by Brian Doyle
Then along comes Connie Pan on her lunch break from her part-time job up at the Hong Kong Beauty Salon and right away Dink can’t wait to tell her who he saw going into Valentino’s for lunch today.
“Guess who I saw going into Valentino’s today,” he says to Connie Pan.
For some reason or other I don’t want Dink to start talking about that in front of Connie Pan. Maybe it’s because she’d be embarrassed or shy about a subject like that or maybe it’s because I don’t want Dink to tell her that we ran through there last summer with the waiters chasing us, just to see what it was like. I don’t want Connie Pan to know I did that.
So I change the subject.
I start telling Connie Pan and Dink and the guy from the Bangkok Grocery up the street, who is standing around eating his fries, all about Mr. Fryday’s song and how he wants it to go on TV and on the radio. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is on, the Second Movement, playing nice and quiet. I’ve got it turned down low.
We’re having a very nice time.
Then I start telling them all about how when Mr. Fryday first started in the chip business he parked his wagon right in front of a restaurant on Rideau Street and got into big trouble with everybody. What happened was, people were buying potato chips from Mr. Fryday’s wagon and then taking them into the restaurant and sitting there with a glass of water and eating the chips. They were even using the restaurant’s salt and vinegar which was on the table, and, like the owner was shouting to the cops after, even using his ketchup and his serviettes and his forks!
So the owner started kicking the people out of his restaurant and a fight started out on the street because the owner pushed one of them and spilled her chips on the sidewalk and she said the restaurant guy should buy her some new chips because she hardly had eaten any of them. And he said she only had a few left in the bottom and her boyfriend said are you pushing my girlfriend and punched the restaurant guy in the mouth. Then Mr. Fryday got out of his wagon and the dishwasher from the restaurant and two waiters came out and a big brawl started and Mr. Fryday had his pants ripped right off him. And somebody threw a restaurant ashtray through the window of Mr. Fryday’s truck. And a bunch of punkers came out of the Video Arcade next door and were rocking Mr. Fryday’s wagon trying to tip it over when the cop cars came screaming up.
That’s why Mr. Fryday never parks in front of a restaurant. There’s all kinds of restaurants in Chinatown on Somerset Street in Ottawa and Mr. Fryday’s wagon is parked between them, not in front of any of them.
I give Connie Pan a loonie and ask her to feed the meter for me.
I like the way she takes the loonie in between her thumb and forefinger and slips it in the meter. Then twists the handle.
We’re having a nice time.
But, all of a sudden everything is ruined.
Because here comes Dumper Stubbs in his filthy truck with the big ugly steel bumper on the front to pick up the trash.
When he dumps my trash he hits the can against his grease barrel and it makes a dull, heavy clunking sound.
It’s like my dad used to say. You’re having a lovely garden party and a skunk shows up!
After everybody leaves it gets quiet and I start Beethoven’s Fifth at the beginning of the First Movement.
Purple clouds are rolling in and the sky coming over from the west is black. There’s a wind blowing dirt and papers up in the air. A woman goes by holding her veil with one hand and her long dress with the other.
For the first two movements of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 to play on my disc player in my wagon it takes exactly seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds.
Exactly seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds after I start Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, I see Mr. Boyle coming up the street from Valentino’s towards my wagon. As he gets closer I can see he’s staggering a bit. The wind is giving him a bad time. The kind of wind you get in the hot summer after a long heat wave and before a big storm on Somerset Street in Chinatown in Ottawa.
I can tell he’s not going to see me here in my wagon. He’s going to walk right by. Unless I do something.
I turn up the volume until I figure the noodles on the shelves in the Mekong Grocery must be trembling.
Then, just as he’s passing my window, I shut Beethoven completely down. The jolt snaps his head around but he still can’t see me.
I shout. I shout the answer.
“You do that at home all the time!”
He stops but he still doesn’t seem to know where the voice is coming from.
I shout again.
“You do that at home all the time!”
He looks right at me in my wagon.
