Ice Storm (13 page)

Alice left in a huff. There were other things to think about right now. Maybe if she found Jean-Michel he’d let her borrow the keys to the bookstore again. But before she found him, another volunteer tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hello, dear, what’s your name?” Alice told her.

“We’ve just been told that the bakery next door has been given a delivery of staples by the army: flour, sugar, eggs and things like that. They’re looking for volunteers to make muffins to distribute to the shelters. Would you like to help?”

Would she? Alice was excited. She had never been inside a commercial bakery before. It was huge. The ovens and the fridges and the mixers were ten times the size of the ones they had at home and all the counters were sparkling stainless steel. She looked around in awe. And she wasn’t the only one; there were a least a dozen kids her age volunteering, looking just as overwhelmed as she felt. The owner of the bakery was quite a jolly man, inviting all the volunteers to “Come in, come in!” The other bakers didn’t look so welcoming. Maybe they thought the kids would have a food fight or break the machines or something. Alice stuck close to the owner. He was funny.

Monsieur le Muffin (surely that wasn’t his real name?) split the kids into two groups, one to make muffins and one to make cookies. Cookies sounded like fun, but Monsieur le Muffin was taking the muffin group, so Alice stayed with him. They all got big white aprons and hats. For a moment, Alice thought about Sébastien and his new video camera. He’d go nuts if he could film this! While the real bakers started up the ovens and the mixers, some of the kids were given instructions for measuring, some got started preparing the baking tins, and Alice and three other kids were taken into the pantry to choose ingredients to put into the muffins. The pantry was another incredible hidden kingdom, as far as Alice was concerned. Container after container of nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, dried fruit, sprinkles, sesame seeds, coconut, maple sugar and a whole bunch of other things Alice couldn’t even name.

The baker gave them each a stainless steel bowl. “Fill each one with something different that would taste good in a muffin,” shouted Monsieur le Muffin. “Be creative! Be inspired! Our muffins must lift the spirit and spread happiness!”

Alice couldn’t help but laugh. That was a tall order for even the very best muffin. Alice headed for the maple sugar, her favourite. The other three went for the chocolate chips.

“Who are you?” asked a blonde girl.

“Alice.”

“Rachel.”

“Tucker.”

“ Hi. I’m Saskia. My house burned down.”

The other three looked at Saskia in shock. “You’re kidding!” said Rachel.

“Nope. Right to the ground. Kept us warm for a while.”

“That’s awful,” said Alice.

“It’s so cool,” said Tucker. “How high were the flames?”

The girls just looked at him. “Boys!” they said in unison. He just shrugged.

After the four of them filled their bowls, they went back to the main kitchen to wait for the muffin batter to be ready. Tucker stared at the bowls. “That baker guy said to be creative. Why don’t we mix things up a little?”

Rachel looked at their ingredients critically. “What if we mixed the walnuts and the raisins?”

“Yeah, and the pecans and the maple sugar?” Alice got into the swing of it.

“What goes with coconut?” asked Saskia, heading back into the pantry. They found more bowls and began to combine their finds. From time to time, Monsieur le Muffin wandered by, smiling indulgently. He even gave some suggestions. By the time the batter was ready, so were their creations, bowl after bowl of concoctions that were more or less palatable. One of the other bakers raised his eyebrows when he saw what was in the bowls.

“Interesting,” he said to the four of them drily. “Let’s hope that whoever eats one of these muffins remembered their toothbrush. With that much sugar, their teeth will rot out before morning.” The girls giggled, while Tucker simply looked lofty. As they waited for the muffins to bake, they compared notes. Saskia’s house burned down because they’d lit a fire in the fireplace without realizing that it was all clogged up with soot. She wasn’t too worried about it, though.

“Normally I would be,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “But this isn’t normal. Nothing is normal. Dad says we all got out alive, so it could have been worse. And he’s right.”

Wow. Alice wondered how it was possible to shut worries off like that. She wished she could do it. Where would Saskia’s family go when they left the shelter? “Why do you have that note?” asked Alice curiously. Saskia looked down at the paper pinned to her shirt that read “Danish.”

