He heard the sound of her voice, but the individual words were lost on him.
“It’s most likely she’ll continue to have trouble sleeping, what with cutting back on the pills, but we can hope that’ll improve.”
Danny’s mind was on the school grounds with Janine and the setting sun.
“I wanted you to know, I’ve put the idea of you coming out to the farm on hold. I’ve spoken to Lena, and she’s going to do a little more cooking. I know you want to stay here, Danny, with your friends and activities and such, so we’ll continue on as we are and hope that your mum continues to make progress.”
Good. She was saying something good.
She stood up and smoothed her skirt.
Danny threw back the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His pajamas had trains on them and stopped halfway up his calves.
Dot smiled. “Looks like you need some new pajamas. This is quite a growth kick you’re on.”
She leaned over and kissed him on top of his head. As she left the room she described pumpkin pies and casseroles and what was where. She kept talking all the way down the stairs.
It was a windless Tuesday. The girls’ basketball team had a game after school so Miss Hartley would be there till 6:30 or so. After classes, as arranged, they both went home to feed their parents.
Danny made Kraft Dinner and wondered if it was the last thing he would ever make. The whole day had been like that, right from when he set his two feet on the floor to get out of bed. He had no intention of dying, but he felt a finality in every move he made. It wasn’t unpleasant.
For a second he caught the aroma of a chocolate cake baking and he felt a familiar movement inside his chest. Then both were gone.
The powdered cheese from the Kraft Dinner seemed distasteful to him for the first time. Yuck. More like powdered orange chemicals. Agent Orange. The stuff the Americans used to poison Vietnam and everybody who lived there. He’d heard about it on television back before Cookie died.
When he presented the pile of muck to his mother, she said, “Thanks, Danny. One of these days soon, I’m going to get up off this chesterfield and cook you your favourite supper.”
That was a shock. He didn’t want shocks on this of all days. It was enough that Dot had come and gone.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
He didn’t know what his favourite supper was. Did he have one? Would she have an answer to that if he asked? He didn’t want to put either of them through it.
Back in the kitchen, he couldn’t get his food to go down so he threw the orange mess into the garbage.
Russell watched him do it.
“Sorry,” Danny said.
His mother ate every bite of hers.
Russell didn’t like being left at home, but Danny closed both back doors firmly against her eager little face. Then he stopped at the shed to pick up the remaining pumpkin rinds.
He worried that they had left it too late. Even one week ago things would have been clearer, cleaner. But Janine had argued for the change in light. She could handle it. She could do this.
“Have you got the stone?” She stood with her hands in her back pockets, leaning against the school at the western entrance.
“’Course.”
He’d carried it in his pocket since the day he found it.
Miss Hartley’s Volkswagen and Mr. Potter’s Hudson were the only cars left in the teachers’ new parking lot. The bus that had brought the visiting team and their fans was parked in front of the school.
“I thought her car was blue,” said Danny.
“Nope. Green. More of a bluey green, really.”
“I could have sworn it was blue.”
“Blue. Green. What’s the diff?”
Janine was shooting stones at anything.
“The diff is one’s blue and one’s green,” said Danny. “Maybe she got it painted.”
Janine emptied her pockets of stones and moved them into a tidy pile with her foot.
“So, teach me,” she said.
There were more people around than on the previous evening. Mostly kids coming and going through the school doors. Game day.
“It feels weird,” said Danny. “You’re better than me.”
“We’ve been through this. And don’t talk so loud if you’re going to say things that aren’t fake.”
“Okay.” Danny cleared his throat. “The main thing is concentration. It’s a bit like bows and arrows in that way.”
“Do you shoot bows and arrows?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I don’t. But it figures.”
He crouched down and studied her stones.
“The size of the projectile is important too.” He hefted one in his hand. “You look to have done a good job choosing yours.”
“What should I aim at?”
“I’ll place these pumpkin rinds on top of the fence posts, and we’ll start with those.”
“Okay, good. I’ll shout out which one I’m aiming at, like when you call out the balls and pockets when you’re playing pool.”
“Do you play pool?”
“A little. I’ve gone with my dad to the Coronation pool hall.”
“Is this real talk or fake?” Danny said quietly.
“Real.”
“Okay. Down to business.” He put one rind on each of ten posts.
“Second from the left,” said Janine and missed the shot.
“Nice try,” said Danny. “Was that real or fake?”
“Fake, you moron.”
“Shh.”
“Okay, from now on everything’s fake. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Third from the right.” She missed again.
They discussed each shot and celebrated loudly when she hit one and then another.
Their play-acting wasn’t for nothing. Other kids were playing baseball at the south end of the field, out of listening range, but not out of sight. And Mr. Roberts at the corner house on Balsam Place was messing around in his front yard. The Coniston bus stopped at the corner of Highfield and Pinedale, and two men and one woman got off. The men trudged home across the school grounds. The woman took the sidewalk.
