by Brian Doyle
Now, the clouds are already racing across the sky like herds of elk running from a helicopter!
XV
We sit around on the benches at Kitchissippi Lookout and look at Dink’s pictures of Nenaposh the Medicine Man’s Rain Dance. Down on Westboro Beach the beach freaks and the E.S.L. volleyballers and mothers and the fathers and the uncles and the kids are starting to look around and talk about going home. They point over at the sky getting black. A big purple wolf is coming out of the west. It is chasing the little white sheep above us. A wind like a wild kitten runs around Westboro Beach. Sand starts lifting in the air. Clothes and plastic cups, towels and lunches, books, socks, sunglasses, parts of castles, little pails and shovels, blankets, Kleenex, bottles of sun-shield are chasing each other up and down.
Connie Pan and Dink and me, we get on our bikes and ride home, dirt blowing in our eyes. Outside Connie Pan’s house I say goodbye to her. While we’re saying goodbye, the rain falls out of the black monster above us. I can see Mrs. Pan shutting the windows. I wave at her. She doesn’t wave back.
By the time I get my bike into the back shed at 179D Rochester Street, there’s hail bouncing all over the place like there’s an explosion in a ping-pong ball factory someplace nearby in Chinatown.
This is a better storm than the last one even!
I go in and call the Department of Physical Environment, the special number the eyebrow man gave me. He tells me that if this storm lasts through the night it will be enough to drive the grease into the river.
“It’s going to be a big one,” I say.
“How do you know?” he says.
“There’s extra medicine in it,” I say.
“Pardon?” he says.
“Never mind,” I say.
“Tell you what,” he says, “if it’s still raining tomorrow morning early, I’ll meet you at the Wavell outlet at 5:30 A.M.”
I hang up and phone Dink. He says he’ll be over at my place at five o’clock. I phone Connie Pan to see if she can come with us. I hear her ask her mother! Her mother’s going to say, oh yes dear, you can go out at five o’clock in the morning with Bignose to look at a sewer!
Sure.
Connie Pan tells me she doesn’t think she can go, but good luck.
I kill some time watching TV until around supper time. The storm is banging away outside, rattling the windows. I imagine everybody chasing their funny-looking vegetables and their fish down Somerset Street.
My mother isn’t home from work. I slosh across the street through the storm to the Village Inn. She’s over there sitting with some of her friends.
I sit in the empty chair beside her. Where my father used to sit. I can tell the way her friends are looking at me and at her that they’ve been talking about me, or she’s been telling them about my job at the chipwagon and being unfired and probably about Dink and me, the private investigators. I get embarrassed when that happens. I know they do it because they’re proud of you but you sometimes wish they wouldn’t. Talk about you, I mean.
My mother tells me that she’s been talking to Mrs. Pan and that they were talking about how her son was a friend of her daughter’s and all that stuff. I tell her about tomorrow morning and the red dye, and what’s going to happen at 5:30 A.M. if the storm keeps up. Then I tell her privately that I asked Connie to go but her mother won’t let her.
“You’ll have to get better acquainted with the Pan family before they’re going to let her go out with the likes of you at five in the morning to look in a sewer!” my mother says.
This makes everybody smile. It’s hard to have a private conversation with your mother in The Village Inn.
I tell her I’m going out for a while and I’ll see her later. She says she’ll be home a little later.
I go back home and dig around in the cupboard until I find my father’s rain cape. I put it on, and his rain hat and go out into the storm on my bike. I go all the way out Richmond Road to Wavell. I cut across the Ottawa River Parkway to the outlet but it’s dark and I can’t make out anything.
But I can hear the water roaring in the pipe. I ride up Wavell, across on Tyndal, along Broadview, following the grease route. The streets are full of running water. I’m alone. Everybody is hiding inside behind their windows and doors. I can imagine the grease, flowing, red, under the wheels of my bike, in the tunnel below me.
I’m alone and I feel strong. Like I did on my ninth birthday by the small lake that time.
