by Brian Doyle
“Why give rose, Bignose?” she says.
I give the fries to her.
“Rose is a gift. Like chips. I give you chips — a gift,” I say. I know it’s stupid to talk bad broken English to people who can’t speak English very well but I guess I can’t help it because I always do it. Except with Connie Pan. I don’t do it with her.
She takes the fries. Connie Pan tries one.
I turn up Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Third Movement which is now playing. At least it’s happier than the second movement.
“Why go on dirty road?” says Mrs. Pan.
Why do Chinese daughters tell their mothers everything? Maybe it’s a Chinese tradition. Tell your mother everything.
“We were going on a picnic and I took the wrong road,” I say. Canadian sons tell their mothers lies. And their girlfriend’s mothers too. It’s a Canadian tradition.
“Not bike no more on dirty road!” says Mrs. Pan, wagging her finger.
“No, Mrs. Pan, I promise. No more on dirty road bike,” I say, being a bit of smart ass.
“O.K.,” she says. Then she takes another look at my nose and turns and walks away. Connie Pan goes with her. After a few steps, Connie Pan does this amazing thing. She turns her head to me and kisses the air!
I feel my face get deep red and hot. When I stop watching her walk up Somerset Street with her mother and when my face cools off I see Dink the Thinker there in front of me, taking my picture from the step of the Mekong Grocery.
“Nice flower,” says Dink, his camera in front of his face.
“Flower is gift,” I say. “Like chips. I give you chips — a gift.” I give Dink a free order of fries. He douses them with vinegar and salt and then we look at my picture. Pretty good picture of an elephant wearing a silk buttercup over his heart.
In between customers I tell Dink everything. When I get to the part about Dumper’s lake he can hardly control himself, he’s so excited. Then I tell about the hose and the sewer grate.
All of a sudden we both get the same great idea at the same time!
The camera!
We have a good solid big supper at Dink’s place because we’ve got a lot of biking to do. We get a whole load of take-out from the Chu Ching Restaurant next door to the Hong Kong Beauty Salon after Mr. Fryday gives us a big happy goodbye and drives off carefully in his truck. I pay for the take-out because today’s payday and because Dink has no money because he spent it all on a flash for his camera.
We have spring rolls, shrimp fried rice, moo koo guy pan, shrimp chop suey, vegetable chow mein, bar-b-q pork almond diced, moo koo har kew, mushroom egg foo young and almond cookies.
Even Dink’s dad has a taste of a few dishes in between cigarettes. But when he coughs a whole lot of chop suey all over the wall, he leaves the kitchen and goes to bed.
We watch TV for a while to kill some time and let the take-out food go down a bit. We watch a show that Dink wants to see about a quasar they just found as big as our whole solar system. It gives off a light brighter than 1,000 galaxies of 100 billion stars each, the astronomer on TV tells us. Dink always plays his science shows really loud so his dad can hear them in the other room. “That’s a lotta light!” Dink’s dad shouts and then coughs through the rest of the program.
At about ten o’clock we ride down Somerset to Wellington and the Elmdale Tavern to check out Dumper’s truck. It’s there alright, and he’s got a full barrel of grease in the back. I check his glove compartment. It’s still locked.
We get back on our bikes and ride west on Wellington until it changes into Richmond Road. We’re not taking the Queensway to Dumper’s place. This way is safer. And longer. And slower. But we’re not in a hurry. We’ll be there before Dumper gets there.
We cross the Queensway at Maitland and turn up Woodward.
We hide our bikes under the hedge and walk across the dark lot to where Dumper’s parking spot is.
We stand over the sewer grate where Dumper Stubbs will put his hose down. I stand beside the grate and point at it. Dink flashes my picture. We go back to the hedge and lie down near our bikes and check out the picture with my pen flashlight. The picture is perfect. Dink’s flash works great.
I can see Dink’s eyes are pretty wide.
He can’t wait to catch this criminal in the act with his instant camera.
