18
Incident at the Two-by-Four
I DON‘T GET HOME from Buster’s on Saturday until almost noon. Everybody is out except Mum and Annie Oakley. Annie’s not feeling well. She’s in bed and Mum is doing laundry.
“I’m heading out,” I yell down the laundry chute.
“Eat something,” Mum yells back.
I make a Nutella sandwich and hightail it. I lick the Nutella off my fingers, stick my hands in my parka pockets and head towards Bank Street.
Dark clouds hang over the city like big bags of dirty laundry. Snow clouds? I hope.
I head towards you-know-where, but I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Natasha went on a trip. Maybe she left for good – ran off with her boyfriend! But if she did, Larry would have noticed since he’s spying on her. Where is he staying? Where did he leave the truck?
I’m just passing the corner of Fourth, kind of lost in thought, when I look up and there she is on the other side of the street turning on to Bank Street from Fifth. I stop, and a Saturday shopper bumps into me.
“Sorry,” I say, stepping aside. Then when I look again, Natasha is gone. I race across Bank Street and a car beeps at me.
“Sorry!” I shout.
I hurry along the sidewalk. Where did she go? Luckily, I catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye. She has just stepped into the café on the corner of Bank and Fifth. It’s so small they call it the Two-by-Four.
I peer through the glass. There is a man at a table rising to greet her. He gently takes her arm and kisses her on the cheek.
It’s not Larry, that’s for sure.
I step back from the glass before she notices me. Then an idea pops into my head and I dart to the corner and look east down Fifth.
Just as I suspected – her husband! He must have been tailing her and he’s not even half a block away. I pull my head back and lean against the wall.
What do I do?
There’s only one thing I can do. I dash into the café and go straight to their table. Natasha is sitting down now, pulling off her gloves.
“Rex? What are you doing here?”
I lean on the table, out of breath.
“He’s coming!” I whisper.
“Excuse me?”
“You know,” I whisper, glancing furtively at her friend. He’s smiling but his smile wavers when he sees the expression on my face.
“I don’t understand,” says Natasha.
“Larry! He didn’t go away.”
She clutches the edge of the table.
“He’s almost here!”
I’m trying to keep it down but people are turning to look anyway.
Her friend jumps up.
“I’ll wait in the men’s room,” he says.
As soon as he goes, I sit down in his seat.
“What are you doing?” says Natasha.
“You can pretend I’m an orphan and you’re buying me a cup of hot chocolate. That’ll be your cover.”
She almost smiles.
“Scoot!” she says.
I jump to my feet and head towards the men’s room.
“Rex!”
I turn. She’s pointing, panic-stricken, at the seat opposite her. Her friend left his coat. I grab it, almost knocking over the chair, and scurry towards the back of the café.
As I reach the door to the men’s room, I glance back. A waitress is talking to Natasha. And Larry walks by the front window, his collar up, glancing inside.
For a split second he stops, sees her, then moves on.
That was close!
I hand the coat to Natasha’s friend.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”
I nod. Now what do we do? He doesn’t seem to know.
I peek through the door. Natasha has produced a thick paperback from her handbag and is reading it. There is no Larry at the window.
The friend peeks over my shoulder. “Where did he go?”
“He walked by,” I say. “But he saw her, all right.”
The man steps back into the men’s room and leans against the wall. He wipes his face slowly with his hand.
“Oh, my,” he says. “Oh, my, my, my.”
He’s what my dad would call a nice-looking bloke. He’s got wavy ginger-coloured hair and blue eyes. He’s no Cary Grant. He’s kind of ordinary looking and a little scrawny, but he’s got an open face. And that open face of his looks pretty worried.
I close the door.
“He’s been spying on her,” I say. “He didn’t go away.”
Mr. Boyfriend’s jaw drops. “You must be kidding?”
“No, sir.”
He sighs and shakes his head. Then he wipes his face again with his hand.
I peek through the door. The waitress has brought Natasha a pot of tea.
“I could go scout things out,” I say.
Mr. Boyfriend frowns.
“He doesn’t know me,” I say. “It’ll be safe.”
Now he closes his eyes and his head droops. When he looks at me again he’s smiling in a worried kind of way.
“This is pathetic,” he says. “Here I am hiding in a bathroom completely dependent upon a very brave young man of...what? Eleven?”
“Bingo!”
He holds out his hand.
“Wilfred Dance,” he says. “And I have a feeling you’re the young man I should be thanking for the return of my address book.”
I shake his hand. “That’s me,” I say. “Rex Zero.”
He takes a long, deep breath and opens the door a smidgen.
“What do you suppose we do, Mr. Zero?”
“Well, I could go check out the street. Let you know what’s up.”
Mr. Dance combs his fingers through his hair. He walks to the sink and looks in the mirror.
“I’m not cut out for this kind of thing,” he says. “I’m a librarian, not James Bond.”
It’s true he’s no secret agent man. So I guess it will have to be me making all the decisions around here.
Just then the door opens and Mr. Dance and I both gasp. The man looks from one to the other of us, makes a crabby face and hurries into the cubicle.
“Does Larry know what you look like?” I ask in a whisper.
