Charleswood Road Stories

by Joudrey, M. C.

  Dana was leaning up against the passenger door. She looked the same as always; I was surprised that she wasn’t more dressed up for the party. She opened the door for me and went around to the driver’s side. She got in and started the car. The cassette player was on and the Descendants came through the speakers.

  “I know it’s not the Ramones but this will have to do,” she joked. She knew the Ramones were one of my favourite bands.

  “I like the Descendants too,” I said, trying to stand up for my musical tastes. “How do you know Terry?” I tried changing the subject.

  Dana smiled, acknowledging my ploy. “Everyone knows Terry. He bought me beer a couple of times”

  I should’ve known.

  We picked up Dana’s two friends Janie and Kara. Both girls were rather made up and wore provocative clothes which accentuated certain key areas of their form. In all honesty, I was uncomfortable. If it had been Todd, he would’ve been right at home in situation like this but I tried my best to hide my nerves.

  I felt out of place at the party too. I didn’t know anyone and Dana disappeared for a while, leaving me to fend for myself amongst the drunken fodder. I met a guy who said he used to skate when he was younger. He looked really old because he had grey coming through the stubble on his face. He seemed nice enough so I did my best to cling to him for a while and pretend to be interested in the topics he wanted to discuss, such as why two and two shouldn’t make four and the notion that the perfect joint is not made but rather is a state of consciousness. I was out of my league.

  Dana eventually found me and seemed to have misplaced certain articles of her clothing. She was also drunk but still somewhat coherent. I told her I was going to check out because I was bored and offered to drive her home. She declined and I asked how she intended to get home. She said she was close with the owner of the place and always stayed over on a party night.

  “You gonna be able to find your way home, new-boy?”

  “Yeah, the guys are downtown skating anyway. I know the spots, I’ll find them or take the bus.”

  Dana swayed a bit like she was going to topple over. I caught her and straightened her out.

  “Nice save, new-boy.” She looked down at my hands which were holding her arms. She looked up at me. Her face was flushed with red and her eyes were under the influence. I took my hands away.

  “Had enough, have you?”

  “I…”

  “You what?”

  “I’m going to take off.” I didn’t like her like this. She was too aggressive. I made my way through the confined sweaty bodies, broken beer bottles, clouds of smoke and even a few passed out dogs in search of the door. As I left, I could hear Dana faintly in the background behind me.

  “Bye, new-boy.”

  I eventually did find the gang skating a set of stairs at a building downtown. It’s not hard to locate skaters in the city of Winnipeg at night if you know where to look. Damian and Ash were trying to kick flip down a set of stairs at least eight steps wide. I saw my brother sitting on the far side of the steps with Bill and Todd.

  “Well, if it isn’t Casanova,” yelled Bill into the silent air as I came into sight.

  I smiled, “Not likely.”

  I took a seat next to my brother.

  “They land it yet?” I asked the three onlookers as Ash stumbled on the landing and his skateboard shot away in front of him. Ash silently got right back up on his feet, dusted himself off, fetched his board and climbed back up the steps to try again.

  “Nah, they just started to hit this thing,” said Bill.

  Todd looked past Bill at me. “Where’s Dana?”

  “Back at the party. I guess. It was lame and I was really bored.”

  Todd smiled. “Girls!”

  I sure didn’t understand girls. It was like everything they did or said was a big mystery. Half the time they just looked at you like they could read your mind and eventually would made some sort of facial gesture, but then said nothing. The worst part wasn’t the cryptic things they said but the things they held back and didn’t say.

  My brother changed the subject and informed me that they had gone to the Edge to skate earlier. Peter had mentioned that we could skate a private session tomorrow because he had a few repairs to do around the park. That cheered me up and I went to go grab my skates from the trunk of their van. As I started to walk away, Damian landed a kick flip clean down the stairwell and almost rode right into me.

  “Hey buddy,” he said and slapped me five.

  “Nice catch,” I said, congratulating him on the landed trick.

  “No biggie. Watch Ash ‘cause he’s about to board-flip down the set.”

  Ash rolled up and landed a board-flip just as Damian had called it. Only a few moments later, a security guard appeared at the top of the stairs and advised that we had to leave as the police had been informed of our presence. The guy was nice about it and no one gave him any grief as we packed it in.

  We piled into the van and went to a few other spots, then hit a drive-thru for some food. We also added about ten cups of water to our order. We drove around in the van with the sliding back door open, providing drive-by cool downs to un-suspecting people on the sidewalk. Some were pleased, some weren’t. We felt it was our civic duty to continue until all the cups were empty. Then we headed for home.

  I took a seat on the bench and watched as Damian tried in vain to feeble grind along the quarter pipe. Peter took a seat beside me and handed me a can of cold soda.

  “That kid is getting good!” He popped the tab on the can and it made gurgling sound. “So are you,” he added.

  I looked over at him. No adult had ever said anything about my skating before, let alone something in the way of a compliment. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve heard around that someone from Maverick Skates is interested in talking to you. That true?”

