This River Awakens (7 page)

Jennifer laughed harshly. ‘You can count on that, Daddy.’ She stood, the movement abrupt enough to startle both her parents. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

Her father said, ‘Don’t be too late.’

‘Sure thing. I wouldn’t want to miss the fights, would I?’ She took down her faded jean jacket from a peg beside the back door.
‘With a bag of goodies and a bottle of wine,’
she sang, then turned back to her parents. ‘Know what that song’s about?’

Neither replied.

With a smile and a wave Jennifer left the house. As she walked across the yard Sten’s dogs barked at her. She ignored them.

Halfway up the block Jennifer met Sandy and Barb, who had been coming down to call on her. As always, it was important to meet them away from the house. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You ready?’

Barb grinned behind her hand.

‘Ready for what?’ Sandy asked.

‘Didn’t Barb tell you? We’re going into town.’

Barb giggled and said, ‘Jenny knows some Grade Nine guys. We’re meeting them at the McDonald’s.’

‘Come on,’ Jennifer said, draping her arms around her friends and pulling them forward. ‘We’re going to hitch in.’

‘Hitch-hike?’ Sandy asked.

‘Yep.’

Sandy pulled back.

Jennifer reached out and took Sandy by an arm. ‘Don’t worry. If some perve tries anything I’ll rip his nuts off.’

Barb screamed her laughter. Halfway back down the block, the shriek set off Sten’s dogs again.

The three girls walked towards the highway.

VI

We arrived at the traffic lights. Across the highway stood the school. Along the playing field rose a high chain-link fence that stretched around to include the now empty parking lot.

‘We’re Patrols,’ Lynk said. ‘We get keys to work the lights, and we take all the little kids across. You got Patrols in your school?’

‘Sure.’

‘You a Patrol?’

I shook my head. ‘I take the bus home, right?’

‘But when you lived close,’ Lynk persisted.

Again I shook my head.

Lynk swaggered as he walked up to the highway’s gravel shoulder. The traffic lights blinked green for the cars, blinked red at us. Cars and trucks rolled past us at high speeds. We waited for a lull.

Lynk said, ‘The Boorman kid got killed here last year. That’s why they put up the lights, and put us in charge. He was six. Had big ears and a runny nose.’

Roland, hands in pockets, said, ‘He was the third kid killed around here in the last ten years.’

‘Happens all the time,’ Lynk said.

‘A girl in an apartment block we lived in fell from the third floor, right over the balcony rail on to the grass.’

Lynk looked at me. ‘You lived in an apartment?’

‘For a little while,’ I said, turning to watch the traffic. ‘She broke both her legs.’

Roland put a booted foot in a puddle and swirled it until the water turned grey. ‘That’s a long drop. Good thing she didn’t die.’

I nodded. ‘We lived on the fifth floor. I went out on our balcony when I heard this screaming. The mother was on her balcony, screaming and screaming. Everybody came out to look, all of us leaning over the rails – the whole side of the apartment, twelve storeys, all these people leaning over and watching her scream. We couldn’t see the girl, but we watched her mother scream.’ I glanced to see that they were all watching me. ‘They took the mother away. The police did. There was talk that she pushed her daughter over.’

Lynk’s eyes went wide. Roland scowled. Carl licked his lips.

I shrugged and kicked at some gravel. ‘In the city you get accidents, sure,’ I said, scanning the blacktop. ‘But lots of times they aren’t accidents. They just look like accidents.’

The lull came, not a long one, but long enough. My three friends ran hard across the highway; I followed at a slower, slightly daring pace. The last bit of my story, about the mother, had been a lie of sorts.
That
mother did live in the apartment, and had been taken away because she beat her kids, but it was a different mother from the one whose daughter fell from the balcony. And it had happened years earlier.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong in putting two truths together to make a lie, especially since it was a good story. No, not just a good story. It had been ugly enough to take the swagger out of Lynk, to make Roland study me carefully, as if he saw something he hadn’t seen before. It had been enough to make all three of them run hard across the highway.

We walked down the short driveway leading into the parking lot. My thoughts had moved on, flipping through scenes in my mind. The Boorman kid, his mother screaming and running up the highway to where he lay in the muddy ditch. The stopped cars, the flashing lights on the police cars and the ambulance’s wild wail. I ran it all through my mind, then checked myself for whatever feeling came from it.

