Blue Vengeance

by Alison Preston

  “Sure thing, Marv. Just wait till I finish here with the winch. It’s actin’ up again.”

  The day after Danny had noticed this new site he went back while the men were at work and watched them dig, level, and prepare to lay cement. When one of them sat down on a crate for a smoke and a drink from his thermos, Danny sauntered over.

  “What are you building?” he said.

  “Just a parking lot for the teachers, buddy boy. Nothing very exciting.”

  Danny couldn’t think of anything more to say, so he stepped away and left the man to his cigarette and coffee. There were some kids on the other side of the school grounds playing baseball. He wanted to join them and wondered why it had suddenly become so hard. Joining in used to come naturally, like drinking cool water to quench his thirst. He sat down in a sunny spot against the school, where he couldn’t see either the parking lot or the game, and watched instead the pictures inside his head, mostly of Janine.

  Two mornings later, he presented his mum with a bowl of Rice Krispies and made two pieces of toast for himself. He buttered them and looked for jam. What he found was an empty jar of E.D. Smith apricot. Why would someone put an empty jar of jam back in the cupboard, he wondered, and then realized it had probably been him.

  He spread brown sugar on his toast and as he ate it he made a grocery list without asking his mum if she wanted anything. He took some bills from the drawer and folded them into his pocket.

  On the ride home from the A&P Danny congratulated himself. It was the best job of shopping he’d done so far. There was cherry jam, bread, eggs, peanuts in the shell, milk — everything on his list plus a few items that he hadn’t thought to buy before: Sugar Pops, two kinds of cheese that weren’t Velveeta, and crackers that weren’t soda crackers. They were called Sociables and they looked good on the box. He concentrated on the road to avoid trouble with the eggs. He whistled as he cycled.

  When he got home the couch was silent.

  It came to him as he put the groceries away. The new parking lot was directly adjacent to the north side of the school grounds. If he and Janine were to practise in that area, it would make all the sense in the world for one of them to accidentally hit Miss Hartley on her temple and watch her die instead of get into her car.

  In his head when he described it to Janine he said, the north side of the school, hoping she would be impressed with his grasp of directions and forget that he had not known which way was east. He could also say, on the way home from baseball, so she would know that he was playing with others. And then he would quit but not tell her. It seemed dumber all the time to be putting himself through it just because a girl thought he should have more than one friend.

  He had the sense of time running out. Winter was a long way off, but when he pictured it, he saw an impossible place, with snow-covered streets and thick mitts and heavy hooded parkas.

  26

  Danny had planned on two new pieces of toast, with jam this time, but he couldn’t wait.

  As he rode over to Janine’s, he thought about Cookie. In 1966 he would be older than she ever was, ever would be. He supposed that when he was ninety he would still think of her as his big sister because he had never experienced her as anything else.

  Why had she been so messed up? There was a time when she ate like a regular kid and hated throwing up as much as he did.

  He remembered her love of Cherry Blossoms. She had thought they were almost too good to be true, the same way he thought about yo-yos and kaleidoscopes. Danny thought they were a gyp. He thought they shouldn’t cost as much as other chocolate bars; they seemed so small. She explained to him that they were as big as the others. She pointed out the weight on the box compared to the weight on a Jersey Milk. He still didn’t buy it.

  She was particular about chocolate bars. For instance, she liked Jersey Milks better than Dairy Milks. Danny hadn’t been able to tell the difference. She made him sit down for a taste test, and he couldn’t say why exactly, but he found he agreed. Jersey Milk was better.

  “Told ya,” she’d said.

  That was a long time ago.

  He almost missed Janine. She was on her bike.

  “I have to go grocery shopping.” She skidded to a stop. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “Sure.”

  He didn’t tell her that he had just been.

  “Do you have money in case you want to get something?” she said.

  “Yup. Go home, Russell. We’re gonna be ridin’ in traffic.”

  Russell made an about-face and trotted off back up the lane.

  “Will she really go home?” said Janine.

  “Yup. She’ll probably head out again soon after she gets there, but for sure she’ll go home first.”

  They pedalled over to Dominion against the warm dusty wind. Janine had a big carrier too.

  “We’ve got a lot in common,” said Danny.

  “Like what?”

  “We both have big carriers on our bikes. I know loads of kids with no carriers at all.”

  They parked and got a cart.

  Janine whisked through the aisles, throwing things into it.

  “Don’t you have a list?” Danny said.

  “No.

  “Don’t you forget stuff without a list?”

  “No.”

  She stopped so abruptly that Danny banged into the back of her.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t look anywhere. Back up. Hardass is over there in the frozen foods. She’s with another woman.”

  “Let me look.” Danny moved to get past her.

  “Stop. Use your head.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t want her to see us together, you idiot.”

  “Why?”

  Janine ignored his question and approached the end of the aisle again.

