Smoke (17 page)

“You did what?” Jelly Bean uncrosses her legs. “Mother, you invited her
here
?” She glances towards her father, to where the Barbara Ann Scott doll is staring back at her from its countertop pedestal with those ever-so-maddening white teeth and that fluffy white muff. Eyes perpetually locked in the wrong direction.

“She took us from Ottawa to the Olympics,” Hazel says before Walter has a chance to respond. “She won gold at the European, World
and
Olympic championships all within six weeks. She's done more for this country than that monarch over there.” Hazel points to a colourized photograph of a young Queen Elizabeth II hanging on the back wall by the staircase leading up to their apartment. “And you.” She waves a thick finger at Jelly Bean. “You'd do well to follow her example, Judy. Perhaps you'd improve your physical education grade. Or even win at Miss Tobacco Queen this year.”

Jelly Bean's stomach turns, her tongue flops from side to side inside her mouth like a scaly fish. She hates her perfect blond hair, her perfect white skin and her blue eyes. She is so tightly wound up in her ribbons and bows that she feels she might, at any moment, unravel and sit like a pile of string at her mother's feet. “Who cares about the contest,” she snaps. “Who cares about gym class or figure skating. I hate winter and I hate the ice.” Once she gets going she can't stop. “Barbara Ann can jolly well find herself another town to visit! Daddy, tell her. I paint. Tell her, will you please?”

“Those figure skates were mighty expensive young lady.” Hazel turns her back to Walter and faces the doctor once more. “I knew it was a long shot. I mean, I never in a million years thought she'd say yes—well all right, maybe a little.” She thrusts the open letter onto the counter. “Read for yourself. She wants to come. She will judge the contest and meet the president of her fan club. Me!
And
she's asked whether we need someone to lead our parade.”

“Dad's leading the parade,” says Buster, walking past Jelly Bean and peering over her shoulder to see what she's drawn. He delves into the jar on the counter for a hard candy, pops one in his mouth. Peppermint.

Walter taps his fingers on the counter. “There's been talk about that.”

“What kind of talk?” Doc John removes his gloves, sets them beside the register. He's aware of Buster listening intently.

“Town council's still divided on the tobacco board. Len's leading the charge.”

Just then Len Rombout enters the store, sending the bell over the door tinkling once more and a gust of cold weather rushing in.

“Gooday all.”

They turn. Doc John is the first to offer a greeting.

“Gooday.”

Len balances a lit cigarette between his teeth. “I could use a new stepladder.”

“Help yourself.” Walter points to the back of the store. “I'm just sharpening these blades.” He lifts one of his daughter's new white figure skates. Jelly Bean massages her ankle and slips her drawing pad under a pile of magazines on the counter.

“Tom should be the one to lead the parade,” the doctor says.

“But if it doesn't work out.” Hazel waves the letter. “There's always Barbara Ann.”

Len approaches the counter with a small stepladder under one arm. Smoke from his cigarette hovers around his ear. “McFiddie's been bringing in outsiders all year, might as well have someone else for the parade. I bet there's plenty who'd agree with me.”

Doc John watches Buster's face sink at the thought of his father's displacement. “Nobody in this room,” he says.

Len tosses a new bill onto the counter and walks out with his purchase. Jelly Bean waits for Buster's response, and when he follows outside on Doc John's heels she and her parents move to the doorway.

“Tom's a good man Len, and you know it. He's promoting the tobacco industry, and tobacco has kept this village in clothes for years. If Tom McFiddie thinks the marketing board is a good idea, I trust it is.”

“That so? I could get a bunch of signatures that say otherwise.” Len ducks his head from around the small ladder, drops it into the back of his flatbed. He has no time for a debate today. He spits the butt of his cigarette into a snowbank and lets it flicker and drown. Then he points at Buster. “Everyone knows what you've been up to young man.”

Buster steps forward. “Oh yeah? What do they know?”

Doc John lifts his walking stick, points it into the air between Len and the boy. “See here. People won't stand for you stirring up trouble, Len.”

Len slaps the cane away, steps back and opens the truck door, slides inside and turns the ignition. He rolls down the cloudy window, his breath visible. “You'll be caught one of these days,” he says, looking right at Buster. “That'll teach you
and
your father.” Then he sets his gaze on Doc John. “Stick to medicine old man.” He tears off, leaving them both to get splashed by his tires.

“Did you hear what he said about me?” Buster is fuming. “I should've creamed him!”

“I dare say he would've deserved it.” The doctor wheezes as though he's been sucking on gravel. His stomach is on fire again and he shifts in his clothes so that he might loosen the bandages wrapped around his rib cage. “You better hope your father doesn't hear about this.”

“I bet Dad won't even care.”

“Oh he'll care, all right.” Doc John slips his small hands into his gloves. “Len's got an axe to grind, but you shouldn't be taking that tone with him.”

“What do you expect me to do, just let him run us down like that? In front of the others? In front of Jelly Bean? You're the one who's always talking loyalty.”

The doctor is off in a huff, walking home, his breathing laboured and his cane slicing into the snow at an even pace. The clean sound is of a clock—
tick-tock, tick-tock
—winding down.

“I'm sorry Doc. I am.” Buster rushes to catch up. “You're right; I shouldn't get so frosted.”

“Well are you angry because Len's after your father or are you just plain mad at everyone? Whose side are you on, son?”

“Yours,” says Buster. “I mean Dad's. You're right. It's just family honour and all that. I swear, from now on I resolve to shoot straighter.”

The doctor smirks, and then can't help laughing out loud. “Easy now. There's no need to get carried away.”

