Sunny Dreams (13 page)

Things worked out okay for Benny and Jackson for the next week or so. But not for Tag. A couple of days later I stopped by his camp on my way home from Wade’s drugstore and there he was, sitting on the ground beside his tent whittling away on a sharp stick. He wasn’t alone; Warren and Tippy Walker sat with him. Warren honed his own stick, doing at least as good a job as Tag. Tippy whapped her tail against the ground when she recognized me, raising a low-lying cloud of dust.

“I see you two have found each other,” I said.

“Hi, Violet,” said Warren. “We were just talking about you and your family.”

Tag silenced Warren with a look.

“Nothing bad, I hope,” I said, wondering what on earth could have caused that look from Tag.

He changed the subject. “My little buddy here is showing me how to protect myself from a grizzly bear should one happen by.”

“I don’t think a sharp stick will do it,” I said.

He laughed.

I rummaged through my bag of drugstore items and came out with some mixed nuts and a Burnt Almond chocolate bar that I had bought for Tag.

His eyes grew big, especially at the sight of the chocolate bar.

“Violet, are you sure?” he said.

“I’m very sure,” I said.

Warren tried not to look at the treats. He knew how much Tag needed them. I reached into my bag again and came out with a small Jersey Milk bar that I had bought for myself and gave that to Warren.

A little stream of drool escaped his mouth when he spoke. “Thanks kindly, Violet,” he said.

“Any sign of your brother?” I asked Tag.

He shook his head. “No. No luck there, I’m sad to say.”

“How did you make out with the relief camp people?”

“Not so good,” he said. “They closed down all the camps last month. There’s no such thing anymore.”

“It’s probably for the best,” I said and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

The day had been hot and clear in the morning, but by lunchtime clouds had pushed in from the west, bringing a dampness with them that made a person want to lie down and rest.

Tag stood up and went into his tent and came out with a small threadbare rug that he folded and set on the ground next to them.

“Sit down, Violet,” he said.

I did so, fixing my skirt carefully around my legs.

“Thanks, Tag,” I said. “So what now? Will they give you some kind of relief payment while you hunt for Duke?”

“Nah, I don’t belong here, they said. They want me gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “So is that what you’re going to do then? Go home to Detroit?”

“I don’t rightly know. I don’t want to go home without Duke. For the time being I’m going to keep on whittling on this stick till Warren here tells me it’s done.”

Warren tested the point on his own stick by poking it into his own thigh and saying, “Ouch.”

Tag and I laughed.

Warren stood, hitching up his pants. They were way too big for him. “Tag’s gonna come and stay at our house,” he said. “I’m gonna ask my mum.”

Tag and I exchanged a glance.

“Just till Benoit and Jackson are done over at the Footes,” said Warren. “And then he can hook up with them again.”

It wasn’t for me to stomp Warren’s idea into the dirt. Gert Walker would do that soon enough. So I just wished them both luck as I got to my feet and continued on my way across the field.

“Watch out for grasshoppers!” Tag shouted after me.

I felt them crunching and dying beneath my shoes. I turned back and waved. It was an effort to raise my arm.

Please go home, Tag, I said out loud to myself. Duke’s not here. If he ever was, he’s gone now. He’s likely home safe with your parents.

“Don’t leave without saying goodbye!” I called over my shoulder.

“He’s not going anywhere!” Warren hollered back.

By the next morning the scrub field had been deemed off limits by the police, and a few men, including Tag, made a new home for themselves beside the river under the Norwood Bridge.

That afternoon I was over at Gwen’s house playing crokinole with her and Dirk and Fraser.

The pressure was on Gwen to get any kind of job now. If she wasn’t going to take her grade twelve, she couldn’t just be mooning around the house, as Mrs. Walker put it. As though Gwen didn’t do every single bit of work in that house, except maybe snap the odd bean.

The four of us sat at the kitchen table. The kitchen was the coolest room in their house when the stove wasn’t on. A giant oak shaded a goodly portion of their yard.

We drank Cokes as we played. I had brought them from home. Mrs. Walker didn’t believe in Coca-Cola. That was what she said, as though it were its own religion or something. She didn’t disbelieve enough not to enjoy a glass when I provided it, though, so I figured it was just that she wasn’t willing to spend the money on it but was too proud to say so.

She was at the counter snapping beans.

“What are you doing hanging around with the Willis brothers?” I asked Dirk.

He and Mrs. Walker exchanged a quick look and Gwen stared at me and then at Dirk.

“I haven’t been hanging around with them,” he said in his flat voice.

“We saw you over in their yard,” I said. “Fraser and me. We even waved at you, but you didn’t wave back.”