  “They’re not actually sharing a cart, but they’re definitely together,” she said when she came back. “It must be her sister. Unbelievable.”

  “What’s unbelievable?”

  She ignored him again.

  “Let me have a look,” Danny said.

  “You can in a minute.”

  “Why do you think it’s her sister? Couldn’t it just be a friend?”

  “Shh! They look a lot alike. Christ, they look exactly alike.” Janine took another peek. “The shape of them, their size. Plus, I doubt if Hardass has any friends.”

  “Let me see.”

  “Okay, quick. They’re comparing items. One second at most.”

  Danny peered around the cans of pineapple stacked at the end of the aisle. “They look alike except for their hair.”

  “They sure do,” said Janine, “right down to their flat asses.”

  “I can’t see those,” said Danny, straining again to look.

  “Okay, pull back.”

  “They don’t dress much alike,” Danny said.

  “So?”

  “Maybe they’re sisters, but not twins.”

  “Who said they were twins?”

  “I don’t know. Me?”

  “Who cares? We can use this.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Janine took another look. “They gotta be twins. This is unreal.”

  “I wonder why they don’t dress alike if they’re twins.”

  Janine sighed. “Jesus, Danny. Twins don’t dress alike after the age of six, when they go to school and get teased to death and realize their mums have been making fools of them all through the first years of their lives. You absolutely flabbergast me with the things you don’t know.”

  He poked his head out again and stared in plain sight at the two women chuckling over the frozen foods. He didn’t care if they saw him. It was the only thing he could think of doing to pay Janine back for her meanness.

&nbs
p; “They’re laughin’,” he said.

  “Bitches. That makes me sick. They shouldn’t be allowed to laugh.”

  She pulled his T-shirt till it stretched out about a foot and a half.

  “You’re wreckin’ my shirt.” He stepped back out of sight. “I wonder if they live together.”

  “Probably not,” said Janine. “They have separate shopping carts. Unless they live together, but keep their food separate. I can see them doing that — yelling at each other if, say, Hardass’s tomatoes touch the sister’s lettuce. Coming to blows. Maybe the sister’ll end up killing Hardass, and we can sit back and relax.”

  “That’d be great,” said Danny. “But then...” Then, we wouldn’t get to do it. He stopped himself before he said it. “Maybe they live together but have two fridges,” he said instead.

  Janine chuckled.

  She reminded him of Jake when she laughed. He remembered the splendour of her honest laughter, as father and daughter sat next to one another and shared a joke in their backyard.

  “I think it’s most likely that they live in separate houses,” she said. “The sister might have a husband. Most women do.”

  “Miss Hardass doesn’t,” Danny said.

  “Probably because every man she’s ever met in her entire life hates her,” said Janine. “You gotta get out of here. We don’t want them to see us together. Meet me back at my house. It’ll be okay if they see me on my own.”

  “I’m not clear on why they can’t see us together if it’s gonna be an accident,” said Danny.

  “Oh, yeah. Well…it just seems right is all.”

  27

  “Quick. Get on your bike,” Janine said as she steered hers into the backyard.

  “Why?”

  Danny was sitting on the grass, patting Pearl, who was on her side with her eyes closed.

  Janine dumped her groceries on the stoop.

  “Hurry up. They’re still there. We have to follow them and find out where they live.”

  Danny stood up. “I should really go home and make lunch for my mum.”

  “Are you insane?” said Janine. “Come on.” She was back on her bike and heading out of the yard.

  “Why do we need to know where they live?” Danny had caught up, and they were careening side by side through the streets.

  She didn’t answer; he knew she heard him.

  “I really should go home and make my mum some lunch,” he said again.

  “What will happen if you don’t?”

  It wasn’t the first time Danny wondered that himself. She often didn’t eat much of what he presented to her anyway. What would happen if he didn’t take a tray to her three times a day? Would she get up and make something for herself? Would she starve? Would she die?

  “She’d get skinnier and skinnier, and I’d probably get taken away from her. Not by the Children’s Aid Society, but by Aunt Dot.”

  “I like Aunt Dot,” said Janine.

  “Me too. But I don’t wanna go and live with her.”

  “I get it. This won’t take long.”

  She sped ahead of him, and he pushed to catch up.

  They wheeled into the parking lot as Miss Hartley and her sister were loading their groceries into the trunk of the dark blue Beetle.

  “Hide,” said Janine.

  There wasn’t a lot to hide behind, so Danny crossed Marion Street to Anderson’s Animal Hospital and went inside. The cacophony was such that no one noticed him standing sentry at the window. He waited till the women were on their way down Marion before he emerged and shouted across at Janine. They headed after the Volkswagen.

  It wasn’t much of a trip.

  “Hardass drives like an old lady,” Janine said over her shoulder. “Slow down a little.”

  “You’re tremendously bossy today,” said Danny.

  They followed the two women to a big old house on rue Valade in the old section of St. Boniface where people spoke French. Miss Hartley dropped her sister off and gunned the car as she drove away.

