On Halloween Donna put me on the door.
“Brett’s taking the cousins,” she said. “Your aunt’s dropping them at five. You do the door. One handful each. Not two. Your dad thinks two. It’s one.”
She gave me a mixing bowl full of mini chocolate bars and a witch hat. I put the bowl on the hall table and the hat on the bowl.
The cousins came at five. They were Donna’s sister’s kids from Airdrie, a girl of eight dressed as a fairy and a boy of six dressed as a dinosaur with a tail that dragged. The girl looked at me in the hall and said “You got big.” The dinosaur hid behind Brett’s legs.
“Come on, Rex,” said Brett. He had a flashlight and a pillowcase for each of them, and he was wearing his Crowchild football jacket and a pair of plastic vampire teeth that he took out to talk. “Ten houses. Then hot chocolate.”
“Twenty,” said the fairy.
“Ten,” said Brett, and put the teeth back in, and took them out the door.
I did the door for three hours. I did it in the grey hoodie, the one from the garbage bag, with the strings chewed flat. It was the first time I’d worn it outside my room. Nobody in Hawkwood knew what it was. It was just a hoodie on a big kid at a door.
Little kids came in clumps with their parents at the bottom of the driveway. Princesses and Spider-Men, and a lot of Batmans. The movie had come out that summer. One kid was a box with tinfoil on it that he said was a robot. One kid was a hot dog. One little girl, about four, was dressed as a firefighter, with a real fire hat that came down over her eyes, and her mom said “She insisted. She wouldn’t wear the princess one. She cried for two days.”
“It’s a good costume,” I said.
The little girl pushed the hat up so she could see me. She held out her pillowcase.
I gave her two. Donna wasn’t looking.
At eight Brett came back with the cousins. The fairy had lost a wing. The dinosaur was asleep on Brett’s shoulder with his tail hanging down and a pillowcase in one fist. Brett carried him past me into the living room and put him on the couch without waking him up.
Then he came back to the door. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a chocolate bar, a full-size one, and held it out.
“House on the corner does the big ones,” he said. “For the door guy.”
I took it.
“Don’t tell Mom,” said Brett, and put the vampire teeth back in, and went to find the fairy’s wing.
* * *
It snowed on the Sunday. Real snow this time, not the kind that melts by noon. It came in the night and in the morning it was a foot deep on the deck rail, and the cul-de-sac was white all the way across with one set of tire tracks in it, and everything was quiet. Gordon stood at the kitchen window in his housecoat with his coffee and said “Well, there she is,” like it was a person he’d been waiting for.
He was happy about the snow. Snow was furnace season. Furnace season was money.
“You want to come out with me Saturday?” he said, not turning around. “Got a job in Edgemont. Old furnace out, new one in. Need a guy for the heavy end.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He turned around. He looked at me over his coffee.
“You never wanted to come out with me,” he said.
“I want to now.”
He took a second. Then he nodded, slowly, like he was agreeing to a price.
“Okay,” he said. “Seven a.m. Wear your boots.”
* * *
On the Wednesday, the day after the American election, Mr. Baptiste rolled the TV cart into social studies.
He was the social studies teacher. He was always excited about something. That morning he was excited about the election, and he put on a tape he’d recorded off the news the night before, of the man who’d won making a speech to a park full of people in Chicago in the dark. A lot of the people in the park were crying.
“This is history,” Mr. Baptiste said. “You are watching history. In fifty years you’ll tell your grandkids where you were. You’ll say, I was in Grade 9 social studies at Bow Crest, and Mr. Baptiste made me watch it.”
The class laughed. I didn’t. I was watching the people crying in the park.
At the back of the room, Manny was watching me.
* * *
The semi-final was on the Friday after that, at a high school field in the south, under the lights. It was a playoff, and it got dark at five.
We lost.
We lost twenty-seven to twenty. They had a quarterback who could throw the ball fifty yards and a receiver who could catch it. They scored first. We tied it. They scored again. I scored with four minutes left, from the eight, with two of them on me, and we were down by seven, and we got the ball back with a minute to go, and on the last play the quarterback threw it to the wrong guy, who was on the other team.
It was cold. It was minus twelve. It was so cold the ball felt like a rock and my hands didn’t work right.
When the whistle went I took my helmet off and threw it.
I didn’t mean to. My arm did it. It went about thirty feet down the sideline and bounced. One of the managers went to get it. I stood there with my hands on my hips and the steam coming off my head in the lights.
