Payback (4 page)

Personally, I think we were better off where we were, in Dublin. Maybe the worry of the move and Da trying to find a job helped to make Ma sick again.

Attila the Hundle is glaring at me, waiting for an answer.

There is no answer so I say nothing.

He's like, “Well?” Dripping cold.

The temperature dips even more. Icicles start to form on the edge of Attila the Hundle's desk. It's deadly in here.

I'm like, “Sir, look, I'm sorry —”

“Sorry is hardly good enough. You destroy a perfectly good textbook and all you can come up with is ‘I'm sorry.'”

“I'll pay for the book.”

“And tell me why you were having detention with Mrs. Pickles.”

“Homework.”

“Speak up, boy!”

I suddenly remember what my da told me to do when someone intimidates me or makes me nervous. Imagine them naked. I've got a pretty good imagination so I close my eyes and conjure up a picture of Attila the Hundle sitting there with his skinny white legs and his pot belly hiding his little white johnny wobbler.

But it doesn't work. I'm still scared.

“Well?” says Attila the Hundle.

The room temperature dips even more. The cold is fierce. Frost covers the Socials textbook on the desk in front of Attila the Hundle.

He stares at me, waiting.

I forget what he asked me.

Then he says, “Defacing textbooks and not doing homework are not acceptable behavior at Lonsdale Junior High.”

“No, sir.”

He glares at me. “And you have two unexplained absences from school.”

I say nothing.

“Why?”

“Why what, sir?”

“Why were you absent from school?”

I'm thinking I should maybe tell him that since Ma died I haven't felt like doing much, including coming to school, but that sounds like an excuse, or like I'm fishing for his sympathy, so I say nothing.

Attila the Hundle stands and walks to the window again, hands pushed into the trouser pockets of his dark blue suit. He wears a jacket and a blue shirt with a red tie. He's got thin gray hair and a small gray mustache.

He lets the silence fill the office. Then, after a while, he sits down again behind his desk and opens the folder lying there.

“You're from Ireland, I see. Dublin. Hmmn. Is this the way books are treated in Dublin?” Pause. “You have a sister in third grade at the elementary school.” Long pause. “You don't like it here at Lonsdale Junior High?”

“Yes, sir, I like it just fine.”

Liar.

I can hear the end-of-lunch bell ringing outside in the hallway.

Attila the Hundle says, “I think perhaps I will have a word with your parents.” He stops, leaving a slice of silence for me to help myself to, but I take nothing. He probably expects me to beg for mercy.

I can't even gather enough energy together for a shrug.

Silence. I stare at the name plate on the desk:
Norman P. Hundle. Vice-Principal.

Norman P. Hundle, Vice-Principal, says, icy-like, “Very well, then. I will contact them right away.”

Silence.

“You may go, boy.”

I get up and move to the door.

“Boy.”

I pause.

“I don't wish to see you in here ever again. Your behavior from now on must be exemplary. If I hear another complaint it will mean automatic suspension.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, boy!”

He points to the textbook, pulling a face as though the book is made of dog turds. “You can take this with you.”

I return and grab the book off his desk. As I leave I'm thinking a suspension would be just grand — a gift, you might say. I could ride my bike instead of listening to Dill Pickles or my other teachers ranting on about stuff I don't have the slightest interest in. Life would be a lot more interesting if I could get three or four suspensions a week.

But then what would Da say?

I decide not to go back to class. I will give myself a half-day suspension. I grab my jacket from my locker and I'm out of there. A blast of fresh air and bone-warming sunshine is what I need. I gallop down the hill toward the waterfront, my back to the school, my face to the sun.

I sit on a bench at Lonsdale Pier all afternoon, watching the boats and the seagulls. Then I have to run back up the hill because I'm late picking up Annie.

I can see her standing at the top of the steps as I get closer. I wave to her but she doesn't wave back even though I'm pretty sure she sees me, which means she's mad at me. Oh, well.

“You're
so
late, Charley. Where were you?”