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve Buster swaggers up Main Street in his hat. You all think I'm the bandit? Fine, might as well act like one. See if I don't command respect this way. He approaches the makeshift skating rink around the back of Johnson's store and stands in the snowbank along the lip of ice. He is bundled under so many layers that his face is barely visible. Walter, one floor up, aims his stereo out through his kitchen window and into the yard. It blares Giselle McKenzie and then the McGuire Sisters while the kids lace up.

Jelly Bean practises her figures on the small rink. She is wearing a new red plaid coat and a white scarf wrapped tightly around her skinny throat. Her ankles practically touch the ice as she cuts wobbly figures in her new skates. Hazel presides over the event, yelling down for encouragement. “Work on your axel dear, that's the hardest. Think of Barbara Ann. She's a ballerina on ice!”

Susan flies past. “Think
you're
Canada's sweetheart? Watch this.” She glides a few feet, stops and picks the ice with the toe of her skates. This causes her to spin one and a half rotations, like a real professional. Hank, who is running along the road, reaches the Johnsons' in time to witness her spin. She makes him dizzy. He rushes to do up his own skates and weaves in and around the girls, gliding along the ice with the aim of making a big impression.

“Show off!” Buster hollers at his brother.

Hank whips a snowball and Buster dodges it. Then Buster imitates Susan by spinning on the balls of his feet, exaggerating his gestures and taking a dramatic bow in the snow. Jelly Bean, seeing this, giggles and pushes off towards him. She totters on the edge of the rink farthest away from the house where her mother might not see.

“Wanna join us?”

“Naw, not interested,” he lies.

“Maybe you can't skate any better than me.” She examines his hat and there's a long silence. Cloudy breath hangs in the air. “You look like a gangster in that.”

“Good.”

“Since when are you a gangster, Buster?”

Buster stands taller, his boots sinking a couple of inches. “Since I say so.”

Jelly Bean's wet lashes flutter like a nervous moth.

“I heard Susan say there's going to be a New Year's Eve party.”

“Sounds lame.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, trying not to be hurt. “I guess I could always go with someone else….” Hank speeds past and Jelly Bean smiles at him. Blood threshes inside Buster's veins like his father's field machine. Before he can calm himself Jelly Bean has pushed off and stumbled away, the blush on her cheeks suggesting more than cold weather. She waves a bright white mitten and he waves back, speechless.

Jelly Bean repeats the same figures over and over, trying to hold precisely to her line, and as she does so her fists, inside her mittens, are clenched. I've had it, she thinks. Being good and proper is boring. She pretends the blades on her feet are brushes and that the ice is a large grey canvas on which anything might be drawn. Barbara Ann began at the age of nine, her mother has told her.
She
practised seven hours each day. Big deal. What might I have already drawn or painted, Jelly Bean wonders, using all that ice time? What unique beauty is waiting for me?

Buster watches her teeter and skate. Watches Walter and Hazel join the others on the farthest edge soon after, and all the girls passing each other in wide rings of silent competition. He observes Gloria and Susan holding hands to steady one another and Hank speeding after them, strong as a wolf. He doesn't spot Ivan and Donny advancing up the drive until they're upon him and then he makes no attempt at a handshake.

“Hey.” Donny's black hair pokes out from under his cap. Ivan stares at Buster's hat and Buster can tell he's impressed.

“So, I hear folks think
I'm
the bandit.”

Donny and Ivan regard one another sheepishly.

“We heard something about that,” says Ivan.

“I bet you did.” Buster runs his fingers along the brim of his hat. “I bet you had something to do with it too.”

Donny slugs Ivan. “Told you it wasn't true.”

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn't,” Buster grins. “Think what you like….” He kicks at the ice. “So, you fellas expect to bag any good loot this year?”

“Naah,” says Ivan. “Just the same old clothes and junk.”

“My mom found me another
Tales from the Crypt,
” says Donny. “I saw it in the closet where she keeps the unwrapped presents.”

“Which one is it?”

“Number twenty-seven. It starts with Four Way Split.”

“Cool. That's got to be one of the last.”

“Yeah, it's boss. Roy Dixon gets sentenced to the gas chamber and then he's on a scaffold. He thinks it's all a dream. Come by sometime. I'll loan it to you.”

“Maybe I will.” Buster kicks the snow, one boot and the other.

“Listen,” Ivan finally says. “I'm having a bash on New Year's Eve. Everyone's coming.”

“No parents,” adds Donny.

“Yeah? I dunno. Maybe.”

“Maybe maybe maybe,” mimics Ivan. “You're the maybe man now.” Buster clenches his jaw, feeling provoked. Something in Ivan's taunting seizes him and sends him back to that night in the root cellar, the night of his accident.

“Bet you can't outdrink me,” Ivan had dared, waving a bottle of Gibson's, and Buster knew he'd have to drink more than half the bottle without stopping if he was to beat Ivan's record. He dropped his lit cigarette into an empty cola can and grabbed the whiskey.

“No sweat.”

“Ready?” Donny raised one hand and brought it down fast, as though to signal the start of a drag race. “Go!”

Buster remembers lifting that bottle to his lips and tasting the old flavour as it pressed against his teeth and clawed down his throat to rest, like a dirty mound, in his stomach. He remembers coughing and gagging at first, and the others laughing at him. Ivan pretended to take tiny sips from an imaginary bottle. “You drink like my sister,” he said. That was when Buster held the bottle with both hands, closed his eyes and swallowed in bigger gulps. He hated losing to Ivan more than to anyone, for they were evenly matched in many arenas. Both their fathers were growers, natural born leaders, though Tom McFiddie inspired respect whereas Len Rombout demanded it. He and Ivan had tied scores for their school's broad jump record and tried to impress girls. He wasn't going to be satisfied unless he saw Ivan knocked down a peg or two.

“Don't quit now,” said Donny. “Keep going.”