“Of course not. She’s a teacher. Why would I still know a lame-ass history teacher?”
“You tell me.”
“Get lost, you two. I’m busy.”
He buried his head inside his car.
They walked away down the lane.
“He’s lying,” said Janine.
“Told you.”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t think you did a very good job of easin’ into it like you said you were gonna,” said Danny.
“So what? We got what we came for.”
“You should have started with the weather or what are you doin’ or something like that. I would’ve.”
“Well if you would’ve, why didn’t you? Anyway, what’s the diff? Je m’en fiche. We know he’s a liar and a weasel.”
Janine’s eyes filled with tears. Danny hoped she wouldn’t cry for that no-good hoodlum with grease all over his hands. He pictured those hands mauling her and he couldn’t stand that she would cry for him.
“I’m sorry that you’re disappointed,” he said.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. I don’t want you to feel bad about anything. Even if…”
“Never mind. I know what you mean.”
“He knows now that we know,” Danny said.
“So what? That doesn’t have to be a secret.”
“Oh. I thought it did.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I think it would be better if it was.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, it isn’t a secret, and that’s that.”
They wound their way back to Janine’s house and sat down on the front steps.
The sky was the bright blue of coming autumn, and cumulus clouds scudded across it in the cool wind.
“Let’s go around to the stoop,” Danny said.
“Why?”
“He can see us from his house if he comes around front.”
“So?”
“Well he’s not gonna beat you up, is he? You’re a girl. I’m gonna be the one he kills.”
“Shh, my dad’s sleeping.”
“I’m gonna be the fall guy in all this,” Danny said.
“There isn’t going to be a fall guy.” The tears that threatened were gone. “Except maybe Mrs. Flood.”
They went around to the back and sat on the stoop beside Pearl, who was stretched out in the cool sun. Danny rubbed her tummy and wondered if there was a black-capped chickadee inside it.
“He would have gone to Queen Elizabeth for grades seven and eight,” Danny said, “before the addition was built on Nordale. That’s probably why I’d never heard of him.”
“I feel sick,” said Janine. “Like I’m going to puke. I knew it. I knew there was a good reason for us to spy on her.”
“Please don’t puke.”
“We can use this. We can use this big time.” She looked over both shoulders.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She stood up. “Let’s walk.”
They headed off in the direction of the icehouse.
“It’s probably not against the law what they’re doing,” Janine said, “but it might be against school laws and for sure against the former Mr. Flood’s laws. Maybe Rock is what happened to their marriage.”
“If Mr. Flood exists,” said Danny. “He could be dead. She could be the widow Flood.”
“It makes me sick to think of them actually doing it,” said Janine.
“Maybe they’re not.”
Danny thought about their palms touching, and the finger thing, and he knew they were.
“They are,” said Janine.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“How could he want to do it with her? She’s gotta be at least thirty-five.”
Danny thought the question was, why would she want to do it with him? but he held his tongue.
“Maybe she lured him in with her red lipstick and high heels,” he said.
“And she thought he could do things to her that Mr. Flood didn’t do,” said Janine.
“What kinds of things?”
“I don’t know. Wild things.”
“Maybe he thought the same,” said Danny, “with her bein’ old and all. That she could teach him stuff — things that Mr. Flood had done that he might not know about yet. It could work both ways.”
“Shut up, Danny.” She said it softly, and her eyes filled up again.
He stopped talking for a while, let her pull herself together.
“Even if they aren’t doing it,” Janine finally said, “we can pretend they are for our purposes.”
“They are,” said Danny. “They are doin’ it.”
She looked at him. “Do you know something more that you’re not telling me?”
“No.”
He thought about demonstrating, using Janine’s palm as an aid, but it seemed way too complicated. She might think that he wanted to do it to her, which he did, but she couldn’t know that yet.
Danny didn’t know what their purposes were, but he did know one thing.
“Janine…” It was the first time he had called her by her name. It felt strange…exciting, but in a self-conscious way.
“What?” She didn’t show any outward signs of noticing.
“Well, this whole new tack doesn’t have anything to do with Miss Hardass. It’s just something you’re goin’ off on because you’re jealous. The thing that you don’t know what it is, but that we’re gonna do, can’t take over from our original plan. It just can’t.”
“I’m not jealous,” she said. “What do you know about jealous?”
Everything.
“It’s just…I don’t want all our planning to go down the tubes. Maybe we should forget about this new batch of information till we’ve accomplished the Miss Hardass angle.”
“It’s all connected.”
“No, it’s not.”
Jealousy was blinding her, but he was teetering on the precipice of pissing her off. He couldn’t go back to the nowhere land where he had lived without her.
“I need to think,” said Janine.
“Okay. Thinking is often good.”
He knew it was Rock Sand who owned her heart. But maybe now, once the dust settled, he would own less of it. A small corner of it would be free for him.
