“You know Hank next door.” He made it a statement rather than a question.
Mrs. Frizzell turned. She looked weird with one green eyelid and one a veined pink. “Sure,” she said.
“Has he been left any money by somebody?”
“Not as far as I know. She’d surely have told me if a rich relative had left him somethin’ – I’m sure she would. Why?” she inquired, as, tongue clenched between teeth, she carefully finished her second eyelid.
“Nothin’. I just wondered.”
Mrs. Frizzell stopped half-way into a bone-coloured skirt – bone had been last year’s fashionable colour, according to the Tollemarche Advent.
“Maxie Frizzell! What do you know that I don’t?”
He was sorry that he had brought up the subject and hastily departed for his shower, shouting that he would tell her while he was dressing.
By the time he came back she was ready, looking like a spangled Christmas doll, her bone suit augmented by a scintillating green, three-tier necklace and bracelet, a startlingly flowered green hat, tight, incredibly high-heeled shoes of shiny green, and her fox stole.
She was sitting tensely on the gilt chair.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Say, you do look nice.” He went over to her, holding a towel round his middle, and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek.
She pushed him off irritably.
“What’s this about Hank?”
He let the towel drop and dug around in a drawer for some underwear.
“Maxie, cover yourself! You’re not decent!”
He ignored this, and leisurely got into his undershirt.
“Hank,” she reminded him, her anxiety to know apparent in her rapt attention.
“Well, he bought a Triumph off us yesterday.”
“So what?” She was disappointed.
“You don’t get a Triumph one year old for cents.”
Mrs. Frizzell digested this truth, and the import of it slowly became clear to her.
“That’s right,” she said thoughtfully. “Mebbe his father got worried about him driving that old jalopy – it weren’t safe. He might have helped Hank buy a new one – he’s making enough money.”
“His father don’t hardly know he’s born yet,” said Maxie scornfully.
“How’s he payin’ for it?”
“A thousand down and the rest over six months – plus his old wreck, of course.”
“Cash?”
“No, cheque – but it’s good – Josh checked with the bank, called Hnatiuk at his home. Hnatiuk says his savings account has been in good shape for a boy this past two years.”
Mrs. Frizzell licked her finger and smoothed her eyebrows with it. This was truly a mystery. She pondered silently, and then was suddenly alert. Hank must have done a robbery to have so much money – he must have – there had been one or two bad ones recently – a Chinese grocer had been shot to death, in one instance.
She was filled with excitement. She would get hold of Mrs. Hnatiuk after church and see if she knew anything about it. No good asking Olga Stych; she’d just stick her nose in the air and say that Boyd was doing very well.
“Hurry up,” she said, as if the church service would be over all the quicker if Maxie got a move on. And then she said: “Mebbe he’s one of that gang that has been holding up grocery stores.”
“Mebbe,” said her husband. “I don’t care what he’s done. None of my business. The finance company will pay us, and they’ll soon squeeze the balance out of him.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Such a scandalous-sounding mystery, and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything, except cars and trucks. A fat lot he even cared about being late for church, and she trying to keep up a good style.
“For goodness’ sakes, hurry up,” she exclaimed, standing up and folding her stole around her. “I’ll go get the car out.”
The Reverend Bruce Mackay, the patient and acquiescent minister, went on to “fifthly” in his sermon, and Mrs. Frizzell was sure he would never end. Mrs. Hnatiuk, who was wearing a fast-looking white jockey cap, was only two rows in front of her, and Mrs. Frizzell did not know how to bear the suspense. The final hymn had eight verses, not to speak of a chorus of Hallelujahs at the end of each one; Mr. Frizzell enjoyed this and sang in a pleasant tenor voice.
Across the aisle, Mrs. Stych expanded her tremendous bosom to shout to the Lord in a wobbly soprano. Borne along by the music and the comforting sermon, she was happy.
It was over at last. The minister stood at the door and shook the hand of each member of his congregation, with a kindly word for each boy and girl. The children viewed him with wary respect, since, in spite of his air of benignity, he frequently exploded when faced with old chewing-gum stuck under the pews, the choir guardedly shooting craps during the sermon, and similar juvenile straying from the path of righteousness.
