by William Bell
Hawk’s house was calm and comfortable. The dishes didn’t match, the furniture was worn, and the rugs were threadbare. There was nothing fancy or put-on about his house or the people who lived in it. I guess that was why I spent so much time there—that and the fact that Hawk was my best friend.
FIFTEEN
THE DEAFENING CHIRPS of a thousand excited birds woke me up the next morning to the smells of frying bacon and fresh coffee. I wasn’t supposed to like either one of them—Coach Leonard’s orders—because coffee does all manner of subtle damage to the body and bacon contains nitrites, which are bad too, but I forget why.
Coach Leonard was totally rabid about all that stuff. He looked it, too. He was small, muscular, wore his hair super-short and had a hard single-minded stare. That’s why we called him the Fanatic. I’d hate to have faced him on the mat. He once told me that when you grow up Jewish in a Gentile neighbourhood in Toronto you get tough or you get beaten up a lot.
He demanded a lot from us and he was always preaching about proper diet as well as proper training. Hawk had been converted long before—his parents had always been granola and alfalfa-sprout types—except for his carrot muffin habit. I followed the Fanatic’s regime. I had to if I wanted to stay on the wrestling team and, besides, I thought he was right.
I rolled over in the bunk and stared at the camper’s slanted ceiling, letting my nose enjoy the forbidden aromas. The more I thought about it, the more I realized everybody I knew was paranoid about what they ate. My mother was always on one kind of diet or other, the water diet, the banana diet, the no-protein total-carbo diet, the non-carbohydrate total-protein diet. Last year she joined one of those weight-loss support groups and came home every week drowned in guilt. The thing is, she wasn’t fat and never had been.
And a lot of the girls at school got totally boring about the whole thing. My friend Sara was always saying, “I’m so fat!” as if she could hardly get through the door. She looked just fine to me. All the girls seemed to be dieting. They’d rather have been dead than overweight. They all wanted to look like those flat-chested concentration camp types that model in magazines. They wanted to be hangers—that’s what they called models. Even when Sara’s best friend checked into the hospital with a case of anorexia and almost died, Sara said to me she secretly wished she could be anorexic for a few months so she could get her weight down.
“Down to what?” I had asked her. “Who wants to go out with a bag of bones?”
She told me I didn’t understand. Right on, Sara. Go forward three spaces.
Anyway, I didn’t want to lie there any longer thinking about Sara, so I crawled out of the sleeping bag, pulled on my damp bathing suit and went down to the lake. The old man was standing by the calm green water, leaning against a thick birch, barefoot, bare-chested, looking out toward the islands. He didn’t have a beer in his hand or his pipe in his mouth, so I figured he hadn’t been up long.
I felt uneasy about last night and tried to think of something to say to smooth things over.
He beat me to it. “Nice day, eh?” He tore a loose piece of bark from the birch and began to work it with his hands like a piece of leather.
“Yeah, great. Coming in?”
“Nope. Had my dip already.”
“Oh.”
I dove in and started to stroke out toward the horizon.
“Don’t go out too far,” he shouted after me. “Breakfast is ready.”
Soon we were on the road again. It looked like another great day, and except for the pipe smoke and the horrible music—country and western this time—I half-enjoyed myself.
We continued north on 69 under a blue sky decorated with slow-moving ice-cream clouds that broke the sun’s glare every few minutes. I caught the odd glimpse of Georgian Bay on the left before we swung inland and crossed the French River on a big silver trestle bridge. We made Sudbury about ten and the old man took the turn-off into town.
“Have to buy some food,” he said.
Coming into Sudbury is like coming into any town, I guess. You have to drive past all the junk-food places—hamburgers, a million flavours of ice-cream, pizza, chicken massacred in various ways, fish and chip stores that always look like they’re about five minutes from bankruptcy—and then the malls with huge ugly signs and parking lots that stretch on forever. The buildings in Sudbury seemed to be carrying on a losing fight with the ugly black rock that poked up everywhere through the thin soil.
