Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels

by Michael Libling

Then something and someone new. Something and someone I had not seen before. Behind Mr. Blackhurst in the backlight of his broad wake, as if flickering in silence across a movie screen, a woman, her face framed by and hooded in black fur, collar bunched at her throat, her lips and nails Dragon Lady scarlet, her purple eyes a Technicolor spectacle and dead set on consuming me. She knew me. Knew more about me than I knew about myself. A blur was all she was, a wisp within a wink, before the suits closed ranks and the screen went dark.

  I angled for a second look, Mr. Blackhurst not helping. I stammered an apology. “I didn’t know you were busy with somebody.” I rose to my toes, peered beyond his shoulder.

  “Alas, my lad, I am occupied only with pleats and wrinkles,” he said, and sorted through Mom’s laundry.

  “But that lady . . .” I pointed toward the suits.

  “Lady?” His chuckle patronized. “Oh, you’d be amazed at the wonders I imagine in the folds and creases of laundry. A trompe l’oeil, my lad. No different than lambs gambolling in clouds.”

  “But I swear I saw . . .” I appealed to the Sewing Machine Witch. She hoed the button box with her nose.

  Mr. Blackhurst handed me the ticket. “Tell your mother I’ll have the lot next Friday, same as usual.”

  “I know what I saw,” I said. “I know what I saw.”

  “Anytime after three.” He tendered his basket of lollipops. I grabbed and ran. Two lousy yellows and a lousier orange. Served me right.

  Nuts, eh? A dry cleaning shop. The crazy shit kids blow out of proportion . . .

  5:00 2 THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB—Kids

  Insanity and melodrama intersect as Jimmie helps guest Mouseketeer Gus cope with his fear of dry cleaning.

  . . . The crazy shit you look back on in adulthood and laugh your freaking head off over, your wife or girlfriend teasing you about it, till it’s not so funny anymore.

  Nine

  A cold-hearted obliteration of what was

  There’s this moment toward the climax of House of Wax where the heroine, Phyllis Kirk, fearing for her life, smashes Vincent Price in the face. Except it’s not his face. It’s the wax mask he’s been hiding behind, and as it shatters, the grisly truth is revealed. Phyllis faints. You can’t blame her. The psycho’s mug is a flame-broiled eggplant.

  Trenton is Vincent Price with a chintzier mask and uglier eggplant.

  Fires have done a number on the town. Huge, catastrophic fires. Too many in too many years to count. Rip-roaring blazes that have devastated the forests, the fringes, the heart of downtown.

  Easter weekend ’78, Godzilla dropped in for the night with Hiroshima on his breath. Walk the main street and you’ll see, the town never did recover, all claims to the contrary Chamber of Commerce claptrap. There’s a charmless, slapped-together look to the whole. You can’t help but wonder if public tenders are extended only to builders schooled on LEGO, and then awarded free rein to masturbate in brick, aluminum, and plastic. Aesthetics. Zoning. Heritage protection. Afterthoughts, if that. Some might argue there’s no point in sprucing up tinder. Maybe so. But spend enough time in Trenton and you’ll understand, if fire doesn’t blacken your soul, the politicians and speculators will.

  Mount Pelion rises two hundred feet above the town. It’s the highest point for miles. An antique naval cannon sits at the top in commemoration of nothing anybody is clear on. Most days, you can fish beer cans and McDonald’s wrappers from the barrel. Explorer Samuel de Champlain and his Huron buddies are said to have climbed Pelion in 1615 to get the lay of the land.

  Dufferin Street School went up at the base of the mountain in 1913. Come winter, we’d spend recess on Mount Pelion, sleds and toboggans in tow. Winter 1960, I watched Jack pull a set of car keys from the snow. They belonged to my third grade teacher, Mrs. Beckwith. She’d lost them while on recess duty. Later, she told our class, “Jack Levin is an exemplary young man. By applying yourself with civility and diligence, I believe the same qualities can be found in each of you. Even the girls.” The keys were a minor find for Jack and unreported by the Record.

  They tore Dufferin down circa 2007. Almost ninety-five years reduced to rubble. The city elders had run out of patience, and stopped praying for fire to do their dirty work.

