by William Bell
The photographer from the Star had caught the Korean and me in the middle of the throw. I was proud of that picture. I looked at it almost every day. And I was looking at it when my mother shrieked from the kitchen, “He’s here! Stevie! He’s here! Hurry, so he doesn’t have to come in and wait!”
As if she needed to remind me. She had told me a dozen times, “Make sure you’re ready so you can go right out and get in his car. I don’t want to talk to him. And I especially don’t want him hanging around in the house waiting for you.”
I went to the window. Parked in our driveway beside Mom’s BMW was a white Volkswagen camper-van with maroon splotches all over it where somebody had been doing some body work. Now that the rock music wasn’t pounding into my room from the TV I could tell the van needed a new muffler. One wheel cover was missing, and the lens on the left rear light was patched with silver duct tape. Nice wheels, I thought.
The rumble of the motor died and I heard somebody howling in Italian—opera music that got louder when the driver’s door opened and my old man swung down onto the driveway.
At least I figured it was my old man. I hadn’t seen him in quite a few years. He was thin and wiry, not too tall, with curly black hair. He was wearing faded jeans and a wrinkled white T-shirt. He slammed the door of the van and stood there, thumbs in his belt, and looked up at the condo.
I pulled back from the window, tripped over my athletic bag and fell onto the bed.
“Stevie! Come on!”
“All right! All right!” Man, was I tense.
I snatched up my suitcase and athletic bag and went downstairs into the living room. Mom was sitting in the leather armchair, watching her favourite soap, the hour-and-a-half Sunday version where they catch you up on everything that happened—or didn’t happen—during the week. She was wearing wool slacks with a red silk blouse. She had her make-up on—she always had her make-up on—and her hair was carefully brushed.
She got up and hugged me. “Bye, dear. Good luck at the tournament. Bring home a trophy.” She smiled.
“Okay, Mom, I’ll try.”
She walked me to the kitchen door, and as I struggled through with my luggage the phone rang. Mom grabbed the portable phone from the kitchen table.
“Stevie, wait, it’s Hawk.” She held out the phone.
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
A look of disbelief crossed her face. “What? I said it’s Hawk. He wants to speak to you before you go.”
“Tell him I’ve left.”
“Stevie, what’s—”
“I don’t want to get into it right now, okay? Let’s just say my so-called best friend and I have thrown in the sponge. He’s not the guy I thought he was. Goodbye, Mom.”
“But what should I say to him?”
“No message.”
The door closed behind me as I walked out to meet my old man.
REPLAY
He would never admit it, but I knew Hawk had gotten into weight training and athletics for the same reason I did: he was trying to make up for his size. I was skinny and awkward; he was short. But unlike me, Hawk was a natural athlete. He could throw a football through the centre of the tire hanging from the maple in his yard with ninety per cent accuracy, and he caught even better than he threw. Guys on a baseball team feared him because when he fielded the ball from short he fired it so hard he practically knocked the first base man on his butt. No matter what sport it was, he seemed to have an instinct for the game.
“The only reason I don’t play basketball,” he once said, “is because of my ass.”
I laughed. “What’s your ass got to do with it?”
“Too close to the ground.”
In wrestling, my height was a bit of a disadvantage because it slowed me down, but in spite of that it was the only sport where Hawk didn’t leave me behind in a cloud of dust. We were in different weight classes, but sometimes practised together, and early on I discovered the real secret of his athletic success.
There was something in him, some kind of non-physical electric power, that was impossible to describe. It was as if he had a bottomless pool of anger, and when he wrestled he drew from it, the way a steel rod draws lightning from the centre of a storm.
Before a match he’d pace back and forth on the mat, so psyched he seemed to radiate a fierce energy that scared the hell out of most of his opponents before they walked into the circle. And when the match was on he moved in a series of explosions. He hardly ever threw a guy, but he racked up points relentlessly.
One time in grade nine I wrestled him in an open match. It was the only time he beat me. At the end of the match I told him, “You fight like an animal.”
He laughed, and the next day at practice he sported a bright yellow T-shirt with GO ANIMAL across the front. From that day on, whenever the guys on our team wanted to encourage each other they’d yell, “Go animal!”
But I often wondered what was the source of that ferocious anger.
ELEVEN
THE OLD MAN WAS STANDING in the driveway by the camper-van, cracking his knuckles. When he saw me coming he stepped forward and held out his hand. It shook a little.
“Hi, Steve,” he said. “How’ve you been?”
“Okay, I guess.” I put down my bags and we shook hands. His grip was firm, his hands rough.
He looked me up and down. “You sure have grown!”
I could see myself in his face—the green eyes, the little bump on the bridge of the nose. I had inherited his black hair, but not the natural curl. He was thin, like I used to be, but I was taller than him now, and working with weights had made me heavier.
“Well,” he said after a moment. “Might as well get going. You can put your stuff in here.” He slid open the door at the side of the van.
I stashed my bags inside and he rolled the door shut. I pulled myself up into the front seat and caught the music full blast. I could never understand why people listen to opera. All the singers sound mad at each other and they’re all trying to sing at once.