“Sorry, Annie. But I'm here now, okay? That's the main thing.”

“No, it's not! You don't care about me one bit. You only care about yourself. I've been standing here for
yonks!
I thought —”

“Stop whining, Annie. Come on, let's go.”

Girls are such a pain.

Lately I've been avoiding the cafeteria at lunchtime because Benny will probably be there and he will expect me to sit with him and I don't want to sit with him because I can't stand it when kids start calling him names. So I go to the woodwork room and eat my lunch there instead.

Then I go to the bogs and Benny is in there, just coming out of a cubicle. His eyes are red like he has been crying.

“Hi, there, Benny,” I say as I keep moving, pretending I've noticed nothing.

Whatever problem he's got, I don't want to hear about it.

But instead of saying hi back, he just pushes past me and hurries out the door.

••••

Friday, end of the day, I see Sammy and Rebar. They've got Benny over in a quiet corner of the playing field. Sammy pushes Benny into the dirt.

I don't want to see any more, but I'm on my way to pick up Annie.

Sammy yells, “A little dirt will make you look more like a boy.”

“Leave me alone,” Benny cries desperately.

I watch, hoping Benny will do something, lose his temper, get mad, scream, but he does nothing.

A few of Sammy and Rebar's pals gather, hoping for a fight. But I know Benny won't fight no matter how dirty or muddy he gets.

“Fags are cowards,” Sammy jeers.

“I don't believe in fighting,” says Benny. “That's why countries have wars. People like you are the ones who start them.”

I like the way Benny answers back, but Sammy isn't interested in debating. He gives Benny another shove. Benny slips, this time in the muddier part of the field, and goes down again.

Sammy laughs. The other kids — about four or five of them — yell for Benny to get up and fight.

Benny stands. He looks down at his muddy hands and clothing, and his eyes start to tear up.

“Look! He's crying!” Rebar yells.

The boys jeer.

“Faggot!” Rebar shouts.

Everyone laughs. When they see there's to be no fight they walk away.

I know I should go and help him get up, but I have to run like mad to pick up Annie.

••••

On weekends I've got my job in the mall from two o'clock to five-thirty, working in my hotdog suit. I only got the job because I'm so tall and skinny and the suit fits.

I do it because I need the cash. I hate it when I don't have a bit of money in my pocket. Also, I'm saving up for a pair of cycling shoes, the ones with Velcro straps and clips on the sole for the pedals.

I actually don't mind it — the job, I mean — but I don't like the boss very much, a guy named Harvey. He weighs several tons — scarfs down too many of his own hotdogs probably — and he never says any
thing nice. Instead he complains that I don't play the tape often enough, that I dance like a man who's been dead eleven years — on and on.

The tape is a yucky piece of music that plays out of the head of my suit, even though hotdogs don't have heads. While the music plays, I'm supposed to dance hippity-hop, shuffle-shuffle, hippity-hop. I control the tape inside my suit.

Harvey is right, though. I'm not a very good dancer, especially in a hot hotdog suit.

So that's what I do for three and a half hours, with one fifteen-minute break, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I dance around outside the hotdog shop in the mall in a sausage suit with “Harvey's Yummy Hot-dogs” on it and every five minutes or so I play the tape and do a funny little dance.

The hotdog suit is made of some rubbery plastic colored to look like a grilled hotdog in a bun with yellow mustard and onions oozing out the sides. I've got a narrow letterbox opening to see through the bun part.

If you don't think it gets hot in a hotdog suit, especially when you've got to dance every five minutes with your arms by your sides with very little
room to move them about, then you never tried it. But hey, I like the way people, especially little kids, stop and watch me and laugh at me.

It's the best part of the job.

••••

Da is home for three days. He came in Sunday night and picked us up from Aunt Maeve's about eight o'clock.

As much as me and Annie like Aunt Maeve's, it's always grand to be in our own home and in our own beds.

On Monday, Attila the Hundle talks to my da on the phone. Da tells me how much it is for the damaged book. I hand over most of my hard-earned hotdog money, and then Da writes a check, pushes it into an envelope and addresses to Attila the Hundle.