There’s steam swirling around me in the window. He’s squinting a bit. There’s thunder rumbling. The thunder crashes. The crash seems to open his eyes. He sees me now. He figures out who it is. He figures out what I’m saying.
I crank the Beethoven up as far as I can without blowing my speakers.
I yell.
“How are the naked women doing today? At Valentino’s. The naked women on the tables. How are they today?”
His whole face changes. His teacher’s face grows over his real face. I can see his face changing, just like you see sometimes in a movie, a man’s face changing right before your eyes! Trick photography!
“Sweetgrass!” he shouts. “John Sweetgrass! I didn’t know you worked in a chipwagon! How long have you worked in a chipwagon? Maybe I should buy some chips from you!”
I hate the sound of my name when it comes out of Boyle’s mouth.
I shout.
“We’re not getting off on the wrong foot are we!”
The last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth is crashing away.
The sky dumps a lake of rain on us. A bolt of lightning stabs into Somerset Street in front of the Chinese Clinic.
Mr. Boyle is suddenly soaking wet. His shirt is hanging wet over his ugly beer gut. His face is red and he’s spitting spit and rain. He’s shouting something at me. Something, something “you punk!”
Something, something “you punk!”
“We’re closed!” I shout, and slam shut the window.
The two magic words, followed by “you punk!” The first word is the one used in the same way in every language on earth by everybody, according to Dink the Thinker.
The other word is “you.”
It takes exactly eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds for Beethoven to get through the Fourth Movement of Symphony No. 5.
It takes about the same time to fill Somerset Street with a roaring river of rain in a wild summer storm.
I turn the keys in the ignition and switch on the wipers. The wagon is fogged in. I have to clear a space on the windshield with my hand so I can watch the storm.
The rain is roaring down Somerset Street from up around the Yangtze Restaurant. It’s a swollen, slashing, swirling river of rain, sucking down the storm sewers and filling the roadway up over the curbs.
Beethoven is competing with the thunder and lightning. The rain is whipping from the sky like a vicious curtain in the wind. The signs of the shops of Chinatown are lifting and bending and swinging and rattling and screaming.
The water is roaring down past Jasmine’s Sports Bar and the Golden River Restaurant, past the Caisse Populaire St. Jean Baptiste Chinese Bank, past the Somerset Heights Community Police Center over Lebreton Street, past the International Driving School, the Chinese Typesetters, the Asia Pizza, over Booth Street, past the India Food Center, the Reggae Club, the Sun Ming Meat and Seafood Company and under my wagon.
Dresses that were hanging outside the Indian Fashions Shop are flying over the chimneys like witches.
A box of funny-looking vegetables floats by.
The stoplight at Booth Street is swinging wild like a broken lighthouse in a typhoon.
The guy at the Bangkok Grocery is trying to drag a box of cabbages into his store. The wind catches his door and it smashes back against his live-fish tank. The tank collapses and smashe
s. The fish swim out the door and take off down Somerset Street. A huge carp swims past my wagon.
Free at last!
Some smashed flat Chinese ducks float around in a whirlpool over a storm sewer.
A chain of lightning splits the street and an explosion of thunder knocks Chinatown in half.
Beethoven’s in his big finish and the timpani drums are pounding and the cymbals are crashing and the horns are blowing and howling and the fiddles are racing away and the rain is slashing down and Chinatown is floating.
All of a sudden it stops. I open my window.
There is only light rain falling.
Beethoven’s not finished, though. He’s in his last minute of his Fifth Symphony. Boom! Boom! Boom!
Beethoven wins! What a way to do a storm!
There’s no sign of Mr. Boyle. Maybe he’s been sucked down a sewer.
I wish!
VII
I hear my mom get up and then phone somebody and then go back to bed. I know who she’s phoning. She’s phoning work.
I make her a cup of instant coffee and take it into her bedroom. She’s not feeling good this morning so she phoned in sick. She was out late last night at the Village Inn.
We have a little chat about what we always have a chat about. My father.