“Oh, lots of us kids have them,” Saskia replied in an offhand way. “It means we speak another language and can translate for some of the old folks who can’t speak English or French. There are a lot of new immigrants in the shelters, and they’re pretty scared.” Alice was impressed. She could barely speak two languages, much less three.

Rachel’s story was similar to Alice’s. Her mom was a nurse and living at the hospital because there were so many patients to look after. So the soldiers came to get Rachel just like they had Alice. It made Alice feel like she had a buddy. It was a cool feeling. She and Rachel smiled at one another.

Tucker was at the shelter with his mom, his dad, his five brothers and sisters, two dogs, three cats, a goldfish and his mom’s favourite houseplant. “I love it here,” he stated with a straight face. “It’s so quiet and calm compared to my house.” The girls just couldn’t help but laugh at his jokes.

In twenty minutes time, the muffins were baked. A dozen tall white hats peered into the ovens to catch a first glimpse of their creations. Just then, there was a commotion outside. Tucker ran to the window of the bakery.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
demanded Monsieur le Muffin. “Who interrupts the creation?”

“I can’t see,” said Tucker. “There’s a whole bunch of people out on the street. Wait – they’re waving. And shouting. I don’t know, but it looks like, well, it looks kind of like a parade. That can’t be right, can it?”

Curious, the rest of the bakers joined Tucker at the window. They all strained to see. Alice was the first to understand.

“It’s the Americans!” she cried. “The Americans have come to help us! And she was right. A line of great big hydro trucks was inching along the icy street. They had enormous American flags tied to the front grills. The linemen inside were smiling and waving. Soldiers, police officers, volunteers from the shelters, the few passersby – all of them clapped and cheered as the trucks went by. Help had come.

Just seeing them made Alice feel hopeful, which gave her an idea. Rushing over to the cooling racks, Alice loaded a plate with hot muffins and cookies.

“May I?” she asked Monsieur le Muffin. The jolly baker nodded with a smile. Alice ran outside, coatless, hatless and bootless, but she didn’t care. The ice slowed her down a bit, but she still managed to pick her way to a truck. Reaching as high as she could, she offered the warm treats.

“Thank you, thank you!” she cried. “My dad is out there. He’s a lineman too. Thank you for coming to help him!”

“Wal, little lady, ain’t no trouble a’tall,” drawled one of the linemen. “It’s the neighbourly thing to do, wouldn’t ya say? But I ain’t sure we got ourselves enough clothes for this here weather ya got going on.” “How cold is it, anyway?” Alice laughed.

“Where are you from?” she asked, as she followed along beside the truck.

“We hail from Raleigh, North Carolina, miss,” replied the lineman.

“Well, if you need extra clothes, you talk to my dad. He’ll get you some,” said Alice solicitously. “The army will too. Don’t catch cold.”

The lineman smiled as he handed the empty plate back to her. “I’ll make sure I do, little lady,” he said with a grin. “Now you get back inside and keep warm too.”

Alice took the plate. As the truck moved off, tears gathered in her eyes. They’d come over a thousand kilometres to help, in weather more wicked than they had probably ever seen. But still they came. Alice didn’t need a coat, she felt so warm inside.

Now that the trucks had passed, the bakery volunteers were busy packing up the goodies for the various shelters nearby. Alice pitched in, and in no time the boxes were ready for pickup. When the cleaning up was finished, they all thanked Monsieur le Muffin, who answered with a courtly bow, not too low because of his portly shape.

“My pleasure,
mes petits, merci beaucoup, merci, merci!
We must have treats in a crisis, it is
très important!”
Rachel and Alice looked at one another and burst out laughing. Now that was a strategy – treats in a crisis. With all the worries everybody had right now, that would be a lot of treats!

The group of volunteers had just made it back to the shelter when there was another commotion. Once again, Tucker saw it first. “It’s the Montréal Canadiens!” he exclaimed. “They’re here!” Tucker was off like a shot.

