The Western Light (21 page)

37

ON THE SAME DAY THAT FRANCE TESTED ITS FIRST ATOMIC BOMB, the seventh blizzard of our icebox winter blew in from the Bay. Its flakes were as fine as grains of rice. As silvery and light as dust motes floating in sunlight. I put on my snowsuit and galoshes and went outside to wait for the Bug House van. By that time the flakes were coming down hard and fast, and it took me longer than usual to climb aboard and take my place by Ben.

“Snob, snob, Mary Bradford's a snob,” the Bug House boys chanted as I sat down. Ben's shoulder pressed mine. “Don't listen,” he whispered as we bounced up and down, anxious looks on our faces. It was bad enough that Hindrance caused me problems, but now that it was winter and we had to take the van, Ben and I were stuck with our mortal enemies. Groan. Sigh. I wished John could scare them off the way he did that afternoon at the icehouse, but there was nothing he could do now to stop Sam and his friends calling me names.

As soon as the boys grew quiet, I showed John's letter to Ben. He read it twice, his eyes popping. John had never signed off “affectionately” before. I told Ben about the “Annabel Lee” poem with its line, “And we loved each other with a love that was more than love.” Did John love me, I whispered, with feelings stronger than love? I couldn't help thinking I was puffing myself up. Ben shook his head.

“He's crazy about you,” Ben whispered. “You have to visit him, Mouse.”

“You think I should?”

“He asked you, didn't he? I'll come with you.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Now what are you two whisperin' about?” Sam surprised us, breathing down our necks.

“None of your beeswax. And it's ‘whispering,' not ‘whisperin'.'”

“Is that so, Peg Leg?” Sam said. “Well, I know who you're whisperin' about. Pilkie! He nearly killed one of the guards last week.”

“He did not!”

“Did so! My dad told me, but nobody is supposed to know in case they stop Pilkie from playing hockey.”

“Who was the guard?”

“Sib Beaudry. John choked him with a sheet when Sib came into his cell. My dad says Sib went out cold for one whole minute.”

“Well, Sib was asking for it. He picks on John.”

“John! She calls him John!” Waving his arms like a conductor, Sam chanted: “Mouse Bradford is sweet on the hockey killer!” The Bug House boys chanted in the same singsong voice: “Mouse Bradford is sweet on the hockey killer.” They were still chanting after the driver dropped us off. I walked into the schoolyard, holding my hands over my ears.

In current affairs class, I talked about the Rats making the Pickering Cup semi-finals. While the Bug House boys blew raspberries at me behind the teacher's back, I explained how John had led the Rats to victory over the Orillia Warriors during his first game back with the team. Generally, the Warriors played so cautiously the other team went to sleep on their skates, but this time their shutdown brand of hockey didn't work. Instead of playing slower, John skated harder and faster until he was outskating every player on the rink. Reading from
The Chronicle
, I quoted Kelsey Farrow: “It was a cleanly played game with the referee handing out only eleven penalties.” Before Sam could put John down for getting six of the eleven penalties, I repeated what Kelsey had told us at the Dollartown Arena: “A player who can't get physical is no use to his team.” Everybody, even the teacher, grinned.

By noon, the snow was a solid white wall, shutting out the street. We had to be let out early. The hospital van was waiting near the front door. The chant started again as I struggled up its steps. “Mouse Bradford is sweet on the hockey killer.” I didn't bother covering my ears. Our van crept along behind the snowplow as we passed Dollartown Arena and the shops on the Main Street. In the falling snow, Maple Ridge was a yellow glow behind the skeleton shapes of the trees on Bug House hill. I imagined John all by himself in the hospital infirmary. Was he thinking about me? More likely, he was being bullied by Sib Beaudry. Sib deserved to be choked as far as I was concerned. I put Sam's story in a part of my mind where I didn't have to look at it.

When the bus dropped me off, I told Little Louie about John inviting us to visit him.

“Do you think they'll let us see him, Little Louie?” I asked.

She frowned. “Probably not, Mouse.”

“But he's down in the dumps.”

“Well, you're right about that. But there's nothing I can do.”

“Really? Oh, can't you help us, Little Louie?” I cried. “I'll just die if I can't see him.”

She stared at me, surprised. Then the muscles in her face relaxed. “I guess it wouldn't hurt,” she replied. “A visit from you might do John some good. He's pretty wound up about getting a review of his case.”

“Will we have to throw bedsheets up to his window? And then climb up them?”

