Too Close to the Falls (13 page)

We stood there; my legs felt like two broken elastics. Dicky ran toward us screaming, “Cathy, get help!” I looked at the life preserver on a pole too high for me to reach. Franky looked off in the distance as though he were some kind of famous explorer, and Dicky was still negotiating his way down. How come
I
was suddenly in charge? I had to go into the Riverside Inn. My heart raced like a scooter. I didn't want to “get into trouble” like other girls who went in there.

Inside the inn, Dicky and Franky stood behind me. I smelled old beer. Roger, the bartender, ran toward me. “We saw. Call an ambulance!” he said to Mrs. Welsh. “I'll fish him the pole if I can,” he added over his shoulder as he ran out with two other men.

Mrs. Welsh made three hot milks with little squirts from the big bottles with nipples on them that hung from the ceiling, and plunked the mugs on the dark mahogany bar. “Kate, sit down and warm your insides. You'll need it.” As I drank what tasted like a turpentine milkshake, I wondered if this was how Sarah Welsh “got into trouble.” As the three of us sat on the high stools, I looked down at my sawdusted red boots hanging limply.

“Who is it, darlin'?” she asked.

“Trent McMaster.” I swung around on my bar stool once so I wouldn't see her face.

“My God, Mrs. McMaster will never survive the loss.”

The loss? The
loss
. The Black Label sign flickered. Was he going to die? Surely that was just ridiculous “melodrama,” the word my mother used to describe Dolores's carryings-on.

Everyone went to the bay window, and finally I ambled over as well. Roger, who also fixed radios and sometimes irons, was out on the ice with the others. They threw Trent a life preserver, but he never grabbed it.

“Hypothermia, muscles given out,” said Jeffrey Hicks. He leaned back on the heels of his unlaced workboots and said, “What was you doin', little lady — up to no good with these here boys?”

Finally Roger gingerly walked out on the edge of the brown ice patch and we all took a deep breath, and one man with veins all over his nose like a road map muttered to the window, “Watch out, my man. Heaven's full of heroes.” Roger himself was blowing across the ice, but he finally anchored himself and managed to get Trent to slither up on the pole like an inchworm. He was dragged across the thinnest part of the ice until Roger could grab him. He took off his parka and wrapped Trent in it. Only Trent's lifeless
feet drooped out the end of the roll as he carried him in. Everyone moved aside and we were all silent.

“Clear the bar,” Roger shouted, and laid him out on it. Trent looked patchy and blue. Mrs. Welsh put some brandy in his mouth, but it just dribbled along his cheek. I heard the screech of the siren through my numb heart.

One man at the bar looked at another and said, “Kids are such idiots, ‘sa wonder more don't die.” Then he knocked back a shot.

Trent didn't die; he had hypothermia. He hung between life and death until his body temperature returned to normal. He did, however, lose some fingers to frostbite. The doctor said he was lucky he retained his thumbs, which are the pincers that people really need. They said it was the wind chill factor when he raised his hands out of the water and clutched the edge of the ice that caused the irreversible damage.

After that I had to carry Trent's lunch to school every day and sit at his lunch table to click open his lunch box. I also had to hold the Kleenex for his nose because he now only had what looked like two hooves. He was in white oven-mitt bandages for months, and then had a series of operations in the years to come. As the months wore on and Trent was still in his bandages, my fantasy of what was under those bandages grew more terrifying with time. I'm sure nothing could have matched my vision of what he would look like when the bandages were removed. His hands, which in their bandages looked like two little golf clubs, earned him the nickname Stumpy. Trent didn't seem to mind the name. In fact, he began referring to himself as “Stumpy McMaster.” Only his mother steadfastly held on to “Trent.”

Every school had its sadist and ours was Anthony (named after the patron saint of lost causes) McDougall, the boy who was held back so many times he was mistaken for the janitor on parent-teacher night. When we did arithmetic, Anthony was especially rambunctious and our teacher, Sister Immaculata, relegated him
to tidy the coat room and mop up the slush under the boot rack.

He had red hair as did his six brothers and one sister, and he had those kind of giant freckles that only redheads are blessed with that crowd their whole body, at least what I could see of it. I had little conjecture about the rest. His skin was as thin as it was white. His ears were like a replica of a newborn monkey's, so transparent you could see the veins and capillaries.

Catholics seem to have an inordinate belief in alphabetical order. Since my name was McClure and his was McDougall, he was always seated directly behind me. He was a perpetual fidgeting machine, either scratching, taking his pen apart and getting ink all over himself, or tapping his pencil. He led quite an impressive war campaign. He waged little battles on his desk, pretending his pencils were submarines bombing each other. He incessantly simulated bombing noises by blowing air out the side of his mouth, while simultaneously throwing his pencils in the air and ducking under his desk to avoid leaded shrapnel. All this activity made me feel as though I were in the middle of a war-torn country, and by noon I was suffering from battle fatigue. I eventually began to tune out “Anthony's Crimea,” as Sister Immaculata termed it. But that was the least of my problems with Anthony McDougall.

Anthony was not pleased with my new policy of ignoring him. Apparently he preferred it when I turned around and screamed “Shut up!” as loudly as I could. He took to pulling my ponytail out in chunks. He would hold up fistfuls of blond switches with glistening roots that looked like yellow scallions. He would display these blond tendrils as though he'd won a lock of hair in some medieval tournament that only he was aware of. He would then carefully lay the tress trophy in the pencil indentation of his desk
as if it had been specifically designed to hold his mane spoils.

