Blue Vengeance

by Alison Preston

  Danny and Janine kneeled together, between Cookie and the teacher, who yelled at them to get out of her gymnasium and march right down to the office. They propped Cookie between them and walked her out of the gym and out the front door of the school. They sat on the grass, still brown and damp from winter, while Cookie caught her breath. No one followed, but Danny was ready for them if they did.

  The three of them walked to the Blue house on Lyndale Drive. It was chilly despite the sun, and the girls in their gym wear weren’t dressed for it. They stopped several times on the way; Cookie had trouble holding on to a breath once she caught it.

  “You’re gonna be in trouble on account of me,” she said.

  “Trouble, shmouble,” said Danny.

  “Do I stink?” she said.

  “No, Cookie. You don’t stink,” he said.

  Cookie turned to Janine and pleaded with her eyes.

  “No,” said Janine. “She stinks. She positively reeks.”

  She left them at their gate.

  Their mother didn’t want to know.

  “The teacher called her a stinky cockroach,” Danny said, after Cookie had gone upstairs. “She was the only one left running.”

  He hadn’t gotten into trouble, and neither had Janine. But not getting into trouble meant nothing. Miss Hartley was still there.

  Danny insisted that his mum write a note to the school saying that Cookie had a hole in her heart that made her weak and fragile, and could she please be excused from phys ed for the rest of the year. And he planned to insist that she write another one when school started again in September. They all knew that wasn’t the reason for her weakness, but it could have been.

  “You look different,” Danny said to Janine now.

  Her gaze was steady, steadier than Cookie’s had been. Her eyes had often darted from side to side, as though looking for a way out. He wondered if Janine was sixteen yet. Cookie would have turned sixteen in August, if she weren’t dead.

  “I cut my hair off.”

  “It looks nice,” he said. “It suits you.”

  “Thanks.” She tugged at a strand next to her ear. “It could use a little evening up in spots.”

  He didn’t know where to take it from there. He wanted to ask her to sit down beside him on the stoop, but it seemed beyond him, so he stood up instead and stepped down onto the grass.

  “You’ve got a good setup here.” Janine gestured towards the fence posts.

  “Thanks. It works pretty well for me.”

  “Well, what do you think?” she said. “About me helping, I mean.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’d be good. I promise I won’t be in your way.”

  “Helpin’ with what exactly?” He hadn’t voiced his plan to anyone, not even Paul.

  “With you becoming the best slingshot shooter in Canada.”

  Her look faltered; she wasn’t telling the truth, not the whole of it. Danny admired everything about her, even her lie.

  “That’s it?” he said.

  “I’ve seen you on your bike. No hands. Once even blowing a bubble at the same time.”

  He was so delighted she had seen it that he had to move, get his feet off the ground. Russell sensed the joy and behaved for a moment or two as though she was about to receive a snack.

  “I’m not sure I need a helper.” He looked at her, met those steady eyes.

  “You missed, didn’t you?” she said.

  The words hung in the air between them. Danny couldn’t snatch them back; they weren’t his to snatch.

  “Don’t talk any more.” He walked over to the shed where he fetched a y-shaped piece of dogwood from his shelf.

  “If you’re gonna help me, it would be good for you to have your own slingshot, so you understand the ins and outs of it.”

  She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and brought out as fine a specimen as he had ever seen. It made his look like something Fred Flintstone would carry around. Hers was uniformly solid, and the rubber and leather sling looked strong and full of purpose.

  “Wow,” he said. “Where’d you get your hands on that?”

  “So I’m allowed to speak now?”

  He smiled. “’Course.”

  “I made it.” She handed it over.

  “What kinda wood is it?”

  She had left the bark on, except where the grooves were, and he liked that rough-hewn look. His weapon looked naked and tired next to it: the slingshot of a simpleton.

  “Willow,” she said. “We have a big old willow tree in our yard.”

  “The rubber,” he said. “It’s red.”

  “Yeah. It’s from an inner tube.”

  She lifted her chin towards a black inner tube that floated on the surface of the pool along with the elm seeds and aspen fluff.

  “Like that one, except red.”

  A picture of Cookie, cold and rubbery from the river, flashed behind Danny’s eyes.

  “The rubber of red inner tubes is more elastic. You can pull it back further.”

  He pulled and saw that she was right.

  The grooves were perfect and the rubber was tied with strong twine. The leather pocket for the stone was expertly attached; there were uniform slits to slip over the tubing.

  “There’s a dead squirrel in your pool,” Janine said.

  He followed her gaze. He handed the slingshot back to her and went to the shed for the skimmer that Uncle Edwin used to clean the surface. Handling it with ease, he scooped the squirrel out of the water and tossed it over the back fence with one smooth action. It was done before Russell had a chance to get involved.

  “Nice one,” said Janine.

  “Where’d you get the leather?” he said.

  “It’s the tongue from a pair of my dad’s old shoes.”

  He whistled quietly. “It’s a beaut.” He laid the skimmer down.

