“Who’s Paul?”
“My former friend.”
They took the ball bearings with them to the icehouse on the corner of Lyndale and Gauvin Avenue. They bought two solid bricks of ice for twenty-five cents apiece and set them up in the scrubby lot behind the building. They shone in the sunlight.
Janine joined in this time. She was at least as good as he was. They shot till the bag was empty and then gathered up as many of the ball bearings as they could find. They were too precious to leave behind.
At the river they sat down in the long grass, Janine cross-legged, Danny with his legs sticking out in front of him, supporting himself with his two brown arms. Russell joined them there.
“Why is Paul your former friend?”
A fist formed in the centre of Danny’s chest and settled there. It was a tiny fist, the size of a small sour crabapple, but too big for a spot that had no space for it.
“Because I just want to practise with my slingshot, and he wants to do other stuff, like we used to. It’s kinda my fault.”
“Maybe you can be friends with him again…after.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Don’t you have any other friends?”
“I did. But they might not be my friends anymore either.” He thought of Stu and Stubby and the way they all vied for Paul’s attention. The fist inside his chest clenched.
“What kinds of suppers do you make for your dad?” he said.
He didn’t want to think about things that hurt his insides.
“Nothing special. He has his favourites, but they’re simple, and he’s easy to please. Why do you ask?”
“I have to make stuff for my mum and I never know what to make.”
“What does she like?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm, that makes it hard.”
A dog barked from somewhere far away. Russell’s ears twitched and then settled down. Danny stroked her stiff coat and wondered if a dog of the same size and breed as the one barking now had sounded the same a thousand years ago. He suspected so.
“She needs a bath,” said Janine.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why is she called Russell if she’s a girl?”
“She’s mostly Jack Russell terrier, so we figured on either Jack or Russell and finally chose Russell.”
“Who, you and Cookie?”
“Yup.”
She rubbed one of Russell’s ears and the dog closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Janine wiped her hand on her shorts.
“She’s kind of big for a terrier, isn’t she?”
“There’s other stuff in her too, Lab, we think, because of her size and her floppy ears.”
Russell knew they were talking about her and shifted her gaze from one to the other and back again. She looked doltish, and Danny hoped Janine didn’t think so.
“What are you makin’ for supper tonight?” he said.
“Beans and toast probably. I make that at least once a week.”
“Hey, I forgot about beans. I could make that. She used to like beans, I think.”
“What’s the matter with her? I mean, is there something more than Cookie dying?”
“Yeah, she’s got fibrositis.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a disease that means everything hurts, and you don’t sleep and you sometimes have trouble swallowing.”
“Sheesh. That covers a lot of bad stuff.”
“She can’t stand it if you touch her because even the lightest touch hurts.”
“Jeez, your poor mum.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Danny stood up. There were beer bottles strewn around the area, and he took a few shots, this time with stones from his pockets. He missed two out of five.
When Janine said she better get going, he asked her which house on Lyndale was hers.
“It’s on the other side of the street from Rock Sand’s house,” she said, “and not as far east.”
“Who’s Roxanne?”
Janine looked at him sideways.
“Rock Sand,” she said and spelled it for him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“He’s a guy. I can’t believe you don’t know who he is.”
“Well, I don’t. Why would I?”
“Everyone knows who he is.”
“I don’t.”
A vertical line appeared on the smooth skin of Janine’s forehead between her brows.
“Hmm. Maybe he’s more of an eastern Norwood phenomenon,” she said.
Danny was sick of the conversation. He didn’t want to think about which way was east and some guy whose house was probably full of sand that got under your fingernails even right after a bath and turned up inside your sandwiches.
“So who is he?” He didn’t want to care, but he did.
“Well, he’s kind of a rebel, for one thing. He doesn’t take any guff from anybody.”
“What’s so great about that?”
“I didn’t say it was great. Did I say it was great?”
“No. I guess not.”
“He is great, though. For all kinds of reasons.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s see…he’s cool and smart and he plays the guitar and is full of good ideas.”
Danny didn’t know anyone who was cool. Maybe Paul verged on it.
“Lots of people are smart,” he said, though he was hard-pressed to think of any of those either. A couple of his teachers maybe. Uncle Edwin? Perry Mason was smart, but Janine would probably think he didn’t count. Paul for sure wasn’t smart; he was an imbecile. A coolish imbecile.
There was no arguing with playing the guitar. George Harrison played the guitar, and one-quarter of the girls in the universe wanted to marry him. All the ones who didn’t want to marry John, Paul, or Ringo.
“Plus he’s got weights in his basement,” Janine said, “that he lifts to make his muscles stand out and so he can beat people up if he needs to.”
“Why would he need to?”
“Well, say someone was giving him a hard time for something.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?”
