Blue Vengeance (9 page)

“And you didn't tell anyone?”

“'Course not.”

“Your dad seems to know I'm a dab hand with a slingshot. What about him?”

“I didn't tell him what you did. What you didn't do. What we're going to do.”

She started walking again, and Danny and Russell followed along.

“Honest,” she said.

They sat down on a patch of grass near the river's edge.

“I bet you wouldn't have missed that day if it hadn't been for the barking dog.”

“Yeah, that's what I think too. But I'm glad I missed.”

“Why?”

“It was supposed to be just a trial run. I need to be readier.”

“Maybe I could make sudden loud sounds sometimes when we're practising,” said Janine.

“Yeah. I thought of that too, but I think it would completely destroy my concentration if I had to wonder when and what your next sound was gonna be. I'll just have to chance loud sounds.”

“You need nerves of steel for something like this.”

“Like Superman.”

“My dad said that he had nerves of steel before the war.”

“Maybe we could time travel back to before the war and get your dad to go into the future and do it. Then we could zoom back to the present, and he could go back to the past, and no one but us would know what had happened. Your dad of the past wouldn't exist in the present.”

“He was shell-shocked in the war,” said Janine.

“Shell what?”

“Shell-shocked.”

“What's that?”

“Messed up inside his head in certain ways. He wasn't the same when he came back as he was before he left.”

“How not the same?”

“I don't know exactly because I didn't know him before he went, but I guess for one thing, he no longer has nerves of steel.”

“Maybe it's good that you didn't know him before,” said Danny, “so you don't have to compare the two versions.”

“Yeah, maybe. I like him fine the way he is now. He was an electrician before the war and now he works on an assembly line at Kub Bakery.”

“I noticed he smells a bit like bread.”

“Yeah.” Janine smiled.

“Where were you when you saw me?” Danny said.

“In the lane behind Birchdale Betty's house. I was heading to the school grounds, to cut through, when I noticed a bush move — a honeysuckle — the type cats go berserk over. Bushes don't usually move, so I went closer to see whether it was rabbits or kids necking or what. Turned out it was you.”

“You actually saw me.”

“Yup. I peeked in the back of the bush, and there you were. And then you did what you did.”

“Jesus. Imagine me not knowin' you were right there.”

“I'm quiet.”

“Did you see the afterwards part?”

“Just the part where Hardass went screaming into the school. I took off down Balsam. I had my slingshot with me and I didn't want them thinking I did it.”

Danny told her about what had happened next, Mr. Calder's appearance on the scene, how that had gone.

“I feel sick,” he said. “What if it had been someone else who saw me, like Birchdale Betty?”

“It wasn't, so quit worrying about it. She doesn't leave her yard unless it's in that boat of a car.”

“Birchdale Betty hates me.”

“She hates everybody. Who doesn't she hate?”

“I don't know, her husband?”

“No. I'm pretty sure she hates him too. I heard her yelling at him once, when he was vacuuming the trees. She shouted that he wasn't doing a good job, that he was missing spots. She even said,
what good are you anyway
. That's not a very nice thing to say to your husband.”

“I wish you hadn't told your dad about my slingshot skills.”

“Sorry. I shouldn't have. I'll try and get him to forget about it.”

“How?”

“Maybe by talking about other things you're good at.”

“I'm not good at anything else.”

“You're smart in school, aren't you?”

“Well, I'm pretty good in maths, I guess.”

He was exceptional in maths and good in everything else except phys ed but he didn't want her thinking he was some kind of suck who studied all the time.

“Your dad shouldn't know,” he said.

The grass was damp. When they stood up, they had damp rear ends. They walked, following the curve of the river.

“Lots of other kids have slingshots,” Danny said. “Nearly every guy in my class had a Wham-O hangin' out of his pocket last year. I think they were in style or something.”

“What's a Wham-O?”

“It's the one you can order from the back of comic books. I sent away for one. I think it was one of my
Lone Ranger
comics that had the ad in the back pages. It was pretty good actually; I might still have it lyin' around somewhere.”

“Jeez. I must have read the wrong comic books.”

“What comic books do you read?”

“Well, none anymore, of course, but I used to read a lot of
Archie
and
Little Lulu
.”

Of course she doesn't read comics anymore. Danny wished he could take back his little-kid words.

“Let me do it for you,” Janine said again. “People probably do know how good you are.”

“Maybe just you and Paul and your dad and me,” Danny said.

“Likely more.”

“Maybe.”

“Nobody knows how good I am,” said Janine. “My dad, but he doesn't count in terms of me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I were to do something bad with my slingshot, my dad wouldn't let anything happen to me. He'd lie or kill to keep me safe.”

Kill
. She'd said the word that hadn't yet been spoken.

Danny envied her a dad that would kill to keep her safe.

“If I do it,” she went on, “and they suspect you, they won't be able to prove it because you won't have done it.”

“There'll be circumstantial evidence.”