  “I have to go now.” She put the slingshot back in her pocket. “I have to make supper for my dad, but I could come back later and start in on being your assistant — set up cans and stuff.”

  “Why do you want to help me?” Danny said.

  “I just do.”

  “But why?”

  “Cookie was my friend. I mean, not so much lately, with what she got up to and everything, but...well…she was kind to me, back before…”

  “Back before what she got up to lately.”

  “Yeah.”

  Danny hadn’t known that anyone else was aware of what she got up to lately. He wasn’t even sure that his mum realized the extent of it.

  “Plus, I hate Hardass and I’d like to do something to her.”

  Danny smiled. Hardass. So it wasn’t just about him becoming the best slingshot shooter in Canada.

  “What if we get in serious trouble?” he said.

  “We won’t.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “On Lyndale. Same as you but at the far end.”

  “Maybe I could come there.”

  He wanted to get a look at the tree with the good wood, maybe find himself a decent branch. Maybe she would give him a strip of the red tubing.

  “No,” she said. “That wouldn’t be good. I’ll come here, or we could meet somewhere. At the river, say.”

  “Yeah, okay. Tomorrow? Two o’clock?”

  He too had a supper to make and he had to digest this new development.

  Russell saw her to the gate.

  As she walked away, she said over her shoulder, “Your grass could use a mowing.”

  Danny looked around him. It hadn’t been cut since the last time Uncle Edwin was here, and that was well before school let out for the summer. He tossed the piece of uncarved dogwood over the fence into the vacant lot. Then he got the push mower out of the shed. After one go-round the gr
ass looked practically as long it did before he started, so he did it again.

  “That oughta do it,” he said to Russell.

  When he went in the house, his mother was on the couch. He hated the couch almost as much as he hated Miss Hartley. He started opening windows.

  “What are you doing?” his mother said.

  He ignored her at first.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m opening windows. The house stinks. It smells like lazy bums live here.”

  He went into the kitchen, dumped a can of cream of mushroom soup into a pot with water, and heated it through. Usually he added milk to mushroom soup — it was better with milk — but not this time. He didn’t want it to be better.

  When he took the tray in to his mother, she didn’t look at him.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He didn’t say, you’re welcome.

  It was the first time he didn’t say it, and the painting of Scottish cows did not crash down from the wall, and the breeze continued to drift through the freshly opened window. It felt as if there were worlds of things he could not say, or say, and get away with it.

  After supper he retrieved the dogwood from the lot next door. What if he never saw Janine again? What if he never found a willow tree? What if he did, but couldn’t find a suitable branch? He placed the rough wood back on its shelf in the shed.

  Why had she said it wouldn’t be good for him to go over to her house? Maybe she had a sick mother too. She was making supper for her dad.

  He liked the way she talked, there was something about it.

  It was a relief to have something to think about other than Miss Hartley. Janine had called her Hardass. He liked that too. He wondered if she had been there the day that Cookie was made to feel bad in the locker room. Probably.

  Sometimes he thought it would be enough just to hurt Miss Hartley; that held its appeal. He could keep her captive, tie her up in the shed, naked on all fours. Feed her hard crusts of mouldy bread and dirty water between the hurting. That way she would know what was happening to her and why. He could buy a whip. But mostly he just wanted her gone.

  From time to time, since Cookie’s death, he had thought about dying, as it applied to himself. It was a faint, barely uplifting desire. Maybe he could talk to Janine about it, hear some of her thoughts.

  He wanted to believe in heaven, but by now he knew that everything he’d learned at Sunday school was a steaming pile of crap. He’d liked some of the stories, but not the impossible ones. Even they might have been okay if the stupid teacher hadn’t tried to convince them that they were true. Some of the kids had believed her. He’d known that from the looks of amazement on their faces.

  Danny liked far-fetched stories, like Gulliver’s Travels, because no one had spoiled them by telling him they were true. Still, Robin Hood and Treasure Island were the best, because they could have happened in real life. He’d only read Gulliver’s Travels and Treasure Island in comic book form, but he intended to read the books as soon as he had some time, once this Miss Hartley situation was out of the way.

  There was comfort in Janine knowing about his plan, if she really did know about it. It eased his load somehow. But he worried about having been unaware of her watching him the day of the botched trial run.

  You missed, didn’t you? That’s what she’d said. She had seen him.

  She couldn’t know for sure how far he wanted to take it. Could she? No. It was as unlikely as the story about Jesus waking up after three days of being dead. She couldn’t know, but she could have an inkling; she seemed pretty smart. She could probably make a yo-yo go ’round-the-world.

  Maybe she could help him by making unexpected loud sounds as he took aim. Mimic a barking dog, say, or the blast of a train’s whistle.

  His real plans were starting now, with Janine. Her appearance in his life shifted things for the good.

  He took his yo-yo out of his pocket and after a few tries made it sleep for the first time in his life.

  13

  At one o’clock the next day, Danny started walking towards the St. Mary’s end of Lyndale, where Janine had said she lived. He couldn’t wait for two o’clock, had no idea why he’d suggested two.