The old man turned in to a little mall and parked he van between two pick-up trucks in front of a store.
“I thought you wanted groceries,” I said.
“Right.” He looked hesitant as he shut off the notor.
“This is a drug store.” I pointed to the big sign with I.D.A. painted in red half-metre-high letters on a white background. “You want the IGA, right?”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Pretty stupid. Guess my mind was somewhere else.”
The old man started up the van and we drove around some more. He stopped three times to ask for directions, looking for a food store, squinting through the windshield like a pensioner. Finally he pulled into another mall where there was a little IGA store.
“You don’t need to come in,” he said. “I’ll only be a sec.”
“I think I will. I’d like to stretch my legs.”
Big mistake. I thought shopping with Mom was frustrating. The old man grabbed a cart, one with a wheel that flapped like a demented sparrow, and walked to one side of the store.
He moved up and down the aisles, squinting at the cans, bottles and bags lined up on the shelves, as if he was trying to memorize all the labels. After about ten minutes I said, “What are you looking for, anyway?”
“Oh, soup, stew, like that,” he said vaguely.
“Is there something you want me to get, maybe save some time?”
He was dropping cans with big coloured pictures of stew on the labels into the cart. “No, it’s okay. I think of things I need as I go along. Why don’t you wait outside in the van? I won’t be long.”
He seemed anxious to do his shopping without me around, so I figured fine, he wants to be alone, that’s okay with me. He came out about half an hour later, weighed down by shopping bags, just as I was ready to die from boredom.
After a quick stop at the beer store, which he found easily enough, we were on the road again, rumbling past the slag heaps and the pinkish granite rocks that stretched away from the highway toward the big chimney that dominates the city.
Once out of Sudbury we were heading into the afternoon sun. We drove for over an hour, through towns with fascinating names like Whitefish, Massey and Spanish, before the old man took a right onto a secondary road. Not far along he turned into another campground, this one called Chutes Provincial Park. I knew from my four years of totally boring French classes that a chute is a waterfall, so I figured this might be a pretty spot. Sure enough, as soon as the old man pulled into a campsite and the rumble of the broken muffler died away, I could hear the falls.
I got out, stretched the kinks out of my back and followed a path through a stand of evergreens toward the distant roar, waving the bugs away as I walked. The path opened onto a small sand beach on a tiny lake—more like a pond—of slow-moving dark water flecked with foam. The shore opposite was lit up by the afternoon sun. At the far end of the pond was a small waterfall gushing over a rock shelf. At the nearer end the pond narrowed into a small river that rushed away into the bush.
I went back to the van and put on my bathing suit. The old man was brewing up some coffee on the stove, puffing on his pipe, filling the van with foul-smelling smoke, and humming to himself. I headed for the pond.
Under my feet the path was cool and damp, covered with pine needles that made walking soft and silent. I waded into the pond carefully because the water on this side was shaded and dark, making it hard to see the bottom. I pushed off, gasping as the cold water enveloped me, and swam toward the falls. The current was surprisingly strong, but not th
reatening. The sun on the foaming water of the falls turned it milk-white as it thundered into the pool. I swam against the current and pulled myself up to lie on a flat rock next to the falls. The sun against my back felt good. There’s something about water and sun that usually opens a tap and drains all the tension out of me. Not this time, though.
My mind returned to my old man. I already dreaded sitting around with him during and after supper with nothing to do except read my book. Then after dark, what? Go to bed at nine o’clock and lie there staring at the ceiling like last night?
Maybe I’d ask him about himself. But now I wasn’t sure I felt like going into all that. He’d start digging up the past, and I wanted to do anything but. Why open it all up again? It was over.
Except I wasn’t doing a very good job of forgetting.
I gingerly lowered myself into the cold water. As I struck out I noticed the old man on the far shore, turning and taking the path back to the campsite. He had been watching me.