I was enjoying myself. Gwen obviously didn’t know about Dirk’s new best friends.

“The Willis twins have been treated unfairly, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Walker. “They’re not such bad boys. I swear once or twice when they were sent to jail it was a set-up.”

“Why on earth would you think that?” asked Gwen. “Do you know them?”

“I’ve known their mother forever,” said Gert.

“You’ve never told me this before,” said Gwen.

“I was never asked,” she said, as if there were any reason in the world that Gwen would have asked her about grubby Mrs. Willis.

Fraser was telling Dirk about how his dad’s new shed was turning into a garage. “Benoit talked him into it,” he said.

“Who’s Benoit?” Dirk asked.

“One of the men who built Vi’s dad’s garage,” said Gwen, “as if you didn’t know.”

I could see her mother’s posture tighten up over her yellow beans.

“Yeah,” said Fraser. “My folks went over to Violet’s place to have a look at what had been done there and my dad was pretty impressed. I’m helping some. Dad figures I can learn a thing or two from Benoit.”

Mrs. Walker snorted. A mean snort, not the kind Gwen made when she laughed.

“About the Willis boys…” I tried to interrupt. Enough about sheds! Fraser should have been helping me out.

“What does your dad need with a garage?” asked Dirk. “That old Studebaker he drives looks like it wouldn’t make it to the end of the block.”

Fraser laughed. “Yeah, it’s an old wreck. But he likes it. And, anyway, he’s saving for a new car. When he gets it he’ll already have a place to keep it. I think it’s a great idea.”

“I think so too.” I stared at Fraser with what I hoped was a stern look on my face. “My dad’s really happy with ours,” I said through clenched teeth.

Fraser’s face took on a quizzical look and I sighed loudly.

We played without talking for a while, the only sounds the wooden pieces knocking against the sides of the crokinole board and Mrs. Walker snapping her beans.

“Well, I declare,” Dirk said quietly.

“What?” said Gwen.

He was looking out the window, past the yard to the field that edged on to the golf course, where we had played baseball in younger cooler times. Warren’s field. We followed his gaze: Warren and Tag were throwing a ball back and forth. Tippy was leaping about with them, part of the game.

“Mrs. Walker, come and have a look at this,” Dirk said and stood up to make room for her by the window.

“What?” said Gwen again, irritated by now with what I suspect she saw as the unnatural pairing of her mother and her boyfriend against what they saw out the dirt-streaked window.

Mrs. Walker didn’t say anything. She just scooted to the back door and shouted, “Warren! Get over here! Get over here right now!”

Warren and Tag stopped their game of catch and looked at her.

“Now, young man!” she shouted again when no one moved.

Warren looked to be speaking a few words to his friend and then he walked toward the house, Tippy at his side with her tail down.

We all continued staring out the window, except Mrs. Walker who waited on the stoop till Warren was at her side.

Tag headed back across the field, to the bridge and his camp there, I supposed.

Dirk was smirking.

“What gives?” said Fraser.

“Gert doesn’t like Warren’s new friend,” I said.

She slapped Warren; we all heard it — it had to be his face. Tippy snarled and Gwen rushed to the door to hold the dog back from attacking her mother.

Sic her, girl; sic her
, I said silently.

Gwen tied Tippy to the bottom of the stoop, then followed her mother and brother back into the house.

Warren was crying. “Tag’s my friend,” he said to his mother. “We share secrets.”

“No, he’s not your friend and I don’t want you going anywhere near that man again.” Gert turned to me. “You see, Violet? You see now?”

So it was my fault.

“What gives?” said Fraser again. He must have wanted a better explanation.

“I gotta go is what gives,” I said.

“Can you believe he asked me if that filthy vagrant could stay with us?” Mrs. Walker addressed Dirk now.

Fraser came with me. We left through the back door. An angry slap mark hid Warren’s freckles. I tousled his rust-coloured hair as I passed him and he looked up at me with a sad, perplexed little face. I looked back at Mrs. Walker.

“He has to learn,” she said.

Gwen crouched before him and said, “I’ll take you to Happyland later, Pipsqueak. We’ll go for a swim.”

“We’ll all go,” I called back.

Gwen followed Fraser and me out and we left Dirk with Mrs. Walker. I hoped Warren would go to his room, away from the two of them.

“Dirk smells like a dentist’s office,” Gwen said.

Turning to look back, we saw him and Mrs. Walker on the stoop with their heads together as though they were discussing auditions for the school play.

“Look at my mother,” Gwen said, walking backwards for a step or two.

Fraser and I clomped along beside her.

“I better go back and see to Warren,” she said and ran back home.

