Blue Vengeance

by Alison Preston

  “Do you wanna come back for supper?” he said when they approached his house.

  He didn’t want to lose her.

  “We have full-fledged meals when my aunt’s here.”

  “Are you sure you want me to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Won’t everybody mind?”

  “No way. My mum might not even see you, and Aunt Dot is a farm wife. She’s used to makin’ loads of food and havin’ visitors. They’ve even got hired hands who she cooks for.”

  “Okay then.”

  So…he had a future.

  23

  Danny tossed two mats over the railing of the stoop to add credence to his rug-beating story.

  “Just airing one or two things out,” he said to Dot when he saw the questioning look on her face.

  It was just mid-afternoon so Danny headed out again after telling Dot that he had invited Janine for supper. He found a secluded spot and sat staring out at the river. The day was cloudy, but the trees still cast their shadows on the water. It was, as always, travelling towards downtown. Here and there it looked as if it was going nowhere, but still, it moved. Those must be the spots where the current came into play — the current that everyone went on about — the one that caused one person a year to drown. Cookie was this year’s person.

  The banging on the back door had sent the toast clear out of Danny’s hand onto the kitchen floor. Before either he or his mother could respond the door slammed open, and a soaking wet Frank Foote gasped, “Call an ambulance. It’s Cookie. She was in the river.”

  They stood mute for what seemed a long time when Danny remembered it later. He worried that he hadn’t acted fast enough. Neither of them had known that she wasn’t in her bed. His mum pointed to the telephone in the hallway, and Frank lurched forward to make the call, drenching the floor with river water. A puppy was suddenly scrambling around the kitchen making squeaking sounds. Frank’s puppy. Danny was out the door in his pajamas and bare feet, at the riverbank in seconds. He couldn’t find her at first, not till Frank caught up and pointed a little further downstream. Then he saw her. She was on her front at the bottom of the bank, barely out of the water. Frank must have dragged her in and turned her head to the side, eyes to the river. Danny slid down and tried to look at her face. If he could just have pushed the swollen river aside. It kept getting in his way.

  Barbara Blue stood at the top of the riverbank staring down, and Frank joined Danny at the bottom. He still had streams of water on his face — tears or river or both. He moved forward to help, and they turned her over.

  Cookie’s wide-open eyes and blue lips shook him, but Danny began mouth-to-mouth respiration. He had learned it at the Sherbrook Pool, where he had earned his intermediate badge last winter. Her lips felt like cold rubber, like cold inner tube.

  “The ambulance is coming,” Frank said.

  Danny kept on.

  Cookie was wearing her housecoat with deep, buttoned pockets. There were buttons up the front too. Danny was glad of that. If she had been wearing one with a tie it might have opened and come off, and she might have been naked, and Frank would have seen her, and the ambulance men would see her, and he would see her. Cookie. He kept on with the mouth to mouth.

  Frank put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I can hear the ambulance, Danny. Help is almost here.”

  He heard his mum say, “She has a hole in her heart,” as though that had something to do with anything.

  The ambulance men told Danny and Frank to stand back, and they worked over Cookie for a minute or two.

  “I’m sorry, boys,” said one and he headed up the bank to where Barbara Blue stood waiting.

  Danny fell to his knees by his sister and pressed his face into the soaked terry cloth that covered her narrow chest. She smelled of the river. He wedged a hand under each side of her and hung on. A keening sound escaped from inside him, and Frank knelt down and put a hand on his back.

  The ambulance man struggled back down the embankment with a stretcher.

  Danny didn’t want to let her go. If he let her go she would be gone. He wanted to stay with her at the river, at least until he died.

  “Danny?” His mum’s voice wafted down.

  “I’ll go,” Frank said. “You’ll be okay?”

  “Mmph,” he said.

  Sometimes it occurred to Danny to go over to Frank’s house and stand next to him, the boy who tried to save her. But he couldn’t do it; not now, anyway, these days when so many of his thoughts ran towards destruction. He felt himself too great a contrast to Frank Foote, who did such a first-rate job of caring for his own doomed sister.

  He thought about how blue Frank had been from the icy water of the Red and wondered if they had thanked him enough. He had even had the presence of mind to shut his puppy up in their house till the ambulance had taken Cookie away. No lights, no siren.

  She had begun drawing nooses and daggers in the margins of her scribblers during the last months of her life. Other things too. Danny often didn’t know what they were; she wasn’t a very good drawer. But they all had to do with pain and death. Droplets of blood. Whose blood? Her own, Miss Hartley’s, their mother’s?

  One time he came upon her as she was drawing a big squarish object with saw-toothed edges on two sides.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “A razor blade.”

  “Why are you drawing razor blades?”

  “It’s not razor blades. It’s a razor blade. And I’m drawing it because in art class Mr. Loepky told us to draw a picture of the World Series.”

