his father to pay more attention to him. His father had been involved with the men he did business with, taking late calls, running off to meetings, and drinking like a fish for months. He was obviously involved in some big scheme, but no one in Rudy’s house knew what it was. His father was sworn not to discuss it with anyone else. I was the only one outside their house who even knew something was different, who knew anything, and that was because I had promised. In some way, I think you’re the key to all my memories of that time. At the time, my God, how we feared his father.

  “I still remember picking out special gloves so my fingerprints wouldn’t be found by Rudy’s Dad! Because his dad had fingerprint dusters, special chemicals, explosives and wires, and putty, all kinds of things you expect only a cop would have, a cop and not a crook. Now, I figure his father was mixed-up with both of them, but at the time all we knew was that we had boosted his precious pro lock-pic set. We took it for our own use, vowing it would be back before he was home that night. The leather of the thing smelled beautiful. The order and precision of all the picks, the logic and the language behind it, this was a language of adults that both impressed us and frightened us.

  “It was Rudy more than me who didn’t want to understand. Rudy wanted to act out against his father and to look into his father’s world. We turned the lock-pick set over in our gloved hands, smelled the stolen-wallet smell of danger. But the desire for the know-how was pure adrenaline, and it appealed to our frustrated teenage lives. At the time, we were so young, we felt like we had a hundred years on our hands.

  “That night was cool and full of the cries of night hawks and bats, and we were in the illegal possession of lock picks to open and start the ignition on any Ford Mercury or Thunderbird, any Lincoln Continental, any Dodge Dart or Plymouth Fury, or any Chevrolet car that caught our fancy.

  “Our eyes fell on a ’70 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, and we both said, ‘V-8, 450 ponies,’ and slapped hands.

  “It was parked outside a little restaurant, just a diner, with two cars between the front of the place and us.

  “Rudy and I hopped inside and started fooling with the ignition. We left the driver’s side door wide open, and Rudy’s legs sticking out into the parking lot.

  “That’s when a couple came out of the place and got in the car parked closest to the restaurant window. Rudy saw the couple and pulled the door shut, but when he tried to draw his leg in, his knee caught against the dash and the door caught his foot.

  “We were pressed close. He looked into my eyes and gritted his teeth from the weight of the door crushing against his running shoe, counting off the seconds for the people to drive off in their car. But they didn’t drive off, they stayed there, kissing and talking together, as if they were going to discuss the whole damn menu and what a miracle it was that there was a diner open at night.

  “I remember the sweat breaking out on Rudy’s face, and the little fuzz-face of a moustache he had at that age, and I felt like passionately kissing him, even though that was something that neither one of us was wired to ever do. As if he had read my mind, Rudy winked at me, and then he opened his sulky mouth, extended his tongue and licked it across my lips.

  “His eyes were black as coal briquettes. The moment hung between us. Then he started the car, pulled in his leg, and gave the Chevelle all the power it had, without caring if the couple in the other car saw us or not.

  “We burned out of there laughing, cruised around town, stopped for some ice creams, and called out the windows at every female we passed, asking them if they would like a ride. Finally, we drove out to the Scarborough Bluffs, left the car, and walked along the beach looking for a party on a Tuesday night.

  “Of course, there was nothing but the waves breaking against the bluffs and the wind moving in the trees above us.

  “We pulled up weeds and whipped each other with them mercilessly, and I whipped Rudy so hard through his T-shirt that he actually started to bleed. Then we climbed straight back up the bluffs, right up the cliff side, still laughing like two wild dogs, and circling around for the car.

  “By now the sun was rising, and we hustled the thing back to town, doing a hundred miles an hour on the straight stretches and making plans for another day.

  “Finally, we ditched the automobile and walked back to his house.

  “When we got in, his mother made breakfast and told Rudy that his father had been home, had rummaged around, left again, stinking drunk and driving the family car. We slapped hands again, thinking we were lucky to have escaped his wrath.

  “It was only two days after this that Rudy’s father finally made one final and unforgettable appearance, and when he did, it was in Lake Ontario, floating face down near the docks. It was evening. Rudy and I were eating pickle sandwiches by the television when the phone rang. When the police told Rudy’s mother, we heard her scream, and we picked up the basement extension line. We heard them ask her if they could drop by and examine the house. Without speaking, we threw everything we could find that Rudy’s dad might own, including the contents of a small safe with a tumbler lock and the coveted lock-pick set into a bag and we tore out of there at double speed.

  “We hid it in the chimney of my uncle’s home … my uncle who raised Vespa and me after my mother’s death. He was a very religious man and prone to rant on about fire and brimstone, but he had sealed that chimney long ago and converted to oil heat, so there was no danger of the thing catching a spark. Rudy wasn’t even acting like a kid in mourning. He was just acting like he was doing a chore, a job that could protect his dad. I don’t know when Rudy mourned really, only that I spent that whole summer and important parts of the next few years like a brother to Rudy as he followed in the footsteps of his father, going places even I feared to tread. Unlike his father, he didn’t brag, he didn’t join a gang, and I was the only one who knew anything about it at all.