They talked louder when people went by.
“Good shot.”
“Watch this. Oops.”
“Not bad, not bad.”
The flow of people began to lessen, and the light began to fade.
“Let’s not do it today.” Danny looked at his watch. “It’s gettin’ too dark.”
“There she is,” said Janine.
It was 6:35, and Miss Hartley exited the building.
Janine reached out her hand, eyes on the teacher, and Danny took the chosen stone from his pocket and placed it on her palm. She settled it in the pocket of her slingshot and waited for her moment.
Miss Hartley walked towards her car, teetering on high heels, something Danny had never seen before. She was more inclined towards low heels and running shoes. She rummaged in her handbag. Stopped, started, stopped.
Water sounds floated over from Birchdale Betty’s yard.
She started again, and Danny worried that Janine had missed her chance. Miss Hartley had found her keys and paused for two seconds at the driver’s door.
Janine took her shot, and the teacher went down like a wounded marionette, fell to rest in a crumpled pile.
They looked at each other and turned towards the back lane between Pinedale and Balsam. Mr. Roberts was gone. At first they walked quickly, their sneakers crunching on the gravel.
“Who’s there?” Birchdale Betty called over from her yard. Her hearing was legendary. She was watering her fir trees — something she did every fall before winter set in.
Their footsteps quick
ened to a run, down Highfield to the river.
“We should have stayed.” Danny gasped for breath. “We were gonna stay.”
“Running seemed the only thing to do.”
“I know, but we have to go back.”
“It’s too late.”
“What if somebody saw us?”
“I don’t think anyone did.”
“Birchdale Betty yelled.”
“She doesn’t count,” said Janine.
Danny’s heart would not slow down. “I don’t know. This might be the only time in history when people pay attention to what she says.” Blood pounded in his head. “It might not be too late to go back.”
They stood inside the deepening dark until breath came more easily.
“We should have gone over the afterwards part more.” Danny sat down in the tall grass. “So we knew exactly what we were gonna do.”
“It’s okay,” said Janine.
“What do you mean it’s okay? How can it possibly be okay?”
“I missed the shot.” She sat down beside him.
“What?”
“I didn’t make the shot. My wrist twitched.”
“But…she went down. She fell down beside her car.”
“I know that.”
“At the exact same time that…”
“I didn’t hit her.”
“This is impossible.”
“I would think so too if I didn’t know otherwise.”
“Maybe you just think you didn’t hit her. Your mind could be playin’ tricks on you.”
“I hit her car,” said Janine. “I heard the plink.”
“What happened to her, then?”
“I don’t know.”
Danny imagined the shape of her now, getting lost in the shadows of the autumn night.
Then the sound of an ambulance wailed in the distance, came closer, was right on top of them. They both stood up.
“Maybe she died of fright when she heard the plink,” said Danny. “Let’s go back.”
“No. If we were going to check on her we should have done it at the time. That would have been the normal thing to do, not checking on her seven hundred hours later, after we’ve thought about it, and everybody else in the world is already there.”
“We could watch from a distance.”
“No.”
“What’ll we do then?”
“We’ll wait till tomorrow to see what happened.”
“Easy for you.” Danny didn’t know why that was so, but it seemed to be the case.
“Danny. Look at me.”
She held him by the shoulders, and her eyes drilled holes into his.
“We didn’t do it. We didn’t pull it off. There’s nothing for us to get into trouble for.”
Danny stared back without flinching.
“If you say so.”
“I do. I say so.”
They walked down the riverbank as far as they could towards St. Mary’s Road and then climbed up onto Lyndale Drive.
“You never miss,” said Danny.
“I missed tonight,” said Janine.
They went to Bober’s for some penny candy.
Danny stood in front of the gum machine and stared at the round balls inside the plastic bubble. Only two blacks visible in the sea of white, blue, red, green, orange, yellow, pink. Lots of pink. Whose idea was this? Every kid wants black. The familiar rage tore through him. There should be a gum machine that had all blacks. He wondered if there was such a thing anywhere in the world.
He bought a package of Black Cat gum — the kind in sticks.
Janine stole a licorice pipe and a few caramels.
“I can’t believe you stole, tonight of all nights,” Danny said when they were back on the street.
“I’ve never paid for candy at Bober’s,” said Janine. “I’m not about to start now.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Danny. “I have to go home.”
“Why?” she said. “It can’t even be eight o’clock.”
“I’ve had enough for one day.”
She let him go without further argument, and he headed home down Coniston. He didn’t have the wherewithal even to open his pack of gum; the act of chewing seemed far too strenuous.
Russell greeted him at the door in a full-out frenzy.