We go back to the sewer. This time I take Dink’s picture standing beside the grate. This time, Dink’s not pointing. He’s standing with his arms folded and his foot on the grate, like an old-fashioned picture of a guy who just shot a lion.
Back at the hedge, there’s a big man standing with his foot on our bikes, like a guy in an old-fashioned picture who just shot two lions. There’s a light on now in the front window of the furniture factory.
“What the hell are you kids doing here?” says the guy. “Get away from that truck.” He’s got sawdust in the hair on his arms. He’s wearing a belt with a tape measure attached and he’s got a hammer in a holster on the side. He must be from inside the furniture factory.
“Just trying out this new camera we got for our birthday,” I say. “My brother and me, we’re twins, we got this summer school project, in night photography,” I say, telling the longest lie of my career so far.
“Well, you can’t hang around here, this is private property. Get the hell out of here,” says the guy, and gives our bikes a kick.
We walk our bikes out of the lot and down Woodward Avenue till we’re out of sight of the furniture factory hedge. We hide our bikes behind a pile of fresh sod and slide back in the shadows behind the factory.
“Twins?” says Dink. “I should have got a picture of that lie!”
There’s some lights coming into the lot.
It’s Dumper’s truck.
He turns and backs into his spot. He’s over his sewer grate.
We’re sitting in the bushes right behind his truck. If it was daylight, he’d see us sitting there, just like two crows on a fence. But in the dark, if we don’t move, he won’t. His broken tail light lights us up like a search-light. But that light will be out when he comes around the back of the truck to put down his hose.
Out comes Dumper, grunting and talking to himself.
I’ve got my hand on Dink. I don’t want him to move until exactly the right time. Dumper’s going to see the flash. So we’ve only got one shot. Dumper climbs up on his truck. He gets his hose and his wrench. He turns the plug at the bottom of the barrel with the wrench, takes out the plug, jams the plug end of the hose into the hole, tightens the hose. You can hear gurgling. Here comes the grease. Dumper gets down off the truck. He doesn’t look as drunk tonight, not like he was last night. He’s down off the truck without staggering. He’s puffing a bit, though. He’s got the end of the hose in his hand. It’s spouting grease. You can hear the grease splashing on the pavement.
He leans under the truck with the dangling hose. He tries a couple of times and then finds the grate. Finds one of the rectangle holes.
He’s on his knees. He’s placing the flowing hose.
I let go of Dink’s arm.
Dink flashes the picture. Gotcha!
Dumper lifts up and bangs his head under his truck so hard that he goes back down. His head hitting the truck sounds like the dull heavy clunking sound of something hollow hitting something full. I guess the something hollow part is Dumper’s head.
Now Dumper’s mad. He crawls out from under the truck and charges right at us. He’s blind from the flash and so are we. He’s so fast crawling, he’s like an animal, a bear maybe. He’s growling and cursing. Dink and I are moving away from the back of the truck. There’s bushes blocking our way a bit. The other way is easier. Dumper is crawling and grunting and swearing. Dink trips over a cinder block along the edge and his camera flies ahead along the pavement. Now Dink is crawling. Dink and Dumper are both crawling towards the camera. I jump over Dink and kick the camera ahead so Dumper won’t get it. I run and kick it again. Then I lean over and pick it up
. I run towards Woodward Avenue and our bikes. Dink is running now too. We can’t see but we can sort of see. Dumper’s tangled up in his grease hose. He’s slipping around in the cooking grease, the hose whipping around his feet. He falls on his back.
I’m at the bikes where we hid them. I can hear the carpenter yelling from the furniture factory about what’s going on out there. I’m on my bike. Dink’s got his bike. I’ve got the camera. We take off down Woodward Avenue the other way to Clyde Avenue. We cut up Clyde to Carling. We stop at Churchill and Carling to get our breath. There’s nobody following us. We pull in behind Hakim Optical and sit on the grass there.
Dink is puffing and snorting and almost crying. The knees of his pants are ripped and his elbows are bleeding.
I give him his camera. There are pieces hanging off it. He tries to eject the developed picture. It’s jammed. The track is broken. The camera is smashed.
