Spud in Winter

by Brian Doyle

  I get a square shovel and find my father’s ax in the shed behind a bunch of junk. The blade of my father’s ax is rusted. When I see the rust I feel ashamed and sad.

  He used to keep it sharp and shiny.

  Once, when we were out camping, I held up the ax, like a mirror, while my father trimmed his own hair with his hunting knife.

  I’m in my yard, which is closed in by buildings on all sides and is quiet. The brown doors lead into the street. Out there they shoot you dead from brown vans. The doors are shut and locked.

  The light from my bedroom window is yellow. I can see the warm, fancy shapes of the thick frost on the panes.

  It gives me enough light to do my work. I’m like a midnight gravedigger on a stage in a play I saw once.

  Except it wasn’t minus so many degrees.

  Minus so many degrees!

  Thinking of Connie Pan makes me warm.

  I brush away the top layer, the feathery, dusty snow, to get down to the stiff crust. This crust is thick and strong enough to hold me. If I jumped hard on it I could break through but I don’t want to. Too messy. This has to be done right. I set my tools down side by side on the crust and clear off a perfect square about the size of a trap door.

  It’s so cold that you can’t feel it. This is the cold to look out for.

  There’s no wind, no breeze, perfectly still, the sky is clear of cloud. It’s filled with a quarter moon and a billion stars. The Weather Channel says this is the most dangerous time of all. When it’s pleasant, beautiful like this.

  When everything is nice and cozy. That’s when they get you. For instance, after you’ve had a nice couple of cups of your favorite coffee, and then you stroll out to your brand-new warm car.

  When it’s like this, you could decide to sit down for a little rest, take a look at the big show in the sky up there, feel really great, lie back a bit, just for a minute, maybe take a little snooze...and wake up dead...frozen stiff as a popsicle!

  With the square shovel I’m careful. I cut four sides of a perfect square the size of a trap door.

  I slide the shovel under the square from each side and loosen the hard crust from the snow underneath.

  When it’s free, I carefully lift the square of crust off the snow and set it down away from the work area where it won’t be damaged.

  It’s out in the shadow now, where I can’t see it. I shovel out the next layer. This layer is lumpy snow, icy, coarse, breaks into funny shapes, isn’t too heavy. It goes down pretty deep, to half the length of the handle of my shovel.

  With my father’s ax, I chop out the next layer, which is milky-colored hard ice and is about two hands deep. Under the ax it breaks up like thick hard glass chunks and they clunk together like lumps of marble.

  I clean out these pieces with my hands, like a dog digging.

  I keep this pile separate from the pile of coarse icy snow.

  The next layer is packed snow. Because the hole is as deep as the shovel length now, the work is getting harder. I stack this snow in a separate pile.

  My head and my hands are starting to sweat. I check my alarm clock, which I have brought down and placed on the doorstep leading into my back shed.

  It looks lonely there, in the shadows, propped up in the snow. Can clocks freeze?

  It’s five minutes to midnight.

  The hole is down to frozen grass. I can feel it. Now the hard part.

  I lie on my stomach. I have to lean way in to get any kind of decent whack at the frozen grass with the ax. I try putting the shovel into the hole and using it to support my left hand while I chop with my right. It’s hard, sweaty work.

  I stop to rest. Nice and pleasant to have a short rest on such a beautiful night.

  I roll over and look at the sky shining, glittering with silver points and the moon looking cozy in the cold.

  Nice to have a rest like this after shoveling and chopping. Head sweaty. Hands hot. Maybe loosen the scarf. Take off my toque.

  Slip off the mitts for a minute.

  Cool off the hands.

  Feels good.

  Maybe even take a little snooze.

  It’s nice out here.

  Reminds you of summer, camping, sleeping under the stars, on a fishing trip with my father.

  Doze off like in Mademoiselle Tarte au Sucre’s French class in the afternoon when the warm sun is streaming in the windows and she’s reading to us, like she does every day, the continued story of Les Misérables in French, by Victor Hugo. Nobody in the room, except her, knows anything about what’s going on in Les Misérables, but who cares. It’s peaceful and she’s got a nice voice. It could be a beautiful love scene by a lake she’s reading to us, or it could be a bloody massacre during a war...what’s the difference...

