Kicking the Sky (11 page)

Then we heard a scream. “Help!” It was Edite. I squinted upward and could trace her shape on her landing. She was pointing toward the alley that cut onto Palmerston. “Help her!” We all ran in the direction Edite was pointing and
found Senhora Gloria standing over Agnes, pounding her fist into the girl’s head. With the other hand she whipped the braid across Agnes’s back. The garden shears were lying on the ground. We watched, our feet glued to the ground. Agnes had curled herself up like a pill bug and sobbed into her bare legs.

“Puta! Why you go and treat us like this?” Senhora Gloria yelled from deep inside her guts. “You can die on the streets. I don’t care. You hear me?” Her Portuguese was slurred. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to rip that sin out of you.” Senhora Gloria’s red face looked our way but she didn’t care about the audience. “You is good for nothing!”

Agnes opened up and laid her cheek against the fence, her chin up in the air exposing the soft skin of her neck. Senhora Gloria picked up the garden shears and sprang toward her. Edite’s scream channelled through the laneway, threw Senhora Gloria off for only a moment. “Puta! You’re a disgrace!”

James leapt into action like a superhero. He grabbed Senhora Gloria just as she was about to lower the shears. He squeezed her wrist until the shears dropped to the ground. He kicked them away, and Ricky picked them up and took off.

“I no want you in my home. Mentiras! Ungrateful girl. Mentiras! You know how hard I work? How hard we work for you? And you do this. That baby will be a bastard! Perdida. Tas perdida!” She spat at Agnes and missed, before turning to stagger home.

My mouth opened but the words didn’t come out. I closed my mouth and tried again. Still nothing. It didn’t matter,
really. What would I have said anyway? The idea that Agnes was pregnant—that some guy had done things with her—was beginning to sink in. Once again, James had saved the day, while I could only stand there and watch.

I
RODE MY BIKE DOWN
to the Bathurst streetcar loop. Along the way there seemed to be more boarded-up stores. There were men outside the Paddock Tavern who should have been at work. I avoided the Princes’ Gates because it was the busiest entrance to the Ex, our city’s equivalent of a country fair, which ran for two weeks every August. I made my way straight to the Bulova clock tower, the tallest building at the Canadian National Exhibition, past the smoking carnies collecting tickets, moving cranks, levers, pushing buttons with their tobacco-stained fingers. A few of them were on break and had gathered along the side of the wooden rollercoaster, the Flyer, where a bunch of generator cubes rested on wooden blocks. Everything was hooked up to miles of rubber tubes and electric cables the same way my grandmother had lines connected to her before she died.

One of the guys bent down and crushed his cigarette butt into the asphalt. He lifted a container of water over his head and let it drip over his oily hair, shaking off the beads like a wet dog. The guy caught me staring. He cupped his crotch with one hand, jiggled his package a bit, and then blew me a kiss. I ran away. I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following me.

Always the same dirty men and tattooed women working the game booths. They drew you in with promises, “Hit the
black dot and win a prize!” “Everyone’s a winner!” They smoked their cigarettes under a sky of stuffed pink elephants, gigantic teddy bears and snakes with felt tongues, rubber bats and monkeys that dangled from long, sharp sticks, engraved mirrored plaques with western-styled letters next to a bottle of Molson—the kind of thing I’d try to win if we had a basement bar in our house. There were framed posters of Ann-Margret kicking up her heels, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and a smiling Farrah Fawcett with her nipples poking against her red bathing suit. The food stalls sold hot dogs and fries. The smells of fried onions and popcorn mixed with the candy smell of Tiny Tom doughnuts. The candy floss hung upside down from the ceiling like blue and pink clouds. Corn dogs were arranged beside candy apples, all glossy red in their glass cabinets.

Today was Children’s Day, the only day during the two weeks of the fair when kids got in free. Most years the place was crammed with a crush of kids my age, but today the grounds looked empty. Most of the kids I saw were with their parents, holding hands. Attendance numbers were down, even though city officials and politicians had been going on and on about how safe the city was. But the more they said it, the more it sounded like it wasn’t true. Edite said that fear had infected the city like a cancer.

