Tinker and Blue

by Frank Macdonald

  Peter?’s efforts to find out more about the oxygen engine were ignored by Tinker who had more important things on his mind, but the implications of Tinker’s invention were as self-evident to him as Blue’s music.

  “No wonder they’re looking for you, man. You’re talking about an energy source that’s as natural as breathing. It won’t just salvage the planet from our inhuman greed, it makes that source of energy available to everyone. The ultimate democracy, I always believed, is reflected in the potential of solar energy. No one owns the sun, man. Like God, to use a metaphor I don’t believe in myself, it belongs to us all. So does the oxygen we breathe. Economic dynasties will topple with the development of your engine. Maybe even governments. No wonder the FBI wants you, and I’m willing to bet they don’t want you alive. The powers-that-be want the massive contents behind that modest cranium of yours to stop functioning, and if it takes a bullet to do that, then so be it. The FBI is not without its executionary resources.”

  The others weren’t paying a lot of attention to Peter?’s rambling exploration of Tinker’s pending invention until the suggestion that Tinker would not be taken alive.

  “We better get moving,” Blue said. “Tinker, pack! I’ll drive Tinker and Mrs. Rubble over with the van. None of you know where she lives, so you can’t give my buddy up, not even to save your little pinky fingernails. Come on, let’s go, everybody move! We gotta get Public Enemy Number One out of here.”

  After a flurried moment to pack, the whole population followed Tinker and Blue down the stairs into the backyard where a stunned Tinker stopped the parade.

  “What’s up, buddy? You look like you’ve seen Danny Danny Dan’s ghost,” Blue said.

  Tinker’s forefinger pointed weakly toward the tan and brown vehicle parked beside the commune van.

  “Oh, you mean the Plymouth,” Blue said. “Didn’t I tell you about that? I guess not. Gerry knew this guy, eh, does body work. He came by one day when you were at work and took it. Not a bad job, except that new coat of paint kind of ruined Kathy’s butterfly and the other paintings. It was supposed to be your Merry Christmas gift, but this Christmas is not very merry, as the other fellow says.”

  Tinker approached the Plymouth, reaching out with a timid hand, as if afraid it would disappear under his touch. It didn’t. He walked around it, looked inside, opened the driver’s door, turned the keys in the ignition and the engine leapt to life. Letting it idle, he walked to the front of the car, opened the hood and studied its vibrating engine.

  “Tinker, I don’t think this is the time to be thinking about taking it apart,” Blue said.

  Tinker lowered the hood, took his suitcase from Blue, put it in the back seat, then opened the passenger door for Mrs. Rubble, hugged Kathy, and sat behind the wheel. Blue leaned in the open window.

  “It’s like I said, buddy, by tomorrow night we can be in Vancouver, both of us.” Tinker shook his head wordlessly. “Think about it because there’s worse things than being in jail, buddy. If we stay here, we’ll have to stop calling you Tinker and start calling you Aloysius.”

  Tinker shifted into reverse, backing the Plymouth out of the yard, finding his voice as he did so. “I’ll call you later, Kath. Blue, thanks, buddy. Next summer. We’ll drive home next summer.”

  45

  “Blue, wake up, you’re having a bad dream.”

  Blue’s eyes flew open, saw Karma leaning across the bed shaking his shoulder, searched the room to get additional bearings, then closed in momentary relief. He felt his rapid heart, and, sitting up on the side of the bed, slowed down his gasping breath.

  “A nightmare, a god-awful nightmare. It was next summer and Tinker and I were driving across the Canso Causeway on our way home. The causeway’s only a mile long but we kept driving and driving and driving and we couldn’t get to the end of it. Then we could see that the island was sinking, going down inch by inch into the ocean. Tinker was driving faster and faster trying to get there but we couldn’t reach it. First, the coastline started disappearing into the water, then the forests, then the mountains and then it was just gone. When we got to the end of the causeway, Cape Breton wasn’t there anymore, nothing but bubbles, as if something alive was drowning down there. Tinker and I just looked at each other, talking without talking the way it works sometimes, and got back in the car and Tinker started to drive off the end of the world and if you hadn’t woke me up the two of us would of drowned. You know what the other fellow says about dying in your dreams, don’t you? If you die in a dream you’ll die in your sleep, although I don’t how they know that.”

