Authors: John Cooper
Danny started feeling woozy … like maybe if he just gave up, he’d be free of this guy, free to leave and go home and forget about it. But Big Red was still fighting. “Your old man was a loser. Everybody knows that.”
Danny’s heart turned to stone. One word came choking its way out of his throat repeatedly. “No. No. No.” He was within seconds of losing the match and, spinning madly on the floor, got the word out while trying to figure out a way out from under this guy. Sensei Bob’s face floated through his thoughts.
There is a way to escape
, Sensei Bob said wordlessly.
Then, strangely and luckily, a bee began buzzing around Big Red’s face. He looked away, loosening his group enough for Danny to get a knee up for leverage into Big Red’s chest; then he shifted his right foot, and pushed Big Red off of him. Danny moved up quickly off the surface of the mat, scooted in, and grabbed his opponent’s
gi
, then moved into his opponent’s space, and executed the
yama arashi
(“You may want to call it the Mountain Storm,” Sensei Bob had told him), grabbing the right sleeve of Big Red’s
gi
and throwing his opponent over his hip. Sensei Bob later said that it was one of the few times he’d seen a student execute a throw like that so well.
The match was done. Danny had won.
He then faced the biggest competitor, the rough-looking guy, but lost, settling for silver.
He looked into the crowd. Mom was there. Nicole was standing by the door. She told him later that she was worried for him, scared that he might be hurt. He did have some bruises, and a red mark across his neck, it’s true. “But I never felt better,” he told her.
“Your dad would be proud,” his mother said quietly.
MARCH
Danny began a
new page in his diary.
* * *
I miss my dad. It has been six months since he died — half a year already! I think Long Shot misses him too. She will stand near the front door, staring out through the screen door at the time that Dad would usually come home, the way she would when he was alive. Is she expecting to hear the tires on the driveway? Does she expect to see him to come through the door? Or is she just watching the neighbour’s cats, or squirrels running across the lawn? Anyway, I am surprised that I have held up as well as I have. I accept the fact that Dad’s gone, that there is always going to be a certain amount of sadness. But I can work through it.
What else can I write about? I promised Feinman that I would write every day, even if what I write might seem to have no meaning to me right away. Maybe someday it will. I’ve missed a few months, so I guess I should catch myself up so I remember things later.
I’m still talking to Dr. Feinman. I’m actually dating Nicole. I still don’t get why she likes me, but maybe I have a self-esteem problem, I don’t know. There’s a lot I still don’t know. The shrink says a lot of this is stuff I have to figure out for myself. That’s my job, he says, and he’s right.
Something else I didn’t know before: Mom said Dad had prepared for the future by buying life insurance. He managed to keep several policies going and there was money from his old work, and Mom put the money into kind of a trust fund for Susan and me. And there’s the $10,000 Dad got for running Long Shot in the big race. All of it in cash — a stack of bills held together with a thick rubber band. I had never seen a hundred dollar bill before. It didn’t seem as impressive as I thought it would.
“Money is important,” Dad said on more than one occasion. “But not as important as family.” Anyway, a big chunk of that money already went to pay bills. But I believe Mom when she says things will be okay.
I just got my licence. Mom says I can drive the car, but she’s nervous about me driving at night. I promised her I would be careful and I know she’s going to hold me to it.
What else? I want to get some fuzzy dice to hang from the mirror.
I’m still kind of annoyed that Ben moved to Listowel. I miss him. His cousin from Darfur was relocated there, so that’s where Ben wants to be. Apparently quite a few of his family members will be moving there. There’ s a factory there that his cousin works in, and it’s expanding, so there will be job opportunities for his family. Ben was happy to be going to Listowel, it was always important to him that his family was able to reunite. So I guess that’s good for him.
He wrote a poem that he called “Scattered in a New Diaspora.” It was pretty good, but I had to look up the word diaspora. It means the dispersion of people from their original homeland. I’m going to remember it. I want to read more about Darfur. Family is everything, Ben told me. He was right. Before he left, he won the 400-metre final in track and field for our district, and came third in the regional finals. Hopefully I’ll drive to Listowel sometime to visit, and maybe I can take Nicole. It will be a long drive, but worth it. We’ll drive around Listowel with Ben and see the sights.
* * *
Danny turned to look at Long Shot, lying on her back, paws tilted at all angles in the air, chest sticking out, her rib cage forming a smoothly furred arch that moved slightly with each breath. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth and her eyelids gently twitched. She must be dreaming, Danny thought.