Mrs. Frizzell eased herself – it could not be said that she exactly pushed – through the crowd so that she was next to Mrs. Hnatiuk, while Maxie stopped to talk to clients.
Out on the pathway, Mrs. Hnatiuk was surprised to find her hand gripped enthusiastically by Mrs. Frizzell, who was normally so condescending, and her health solicitously inquired after. Mr. Hnatiuk had taken one look at the approaching Mrs. Frizzell and had dived for cover into a knot of other businessmen. Mrs. Hnatiuk was cornered.
Mrs. Frizzell circulated painstakingly through all the usual conversational openings, the weather, the forthcoming Edwardian Days Carnival Week, the coming winter and what winter did to the car trade, wondering how to get round to Hank’s Triumph. She was unexpectedly helped along by Mrs. Hnatiuk, who said: “Ah, there’s Mrs. Stych. I just love her little car.”
“Yeah,” said Mrs. Frizzell, with satisfaction. “Maxie just sold her Hank another nice one, a Triumph.”
“My! They must be doing well,” said Mrs. Hnatiuk. “Three good cars in the family, counting Boyd’s Dodge.”
“Maxie said Hank paid for it himself,” dangled Mrs. Frizzell hopefully.
The fish failed to rise.
“Did he?” exclaimed Mrs. Hnatiuk. “He must be working at something good.”
“He’s still in high school. Doing Grade 12 again.”
Mrs. Hnatiuk’s five little girls were still in elementary school and, consequently, she did not come into frequent contact with high school students. She was, therefore, unaware of Hank’s reputation for being rather irresponsible. She said maddeningly: “Say, that’s a nice stole you’ve got. Mrs. Macdonald’s got a blue mink, but that one of yours sure is nice, too.”
Mrs. Frizzell nearly screamed. Either Mrs. Hnatiuk really did not know much about Hank or she was just being perverse.
“Where do you think he got the money from?” she queried.
“Who?”
“Hank Stych.”
Mrs. Hnatiuk’s pale blue eyes opened wide. “From his father, I suppose. Where else?”
“He might have stolen it.”
Mrs. Hnatiuk’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Do you think so?”
It was obvious that Mrs. Hnatiuk was not telling. Mrs. Frizzell mentally crossed her off her list of guests – she’d never really be anybody anyway – and abruptly made her farewells.
She moved down to the curbside, smiling graciously as she elbowed her way through the crowd. Mrs. Stych was having difficulty starting her little car, so Mrs. Frizzell bobbed her flower-decked head down until her hawklike nose was level with the half-open window.
“How does Hank like his new Triumph?” she asked.
Mrs. Stych ceased her frantic turning of the ignition key for a moment, and looked perplexed.
“Triumph?”
“Yeah. His new car.”
Mrs. Stych pursed her heavily painted lips and looked at Mrs. Frizzell as if she feared for Mrs. Frizzell’s mental health.
“He hasn’t got a new one. You know he’s not working yet.”
She gave the ignition key another desperat
e turn and the engine burst into song.
“But,” Mrs. Frizzell began, “he – ”
Her words were lost in the sound of grinding gears, and the car leaped away from the sidewalk, knocking Mrs. Frizzell’s hat askew and leaving her mouthing furiously at nobody.
CHAPTER 6
Hank was not in when Mrs. Stych returned home from church. She made a cold lunch for herself and then left to visit her mother-in-law. Every Sunday afternoon she meticulously visited either her mother or her mother-in-law, these indications of filial affection being indispensable to anyone of her aspirations, with a public image to maintain. She never bothered to write to her husband while he was away, husbands being regarded as of very little importance, except as sources of money.