His mother called out. “Is that you, Danny?”
“No. It’s Danny Kaye,” he said.
“Come and see me a minute.”
She was sitting up.
“Let me look at you.”
Had the whole world changed tonight?
“You look shaken. Is something wrong?”
“No.”
She had lipstick on.
He plodded up the stairs to his room. This was no time for his mum to start paying attention to him. He hoped her sudden burst of energy would burn itself out overnight.
After a half hour or so he tiptoed back downstairs and phoned Janine. There was no answer. She was probably across the street giving Rock Sand a blow job.
“Danny?” said his mum.
He snuck back up the stairs to his room and closed the door.
40
Danny didn’t go to sleep that night. He didn’t even get out of his clothes. At 3:00 a.m. he slipped out the back door and pressed through the night air over to Janine’s. It was warm for October. Her house was in total darkness. He thought about throwing stones at her bedroom window, but realized he didn’t know which room in the tiny bungalow was hers. He went over to the school grounds, to the spot where they had put on their charade.
So, the word of two kids against the word of a mad woman. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that. Birchdale Betty may not have seen them, and Janine was awful sure that she’d missed her shot. But in that case, what happened? It all seemed impossible. Nothing could line itself up inside his head.
He went home and lay down on his bed till after the sun came up.
Thoughts, mostly unwanted, came and went. If Miss Hartley was dead, Mrs. Flood had lost a sister: a twin. It staggered him that he hadn’t thought about that before. They had laughed together; he had seen them.
When he went downstairs, his mother was in the kitchen stirring oatmeal porridge on top of the stove.
She smiled at him. The tiniest smile imaginable.
“Good morning, Danny.”
She must have said that to him before; it was a regular-type thing for people to say. But he couldn’t remember it if she had. And she wasn’t regular, hadn’t been for years. He struggled one more time to remember who she had been before her illness led her so often to the couch, and Cookie’s death glued her to it. He didn’t want to prefer the couch person, but in many ways she was easier.
His mouth opened but no words came out. He forced himself to eat a bowl of porridge. He couldn’t let her down on her first try. She stood and looked out the kitchen window while he ate. Neither of them spoke. And then she went back to the living room.
Danny rinsed his bowl. The oatmeal sat like gumbo in his gut. He walked out into the crisp fall morning. The brightness of the sun pained his eyes; it held little warmth. Leaves drifted down, and squirrels ran about preparing for winter. He wished it were one year ago, and that he could change the world he lived in.
He followed the familiar route to school. Nothing seemed different on the street. Kids passed him; he passed other kids. One or two of them said hi. No boys, just girls.
Maybe Miss Hartley would be there. Maybe it hadn’t happened. What had happened? He thought about Janine and wondered how she felt this morning. Cool, calm, and collected, he guessed, but she was convinced that she had missed. He wondered how she would be feeling if she didn’t think she’d missed, if she would be anxious the way he was. He suspected not.
Miss Hartley wasn’t t
here. The girls in Danny’s class were excited because they would have a substitute for phys ed. That was all that the excitement seemed to be about. He listened carefully all day to anything anyone had to say. Nothing caught his attention.
He didn’t see Janine so he walked over to her house after school.
All the crabapple trees along the lane were empty of fruit; they had been picked clean weeks ago. The apples that hadn’t been picked lay rotting on the ground. Danny regretted not having eaten more of them when they had been at their peak of deliciousness.
Janine was raking, out back where the willow tree was. He remembered his plan to fashion a new slingshot with its wood. It hadn’t happened. That plan was from a lifetime ago.
“Why are you rakin’?” he said. “Most of the leaves are still on the tree.”
She looked up and smiled. “I like raking.”
“Would you like some help? I could help.”
“No, it’s okay. We haven’t exactly got the biggest yard in the universe. I’m about done for now.”
“Miss Hardass wasn’t at school.”
“Yeah, I know. We had a sub for phys ed. Well, it isn’t a surprise, is it? Something happened to her.”
“What? What happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” Janine rested the rake against the side of the house.
“She couldn’t be dead or there would have been a bigger to-do at the school,” Danny said. “There was just girls bein’ happy because she was away.”
“It’s too bad. It would’ve been great if she’d died without us having anything to do with it.”
She was so sure.
“No, it wouldn’t have,” said Danny. “Not with us bein’ there and runnin’ away instead of helpin’.”
And leaving her with a twin sister who would miss her forever.
“You worry too much, Danny. Give yourself a break.” Janine squinted into the lowering sun. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s eat.”
They went in the house and Janine opened the fridge and every cupboard in the kitchen that had food in it. They ate bread and butter and peanut butter and jam, and cookies, and marshmallows, and what was left of a bought pumpkin pie.
“Aunt Dot made real pumpkin pies when she was here,” said Danny.
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