  My sentiments ring hollow, I know. Taxidermiphobia notwithstanding, I cannot deny my lingering affection for the school, my attachment shameless and twisted, like nostalgia for a loveless marriage. (And I should know.)

  Forget the historical and architectural arguments. It’s the calculated injustice that pains me, the coldhearted obliteration of what was, for so long and so many, so dear to heart.

  The Past. You’d think it harboured incriminating evidence, the town’s aversion to it.

  The mountain stands, for now, though passersby can be excused for passing by. The unrestricted width and height of the seniors residence built over Dufferin’s grave blocks the view. Sledding is also discouraged, the southern slope overgrown.

  In the summer of 2007, a young woman’s body was found not far from the cannon. She wasn’t the first to die up there, only the most recent. But then I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Thing is, the town keeps running. And no one ever stops to ask from what.

  Ten

  The boy who Peckered himself

  “Do you know him?” Annie asked, as we paused to catch our breaths. The snow was deep and fresh. It had come early in November and continued without let-up into February. Hauling the toboggan up Pelion was a trudge, waist-deep in areas.

  “Not really,” I said. “Except from the newspaper.”

  “Then why are you always watching him?”

  “What? No. I’m not. I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. Every chance you get. You’re doing it now.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Do you want to be his friend or something?”

  “He’s got friends.”

  “You can’t spy on him forever. Why don’t you go over and talk to him?”

  “He’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “But you are, aren’t you?”

  “Jesus, Annie.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  Jack was kneeling in the snow. “Looks like he found something.”

  “Something shiny,” Annie said. “Keys, I think.”

  “I’ve never seen him find anything before.”

  “So that’s why you’ve been watching him.”

  “Stop it. I told you. I’m not.”

  “Do you think he’s stuck-up? Bonnie’s mom eats lunch at the Levins’ restaurant and she says Jack Levin has a big head from being in the paper all the time. Lots of kids say so.”

  “I don’t know. Could be.” The speculation was odd, coming from Annie. She never said bad things about people. Not even kids and teachers who deserved it. Once, out in the schoolyard, watching Dougie Dunwood parachute from a swing, I said, “There goes Mickey Mental.” As harmless as that.

  Annie covered up her smile real fast, swallowed what I could swear was a giggle. “If you don’t have anything nice to say about a person, say nothing at all.”

  “But that guy, he’s a stupid jerk.”

  “You should look in a mirror sometimes.”

  Annie had found me out. I went cold turkey. Tossed the Detective Handbook into the netherworld of my bedroom closet. I had no choice. My cover was blown. I trusted Annie to keep mum, but if anyone else got wind of my spying, I’d be Peckered for the duration.

  Pecker, aka Doll-Pecker, born Charles Dahl-Packer. He shows up in class, sissy-ass hyphenated name and all, a month or so into second grade, and digs a hole for himself day one. He’s come from London—either Ontario or England, like any of us give a hoot. And just as Miss Smeets is winding down her introduction, he feels compelled to interject, “My father and mother are Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Packer, the pharmacists—which are as important as doctors, you know—and we own the new drugstore across from the Dairy Queen. Packer Family Pharmacy.” Like any of us give two hoo
ts. But then, he goes monkey-ass red in the face when anybody calls him Charley or Chuck, Miss Smeets included, and insists it’s Charles and only Charles. Naturally, we call him nothing but Charley or Chuck. And then, first recess out in the playground, he strays over to the girls’ side, wanders too close to the swings, and gets kicked in the head by Sally Fritz. A first-grader, no less. Smallest kid in the whole damn school. So small, her friends call her Bitsy Fritzy. And down Charley-Chuck-Charles goes, bloodied nose and mouth, bawling, thrashing about like he’s been peppered with buckshot.