They turned onto Monck Avenue and passed a hedge made up of lilac bushes. Danny picked a leaf.
“A lilac leaf is a perfect example of what a leaf should look like and feel like,” he said.
He ripped it in two and held it to his nose and inhaled.
“And smell like. I wonder why lilac leaves don’t change colour in the fall.”
“Beats me,” said Janine.
The wind was blowing the first leaves off the trees. It irritated Danny. If the wind didn’t blow so hard, the leaves could stay longer. If it didn’t blow at all, maybe some of them could stay all winter. Wind pissed him off.
“Lilac leaves are almost the last to fall,” he said. “I wonder if it has to do with them stayin’ green.”
“Do you mind?” said Janine. “I’m trying to think.”
“Sorry.”
They passed Morven Rankin and her brother, George. They were both wearing baseball gloves.
“Hi, George. Hi, Morven,” said Danny.
“Hey there, Danny. Hi, Janine,” George said.
Morven just stared. George nudged her with his elbow, but she kept on staring. Janine didn’t even look up; they were as bad as each other.
“Why didn’t you say hi?” said Danny. “That’s the girl who you told me the menstrual story about.”
“What? Oh.” Janine turned around and waved. “Hi, Rankins.”
/> George waved back.
They walked as far as the community club, where they sat by the tennis courts and watched grownups hit balls back and forth.
“How about the flamin’-shit-on-the-doorstep gag?” said Danny.
“Not good enough.”
35
“I’ve come up with something,” said Janine.
“What?”
They were sitting on the grass by the empty wading pool at the community club. Girls carrying their tap dancing shoes came and went.
“It’s a variation on the fiery shit in a bag.”
“Okay,” Danny said. “Let’s hear it.”
“Danny has a girlfriend,” two little girls sang as they walked by. “Danny has a girlfriend.”
“My dad has these roofers’ nails,” said Janine. “They’re excellent nails with good flat tops big enough they can stand up on their own.”
“Yeah?”
“Okay, so we place some nails standing up, inside the shit, inside the bag. We pour a bit of gasoline on it. Then we ring her doorbell, set a match to the works, and run like hell.”
“You’re talkin’ about the divorcée Flood, right?”
“Of course. Who else?”
“Well, I keep hopin’ we’re gonna be talkin’ about Miss Hardass.”
“Relax,” said Janine, “We’ll get to her.”
“You’ve got Janine’s cooties,” sang another girl as she tagged her friend.
The friend tagged her back.
“No, you.”
“You.”
“No, you.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Janine.
They took off down Lawndale, away from the taunts of the eight-year-olds.
“Remember when I said that Cookie was kind to me?” Janine said.
“Yeah?”
“It was when kids said things like that about me, to me: that whole cooties thing. If she saw it happening she would always come over and kind of make it seem like we were playing together, as if she wanted to be with me. And the kids would back off. It was before she got weird, when she was still half-assed popular back at Nordale.”
“I wonder why she had to go and get weird,” said Danny.
“Probably all kinds of reasons,” said Janine. “And don’t forget Hardass. She was on Cookie’s back right from the start, from the beginning of grade nine. Always on her about not being any good at anything. I don’t know why she picked on Cookie — lots of kids are terrible at sports — but she never gave her a break. Once she…”
“Once she what?” said Danny.
“Nothing.”
“Are you thinkin’ about the locker room thing?” said Danny. “Cookie told me about that.”
“Yeah, there was that. It was really horrible. God, I detest that bitch. Did Cookie tell you that she’s always in the locker room with us? For no good reason. That’s bizarre in itself, right? I mean, we have our underwear on, but still, it’s creepy. A couple of the girls took their bras off once and walked up to ask her a question — pushing it, you know, tits all over the place, but pretending nothing was out of the ordinary. And she didn’t say anything, didn’t tell them to put their bras back on, just drank it all in. Is that perverted or what?”
“Which girls?”
Janine chuckled. “Oh, Danny, Danny.”
He stepped out of reach so she couldn’t tousle his hair. Her voice had tousling all through it.
When they got to the river they sat down close to the edge.
“Who’s gonna do the placing of the nails?” said Danny.
“I’ll do it. I’ll wear rubber gloves.”
“Oh. Rubber gloves. That’s a good idea.”
“Well, what did you think, I’m going to do it with my bare hands?”
“No, I guess not.”
“This is going to be great. We’ll do it after dark. We want her to be sure to see the flames. It’ll scare the piss out of her.”
“And we don’t want anyone to see us. Maybe we should wear disguises.”
“What sort of disguises?”
“I’ve still got a Lone Ranger mask and hat.”
“I’ve got a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with a false nose attached.”
“This is why it’s not good that Rock knows that we know about them,” Danny said. “He’ll figure it’s us and he’ll rat us out.”
