Nary, Nary, Quite Contrary

by David J. Wighton

  "Why do you say that?"

  .......... "Dunno."

  "And Mr. Rogers, he's disappeared and they say that he was messing with some boys."

  .........."Really?"

  "Yes, and there are posters in the school advertising free counselling for anybody who has been hurt by either of them. Some foundation is giving the counselling. Did you see the posters?"

  .......... "Yah."

  "Do you think anybody would go?"

  .......... "Dunno."

  "The new math teacher, Mrs. O'Leary. What do you think of her?"

  .......... "Nice."

  They walked together in silence for about three minutes while Annika regrouped. She had counted on the school's staff changes to get them to her home. They were only halfway there and she had run out of all the opening questions she had prepared and practiced beforehand.

  "Are you still reading through the bots in the library when we're supposed to be working in class?" Reese had told her what he was really doing when Annika asked why he never did any of the classwork.

  .......... "I'm finished with the science bots now."

  "What are you reading now?"

  .......... "History bots."

  "Are you planning stay in this school next year?"

  .......... "If my parents let me. They didn't like students being able to go into the woods and... (eyebrow waggle)."

  "Same for me. Especially with those two bullies who were after me. Those girls are gone now. Ms. Paulson sent them to some other school."

  .......... "I heard. They were nasty."

  "How'd you know that?"

  .......... "I just knew."

  Pause of about a minute.

  "That's my place in the middle of the block with the big tree in front."

  .......... "Yah."

  # # # # # # # #

  At the door, Annika worked up her nerve and turned to face Reese.

  "You know, I'm having trouble understanding the new math teacher, and I was wondering, you know, if you weren't busy, would you mind explaining some math to me?"

  "I could do that."

  "I can't do my homework for tomorrow without help. Since you're already here, do you think you could help me now?"

  "OK."

  "I have to ask my mom first."

  "OK."

  Annika opened the front door with the key hanging around her neck, poked her head in, and yelled, "Mom, I have a visitor."

  "That's nice, dear." A lady came to the door, like Annika, but in the tall size. "What's this about a visitor?"

  "Mom, this is Reese Wiltz. He's the boy that sits behind me in most of my classes. Reese, this is my mom."

  Reese held out his hand. "I'm glad to meet you," he said.

  "Annika told me what you did for her. We really appreciated that." She shook Reese's hand.

  "Wasn't much," Reese said.

  "Mom, you remember that I told you that I was having trouble with my math because of the new teacher."

  "Trouble? Math?"

  "I told you how worried I was. Remember!"

  "I do now."

  "Reese has offered to help me with my homework. Since I always do my homework on the dining room table, and since we always eat dinner late, I thought that he could help me with my homework right now because there'd be enough time even though I couldn't give you any warning. Is that all right?"

  "Come on in, Reese. I'll show you to the dining room. You know math, do you?"

  "Some."

  "Let me take the cutlery and these dinner plates off the table. I don't know where my mind is these days."

  "Mom, you know how I always become distracted when Theo is around when I'm trying to study in the dining room, and how he's always so irritating, could you tell him to stay downstairs while I'm studying with Reese?"

  "I'll lock him in the downstairs cell."

  "Mom's kidding. We don't have a downstairs cell."

  "We do have an upstairs cell though. Reserved for Annika," her mom said as she skipped down the stairs to the basement.

  "She's kidding again."

  "Who's Theo?"

  "My younger brother. He's a little pain."

  "I have a brother named Theo. He's older than me. Way bigger than me too."

  "Tell me about your brother Theo. Is he nice? Would you like to trade Theos?"

  Well, getting to that homework took some time. First, Annika had to offer Reese something to drink, and since he took her up on the offer of chocolate milk, and mentioned that his family liked hot chocolate, Annika offered to fix him some as soon as she had a quick talk with her mom. After that, she came back and made some hot chocolate.