It came up in me like hail. Like the sky going green over the coulees in August, and then everything coming down at once, and you can’t stop it, you just stand in it. I’d never been that angry about a game. I’d lost a lot of games in Lethbridge. I’d lost the U14 final in a shootout and gone and got a slushie.
This was different. This was mine. I’d wanted it.
Coach Ferreira came over and stood in front of me. He was short and wide, with a moustache that was white at the edges.
“Pick up your helmet, Reimer.”
I picked up my helmet.
“Good,” he said. He looked at me. “That’s caring. Caring’s fine. Next year you’ll be at Crowchild and you can care all you want.” He hit me on the shoulder pad, once. “Go get warm.”
In the parking lot, Gordon was waiting by the truck with the engine running and the heater on full. He’d watched the whole thing from the stands in his big parka. Donna had stayed home because of the cold. Brett was there too, with his hands in his jacket pockets, leaning on the tailgate.
I got in the back seat. Nobody said anything for the first few blocks.
“You threw your helmet,” Gordon said.
“Yeah.”
“Ferreira say anything?”
“He said caring’s fine.”
Gordon laughed. It came out of him in one big bark, the way it did, and he hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.
“Caring’s fine,” he said. “Damn right it is.” He looked at me in the rear-view mirror. “You know how long I waited for you to give a damn about a game? You know how long?”
I kept my eyes on the window.
“That’s my boy,” he said, to the windshield, quieter. “That’s my boy.”
Brett, in the front seat, didn’t turn around. He was looking out his window at the snow on the side of the road. But in the side mirror I could see his face, and he was looking at me. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
* * *
On the Saturday I went out with Gordon to Edgemont.
It was a split-level on a crescent with a furnace in the basement older than Gordon. We took it out in pieces. We took the ducting off, then the old blower, then the heat exchanger. I carried them up the basement stairs one at a time and out to the trailer. Gordon carried the light end. I carried the heavy end. The woman who lived there stood at the top of the stairs in her housecoat and said “Oh, he’s strong,” every time I came past.
“He’s my son,” Gordon said, every time. Like it was the answer.
The new one went in on a dolly, and we did it on the stairs together, him at the bottom and me at the top, step by step, with him saying “Easy. Easy. Hold it. Easy,” the whole way down.
At lunch we sat in the truck with the heater on and ate the sandwiches Donna had made, ham and mustard on white. Gordon had a thermos of coffee. He poured some in the lid and gave it to me, and I drank it, and it was terrible.
“You could do this,” Gordon said. He was looking out the windshield at the snow. “You know that? You’ve got the hands for it. You’ve got the back. Brett’s going to the U of A, he’s going to be an engineer, good for him. But somebody’s got to take the trucks.” He drank from the thermos. “One day. If you want. I’m not saying you have to. I’m saying it’s there.”
I sat with the coffee lid in both hands.
It was a lot. It was the whole thing: the trucks, the shop, the name on the side of the truck. He was holding it out to me in a thermos lid in a parking spot in Edgemont. He’d been holding it out for fourteen years, to somebody who’d never wanted it, and now he was holding it out to me.
I didn’t know if I wanted it. I knew I liked carrying the heavy end. I knew I liked his hand on my neck. I knew none of it was meant for me.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Maybe’s good,” said Gordon. “Maybe’s a lot more than I used to get.” He screwed the lid back on the thermos. “Okay. Let’s go fire her up.”
* * *
The weights were in the basement, in the corner by the furnace, on a square of rubber matting. Brett’s weights. A bench, a rack, a bar, plates on a tree. He lifted down there every night at nine, with the radio on a station that played classic rock.
I’d started going down at nine too. He hadn’t said anything about it. The first night he’d looked at me on the stairs, and then put a second set of plates on the tree beside his, and that was it.
He’d been spotting me for three weeks. We didn’t talk. He put the bar in my hands, and I lifted it, and he stood behind the bench with his hands under it, not touching, and said “Up. Up. One more. Up.” And then he put it back on the rack for me.
On the Thursday after the furnace job, he didn’t put it back on the rack.
I’d done my last set. I was lying on the bench breathing. He was standing behind me, behind my head, with his hands on the bar on the rack, and he didn’t move.
“Who are you?” he said.
I lay there.
He wasn’t joking. I could tell from his voice. It wasn’t his two-word voice.
“What?”
“You heard me.” He let go of the bar. He came around the side of the bench and sat down on the weight tree’s base with his elbows on his knees, so his face was level with mine. “You don’t flinch.”