While Hank was, in his grandparents’ opinion, too small to be left alone, the two grandmothers had insisted that he accompany his mother, and he had enjoyed wandering round the Palichuk pig farm with his grandfather, or playing in a corner of the lounge of his Grandmother Stych’s more fashionable home. He was the youngest grandchild, however, and as he grew to be a hulking, noisy ten-year-old, his aging relatives found him very tiring. After the death of Grandfather Palichuk, the custom arose of frequently leaving him at home. Even now, he remembered with a shudder the appalling loneliness of Sunday afternoon, spent trailing noisily around the streets with a group of equally neglected youths, returning to the empty home to eat his supper, while the television set bawled commercials at him to fill the silence, until he heard the scrape of his mother’s key in the lock.
Occasionally, his father was at home during the weekend. But he also felt that he should visit his mother. He had, too, a lot of paper work to deal with while in Tollemarche, and only rarely shared his Sunday supper with his son. He was a taciturn man who found it difficult to talk to a boy; but he did sometimes spare time to tell him of his travels in the wilder parts of Alberta, of encounters with grizzly bears, white water rushing through narrow gorges, being lost in unexpected snowstorms, in an unconquered wilderness totally alien to his suburb-bred son.
When Hank was fifteen, his best friend, Tommy Moore, committed suicide by quietly dropping himself off the railway bridge into the icy waters of the North Saskatchewan. He had threatened to do it for some time, but only Hank had taken him seriously and tried to dissuade him. Hank felt stripped of the only person in whom he could confide, and, for a while, considered following his example. Perhaps it was fortunate that at that time he discovered girls, and a year later met the Dawsons, who always seemed to have time to stop and gossip with him. He had by now forgotten the faces of many of the girls he had run around with, and Peter Dawson was dead, but there was still Isobel, the one steadying influence in his life.
From watching Isobel and her husband he had discovered that there was much more to sex than just taking a girl to bed or being uneasily married to a frigid, grasping woman.
Peter Dawson had been considerably older than Isobel and since he had only a few more years to serve in the army, had decided to establish a permanent home in his native town. It had taken their combined savings to make the down payment on a house in overcrowded Tollemarche, and Isobel had declared that she could manage without a car. She therefore advertised the garage as being for rent, and at the same time got herself a job as a secretary to an insurance broker, to fill in the time until Peter should be at home permanently or a family should arrive.
When a younger and less sophisticated Hank had come quietly through the back gate in search of the garage, the couple had been busy planting a lilac tree. He had watched them silently as they lowered the little bush into the prepared hole, with considerable argument as to how the roots should be spread. It was a different kind of argument from any he had heard before; it was friendly and joking. When the earth had been finally pressed down round the tree roots, Peter Dawson had put his arm round his wife’s tiny waist and they had surveyed their handiwork with obvious satisfaction. He had kissed her on the nose, and then they had strolled around their small domain, debating what else they should do to the garden.
Hank had hastily retreated round the side of the garage, while they decided where to put a sand box for the child as yet unconceived, and then he had re-entered the gate, giving it a diplomatic slam behind him.
He had not had much hope that they would rent the garage to a teenager, since teenagers were regarded generally as being as reliable as something out of the zoo. Peter Dawson had, however, asked who his father was, and had then inquired if the family was any relation to Mr. Heinrich Stych, who used to teach in Tollemarche Public School.
“Yeah – sure,” replied Hank. “He was my grandfather.”
Captain Dawson was immediately more friendly.
“Well, that’s great! He taught me when I was a boy. Of course you can have the garage. I don’t think we’ll be needing it for a while.”
He asked what kind of a car Hank had, and was very encouraging when Hank told him that he and his friend Ian were going to rebuild one.
Hank paid five dollars from his paper money as the first month’s rent, and, later that day, he and several of his friends pushed a dowager of a car round from his back lane, where it had been dumped by a tow truck, into the Dawsons’ garage. The Dawsons themselves had enthusiastically helped to heave it over a rut and up the slope to the garage.
Ian MacDonald and he had stripped down the old wreck and searched junk yards for spare parts. Mr. Frizzell, before the unfortunate episode with Betty, had been prevailed upon to donate four old, though still serviceable, tires; and finally the great day arrived when he backed it slowly out of the garage and drove it round to his own home in the vague hope that his mother might like to see it.