When the screaming goes away, that’s when it gets bad. That’s the way it seemed, anyhow. Because the quiet kind of sadness doesn’t go away – it stayed with every new scene I conjured up: the family at home, the little boy’s room, his empty bed.

Next year I’ll become a Patrol.

We approached the school’s glass front doors, the four of us looming large in the reflective, smoky panes.

Lynk gave Roland a light push, then said to me with a grin, ‘The girls usually hang out back.’

‘What do they do?’ Even as I asked I remembered:
They smoke cigarettes.

But Lynk laughed. ‘What the fuck do you think, Owen? They sit in a circle and show off their tits.’

With a smile, Roland said, ‘Problem is, only Jennifer’s got any.’

‘Only one in Grade Six,’ Lynk said, nodding.

The area around the school was paved. Hopscotch lines stood out in bright yellow contrast on the dark asphalt. Back of the school the pavement gave way to gravel, where there were monkey-bars and concrete tubes big enough to walk through. Beyond them rose a wire fence, and beyond that ran railway tracks on a raised bank.

We came to the school’s back wall – high, windowless and made of dark brown brick. Two recessed metal doors without handles marked the only variation down its length. Just past the new construction, the high wall ended abruptly at the juncture with the old school, with its own low span of pitted, crumbling limestone. The fence was closest here, only ten feet away as it followed a drainage ditch from the railway tracks back to the highway. On the other side of the ditch ran a narrow dirt road that turned before reaching the tracks and encircled a massive, blockish building made of Tyndal stone. It was at least four storeys tall and looked abandoned.

Lynk looked around, then leaned his back against the old school’s wall. ‘No one’s here,’ he said.

Carl bent and picked up a stone, which he threw over the fence.

I pointed. ‘What’s that old building there?’

‘Candle factory,’ Roland answered. ‘All closed up now.’

‘Looks old.’

Roland nodded and said, ‘My dad says it was built in 1900. There wasn’t even a school here back then, and the highway was just a gravel road.’

Lynk joined Carl in throwing stones. He flung one hard at the building, but it fell short.

Roland’s eyes remained on the factory. ‘Making candles used to be big business, I guess.’

‘Ever been inside it?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘It’s all boarded up.’

‘There’s piles of candles out back,’ Lynk said. ‘Little brown ones. Thick.’

Roland said, ‘We got a whole box of them in the barn.’

I turned back and looked at the school. In a few months I’d be inside it. New teachers, faces I wouldn’t recognise. I’d get into fights. I always did. If I won them, things would be okay. If I didn’t …

‘What’s the matter with you?’

I glanced over at Lynk’s question. He stood with a large stone in his hand, chest thrust out, feet planted wide. Our eyes met. ‘Nothing,’ I answered, forcing myself to relax.

‘Yeah,’ Lynk drawled. ‘Fuckin’ right, Owen.’

Something was happening. I wasn’t sure what. Roland and Carl were both watching. I hesitated, then sauntered up to the limestone wall. I unzipped my fly and moments later was peeing against the wall.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Lynk demanded.

I looked over at him. He was fidgeting, his head turning this way and that.

‘What’s it look like?’

‘Jennifer and Sandy and Barb could walk up any minute,’ Lynk said. He stared at me, then laughed. ‘I don’t fucking believe it.’

I finished.

Lynk swung to Roland. ‘He’s a fucking idiot! Did you see that?’

Roland frowned at Lynk, then shrugged. ‘So?’

I was wondering the same thing, though a part of me was quietly satisfied. I’d rattled Lynk, somehow, as if I’d answered a challenge with contempt. Even as I thought that, I knew that it was right, though I had no idea what the challenge had been. ‘Hell, Lynk,’ I said casually, ‘it’s not as if I pissed on your shoes, is it?’

His face reddened, then he spun and threw the rock hard. It fell short of the candle factory.

I glanced over at Roland, and was surprised to see his expression animated – more than I’d ever seen it before. There was something in his eyes as he stared at Lynk’s back, and the look he finally turned on me was sharp, intense.
He knows what just happened. He understands it completely. How come I don’t?

VII

‘Aren’t you girls a little young to be going into the city all alone?’ the bearded man asked as he pulled his car back on to the highway.

‘Not as young as you think,’ Jennifer answered, leaning back in the seat beside him and stretching her legs. Barb and Sandy, sitting in the back, remained silent.