  Nobody called him Charley or Chuck after that. He was Doll-Pecker and only Doll-Pecker, until the less cumbersome Pecker gained favour. And while ganging up was never my forte, seeing as how I never had anyone to gang up with, I was eager to give it a go. Turned out I had the gift, despite my experience on the receiving end. I got swept up in the thrill, same as Jesse James did when he chose to ride with brother Frank and the snivelling Youngers. Even knowing how the name-calling would cut deep, how the butterflies would gather in Pecker’s gut each morning before school, the ache ballooning to his throat and into his head. It wasn’t a question of recognizing right from wrong. I recognized. I’d been cornered and name-called for the crime of sneezing funny, for the flagrant commission of exiting the school library with the maximum allowable three books under my arm, for wearing a Davy Crockett t-shirt with Bermuda shorts. My shyness could be seen as arrogance, my reticence disdain. Heck, I rubbed some kids the wrong way solely through my concerted effort to stay the hell out of their way. However frowned upon, bullying had credibility, whichever side of the equation you were on.

  Bullying was a time-honoured essential of the formative stage and for every tut-tut by teachers and tsk-tsk by parents, there’d be as many blind eyes turned. I was contributing to the greater good for Pecker’s own good. He’d thank me some day.

  Annie refused to go along. She never called Pecker anything other than Charles.

  Unlike Pecker, I’d steered clear of first-graders on swings. And while I’d had my share of run-ins, I approached fourth grade unscathed and unlabelled. I’d been careful, too, had given Mickey Mental a wide berth since our bat-in-the-mouth chat. But careful could carry me only so far. By calling me out on Jack and my spying, Annie had saved me from Peckerdom.

  I avoided the owl with the big lemon eyes and abstained from Jack with the same tenacity I’d exercised when tailing him. I returned to less perilous obsessions. Comics, Believe It Or Not!, MAD, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. TV, Saturdays at the Odeon, Hockey Night in Canada, and the Montreal Canadiens.

  The only fallout from my undercover career were the errands. I’d taken my Good Son routine too far. There’d be no shirking.

  By fall 1960, I was a full-time civilian again, living the good life, unencumbered by the compulsion that had consumed me. Yeah, as in touch with myself as the alcoholic who gets the idea he can tend bar. Because October comes and Jack goes and finds the damn gold ring and the Record goes overboard with the news and my mother goes, “My, oh, my, we haven’t heard from him in quite the while, have we?”

  By the time I made it to school my brain had turned to Jiffy Pop. I scoured the playground, locked him in my sights, and marched right up. “You’re Jack,” I said.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  And without additional formality, my three years of self-restraint and scrupulously cultivated anonymity went down the toilet in a sycophantic rush of verbal diarrhea. “I just want to say that uh how I think it’s really neat how like how you find stuff like me too uh like five dollars once outside the A&P uh I’m always looking uh Mommy . . . uh my mom . . . uh . . . she said uh . . . uh . . . I mean me . . . you . . . like us . . . we could be, you know, sort of like, you know, The Hardy Boys.” Mommy. I’d said Mommy. My mastery of the awkward was flawless. Kill me now. I’d Peckered myself.

  Silence struck like an executioner’s axe.

  “Hey, guys, it’s the weirdo I told you about. Remember? He thinks I’m Mickey Mantle.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jack said, and he and his pals began roaring, backslapping, arm punching. I was by far the funniest thing they’d heard and seen since Moe last blinded Curly.

  They circled me.

  “Look at that, Jack. You got yourself a little fairy.”

  “Hey, pansy! They’re calling you back to the girls’ side.”

  “You got a screw loose or what, kid?”

  “He’s hungry, Jack. Give him a knuckle sandwich.”

  “You gonna cry, Tinker Bell? You gonna go tell Mommy on us?”

  “Yeah, he’s gonna go tell his mommy at the A&P.”

  Jack laughed with them, and man, I hated him right then like I’d never hated anyone. More than Mickey Mental himself. “Well, yeah, anyhow,” he said, and returned to his friends and their football, jogging long and deep as he signalled for a pass, leaving me behind, alone and, in retrospect, saved from further ridicule.

  I was never more than an average student. But when it came to beating up on myself, I was scholarship material from the get-go. Never took much. A minor setback, the slightest slight, and I’d agonize like nobody’s business. On those days, I knew to avoid Annie. She’d only try to cheer me up. Good thing, outside of school, we went our separate ways.

  Walking home that afternoon, I was well down the slippery slope, nine years old and in the throes of shame. How clueless could I have been? As I came upon my street, I wished what I have wished far too often over the years: I wished I was dead. Jack and his idiot pals, they’d be sorry then. I was working on who else might be sorry, cataloguing every best and probationary friend I’d ever discarded or lost, when the footsteps closed in from behind.