The storm sewers along the curb are sucking and gurgling like unplugged bathtubs. I ride all the way back to the Elmdale Tavern. My father’s rain cape protects me from the thick driving rain. I stop at Dumper’s truck and push a capsule into his barrel, right up to my shoulder. I race home, the rain pushing me from behind.
I grab some supper. While I’m washing up, my mother comes in and goes to bed. I bring her a hot chocolate.
“I’d like to go with you tomorrow if that’s alright,” she says.
I set the clock for 4:30 and go to bed.
Of course it’s alright. That’s the way it used to be. Do everything together.
It’s hard to sleep and the storm outside is acting like it wants to come in and get into bed with me.
I dream a funny dream that makes me laugh. I don’t know if I’m laughing in my dream or if I’m actually laughing in my bed. It’s hard to tell. I know I’m dreaming but I can’t wake up. My father and I are standing by Dumper’s truck where he parks it and we are smiling. Dumper is under the truck dipping his hose in the storm sewer. My father raises his trombone. He blows a loud cavalry charge, only moving the slide slightly a couple of times. The notes are beautiful and clear and make your flesh bumpy. Dumper is so surprised he rises up under the truck and whacks his head and starts cursing. My father and I laugh.
Now, I’m dreaming I’m at the Wavell Avenue outlet. The music is frightening. It’s some kind of Beethoven but it’s played all wrong. I’m staring through the cage gate at the mouth of the pipe. Now the gate starts to push open. The bars of the gate are hung with filth. Floating towards me is something that is scaring me, making me sick with terror. It’s a body. It’s a person, floating, drowned in grease! The body floats closer. It floats on its stomach. Now it’s stuck in the half-opened gate. It rolls over. I look at the face.
The face is my face!
My alarm rings.
I’m glad to get up and get rid of the dream.
My mother is up.
She will get the car out and follow a little later.
She knows where to go. On the Ottawa River Parkway, bottom of Wavell Avenue. She’ll find it. She’s got something to do first.
She’s got a funny look on her face.
She’s up to something, I can tell.
I make some peanut butter and toast and Dink shows up right on time and away we go to meet Eyebrows at the Wavell outlet. It’s still raining but the storm is over. There’s some blue showing in the early morning western sky. Eyebrows isn’t there yet. The water is gushing out of the huge pipe into the Ottawa River. There’s only one thing wrong. There’s no red. What happened to the capsules? The red dye? I can’t even tell if there’s any grease in the water. There’s so much gunk here. Mud, paper, gasoline, plastic, Styrofoam, dog turds, cans, slime, dead fish...
A car pulls up and out gets Eyebrows. He looks happy and excited. He’s so tall and with that big yellow rain slicker on, he looks like Big Bird.
“Well,” he says, “what do you think?”
“Good storm,” I say.
“Great storm!” he says.
“Where’s the red river of rancid grease?” I say.
Eyebrows goes to his car and brings out a thing that looks like a small rocket launcher. But it’s not a rocket launcher, it’s a special light with different filters on it. He fiddles with the filters, then turns on the light, then adjusts the filters some more. He shines it on the opening of the pipe. Slowly, as he adjusts the filters, the liquid puking from the opening of the pipe t
hrough the gate turns pink, then bright red. He shines the light out into the water. A wide snake of red coils out into the Ottawa River.
Eyebrows lets out a victory shout.
“Well done, boys!” he shouts, while his eyebrows go nuts.
Another car pulls up and out gets guess who? My mother, Connie Pan and the driver, Mrs. Pan!
“Surprise!” says my mother, “look who I brought!”
Everybody’s standing around smiling and talking and explaining and happy, just like we were getting ready to have a really great picnic.
My mother tells me all about how she left the Village Inn last night just after me and went over to the Pans’ place, Mrs. Pan is her new friend from the Resource Center, and she explained everything to Mrs. Pan about how I’m not really kicked out of school and how I’m working on this pollution case and everything. My mother’s been helping Mrs. Pan fill out the papers and get her driver’s license and buy this brand new used car she has.