“I won’t have that thing standing in front of the house,” she had said forcibly. “Take it away.”
Crestfallen, he and Ian had driven to Ian’s house, but Mrs. MacDonald had gone to an art exhibition and Mr. MacDonald to a service club meeting. Ian’s kid sister, who was playing mothers and fathers with her friends in the crawl space under the porch, said it was marvellous, so they had to be content with this infant praise and with taking her and her mud-covered friends for a ride round the block.
Wrathfully indignant at his mother’s lack of appreciation of his efforts as a mechanic, an idea which had long been in his mind, that of writing a novel, had crystallized. He would write a book which would cause a sufficient furore to upset both his parents thoroughly, and make them realize that he was a person to be reckoned with. To do it, he had to have more privacy than his room allowed, and he had tentatively approached Captain Dawson, who was home on leave and was painting the porch, for permission to put a table and chair in the garage, so that he could work there.
Captain Dawson sensed that there was more behind the request than was readily apparent. He was used to handling a great variety of young men, and his piercing stare, as he considered the request, made Hank quail; he had a suspicion that Peter Dawson could make his wife quail at times, and in this he was right.
“Why can’t you work at home?”
Hank decided that, in this instance, honesty was the only policy possible and had said frankly that he wanted to try to write a book. He did not feel he could write freely if the typescript was readily accessible to his mother.
The Captain wiped the paint off his hands and carefully avoided showing his amusement. He agreed that a mother’s censorship would be very limiting, and, after consulting Isobel, who was enchanted with the idea, he said that the furniture could be brought in.
“You had better change the lock on the door,” she had teased, “because I might be tempted to peep at the manuscript.”
He had gravely changed the lock and kept both keys. She had, however, through the months of work, taken a real interest in what he was doing, and he found himself confiding in her more and more. It was she who, when the manuscript was ready, had given him an introduction to Alistair MacFee, a professor of English at the university. Professor MacFe
e had read it, had been startled by its undoubted merit, and had carefully discussed it chapter by chapter with him, suggesting how to improve it. Glowing with hope, Hank had gone back to the garage and pruned and polished. Then the professor and Isobel, both young and enthusiastic, had helped him to choose a likely publisher to whom to send it. The English firm which they first suggested returned the typescript. Undaunted, Hank sent it to a New York firm and they accepted it. He was so excited that he forgot about the revenge the book was supposed to wreak on his parents.
Now, The Cheaper Sex had been out in the States for some weeks, and it seemed as if everyone under the age of twenty-one wanted a copy. On the day of its publication, Hank had gone jubilantly to Isobel’s back door, armed with an autographed copy for her and her husband.
He had found an ashen-faced Isobel, showing none of her usual gaiety or cordiality. She had written a receipt for the month’s rent for the garage, which he had proffered at the same time, and had received the book with a watery smile. She had then wished him good luck with the sale of his book and had quietly shut the door in his face.
Bewildered and hurt at her lack of interest, too shy to ask what the trouble was, he had gone back to the garage completely mystified, and had spent the rest of the evening painting his jalopy electric blue.
When he finally went home, he saw the Tollemarche Advent. It informed him in letters an inch high that Captain Peter Dawson had been murdered in Cyprus.
His first instinct was to rush back to Isobel. Then he told himself that he was just a nut who had written a book in her garage, and that he had no right to intrude.
As a way of showing sympathy, however, he had the following Saturday morning put on his best suit, which was far too tight for him, and gone to the memorial service for Captain Dawson in the nearby Anglican church. In total misery, he watched, from the back of the church, the stony-faced widow, flanked by her husband’s mother, a surprisingly elegant woman in smart black, and his father, a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, looking tired and grey, as they went through the formalities of the service. Absorbed as he was by the sight of a family in grief, a new phenomenon for him, he could not help observing, with some awe, the large number of military men present to testify to their friendship with the dead man. They sure looked smart, he thought, and from that moment he began to cultivate the straight, dignified bearing which was to be his hallmark in later life; only occasionally did he forget and relapse into his old North American droop.
The Latchkey Kid Page 5