  “The police questioned him that night, and he didn’t even let out a whimper, and I know they told him that it wasn’t an accident, and whoever got his Dad could get him too.

  “The worst part was, I just knew he thought that the car-lock pick combination set we stole was somehow the reason that his dad died. He knew that his father came home that night, looked frantically for the lock-pick set, and then left in his own car, without the ability to either access something or to transfer into someone else’s car and escape being followed. Not having the lock-pick set killed him. It was clear.

  “When I tried to tell Rudy that his dad was no small fry and could probably start any car he wanted with his bare hands, Rudy just sank deeper into being a crook. Mostly, he was fond of finding places he could pick open and then using the tools he had at hand to crack a safe and make off with the money. He was methodical and liked a ritual and a souvenir at the same time, complete with a little flashlight for dramatic effect.

  “Never, never did Rudy get caught, and he did it for years. Many a night I would be working late fixing one of my uncle’s stupid American motorcycles and wondering if my friend was going to get caught or kill me for ratting. I never ratted. I think Rudy knew I was in love with him. Since the night he licked my lips, I was in love, and I stayed loyal to him. Even when we duelled with weeds and we whipped each other until we were bleed
ing, Rudy was always in control, but he always pushed things as far as they would go, and I didn’t know if he would someday decide to methodically push me off the face of the earth. We stayed friends. Only one thing bothered me as I was sorting through Rudy’s ‘Get Well’ cards during my convalescence. I was wondering where the photo of my friggin’ CZ had gone, where I had put it. The only one I ever took.”

  “Umm, Ben, there’s a lot of blood, and the paramedics are here. Should I let them in?”

  “What do you mean ‘let them in?’”

  “You’re naked, Ben. You don’t have anything on.”

  “I’m not ashamed,” says Ben. “When you have been in a coma for weeks, nothing can ever embarrass you again.”

  Wanda jumps up and opens the door, and two uniformed men hurry in with a wheeled stretcher. Ben tries to sit up and winces from the pain.

  “A plate fell and it struck him quite hard….”

  “Where is the plate, the plate that struck him?” The medics seem suspicious, as if Wanda had struck him with a baseball bat and then called for help.

  They lower the gurney and begin lifting Ben onto the surface.

  There is a clatter.

  “Oh, there it is,” says one of the medics, holding back a smirk.

  “It was stuck to his ass.”

  “He fell off the bed,” Wanda adds helpfully, “and must have landed on it.”

  “Shut up, Wanda, this is embarrassing,” says Ben.

  “Really, pussycat, you’re lucky I was there.”

  “Was this a domestic?” says the first suspicious paramedic.

  “No, it was a decorative,” she tells him. “We have other plates for domestic purposes.” She picks it up and puts it on the gurney next to Ben.

  “I love you, honey.”

  “I love you too,” says Ben. “Please ride in the ambulance with me.”

  “She can’t ride in the ambulance until we get this sorted out.”

  “Says who?”

  “New rule when in suspicion of a domestic dispute.”

  “But you’ll be there. It’s not like I can suffocate him or something,” Wanda says.

  The gurney starts to roll.

  “Why can’t she come with me?”

  “She may not have hit you, but then again, you may have amnesia and not remember that she hit you.”

  “With a decorative plate?”

  “Your blood and hair are on it.”

  “So are my ass-prints! Wanda?”

  “Yes, Ben?”

  “The photo?”

  “Yeah, the CZ. You only had that one shot.”

  “It’s in a safe, in Rudy’s mother’s house.”

  “In a condom?”

  “No, in a locked box. And the combo…”

  The gurney begins to move down the stairs.

  “The combo to the safe?”

  “Is written inside your first prosthetic hand, the one you wore when we first met…”

  “The big heavy one? It’s in a box of my things!” says Wanda. “I’ll bring it!”

  “Just wear it, baby, just wear it!”

  The gurney disappears into the ambulance and the ambulance pulls away, followed in minutes by Wanda in a taxi. The next morning, after being watched by nurses and interviewed by a psychiatrist, Ben is able to go back home. There is a large bandage around his head. Wanda has forgotten to bring him any clothes. Arriving on a small, single cylinder Jawa, Wanda asks Ben to negotiate a blanket from a nurse, and then insists on driving him on the awkward vintage motorcycle back to their home. Ben clings to her back like an infant. When they arrive, the small blanket has blown away and Ben is wearing nothing but a wristband with his health care information on it, and a small green gown that barely falls to his waist. He wraps Wanda’s leather jacket around his middle and hurries up the stairs to their second-storey apartment.