“Is he a greaser?”
“Yeah, I guess people would call him a greaser.”
“Greasers are idiots,” Danny said, but he said it quietly, and Janine was so starry-eyed she didn’t seem to hear him. He was glad. He was heating up inside, but he didn’t want to have a fight with her.
“His biceps are hard as rocks. He let me touch one.”
“What’s a bicep?” Danny said, leery of the answer.
“It’s an arm muscle. Arm muscles are called biceps.”
She said this as though she knew everything in the world, and part of Danny wanted her to go away.
“Plus, he has a car,” Janine said. “A really neat one. It’s old, but it’s in mint condition, and he does all the work on it himself. I think it’s a model of car they don’t even make anymore.”
Danny understood what was great about having a car. You could take girls into the back seat and touch them all over.
“Why would anyone wanna be a greaser?” he said, not meaning to, wanting the talk to go back to what they made their parents for supper.
“In Rock’s case,” said Janine, “I think he was born one.”
“I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you’re born to be.”
She reached in the bag for a ball bearing and stood up to shoot.
“He’s got blond hair,” she said.
Danny didn’t like Rock Sand. He didn’t like the way Janine’s eyes went when she talked about him. She missed the shot.
“What were you shootin’ at?” he said, needing her to admit it.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I didn’t hit it.”
At least she came clean.
“Greasers don’t usually have blond hair, do they?” Now Danny wanted to take issue with something.
She rolled her eyes. He preferred that to the faraway look she’d had a moment ago.
“Marlon Brando has blond hair,” she said.
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Yes, he does.”
“No, he doesn’t. And anyway, he’s an actor, not a greaser.”
Janine rolled her eyes again, but Danny knew he had her on both counts. He’d read in one of his mum’s old movie magazines that when Marlon Brando turned up with blond hair it was “from a bottle.” That meant he dyed it, just like women did. That made him a sissy.
“You said this guy has good ideas,” Danny said. “Like what?”
A moment or two passed before she came up with one. “He’s going to get so good on the guitar that he’ll play in a band.”
“Yeah, and?”
“He drives like the wind down the highway with the windows open.”
“How can he drive like the wind in a rickety old car that they don’t even make anymore?”
“He just can, okay? It’s not rickety.”
It was Danny’s turn to roll his eyes. He wanted to stick his finger down his throat and throw up on Janine’s feet. Cookie.
She was setting herself up for another shot.
“Don’t waste the ball bearings,” Danny said. “We won’t be able to find them, if you shoot them into the trees.”
“I’ll shoot them where I want to,” she said. “They’re mine.”
She picked up the bag and took off. Danny stayed at the river for a while. He had thought the ball bearings had become both of theirs.
Russell had strayed off, but she came bounding back now.
“You’re a good girl, Russ. I’m sorry if I’ve been ignorin’ you. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
Back at the house he lifted her into the bathtub. It was something he couldn’t have gotten away with before Cookie’s death. Now he was certain his mum wouldn’t care, in the unlikely event she even noticed. He decided he would pick up a new movie magazine for her — try to find one with Doris Day or Natalie Wood on the cover. She used to like both of those movie stars. He wished his mum were Doris Day, with her lively way and her freckly smile.
After he put Russell outside to dry off he went to the cellar pantry to look for beans and found none.
It worried him that he had angered Janine. He didn’t want to lose the one person he could talk to these days. There was Russell, but she couldn’t answer back when he asked her questions. Sometimes he liked to pretend that Russell could talk, and he imagined the kinds of answers she would give. They would be jolly kind-hearted answers no matter what. Even if he told her his plan for Miss Hartley, she would root for him, scamper along beside him all the way.
Danny and Janine still hadn’t talked about it out loud. They had hinted at it, when they talked of targets and lookout positions and good cover, but they had yet to discuss the degree of damage they wished to cause, to call it by its name. Maybe she would vanish if she knew how far his intentions went. Maybe she thought he just wanted to hit Miss Hartley on her scrawny, no-account ass.
15
The day after the Rock Sand conversation it was cloudy and cool. Danny rode his bike to Wade’s, where he found a Photoplay with Elizabeth Taylor on the cover. There was an article about Natalie Wood inside; she was in a movie called Love with the Proper Stranger. He liked the sound of that.
The breeze he caused as he travelled through the streets felt fine against his face. At the A&P he picked up pork and beans and dog food, along with the usual stuff like milk and bread and, of course, Swanson TV dinners. On the way home, when he turned onto Lyndale Drive, he tried to pick out Janine’s house. His bike wobbled with the load, so he decided to take the groceries home and come back on foot.