  Gillette advertised during the World Series games so it made sense in an odd sort of way. Drawing a razor blade was easier than drawing a ball player or bleachers full of fans, or even a bat or a ball. But it still didn’t sit well with him. When she got out her watercolours and dipped her brush in red paint, he was sure she was going to add blood to the blade. He breathed a sigh of relief when she carefully printed How’re Ya Fixed For Blades? at the bottom of the page.

  It was Gillette’s slogan. But did it have to be red?

  He headed back up to the drive now, home to Dot’s Sunday roast and to their dinner guest.

  When Janine arrived her hair was nicely combed, and Danny caught a whiff of flowery shampoo when he greeted her at the gate.

  He took her inside and introduced her to Aunt Dot, who greeted her and said, “Do your folks know you won’t be home for supper, dear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s just my dad, and he says to thank you very much.”

  “Well, you tell him that you’re most welcome. We’re happy to have you. Maybe next time your dad can come too.”

  Danny blushed. He hadn’t thought to anticipate all the things Dot might say to embarrass him while Janine was there. Up to now, he had left all talk of next times to Janine.

  “It smells great in here,” she said.

  “That’s the roast,” said Dot. “We’re about ready to sit down. Danny, take Janine in to meet your mum, and I’ll get everything on the table.”

  Danny hadn’t bargained on this. He and Janine went into the hall and he poked his head around the corner to see what sort of shape his mum was in. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t look too bad, but he didn’t want these two parts of his life to intermingle. He didn’t want his mum’s sick aura to touch Janine. He made murmuring sounds for Dot’s benefit, motioned to Janine to do the same, and then guided her back through the kitchen to the dining room.

  The table was set for three.

  “You can just slip into Danny’s mum’s place there, Janine,” said Dot. “She won’t be joining us.”

  “Well, isn’t that a surprise,” said Danny. He was irritated with her for telling him to introduce Janine to his mum. He hadn’t done it, but still.

  Janine had two helpings of everything: roast beef, carrots and sw
eet onions that had been cooked around it, mashed potatoes and gravy, Yorkshire pudding, and apple brown betty for dessert. Aunt Dot gloried in watching her eat.

  “Thanks, Aunt Dot,” Janine said, as she pushed away from the table. “That was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.”

  Dot was flushed with pleasure. “You’re so welcome, my dear. You must come again.”

  Janine insisted on clearing up, and Danny helped. Dot went into the front room to sit with her sister. The kids left the kitchen spick and span.

  “God, that was good,” said Janine before she left him at the lane.

  He wanted her never to leave. He thought about walking her home but it seemed not quite suitable, seeing as she had walked him home earlier.

  24

  During the past few days there had been no more talk of whisking Danny and his mother out to the farm, but he knew he’d have to remain on his toes as far as Dot was concerned.

  She was in the kitchen preparing to go home. This involved attaching notes to casseroles and rearranging the fridge by moving the older stuff to the front.

  “I’ve laid in some groceries, Danny. There are some things that are going to run out before I come back — milk and such — and I may not have covered everything you like. We really should sit down, you and I, and make a master list.”

  “We can manage, Auntie Dot. I’m good at shopping for groceries.”

  She tousled his hair. He wished people would stop doing that. He’d just combed it and added a little Wildroot Cream-Oil that he’d picked up at Wade’s last time he was there.

  “I know you are, dear.” Dot wiped her hand on her apron.

  “There’s a carrier on my bike. It holds a lot.”

  They had eaten lunch, and Danny was itching to get out of the house.

  “Your mum’s set up on the couch again.” Dot said it as if it was normal. “Edwin’s going to be here in a few minutes to pick me up. Did you brush your teeth, honey?”

  He sighed.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I know you don’t need that type of reminder.” She sighed too and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Sit with me for a minute, Danny.”

  “I have to go,” he said. “Things to do.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  He pulled out a chair and perched on the edge of it.

  Dot made a steeple of her fingers.

  “This girl, Janine, isn’t she a little…I don’t know…mature for you?”

  Danny wondered for a second if she was referring to the two nicely contained mounds underneath Janine’s T-shirt.

  “No,” he said.

  He thought about things Janine had said that hinted at experiences beyond his and he saw how Dot might think she was right about this. But it didn’t matter. He was just a couple of years and one or two experiences behind Janine. He would catch up to her, no sweat.

  “Don’t get me wrong, honey. She seems like a nice girl. It’s just that she’s…well…she must be at least Cookie’s age, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah. She’s pretty much exactly Cookie’s age.”

  His aunt didn’t say anything for a minute or two. Danny hoped she was thinking that he thought of Janine as an older sister, a sort of substitute for Cookie.

  “I haven’t seen Paul in a while,” Dot said. “Or those other fellas, Stu and Stumpy, is it?”

  “Stubby.”

  He wished he could talk things over with Cookie now. She’d know it was okay for him to be friends with Janine and might even have the words for him to say so Dot would think so too. She’d often been good at knowing what other people should do or say — just not herself.

  Too bad he hadn’t been friends with Janine before Cookie died. Too bad Cookie had never brought her home. They could have hung around, the three of them. He and Janine could have saved her together.

