Harry took a cab from the train station to his dad’s apartment. His dad usually got off work at about two o’clock on Fridays, which gave them extra time together. Usually Harry didn’t have to wait too long before his dad arrived home, but sometimes he was late.
By the time Harry discovered “Strangers on the Shore,” it was already 4:30. With no word from his father, Harry began to wonder if there was some problem. He began to wonder if he might finally get a chance to break into his emergency funds. He imagined having to buy his own supper and a few videos, maybe.
He stood at the window of his dad’s apartment and looked down at the street seventeen floors below. He tried to make out his dad amid the ants down there. They were all going somewhere in a big Friday-afternoon hurry.
He stopped listening to Acker Bilk. He put on Billy Vaughan and his Orchestra. Instead of 400,000 violins, this LP featured 400,000 saxophones, all playing the same melody. Very slowly. It was just as mushy and boring as “Strangers on the Shore.”
Harry thought of phoning his dad’s office, but the secretary always called him Junior and asked him how he was. She expected a real answer. She wanted to have a conversation with him. So Harry just listened to the LP, instead. LP stood for Long Playing. The way Billy Vaughan played it seemed very long. It grew dark.
At 5:38 his dad phoned. He was still in an unexpected meeting that was really important. He said he was sorry. He said he would bring home a pizza. He said to look through the papers and see what was playing and pick a movie. Harry picked a movie, but when his father came home at seven he brought not only a pizza but a friend from the
office. She was a lot of fun. They all made a crazy salad together, but they never did get to the movie.
CLUNY SMITH’S father’s name was John. Her mother’s name was Anne. Cluny was named after a museum in Paris where her parents had met. Her mom and dad kidded her that if they had had other children they would have named them after museums, too, so Cluny wouldn’t feel so weird. Cluny tried to imagine having a brother named Ashmo-lean, or Smithsonian. Smithsonian Smith! It might make a funny piece for the second issue of Cluny.
By Friday afternoon the zeen was well and truly launched. Percy was going to send a copy to his sister, Irene. Irene wasn’t that uncommon a name in the old days, but you didn’t see too much of it about anymore, he told. Cluny. He made it sound like smallpox or some old-fashioned disease. There was another reason he was sending Irene the magazine. “She lives in Punky Doodle Corner.” Cluny gave him the big thumbs up.
Bryony was sending her extra copy to her friend Hezekiah who lived in California. Hez was named after an ancient king of Judah, and Bryony had the idea that they could include weird biblical names in the next issue of the zeen: Nahor and Uz and Pildash, things like that. She had looked up the names in the library. Maybe they could make it a regular feature.
Darwin didn’t know anybody with a weird name other than Bry and Cluny, but he was going to draw a picture of the baseball player Ranee Mulliniks for the second issue. It was a good start.
Or it should have been.
But Kelly O’Connor, who had tried to snatch a copy of the magazine as soon as Cluny had got on the bus that morning, finally managed to get hold of one in the bus line-up after school. She grabbed it right out of the bag in Cluny’s arms, and when she did she ripped the bag, and two copies of the magazine fell on the ground and got covered with muck. Then Kelly sat at the back of the bus all the way home reading it out loud to her friends. Cluny covered her ears. It all sounded stupid coming from the likes of Kelly and Susan and Crystal and Tracy. “Clowny Magazine,” they called it; the magazine for people who have nothing better to do. . What did they know about it.
IT WAS NOT a good weekend for Harry. Sometimes that happened. He had gotten pretty good at figuring out when a weekend with Dad wasn’t going to be a good one. The Friday meeting that had kept his father at the office had to be reconvened on Saturday afternoon, which meant the track and field meet at the coliseum was out. Harry’s father kept thinking of people Harry could go to it with. Harry said he would be all right at the apartment. He didn’t really feel like going anyway. His father said, “Well, if that’s the way you’re going to be about it.”
Harry ended up listening to LPs. Lester Lanin. Nat King Cole. Dizzy Gillespie.
He was making himself a sandwich when he heard a noise down the hall. He ran to the door in time to see Flower stepping into her apartment.
“Hi,” he called.
“Hi, Harry,” she called back and waved. Then a guy who was not Night and who Harry had not seen before poked his head out her door and said, “Hi, Harry,” and a couple of other kids did the same and called him Harry as if they knew him. Then they all went into Flower’s place and closed the door. Harry sat in a chair with a comic, practising looking as if he was having a fine time and hoping Flower might knock on his door and invite him to the party if he had nothing better to do.
His dad got home tired at six. They watched a hockey game on the tube. The Canucks lost.
Sunday, Harry’s dad was still tired. They went for a walk down the canal that ran through the city. It was cold and wet. They had lunch out at a restaurant Harry’s dad liked. Harry’s burger had sprouts on it. It was that kind of a weekend.
That night while they cleaned up after supper, Harry asked if the friend from the office would be around again. His dad said he wasn’t sure. Harry said, “Well, she sure knows how to make a crazy salad.” But his dad didn’t laugh.