We went swimming that evening after supper: Warren and Tippy and Gwen and Fraser and me. Happyland wasn’t much of a pool — a simple wooden enclosure fed by the Seine River. But it was big enough to cool off in, deep enough to dive in or drown in, dirty as the dickens.

My friend Isabelle was there and we smoked together. She could roll a cigarette with one hand. She only had enough tobacco for one — she had stolen it from her dad (just like me) — but she shared it, puff for puff.

Fraser and Gwen played with Warren and Tippy while I smoked with Isabelle.

I told her about the cut-up clothes; she already knew. Someone had heard the Willises talking and laughing about it at a coffee shop downtown.

“Do you want to do anything about it?” she asked me.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, some sort of payback.”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

I pictured something feeble on our part that would mildly inconvenience them, like burning a poo-filled paper bag on their porch. Then they would follow up by doing something horrendous to us, the crowning glory of the Willises’ career in crime, something that would be the worst possible thing that could happen to anyone in the entire history of the universe.

After a good cooling-off, the others came up to us, ready to go.

“See ya, Isabelle,” I said, standing.

“See ya, Vi. I’m around if you ever need anything.” She winked. “Or if you change your mind about that other business.”

“What on earth did she mean by that?” Gwen asked.

We were walking home down back lanes, past plum trees not quite ready for picking.

“I’m not sure.” I laughed. “Potato whiskey, most likely. She knows where to get it.”

“Good grief,” said Gwen.

She had never taken to Isabelle. She couldn’t get past her stained tobacco fingers. I liked her fingers and tried to get mine to look like that — like hers and Jackson’s — but I couldn’t manage it. Sometimes I wanted to be Isabelle, even for just one day.

Several days after our swim I sat with Gwen on her back stoop helping her shell peas. Warren and Tippy were out in the field. We saw them walking slowly towards us, which seemed odd. They usually ran and leapt.

Warren looked scared when he entered the yard.

“What’s the matter, Squirt?” asked Gwen.

“I threw up,” said Warren, “and my head hurts.”

Gwen put him to bed with a bucket beside him on the floor in case he had to throw up again.

“Too much sun,” she said.

The next day Warren was fine.

Two days later his right leg ached but he mentioned it to no one at the time.

The day after that, Tippy barked. The quietest dog in the world barked for the first time any of us knew about. Gwen and I were sitting on her stoop talking about what a jackass Dirk was and it took both of us a moment to realize who was causing the ruckus from out in the field. It was Tippy, all right — barking and carrying on — running towards us where we sat and then back towards the middle of the field. Like Rin Tin Tin might have done.

Once we understood her, we ran to follow. We found Warren crawling slowly through the weeds. His eyes were unnaturally bright; he looked like he was watching a horror show at the Baddow Theatre, something way too scary for anyone his age to see, for anyone to see.

A few inches from his outstretched right hand was an old board with four gopher tails nailed neatly to it. Gwen and I carried him to the house and laid him on the chesterfield. I phoned Aunt Helen. Warren’s right leg was so weak he hadn’t been able to walk. He had crumpled to the ground on his way to the golf club where he was going to sell his tails to the greenskeeper.

He turned to me. “Violet, would you mind going back for my gopher tails? That was a good morning’s work.”

“For sure, Warren,” I said. I headed right out so he would have one less thing to worry about. I found them and put them under the stoop. I fought back my tears; he didn’t need to see those.

Aunt Helen was there when I got back.

I told him where I had put the tails.

“Thanks kindly, Violet,” Warren said.

“Warren, dear,” said Helen, “can you bend your head down to your knees?”

He bent down all right but he bent from the hips with his spine held straight and rigid.

“I feel quite stiff,” he said.

“Violet, phone your father and tell him to come over right now with the car. We’re going to take this young man to the hospital.”

Warren was put in isolation and given a serum that was thought to be effective if administered early on.

Gwen tortured herself. “Why didn’t I recognize the symptoms sooner?” she said.

“Why would you?” I said.

“We shouldn’t have gone swimming at Happyland,” she said.

“I don’t know,” said I. “Surely it takes longer than a few days to take hold.”

By the end of the week Warren couldn’t stand up without help. His right leg was almost useless and his left one was weak.

We were all put under quarantine: Gwen and her mum, me, Helen and Dad, all those who had been in contact with him that day. We couldn’t leave our houses for three weeks.

Most often polio was connected to swimming places, where other kids splashed and swallowed and spat and peed. But Gert Walker didn’t blame Happyland Pool or the Red River or any of the other places where Warren played. She believed that the disease came from the Negro named Tag. She made no secret of this and I prayed to any entity that might be listening that he was safely home on Brush Street in Detroit.