Da doesn't read me the riot act or hand me a lecture about it, either.

He just puts an arm around my shoulder and says, “If you plan to act mad or stupid, Charley, could you please do it at home instead of at school?”

“Okay, Da, sorry.”

“And what's this about missing two days of school?”

I give a guilty shrug.

“What were you doing?”

“Riding my bike.”

“And what are these little faces Mr. Hundle mentions?”

At first I don't know what he means and then I twig — the screaming heads.

“Oh, those,” I say. “I don't really know. Maybe it's the way I was feeling, you know?”

He knows. He knows how much me and Annie miss Ma.

He's okay, my da. I wish now I hadn't wrecked the book with those little screaming heads and racing bikes and a tomato splotch that soaked through to the next page. My da's got enough to worry about paying the rent and the food and keeping our family going.

“School is important, Charley. Your ma wouldn't want you missing time.” He ruffles my hair.

“Yeah, Da, I know that.”

I don't tell him in case he worries even more, but my notebooks are full of little screaming heads lately, especially ever since Friday, when Sammy pushed Benny Mason into the mud.

The last day of September.

“Charley, what do you think of us using puppets for part of our English presentation? Benny asked.

“Puppets?”

“We'd do it like a TV show, and...”

I didn't listen to any more. Imagine Benny and me with puppets! The other kids would laugh us out of Lonsdale. Especially Sammy and Rebar.

Forget about that.

••••

Wednesday, Da takes me and Annie over to Aunt Maeve's after dinner, and then he has to go back to work.

I happen to overhear him in the kitchen telling
Aunt Maeve about the damaged textbook and how I skipped school a couple of times.

“I'm a bit worried,” he tells her.

Crazy Uncle Rufus is at a meeting of the North Shore Kite Club, and Aunt Maeve is busy making a batch of her almond and walnut granola. The whole place smells rich with roasting grains and nuts.

She says to my da, “There's no need to get your knickers in a twist about it, Tim. Don't we all know Charley's a dreamer. There's not a scrap of harm in the boy, I swear to God. Stop your worrying about nothing.”

It's not the first time I've heard myself called a dreamer. That was what my old Dublin teacher, Mr. Gannon, called me, too. “You're a dreamer, Charley,” he used to say when I didn't get my work done on time. Or, “What are ye day-dreamin' about now, Charley Callaghan?” he'd say as I stared out the window at the sky. “What do ye see out there, I wonder? Besides the trees and clouds, I mean? Is it Charley Callaghan ye see? And himself a great leader of the Irish people, uniting our poor country after eight hundred years of foreign occupation, is that it?”

Mr. Gannon reminded me a bit of my Crazy Uncle Rufus.

I haven't said much about Aunt Maeve. Her full name is Maeve Finch and she's got short light-brown hair that's going gray, and she got a nice easy-going way with her. Aunt Maeve is my ma's older sister, though she doesn't look a bit like Ma. She and Crazy Uncle Rufus don't have any kids of their own. They came to Canada yonks ago, long before us.

••••

There's hardly anyone in the mall at the weekend. I hate it when it's not busy because it's easier for Harvey to spy on me out his window and see if I'm dancing. So I've got to work harder. And there's hardly any kids. No nice-looking girls to admire, either. It's really boring.

Deadly.

••••

Me and Benny are working on our Prospero assignment but now and then we take time out to talk
about other stuff. I know a little more about Benny now. For instance, I know he was born here in North Vancouver and that he's got a little five-year-old brother. I ask him what his dad works at.

“Longshoreman. He was killed in an accident at work when I was five.”

“That's too bad.” Then I remember his little brother. “So your ma married again?”

“I don't have a stepfather if that's what you mean. He took off after my brother was born. So now there's just me and my mom and Rico.”

“Rico is your little brother.”

“That's right, half-brother.”

Sammy and Rebar have been watching us.

“You two sure make a nice couple,” says Rebar from across the aisle.