“What?”

“Circumstantial evidence,” said Danny. “You hear about it all the time on
Perry Mason
. It's when there's no actual proof, like fingerprints or bein' caught red-handed, but there are so many things that point to the culprit that they capture him anyway and send him down. Like in my case, it would be my hatred of Miss Hardass and my skill with a slingshot.”

“It won't go to trial like on
Perry Mason
,” Janine said. “Kids don't go to trial.”

“Where do they go?”

“Reform school. It's a home for juvenile delinquents. But neither of us will have to go there. We're going to plan this and pull it off so that won't happen. It'll be perfect, and I'm going to be the one to do it.”

“What if you get caught red-handed?”

“I'll pretend it was an accident. Like I said, no one knows how good I am except you and my dad and me. I could be just learning, and the shot goes wildly astray. Stuff like that happens all the time.”

“It does?”

“Yeah. I've got a second cousin with a glass eye because of a slingshot accident.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Who shot him?”

“Me. I was just learning. See? I'm experienced in these things. I got in no trouble over it. Zero trouble.”

“Was it really an accident?”

“Of course. I like my second cousin.”

“What's his name?”

“Who cares? Plus, it's a her.”

“And she didn't die.”

“No. She didn't die.”

Danny was mildly disappointed. He wondered if she was making up the story just to talk him into letting her do it. Then he realized it didn't matter one way or the other, like the cousin's name didn't matter. Janine wanted to help him. Period.

“Do you have lots of cousins and second cousins and stuff?” he said.

“No. As far as I know, just that one second cousin. Around here, anyway.”

“How do you have second cousins without havin' first cousins?”

“I'm not sure. I don't know the legalities surrounding it.”

“I don't have much in the way of cousins.”

Danny figured they had a lot in common family-wise: her with no mum (that he had seen), him with no dad (that he had seen); both of them with no brothers or sisters (anymore, for him); no cousins to speak of except the one-eyed girl. As far as he was concerned, second cousins were too distant to even mention, unless they'd had eyes shot out. He had a dog.

“Do you have any pets?” he said.

“Yup. A cat named Pearl. You'll meet her.”

Any time she said anything about the future, even if the future was just later that day, Danny's heart leapt up with the knowledge that he would see her again.

“Pearl loves honeysuckle bushes. She rubs up against them and goes cross-eyed.”

“That's funny,” said Danny.

“Yeah.”

Neither of them laughed.

There was no doubt in his mind that she was as good as he was with her aim. In fact, they both knew she was better. But still.

“You can't do it,” he said. “There'll be trouble, and it shouldn't be your trouble. It'll be way too suspicious that Miss Hardass gets targeted twice. Mr. Calder will figure it out.”

“I want it to be my trouble,” said Janine. “She's a vile human being. Plus, Mr. Calder probably hates her. Didn't you say he put his hands over his ears while she was screeching at him?”

She picked up a stone.

“It's true,” said Danny.

“Like I said, if I do it, and they suspect you, they won't be able to prove it. Never mind circumstantial evidence. You can be somewhere else, somewhere definite where a trustworthy person sees you and can stick up for you.”

“Who?” he said.

“I don't know. Another teacher, maybe. The janitor, Mr. Potter. We could plan it so you're inside the school in full view of people while I'm outside doing it.”

“Mr. Calder,” said Danny.

It was sounding more and more like a good idea.

“Sure. And it'll be an accident. You can't get punished for accidents.”

“Can't you?”

“Nope.”

Janine fit the stone neatly into the pocket of her slingshot and aimed for something low, far into the shrubbery.

“What were you aimin' for?” Danny said.

“What I hit.”

Danny turned up towards his house.

“Where're you going?”

“I have to go home for a while, think things over.”

“Okay. We'll talk some more soon.”

Janine headed back the way they had come.

“You can swim in our pool if you want to,” he called after her, in case he had been too abrupt.

She waved without turning around. Every single thing she did enchanted him more.

 

Later that afternoon, the clouds disappeared, and Danny sat on a Muskoka chair by the pool popping peanuts into his mouth and flipping the shells onto the ground.

Russell lay across his legs. She was far too big for anybody's lap. She was covered with peanut dust, and broken shells had attached themselves to her fur. Her eyes were closed and the warm rays of the afternoon sun caught the rear half of her body.

The Blues were practically the only family in the neighbourhood with a swimming pool in their yard, and Danny thought, for the first time, how odd that was. His family would not be on anyone's list as one likely to have a pool.

In previous summers he and his friends had used it — Cookie, not so much in recent years. On extra-hot days other kids would knock on the door and ask politely if they could have a dip to cool off. Mrs. Blue had allowed it; she hadn't told them to go away. But Danny knew she didn't like it. She was on edge till they cleared out.