He had known her for only three days, but he couldn’t imagine a day without her. If she moved away, or worse, stopped wanting to hang around with him, he wouldn’t be able to stand it. He might become even less of a person than his mum. He’d lie down on the floor — the cellar floor — and accept neither food nor drink. All that would be left of the old him would be his plan, floating around in the atmosphere, with no one to pull it off.
It was a real worry, because the thing was, Janine was a girl. And not only that, she was probably two years older than he was. It made no sense for her to be his best friend.
When he got home he fed Russell and used the new can opener that Dot had bought to open a can of beans and put them on the stove to warm up.
Then he picked some wild flowers from the vacant lot next door and put them in a small vase. He didn’t know what they were called; he hoped they weren’t weeds.
A few minutes later he placed a tray containing beans, toast, flowers, and the Photoplay on the coffee table beside his mum. He caught a glimmer on her face. It came and went, just like that.
She started to cry. He left the room and ran out the back door, leaving his own beans on the kitchen table. A mother who wasn’t much of anything was one thing, but a crying mother was something else entirely.
He began the walk down Lyndale towards St. Mary’s Road. Janine had said she lived across the street from Rock Sand, but not as far east. If he couldn’t find her he could ask someone where the greaser lived and proceed from there. If he was as famous as she let on, everyone in the area would know which house was his. Danny didn’t know which way was east and he hadn’t asked because he felt so stupid about not knowing who that asshole Rock Sand was.
He cut through the field behind the icehouse to see if their chunks of ice were still there and was amazed to find that they were. They didn’t even look much smaller than they had the day before.
Past the icehouse there were eight small houses on one side of the drive and several more on the other. He walked down the front street with no luck, so tried the back lanes. Behind one of the scruffy little homes he spotted her in the yard, sitting on a nylon lawn chair beside a wiry man who Danny took for her dad.
He had a cigarette resting on his lower lip, as if he had sticky spit, or it was attached with Mucilage. It bobbed up and down while he talked. He held an accordion between his legs, but wasn’t playing it. Danny had never known anyone who owned an accordion or any musical instrument other than a piano. Pianos were everywhere. Most girls seemed to take lessons, and even some boys (Paul, for instance).
Janine or her dad must have said something funny because they both laughed. The dad’s turned into a cough, but Janine’s was clean and hearty. It was the first time Danny had heard it. Her dad punched her shoulder gently and tousled her short uneven hair.
As she recovered from her laughter, Danny saw her see him and pretend that she didn’t. It alarmed him. She must be pissed off about the way he acted when she talked about Rock Sand.
He went home, and wasn’t in the house for five minutes before she knocked on the back door. Russell stood beside her wagging her tail. When Danny opened the door, they both moved to come in, but he stopped them.
“No. Let’s sit on the stoop.”
He didn’t want her to know how dark and musty his house was compared to hers, which was probably full of laughter and music and board games.
The screen door clacked shut behind him, and they settled themselves in the backyard.
“Why did you pretend you didn’t see me?” Danny said.
“Sorry.”
“Why, though? Was it because I told you not to waste ball bearings?”
Janine looked puzzled for a second or two and then laughed. Not the hearty one, though.
“’Course not.”
She cuffed his shoulder, like he had seen her dad do to her.
“Was it because we argued about the colour of Marlon Brando’s hair?”
He stayed away from Rock Sand, even though he was sure he was the real reason — something to do with him.
“No, you crazy idiot,” said Janine.
“Why then?”
She invited Russell to sit down beside her and concentrated on giving her ears a good scratch.
“She’s clean,” she said.
“Yup. I gave her a bath.”
“I didn’t want you to see where I lived,” said Janine. “I mean, obviously you already had; I saw you see me. But for a second I thought I could still hide it.”
Danny was so relieved that it wasn’t about anything he had said that he almost started to laugh, but he noticed that Janine’s eyes had filled up. He didn’t want her tears to spill. They might be even harder to take than his mum’s.
“Why?” he said.
“Because you’re rich, and I’m poor.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
Danny looked down at Russell. She was staring straight ahead. He faced Janine again.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
“I’m not even a hundred per cent sure we’re rich.”
“Have you noticed what your house looks like compared to mine?”
Danny looked at his house.
“No.”
“You’ve got a swimming pool, for Christ’s sake.”
Danny looked at the pool with its deflated inner tube and sprinkling of debris. A blanket of rotting elm seeds had turned black and scummy.
“I haven’t swum in it yet this year.” He knew that wasn’t any kind of point.
“So? You could have.”
“But you and your dad were laughin’,” he said. “Sittin’ side by side, laughin’ at something one of you said.”
“So? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Everything.
They sat on the stoop for a while. The breeze picked up and rustled the treetops, wafted against their faces. Danny wondered what it would feel like to be a topmost leaf, at the mercy of the wind and the seasons and stones shot from slingshots.
Blue Vengeance Page 7