A Troublesome Boy (7 page)

“They'll be the next to go.”

“Hey, Freddy,” said Rita.

“Way ahead of you, Rita. Burger's already on.” Freddy looked through the window. “Fries with that?”

“Please.”

“Comin' right up.”

“So, what've they been teaching you up there on Prison Hill.”

“Never piss off a priest.”

“So I hear.” Rita was working on the shake. Three scoops of ice cream this time. She ran the metal container up under the thing that spun around and pressed the button. A couple of minutes later, she put the container and a tall glass in front of me, poured the glass full and stuck in a couple of straws.

I took a sip. “Better than ever, Rita.”

She gave me one of those smiles. A bit of lipstick on her front teeth. She sat on her stool, pushed a strand of hair away from her face, relit her smoke and waited for Freddy to finish up with the burger and fries.

“Freddy. You still awake back there?”

“Movin' as fast as I can.”

“I got a kid out here just fainted from hunger.”

“Funny, Rita. Real funny.”

The burger was burnt and the fries were still soggy. But everything was hot.

“Hear they had to take some kid to hospital,” said Rita. “A week or so ago. Took him out by ambulance in the middle of the night.”

“How'd you hear?”

“Ambulance boys come in here pretty regular. Said they had to make a run down to the city. Took the kid to the hospital down there. Said he was talkin' gibberish to himself the whole way down there. Something about snakes. They had to tie him down to the stretcher. Spooked them right out.”

I worked on my burger, finished my fries.

“What else has been happening up there?” she said. I told her about Cruickshank getting banged against the wall, Cooper and me being tossed in The Dungeon.

Rita shook her head.

“What I'd like to know is,” I said, “how come they get away with all that stuff?”

“Those guys are in a world of their own. It's like they got a moat around the place. They get away with stuff that would land most people in jail.”

“How come?”

“They're priests. No one messes with the Church. Not the cops. No one.”

—

I'D BEEN UP
one side of Main Street and back down the other when a pickup pulled to the curb beside me.

“Well, say.” Rozey's shiny smiling face.

“Hey, Rozey.”

“You got plans or are you just passing the time?”

“No plans,” I said. “There isn't a whole lot to do in a place like this.”

“You can say that again.”

“There isn't a whole lot to do in a place like this.”

Rozey laughed, leaned across and opened the door.

“Wanna go for a ride?”

Rozey's pickup was an old Ford, blue and beat up. There were boxes and tires and old cans and junk in the back. The dashboard was littered with scraps of paper and old coffee cups. There was a toolbox on the floor, and a pair of old work boots, one running shoe and a tackle box, a set of booster cables, a scraper for the windshield.

“Shove that stuff over,” said Rozey. I shoved the tackle box and the toolbox over until I had enough room for my feet. Then I climbed in and shut the door.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Not if you're sharin'.”

We lit up and Rozey put the truck in gear and pulled out onto Main Street.

“Where to?” I said.

“Nowhere in particular. I was just out drivin' around, seein' what's what.”

“What's what so far?”

“Not much,” said Rozey. He picked up his coffee cup from the dash and took a sip, put the cup back.

“Looks like you live in this thing.”

He laughed. “Bought her new in '52. Haven't cleaned her out since. My girlfriend doesn't care.”

“Your girlfriend?”

He pointed at the air freshener hanging from the mirror. A picture of a girl in a bathing suit.

“She never says nothin' about the mess.” He laughed.

We drove down Main Street to the end. There was a town, and suddenly no town, just rocks and bush. We drove out of town maybe five minutes and Rozey turned down a side road.

“What's down here?”

“The shopping center,” said Rozey.

Five minutes later, we came to a cutoff on the left. The sign said
belleview municipal landfill
.

“The dump?”

Rozey laughed. “Pretty near everyone comes out here shopping. Great bargains.” We parked on a rise overlooking the pit. Rozey cut the engine.