  “Yeah, there was a rep here last week watching me skate. I guess they need some skaters to do shows and demos overseas. He said there’ll be some professional contests they’ll be entering me in also.”

  “What do you think of all that?”

  I told him I was really interested in traveling and getting paid to do something I loved.

  “I bet it would be pretty sweet to see new places and meet new people all because of skating,” he offered.

  I smiled. I had the feeling Peter was worried about me still being in high school and taking off alone around the world. Damian landing the feeble grind interrupted my thoughts. He rolled over on his board and took a seat beside Peter and me.

  “You see that shit?” he asked, breathing heavily.

  “I did, but you could’ve come out fakie, it would’ve looked cooler.”

  I promptly received a punch in the arm for my joke and Damian rolled away. Bill, Todd and my brother were sitting up on the landing of the spine ramp while Ash skated in the transition.

  “You guys want to go grab some wings after this?” asked Peter as he watched Damian roll by. “It’s on me.”

  “I don’t think that will be a hard sell,” I replied.

  At the restaurant, Damian crowded into the booth next to me, Ash, and Todd even though there was more room on the other side with Bill, Peter and Ryan. Ash took some water into the straw of his beverage and spit it down Damian’s back. He wreathed and wriggled uncomfortably from the cold wet feeling running down his back and changed to the other side of the booth accordingly.

  Peter took us out now and again for food. He didn’t have kids of his own, so I think this was his way of being a bit of a dad. He always gave us all a ride back to one of our houses which meant we didn’t have to take the bus. But these kind gestures weren’t what made Peter cool; he listened to us in a way most adults didn’t. He also understood the things we were into because he used to be into them too and still messed around on a skateboard from time to time. He built and maintained all the ramps in the park, so we could always talk about the possibility of a new obstac
le. He even introduced us all to a great band called the Undertones.

  Bill and Todd ordered “super hot” wings and had to eat two bowls of vanilla ice cream afterwards because their stomachs were on fire. Ash mixed six different table condiments together, including vinegar, ketchup, mustard, soya sauce, hot sauce and three packets of sugar. He then dared Damian to drink the concoction. Despite having eaten two pounds of wings and fries, Damian asked for his usual payment of a Mac Meal. Ash agreed to the terms and Damian put the hideous liquid down his throat. He promptly vomited on the floor beside the booth. Peter signalled for the cheque.

  On Sunday, Terry came by my house to work on the ramp. My father had restocked the beer and we set out to complete the final stages of the work. We worked beneath the hot sun until the damn thing decided to leave us. We had put in a full day of work and now stood back and looked upon the completed ramp. We just stood there and stared for who knows how long. It was Terry who broke the silence.

  “This feels right.”

  I smiled. It was his finest piece of art work and the only thing he ever finished. That night Terry had to work at the convenience store. Two men with guns robbed the store. Terry ran out after them to get the license plate number and a third person, the lookout, shot him in the face with a shotgun. He died two days later in the hospital.

  I didn’t go to school on Monday. I told my parents I was sick. I think they knew the truth though. I spent most of the day in bed. When I finally got up I went to the window of the backyard and looked out at the lonely ramp. It was beautiful day, perfect. He never even got to ride it once. They say time heals all wounds; I’ve never stopped thinking of Terry though and it hurts to this day every time I do.

  It was two weeks into summer vacation and the gang had spent almost every day in my parents’ backyard skating the ramp. My friends never mentioned Terry or the events surrounding his death and I was grateful for it. I had attended his funeral just before school ended. I went with Dana. She was quiet and not at all herself. In fact, she didn’t really say anything to me and left without saying goodbye. That evening when I called, her parents answered and said she wasn’t feeling well. I asked if I could speak to her anyway. They called out to her and Dana answered the phone.

  “Hello, new-boy. What do you want?”

  “You’re not sick, are you?”

  There was pause. “No, not the kind you’re thinking of.”

  She wasn’t responding sarcastically like she usually did; she sounded meek but serious.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned.

  “Nothing.”

  I pried a little harder. “Is it about Terry?”

  “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business!” She slammed the receiver down and hung up.

  I listened to the dial tone in shock, and then I finally hung up the phone too.

  A few weeks passed and I concentrated on skating the ramp in my backyard. I had been trying to learn how to do a McTwist and couldn’t quite stick the landing. I skated well into the evening and my parents flicked on the backyard light for me. I stood on the landing at the top of the ramp. I was eleven feet up and over the roof of my parent’s bungalow I could see a car pull into the driveway. Dana stepped out and waved at me. She came around back and I skated down the ramp to meet her.

  Dana sat in the chair next to me as I proceeded to take off my skates, pretending to do some adjustments to my bindings.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I dropped my skate. I looked at her.

  “It happened at the party, after you left. I was really drunk and tried to sleep it off and a guy came into the room and… and…I, he held me down and I was so drunk I couldn’t stop him.”