Saskia stood on her tiptoes. “Just looks like a bunch of guys signing autographs to me.”

“Like hockey players are important or something,” Rachel added.

“Well, it’s not like they have anything else to do,” went on Alice. “Their ice rinks have melted.”

All three girls laughed as they marched off in the opposite direction with their noses in the air. They split up to check on their families after agreeing to meet for
supper. Alice hugged herself a little as she made her way to Mrs. Hartley’s corner. She couldn’t wait to tell the old lady about the new friends she’d made, and about the muffins and the American linemen.

But when Alice arrived at Mrs. Hartley’s cot, it was clear they’d be doing no talking. Mrs. Hartley was curled up in a ball, shivering so hard Alice was afraid her false teeth would fall out. Her lips were blue and her crablike hands were convulsively clutching at the sleeping bag. She looked to be in terrible pain.

“Mrs. Hartley, what’s wrong?” cried Alice. “Do you need your insulin?” Mrs. Hartley shook her head. She could barely talk.

“My nitro,” she gasped. “Under the bed.”

Alice didn’t know what nitro was. She thought it was something people used to make bombs. Surely that wasn’t what Mrs. Hartley meant. It must be some kind of pill or something. Alice dug out Mrs. Hartley’s overnight bag from under the bed and unzipped it. She sat back on her heels in dismay. There were no pills in it. Not a single bottle. But Mrs. Hartley had arrived with at least a dozen bottles of medicine, Alice was sure. Where were they?

Mrs. Hartley was shaking even harder. Alice had to do something.

She stood up and looked at Mrs. Hartley’s new friend in the next bed. Maybe she would know. But that lady was asleep. She looked at the bed on the other side. In it sat a diminutive Asian woman, a woman older than anybody Alice had ever seen before. But age hadn’t affected her energy. The tiny woman was staring straight at Alice, pointing to Mrs. Hartley, pointing to the overnight bag, pointing to the door, gesturing this way and that, while the whole time letting loose an agitated stream of a language Alice had never heard before. This woman knew something. Alice thought of Saskia’s note. She needed to find a kid who could speak whatever language this woman spoke and she needed to find the nurse. Alice put her finger up to the tiny woman, trying to make her understand that she was going to get help. Then she ran.

She couldn’t find a nurse or doctor anywhere. Just great. She found a knot of kids and scanned their shirts. One girl had a note that said “Chinese.” Alice grabbed her by the arm and towed the bewildered girl back to Mrs. Hartley.

Alice pointed to the woman. “Can you tell me what she’s saying?”

“Nope,” said the girl. “I only speak Chinese. That’s Korean.” The girl left.

Alice ran back to the kids’ area. “Anybody here speak Korean?” she shouted over the din. “It’s an emergency!”

A little girl who couldn’t have been more than six was pushed through the crowd. Obediently she followed Alice, who was still casting her eyes about for a doctor or a nurse. Nothing. No one. Nada. When they got to the old people’s area, the little girl went straight to the tiny woman and listened. Then she turned to Alice.

“The grandmother says that big boys came. They looked in all the bags and took all the pills. No pills left for anybody. They took them all. She yell but they laugh. Nobody stop them.”

“Ask her to describe the big boys,” said Alice urgently. The tiny woman let loose another torrent of words. The little girl didn’t understand all of them, but she gave Alice a pretty good picture all the same.

“Where did they go?” The little girl asked the question. The tiny woman pointed in agitated fashion. Alice turned to run in the direction she pointed but at the last minute remembered her manners.

“Please tell her thanks,” she told the girl. “You too. I’ll try to get the pills back.”

For the first time, the little girl looked scared. “Don’t!” she said urgently. “Those boys are bad boys. They’ll hurt you!”

“I won’t let them,” replied Alice fiercely. She took a last look at Mrs. Hartley and ran. This was unbelievable. Sure, she’d heard about gangs, but this was absolutely too ridiculous for words. She had never been so furious. Mrs. Hartley might die, just because she didn’t have a pill worth a couple of bucks?