I sat underneath the Bulova tower. The clock read 11:08. My friends were late. They were supposed to meet me after Ricky got his dad into bed. I had told my mother that we’d be coming as a gang and that we’d stick together, even when we went to the bathroom. Staying around the house or playing in our laneway was one thing, she said—at least the neighbours could
watch out for us—but going to a place like the Ex with all those people was just too dangerous. She refused to change her mind, even after I pointed out that she was always working, and that she would never be able to take me to the Ex herself.

When Edite had called to say she might pass by the Ex and wondered if my family would be there, I told her—in a voice that made it sound like my life was over—all the reasons I had already given my mother for letting me go. She told me to put my mother on the phone. When my mother hung up, she went to her purse. “Here,” she said, and handed me twenty dollars. “It’s your birthday present.” I kept the bill damp and crumpled between my sweaty palm and handlebars the whole ride down. I wasn’t sure if Edite had told my mother she would be going to the Ex too, or if something else had changed my mother’s mind. I wondered if maybe she knew I’d seen her with Dr. Patterson. Maybe the money wasn’t really a birthday present. Maybe it was meant to keep me quiet instead.

I climbed up on the stage to get a better view, and in the distance I saw Ricky floating in the air. A closer look and I could see him sitting on James’s shoulders, taller than anyone else. A stuffed snake was coiled around his neck, and he bopped up and down with every step. He looked safe, like no one could touch him.

James had taken Agnes in to live with him. He told us to stay away. He said we needed to give her some privacy. That was a week ago—a whole week without meeting in his garage. The first couple of days, we went back to doing all the things we used to do: catching grasshoppers, racing across roofs, and rolling old tires down the laneway until they crashed into garages and we’d take off running. Despite the ban, I was still sneaking
food over, enough for James and Agnes now. And Manny said there were things James still needed him and Ricky to do.

“What things?” I asked.

“Nothing really,” Ricky said.

“I’m not sure what he has for dickless wonder here.” Manny sucked on his cigarette. “But James has to support Agnes and her baby now too, so I got a few more bikes to hawk, that’s all.”

Ricky said he needed to steal more of the stuff James needed from stores like Woolworth’s and Senhora Rosa’s. He was good at it. He was small and could get in and out quickly. What it was that James actually did was still a bit of a mystery to me. Edite said a lot of guys like James came to the big city to work the streets. Hustlers. She said they did things to survive. I told her Manny said James was some kind of gigolo. I left out the part where Manny said James took care of horny old women who would throw him fifty bucks to do things their rich geezer husbands couldn’t. “Manny says he saw it in a movie,” I added.

“I’m sure James
sometimes
meets with women,” Edite said. “Do you know what I mean, Antonio?” I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure. “Deep down James is a good kid who just needs people to see the good in him, that’s all.” That part I understood. He was taking care of Agnes, while I was just a useless dipshit.

“So this is it?” James said, sneaking up breathless as he twirled Ricky down from his shoulders. Manny leaned against the tower and picked his hair.

“Agnes isn’t with you?” I said. I had hoped she’d come. I wanted to win her a teddy bear or maybe buy her something.

“She wasn’t up to it. Still needs to rest.”

“What do you want to do first?” Ricky asked.

“It’s Antonio’s birthday,” James said, a smile stretched across his face. “Let him choose. Me, I don’t have much of a stomach for rides. But I saw here”—he unfolded the brochure he’d picked up at the entrance—“they have a Scottish World Festival. How ’bout that?”

“Why?” Manny shot out. “I want rides, not a bunch of men in skirts.”

“Kilts,” I corrected. I knew we’d all go with James, if that was what he wanted to do.

“My father was Scottish,” James said. “But I didn’t grow up with any of it, just wanna see how it makes me feel.”

James sat glued to the burly men tossing their logs and hammers. With every winning toss he would jump up and yell. Meanwhile, Manny scanned the stands for distractions.

Three girls sat a few bleachers below us. Two of them had flipped hair, and the one that sat in the middle wore her hair in a ponytail. All three of them wore tight hip-huggers that went so low you could see the dimples above their ass cracks. Manny kept trying to throw popcorn down their pants. Whenever they turned around, they looked right past him, straight at James. He was wearing a tank top and a pair of jeans he called loons. The flares covered his wedgies. He stood over six feet tall but he seemed almost seven feet when, after the hammer toss, he bought himself a felt top hat with his name spelled in exaggerated silver sparkly loops.