  “Hey, you. Kid! Wait up. You the Flash or something?”

  I did not turn.

  “Hey, Speedy Gonzales!”

  I did not slow.

  “Never mind those guys,” Jack said. “They were only pulling your leg.”

  Poker face. I gave him nothing.

  “Well, okay. Good. Glad they didn’t get to you. What’s your name, anyhow?”

  I kept my focus on the straight and narrow, mumbled a miserly and miserable, “Gus.” I saw no need to confuse the issue with the truth. Besides, it’s who I was by then, Leo consigned to secret identity.

  “Hey, I know you. You’re the kid who’s always weighing himself on the scale outside the restaurant. Yeah, you’re the one.”

  I skipped ahead.

  “So, you like finding stuff, too, eh?”

  I did not drop so much as a hint of a nod.

  “Most people think it’s about keeping your head down and your eyes open. But if it was that simple, everybody’d be a finder. The thing you need to know, listening is as important as looking.”

  I stopped at my house, searched the sky, surveyed the trees, the grass, the sidewalk.

  “Well, okay then, Gus, if that’s the way you want it.” He mock-punched my arm, roughed up my hair till it was as messy as his own, and split, his PF Flyers flying.

  I didn’t put a comb to my hair for days. Thought the look would improve my finding skills, same as Samson’s hair had juiced his strength. Mom got fed up, hauled me off to Seeley the Barber. A brush cut, yet, goddamn.

  Eleven

  The dad who was blown to smithereens

  Jack gave the meteorite to Queen’s University in Kingston, the message and bottle to Cardiff Mann, Jr., President of the Great Lakes Mariners Historical Association, and the gold wedding band to Mrs. Edna Bruce, the 72-year-old widow who had lost it 49 years earlier.

  Jack’s largesse returned him to the front page every time.

  LOCAL BOY DONATES RARE METEORITE

  JACK THE FINDER DONATES MESSAGE IN BOTTLE

  JACK THE FINDER RETURNS LOST WEDDING BAND

  Yeah, Jack the Finder. That’s what the Record was calling him now. Bryan McGrath, the reporter who had taken Jack under his wing, had come up with it. People liked it. Me, too. Finder had a superhero feel about it,
a Mandrake the Magician aura.

  Queen’s put the meteorite on exhibit with a small bronze plaque to credit Jack. You can still see the meteorite in the school’s Miller Museum, though the plaque went missing long ago. (I’ll solve the mystery for you, soon enough.)

  Cardiff Mann, Jr., and the Great Lakes Mariners Historical Association were frauds, of course. The news caused quite the stir.

  JACK THE FINDER VICTIMIZED

  Jack shrugged it off, expressed confidence Harald Nordahl’s legacy would be preserved. “Anyone who’d bother to steal an old bottle is going to look out for it way better than most.”

  Edna Bruce offered him five dollars in gratitude for the ring. Jack declined politely. “I don’t find things, exactly,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s more like things find me.”

  The Widow Bruce went on to say Jack’s gallantry reminded her of her own son. “I pray it doesn’t kill him like it did my Murray.” Murray Bruce had lied about his age, enlisted in the Canadian Army at fifteen, fell on Juno Beach at eighteen.

  I clipped the Jack stories—I had them all, going back to the meteorite—and stowed them flat between the pages of the biggest book I owned, Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels. I guess I thought of Jack and his finds as marvels, too. The book was the last gift my father had given to me. Not that he gave it in person. And not that I believed the book was intended for me, but rather for the shelves in the den with Dad’s other big books. He died at Christmastime in 1954 on his way home from Buffalo, New York. My mother breaking the news is an early memory and easily within my top ten. “You need to listen to me very carefully, sweetheart. Daddy has had an accident. A very bad accident. I’m afraid he has passed away.” My father slipped in the bathroom of a Texaco gas station on Highway 2 near Oshawa and cracked his head open on the sink.

  Two policemen delivered Dad’s car and belongings to our house. They had moustaches Mom described to friends as “utterly droopily mournful.” When done, they doffed their hats, and wished Mom well. “Very sorry for your loss, ma’am. A terrible misfortune.”