Mrs. Pan is looking around, checking everything out.
She especially can’t keep her eyes off Eyebrow’s eyebrows!
Now he’s on his cellular phone. Soon, a police car pulls up and two men get out. They have a little talk while Eyebrows lets me fool with the light while Dink shoots some pictures.
One is a picture of Connie and Mrs. Pan and me and my mother.
The red snake slides right out into the river and down towards Westboro Beach!
Good work, Nenaposh!
The cops get in their car.
My mother and Connie get in Mrs. Pan’s car.
The three cars speed over to Woodward Avenue where Dumper parks his truck. The truck is there. The barrel in the back is empty. The light shows the back of the truck red, the barrel red, the hose red, the pavement red, the sewer red.
We go over to Dumper’s apartment building and find his apartment number on the mailboxes. We go up the stairs and the policeman in his uniform knocks on his door. The policeman in the gray suit has some papers and is writing notes.
In a while Dumper, half asleep, answers the door. He’s holding up his pants with one hand. Eyebrows explains to him who we are and then the policeman with the gray suit reads from his paper all the stuff about Dumper and getting charged with polluting.
He starts off with, “Angelo Stubbs, I will point out to you your rights and I will then explain what you are being charged with.”
While he’s doing this, it takes Dumper a little while to catch on. As he is slowly understanding, Dink snaps his picture using the flash in the shadowy hallway of the apartment building.
All of a sudden, Dumper is awake.
Now he sees what’s happening.
He remembers this flashing camera.
Now he stares at me.
He sees me now.
I look behind me. My mother is at the end of the hall, standing there. Behind her, peeking, is Connie Pan and her mom.
I look back at Dumper.
While the policeman is telling him when he’s supposed to appear in court to answer these charges and while he’s handing him the papers, Dumper is looking at me.
If these policemen weren’t here right now, Dumper’s eyes tell me, I would be dead.
Outside Dumper’s apartment building everybody’s thanking everybody and shaking hands.
I get in with Connie in the back seat of Mrs. Pan’s new used car and my mother gets in the front. Mrs. Pan takes a last look at Eyebrows’ eyebrows and gets in behind the wheel. She is sitting on a thick cushion.
Dink rides with the cops. We get dropped off at Westboro Beach and get our bikes.
We bike home.
I’m feeling pretty good.
In fact, I’m feeling very good.
There’s no rain now and the sun is trying to come through the tame clouds. I change into my shirt with the silk buttercup pinned over the heart and go up to Somerset Street to work. Mr. Fryday is carefully parking his truck in front of the Mekong Grocery and, as usual, I remind him to switch off his parking lights. We get set up and he leaves.
About lunch time a man orders some chips and tells me he’s a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen and can we talk about how the charges got laid against Mr. Stubbs and what part did I play. This reporter is a guy Eyebrows knows and it’s pretty obvious Eyebrows already told him the whole thing. This reporter has already talked to Mr. Fryday so now he knows everything, too.
Then he tells me that I’m a hero and can he take my picture for tomorrow’s paper. I don’t mind at all. When the reporter’s taking my picture, I’m standing in my chipwagon, I try to make my nose look as small as I can.
Then along comes Mr. Fryday and you can tell he’s glad he’s not involved in the crime but you can also tell he’s worried about his brother-in-law and about how his poor wife will feel when she hears about it.
Then the reporter and Mr. Fryday have a chat and Mr. Fryday makes sure that the paper won’t say anything bad about Fryday’s Classical Chipwagons.
After the reporter leaves, Mr. Fryday thanks me for warning him about what Dumper was doing and tells me that I have actually saved his business and that he hopes that after I’m finished school I’ll go in the chip business with him. I’ll be his junior partner.
Then he tells me something that makes me feel empty.
