Truth and Lies (4 page)

“Mr. Ducharme?” said a voice somewhere behind me. Riel's voice. “You remember me? John Riel.”

Mr. Ducharme didn't answer. He thrust his wallet at Riel.

“You know him,” he said. A statement this time, not a question.

Riel stepped forward, took the wallet from the man and studied the photo. “Sure, I knew him,” he said.
Knew
, not
know
. “He was a nice boy.”

“He was a good boy,” Mr. Ducharme said.

Riel touched Mr. Ducharme's arm, the one that was gripping me like a cop restraining a perp. Mr. Ducharme loosened his hold. Riel nodded at me. I pulled free and retreated a couple of steps.

“I'm sorry about what happened to Robbie,” Riel said. He handed the wallet back to Mr. Ducharme. Mr. Ducharme ran a finger over the surface of the photograph. “He wanted to be an engineer,” he said.

“He was doing so well in school.” Riel said nothing.

“All he did was study,” Mr. Ducharme said. “Study and play on his computer. He liked to design things, you know? He never hurt anyone. You know?”

“I know,” Riel said.

“His watch was missing. Did you know that?”

Riel didn't say anything, didn't nod or shake his head.

“A watch his grandfather gave him. Whoever …
hurt
my Robert—”
Hurt
, like being dead was something they could cure. “They took his watch. His grandfather gave it to him for his thirteenth birthday.” The man looked baffled. “You don't think they did it for the watch, do you?” he said to Riel. “You don't think that was what it was all about, do you?”

A bell rang, loud enough for everyone outside, even at the farthest edges of the yard, to hear. Riel glanced at me and nodded toward the school.

“Did you walk over here, Mr. Ducharme, or did you drive?” he said. He laid an arm on Mr. Ducharme's shoulder and steered him away from the school. When I finally went back into the building, Riel was on the sidewalk, still talking to Mr. Ducharme.

There's knowing what you're supposed to do, and then there's doing it. My Uncle Billy had always known what you were supposed to do, although that was never how he put it. What Billy always said was, “what the monkeys do.” Monkey see, monkey do, Billy always said. People who worked at Walmart or Zellers or Canadian Tire—monkeys. Gas jockeys, grocery packers, auto assembly-line workers, bank tellers—monkeys, monkeys, monkeys, monkeys. Doing what they were doing because that's what they saw everyone else doing. Working at boring, soul-sucking, go-nowhere jobs day in and day out. Billy
himself had been a mechanic in a garage, what some people called a grease monkey, only you didn't dare say that to Billy.

Billy was like a ghost that way—he could look in a mirror and never see himself reflected back. Doing things just because someone somewhere said you were supposed to was what monkeys did, Billy said. People—what Billy called free and independent human beings—exercised the right to choose. They did things because they
wanted
to, not because they
had
to. They answered to no one and played by their own rules, which was why Billy had gone through so many jobs. He kept getting fired for missing too many days and insisting on two rules of his own: never explain, never apologize. To be fair, though, although there were plenty of things Billy had messed up on, the bills always got paid eventually, and Billy made sure I went to school regularly and was careful to do enough things right so that the child welfare people wouldn't come around and threaten to take me away from him. But you can do all the little things right and it doesn't matter, not if you turn around and do one colossal, humongous, gargantuan thing wrong, like Billy did.

I knew what I was supposed to do. Two words—Riel's words—said it all:
Be responsible
. Meaning, Go to school. Meaning, Keep track of your stuff, get your assignments in on time, always remember that good enough really isn't good enough. Reach for the top, Mike, go the extra mile. Platitude, platitude, platitude. Meaning, Don't
dump your dirty socks and underwear on the floor, put them in the hamper where they belong. Meaning, Don't just get to work on time, get there a few minutes early. Meaning, Don't just show up expecting supper to be put on the table for you, show up ready and willing and
eager
to set the table—and then clear it again afterward without being asked and stack everything in the dishwasher. And if the dishwasher is full, don't leave stuff in the sink, for heaven's sake,
unload
the dishwasher. Meaning, Don't gripe when you have to do your homework at the dining room table where I can see you, you have to
earn
privileges, Mike—and with my grades, it was going to be a real privilege to have Riel trust me to get my work done on my own in my own room with the door closed.

Riel had way more rules than my mom ever had. For sure he had more rules than Billy. And he had
standards
. Billy didn't even know what standards were. So—what choice did I have?—I had reformed. Well, mostly reformed. No one's perfect, right?

I had a job at a candy store on Danforth. Four to six, Monday through Friday; nine to one on Saturday. Minimum wage and a boss, Mr. Kiros, who freaked out if he smelled spearmint or peppermint or cherry—any candy flavor—on my breath. Mr. Kiros was a big man who ran a small printing business next door to the candy store. He was always watching the place, always worried if there were more than four or five kids in there, afraid they were going to rob him. He kept harping at me to watch the customers, make them turn out their pockets
if I had to. I never did. Sure, some of the kids probably pinched candies when I wasn't looking, but I would have bet my life that most of them didn't. Besides, a guy who thought all kids were crooks, but who went ahead and opened up a place that sold cheap bulk candy, was probably in the wrong business. Double besides: Mr. Kiros's oldest son, who was seven, came into the store every day after school and stuffed his pockets with candy. Nobody ever complained about that.