  Reese must have liked the hot chocolate because he became all talkative and told Annika about his brothers and sisters. Then they talked about the other kids in the class, and about sports, and about whether either of them was planning to try out for a school team next year.

  Then Annika's mom walked into the dining room and said, "About that math homework?"

  Annika quickly pulled out the assignment page she was working on – using ratios to make equivalent fractions. "How can you be sure you have the right number on the top?" she asked Reese.

  "Cross multiply to check your answer," Reese said. "If the two answers aren't the same, you made a mistake."

  "OK. Got it. Thanks."

  They said goodbye because Reese had to get home but not before Reese thanked Annika's mom and Annika for the hot chocolate.

  After the door had closed, and before Theo was allowed upstairs, Annika's mom said, "Math difficulties? You?"

  "Motherrrrrrrr," Annika replied.

  # # # # # # # #

  Back in the real world, Reese had not been invited into the house. He had walked Annika to her sidewalk, said See ya, turned around, and walked away. Annika was left standing on the sidewalk watching him go. She had been outside a long time, so her mom opened the door and asked, "Are you coming in now?"

  "Yeah, I guess."

  "What were you doing?"

  "I was thinking about something Jessie had said. You know Jessie. She's the one you don't like."

  "Sometimes she's a manipulative, lying little witch."

  "She's that way all the time. She's not my friend, but she walks with me at noon hour and she knows that I like Reese."

  "Does Reese know that you like Reese?"

  "I don't think so."

  "About Jessie?"

  "Jessie said that I should make up a story about how I wanted Reese to help me with my homework, invite him into the house, pretend to do homework, but use it as an excuse to get him to like me. Give him hot chocolate, for example. All boys like hot chocolate. She said that I should touch his arm a lot when I was pretending to not understand what he was saying."

  "But you didn't invite him in."

  "No. But I wanted to. After Reese left, I was just pretending what would have happened if I had lied like Jessie had said I should. Reese and I had a nice conversation in my pretend homework date. I knew that he has an older brother named Theo and he's way bigger than Reese and I used that to start him talking about his family. That's when he did the most talking."

  "How did you know about the brother Theo?"

  "That's the name that's inside Reese's back pack. The straps are worn, and if they were put back to where they would have been before, they'd fit a tall boy."

  "I'm curious what subject you told the pretend Reese that you're finding hard."

  "Math."

  "Honestly? Math?"

  "Honestly. I'm sitting at 98% right now, so it's my worst."

  "And what would have happened when Reese found out that you had lied to get him to come inside the house."

  "I know what would have happened, Mom. That's why I didn't do it."

  ...

  "Mom, in my pretend homework date, I said some things about our family that weren't true. Was that wrong?"

  "I probably know what you made up. That's called wishing, and it'
s not wrong to wish for something. I wish for the same things that you do."

  Back to the Table of Contents

  Chapter 35

  Downtown Toronto's transportation needs were provided to its citizens through its metro, sidewalks, and streets. The Toronto Metro was an underground subway system that consisted of a large number of tunnels and subway cars that were like miniature rockets with space for people to sit inside. Mostly automated, a train of subway cars all connected together would stop at one place in the underground system, pick up and drop off passengers, go to the next stop on the system, pick up/drop off, etc. When the train reached the end of the line, it would reverse course. Power was provided by electricity to whatever end car was pulling the train behind it at the time.

  Although my readers will scoff at such an archaic system of transportation, it actually was quite efficient, although painfully antiquated. The tunnels and the cars were built in the 20th century, but the workmanship had been good. Even in the 2080's, Toronto's Metro was the prime transportation system delivering thousands of passengers into the downtown core and out of it quickly and efficiently. The system even had a built in exercise facility. These were metal turnstiles positioned at ground level that blocked the way to the trains. Most people vaulted over them. For others who weren't that agile, they could always perform the underneath crawl. Either system worked well to give passengers the right amount of exercise to start or finish the day. Long staircases of steps also provided valuable exercise.