“There’s a lot of your father in you, John,” she is saying. “He was a stubborn, outspoken man. It caused him a lot of trouble. And it could cause you trouble. Remember that.”
This little chat makes me feel very empty inside. We’re not talking the way we used to. We’re talking about him all the time. All the time comparing me to him. And all bad stuff. She’s looking at me but I don’t feel it.
And another thing.
I feel very sneaky and guilty.
Because she doesn’t know they kicked me out of school.
I never told her.
Things just aren’t the same anymore.
I used to tell her everything.
Now, I don’t tell her anything.
Well, too bad.
She doesn’t tell me anything either.
So, I guess you could say we’re even.
I go down the back stairs and get my bike out of the shed. It’s early and I’m going to go over to Mr. Fryday’s house and help him get the wagon ready. He lives over on Bayswater Avenue. I also want to talk to him about a couple of things.
I speed up Rochester Street, turn left at Somerset, sail down Somerset on over the bridge over the City Center and turn left on Bayswater. Bayswater is a nice street with trees and houses with verandas and yards. And cats in the windows.
I turn into Mr. Fryday’s laneway and lean my bike on the end of his long veranda with the pillars. On the veranda is Mrs. Fryday, sitting in her white chair at a little white table having her breakfast. Mrs. Fryday is an invalid and Mr. Fryday has to take care of her. He comes out the screen door and puts an icing sugar covered donut on a plate on her little table. The donut is cut up in small pieces so she can eat it. She has a glass of iced tea with a straw in.
Mr. Fryday and I go into the yard and start to get the truck ready. While I’m spraying the windows with vinegar and water and cleaning them I discuss with Mr. Fryday the first thing I want to talk to him about. It’s about the cardboard sign he uses in the truck. One side of the sign says “Sorry, We’re Closed” and the other side says “Come In, We’re Open!” I want Mr. Fryday to change the sign. First of all, what’s the use of saying “Sorry, We’re Closed.” When a chipwagon is closed, it’s driving along a street or it’s parked in somebody’s yard.
And the other side of the sign is useless, too. “Come In, We’re Open!” You can’t come in a chipwagon. You stay outside a chipwagon.
Mr. Fryday and I discuss changing, getting a better sign, having no sign at all. Maybe you don’t need a sign on a chipwagon.
While I help fill the salt shakers and vinegar bottles and wipe off the counters with baking soda, Mr. Fryday goes and helps Mrs. Fryday back in the house to wait for the person who comes over to take care of her for the rest of the day.
While I’m cleaning the Beethoven CDs with special fluid to keep the grease from spoiling the music, Mr. Fryday gets in the truck and starts the motor. While he’s carefully backing the wagon out of his laneway, I get my bike and wait at the curb on Bayswater Avenue. When Mr. Fryday’s truck is backed onto the street and ready to go, I pull my bike alongside and hold onto his outside mirror. We take off slowly. I always wish Mr. Fryday would drive a little faster but I guess he never will. He’s the most careful driver in the world.
And he always drives with his parking lights on.
While I hang on to the driver’s side and while the cars blow their horns and rip around us squealing their tires, we swing up over onto Wellington Street to get into the City Center where the Potato Processing Plant is, almost under the bridge. Mr. Fryday buys all his potatoes here.
“It’s very commendable that you take such an interest in the business, Spud Sweetgrass,” Mr. Fryday is saying to me, talking loud so that I can hear him over the squealing of the tires and the honking of the horns of the impatient cars behind us.
“I’m going to think about what you said about the signs. I have the identical sign in all ten of my wagons, so if I decide to make a change, it will be an important and expensive decision. I want you to do a little research for me, if you can. Find me a better idea for a sign, one that’s not too expensive and I’ll consider it. Perhaps there will even be a little bonus or a commission in it for you. I agree with you. It is silly to have a sign on a chipwagon, saying ‘Come In, We’re Open!’ when you don’t mean it. Why didn’t I notice that! Well done, Spud. You’ll go far in the chip business one day!”