“I don’t think so.”
“You didn’t...you haven’t been over...”
“Over to Natasha’s? No,” he says. “Never. Certainly not.”
I peek through the door again. This time Natasha looks at me with an anxious expression. I close the door quickly. The toilet flushes. The crabby guy will be out any second and the men’s room isn’t big enough for the three of us.
“Come on,” I say, grabbing Mr. Dance by the sleeve. “You can pretend to be my uncle. We’ll leave here together.”
“What about Natasha?”
I hold open the door and he steps out, but we stand there uncertainly in the narrow hallway leading to the kitchen until the waitress comes by, her hands full of plates of hot chicken sandwiches.
“Are we having a party?” she says in a tetchy voice.
I head to the front door and glance back at Mr. Dance.
“I’ll make sure he’s not around. You can talk to Natasha until I give you the high sign. Okay?”
“Whatever you say.”
Natasha smiles at me as I go by and my heart starts to flutter. But I don’t have time to dillydally. I’ve got a job to do. I step outside into the cold.
It’s starting to snow.
The sidewalk is busy. Shoppers hurry by with shopping bags and bundle buggies, holding on to their hats, foreheads creased against the cold.
Larry is nowhere in sight. I lean against the window, my arms crossed, looking both ways, looking nonchalant.
When I peer back into the café, Mr. Dance is leaning on the table talking to Natasha. She says something back to him in an urgent way.
I wish I could read lips. All spies have to learn that. Then I remember my job and look up and down Bank.
There he is! N
orth of us, about three shops up, hanging out in the entranceway. I quickly look the other way. I count five steamboats. Then I casually enter the café.
“He’s just up the street,” I say.
“Oh God,” says Mr. Dance.
“You’d better go,” says Natasha. “We’ll talk later.”
He nods. Then he takes her hand and squeezes it. I turn away because it’s kind of personal. But it’s also exciting, like a war movie. The brave soldier and the nurse, and – out there on the street – the jealous Gestapo officer, a Luger in his hand.
Mr. Dance and I walk up Bank right past Larry, who doesn’t even glance at us as we go by. His eye is trained on the Two-by-Four.
“Was that him?”
“Yeah, it was.”
I hope he’s going to say something, but he seems lost in thought. I wonder if he would take me somewhere for a hot chocolate. It’s getting really cold and the snow is coming down heavy now.
Finally, we stop. He’s got the goodbye look in his eyes. He shakes my hand again.
“Thanks, Rex, for saving my bacon.”
I like that. It’s just the kind of thing Humphrey Bogart would say.
19
Erik at Nine
BY THE NEXT DAY, the world is a winter wonderland. There are mounds of snow on the lawns up and down Clemow Avenue. Enough snow to build one of those snowmen you see on Christmas cards with a carrot nose and two eyes made out of coal. Enough snow to build an igloo for a family of eight. Enough snow to take your sled out to Hog’s Back Park.
But in the Norton-Norton household, no one is going sledding or igloo-building or snowman-making. No one is going anywhere, except maybe for a nice drive in the country. It’s Sunday again.
Armistice Day didn’t change anything. Like those prisoners who break out of jail only to be tracked down by bloodhounds, I made my escape, but I’m back in the pen.
When I’m grown up, my kids will have to play on Sundays. It will be a rule.
Mum wants to cross the river to Quebec and drive up into the Gatineau Hills to look at the mountains. They’re not really mountains – not like in Vancouver. They’re more like bumps.
“But,” says Dad, “they’re the oldest bumps in the world. That’s why they’re so low. It’s hard work standing around looking majestic all day.”
I peer into Annie’s room. She’s too sick to go for the family drive. Lucky her. Cassie isn’t going either. She and Mr. Odsburg are going skating.
There seems to be only two ways to avoid going out on a Sunday drive in the Pontiac with your entire family: get sick or go steady. I guess I’d rather get sick.
I step into Annie’s room. It should be good and full of germs.
I take a deep breath. She stirs and raises her head from the pillow just enough to see I’m there.
“Hi,” she says. It’s almost the nicest thing she’s ever said to me.
“I was just seeing if I could get sick by coming in your room.”
“Be my guest,” she says.
Boy, she must be really sick. I sit on the edge of her bed. She doesn’t look my way. She’s pale and her eyes are hooded as if holding them open is difficult.
“I didn’t find the hidden cache,” she says.
I don’t know what she’s talking about. I wonder if she’s got malaria and is going demented.
“What do you mean?”
“Daddy,” she says.
“No, it’s Rex.”
She lifts her head a little and tries to give me one of her death stares. Then her head falls back on the pillow.
“I meant Daddy’s secret cache,” she says. “Where he’s hiding the you-know-what.”
The letter. Now I remember. The letter written in German.
“I looked everywhere,” she says.
Her voice is so weak that she doesn’t sound as scary as usual.
“Annie,” I say, “Dad may have some letter written in German, but he’s not a spy or anything.”
She doesn’t look at me, but she manages a weak growl and slobbers on her pillow.
“Yuck!” she says, moving her head away from the stain. “Look what you made me do.”