  Blue looked around the room again, grateful for the three-dimensional facts of bed and chair and three walls and the tarpaulin that sheltered their privacy ever since Tulip’s exhibit, and for the reality of Karma’s hand on his shoulder.

  “I’ve seen ghosts, Karma, and I’ve seen lots of dead people laid out in their parlours, but I’ve never seen anything that frightened me like that nightmare of Cape Breton drowning ... except that time I thought you were dead, of course ... watching it drown and knowing there’s no place to go home to....”

  There was a dim glimmer of January dawn outside their window, and Karma’s suggestion that they go for a walk sent a shiver through Blue, but he consented without resistance. Dressing quietly and warmly, they were outside a few moments later, walking wordless blocks together, Karma’s hand in Blue’s, both hands shoved deep into his jacket pocket.

  “Are you homesick, Blue?” Karma eventually asked, then answered her own question. “That’s a foolish question, isn’t it? You’re always homesick.”

  “Worst disease on the island. I know people who get homesick and they never left Cape Breton once in their lives. Some of us die of lung cancer and some of us die of heart attacks, but homesickness gets us all,” Blue said, filing the new thought away as possible material for Blue Cacophony’s next album.

  Spotting an “open” sign in a window across the street, Blue thought he could smell the coffee, and guided Karma through the non-existent traffic into what had once been the sunporch of a house, now converted into a narrow diner, divided by a long counter, stools on one side, grill on the other, two booths at the back. The Chinese owner greeted them with a nodding smile and placed two plastic menus in front of them.

  Karma decided quickly on black coffee and a roll, but Blue lingered over the menu which promised eggs afloat on a sea of bacon fat, the bacon itself, slabs of butter sinking into hot toast, and home-fries heavily salted and wallowing in ketchup. But reading the beverage list, he held up his hand to stop the owner-waiter, chief chef and bottle-washer, from pouring coffee into his cup, ordering tea and toast instead.

  Waiting for his order, Blue lit a cigarette, opening the door for Karma to remind him of his earlier words, that some people in Cape Breton die of lung cancer.

  “It’s not the cigarettes that do it, it’s the coal mines, black lung. Most of the miners I know smoked all their lives but the ones who are dying are dying from black lung. Cigarettes get a bad rap, if you ask me. We had this guy back home, eh, used to smoke a couple of packs a day. He got emphysema and the doctor made him quit smoking. He choked to death in his own bed because he couldn’t get the stuff in his lungs up. When he was smoking all the time, he was always coughing and hacking and that was helping his chest, see, and when he stopped smoking he was dead in a few days. Ask Tinker, he’ll tell you the same story.”

  “Then why doesn’t Tinker smoke?”

  “He thinks it’ll give him cancer,” Blue muttered as the man behind the counter set the toast and tea before Blue. Blue studied the tea, looked at the man’s receding back, looked at Karma who caught his mystified eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Blue’s animated hands made up for his speechless tongue, pointing and questioning all at once, directing her attention to the tiny pot and porcelain thimble that had been placed
in front of him.

  “Your tea?” Karma asked. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “You don’t see anything wrong with this picture?” Karma shook her head. Blue picked the lid off the pot, glanced inside, then lowered the lid again. “It’s green,” he whispered. “I asked for tea, not pee.”

  “It’s Chinese tea, Blue, and it’s very good. Taste it.”

  Blue poured a little into the earless cup and took a timid sip. “Not bad, I guess, but it’s not King Cole. Excuse me, could I get a little milk here, please?”

  The waiter brought him a glass of milk and looked aghast as Blue tried to pour a little from the glass into the cup, an operation that caused most of the milk to trickle down the side of the glass, forming a white puddle on the counter while the milk that did find its way into the tea turned it chalky.

  “No good,” the owner said. “No good to do that. Make tea bad,” and taking another tiny cup from the shelf he poured from the pot and sipped and savoured and sipped some more. “Proper way,” he said. “In China, tea very important. Many ceremonies for tea. Tea to sleep, tea to wake, tea for hunger, tea for aroma, very important. No milk. Never milk.”