  At ground level, Toronto had two transportation systems. The street was a wide concrete or asphalt pathway that was connected to other such streets in a two-dimensional grid system. Back in those days, if one needed to travel from one's home to one's business, a citizen might follow a north/south road for some of the distance into this grid, and then turn to an east/west road, and then a north/south road, and so on. Today, as my readers know, we just materialize where we want to be, but back in the 2080's, citizens were restricted to actually moving their physical body through this two dimensional grid of streets.

  Before the oil crisis, Toronto's streets were impossibly crowded with automobiles that provided citizens with the welcome opportunity to sit in a line of cars, read novels, drink caffeinated beverages, and listen to the music wafting down the street. This music was known as honking. Honking was the noise that the cars automatically made when they were stationed in one spot for too long. You'd think that listening to this music would be quite relaxing, but surprisingly it wasn't.

  In the 2080's, Toronto's streets were mostly empty due to the disappearance of oil. Unlike Calgary, which tore up its streets trying to recover oil from the pavement, Toronto didn't touch their pavement. This foresight proved valuable for a particular Torontonian establishment, but more on that later. The empty streets could have been used as parking lots for copters, and that indeed was how they were used before the 2082 city administration was voted into office. The new mayor immediately banned all copter traffic from the downtown core, citing the danger of accidents as his reason.

  With no copter traffic up and down the streets, that meant that thousands of people in the downtown core had to walk ib what were called sidewalks. The word is a combination of what the people were doing (walking) and where they were doing it (on the side of the empty street). The ancients' naming protocol is quite intuitive. Sidewalks were concrete paths that passed in front of the city's businesses and residences. People would come up out of the metro and jostle with each other down these relatively narrow walkways (north/south and east/west grids again) until they reached their destination. It was somewhat time consuming, but effective.

  Back to those empty streets – also known variously as roads, avenues, boulevards, and many more equivalents. One such equivalent word was expressway. The word express back then meant slow. Expressway therefore meant Slow-way. I told you it was intuitive.

  Since 2082, Toronto's roads had become the domain of the horse-drawn carriages of a business known as Top Hat. The company didn't have this as its formal name – it was identified in official records by an anonymous number instead. With the drivers of their carriages wearing top hats, black bow ties, and tails (all provided by the company) – Top Hat was an obvious way for citizens to refer to the company. The horses all had a top hat nestled between their ears and a company black bow tie around their neck too. As you would expect, the horses provided their own tails.

  Top Hat provided a delivery service mostly within the downtown core. This service was primarily focused on delivering people who, because of Top Hat's high fares, tended to be the wealthy. With the nearly empty streets, a rapid transit of the city's streets would have been possible. But Top Hat never stooped to anything so vulgar as a rapid transit. Its customers weren't in a rush to meet people; those other people were in a rush to meet them. A horse-drawn carriage ride was to be savoured and enjoyed. It was an experience for others to admire and yearn for. A slow gracious passage from home to office was the norm. If Top Hat had ever thought of putting a sign on their carriage doors that would identify their clientele, that sign would have read: I'm Rich, You're Not. Nyaah, Nyaah.

  Top Hat also delivered packages, but again for a high fee due to the level of service provided. A driver would pick up the package at the sender's address, place it within the company's distinctive packaging (a top hat sealed tightly at the bottom), and transport it to the address given. The driver would dismount from the carriage, produce a few notes on a bugle to announce his arrival, and walk regally toward the destination – the top hat package sitting atop a shiny tray. If the actual intended recipient showed up to receive the package, the driver would do a repeat rendition on the bugle, bow reverentially to the customer, and offer up the contents on the silver tray. If a flunky had been dispatched to pick up the package, the driver would hand it to him and go back to his carriage. The bugle, bowing, and silver tray ceremony was usually sufficient to prompt the important person to receive the package personally and in front of everybody who would be staring at someone impressively rich enough to receive this kind of recognition. In the event a flunky had been sent, Top Hat's packaging made it impossible for him or her to open the package without leaving evidence of such presumptuous daring.