The old man hauled himself into the drivers seat, lowered the volume a little and turned the key. The rumble of the motor echoed all over the street as we pulled out of the driveway and lumbered up 23rd Street. I hoped none of my friends were around to see me travelling in a beat-up camper that looked like it had a permanent case of acne.
The inside of the van was messy and smelled of tobacco smoke. There were papers and matchbook covers all over the floor, along with a couple of empty beer cans. On a pull-out dashboard ashtray two pipes balanced dangerously. I turned to check out the back. There was a small fridge, a sink and a two-burner stove, and a table that you could swing out of the way when the van was in motion. Cardboard boxes and canvas bags were piled so high behind the back seat that I couldn’t see out the rear window. The floor was littered with sawdust and wood shavings.
“You like campin’, Steve?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Never tried it.”
“Oh. Weil, that’s what we’ll be doin’ for the next week or so.” A few minutes inched by. “So, how you been lately?”
“Uh, okay, I guess.”
“Doin’ good at school?”
“Yeah, not too bad.”
He finally gave up trying to make small talk and drove in silence. He swung onto the Queen E. and joined the Sunday traffic. All three lanes were packed pretty tightly—everybody out for a drive in the Sunday afternoon sun—but the traffic moved along past us at a good clip, as if we were a rock in the road. The old man had his window wide open. Good, I thought, the wind drowns out the opera.
The tape deck hanging on brackets under the dashboard was a good one. It could take both tapes and CDs, had a seven-band equalizer, programmable stations and as many buttons as a space capsule. All it needed was some decent music. I had my Walkman and a bunch of tapes in my suitcase, but I was afraid to ask him if I could play them.
I wondered why we were heading west along this highway when the way to Thunder Bay was n
orth on the 400, but I didn’t say anything—not even when, after about three quarters of an hour, he took the exit ramp to Hamilton.
We drove into the city and pulled up in front of a large building called Hamilton Place. The old man double-parked and yanked up on the emergency brake.
“If a cop comes along, just drive around the block and I’ll meet you right here.”
“I can’t drive a standard.”
“Oh. Well, it don’t matter. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“Where are you going?”
“Tickets,” he said, then he slammed the door and sprinted up the steps into the building.
I turned off the stereo and watched the traffic. After a few minutes he was back, breathless as he climbed in and started up the van.
“Got ’em,” he said, and handed me two tickets to something called La Bohème.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“La Bohème by Puccini.” He sounded pleased. “It’s only one of the best operas ever. I don’t know if you like opera, but even if you don’t, I’m sure you’ll like this one. And the tenor is—”
“We’re going to an opera?”
“I thought we’d start the trip off with a bang. I was lucky to get them tickets, too. You ever been to the opera, Steve?”
“No, I’ve never been to the opera. I can’t say that I have. No.”
We stopped at a red light. “You don’t wanna go?”
“No, uh, it’s not that. I just … sure, why not?”
“I can always take the tickets back.”
“No, really, it’ll be fine.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.” What else could I say?
“Good. Check them tickets, will you, and make sure the date’s right. I left the box-office too fast to check ’em myself.”
“They’re for tonight.”
“And our seats are centre orchestra?”
“Right,” I said, trying hard not to sound bored already. “We won’t miss a thing.”
We drove in silence for a bit. Soon we were rumbling through a park. The old man parked the van under a big maple at the shore of the lake, right in front of a sign that said NO PICNICS.
“Hungry?” He squeezed between the front seats into the back of the van.
“A little.”
He reached up to release the catches on the pop top and then pushed upwards. The roof rose on a sharp angle, back to front, allowing him to stand upright. As he fixed the roof props in position I noticed again how thin he was. His ribs showed, his stomach was flat, his legs were thin. The only thing worse than a skinny guy in my opinion was a fat guy. There’s no excuse for not being in shape.
When he’d got the top secured he swung the table into position and began to rummage around in the little fridge. He opened a can of beer, took a drink, and put soda crackers and a jar of cheese spread on the table.
“Mind if I take a little walk before we eat?” I asked.
“Sure. Take your time. We’ve got lots of it.”
I walked along the lakeshore, glad to be away from the pressure. A few little kids were wading in the small dirt-brown waves that the light breeze pushed onto the beach. I sat down on a rock and leaned against the pole of a NO SWIMMING: POLLUTED WATER sign. I was thinking about telling the old man I had changed my mind and I wanted to go back to Toronto. My mother had cashed my air ticket but I could probably get another one. I didn’t think I could stand spending the next four or five days trying to communicate with him. I realized now he was a stranger. Why would I have thought he’d be anything else? What did we have to talk about? What did we have in common? Opera? Yeah, right.
But then I remembered Hawk. If I went home, he’d call me every five minutes. I didn’t even want to think about him, never mind talk to him. He’d probably start laying on the guilt, saying I had run off when he needed me most. Well, maybe I had, but so would anybody else who had just found out his best friend wasn’t the person he’d pretended to be. I wasn’t sure I was ready to deal with the new Hawk, or that I ever would be.