We had supper in silence, mostly because I brought my novel to the table and read while I ate so I wouldn’t have to make lame conversation. The meal was stew mixed with pork and beans. I hated to admit it, but the stuff didn’t taste too bad. After we had eaten, the old man chopped up some firewood while I did the dishes. He said it was a nice night for the fire, and besides, it would keep the bugs away.
I was sitting across the flames from him in a lawn chair, struggling to read in the waning light. He was on his third beer. He had peeled the bark off a thick stick and was carving grooves and shapes into it with his pocket knife. The little fire popped and crackled every once in a while—because he was burning hemlock, he told me.
“Mind if I ask you somethin?” he asked, tossing the stick into the fire and folding up his knife.
I looked up from Shogun, but held it open. “Yeah?”
“What’s eatin’ you, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
He stuffed the knife into his hip pocket. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.” I looked down at the page.
“That. Just like that.”
I looked up again. His mouth was set in a firm line. He drained his beer and dropped the can beside his chair. He pulled his pipe out of the pocket of his bush shirt, and pointed the stem at me.
“Im tryin’ to talk to you and you look at your book. That’s good manners, is it?”
“Sorry,” I said. I closed the book and stared at the flames. They were orange-yellow-red, but blue where they separated themselves from the whitened ash of the wood. I waited.
“What’s the problem that you can’t at least be polite? I mean, okay, we haven’t seen each other for a long time. I know it hasn’t been easy for you. But I’ve waited a couple of days. You’re not just shy, you’re rude.”
Rude. That was the kind of word my elementary school teachers used.
“Can’t you talk to me?” he went on. “I was hopin’ we could be … I don’t know … friends.”
Yeah, right, I thought. You turn up from out of nowhere and all of a sudden we’re pals.
“Well?” he said, his voice edged with anger now.
“Well what? What do you want me to say? This wasn’t my idea, this trip. I didn’t even want to come,” I said.
“Why did you then?”
“Mom made me.”
He got up out of the lawn chair and got another beer out of the fridge. Great, I thought, maybe he’ll leave me alone. I opened my book. No such luck.
“She made you?” he asked as he sat down. “You’re a little old for that, aren’t you? What do you mean she made you?”
“She can get pretty stubborn sometimes.”
“That’s for sure,” he said, “she sure can.”
That made me mad, but I kept my mouth shut.
He puffed away for a few moments. “Look,” he tried again, “why can’t we make this a nice trip? Have some fun. Get to know each other.”
“If you wanted to get to know me maybe you shouldn’t have taken off when I was a kid.”
Even in the fading light I could see his face redden. He looked away, as if there was something in the trees that suddenly caught his attention, and stayed like that awhile. Then he nodded. When he started talking again his voice shook, and he kept his eyes on the darkened trees.
“I guess this was a bad idea, this trip. I … maybe I didn’t think it through good enough. You’re right.” He turned and faced me. “It was a bad idea. Tomorrow we’ll get to the Soo. There’s someplace I want to take you, if it’s okay with you. It won’t take long. Then I’ll get you a bus ticket to Thunder Bay.”
He stood up and walked slowly, as if he was carrying something heavy, to the back of the van. I heard the rear door open and then slam shut. When he came back to the fire there was a bottle of whiskey in his hand.
The old man stopped beside me. I looked up at him, but he kept his face averted. His voice was quiet and trembled even more than before.
“Just for the record, Steve, there’s somethin’ you ought to know. I suffered too.”
Slowly, holding the bottle by the neck, he walked into the trees, along the path that led to the pond.
I closed my book and looked into the fire. In Shogun, somebody, one of the Japanese, explained to Blackthorne how the Japanese handled their problems. He said that they put the problem “in a box” in their mind and didn’t think about it for a while. When the time seemed right they got out the box and took out the problem, looked it over, then put it away again if no solution suggested itself.