I hand her the box of Kleenex. She takes a half-hearted swipe at the mess and throws the tissue into a brown paper bag on the floor overflowing with used tissues.
“I know he’s not a spy, Rex,” she says. “Spies don’t get letters that start with ‘My Darling.’”
Then Mum comes to the door.
“Isn’t this lovely,” she says. “How thoughtful of you, Rex.”
Annie groans.
And then Mum says, “Why don’t you stay here, if you like, and keep your big sister company.”
I can hardly believe my ears. I look at Annie expecting her to shriek, but she doesn’t.
“Okay,” I say.
Saved. And I didn’t even have to get sick! I call goodbye from the top of the stairs. Flora Bella is angry because she has to go. Mum has to drag her through the front door. Eventually it slams shut and a few moments later the car is backing down the driveway.
I head back to Annie’s room and find her sitting up, her hands crossed in her lap.
“That was quick,” I say.
“I was faking it.”
She still looks sick. I’ve never seen her so white. But she’s not as sick as she was pretending to be. There is even a twinkle in her eye.
“I didn’t find Dad’s cache, but I did find something,” she says. She reaches under her pillow and brings out a photograph.
There is a woman and a boy in the picture, leaning against the front of a car. The boy is about Flora Bella’s age. The woman has her arm around his shoulder – mother and son, by the looks of it. The photo is black and white, but you can tell she’s brunette and he’s blond. She is wearing her hair in plaits. That’s what Mum calls them when she does Flora Bella’s hair. I think real people call them braids. The woman is thin and pretty. The boy’s hair is curly. He has his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. He’s smiling, but in a serious way. He’s wearing those leather shorts with suspenders that German people wear, a white shirt, open at the neck, and sandals with straps.
I stare at the picture. Then I turn it over. On the back is written Erik at nine.
“Where did you find this?”
“It was under the big chair. Must have fallen there.”
I study the photo. I don’t know what to think.
“He looks like you,” says Annie.
“What do you mean?”
“Just look.”
“So he’s got blond hair,” I say. “Lots of people have blond hair.”
She grabs the picture and stares at it. Holding it with both hands, she slowly sinks back on to her pillow. Her cheeks are red from the effort of sitting up, and her forehead is sweaty. She looks mesmerized, but I’m not sure if it’s the picture or her fever.
“I feel like I know him,” she says.
Suddenly, I wish I had gone for a drive in the country. I hate it in here. It’s stuffy and germy.
I stand up, shove my hands in my pockets and walk to her window to look out at the snow. I want to bury myself in it.
“It’s strange,” she says. “Don’t you feel it – like you know him?”
“No!” I shout. “It’s just some boy.” I rest my forehead against the cool glass. My pulse is racing. I’m burning up. Maybe I’ve got what she’s got.
“Do you know what I think?” she says.
I stamp my foot. “I don’t care what you think, okay? So just shut up!”
She raises herself on one elbow. “We’ve got to find that cache, Rex.”
“Why?”
“So we can know for sure.”
“Know what?” She looks as if she’s sorry for me.
“Stop it!” I shout. I’m boiling mad now.
I know what she’s getting at. I’m not a baby. A letter that says “My Darling” written in German. A hidden photograph of a pretty woman from some time ago,
by the look of it, with a nine-year-old son. Does she think I’m stupid?
“You’re wrong!” I shout at her.
“About what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.” And I’m just about to shout some other things when she shushes me up so forcefully I almost choke on my own words.
In the silence I hear the front door open and then Mum’s voice sings out.
“Hoo-oome,” she says.
It can’t be. They’ve only been gone a few minutes.
“Go!” says Annie.
I don’t go. I can’t move.
“Get out of here!” she says. “Now!”
So I go. At the door, I turn and see her put the photograph back under her pillow. The picture of a complete stranger named Erik, who looks like me. And his mother, who has no name.
20
The Bomb
THE SAUSAGE IS SICK. He must have caught what Annie has. They didn’t even get out of the city before he threw up all over everybody. Flora Bella describes it in detail.
I spend the rest of the day in my bedroom trying to read, but the words keep floating around on the page. They won’t stay still. Nothing will stay still.
At least, by holing up in my room, I avoid Annie. I don’t really believe in the devil, but if there is one, she could get a job with him easy.
* * *
It’s great to leave the house the next day. The snow is still deep and crisp and even, like in that Christmas carol.
Christmas! It’s less than a month away.
The fresh, cold air cleans my head out. No more germs, no more strange boys in leather shorts. Everything is looking brighter by the time I get to school.
And that’s when the bomb drops.
Miss Garr stands at the front of the class holding something in her hands.
A letter. I recognize the creamy colour of the envelope, but it’s a lot grimier than it was the day I sent it.
Miss Garr is wearing the biggest scowl I have ever seen. “Someone,” she says.
“Someone in this class has broken the law.”
There is a gasp followed by utter silence. Then Susan-Anne-Margaret bursts into tears.
“I’m sorry, Miss Garr,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“Susan-Anne-Margaret?”
“My parents bought all my raffle tickets,” sobs S-AM. “I just couldn’t go door-to-door. It’s too scary. I’m so, so sorry.”
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