  “Janine was Cookie’s best friend,” Danny said.

  It wasn’t untrue.

  “Oh,” said Dot. “I didn’t know that. I guess it makes sense, then, that you’d want to spend time together.”

  “Yeah.”

  “To help each other with losing Cookie.”

  “Yeah.”

  He was soon out the door, marvelling at his own genius.

  As he practised at the river he wondered how Janine was feeling in the aftermath of eating supper with him and Dot. Fine, he supposed.

  Then his thoughts turned again to Cookie, to the aftermath of her death.

  Because of the uncertainty surrounding it, the City Medical Officer of Health was called in. They looked into it: talked to Frank, to Danny, to Barbara Blue. They talked to the ambulance attendants, and studied the riverbank. Then they wrote up a report and ruled what happened to Cookie death by misadventure.

  Frank explained to them that she was knocking against the river’s edge when he saw her. He was out early with his new dog. It was the pup that spotted her first. She was caught between a rock and a large branch. He had to go right into the water to free her from the branch. Yes, he admitted — he was a strong swimmer, a strong treader of water. He was able to lift her up onto the shore. She was very light.

  The autopsy report said that she had water in her lungs. That meant she drowned. If she hadn’t had water in her lungs it would have meant that she died first and then fell in.

  So Danny imagined her drowning — swallowing water, breathing water, till there was no place inside her that allowed for any more.

  The report also said that there were marks on her body where she’d been cut, inches below her naval and on her breasts and just inside her hipbones. Cuts made with a knife, some of which had healed and left scars, some with scabs, some brand new. No one told Danny that part. He overheard Dot and Edwin discussing it using their most serious voices.

  Uncle Edwin was the only person he could ask about the particulars.

  “Why didn’t the weight of Cookie sink her?” he said. “I know she didn’t weigh much, but still.”

  “It would have, Daniel, along with the pull of the current. Long enough that she took in enough water to drown. But then the current would have pushed her up again, wedging her into her resting place between the tree limb and the rock. Currents are funny that way.”

  “Funny,” said Danny.

  “And then, as you know, her housecoat was caught on the limb.”

  “Frank uncaught it.”

  “Yes. It was lucky that she got caught that way, so that Frank and his pup found her.”

  “Yeah,” said Danny. “Lucky.”

  His uncle explained about eddies, but Danny wasn’t listening anymore. He pictured Cookie holding her breath till she couldn’t and then breathing water instead of air. Then he pictured her not holding her breath at all, just welcoming the filthy river till it took her over. He hoped it didn’t take too long.

  Someone found the plate that had held the pineapple upside-down cake that Danny, Cookie, and their mother had eaten for dessert at Cookie’s last supper. It had been licked clean.

  She’d had two cans of beans and two cans of Klik in the deep pockets of her housecoat. No one talked about that. But that’s how Danny knew she was dead on purpose. She had used them to weigh herself down.

  He didn’t know if other people thought she had meant to do it. Edwin made a big to-do about the slick flatness of the grass where they figured she had gone in, as though she had slipped unintentionally at the top of the low cliff, gone over the side, and kept on sliding.

  Danny and Russell passed that way now, and he stopped to look.

  There hadn’t been a whisper of suicide, but he knew that’s what it was. Also, deep in his heart, he knew that Miss Hartley wasn’t the sole cause of Cookie’s agonizing misery. Still, someone had to pay, and she was by far the best of all possible targets, she with her poisonous words and brutal acts of cruelty.
<
br />   25

  It took Danny a couple of days to realize that something potentially very useful was happening. It was shortly after Dot had gone home.

  Construction began in the empty lot on the north side of the high school. He noticed it one evening on his way home from baseball at the flood bowl. He had signed up after Janine’s speech about needing more than one friend.

  The friend part was going nowhere, but he didn’t expect or even want it to. He didn’t hate baseball and he wasn’t terrible at it. He never got picked last because there were three or four other guys who were worse than he was.

  His position was usually centre field; sometimes he played shortstop between first and second. The good players played at the official shortstop position between second and third. When he occasionally caught a ball, his fellow teammates shouted things like, “Atta way to be, Danno,” and he liked that.

  It was getting tiresome, though. He had to force himself to go and he didn’t always make it.

  Paul and Stubby played, but so far neither of them had been on his team. Paul wasn’t mean to Danny, but neither did he seek him out, and Danny didn’t try. Trying didn’t feel right. Maybe later, when it was all over.

  In the good old days, Danny and Paul would have spent a large portion of their time at the construction site beside the school. This one was pretty boring compared to some. A couple of summers ago they had revelled in the chaos of two classrooms being built on the west side of Nordale. For the whole season it kept them occupied in the evenings, when the workmen had gone home. They fashioned forts and caves and a high-wire area, where they placed a two-by-four over a couple of sawhorses and performed amazing feats of balance and skill. Sometimes they pretended they were workmen.

  “Hand me that level, will ya, Bert,” Paul would say. “This window is lookin’ a little lopsided. And I wanna shim up those joists.”