I tried clearing my mind the way some of the characters in the novel seemed able to do. No way. My thoughts zapped around like pinballs in a speeded-up game, lighting up posts, buzzing and ringing. The higher the score got, the tighter I felt.
So he had suffered too. Then why did he abandon me like one of his empty beer cans? Why did he stay away? Why did he come back?
I went into the van, closing the slider behind me because a damp chilly breeze had sprung up. I clicked on the little light above the sink so the old man could see when he got back from the pond, then climbed up to my bed.
I lay there for a long time, listening to the waterfall and the wind moaning out of the night sky.
REPLAY
I decided to take a run after the final wrestling practice of the school year. Leonard had pushed me hard, knowing I’d have no formal practice again before the tournament in Thunder Bay, and I was tired and stiff. I took a long slow jog, enjoying the warm sun and the fragrant early summer breeze as I loped through the streets.
When I got back to the school I saw a bunch of the other wrestlers turning onto Birmingham Street, walking with their heads together as if they were sharing a secret. I yelled to them but they didn’t hear me. Too tired to catch up with them, I entered the school.
The large L-shaped locker room was almost dark and the odour of sweat hung like smoke in the damp air. From around the corner at the far end of the room a shower hissed. As I groped my way down the main part of the room and around the corner of the L, a strange sound gradually separated itself from the hiss and gurgle of the shower. Somebody was crying. I felt along the wall for the switch. The fluorescent tubes flickered and buzzed, flooding the room with hard white light.
In the corner, behind an overturned bench, a kid lay facing the wall, curled up like a foetus. He was wearing a black singlet.
Only one wrestler on our team had a black singlet. GO ANIMAL was stencilled across the front.
“Hawk!” I cried, rushing over to him.
My first thought was that the other guys had ganged up on him. But nobody I knew would want to hurt Hawk. And nobody I knew would have had the guts to try.
He didn’t respond at first, just pulled his knees up closer to his chest. Bits of paper littered the floor around him and speckled his singlet. More bits were stuck in his hair.
I threw the bench aside and grabbed his arm. “Hawk! Hawk, what’s going on?”
&nb
sp; He flinched and pulled away. “No more!” he whined. His eyes were screwed shut, like a little kid at a horror movie. I couldn’t believe what I saw and heard. This was no little kid. This was almost seventy kilos of bone and muscle. This was the guy who turned into an electrified devil whenever he was in a fight.
“It’s Wick,” I shouted, scared by the stranger cowering in front of me. “Come on! Quit fooling around!”
I seized him again, roughly, and hauled him into a sitting position. His chin was jammed to his chest, his arms covered his head, and he was sobbing so hard the words seemed to be jerked from his body.
“I’m … o-okay … Go on home now, Wick. I’ll be all right. I’ll … catch you later.”
“Hawk, stop crying,” I tried again, calmer now. “Look at me. Open your eyes. Who did this to you?” I asked, not even knowing what the “this” was. By the looks of him he hadn’t been fighting. There were no scrapes or bruises, no blood.
“What the hell is this stuff, anyway?” I asked, picking up a few bits of the stiff paper. They looked like pieces torn from photographs.
Hawk was still hiding his face in his arms. “They … they found them,” he sobbed in a voice that wasn’t his. “They found them. Damn it! Why didn’t I leave them at home?”
“Leave what at home? What are you talking about? What’s wrong?” I shook him, trying to pry his arms away from his head, to make him look at me, but he was too strong.
“Wick, you’re the only friend I have,” he said desperately. “The only one left. Oh god, it’s gonna be all over the school!”
I sat back on the wooden bench and leaned forward on my knees. I took a deep breath. Go easy, I said to myself. “Look, Hawk, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. So listen, try to calm down, okay? Take your time and tell me what’s the matter.”
He still wouldn’t look at me, but his voice had a little more control when he whispered, “The guys found these … sex pictures.”