It was inevitable that teenagers would take liberties at night, with beer in their bellies and no fear to speak of. Then she would make a fuss. She would even phone their parents if she knew who they were. At night the kids were at least partially naked, so as soon as Danny heard them, he would rush to the bathroom window to see if he could catch anything interesting. Boys' dicks and asses mostly. The girls were slower to get out of the water once they were in and they weren't as flagrant as the boys; they usually left their underwear on. But on occasion, he had seen a breast or two and a hint of something dark down below. It was worth the wait.

No one came knocking this summer. Danny supposed it was because of Cookie's death. The pool was out of bounds now, for fun and frolic.

It must have been different once, before him, before Cookie. Maybe his mum and dad had had some good years, before their kids and her sickness came along to spoil everything. Maybe they had swum together in the pool. He liked to think the Blues were a welcoming family at one time. There was no reason for him to think that, other than that he liked to.

He didn't remember his dad, except as a word:
dad
. A notion of a person.

There was an arm — big and sturdy with lots of hair — soft against his face. That might have been his dad.

He remembered a time when he and Cookie were little, and they had peeked around a wall into the front room to see their mother sitting in a sunbeam, sewing a button on her taffeta dress.

“Daddy?” Cookie said.

Their mum looked their way but didn't speak.

“Daddy,” Cookie said again.

She set aside her sewing and looked past them out the window.

The memory felt so hollow that Danny wanted to fill it up with a better one, even if he had to make it up.

 

When he was old enough to notice that other kids had two grownups in their houses instead of just one, he'd asked his mum about it.

“Your dad died,” she said.

Aunt Dot and Uncle Edwin were there when she said it and they both got funny looks on their faces, so Danny didn't believe her. And then, later that day, Dot and his mother whispered in cat voices. It was the first time he heard them hiss.

He waited what he considered to be a substantial length of time and then he said it again.

“Where's my dad?”

“I told you. He died.”

“No.”

“Yes. Now leave it, Danny.”

He was still young enough not to know that a couple of hours wasn't a substantial length of time under those sorts of circumstances.

When he had given up on asking his mother, he asked Cookie.

“Where's our dad?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Somewhere.”

That was enough for him. He had a dad out there and he would wait for him to come home. His dad would be nicer than his mum.

 

As time went by, Danny and Cookie made it their business to get to the bottom of the puzzle of their missing dad. Cookie became the asker, Danny along for moral support.

Their mother started out by denying again that he existed and then, when they wouldn't give it up, she ignored them, went about what she was doing, even if it wasn't much. She didn't bustle like other people's mothers. Danny wanted a mum who bustled.

They pegged her for a liar. They even made up a game surrounding it. Cookie would be the mum, Danny the kid.

“Where's our dad?” said the kid.

“He's dead,” said Cookie in an irritated mother voice.

“
Liar, liar, pants on fire
!” the kid would shout.

Then they would both dance around, singing it,”
Liar, liar, pants on fire, hang them up on a telephone wire
,” till their real mother shouted up the stairs.

“Cut it out up there!”

They speculated on their father's absence. Was it their fault for being born? Had their dad wanted no children? Had they behaved so badly as babies that he couldn't stand them for one more day and escaped to a far-off land where no one knew his name or what he had run from?

Cookie had more memories than Danny of him. She knew enough to draw a picture of him. He was shaped like an elongated pear. One of the juicy ones that they took outside to slurp on in summer. The drawing looked more like a pear than a person, but Danny praised her anyway and said they could use it as a guide when they went searching.

He imagined their dad climbing up and down grassy knolls with a stick over his shoulder. The stick held a large handkerchief — father-sized — bulging with tasty foods that Danny and Cookie never got at home: fried chicken, crackers with more flavour than soda crackers, potato salad. Their mum cooked potatoes all the time, but she never made them into a salad like other mothers did. Mrs. Carter added mayonnaise and celery, and radishes in summer.

They wondered to death what became of their dad. One of Danny's speculations was that he was a magic man. He had kept his talents to himself over the years and behaved like any other dad, made a living like any other dad, but he could see into the future. And he saw that the future in the house on Lyndale Drive was bleak. It wasn't their fault, his and Cookie's. They hadn't been bleak kids, not yet, anyway. It was the fault of their mother.

Maybe their dad couldn't face a future with her and her illness, so he did the thing that made the most sense. He ran off and joined the circus, putting to use the powers that he had kept to himself for so long. He read people's fortunes, helped them with decisions in their lives, their futures. In short, he did good.

“Maybe that's it,” Cookie said when Danny told her his latest theory.

“Yup, I think it is.”

They found themselves being happy for him, cheering him on in his endeavours, and then they would remember that he left them, and a shadow would fall over the hillside rambler, who ended up in a travelling show of wonderment.

Finally they put it to rest. Out loud, anyway.

 

Danny shifted in his lawn chair now, and Russell dug in. He shifted some more, and she resigned herself to getting up.

There was a small whisk hanging from a hook inside the back door. Danny fetched it and a dustpan and cleaned up the scattered peanut shells around his chair.