A wintry wind whistled at the windows in the late afternoon, like a ghost faintly pleading to come in from the cold. The ghost of winter. The earth outside was still icy in patches and rock hard, and the squirrels that used to run through the maple and oak trees in the backyard last fall had moved to their nests long ago to sleep away the winter. Soon they would be stirring again. Danny turned back to his diary.
* * *
I got my blue belt in judo. Sensei Bob says I need to work harder, and that’s okay. He’s right. He says it won’t be long before I can go for my brown belt, and then on to my black belt. But I’m not sure how long I want to continue doing judo.
Susan went back to university. She got the volleyball scholarship she wanted and she’s been a lot more pleasant to me lately. Which I appreciate! Mom is still working as a social worker. She just takes life one day at a time, she says. “People talk about multitasking, but you can only do one thing at a time,” she always says to me. And everything is still
nice
to her
.
Every couple of weeks, I go over to Evelyn Jossa Park with Long Shot and look at the place where we scattered Dad’s ashes. There’s a birch tree that stands alone and I think of it as Dad’s tree. I close my eyes and imagine Dad leaning against it, watching the Canada geese on the pond nearby.
I started working part-time at the library, shelving books. It’s booooring! But at least I can make some money at it. University will come too soon. I have to get my head around it.
Mr. Mahoney sent me a postcard the other day. “Greetings from Tampa, Florida!” it said. Palm trees and the Gulf of Mexico and deep red sunset across the horizon. Everything is great with him and his dogs are running well. What a nice guy — he said if I ever want to come for a visit I would be welcome — Long Shot too, of course. Maybe we’ll go next winter?
* * *
As if sensing Danny’s thoughts, the greyhound stretched and
thump-thumped
her tail, raised her head slightly, then went back to sleep. Danny’s thoughts about the rangy greyhound, relaxing in a way that only dogs can, moved to his stomach. He was getting hungry. Spoon pudding. Maybe there was some in the fridge?
He wandered into the kitchen, found a spoon pudding in the refrigerator, put on his jacket, and wandered outside, into the backyard, his sneakers slipping a bit on the frost-coated grass. Small piles of still-melting snow were heaped here and there. It was that time of year when you could feel the warmth of spring gently sneaking into everything. Danny looked at the afternoon sky. It was lengthening into evening, streaks of indigo and red and purple stretched like strands of ribbon from one end to the other. He thought of Nicole, the purple streaks in her jet-black hair, her smile, the way she teased him, gently, about everyday things. She might be working now. He took his cellphone out of his jacket pocket and texted her. “I
♥
you,” he typed.
Eating the spoon pudding, he surveyed the yard.
It’s not so bad
, he thought. The sunlight to the west was caught by the branches of a tree, which cast shadows across the patchy ice and snow. Danny squinted his eyes, letting the pastel shades and shadows blend and merge with his mind. He created a tapestry, imagining a great picture of his life stretched across the backdrop of the sky, images in motion from one side to the other: his mother working at the kitchen table, his sister playing volleyball, him earning a belt in judo, a pack of long-limbed dogs racing down a red-dirt track after a mechanical rabbit, and one tall, lean man, studious-looking, with a ponytail and scraggly goatee, standing alone, gently smiling at the scene.
Danny’s cellphone vibrated. It was Nicole. “I
♥
you too.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE LETTER
All of this work is fiction, with the exception of the letter from Danny’s grandfather. Much of the text of that letter is drawn from one written by my great-grandfather Martin to my great-grandmother Alice during the First World War. Martin was a private in the Canadian Corps in Ypres, Belgium, and fought at the Battle of Mount Sorrel in 1916. To me, the letter truly represents courage and dedication, laced with doubt, anxiety, and isolation— capturing the thoughts and feelings of average people who rose to a challenge to do extraordinary things.
GREYHOUNDS
There are many greyhound adoption organizations across Canada and the United States, and they do great work. For the right family, a retired racing dog makes a wonderful, loving pet. I encourage anyone who is interested in adopting a retired greyhound to find out more by getting in touch with their local organization.
DARFUR
Ben’s story of genocide and slavery is sadly typical of the experiences of many young people in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Despite shaky peace agreements, this part of Africa continues to suffer from political instability, war, starvation, and the breakdown of traditional ways of life — all of which create human suffering on a massive scale. Organizations like Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan (CASTS) have done much to bring this situation to the world’s attention and there are many excellent books written on this topic. I urge readers to learn more about Darfur and add their voices to the chorus of those calling for long-term solutions in this part of the world.