Dink looks up at me.
He shakes his head.
We haven’t got a camera anymore.
We haven’t got the picture either.
In fact, we haven’t got anything except torn pants and bleeding elbows.
XII
Twelve little kids tied together with a rope. Their keeper is a girl with shorts on and hiking boots. The kids are driving her crazy. She has a stick that she uses to keep the kids from walking off the sidewalk. They’re lined up at my wagon. Their keeper is trying to figure out their orders.
Every kid wants something different. One wants a small order with vinegar in the middle and no salt. The next one wants a medium with salt in the middle and no vinegar. The next one wants a large to split with his friend but he wants salt and vinegar and his friend is not allowed to have salt or vinegar because his doctor said. Another kid wants a small order with salt and vinegar on the bottom, salt in the middle and vinegar on top. The next kid wants only half a small order with no salt and no vinegar but is there any ketchup? Another kid is sulking because there’s no Pogo Sticks.
Now the keeper wants to know about the calories in each chip. She’s on a diet. What kind of fat do I use? Is there cholesterol?
Now the kid who wanted a small order with vinegar in the middle and no salt changes his mind. Now he wants a medium order to go halves with his buddy and now they’re arguing about ketchup even though I’ve told them about fifteen times that there is no ketchup! Now the keeper is telling them that’s it, they’re only allowed small orders so the ones who ordered medium and large have to order again, start figuring it out all over again.
Now, because these kids are changing their orders, some of the other kids decide they’ll change their minds too and we’re almost back to where we started.
All the time I’m trying to decide if I’m going to tell Mr. Fryday about what Dink and I know about Dumper Stubbs. I’m also wondering what Dink is finding out at the Regional Environmental Office. Dink is doing research. It’s two days since his camera got smashed. He’s already got a new camera from the warranty. These cameras are supposed to be unbreakable under normal use.
Is kicking your camera around the pavement to keep it away from a crazy man normal use? I guess so.
Dink has also read two books on grease already. Used cooking grease gets recycled and is used to make soap, pig food and lipstick. Lipstick! My mom wears lipstick. I wonder if I should tell her what it’s made from. Hey, Mom, that stuff you’re putting on your mouth? It used to be in a barrel in the back of Dumper Stubbs’s truck! Hey, Mom, when you put on more lipstick, what happened to the lipstick you put on before? You what? You licked it off and you swallowed it? Gross!
She’ll laugh at that.
I look at the keeper. She’s wiping her lips with a serviette. The kids are tangled up in their rope and fighting and dumping chips on the sidewalk and squirting vinegar on each other. The keeper uses the side mirror of the truck and takes out a tube of lipstick. She smears it on her upper lip first, then she stretches her lower lip flat and drags a thick layer of lipstick on there. Then she presses her lips together and fixes her hair a bit. The lipstick she had on before. What happened to it? Did she kiss all these little kids and use it all up that way? I don’t think so. I think she hates these little kids.
“What happened to the lipstick you had on before?” I say to her. I’m feeling very sarcastic. My mouth is going to get me in trouble. I can feel it.
“Pardon?” says the keeper.
“What happened to all the lipstick you had on before?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you have lipstick on this morning or an hour ago or something? What happened to it? I mean, how come you have to put more on? Where does it go? Where does lipstick go?”
“What are you, a smart ass?” says the keeper.
“Do you know what lipstick’s made of?” I say. “Do you know it’s made from recycled rancid grease from chipwagons? And you probably licked it all off and swallowed it. How many times a day do you put that stuff on anyway. About ten times a day?”
“None of your business, you creep! What do I owe you for this mess?”
“Let’s see, thirteen small orders of fries will be $19.50. Would you like a small cup of grease to go? No extra charge. Take it along with you? Where’s the next stop for your act? Do your little animals do any other tricks?”
All of a sudden I hear Mr. Fryday’s voice coming from around behind the truck where the propane tanks are strapped on.