  So peaceful, her voice going on...

  My father, using his ax as a mirror...

  Is that a shooting star up there...look at it. Look at the arc...

  There’s a loud crack! It wakes me up, but I’m not sleeping!

  The loud, cracking thud. Came from the old garages, which used to be the stables where they kept the horses more than fifty years ago. The sudden sound is a nail popping in the old wood. It’s so cold the nails are shrinking, tearing through the wood.

  All of a sudden, I’m in a panic!

  I almost went to sleep!

  The sweat on my head is frozen! My hands are white.

  I cover up again.

  My throat is burning.

  My nose is plugged with frost.

  What a stupid, stupid...

  I try to chop some more of the frozen grass, but it’s like chopping concrete. The ax bounces right off. You might as well try to chop a hole in a sidewalk. The ax is ringing. Are those sparks coming off each time I hit? Is the grass in Ulan Bator like cement?

  I get up and check the clock.

  It’s nearly twelve.

  It’s time.

  On my hands and knees I speak down into the hole. The secret.

  “I know who the driver of the killer van is. I saw him. I can identify him. Connie Pan knows him. She probably knows his name. I lied to the police. I’m not telling anyone about this. Only you.” Talking to a hole. I must be nuts!

  Now. Quick!

  I shovel back in the last layer, the hard-packed snow.

  I replace the layer of thick, heavy, marbly chunks.

  I shovel back in the lumpy stuff.

  I smooth over the lumps with some regular snow.

  I carefully replace the trap door of crust.

  I spread the feathery powder over the top.

  My alarm goes off. It sounds like it’s limping. Too cold for clocks.

  Done.

  The secret is in the hole.

  I pick up the shovel and my father’s ax and the clock.

  Now, get in the house.

  Quick, before you freeze!

  Go!

  X

  Dink’s dad bought Dink something he’s wanted for a long time. A cellular phone. One of the newest ones that fit in your shirt pocket. Dink’s dad can’t get over how the top flips open and shut. He used to watch the old Star Trek series all the time, the one with Spock and Captain Kirk. He says he never thought that when Captain James T. Kirk used to flip the top back on his communicator when he was finished talking and say, “Kirk out!” that he’d ever see the day when it could actually happen. And now he’s just bought one for his son!

  “What next?” says Dink’s dad.

  Dink is trying out his phone, phoning some computer stores, asking them questions about the latest software or something, then, when he’s finished talking, he’s flipping his phone shut and then his dad is saying, “Say, ‘Kirk out!’ why don’t you? Go ahead, phone somebody else, and then when you’re done talking, flip it shut, like Captain James T. Kirk used to, and say, ‘Kirk out!’”

  So, to please his dad, Dink calls another computer store and asks them how much is a whatdyacallit and then he says, “OK. Thanks. Kirk out!” and flips
his phone shut and shoves it in his back pocket.

  And Dink’s dad bursts out laughing and claps his hands and tries to speak but the laughing makes him start to choke and then he breaks into a coughing fit that would set all the emergency screens off on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

  I like the way Dink and Dink’s dad like each other. They’re always doing stuff for each other. Like Dink trying to get him to quit smoking cigarettes and his dad buying Dink this cellular phone.

  It makes me miss my father.

  Dink lets me use his phone to call Connie Pan because my mom wanted me to find out if there was anything Mrs. Pan wanted us to bring over for supper.

  Connie Pan’s mother asked me and my mom over for early supper. My mom and Mrs. Pan are friends now since they met last summer at the multicultural center. Mrs. Pan sometimes translates for my mom when she’s trying to help some new Canadians who speak Chinese.

  Mrs. Pan started out not liking me very much. When she found out I got kicked out of school, she didn’t like me even worse.

  But then, when she got to know my mom and they got to be friends, she started to like me a bit better.

  She still calls me Bignose, though. But now when she says it, she’s got a tiny little smile to go with it. Mrs. Pan doesn’t seem very polite, but my mom says it’s just her “manner,” and she’s a very kind, caring person.