  “Back where I come from tea’s very important, too, buddy,” Blue explained. “We don’t have a lot of ceremonies, but tea’s a religion with us, even have our own ‘teaology,’ as the other fellow says, which really means people get together over a cup to gossip. Now, I don’t drink a lot of the stuff myself, but this morning, feeling a little homesick, I saw tea on your menu and thought, tea and toast. When I was a kid, eh, the old lady used to make us toast and tea every night before bed. Weak tea, mind you, because we were kids, but we’d dunk our toast in the tea and eat it. When I saw your little cup here,” Tinker said, holding it up, then holding a slice of toast over it to demonstrate that impossibility of dunking, “I knew it wasn’t going to cure my homesickness.”

  The owner tried to follow Blue’s words, glancing helplessly at Karma from time to time for translation assistance.

  “See this,” Blue said, pointing to his cup of milky tea, “this is weak tea. What I’d do, eh, I’d get rid of these lawn clippings you have in here and get yourself some King Cole tea bags, then you’ve got yourself a real cup of tea. I’d recommend you put a couple of bags in a good sized pot and let it steep for seven minutes. There’s people who’ll give you an argument on that, people who’ll say a five-minute steep is perfect, and some who’ll tell you that you have to boil the tea all afternoon before it’s fit to drink. Steep it right, though, and when you pour it into the milk in the cup, it will turn caramel coloured and you’re holding a taste of back home in your hands.”

  “No milk,” said the owner, “in China never milk. Ruin tea.”

  “We’ve been making tea in Cape Breton for a couple of hundred years, so I think I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Tea in China five thousand years,” the owner said, expanding the fingers, one finger for each millennium.

  “Slow learners, arntcha?” Blue laughed, then diplomatically poured his milky tea back into the glass and poured himself a fresh cup from the pot. “Like the other fellow says, when in Rome do as the Chinese.”

  “You drink. I come back,” the owner said, disappearing through a doorway.

  “Blue, be careful you don’t insult the man,” Karma said.

  “I’m not insulting him. I’m trying to teach him something about tea. We got this restaurant back home that happens to be owned by a Chinese family too. Order tea in there and you get King Cole. Some restaurants might give you Red Rose, but any real restaurant in Cape Breton would serve you King Cole. I’m just telling this guy that there’s more than one way to fill a cup, to quote the other fellow.”

  “Well, don’t forget that he’s trying to tell you the same thing, Blue,” Karma said as the owner returned carrying a clay bowl that contained a tiny teapot surrounded by more miniature cups. He placed it in front of them and Karma and Blue saw immediately that the elegantly decorated porcelain was not his standard restaurant dishware.

  “Excuse me,” Blue interrupted, “but my friend here, Karma ... I’m Blue, by the way ... is afraid I’m insulting you. If I am, I’m sorry. It’s just that we do things different back home.”

  “No insult,” the owner replied, introducing himself as Mr. Lo. Taking a couple of handfuls of Oolong tea from a package, he put it in the pot, then filled it from a boiling kettle he took from the grill area. He poured the water over the cups that were in the bowl, washing and seasoning them, he explained. Then placing the teapot back in the bowl, he filled it with more boiling water, letting it overflow somewhat, put the lid back on and poured more water over the cover. He took the cups out of the bowl and set them lip to lip on the counter, took up the pot of tea, which Blue felt had hardly had time to steep, twenty seconds at most, and began filling the cups. He filled the cups by passing the teapot over them, unconcerned with spilling liquid. Then he gestured for each of them to pick up a cup.

  Following his lead, they held the tea under their noses, inhaling its aroma, then sipped it, finding it pleasant to the taste. He continued to fill the cups until Blue lost count of them, estimating that he had sipped eight or ten tiny cups, noting that if they had all been poured into one of his mother’s tea cups, it would have been perhaps half filled.

  Before each pouring, Mr. Lo took the teapot out of the water in the bowl where it was being kept hot, and ran the bottom of the pot around the rim of the bowl a few times.