Every night at six Mr. Kiros was supposed to close his printing shop and go home to his apartment above the candy store. Then Mrs. Kiros was supposed to come down and take over in the candy store. She was supposed to keep the place open until nine, while Mr. Kiros watched their three small kids. But Mrs. Kiros was almost always late coming downstairs—fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. And this was almost always because Mr. Kiros was late closing his printing shop. He'd be out on the sidewalk, smoking a cigar and talking to a customer or a friend. I'd see him there at quarter past six and I'd know I was going to be late getting home again. It goes without saying that I never got paid for the extra fifteen or twenty minutes either, because Mr. Kiros refused to admit he was late going home, and Mrs. Kiros, who was about half the size of her husband and who seemed to be dragging herself around all the time, never contradicted him.

By the time I got home that night, it was almost quarter to seven. I smelled fried onions as I came up
the walk. The smell was even stronger when I unlocked the front door and stepped into Riel's sparsely furnished but immaculate house. Riel had lived in the place for a couple of years. He hadn't done much in the way of decorating, but he sure kept the place clean. I threw my backpack down in the front hall, looked at it sitting there, then scooped it up and threw it into the hall closet. “It doesn't take any longer to put things where they belong,” Riel always said.

Riel was perched on a stool at the kitchen counter. He'd made burgers—they were sitting on a broiler pan on top of the stove, ready to go into the oven. He was spinning lettuce while he watched the local news on a small TV that sat on one end of the counter.

“Sorry I'm la—” I began.

Riel held up a hand.

Okay, whatever. I grabbed a glass from the cupboard, opened the fridge and poured myself some juice.

“So far the police have no witnesses,” a female voice was saying. “The investigation continues.”

Riel reached for the remote and shut off the TV.

“Robbie Ducharme?” I asked. I had to bite my tongue to stop from adding,
Again?

Riel nodded. He slid off his stool and circled the counter to the stove.

“You're late,” he said.

“Mr. Kiros was late.”

Riel slid the pan of hamburger patties under the broiler.

“The man wears a watch, right?” he said. I rolled my
eyes, but nodded all the same. “And he expects
you
to show up on time, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you should make the point that you're expected to turn up for supper on time,” Riel said. Then, before I could say anything, “Or, if he wants to adjust your hours, that's okay, but maybe he should also consider adjusting your paycheck.”

“Like that's ever going to happen.”

“If you don't stick up for yourself, for sure it won't,” Riel said. “You want me to have a talk with him?”

“No!” I said. The last thing I needed was Riel getting involved in my work life. He was already way too involved in my school life. “I can handle it myself. Besides, he was only a few minutes late.”

“Twenty, thirty minutes every day, it seems like,” Riel said. “What do you think he'd do to
you
if you were twenty or thirty minutes late every day?” Then, switching gears, “Set the table, okay?”

Usually at supper Riel asked me about my day. Since he taught at my school he knew my timetable and all of my teachers. He'd ask stuff like, “Doing a unit on the law, huh? So, what do you think, the police obtain evidence without going by the book and that evidence gets thrown out even if everyone knows the guy really did it, you think that's right?”

A trick question. Testing if I'd been paying attention or if I was just swallowing everything I'd seen on TV—
American
TV. And I'd have to prove that I
had
been
paying attention. Usually I'd try to get my own licks in.

“Looks like someone was asleep during law lecture at police college,” I'd say. Or something like that.

Tonight, though, Riel was quiet. He worked his way through two burgers, chewing, swallowing, not smiling, not talking. Thinking, I guessed, about Mr. Ducharme and Robbie. No way was I going to start in on that topic.

Ms. Stephenson sighed.

“Act four, scene five,” she said again. “Can
anyone
tell me what is going on in that scene?”

Four hands shot up. Diane Davis, Shirlene Fletcher, Bryce MacNeil, and Sam Yee. Honor roll, honor roll, honor roll, honor roll. University bound. Keeners.

Ms. Stephenson looked beyond their hands and settled on Nera Singh. I let out a great big silent sigh of relief. If she was looking at Nera, she wasn't looking at me. Sometimes that was the best you could hope for.

Nera flipped through his copy of the play, the pages
shwick-shwick-shwick
ing softly, until he found act four, scene five. I watched him squint at one page and then another while Ms. Stephenson waited. Nera's face puckered in concentration. He began to shake his head. He looked up at Ms. Stephenson, his shoulders rolled up around his ears.

“The time to read the play is
before
you come to class,” Ms. Stephenson said. She turned and nodded at Sam Yee.
“Please tell us what's going on in this scene, Sam.”

“Ophelia's gone crazy,” Sam said. He was on the student council. Vice president of some dumb thing or other. He was one of the kids who read out school announcements over the PA system in the morning. He couldn't do it straight, either. No, he was always making lame jokes and trying to sound like whoever was the hottest comic on TV. Vin and Sal and I used to argue about who we thought he was trying to be. We almost never agreed, he was that bad.

“Ophelia's gone crazy,” Ms. Stephenson repeated, in case anyone had missed Sam's brilliant answer. “Thank you, Sam.” She peered around the room for her next victim. “And who would like to tell me what has driven poor Ophelia to madness?”