  I said we were invited for early supper because the Pans always eat at 5:15 and finish about a quarter to six. And then, as soon as you’re finished eating, Mrs. Pan says, “OK. Go home now!”

  When my father was alive and we’d have some guests over for supper it would take about three hours to eat and at two o’clock in the morning everybody’d still be there.

  Last time, over at Mrs. Pan’s, I was just swallowing the last of a piece of sweet dessert she’d made when she got up and said, “OK. Go home now!”

  I was insulted, so Connie Pan had to explain it to me at the front door while I put on my boots.

  She told me that I insulted her mother by leaving! See, when she says, Go home, you’re supposed to say, “Oh, no, I’d like to stay longer. It’s so enjoyable here!”

  While Connie Pan was explaining this and helping me zip up my jacket and put on my mitts and toque and scarf, I heard her mom shout out from the kitchen, “Bignose, he gone home yet?”

  I felt like yelling, “No, No-nose, he not!” but I didn’t.

  Connie Pan just laughed and reached up and tapped me on the nose with her first finger.

  I get Connie Pan on the cellular and she tells me that we don’t need to bring anything over for supper. She also says that it’s lucky I phoned because if we did bring something over, Mrs. Pan would be insulted again.

  When my father was alive and people would come over for supper, they always brought something. A chunk of cheese, or a pie or a tin of biscuits or a bottle of wine or a couple of tomatoes from their garden, if it was summer.

  Summer. What a word! It doesn’t seem possible that there could ever be summer again!

  It’s not even four-thirty in the afternoon and it’s already dark.

  I go home to pick up my mom.

  It’s snowing a bit. On Anderson I stop for a minute to watch the laneway man. His laneway is, as usual, black. He’s got the only black laneway in Ottawa. Nobody knows how he does it. Even the city streets, like Rochester Street, which are normally down to pavement because of the salt they put on, are snow-packed. And slippery. The salt can’t melt the snow away fast enough before it freezes again. But the laneway man’s laneway is right to the black top. The snowbanks on each side are cut square and perfect. Right now, the laneway man is sweeping the few floating-down flakes as they try to land gently on his laneway. He’s muffled up so that you can see his breath but not his face. I wave at him but, of course, he doesn’t wave back. He never does.

  He’s only interested in one thing in life.

  When my mom and I get to Connie Pan’s, Mrs. Pan tells us that Mr. Pan won’t be there. Mr. Pan is never there. He’s a traveling salesman or something. He’s always going to South America or India or China or someplace. I only saw him once. He had four huge trunks and he was trying to get them into a taxi. There was a big argument with the taxi driver about the trunks. One of the trunks was stuck halfway out the back door of the taxi. There was Connie Pan’s dad pushing the trunk into the cab and the driver, on the other side of the cab, pushing it out. The driver was an Indian guy wearing a big purple turban. He was yelling in Indian. Mr. Pan was wearing no hat, a black suit and shiny black shoes. He was shouting in Chinese.

  They seemed to understand each other pretty well. One wanted the trunk in, one wanted the trunk out. Pretty simple.

  My mom and I are wearing so many clothes tonight it gets embarrassing taking them off in Connie Pan’s small hallway.

  First of all, my boots seem so big that they take up half the hallway. My mom’s boots are laced so she has to bend over to get them off. While she’s bent over, Mrs. Pan is trying to haul my coat over the top of Mom. My coat weighs a ton and Mrs. Pan staggers backwards with it until Connie helps her lift it up to put on top of the radiator.

  Then my mom’s coat is next. It’s fastened with wooden pegs and while she’s undoing those, Connie and Mrs. Pan’s hands are there, too, helping to undo the coat. There’s thirty fingers in there, undoing a coat. Then the hats and mitts have to be shoved down the sleeves and the scarves handed over and the sweaters and now the hallway of the little house is so full of people and clothes you can hardly move.

  Maybe we should stand right here and have supper, and then we wouldn’t have to get all untangled to go into the living room and then the dining room.

  Just in time for Mrs. Pan to yell, “OK, go home now!”