  “If host ring the bowl from right to left,” he said, explaining a cultural subtlety, “the guest welcome to stay long time. If host ring pot round bowl from left to right, guest should leave soon.”

  Blue noticed that Mr. Lo was ringing the bowl right to left.

  When they had finished the Oolong, Mr. Lo prepared another pot of tea, explaining the Oolong was for drinking at any time, but the next one had special qualities. According to Mr. Lo, the tea, which Blue tasted and enjoyed more than the Oolong, was a tea that was known for its flavour, but should only be taken after meals.

  “When finish, some people use to wash faces. Good for complexion. Old men dry tea leaves after using and make pillows for sleeping, believe it better for health than feather or down,” Lo added.

  “Back home, we use the leaves for reading the future,” Blue replied, examining the fine pattern of powdery leaves in his little cup. “What I see here, Mr. Lo, is me and you, a couple of lost souls adrift in San Francisco with a lot in common. Who would of thought that China and Cape Breton drink the same medicine? We might not have a different kind of tea for every occasion, because King Cole is a tea for all seasons, to quote the other fellow. You should hear my old lady. If she gets excited winning at bingo, her heart flutters until she has a cup of tea, and even if a neighbour comes in and tells her the doctor said the neighbour only has six months to live, the first thing the old lady’ll say is, ‘You need a cup of tea, dear’ as if it was a cure.”

  Throughout the cultural exchange, Blue managed to eat his toast, and by the time they had been served sixteen or twenty cups of tea by Mr. Lo, Blue and Karma were ready to leave. There was no bill.

  Out on the street, Blue asked Karma to wait a moment while he ran back inside.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Lo, but on your menu here, you have bacon and eggs and hamburgers and stuff. Do you fry them up the normal way or do you do something healthy or Chinese to it?” Mr. Lo pointed to the grill. “Well, in that case, I’m sure to come back but when I do, I’ll bring my own tea bag.”

  46

  “He’s just like a Cape Bretoner, all he can talk about is ‘back home,’ in China,” Blue explained to Tinker a few days later, giving Mr. Lo, who was busy at his grill, his seal of approval.

  Although the commune had decided that Tinker’s moving out made it unnecessary to abandon their current quarters for new ones, Blue felt it was in Tinker’s interest
s to change all their former patterns, including the greasy spoon that they and Barney used to frequent. Blue had been back to Mr. Lo’s to test various aspects of the menu and decided that it was the natural choice for their change of culinary address.

  Blue also agreed that the best thing for Tinker to do since he was staying in San Francisco was to keep on working in the subway tunnel, but for different reasons than Tinker’s.

  “If anybody at the commune gets picked up by the FBI, and they put us on a lie detector and ask where you are, we can just say you’ve gone underground but we don’t know exactly where and it will register as the truth because you are underground but none of us ever knows exactly where, right?”

  It was the first time they had seen each other since Blue’s dream, and as Blue introduced Tinker to the new eatery, he explained in conspiratorial tones that besides great food, Mr. Lo’s restaurant could serve as a rendezvous point. “If you call me or I call you and one of us thinks the FBI’s wiretapping the phone, one of us will tell the other one of us that we don’t want to see you and that you better lay low, mister, which will really mean I’ll meet you at Mr. Lo’s. Nobody knows it’s here except Karma, and she’s only been here once.”

  Noticing Tinker idly scanning the menu after they had placed their orders, Blue felt he should warn his friend.

  “I know you don’t drink it, but when you see tea on that menu don’t let it make you homesick. I won’t go into it, but take my word, you don’t want tea.

  “So how’s it going, Baby Face? Remember who I’m talking about? Baby Face Nelson. One of the greatest gangsters of all time. Baby Face Nelson Gillis, to be exact. Father from Margaree, just down the road from home. Could probably find out he’s a cousin of my own if I took the time to look it up, which might not be a bad idea. There’s probably still places where being Baby Face Nelson’s forty-fifth cousin carries some weight. Hell, I can’t believe I got a buddy on the run. Think I haven’t been trying to get that idea and my guitar together for a singalong? So tell me, how’s life as a genuine criminal?”