Appealing to Anthony's sense of decency was not a rewarding activity, so I turned to my father, who suggested this was a case for the authorities. Sister Immaculata told me I made more of a fuss than Joan of Arc when she was burned at the stake. God was testing me, and according to Sister Immaculata, I was losing the fight. It was Satan who was always behind complaining. My father suggested I move up in the chain of command, so I appealed to the ultimate authority, Mother Agnese, our principal. She told me to offer up my sufferings for the poor souls in limbo. My father then suggested I ask for a seat reassignment. Sister Immaculata nixed that anarchistic suggestion, pointing out that if I flounced to another seat, then what would prevent everyone else from requesting a move based on some “inner longing.” Eventually alphabetical order would mean nothing. She also pointed out the obvious dilemma that
someone
had to sit in front of Anthony McDougall. My mother suggested we invite Anthony to lunch, thus turning him into a friend. Needless to say, these suggestions only confirmed that I was on my own in finding a solution.

One Saturday when I was on delivery with Roy, he noticed that I wasn't leaning my head anywhere near the headrest because any pressure on my scalp sent electrifying pain from ear to ear. He asked me what was wrong. He couldn't believe it when he divided my hair and looked at the swollen red scales on my patchy head and my prematurely receding hairline. He shook his head when I yelped as he touched one of the reddish purple patches under my few remaining hairs. I couldn't even put it up in a ponytail anymore, because my bruised scalp could no longer stand the tension of the rubber band. Roy said it looked raw, and he didn't
like the way I was cowering in the car when he reached toward my head.

I went through the whole saga of how I had appealed to every possible authority — even God hadn't helped. Roy shook his head and made the high-pitched sound — “emmm-hm!” — he made when things were either really good or really bad. He rubbed his five o'clock shadow, which he did when he was thinking of something to do or something was bothering him. He finally said that this was “no good” and that “Anthony needed a taste of his own medicine.” Roy knew the McDougall family, as we had delivered medicine there for years. Roy agreed that there was no turning to Mr. McDougall, whom he referred to as “a tavern man,” because he would just tell us to get off his property. Mrs. McDougall had, as Roy said, “lost sight of things many years ago.” We both knew we delivered enough tranquillizers there to quiet a frisky colt. When Anthony was supposed to bring a dish for the May Day pageant potluck supper, Mrs. McDougall sent one devilled-ham sandwich wrapped in newspaper.

Roy assured me that when we were finished with the likes of Anthony McDougall, he'd shake in his boots so hard his freckles would fall off like filthy raindrops before he'd ever
think
of messing with me again. He said, “The guy's big, lots older, all them McDougalls is as skinny as six o'clock, but they're wild and wiry. Ya got to get in
once
and get him good. Maybe four seconds to get in and get out. You got but one chance — you miss the first time, you're scalped. You're not strong enough to actually hurt him by punchin' him. You got to use somethin' sharp and hit him where the body is packed with veins. Break the skin — that'll scare him. Go for the lip with the edge o' your lunch box or smash
him in the hand with somethin' sharp — lots of veins there. When he bleeds he'll
think
he's been hurt a lot even if it's only a nick. It's your only chance. Remember, never cuff ‘im when he starts up with you, he'll be on guard then. Hit him and hit him
hard
with something sharp in the lip or the hand when he's least expecting it, and instead of being the bloodsucker he is, for once he'll bleed. He'll bellyache like a baby for a while — you just walk away and that'll be the last time he'll pull your hair. Bullies are bad, cowards underneath, and you gots to end it on your feet — can't crawl away on your belly or you ain't never gettin' up. The good Lord punish the snake for temptin' Adam and he ain't never stood up since.” Roy hit the dashboard and concluded, “I'd love to do it for ya, but then when you're alone with fast Anthony, he'd turn up that browbeatin' motor somethin' fierce.”

Roy rarely gave advice, and he never gave bad advice. I bided my time. The following week Anthony pulled so hard on my ponytail the elastic snapped in half and flew into the P-through-R aisle. Now even my neck hurt when I turned it to either side. Still I waited to catch him unawares.

One morning we were learning how to bisect angles with our compasses. I glanced down at my gleaming metal compass with its sharp point perforating my paper, and I knew my moment had arrived. I buoyed myself up by repeating Roy's fighting words, “Seize the moment, act quickly, and get out.” I suddenly turned around, looked at Anthony's see-through freckled hand, made a quick study of the vessels underneath which looked like a road map. I picked a major highway and jabbed my compass in, knowing I had no second chance. Blood gushed in the air like a geyser. Linda Low took it upon herself to tell Sister Immaculata (I
guess she thought Sister Immaculata might miss the blood fountain spouting from Anthony's punctured hand). “Sister, Cathy McClure has fatally stabbed Anthony McDougall.” (I was sure she got that line from
Perry Mason
.) Anthony stood up in slow motion, became paler, which I didn't think was humanly possible, looked aghast at the blood, and fainted dead away. As he fell he banged his head full force on the edge of his desk and was out like a light. Following Roy's instructions I ignored the whole thing and tried to go on bisecting my next angle.