She laughed. “Nothing so dramatic, Mouse. I'll sneak you in the next time I do research at the hospital.”

She grinned at my astonished face. Then she pulled out her date book and marked two Fridays from now with a big “X” and the initials “J.P.”

38

ON SATURDAY, TO PLEASE JOHN, I PUT ON MY SNOWSUIT AND my skates and met Ben outside. The wind was cool and damp on my cheeks and I had to talk turkey to get myself down the kitchen steps:
Come on, Hindrance. Do it for John, your special friend
.

Although Hindrance hurt like anything, Ben helped me over to the rink, where both legs slid out from under me and I went face down into the wet packing snow. Ben bent over me, apologizing as if it was his fault that I couldn't stand on my own two skates. The kitchen door burst open. My aunt rushed out and helped me up, brushing the snow off my hair and shoulders. She said she would put on some cocoa if Ben and I came back inside. I didn't need to be asked twice.

LATER, I TORE A CLEAN page out of my schoolbook and wrote:
John wants me to learn to skate and I am trying my best
. The sentence looked too long, so I crossed it out and wrote:
I can't skate very well
. Next, I crossed out
very well
out so the shorter sentence said,
I can't skate
.

The shorter sentence didn't feel right either so I crossed out
I can't skate
and wrote:
I am a failure
.

Then I took out some notepaper and wrote him a letter.

Dear John:

 

I would have written sooner except that I hoped I could say I have learned to skate. Well, I can't stand up not even holding on to the hockey stick you made me. I wish it wasn't true but there is no way around it. The more I try the more my leg hurts. The other night Ben tried to push me from behind but I went over on my ankles. Ben goes way too fast but then it might not matter how slow he went because I can't get my balance. This afternoon, I tried skating without anyone around to make me nervous and I fell again. Little Louie thinks I shouldn't skate in case I hurt my left leg.

Maybe I will do better the next time. I am very sorry for letting you down. You don't deserve to be treated this way when you are helping me learn what any ordinary kid can do without thinking.

 

With fond regrets,
Your special friend,
Annabel Lee (alias Mary Bradford)

 

P.S. Do you know why fathers are so mean to their daughters in old stories? We have to write a school composition about Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon. He sacrificed her to get a good wind for his ship. That started me thinking about fairy tales where the daughters get the lousy jobs. Sons in fairy tales don't have to do that, do they?

John's letter arrived three days later. Did he know how much I wanted to wring affection out of his words? Or maybe he did understand and pretended not to notice how eager I was for proof that he had romantic feelings for me. He was gallant that way. Or maybe he was just plain oblivious because he was becoming more and more desperate. My father and I didn't realize what was going on, although Little Louie knew. Yes, she knew but she didn't let on she did.

Dear Mary:

 

So you think of yourself as Annabel Lee. You have a big imagination. But look here, I'm not disappointed in you. I know you're doing your best and your best is better than most people's. So don't blame yourself because you're having trouble learning to skate. It takes more time than you'd think.

As for daughters in old stories, I reckon their daddies were only thinking of themselves and they didn't understand how precious their girls were to them until it was too late. Of course, daddies are hard on their boys too. Look at your great-granddaddy who got his hopes dashed because his daddy didn't marry his mother. I figure most of us love our daddies, but one way or another we think they don't love us. Take my daddy, for instance. I was never good enough for him. I waited for him to say he was proud of me. He never did. Your daddy is too busy to play with you. It makes me feel bad every time I think about it. And Sal's daddy has too much fun throwing back beers to pay attention to her but don't tell Sal I said that.

Well now, I didn't mean to get serious on you. Here's hoping I'll be up and at it soon so I can play hockey again.

 

Your special friend,
J.P.

39

RIGHT AFTER JOHN'S LETTER, I GOT THE CHANCE TO SEE FOR myself how Sal's father treated her. Morley was throwing a party for his hockey team. To save money, Sal took me with her to buy bootleg beer. Afterwards, she wouldn't admit she had done anything wrong by taking me along. She was so used to men dropping by for their bottles of Zing that she didn't think my father would care. Maybe he didn't. It was a lapse she would conveniently forget, when she started drinking in earnest herself.