  You're probably wondering about the horses and especially what horses were going to leave on those roads sooner or later.

  Toronto had century-old rules about separating road traffic from sidewalk traffic. Vehicles used the roads; people used the sidewalks. This was an historical tradition. The 2082 city council revered the historical traditions that permeated the city. Places like the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto Opera House, the Toronto Art Gallery, the Toronto Private Club, the Toronto Polo Club, the Toronto Golf and Country Club, and so on. Such traditions should not be lost. Wealthy people would become disgruntled. Something as minor as pedestrians casually walking across the road wherever they wanted to cross them had to be actively discouraged. Pedestrians stay on the sidewalks, after all. They cross at the crosswalks. That's the way it had always been.

  This council's focus on preserving Toronto's rich heritage of traditions was supported by the Chief of Police. A law and order man, the chief knew that if the Toronto Constabulary paid a great deal of attention to the little transgressions of the laws, there'd be fewer instances of serious transgressions. It was just good policing for constables to be visible, showing the badge, and deterring common criminals. That's why the constabulary was always out in force on the sidewalks so that they could crack down on violations of pedestrian traffic laws. If some pedestrians didn't know their place within the transportation network, the punishment to apply was obvious. They'd be ordered to walk the streets at night, cleaning up what Granny would call horse-pucky.

  # # # # # # # #

  The day after William and TG's visit to the island, Lucas was floating over Toronto's downtown core, looking for a Top Hat carriage driver wearing a red bow tie instead of a black
one. He saw a few red bow ties before recognizing the driver he wanted. Some casual conversations with other drivers yesterday had yielded his name, or rather his nickname. Slider. Slider had been the driver of the carriage that had killed Basher's mom.

  Slider was a wrinkled old man with a large nose, yellow teeth, and two fingers on his left hand that also were yellow. From above, he looked like a dry stick. At street level, that comparison proved to be unduly complimentary. Looking like a shriveled prune was the best that could be said. Slider wore the Top Hat uniform and it fit quite well in spite of his small size. Shriveled prune appearance notwithstanding, he had a masterful peal on the bugle, he bowed to his customers in convincing fashion, and his hands were the master of a skittish horse. His customers greeted him with familiar cordiality; they offered generous tips; and, they give him a hearty clap on his shoulder as they left the carriage. Mind you, they gave the horse a hearty clap too but that clap was on its hindquarters. Since Slider was sitting on his own humanoid hindquarters, his passengers made do with his shoulder instead.

  Lucas waited until Slider was parked at the entrance to the Westin Harbour Castle before sauntering up to the carriage. Slider saw him coming and greeted him warmly.

  "Get lost, Chief. Your stink is going to upset my horse."

  Perhaps warmly wasn't quite the right word.

  He didn't get any warmer when Lucas told him exactly how Slider had killed a dancer named Sparkle.

  "Beat it. Police ruled it was an accident."

  "Was the $100 bill that Dr. Sandman gave you an accident too?"

  "He was just paying his account."

  "Top Hat drivers can't accept account payments."

  "Must have been a tip. Been so long ago, I forget."

  In 2085 terms, $100 was a lot of money. Toronto was recovering from a decade of economic woes. Lucas had seen enough carriage rides to know that the usual cost of a buggy ride was $10; the tip to the driver would be $1.

  "I know enough about what happened to Sparkle for a court to convict Dr. Sandman. The question for you is whether you're going to jail with him, and in your case, that means a murder conviction. Or whether you're going to slide out of trouble." Lucas had correctly guessed that Slider's nickname didn't come from his prowess in baseball where he would run along the baseball diamond's roads, or streets, or lines or whatever they're called and then slide into a base. (Narrator: The reader will understand that I have no great affection for sporting activities and am not familiar with the jargon. All that sweating!) His nickname was awarded to him because of his ability to slide out of trouble.