Blue Vengeance (8 page)

 

The day after the Rock Sand conversation it was cloudy and cool. Danny rode his bike to Wade's, where he found a
Photoplay
with Elizabeth Taylor on the cover. There was an article about Natalie Wood inside; she was in a movie called
Love with the Proper Stranger
. He liked the sound of that.

The breeze he caused as he travelled through the streets felt fine against his face. At the A&P he picked up pork and beans and dog food, along with the usual stuff like milk and bread and, of course, Swanson TV dinners. On the way home, when he turned onto Lyndale Drive, he tried to pick out Janine's house. His bike wobbled with the load, so he decided to take the groceries home and come back on foot.

He had known her for only three days, but he couldn't imagine a day without her. If she moved away, or worse, stopped wanting to hang around with him, he wouldn't be able to stand it. He might become even less of a person than his mum. He'd lie down on the floor — the cellar floor — and accept neither food nor drink. All that would be left of the old him would be his plan, floating around in the atmosphere, with no one to pull it off.

It was a real worry, because the thing was, Janine was a girl. And not only that, she was probably two years older than he was. It made no sense for her to be his best friend.

When he got home he fed Russell and used the new can opener that Dot had bought to open a can of beans and put them on the stove to warm up.

Then he picked some wild flowers from the vacant lot next door and put them in a small vase. He didn't know what they were called; he hoped they weren't weeds.

A few minutes later he placed a tray containing beans, toast, flowers, and the
Photoplay
on the coffee table beside his mum. He caught a glimmer on her face. It came and went, just like that.

She started to cry. He left the room and ran out the back door, leaving his own beans on the kitchen table. A mother who wasn't much of anything was one thing, but a crying mother was something else entirely.

He began the walk down Lyndale towards St. Mary's Road. Janine had said she lived across the street from Rock Sand, but not as far east. If he couldn't find her he could ask someone where the greaser lived and proceed from there. If he was as famous as she let on, everyone in the area would know which house was his. Danny didn't know which way was east and he hadn't asked because he felt so stupid about not knowing who that asshole Rock Sand was.

He cut through the field behind the icehouse to see if their chunks of ice were still there and was amazed to find that they were. They didn't even look much smaller than they had the day before.

Past the icehouse there were eight small houses on one side of the drive and several more on the other. He walked down the front street with no luck, so tried the back lanes. Behind one of the scruffy little homes he spotted her in the yard, sitting on a nylon lawn chair beside a wiry man who Danny took for her dad.

He had a cigarette resting on his lower lip, as if he had sticky spit, or it was attached with Mucilage. It bobbed up and down while he talked. He held an accordion between his legs, but wasn't playing it. Danny had never known anyone who owned an accordion or any musical instrument other than a piano. Pianos were everywhere. Most girls seemed to take lessons, and even some boys (Paul, for instance).

Janine or her dad must have said something funny because they both laughed. The dad's turned into a cough, but Janine's was clean and hearty. It was the first time Danny had heard it. Her dad punched her shoulder gently and tousled her short uneven hair.

As she recovered from her laughter, Danny saw her see him and pretend that she didn't. It alarmed him. She must be pissed off about the way he acted when she talked about Rock Sand.

He went home, and wasn't in the house for five minutes before she knocked on the back door. Russell stood beside her wagging her tail. When Danny opened the door, they both moved to come in, but he stopped them.

“No. Let's sit on the stoop.”

He didn't want her to know how dark and musty his house was compared to hers, which was probably full of laughter and music and board games.

The screen door clacked shut behind him, and they settled themselves in the backyard.

“Why did you pretend you didn't see me?” Danny said.

“Sorry.”

“Why, though? Was it because I told you not to waste ball bearings?”

Janine looked puzzled for a second or two and then laughed. Not the hearty one, though.

“'Course not.”

She cuffed his shoulder, like he had seen her dad do to her.

“Was it because we argued about the colour of Marlon Brando's hair?”

He stayed away from Rock Sand, even though he was sure he was the real reason — something to do with him.

“No, you crazy idiot,” said Janine.

“Why then?”

She invited Russell to sit down beside her and concentrated on giving her ears a good scratch.

“She's clean,” she said.

“Yup. I gave her a bath.”

“I didn't want you to see where I lived,” said Janine. “I mean, obviously you already had; I saw you see me. But for a second I thought I could still hide it.”

Danny was so relieved that it wasn't about anything he had said that he almost started to laugh, but he noticed that Janine's eyes had filled up. He didn't want her tears to spill. They might be even harder to take than his mum's.

“Why?” he said.

“Because you're rich, and I'm poor.”

“What?”

“You heard.”

Danny looked down at Russell. She was staring straight ahead. He faced Janine again.

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Everything.”

“I'm not even a hundred per cent sure we're rich.”

“Have you noticed what your house looks like compared to mine?”

Danny looked at his house.

“No.”

“You've got a swimming pool, for Christ's sake.”

Danny looked at the pool with its deflated inner tube and sprinkling of debris. A blanket of rotting elm seeds had turned black and scummy.

“I haven't swum in it yet this year.” He knew that wasn't any kind of point.

“So? You could have.”

“But you and your dad were laughin',” he said. “Sittin' side by side, laughin' at something one of you said.”

“So? What's that got to do with anything?”

Everything.

They sat on the stoop for a while. The breeze picked up and rustled the treetops, wafted against their faces. Danny wondered what it would feel like to be a topmost leaf, at the mercy of the wind and the seasons and stones shot from slingshots.

“I don't expect you to understand,” said Janine.