  We go into the little living room and then into the little dining room and sit down. There’s a huge pot steaming in the middle of the table with a flame under it.

  We’re having Mongolian Fire Pot for supper.

  Connie Pan tells me it’s called Shua Yang Jou. I like the way she says the Chinese names. I’m careful, though. I don’t want Mrs. Pan to catch me looking at Connie’s philtrum.

  We each have a plate of meat, a small bowl of sauce, chopsticks and a big soup spoon and a napkin.

  In the middle of the table is the boiling pot with a flame burning under it.

  There’s a big bowl of noodles and another big tray of all kinds of funny-looking vegetables and a basket of hot bread.

  You pick up a piece of your meat with the chopsticks. The meat is sliced as thin as paper. You rinse the piece around in the boiling broth in the middle of the table. When the thin slice of meat changes color, you pull it out of the hot water, you dip it in the sauce and eat it. Have some hot bread with it.

  My first piece of meat is done but it slips out of my chopsticks and I lose it. There it is, floating in the steaming pot. Mrs. Pan sees this, laughs, reaches into the pot with her chopsticks, grabs my piece of meat, dips it in her sauce and eats it! She steals my piece of meat!

  It’s like she’s saying, “Finders keepers, sucker!”

  When the meat’s all done (Mrs. Pan steals five pieces of mine, altogether), she gets a big ladle and pours some hot broth out of the pot into each of our bowls of sauce and we drink that. If any dribbles down your chin from your bowl, you’ve got a napkin, use it.

  Now she dumps all the noodles and vegetables into the big pot and makes a big vegetable stew and we all share that.

  I put extra sauce in mine. Mrs. Pan sees this and points her chopsticks at me and nods her head and smacks her lips like she’s saying, “Bignose not such idiot after all!”

  We finish up with a big basket of peeled oranges and more hot bread.

  It’s hot in here! It must be over plus 90 in here. Outside, it’s more than minus 30. There’s over 120 degrees difference between in here and out there.

  Everybody’s sweating and the room is full of steam. Mrs. Pan and Connie, together, blow out t
he flame that’s under the pot.

  Mongolian Fire Pot! They must have invented this supper in Mongolia, to get two things done at once. Get full and get warm at the same time.

  And another thing. This supper took more than two hours to eat. And that was mostly because people were having so much fun stealing the other guy’s food out of the boiling pot. For a while there, both my chopsticks were floating around in the pot. Really hilarious, eh, Mrs. Pan? I was wrong that the Pans always eat in a big hurry. Looks like it’s going to be a sit-around-and-relax kind of supper like the ones we used to have at our place.

  But, oh, no, here she goes again!

  “OK, go home now!” says Mrs. Pan.

  “Oh, no,” says Mom. “We have some chatting to do. You and I have some culture center business to talk about and Spud and Connie are in the middle of planning a big skating party on the canal, so we would like to stay longer if you don’t mind!”

  Very smart, my mom.

  Then, Mrs. Pan does this amazing thing.

  She stands up and looks for a long time at my mom and me.

  It’s almost like she’s going to start to cry. Then she says two words.

  “Thank you,” she says, and gives this little bow.

  My mom, she’s got some water in her eyes, too. She gives a little bow. I give a little bow to Connie and her mom.

  There’s a long, long quiet.

  Connie Pan takes me into the little living room through a curtain made of beads and we sit together on a wide chair made for two people. Or maybe it’s a small couch where Mr. Pan lies down and takes a snooze, if he’s ever home long enough. Anyway, it’s either a big chair or a small couch. It jingles a bit when we move in it.

  We’re talking about the E.S.L. skating party on the canal that Connie is organizing. We’re talking about how many of her group have skates, or how to get skates for them. We’re talking about how many of the E.S.L. ers can skate, how far they can skate, could any of them go the whole way from Dow’s Lake to the Arts Center downtown. We’re talking about the weather, the cold, what the E.S.L. ers should wear. We’re talking about keeping the group together, how to keep some of them from getting lost. We’re talking about safety, about food, about time, about where to start, about getting into groups, about having a test run first, about going at night, during the week, or on the weekend when there’ll be almost 100,000 people skating.