  She started to sob. I didn’t know what to say. I just put my arm around her while she cried.

  After a while she stopped and looked up at me. Her eyes were puffy and her face was blotchy.

  “I don’t really remember it that much, you know. I tried to stop him, I told him to stop and then I must have passed out.”

  I still couldn’t find any words; my tongue felt dry and my throat was raw and parched.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally.

  “I’m sorry too. I mean for yelling at you.” She paused again, working her way up to say something else.

  “Will you go to the doctor with me? I’m really scared.”

  “Right now?”

  “No, yeah, I guess. I don’t think I can do it alone.”

  “What about your parents? Have you told them anything?”

  “No.” She looked away from me and I could tell she felt filled with shame.

  “Okay, I’ll go with you. I’ll do it.”

  She looked back at me and didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The look on her face made her thoughts clear.

  I read a magazine about hunting in the waiting room. I found it weird that a hospital would have a magazine about killing in a place that was supposed to save lives. After about three hours of waiting I got up to go to the vending machine to buy a beverage. I took a sip and set the can on top of the machine. I reached over my head to stretch and a powerful yawn pushed free. My weary arms found their place again at my side and as they settled, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and Dana was there. Her face looked worn and pale, her eyes expressed an exaggerated fatigue.

  “Let’s go.” That was all she said.

  I was so anxious to know what had happened that I left the soda can on top of the vending machine.

  In the car Dana said nothing so I in turn said nothing, waiting patiently for her to talk. Only she wasn’t going to say anything; I could tell. I wanted to ask her what the doctor had said but was afraid she would get angry with me for prying into her privacy again. Like a fool I did it anyway.

  “You okay?”

  There was a long silence before she responded.

  “The doctor said I had a miscarriage. You see, I wasn’t lying when you called the other night and I said I was sick but not how you think. I was sick. There was a lot of blood I was so scared. I yelled at you but I really wanted to tell you the truth right then. I should have gone to see the doctor right away but couldn’t face my parents.”

  There were tears coming down her cheeks but she didn’t realize she was crying. I put my hand on her hand. She looked over at me and then back on the road. She didn’t say anything else and neither did I.

  By mid-summer, I had signed a contract with Maverick Skates for a year to skate in contests and shows in various countries, starting in China. I met Peter for lunch as he had known the news even before I did. Peter and I ate lunch and talked like real friends do. After lunch, I felt it right to shake Peter’s hand for all he had done for my friends and me over the last year. He shook his head at my hand.

  “I think good friends can do better.” And we hugged.

  That was the last time I ever saw Peter. He would die from a heart attack while I was only a month into my first world tour. I missed his funeral.

  I visited Dana at her house the night I signed the contract. I told her my news and that I would be leaving before the end of the summer. She told me she was also leaving at the end of the summer as she’d been accepted to attend UBC. We didn’t say much after we exposed our respective new life paths. Everything was changing so fast all of a sudden.

  “My friends are having a going away party for me next week,” she said, looking down at the ground. “Will you come?”

  “Yeah, sure, of course.”

  She smiled a little. “I’m going to go inside. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  I walked home and tried my best not to think about all the things that had happened during my final high school summer. I reached down on the ground and picked up some flat stones and threw them one by one into the puddles on the side of the road as I walked. For a moment, I wished it were two years ago when all I had to do was get passing grades in school and skate for kicks. Now everything felt so…adult. I could feel that the weight and c
omplexities of life were more than I could understand or handle. I found it hard to find answers to why bad things happen to good people like Terry or Dana. Maybe there were no answers and things just happened. Maybe we are just supposed to cope with them the best we know how. It was a bitter resolution but the only one I could find on a walk home.

  At night, the gang and I street-skated a lot. Their reaction to the news about me going away to skate was good. Bill and Todd bickered about the best concrete ledge to skate overseas. They did however agree that the concrete bowl in Marseille was the best in the world. France was somewhere in the middle of the tour and promised I would skate it as much as possible.

  Ash gave me a hug and made me swear to send him a post card from each country I was in. Damian was surprisingly quiet about the whole thing. When we drove home that night in the van I was in the far back bench with him and he leaned in to talk to me.

  “You gonna skate the bowl in Munster?” he asked quietly.

  “Yup,” I replied

  “Good. What about London? There’s that ledge on London Bridge, I mean, you gotta grind that right?”

  “I will.”

  “Okay, good.”

  He reached his hand out for mine and he shook it like regular folks did; there was no high five. He just took my hand and shook it like we had made deal, and that was that.

  We skated a lot those final nights and made noise, ate bad food and drank Slurpees. We played the Ramones over the van speakers as loud as it would go. We hassled security guards and refused to take cops seriously when they held us up. One night when we were skating in an underground city garage, we found two street cleaners parked. I managed to get both vehicles started. We activated the sweeping brushes and played bumper cars with them until the fuel ran out.

  We really didn’t miss a single night to be out until the night of Dana’s party. The guys made their regular jokes and I pretended to ignore them as usual.