At her response the man shot her a quick look, then returned his attention to the road. ‘Maybe you got relatives there?’

‘Nope. You can drop us off at the McDonald’s across from P. E. High.’

‘All right.’

Jennifer watched the city take shape alongside the highway. The gas stations came first, then the streets with their square houses and small gardens. The movie drive-in went by, and then the cloverleaf bypass. More houses, smaller lots, then under the old railway bridge, and suddenly there was a cemetery on the left, a used car lot on the right. People on the sidewalks, cars and trucks crowding the lanes.

‘Next light is fine,’ she said.

‘Somebody driving you back?’ the man asked.

‘Of course,’ Jennifer replied.

He pulled into the parking lane in front of the high school. The back door opened and Barb and Sandy hurried out. Jennifer smiled at the man. ‘Thanks. You’ve been sweet.’ She opened the door and stepped out, then leaned back in. ‘Drive carefully.’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘That was cool,’ Barb said as the car drove off. Her round face was flushed as she gazed at the restaurant across the street.

‘You told him we had a ride back,’ Sandy said, frowning. ‘Do we?’

‘Sure. Some guy just like him, heading the other way.’

The light changed and they crossed the street. The restaurant was crowded, most of the booths filled with high-school students, and a few from Junior High. Voices and smoke filled the air. Jennifer stationed herself in a line. ‘Let’s get some shakes,’ she said. ‘And remember,’ she added in a lower tone, ‘when we meet Dave and his friends, we’re all fourteen, right?’

‘Hey, Jenny!’ a boy’s voice called out. She turned to see Dave edge his way through the crowd. He grinned at her. ‘We got a table,’ he said. He was wearing a faded, torn jean jacket with peace symbols drawn on it in black ink, and rust-coloured bell-bottom pants held up by a wide black leather belt with a brass buckle. A pack of Export ‘A’ jutted from the jacket’s breast pocket. Dave stepped up to Jennifer, placed a hand behind her head and then kissed her.

Jennifer pulled him close, laughing when their lips parted even though she felt a moment’s revulsion at seeing a half-dozen new pimples on his shiny forehead. He must have followed her glance, for he stepped back, ducking his head to bring his long blond hair forward.

‘Hi, Dave,’ Jennifer said. ‘These are my two friends I was telling you about. Barb and Sandy.’

Dave nodded at them. ‘Hi.’

Jennifer ordered the three milkshakes and paid. She and her two friends then followed Dave back to a table where a half-dozen boys and girls sat. Spaces were made for them, Dave sitting on one side of Jennifer, Barb on the other, with Sandy opposite.

Dave nudged Jennifer. ‘Guess what?’

‘What?’

He ducked his head again. ‘We got some hash. We’re going over to Mark’s place. His old man’s not home.’ Dave took out his cigarettes. ‘We’ll have to keep all the windows open,’ he said.

‘Mark’s old man is a cop,’ Jennifer explained to Sandy and Barb.

‘He’d bust us all if he ever got the chance,’ Dave said.

Jennifer leaned back in the crook of Dave’s arm. Whenever Dave laughed she joined in, though she wasn’t really listening to him. A girl sitting at the far end of the table drew her attention. She was pretty, and seemed to have snared the attention of Jim and Mike – two boys who, like Dave, were in Grade Nine. A nudge from Barb brought Jennifer’s attention back to her end of the table.

A boy had turned to Sandy. ‘Hi,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m Mark.’

Sandy looked down at the table and smiled. ‘Hi.’

‘You from Middlecross, too?’

She nodded.

‘Going with anybody?’

Barb giggled and Sandy shot her a glare before glancing up at Mark. ‘Not really,’ she said.

Barb sneered. ‘She’s hot for a farmboy,’ she said, shakily lighting her cigarette. ‘Big and dumb.’

‘Roland’s not dumb,’ Sandy snapped.

‘His name’s Roland?’ Mark asked. ‘Roland?’ He rocked back and laughed loudly.

‘That name sounds familiar,’ a new voice cut in.

Mark said, ‘This is Debbie Brand. A transfer.’

Something cold clenched Jennifer’s stomach as she slowly looked over at the girl at the far end of the table. Their eyes met, and the girl smiled, then winked. Jennifer swung a glare on Sandy. ‘Roland’s got hairless balls and a limp prick,’ Jennifer said, smiling coldly as the colour left Sandy’s face.

Debbie said, ‘Poor kid.’