Harry said he would put on some music to wash dishes by. He chose “Strangers on the Shore.” He thought it would make his dad a little happier. He wiped the record .first with the special cloth and cleaned the needle with the special brush that he had dipped in the special liquid. But his hand slipped as he lowered the needle arm and it jumped right out of his hand hard onto the LP.
“For God’s sake, Harry!” said his rather. “Please be careful.”
They washed in silence to the sound of 400,000 violins and one syrupy clarinet. They both tried hard not to hear the new bit of surface noise that had not been there before.
ONE HUNDRED and twenty-three kilometres away, Cluny’s weekend was lousy, too. Someone delivered an anonymous letter to her door early on Saturday.
Dear Loony,
I was so glad to see a magazine for people like us. My friend Frogetta wants to subscribe. She has nothing to do most of the time cos she’s a real stick-in-the-mud. Also my friend Frankfurter is interested in your magazine. He’s a real wiener. I hope you will have a joke section. Here’s one. Q: How many people with weird names does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: None. They’d rather be in the dark. Ha. Ha. Ha. Anyway, have to run cos my boyfriend Pizzaface is at the door. So long for now.
Yours most sincerely,
Lulu McDinkus-Puss
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Dad told Cluny that you had to expect cranks. He showed her a file folder full of stupid letters
people had sent to Turnip. You get used to it, he said. Cluny wasn’t so sure. He didn’t have to get on a school bus five days a week.
By Monday morning, Cluny couldn’t understand why she had ever decided to do such a dumb thing. By Monday morning she was wondering whether she was going to risk taking the bus or work up a quick case of flu. Mom suggested that a quick case of flu wasn’t going to get rid of Kelly and Susan and Crystal and Tracy.
“Besides, having an original name builds character,” she said.
“How about a deathly case of flu?” Cluny asked.
Mom gave her one of her looks. Her looks were like her coffee, black with no sugar. Cluny gathered her stuff together.
HARRY’S DAD drove him to the train station Monday morning, and when he hugged him goodbye he promised to make up for the lousy weekend next time. The train pulled out of the station. It was raining and cold. Harry leaned h
is forehead against the window. It was 8:15.
CLUNY WAITED for the school bus. She had her school books, lunch and one copy of Cluny, well hidden. She was only taking it because her teacher wanted to read it. Fame.
The bus came and even before it stopped, Cluny could hear that the noise was worse than ever. Percy opened the door for her. The noise was deafening. He pointed to his ears. He had cotton batting in them.
“Clue-less-Loo-ny! Clue-less-Loo-ny!”
Percy winced.
Cluny tried to remind herself that the chant was coming from a handful of witless goofballs, that most of the people on this bus were okay, that some of them were genuinely friendly and didn’t care what her name was, that it would all die down and be forgotten and the witless goofballs would find someone else to pick on. She sat down, her face burning, trying very hard to remind herself of all this. But all she could think of was the copy of Cluny tucked between her notes.. And the magazine, despite anything she tried to tell herself, shrank and shrank and shrank in her mind’s eye until it was nothing but a bright, hot ember. An idea who’s time had gone. No matter what her folks said about cranks or character, nothing—nothing—was worth this.
She stared at poor old Percy’s bald head. His shoulders were hunched up around his ears. Even with the cotton batting the noise was too much for him.
“Clue-less-Loo-ny! Clue-less-Loo-ny!”
She refused to cover her own ears. And so it was that she heard that other sound, a sound bigger than the chanting, a sound as big as her thumping heart. A sound coming out of nowhere. She didn’t have time to think of it as a train. She was still staring at Percy’s head when it hit the bus.
“IT’S ALL RIGHT!” said the train conductor. “No one seems to be too badly hurt. Personne n’a été blessé,” he added, so that the passengers would be reassured in both official languages.
Harry stared from his window back down the track to the level crossing where the school bus stood, its front end almost entirely torn off and twisted. Kids were being herded out of the bus, one or two supported by others but no one carried out, so far. The driver was sitting on the ground. Train men and women were squatting and standing around him. He seemed to be talking. Personne n’a été blesse.
Passengers from the other side of the train crowded around Harry trying to catch a glimpse of the bus — the accident — three hundred metres down the track. It had taken the train that long to stop.
“The bus driver stopped and then went ahead right into the path of the train,” one passenger said. He had heard it from someone who had heard it from the conductor who had heard it from the engineer.
“Lucky those school buses don’t go very fast,” said someone else.
“But these trains sure do,” said someone else again. “A real close call!”
Harry got up from his seat and squirmed his way through the crowd.
“Probably going to be sick,” he heard someone say quietly, as he made his way to the end of the car. “Such a shock. Poor kid.”
But Harry didn’t feel sick. What he saw through the window made him feel alive all over. What he saw through the window was an emergency.
He found his knapsack on the shelves at the car’s end and, taking one last look at his fellow passengers, he heaved it over his shoulder, pushed open the door between the cars and made his way down the unguarded steps to the gravel bed of the track.
The air smelled strongly of engine, pulsating
heat, oil and escaping steam. Harry shivered and
hurried down the siding towards the level crossing. He didn’t look back in case someone called him and made him return to his seat.
“There’s nothing on this ticket about getting off and having adventures,” he imagined the conductor saying. He imagined him saying it in both official languages. But by then he was at the scene of the accident, just another school kid in the rain. He didn’t look hurt. No one paid any attention to him.