“Put your money away madam. These chips are on the house. On the wagon, I should say. No, no, I insist. There is absolutely no reason that you should be treated with such rudeness. I apologize on behalf of my employee here. My, what cute kids! Day camp is it? You’re doing a wonderful job. Think nothing of it. My name is Fryday. Everyday is Fryday as they say. Have a nice day! Goodbye.”
I have a feeling I’m going to be fired. It’s the same feeling I had just before I got kicked out of school. Well, if he’s going to be mad at me and maybe fire me, he might as well be good and mad at me. I’ll tell him about Dumper.
I’ll tell him right now, before he starts this speech that he is just going to start.
“Mr. Fryday, the other night I followed Dumper Stubbs home and I watched him pour a whole barrel of cooking oil down into the sewer where he parks his truck. Here’s a picture I had taken.”
I show Mr. Fryday the picture of me standing, pointing at the sewer grate.
“And I went out to the grease depot where you say he takes the stuff. They never heard of him. Those receipts he gives you must be forgeries. My friend Dink and I are going to prove he’s doing it and report him!”
Mr. Fryday’s face is a storm.
For a long time he stares at the picture. A picture of a kid pointing at a sewer. What does that prove?
“We got a picture of him doing it but it didn’t turn out,” I say.
Then for a long time Mr. Fryday looks at me. Then he rips the picture in half. Then in half again.
Then he speaks.
“You’re just like your father. You Abos are all the same. Making stuff up about pollution. Your father was kicked out of his job at the paper plant across the river for the same thing! When will you ever learn?”
He looks at me, shaking his head.
“Get out of my chipwagon, Spud Sweetgrass,” he says quietly.
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the Second Movement, the Allegretto, is playing in the background while Mr. Fryday fires me.
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Second Movement, is perfect music when you’re getting fired.
As I’m walking down Rochester Street, Dink catches up to me. He’s so excited he can hardly talk. Under his arm is a long roll of paper. He’s also carrying books and pamphlets and charts and photographs. He’s telling me all about all this stuff he got from the Department of Physical Environment.
We go into my place and spread the big roll of paper out on the floor.
I put one corner of the huge map under a chair leg. Dink and I lean on the o
ther two corners of the map while we’re studying it and talking. There’s only one corner of the map left to hold down.
My mother stands on it for us.
It’s a map of all the sewers in Ottawa. There’s two kinds of sewers. Sanitary sewers and storm sewers. The sanitary sewers are shown by a solid line. The storm sewers are marked with a broken line. Little arrows show what direction the sewers flow in.
While we’re doing this I tell my mother how Mr. Fryday fired me and why.
“It figures,” she said. “The man is threatened somehow. You must be on to something.”
With a yellow highlighter, we trace along the broken line from the “catch basin” on Woodward Avenue where Dumper parks his truck. The line goes along for a few blocks then under the Queensway, down Broadview, a few more blocks, across Carling to Tilbury, eight blocks along Tilbury to Wavell, four blocks down Wavell, across Richmond Road, under the Parkway and out into the Ottawa River.
Not far down the river from that pipe outlet is a bay. And guess what? Right! Westboro Beach is in that bay.
The grease from Dumper’s barrels travels about twenty blocks under the city, out the seventy-two-inch pipe at the end of Wavell, then slides down river to get caught in the bay. And to poison the beach.
But there’s something Dink and I can’t figure out. Where is all this grease right now? How come the beach is open? Is the grease caught somewhere?
It says on this map that the pipe at the Wavell outlet is seventy-two inches. That’s a big pipe.
I double ride Dink over to his place to get his bike. We ride to the Wavell outlet.
The pipe there is as high as I am. There’s water running out of it. I dip my finger in the stream of water running out of the high pipe into the river. It doesn’t feel greasy. In fact the water doesn’t even seem dirty. It doesn’t even smell bad. Is our map wrong? There’s an iron gate covering the opening of the pipe. The gate is locked with a padlock. No Ninja Turtle games please. We pull on the gate but it’s solid. No sewer walking for Dink and me today.
I tell Dink that we’ve got to find out where all this grease is.