Anyway, it would only take a couple of days to get to Thunder Bay, I thought. A couple of days cooped up with the old man, making small talk, fighting ghosts from the past, insulating myself against Replays that would spark into my mind whenever I let down my guard.
I swore at nothing in particular and stared out over the waves. I noticed a wood shaving caught on the cuff of my jeans. I held it to my nose. Cedar. I must have picked it up from the floor of the camper. I flicked the shaving into the water and went back to the van.
TWELVE
THAT NIGHT WE TURNED UP at Hamilton Place for the opera. Oh, boy, I thought, won’t this be great.
The old man parked the acne-van in the main lot alongside the Audis and BMWs and Legends. I had on my sports coat and a pair of light wool slacks, so I didn’t feel too out of place. But the old man was wearing faded jeans (“Well, they’re pretty clean,” he had said back at the park), a white shirt under a leather vest, and moccasins that looked like they had survived the Battle of Frog Lake. He looked like Stompin’ Tom Connors without the cowboy hat and boots, a little lost among the suits, jewelled tie pins, sparkling necklaces and costly dresses. I have to admit I tried to pretend I wasn’t with him as we moved into the concert hall among the well-dressed crowd. He drew a few stares as he excused himself past people and sat down, holding his program with thick calloused hands. I was glad the lighting was dim.
After a few minutes, the music started. The orchestra conductor was one of those showy guys with long frizzy hair who flap their arms around a lot. He was really getting into it. Costumed rock singers were supposed to be outrageous but show-offs like him were supposed to be normal. Figure that one out.
The curtains opened and things got ridiculous really fast. A few guys were living in an attic somewhere in Paris. I got that from the program—I couldn’t understand the Italian they were singing and I quickly got bored with trying to follow the English dialogue that was flashed on the wall above the stage. One character was supposed to be a painter, one a playwright, one a poet, like that, and they were starving and poor and cold, so cold they wore their long heavy coats and long woollen scarves indoors. Fine. The trouble was, they were all big fat guys who looked about as hungry as those overeaters on the antacid commercials who pigged out all night and wanted to get rid of the full feeling. And it got dumber. After they sang at each other for a little while all of them except the poet took off for a party or something. The poet was called—now get this—Rodolfo. He fell instantly in love with this Mimi babe who knocked on his door because her candle had blown out while she was climbing the stairs to her little room, and she couldn’t find her key. She was about as good-looking as a basset hound. I mean, nobody except a blind man would fall in love with this one at first sight.
Mimi was supposed to be sick with tuberculosis (a lung disease associated with poverty, according to the program) and she was all bundled up under a heavy shawl, but she looked about as sick and starving as a quarterback. She was round and pudgy and she barged across the stage waving her thick arms all over the place. Plus, this weak tubercular babe had a voice on her that would knock down a hockey arena. She belted out her tunes, old Rodolfo shouted right back at her, and the first act ended with them in love. Yeah, right.
Well, it dragged on and on, and got worse, and I didn’t pay much attention, not even when a horse ambled on stage pulling a carriage with a fat lady in red riding in it. She started shouting her tunes as soon as she lowered her carcass down from the carriage. I kind of wished the horse had crapped on the stage. It would have been funny watching the singers stepping around the horse-balls while they screamed love songs at each other.
The last act was supposed to be sad, but it was even stupider than the rest. Porky old Mimi was dying—which suited me just fine—and she was stretched out on a bed, propped up by pillows so her belly wasn’t higher than her head. She looked like any minute she’d roll off the bed and bounce do
wn into the orchestra pit. Mimi coughed every once in a while to show she was sick, but she was warbling away to Rodolfo, who looked like what he really wanted to do was go out with the other guys and have a smoke. It took her about eight hours to die. She finally flopped back onto the sheets and Rodolfo grabbed her chubby little hands and shouted ‘MEE-MEEEEE!’— probably relieved that she finally croaked. The audience exploded into applause. Everyone around me was on their feet, clapping and shouting. I couldn’t believe it. They liked that crap.
I looked over at the old man. He was on his feet pounding his hands together. And there were tears in his eyes. What a wimp.
I shrank back in my seat and pretended I was somewhere else.
Later on, when we were back at the van, he popped open a couple of Cokes and sat there talking on and on about the opera. I waited and waited but he made no move to get rolling. The parking lot was empty when I finally asked him where we were going to spend the night.
“Oh, we’ll just put the top up and sack out right here,” he said. “We’ll get an early start in the mornin’ and miss the traffic.”
“We’re going to camp in a parking lot? Isn’t that slightly illegal?”
“Probably,” he answered.
THIRTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING WE WERE ON our way while the sun was struggling up behind the eastern skyline of Hamilton, trying to burn a path for itself through the haze of pollution. The old man had made a thermos of coffee before I got up, and our first stop was a Tim Horton’s near Hamilton Place, where we visited the washroom and picked up a couple of doughnuts.
The van grumbled through its broken muffler as the old man drove through the noisy streets and into the early morning crush on the Queen Elizabeth Way. He was dressed for travel—T-shirt, jeans, moccasins—and he hadn’t shaved. Neither had I, for that matter. Parking lots are short on amenities.