  “Let’s go!” says Ben, transforming himself from hospital escapee to man.

  A short quarrel later, they emerge in full leathers, hop onto Ben’s fully restored Triumph, swing out into the traffic, and begin weaving through the Don Valley Parkway, into the Gardiner Expressway snarl to Etobicoke, where they park outside a small diner that has become a landmark to Ben. Parked nearest the door, there is a couple kissing passionately in a 1975 Le Mans. Otherwise, the lot is empty. Ben and Wanda order two plates of French toast and a large poutine for Rudy’s mother, to go. In a jiff, they are back on the Triumph, the wind blowing through their hair, fried potatoes in the panniers. The feeling of a powerful and well-tuned bike between their thighs once again gives them a sense of control over the mixed-up world around them. They pull in to Betty’s house, situated at the top of a meandering suburban hillside. It is surrounded by blossoming flowers, roses, climbing vines, and things that his Rudy’s mother has allowed to seed because they are wild, but beautiful, like Ben remembered her boy. Betty seems to have aged little. She invites them in, slamming the door behind them fast enough to nip Wanda in the ass. Wanda hands her the poutine.

  “Hello, Betty,” says Wanda. “I am Wanda, Rudy’s Vancouver friend.” Betty asks them if they know Natalia and then seems disappointed that they don’t. She asks them if they are in some kind of trouble with the law. “No, we aren’t here because of us,” says Wanda.

  “Well, I can’t tell. People in biker jackets always look like they are in trouble.”

  Ben reminds her that he has fixed the alternator on her car and is Rudy’s boyhood friend. As they bend over to set their helmets by the shoes, Betty sees the bandage and Ben’s shaved scalp.

  “Is that from your accident?”

  “No, I’m all healed up now. This is from a plate.”

  “A brake plate?”

  “No, a decorative plate that we had over our bed. It fell down.”

  “Oh, I get the picture.” Betty swings her hips back and forth, miming the movements of a fucking man and then throwing up her arms in fear of falling objects. Finally, she falls limp at the knees with her hand on her imaginary dick, staying that way until Wanda begins to laugh.

  Betty straightens up. “Seniors’ Theatre Circle,” she says with no attempt to conceal her pride. Wanda claps and Betty offers her a gravy-soaked fry.

  “It wasn’t very funny at the time. I was in the hospital all night, with nurses staring at me.”

  “They weren’t staring at you, they were admiring you.”

  “They were staring.”

  “That is true. He didn’t bring any clothes,” Wanda tells Betty.

  Betty puts her hand on Ben’s arm. “A very special woman who will love you to your dying day,” she tells him. She goes to the refrigerator and gets them some pina colada punch. She returns for a bag of ice for Ben to put on his head.

  “Please, I’m okay,” says Ben.

  “It’s bruised,” says Betty.

  “I know, but they put ice on it all night. I don’t want to have a frozen central nervous system. I could go for a beer, though,” he says, swinging their familiar old door open with a smile.

  “No!” says Betty, reaching out to stop him. “Keep out of the fridge!” Until that moment, Ben had not actually looked in the fridge, but now he glances into the little bulb-lit box with surprise.

  A stack of plastic-wrapped fifty-dollar notes extend from the stuffing end of a small turkey jammed in Betty’s chiller tray. There is also a large collection of what looks like quails, half-wrapped in paper banknotes and piled against the inside wall of the fridge. There is no sign of beer. Ben quickly slams the door. “I’ll take frozen peas, if you have any of those,” says Ben, “I just find ice so lumpy.”

  “Go sit, go sit,” says Betty. “I probably have beer somewhere. I don’t know.”

  Ben shudders to think, but Betty ushers him to the living room with Wanda. Once seated, Ben takes a look aroun
d the room. It has become much more expensively furnished since the last time he had seen it, —now, the room boasts a wide screen television and a stereo system with four speakers, two on marble stands and two mounted on the wall. A glance at Betty’s music collection showed her CD’s to be perfectly aligned with the taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. Her bookshelves are full of hardcover travel books, interesting amateur acting trophies, and porn. Betty returns with king cans of Bud and joins them with a smile.

  “So, what the fuck do you want?” Betty asks. It occurs only then to Ben that Betty could be carrying a gun as her first late husband often did, hidden and nowhere in sight.

  “Just to see you, just to show the old neighbourhood to my gal,” Ben answers.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Betty,” rescues Wanda, “do you know where Rudy is? We haven’t seen him in ages, and Ben misses him, even if he has gone kind of corporate.”

  “Kind of.”

  “Your house is nice. Has Rudy been sending you money?” asks Ben, throwing the conversation back into unknown waters once again.

  “No, none at all. The little panty-waist, he thinks I’m shacked up with the man who killed his father.”