Sal Takes Me to a Bootlegger

 

Sal liked to call French Town “a den of iniquity,” and I'd noted in my book of true facts that this was a term for an opium den. So I was surprised that afternoon when she drove me over in our station wagon. I knew that things had changed between my father and Sal; letting her drive my mother's old car was a sign of what would follow. And that day, Sal wanted to show off the station wagon to Tubby Dault. When we pulled in, Tubby was shovelling snow on his driveway. It was a cold day and the snowbanks rose above the top of his toqued head. Behind him stood the original cabin, which had been made out of big old wide, whitewashed logs with plaster between the logs. The Daults had lived in the log house since they paddled all the way to Madoc's Landing from Drummond Island after the War of 1812. In the early days, their ancestors had been French-Canadian voyageurs and later soldiers with the British army. In exchange for fighting on the British side, the Daults were given lots in French Town and the log cabin had been put up by Dault men in 1822, forty years before the poor, overworked delinquent boys laid the foundation stones at the Bug House.

As Sal helped me out of the car, Tubby took off his mitts, which hung like mine from strings that went through his coat sleeves. Bending over, he shook my hand, his lips pulled high above his gums like a horse when it neighs at you. “Sal, you should have told me Doc Bradford's girl was coming so I could clean up.” He winked at me.

“You look fine, Mr. Dault,” I said nervously.

He laughed. Putting his fingers between his teeth, he whistled shrilly. A German shepherd bounded up, carrying a bottle of Fanta in its jaws. He uncapped the glass bottle, and handed me the pop. He whistled twice this time and the German shepherd brought him a bottle of beer. I caught the label, Brading Ale, as Tubby handed the bottle over to Sal. They passed it back and forth while I sipped my Fanta, praying a police car wouldn't go by. Tubby didn't seem to care that it was illegal in Brebeuf County to drink on your front lawn. Or maybe it was so cold he knew the police wouldn't expect to see people drinking in the open air. From the cabin came the sound of a fiddler playing “Red River Valley,” the song that John had played the day he laid sod on the hospital grounds with the work gang.

“Ed, eh?” Tubby tilted his head in the direction of the fiddling. “That's how he pays me. Well, girlie. Your suds are all set to go.”

Sal looked pleased. Motioning with his bright pink, mittenless hands, Tubby led us into his log home. It was one big room heated by a wood stove. Inside, a fiddler was walking up and down serenading half a dozen men sitting on a sofa that looked like the ones in the Salvation Army store window. Shocked, I stared down at my galoshes. Some of the men had on nothing but their long underwear, and there were empty beer bottles on the table near them.

Tubby clapped his hands. The men by the wood stove jumped to their feet, and one of the men yanked a handle at the back of the sofa. There was a loud creaking noise as the sofa folded out into a bed — except that it wasn't a bed. The part designed to hold a mattress had been cut out, and in its place were rows and rows of beer bottles. Tubby took out some of the beers and handed them to the men. When every man held a bottle, the man in the long underwear folded the bed back in place so it was a sofa again. Tubby wiggled his fingers and all the men sat down and started drinking.

“So you've got a new sweetheart, eh?” Tubby winked at Sal. “Soon you'll be too good for us Daults.”

“Hush up, Pop.” Sal drew a finger across her mouth, and looked directly at me. Tubby's eyes followed hers. “Oh-oh. ” He quickly sat me down on a chair away from the men and said he had a story to tell me about my father. “It was when I worked in the Bug House kitchen, eh?” He started talking in rapid French, which Sal quickly translated. As a young man, Tubby was big and strong so he often helped out on other jobs at the hospital. One day a patient died and he was asked to carry the body on a stretcher. It was forbidden to lift the blanket. But he found himself alone and he was curious. So he lifted the blanket covering the corpse, and my father was lying there, pretending to be dead.

By the woodstove, the men laughed.

“Her father likes to joke around, eh?” Tubby called. The men smiled and nodded. I nodded and smiled too, although nobody associated joking around with Morley now, so I guessed Tubby was talking about something that happened before I was born. I had heard about those days from Sal, who said every woman in Madoc's Landing ran after the young doctor who kept racehorses in a barn near the Dollartown Arena. There were old snapshots of my father and unknown women patting the muzzles of thoroughbred fillies. When he married my mother, Morley gave up racing horses, and put his passion into the Madoc's Landing hockey team.

“Do you want to hear another story?” Tubby asked.

“Yes, I do. Can you tell me about Sal getting engaged to John Pilkie?”

Tubby roared. “Maybe Sal should tell you that one.” He nodded at Sal, who sat daintily sipping her beer. I expected her to say “no” but, instead, she motioned for me to come closer so the men by the woodstove couldn't hear.