Big pit about as long as a football field. One end was filled with washers and dryers and old fridges, car engines, car wheels, entire hulks of rusted-out cars and pickups, chesterfields and chairs, old lamps. At the other end there were mounds and mounds of garbage. From where we were sitting the smell wasn't too bad, but on a hot day with the wind blowing at you it would be a killer.

“You come out here often?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Rozey. “At least once a week. Sometimes more often, depending.”

“On what?”

“How much good stuff there is to pick through.”

“You pick through the trash?”

“Nope. Just the good stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, boy. Lots of stuff. I got a good washer and dryer out of here last year. All they needed was a bit of cleaning up, bang out the dents. Took me a while, but they work just great. People are always comin' around to my place lookin' for bargains.” He laughed.

“This lady come by one time, just nosin' around the barn and she saw this armchair. Real nice one. I'd fixed one arm and reupholstered it. Wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad. ‘I had one just like this, only a different color,' she says. ‘What happened to it?' I says. ‘My kid sat on the arm and busted it right off. Took it out to the dump.' ‘Which arm?' I says. ‘Left one,' she says. She paid me twenty bucks. I carried the chair out to her truck and put it in the back and she drove off with her same old chair.” He laughed again.

“Hey!” he said. He pointed at a clearing on the far side of the pit.

Holy shit. A black bear was just nosing out of the bush on the rim of the pit right across from us.

“They can't see very good, but they can pick up a scent a mile away. If she smells us she'll take off.”

She sniffed the air and then ambled down the slope and into the pit.

“Lunch time,” said Rozey.

She worked the trash, clawing through the piles until she found something she liked.

We watched her for maybe five minutes.

“Here comes her boyfriend.”

Another bear came out of the bush, looked about twice her size, paused a moment before skidding down the bank and into the pit.

“This is neat,” I said.

“Better than going to the movies. Especially since we don't have a theater.” He pronounced it
thee-ate-her.

We watched the bears for another fifteen minutes or so. Then Rozey fired up the truck. The bears looked up, but they didn't move. We backed away from the rim of the pit and turned around.

“Wanna go see Rozey's Furniture and Appliances?”

“Sure.”

Rozey's place was on the far side of town. Down another side road about a mile in from the highway, his house was on a rise, the barn behind it. Neither had been painted for years from the look of it.

“If you paint them, you have to keep on painting every few years. I'm saving money,” said Rozey.

“You grow up here?”

“I was born here,” said Rozey. “After Mother died, Dad and I lived on here alone. Since he died, it's just me.”

We parked behind the house and he led the way to the barn. He opened a side door and stepped inside, flipping on a light.

We were in a kind of workshop: lathe and saws, workbench, tools hanging from hooks and nails hammered into the wall. Scattered around the room there were stoves and fridges, washers and dryers and all kinds of furniture — tables and chairs, framed mirrors, sofas, desks, you name it.

“You get all this from the dump?”

“Mostly.”

“And people come out and buy it?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Rozey. “They say I should put a sign out by the road. Rozey's Antiques. Only problem is, there aren't that many tourists and all the locals know where to find me.” He opened a back door that led out to the yard. “I want to show you something.” Behind the barn there was a big unpainted shed, double doors on the end facing the barn. He unhooked the latch and opened the doors.

Inside, sitting on a wooden cradle on a trailer was a sailboat, maybe thirty feet long. Lots of the planks were missing so you could see right through to the ribs, black and rotten.

“Got it for nothing,” said Rozey. “Guy was always going to get around to fixing it up, but never did. Finally his wife told him to fix it up or get rid of it. ‘You haul it away, it's yours,' he says. I had it out of there the next afternoon. Know anything about boats?”

“Nope.”

“It's a yawl, twenty-six feet. Sleeps four. Has a kitchen and bathroom and everything.” He led me to the stern where there was a ladder. He climbed up first, then helped me up onto the deck. He stepped down into the cockpit and then through the hatch and down a little ladder into the cabin.