“What?”
“When I come in a room. You used to flinch. Every time. Since you were about seven.” He said it flat, like reading off a stat sheet. “I’d come in your room to get something and you’d jump like I’d hit you. I never hit you. I pushed you off a dock once. That was it.”
I sat up. I kept my mouth shut.
“You don’t flinch now. I came down the basement stairs behind you the first night and you didn’t even turn around. I threw an orange at your head and you caught it.” He looked at my hands. “You throw right-handed now.”
“I always threw right-handed.”
“You threw right-handed like a kid who hated it. Like the ball was hot. You’d throw it to get rid of it.” He looked at me. “You throw like you want it to get there.”
I said the only thing I had. “It’s the head injury.”
“Sure.”
“The doctor said.”
“The doctor said you’d forget stuff. You forgot the dock. You forgot Grandpa. You forgot me.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “She didn’t say you’d come back better at everything.”
The radio was playing something with a long guitar part. The furnace came on behind us with a whump and started to roar.
“And that girl,” Brett said.
I didn’t move.
“Paige. The one who came to supper and went straight to the bathroom.” He was looking at me very steadily. “You look at her like she’s the only person in the world who knows who you are.”
The furnace roared. The guitar went on.
“It’s the head injury,” I said again.
Brett looked at me for a long time. Then he stood up. He picked up a forty-five-pound plate off the floor with one hand and put it back on the tree.
“Sure,” he said.
That was all. He went back to his own set. He did it like nothing had happened, ten reps, the bar going up and down. When he was done he racked it and wiped the bench with his towel and went up the stairs, stepping over the second one from the top, the one that creaked.
He didn’t say anything about it the next day. Or the day after. He said “Pass the salt, Nate,” at supper, and “You awake?” at my door at midnight, the same as always.
But he watched.
* * *
On the Monday Manny caught me at my locker.
He hadn’t been at the bleachers at lunch for two weeks. He’d been eating in the library. I’d seen him through the glass in the door with a book open in front of him, not reading it.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He stood there with his backpack on one shoulder. He was chewing the inside of his lip.
“The Grade 6 thing,” he said. “On Friday. It’s the anniversary.”
“What anniversary?”
“The Grade 6 thing.” He looked at me. “You forgot.”
I had nothing. I didn’t know what the Grade 6 thing was. I could ask Paige. I’d ask her tonight. She’d tell me, and tomorrow I’d say oh, right, and Manny would look at me, and it would be worse.
“Nate wouldn’t forget that,” Manny said.
“Which thing?” I said.
“Exactly,” said Manny.
He hitched his backpack up on his shoulder and went off down the hall. He didn’t look back. I stood at my locker with the door open and my hand on the shelf, and on the inside of the door, where I’d taped the calendar, the Xs went all the way to the seventeenth of November.
* * *
nate says:
brett knows something dekker #7 says:
what nate says:
in the basement. he asked who i was. he said i dont flinch. he said i throw different. he said i look at you like youre the only person who knows who i am dekker #7 says:
what did you say nate says:
head injury dekker #7 says:
what did he say nate says:
sure dekker #7 says:
he cant know nate says:
he doesnt know. he just knows dekker #7 says:
whats the difference nate says:
one of them you can say out loud
The little line at the bottom said dekker #7 is typing. Then it stopped. Then it said it again. dekker #7 says:
the grade 6 thing is the science fair. we did a volcano. it didnt work. it set off the fire alarm and the whole school had to go outside in the rain and manny got his picture in the paper looking at the fire truck. every year on the anniversary we go to mac’s and buy a pop and a bag of baking soda nate says:
ok dekker #7 says:
dont do it nate says:
why not dekker #7 says:
because he’ll know you learned it. thats worse
I sat in Gordon’s dark kitchen in the light from the screen and thought about that. She was right. She was right about Manny, the way she was right about the fourth stair and the handle on the bathroom door. nate says:
ok nate says:
he eats lunch in the library now dekker #7 says:
i know dekker #7 says:
i used to sit with him every day. at our table by the window nate says:
i know
Upstairs, the floor creaked. Brett’s door. Then his feet on the stairs, stepping over the fourth one. Then the light in the hall.
I closed the window. I sat in the dark.
“You awake?” said Brett, from the kitchen doorway.
“Yeah.”
He stood there in the doorway in his T-shirt. He looked at the computer screen, black, with my reflection in it. Then he looked at me.
“Okay,” he said, and got a glass of water, and went back up.