“How about lunch?” he said.

“Can we come back to see the horses?” Ricky asked. “I want to see the Clydesdales.”

“Yeah, great,” Manny said. “The smell of horse shit right after lunch.”

James grinned down at me. “Hey, how about I win you something for your birthday?”

“Nah, I don’t need anything.”

“Not even that poster of Farrah?” Manny said. “I’d love to have that hanging on my bedroom door.”

I was drawn to the framed poster of Evel Knievel standing beside his motorcycle. The deep V-neck of his flared collar exposed his hairy chest, and he wore a cape like a superhero. I kept thinking when I grew up I wanted to look just like him, with big hockey-stick sideburns and cool shades.

James went over to the first game he saw. He spent at least ten bucks trying to get a softball into an old milk can. The carnie kept offering two balls for the price of one, then telling him he was close and couldn’t lose.

“Let’s go, James,” I said, tugging at his undershirt. “It’s fixed.”

He handed the carnie a couple of quarters. His hand covered the top of the ball. James closed one eye. He flicked his wrist up and the ball moved in a perfect arc and landed right in the mouth of the milk can, only to pop back up and out.

“Aghhh,” the carnie moaned. He came up from the counter with a small pink snake. “Here you go, bud,” he said, “goes with that other one your friend has wrapped around his neck.”

James reached up and yanked at the leg of a giant teddy bear. The bear fell and practically knocked the guy over.

“Hey! What do you think—?”

“Don’t fuck with me, brother.” James’s fist had knotted
the guy’s T-shirt right under his chin. With his free hand James scooped the large bear toward me.

“Happy Birthday, Antonio.”

The Food Building was a huge warehouse filled with kiosks. Voices boomed “Free coupons!” “Ten-cent spaghetti—cheese extra!” I saw funnel cakes arranged into towers, schnitzel piled into hills alongside kielbasa and pails of sauerkraut. The smells of curries coming from a Caribbean place tickled my nose and made me want to sneeze. We walked around snacking on samples. Every so often a pigeon would swoop down from the rafters, shit on the floor or tables before picking up crumbs or french fries and flying back up to its perch. It was hard to decide, but I ended up getting a burger, fries, and a Pepsi because I took the Pepsi Challenge at last year’s fair and I chose Pepsi.

We paid for James’s lunch. He had wanted to pay for us, but we said he was
our
guest and we knew he had spent most of his money on winning the damn bear. We found a spot of brown grass outside and sat with our food in our laps, careful nothing could touch the grass or the goose shit.

Manny slurped on his spaghetti. “I didn’t bust my ass so you could throw cash away on a toy for Antonio.”

James ignored him. “It was a nice thing you did, giving your bear to that kid,” he said to me.

“Well, I saw the way she was looking at it and thought she might like to have it,” I said. The truth was I didn’t want to drag a huge stuffed animal around with me all day.

“You’re a good kid, Antonio. See that, boys? You just need to be good and the world will be good back to you.”

“And I won’t keep handing over cash so you can play house with Agnes.” Manny always said things out loud that I wish I could. “You said if we helped you with the rent we could use the garage any time.”

“It’s just for now,” James said.

“You know who the father is?” Manny went on. “It’s her stepfather, Senhor Batista. She’s a slut who opened her legs for him,” he said. “Part of the wedding agreement.”

James got up and with one hand lifted Manny to his feet by the neck. “Who the fuck told you that?”

I pulled at James’s belt and T-shirt. Ricky wedged himself between Manny and James, trying to push Manny back with his body.

“You little shit! Answer me, who told you that?” Spit was foaming in the corners of his mouth. Manny’s legs dangled like a puppet’s. His face was red. I rammed my shoulder into James’s side and he let go. Manny dropped to the grass, taking Ricky down with him. Coughing and wheezing, he rubbed his neck.

James bent over and yelled in Manny’s face. “Who told you that?”

“I overheard my father tell my mother last night,” Manny said. “You fuckin’ crazy or something?”

James leaned closer. “What did he say?”

“Senhor Batista was drunk and bragged to the other men about doing it with Agnes. It was his bonus for marrying a divorced woman—something like a two-for-one deal.”