He sat on one of the bunks, beaming. “Beautiful, eh?”

It would have been, at one time.

There was a kitchen, a couple of cabinet doors missing, and a little counter with a stove. In the middle of the cabin there was a table and an L-shaped bench, the cushions worn and tatty. Looked like some mice were making themselves at home in one of the cushions. Toward the bow were two bunks, then a doorway and two more bunks.

Smelled kind of sad, like rot and mildew.

“How long you had it?”

“About six months. By next summer I'll be sailing.”

Seemed like it would take a lot longer than that to fix this thing up. But what did I know?

“Where?”

“Georgian Bay, down through the lakes to the St. Lawrence. Down the St. Lawrence and out into the Atlantic.”

“You ever sailed before?”

“Nope.”

“And you're going to sail out into the Atlantic?”

“If I can get through all the lakes and locks, the ocean shouldn't be a problem. I'll be a real sailor by then.”

He pulled out a road atlas and put it on the table, opened it to a double-page spread that showed all the Great Lakes.

“Here we are, and here's where I'll be going.” He traced the route with his index finger. “Down here and through here and along here. I can hardly wait.”

He sounded like a big kid.

“You going to use a road map to get there?”

“Yeah.” Beamed me a big smile. “You wanna come along?”

“Maybe,” I said.

What I was thinking was, good luck with that. Through the Great Lakes, down the St. Lawrence and out into the Atlantic with a map from the local White Rose station?

But it did sound pretty cool, too. Something to think about in The Dungeon, anyway.

“Jeez,” said Rozey. He tapped his watch. “Better get you back. The priests hate it when people are late. I don't want them to yell.”

Rozey dropped me off on the side street around the corner from St. Iggy's.

“I'd drop you off out front, but we aren't supposed to have nothin' to do with the boys, eh? I could get in trouble.”

“No problem, Rozey.” I got out. “Thanks.” Shut the door.

Rozey waved, put the old Ford in gear and headed off.

There wasn't much more depressing than coming back to St. Iggy's after being sprung free for an afternoon. For a little while, it felt like I had a normal life again.

Just before supper, it was mail call. We all filed into the study hall where one of the priests — Docherty, usually — was at the front with the mail bag on the desk. Once we were all seated and everyone had shut up, he started with the air mail.

Docherty was a skinny little guy. Black hair slicked back. Wasn't too old, not like a lot of the other priests. He'd pull a letter out of the bag, call out the person's name, then fire the letter through the air in the general direction of the person who was supposed to get it.

The priests loved it. Some of them, the really mean bastards, liked to fire letters right out the open windows. “Gee, sorry about that, Henderson.” If a letter went zipping out the window you had to wait until mail call was over to go find it. For the priests it was payback time for all the grief you'd caused them during the week. They didn't seem to remember that stuff about turning the other cheek.

Docherty was just about finished firing all the letters when he called out my name. I put up my hand and he flipped the letter over my head.

“Sorry, Mr. Clemson.”

What an asshole. Someone in the back of the room picked up my letter and it got passed back to me.

It was from my mother. I folded it in half and put it in my pocket. The rule was you couldn't open your mail until all the letters and parcels had been delivered.

Docherty held the bag upside down and shook it.

“That's it, boys.”

Cooper got up out of his chair and headed for the door. No mail for Cooper. No mail for Cooper since we'd shown up at St. Iggy's. From the look on his face it didn't seem to matter one way or the other. But you could never really tell with Cooper. He had a tricky little face.

I went out to the yard and down the fence line to the far end, sat under a spruce tree and opened the letter. My mother had slipped some fives and tens into the envelope. I folded them and put them in my pocket.

Dear Teddy,

Hope everything is going fine up there. Haven't heard from you. Did the letter get lost in the mail? Ha-ha. Things are going fine here. Henry and I
 . . .

Screw Henry. I dropped the letter in the trash bin just outside the door.