“She won’t tell him about it,” said Janine. “She won’t want him to know that anyone hates her that much. Plus, she won’t want him to know that she had shit attached to her feet.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mm-hmm. She’ll think it’ll make her less attractive in his eyes.”
“Will it?”
“Probably. Who wants to suck on toes that have been covered in shit? Even if they’ve been washed a billion times.”
“No one, I guess,” Danny said. He wasn’t sure he would want to suck on anyone’s toes no matter what, but he didn’t say so. Something else to think about.
“I hope she’s wearing flimsy slippers or bare feet,” said Janine. “That’s another good thing about doing it late. She’s more likely not to have shoes on.”
They picked Friday, September 18th. Dot was home on the farm, and Jake was working the three-to-eleven shift at the bakery. The sun set at a little after 7:30. They didn’t have to wait long after that for the cover of night, but to be on the safe side they decided on 10:00.
In the late afternoon they searched for dog shit in the grass by the river. They wanted it fresh. Janine had brought an old ladle, rubber gloves, and two plastic bags. They walked slowly, Russell trotting along ahead, till they found what they needed. Russell didn’t even try to contain her excitement.
Back at Janine’s house she transferred it to a flimsy paper bag, positioned the nails, and put it back into plastic for the journey to rue Valade. She put the ladle and gloves in a bag of their own and tossed them in the garbage out back of the shed.
Danny went home to make supper. It was almost 7:00 but he knew his mum wouldn’t care. He wasn’t hungry. He heated up some Chuckwagon Dinner for his mum and noticed for the first time how horrible it was. Thin stew, an embarrassment of stew. How could he have eaten it before without questioning it? He threw it out. Not even his mum deserved Chuckwagon Dinner. He heated up some tomato soup and placed a pile of soda crackers beside it on her tray. She put out her cigarette.
“Thanks, Danny,” she said.
“You’re welcome, Mum.”
He felt okay about the dog shit; it was a good prank. But the nails made him uneasy. He didn’t like imagining how it would feel if he was the one doing the stomping. And what if they got caught? This wasn’t his fight. What a waste of getting caught if it wasn’t even something he wanted to do.
But then, Miss Hartley wasn’t Janine’s fight, and she was gung-ho about that. At least she used to be. Maybe she just needed any fight, it didn’t matter whose.
They mustn’t forget that Miss Hartley lived upstairs. They had to keep an eye on her apartment as well as Mrs. Flood’s for any sign of interference.
He put several kitchen matches in his pocket and said goodbye to Russell at the back door. There was no room for a dog in the plan.
Janine was ready with the bag and a small jar of gasoline. They had a little time to kill so they played a few hands of rummy. At 9:30 they hopped on their bikes and cycled slowly over to rue Valade, stopping across from Saint Boniface Hospital to don their disguises. At 9:45 it was as dark as it was going to get.
“I hope that stupid wiener dog isn’t around,” Janine said, as they parked their bikes on rue Dollard by the fir tree across from the house.
Danny felt as though he hadn’t been much help so far.
“Do you want me to be the guy to do it?” he said.
“We’ll both
do it. I’ll position the shit and pour the gas, and then you drop the match and ring the bell, simultaneously if possible. Christ, I forgot matches.”
“I’ve got lots.”
“Really?”
“Yup,” said Danny, a hero for a moment or two.
“Okay, let’s just stand here and get our bearings.”
“We better not stand for long. There’s no one around right now. We oughta take advantage of that.”
“The lights are on in her apartment,” said Janine. “That’s good.”
Danny looked up and saw the stream of light running the length of the second floor.
“And none are on in Miss Hardass’s,” said Danny. “That’s also good.”
“Be sure to ring the right bell,” said Janine. “The middle one.”
He was tempted to ring the wrong bell to pay her back for thinking she needed to remind him to ring the right one.
“Will we wait to see what happens?” he said.
“Can’t. We have to be gone.”
“What’s the point then, if we don’t get to see how it goes?”
“We’ll hear how it goes. That’s good enough for me.”
The golden light up in the rooms looked as if it should be welcoming someone home, not housing the screams of a divorcée.
“What if someone else answers the door?” Danny said.
“We have to take that chance.”
“What if no one answers, and we burn the whole street down?”
“Danny, for Christ’s sake.”
“What if...”
“Shut up.”
They stood under the branches of the blue spruce. A car drove by towards Taché. Two teenagers walked past on the other side of the street. They were holding hands, and the girl’s head rested against the boy’s shoulder.
“Okay,” said Janine. “We’ll wait till those two lovebirds are out of sight and then, if there’s no other action, we’ll make our move.”
There was no other action.
“Okay, on the count of three. One, two, three.”
It went off without a hitch. The flames shot up higher than Danny had anticipated. Janine’s arm shot out and pushed him back. They ran to their bikes and were in a back lane a block away before they heard the howls of pain.
Blue Vengeance Page 18