We pull up in front of the Potato Processing Plant almost under the Somerset Street Bridge. Even outside here, we can hear the potatoes thundering.
We go in.
Mr. Fryday is talking to the manager in his little glass office, talking about old potatoes and new potatoes, about animal grease and vegetable oil, about restaurants and chipwagons, about hiring people, people who are good workers, people who aren’t.
I can see Mr. Fryday pointing over to me with his thumb. Mr. Fryday likes me. He thinks I’m a good worker, a smart person. A co-operative person. A bit mouthy maybe, at times, but a good lad. And he liked my father a lot.
Mr. Fryday does not know that I got hoofed out of school this May just before exams. I never told him. I guess I’m ashamed of it. Or, maybe it’s none of his business.
I go around the Potato Processing Plant, following the potatoes around. They start up above on a platform in bags. The guy up there cuts open a bag and the potatoes go thundering and bouncing down the chute and then fall on a moving ramp that moves uphill so that all the mud and dirt and stones get knocked off the potatoes while they try their best to get to the top.
After they tumble and work and ride to the top they fall over the edge, just like kids in my class going out the door of Mr. Boyle’s room. They fall into a big metal drum, booming and echoing like Beethoven. Here the big ones go into one peeler and the small ones into another peeler. They roll around between rollers in there, rollers that look like they are covered with coarse sandpaper. Now they come back out white and peeled and two guys pick up the potatoes and gouge them out with little ice cream scoops and let the little potato balls fall down another ramp. The little potato balls are for fancy restaurants.
Then most of the potatoes go through the chipper. The chipper sounds like the machine the tree cutters on the street use to grind up the branches and twigs and leaves of the tree they just cut. Then the chips come falling and tumbling out and splash into a white foamy bubble tub bath of chemicals to keep them from turning black like an apple does if you bite into it and then leave it on the table all morning.
Then they get drained on another ramp and then they go into a bagger and get bagged and weighed.
I go back to the little office and wait for Mr. Fryday to finish hi
s business with the manager. Today’s Ottawa Citizen is sitting there on the bench. I see the words Westboro Beach on the front page. I can’t help it, but right away, as soon as I see those two words, Westboro Beach, a picture of Connie Pan pops onto the screen of my mind. The picture is of Connie Pan, up to her chin in water.
But wait! What does the paper say about Westboro Beach? I read a few more words. Westboro Beach closed. Pollution. Water unsafe. Authorities. Further notice. And other words like that. My mind is running up and down like the potatoes trying to get up the ramp. Try to get up. Fall back down. Crawl up again. Roll back down. This time. This time!
I’m back out holding on to the outside mirror, riding slowly along Corso Italia, turning left to go carefully up Somerset Street hill, stopping and carefully parking in front of the Mekong Grocery.
Like I always do, I remind Mr. Fryday to switch off his parking lights. He always forgets.
I turn on my cookers and set out the containers. I put up my display and turn the cardboard sign over to the side that says “Come In, We’re Open!”
I get a bag of fresh-cut potatoes that we picked up from the Processing Plant and set it in the corner on the counter. I put out the “no cholesterol” empty vegetable oil can where the customers can see it. I put on Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, very low. There won’t be any customers for maybe an hour yet. Lots of time. Maybe I’ll get Dink to get me an Ottawa Citizen when he comes along. Maybe read the news about Westboro Beach again. How they closed it because of pollution. The picture of Connie Pan pops onto the screen of my mind again. I see both Connie Pan and me in the picture this time. The camera moves in closer. Closer to Connie Pan’s mouth. Closer to my nose. Closer to the minute when I tasted the water.
Mr. Fryday is getting ready to leave on his rounds. He’s very happy, humming and trying out his Fryday song under his breath, polishing his rings while he’s humming.
“Have a successful Fry-day, Spud Sweetgrass,” says Mr. Fryday, “sell those chips like hot cakes!”
“Mr. Fryday,” I say, “there’s another thing I wanted to say to you today. Another thing I thought you might want to discuss besides the ‘Come In, We’re Open!’ sign.”