For a second he thought she was talking about leaves, what it would feel like to be one, and he was set to argue.

“I've never really thought about people's houses before,” he said after that second had passed. “I mean, what they look like from the outside.”

He could see from her face that this was of interest to her, and it pleased him that his words had done that.

“Do you and Russell want to come over and meet my dad?”

“Sure. He looked sorta neat, the way he could smoke without the cigarette leaving his mouth.”

Danny figured since he was so good at riding his bike with no hands, smoking that way would be a cinch once he got started on it. Maybe afterwards, in the fall. If he was still friends with Janine, he could go over to her house and smoke no hands with her dad.

They took a winding route back to her house and entered the yard from the lane. There was no fence, just lots of greenery for Russell to root around in. Her dad was still outside but the accordion was nowhere in sight. He was squirting oil into parts of a lawn mower. Janine was already at his side. Danny approached slowly, as if he was entering a special place where he might not belong.

“Come on over, Danny,” Janine said. “This is my dad. His name's Jake. Jake, this is Danny Blue, the kid I told you about.”

Her dad held out a hand, and they shook. His eyes squinted against the smoke that floated in front of his face.

“Danny, is it? Short for Daniel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I had a brother named Daniel once, a long time ago.”

Russell hadn't made it past the scrub at the far end of the yard.

“That's your dog?”

“Yes, sir. That's Russell.”

Danny wondered what Janine had told her dad about him. Did he know about Cookie? About his slingshot skills?

“Is Daniel not your brother anymore?” he said, for want of something better to say.

“He died, I'm sad to say, when he was just a young whipper-snapper.”

“Oh. I'm sorry, sir.”

“Call me Jake, son. We're not in the army.”

Danny had never heard of calling someone's dad by his first name, but somehow it made sense in this case.

“Sorry, Jake.” By now he wasn't sure what he was apologizing for.

“Nothing for you to be sorry about. It wasn't you killed him.”

Janine's dad seemed nice enough, yet Danny felt he wasn't able to say quite the right thing. Not so far, anyway.

He wanted to ask who or what killed his brother, but he figured that might be another wrong thing. Or not wrong so much, as not quite right.

“It was polio got him,” said Jake. “Epidemic of '36.”

Jake had the same thing going on with his words that Janine did. They had an interesting way of talking. Not the words they chose to say, but what they did with them.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Danny tried. It was the comment that he had heard the most at Cookie's funeral.

Jake smiled. The crevices in his face went all the way around it, from his chin to his eyes and across his forehead. He had a lot of crevices for a dad. Usually you had to be a grandfather before you had that many. Other than that he didn't look all that old. He was skinny, in his sleeveless undershirt, and gave the impression he'd had a hard time of it in one way or another.

“Thanks, son,” he said.

“My dad was in the war,” said Janine, as though she knew that Danny was wondering about the hardships her dad had been through.

“Oh?”

Most dads he'd met had been in the war, but he had never come across one that talked about it. He didn't know if his own dad had been in the war. If so, he'd probably deserted. They were probably still looking for him so they could put him to death by firing squad.

“Danny doesn't want to hear my war stories, honey.” Jake's smile wasn't so big now, and that put an end to that.

So Janine said wrong stuff too.

“Jan tells me you're a dab hand with a slingshot.”

For a moment Danny didn't know what he was talking about because he didn't know who Jan was and he'd never heard the expression
dab hand
before. But he soon put it together.

“Yes, sir. I mean, Jake.”

“That's good, son.”

Danny wanted to tell him not to call him son. It reminded him of the burly man at Sydney I. Robinson's and that whole terrible day. But he didn't figure kids were allowed to tell grownups what to call them. Then again, Jake had told him not to call him
sir
.

“I prefer not to be called
son
,” he said.

Jake smiled. “Well, good for you, boy. It's good for you to speak up for what you don't like. I can't very well ask you not to call me
sir
and then turn around and call you
son
if you don't like it, can I?”

Exactly.

Danny didn't like being called
boy
either, but let it go. Maybe it was just a one-off. If it turned out not to be, he could deal with it another time. The effort of talking to Janine's dad was wearing him out.

“Do you wanna go down to the river?” he said to Janine.

“Sure. Let's go.”

They left Jake to his lawn mower and walked away down the lane.

“Your dad calls you Jan.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

Russell trotted along beside them.

Danny waited till they turned left onto the drive before he said, “I'm worried that I'm too famous for my slingshot skills.”

Janine stopped walking.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talkin' about, if I do something with my slingshot that causes some sort of result, I'm worried that everyone will know it was me.”

Tiptoeing around the plan wasn't easy, but Danny didn't want to be the first one to say the word that started with
k
.

This was as close as they had come, except for when she had mentioned that he missed.
You missed, didn't you
? He heard it in his head from time to time; he even saw it — letters forming words inside his eyes — like Jake's cigarette smoke, but more particular in shape.

“Let me do it for you,” said Janine.

That took him by surprise.

“No. Jesus, no,” he said.

“I'm as good as you.”

“That's not the point.”

She took her slingshot out of her back pocket, picked up a smooth round stone, aimed at something on the other side of Lyndale Drive, and shot in a clear straight line.

“What were you aimin' at?”

“What I hit.”

She picked up another stone. “What is the point?”

Danny took a couple of shots himself, hitting his targets both times.

“It's not your fight,” he said. “Are we even sure we know what we're talkin' about, that we're talkin' about the same thing?”

“Of course we are. I told you. I saw you that day.”

“Did anyone else see me? Does everybody in the world know what I did?”

“Nope. Just me.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. We would have heard about it if it was out there.”