Up close he could see that some of the kids had cuts and bruises. One kid was crying hard and holding his arm in a funny way. A train man was unrolling bandage from a first-aid kit. Another kid was lying on the ground; he had fainted. Down the dirt road Harry saw flashing lights and then heard the siren of an ambulance coming towards them.
It was going to be all right. Big kids were helping little kids. Two guys were playing catch with an apple. A girl in the thick wiry grass by the side of the dirt road was crying hysterically. Another girl was holding her, consoling her.
“It’s okay, Kelly,” said the girl. “Calm down.”
“Can I help?” Harry asked. The hysterical girl, Kelly, hid her head in the other girl’s shoulder and held onto her tightly. Harry didn’t know what to do. He patted Kelly on the shoulder.
“You’ll be okay,” he said in a reassuring way. Kelly stopped crying immediately and stole a glance at this stranger. She looked horrible. She had a bad scratch on her forehead and her eyes were all puffy from crying. The rain drizzled down her face. The other girl smiled a little at Harry and patted Kelly’s head.
Then the ambulance arrived and one of the train men called for all the children with injuries to come. Kelly, with a final sob, left the girl who had held her. As she left she squeezed the girl’s hand.
“She’ll be okay,” said Harry. It seemed a stupid thing to say. He looked at the girl to see if she thought it was a stupid thing to say. She didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Harry told her he had just gotten off the train. He told her where he had been and where he was going.
The girl laughed. “Don’t you have a name?” she asked.
“Harry,” he said, feeling stupider than ever.
“Cluny,” said the girl, shaking his hand.
She wanted to get her books from the bus. Harry walked with her. But the police had arrived and no one could go on the bus. So Cluny started walking away down the road. Nobody seemed to notice except Harry.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home,” she said. “It’s just a kilometre. Bye, Harry. Thanks for your help.”
“It was nothing,” said Harry, nodding. He waved to her. He turned to look at the accident. He looked at the train. It didn’t seem like such a big adventure anymore. Nobody looked at him. He turned and watched Cluny walking away. He watched her for about one whole minute.
“Cluny,” he called. She turned. He ran after her. “Maybe I could call my mother from your place,” he said, a little out of breath. “She always says not to hesitate to call if there is any kind of emergency.” He said it in his mother’s voice, and Cluny laughed, as if she had heard a voice like that before. She had a great laugh.
“Okay, Harry,” she said.
Harry fell in step beside her.
He began to feel very, very pleased with himself. There were woods on either side of the road. He realized that it was raining in the woods but not raining on him anymore, on the road, on them. Step by step the sound of the accident fell behind them, until all he could hear was the rain and the wind soughing in the cedars. It sounded like 400,000 violins.
“Cluny,” he said. “That’s a beautiful name.”
Tweedledum and Tweedledead
“IT’S A COMMANDO raid on Wonderland,” said
Tobias.
Peach rolled her eyes. “This is your assignment?” she asked. “You’re going to hand this in?”
Tobias looked at his notebook. Maybe he shouldn’t have shown the story to Peach before it was finished. Something in him had said to keep it under his hat, but he had to show someone. Someone he trusted.
Now that someone had handed his story back without finishing the first page.
“It’s this guy—”
“Sergeant Steele.”
“Yeah. And he hates Alice in Wonderland. At the e
nd you find out that his parents forced the book down his throat when he was a kid. He really wanted to play outside, but they made him read instead. So now he has found out by grilling this weasely counterspy that there is a Wonderland. It actually exists. It’s Top Secret. So he gets these guys together —”
“The Desperate Throng,” said Peach. “I like that. It’s good.” Peach said “throng” a few times, throwing it off her teeth with her tongue. “The-wrong, the-wrong, the-wrong.”
“Right,” said Tobias, “and they plan this raid.”
Peach rolled her eyes again. That was part of the reason she liked Tobias. No one gave her more reason to roll her eyes,’ and it was her best trick.
“Just tell me this,” she said. “Does Alice live?”
Toby’s eyes gave him away. Peach panicked. “No! Don’t say it!” She snatched the notebook out of his hands and, holding it up in front of his eyes, prepared to tear it in half.
“What are you doing?”
“Alice has to live!” said Peach. “Maybe this Steele guy doesn’t realize it, but he’s in love with her, or something, so he saves her life.”
“And if he doesn’t?” said Tobias, trying to say it the way Sergeant Steele would say it—spitting it out like a piece of gristle.
“Then you end up with two short stories, Toby,” said Peach. There was menace in her voice.
Tobias smiled like Steele. “Since when could you rip a notebook in half?”
Since my uncle Alike showed me,” said Peach, stepping out of reach. “It’s all in the wrists. You just tear one page at a time—that’s the trick of it. Mike can rip a phone book in half this way. It’s going to become my new best trick.”
Tobias took a step towards her and she started to tear, He stopped dead in his tracks.
“All I need is a bit of practice,” said Peach. Tobias retreated, holding up his hands like a guy in a movie to show he had no weapons on him.
Some of the Kinder Planets Page 5