  Lyndale Drive formed the arc of the D that framed the Norwood Flats. It had been built as a dike during the flood of 1950. One end of the arc was at the Norwood Bridge, the other at St. Mary’s Road. Danny’s house was in the middle.

  It was hot. The air in the lane shimmered as he saw her moving towards him down the lane. She was carrying something that required both hands. When he got close, he saw that it was a flat of eggs.

  “What the…?”

  “Yeah,” Janine said. “It’s eggs. Don’t worry. They’re rotten. My dad’s going to kill the egg man.”

  “There must be what…three dozen eggs here? This is great.”

  In Danny’s house the eggs used to come in pristine one-dozen cartons from the A&P or Dominion store. It hit him that eggs were another thing he could make for his mum and him to eat. Dot must have already bought some; she’d served them to him lots of times. He’d have to learn how to cook them, but how hard could it be?

  Janine’s eggs were nothing like the ones from the A&P. Hers came from an egg man who her dad was going to kill, and there were feathers attached to some of them.

  “I thought we could balance them on the fence posts with gravel,” she said, “and you could shoot them. They seemed too good to throw away. My dad was glad to know they were going to be put to use.”

  It would be very satisfying to hit an egg. Danny thought of Paul. He would have liked to shoot at eggs, especially rotten ones. But it was too late for Paul.

  He and Cookie used to eat milk chocolate eggs at Easter (when Jesus purportedly woke up after his three-day death). They got them at Wade’s drugstore. It would never happen again.

  Sometimes she hadn’t been able to stop once she got started. He tried to step in a couple of times — not with the Easter eggs, but other times — when he saw that she was eating way too much for it to be okay. She had told him to go away in a voice that scared him, a low voice that wasn’t hers.

  It had turned into a secret thing, the eating too much, and Danny wondered if that could have been his fault, because of poking his nose in.

  With Cookie being his older sister had come an assumption that she knew better than him. Still, she only made it to fifteen. How much could you really know after only fifteen years or so? During some of those years you could barely walk or talk. His mother was forty-nine, and she didn’t even know she was supposed to get up off the couch.

  Cookie had seemed pretty normal in her younger days, before the weird eating got a hold on her. She had gamely gone along to the toboggan run in the winter and taken a couple of slides down the riverbank. She hadn’t liked it much. Danny hadn’t either — it was scary — but they both felt as if they were supposed to like it because everyone else did. He wondered for the first time if in reality no one liked tobogganing. He hoped so. Cookie liked the post-tobogganing part the best: the indoor part with cocoa and baby marshmallows.

  Skating was different. She took to the ice, sailed across it. Forwards like a speed skater, backwards with a grace she shared with no one else on the ice. There were three rinks at the Norwood Community Club: two for hockey and one for “pleasure.” Cookie had owned the pleasure rink, a boy named Butch Goring, the hockey rinks; people stopped to watch both of them. But that was a long time ago, when she’d had a friend or two. He hadn’t known one of them might have been Janine. Cookie had hung up her skates a few years ago.

  “Too busy,” she’d said when Danny asked her why.

  He realized now that it was probably true. She had taken over most of their mother’s responsibilities as her illness worsened, and Barbara Blue came to rely on her more and more.

  “What are you
thinking about?” Janine said now.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look sad. Are you thinking about Cookie?”

  “No.”

  They had walked the short distance back to his house.

  Janine lined the eggs up on the fence posts, placing pointy bits of gravel from the lane around each one to hold it in place.

  Danny admired her while she worked, pretended to be watching the placing of the eggs. The skin on her bare arms was golden. He wanted to taste it.

  The moment of connection was satisfying, more than with soup tins. The eggs were almost alive. Russell and another dog from the neighbourhood snorfelled around them.

  “Go on,” Danny said. “Find something else to do.” He drove them off and turned to Janine. “Would you like to have a go?” The eggs were about half done.

  “No. I’m fine,” she said.

  She put up more eggs as he knocked them down, seeming to enjoy her role as sidekick.

  “It’s you who needs the practice,” she said.

  Again, he wondered if she knew the scope of his intention.

  14

  The next day Janine arrived with a small paper bag half full of ball bearings.

  “These are perfect,” Danny said. “Where did you get them?”

  “My house. My dad had them.”

  Danny stuck his hand in the bag and let the smooth round projectiles run through his fingers.

  “Won’t he miss them?”

  “Nope. He said I could have them.”

  “Does he know what you want them for?”

  “He didn’t ask.”

  She took out her slingshot and placed one of the silver orbs inside the leather pocket. She looked around her for a moment or two and then aimed.

  There was an oak tree in the vacant lot next door. At its apex the glossy leaves stood out against the pastel sky. She took her shot and the topmost leaf disappeared.

  “What were you aimin’ at?” Danny said.

  “What I hit.”

  He looked back at the treetop and wasn’t sure now if the leaf was gone.

  “Paul thinks leaves are too feeble of a thing to aim at,” said Danny.