  “I guess she only drives slow when her sister’s in the car,” said Danny.

  He watched as Janine wrestled her bike behind a tree.

  “We don’t need to hide anymore,” he said. “I’m not sure why we had to hide in the first place.”

  “If we do something to the sister, we don’t want her to have seen us beforehand.”

  “Why would we do something to the sister?”

  Janine didn’t answer him so he asked again.

  “I don’t know, do I?” she said.

  It was a corner house. The sister had two bulging paper bags full of groceries. She fought with the latch on the gate and then struggled up a staircase at the back of the house. She entered a doorway on the second floor.

  “You’d think Miss Hardass could’ve helped her with her bags,” said Danny.

  “She’s not that kind of person.”

  A plump brown wiener dog walked up to them and began to bark.

  “Tais-toi, maudisse!” said Janine. “Vas-t’en! Go away!”

  The dog stayed where it was and kept barking.

  “Go and check the mailbox.”

  “Why?” said Danny.

  “Just do it. And then we should get out of here. This dog isn’t going to stop barking.”

  “What am I lookin’ for?”

  “Anything.”

  Danny found three mailboxes lined up next to the front door. They had nameplates attached. The first one said Roger Dubois, the second one, Mrs. Randolph Flood, and the third one, Miss Gretchen Hartley. Miss Hardass? Danny didn’t know her first name. Could there be a third sister? The discovery that Miss Hartley lived in the house (if indeed it was her) felt like an over-the-top gift, if for no other reason than it gave him something fabulous to report to Janine.

  Next to the door there were three doorbells, also with names attached to them. Miss Hartley was on the top floor. by the looks of it, Mrs. Randolph Flood in the middle, and Roger Dubois on the main floor.

  He rang the bottom bell just because, and ran back to where Janine stood behind the tree.

  “I’ve got some news,” he said. “Let’s go to the park.”

  “What?” said Janine. “What news?”

  “Wait’ll we get there.”

  He hopped on his bike. “Let’s stop at the Spanish Court on the way and get something to eat, my treat, and then I’ll tell you.”

  When they got to the monument in Coronation Park they concentrated on their Fudgsicles for a few minutes. Janine licked hers from the bottom up to keep the ice cream from running down her wrist. Danny’s caught the sleeve of his long-sleeved shirt.

  “Okay, what?” said Janine.

  “What’s Miss Hardass’s first name? Do you know?”

  “Gretchen.”

  “’Kay. She lives on the top floor, and her sister lives on the second. Her name is Mrs. Randolph Flood.”

  Janine was as excited as he was.

  “Jeez, if she lives there too, it was lucky she didn’t come back while we were still there.”

  “Yeah. She couldn’t have gone far. She’ll be needin’ to get her frozen stuff in the fridge.”

  “Mrs., eh?”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Randolph Flood, you said.”

  “Yeah. Why are we excited about this? What does knowin’ where they live have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. Maybe something.”

  “Our plan is still gonna take place in the school parking lot, isn’t it? You haven’t changed your mind about that, have you?”

  “Parking lot?”

  Danny realized in all the excitement that he had forgotten what he had set out to tell her in the first place.

  “That’s good,” said Janine when he to
ld her of his discovery. “That’s very good. But we have to wait till fall for that, when school’s back in. We might want to do something minor before then, to shake them up a little. Not a lot, just a little. And it could involve knowing where they live.”

  “I’m not sure why the sister needs shakin’ up,” said Danny. “Maybe we should do the big thing before fall now we know where they live. What if Miss Hardass changes schools or something?”

  “We’ll monitor them,” said Janine. “We’ll dog their every move.”

  “What if they move to France?”

  “Then we’ll quit dogging their moves. Don’t borrow trouble, Danny.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means don’t worry about things that may never happen. In this case, things that more than 99.9 per cent for sure won’t happen. I wonder if the sister has a husband.”

  “Well, she is a Mrs.”

  “I’m not sure if I want her to have a husband or not,” said Janine. “It confuses the picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “I don’t know yet. You’ve got chocolate all around your mouth and all over your sleeve. Why are you wearing a long-sleeved shirt when it’s a thousand above?”

  Danny rubbed his arm across his face. He couldn’t tell her that he wore long sleeves to cover up his weakling arms. He had never even considered his arms till he saw Rock Sand’s muscles bulging out of his T-shirt. And Janine had admired them; she had touched a bicep.

  “I’m thinkin’ the husband is gone or dead,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “If you have a husband, you’re unlikely to live on the second floor of an old house. You’re more likely to live in an entire house.”

  Janine smiled at him. It was the kind of smile she used when she tousled his hair and it made him feel as if he knew nothing. He stayed out of reach.

  “It seems stupid that they live in the French part of town,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause they’re not French.”

  “So what? I’m French and I live in an English part of town.”

  “You’re French?”