“I’m terribly concerned about Angelo,” he says. “I searched for him today after I found out what happened and I can’t locate him anywhere. He was supposed to be doing trash at Rimsky-Korsakov’s and also at Holtz’s today but he never showed up. He has a terrible temper you know. This was always a great headache with us. If you trapped Angelo Stubbs in any way, he would often get very violent. Be careful of him, Spud Sweetgrass. Once, several years ago, a neighbor’s dog barked at him one too many times. He did a terrible thing which brought the police. He seized the dog, a big Labrador it was, he grabbed it by the throat and lifted it off the ground and strangled it to death with his bare hands!”
Great!
XVI
I’m lying in a nice white bed in the hospital. There’s the doctor. There’s my mother. There’s Connie Pan. And there’s Dink the Thinker. And there’s Mr. Fryday over there, his hands all bandaged. And there’s the doctor telling us all about concussions. It’s a jarring of the brain. No fractures, though. Be back to normal in two days. He means me. Be a bit scrambled for a while. Some memory loss...
But wait a minute.
I remember some stuff, Mr. Doctor.
I remember reading the story in the paper. I was standing in the wagon, looking at the picture of myself in the paper and reading the headline: “YOUTHFUL SLEUTH NABS POLLUTER.”
Then I read under the picture: “John ‘Spud’ Sweetgrass, hero.”
I remember turning up Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Last Movement, the “Ode to Joy.” And reading the part in the paper about Spud, the hero.
Then I remember Dink yelling, “Here comes Dumper in his truck!” I remember looking back down Somerset Street and seeing the truck coming, roaring up the hill and almost tipping over, two cop cars, chasing, swinging into the parking lane in front of Valentino’s. But he wasn’t parking. He was going at least twice the speed limit. He’ll never get stopped behind me! Wait a minute. He’s not trying to stop! He’s picking up speed! He’s flooring it! He’s going to ram me!
I remember seeing his face through his windshield, Dumper’s face, staring over the steering wheel, all red and squeezed up and insane. Dumper’s truck coming so fast into the back of the chipwagon! He’s trying to kill me!
And I remember diving out over the counter to get out of the wagon. I remember trying to dive carefully so I wouldn’t knock over the salt and vinegar containers and the serviettes and make a mess. What a strange thing to be thinking at a time like that! And Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” blaring away!
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” the happiest music Beethoven ever made.
But mostly, I remember Dumper’s terrifying face.
And no
w I’m here in this white bed and Mr. Fryday is talking. While he is talking, saying thank God you’re alright, I’m thinking, trying to think of something I forgot. Something I want to tell Mr. Fryday, something I used to tell him while we were getting the wagon ready. Oh yes! I know!
“Don’t forget to turn off your parking lights, Mr. Fryday,” I say.
I guess I just said something stupid because everybody has on a worried look now and my mother is squeezing my hand. But the doctor just laughs and tells everybody it’s alright, it will all become clear in a very short time. Then I ask Mr. Fryday what happened to his hands, why are they all bandaged? Now Mr. Fryday starts crying. Now Dink shoves a picture in front of me. And he starts explaining.
It’s a picture of somebody lying on the sidewalk on his face. His shirt is on fire. A man is beating out the flames with his bare hands. The man is Mr. Fryday. The person is me.
Dink shows me more pictures. And he’s explaining. He sounds like a friend of my dad’s who used to come over to our place and show us slides of his trips to the Northwest Territories.
He shows me a picture of the front of Dumper’s truck, the big steel bumper crushing the back of the chipwagon, the propane tanks there. The front of Dumper’s truck is a blur. One propane tank is half-way in the air, breaking apart over Dumper’s hood. The other tank is bending in half, pushing into the wagon. The roof of the wagon is buckling. Dink says he’s sorry that he didn’t get the picture of the explosion because it happened right then, caused by an electrical spark because the tail lights were on. He says propane won’t explode unless you give it an electric spark. So, if the parking lights were turned off, there wouldn’t have been an explosion at all.
Is this why Mr. Fryday is crying?
The next picture is one of the guy who runs the Mekong Grocery. He’s buried under a pile of boxes of noodles. Only his head is sticking out! He has a surprised look on his face.