Spud in Winter

by Brian Doyle

  There’s a lot of heat and steam in Connie Pan’s little living room. Steam that floated through the beaded curtain from the fire pot during supper and steam from the conversation Connie Pan and I are having on the little couch.

  It’s so cozy here. From the other part of the house we can hear my mom and Connie Pan’s mom talking and laughing.

  On the table in front of the little couch is a pile of papers. Most of them are Chinese.

  There’s the Ottawa Citizen, too.

  The front page says something about a killer confessing.

  I blink my eyes. I’m swimming up out of a steaming pot of vegetable stew. I pick up the paper.

  Connie Pan is talking about tying all the E.S.L. skaters on a long rope...would that be dangerous... would anybody get strangled...

  I can’t hear what she’s saying.

  My eyes are clearing.

  I’m reading the front page of the Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa Killer Nabbed in U.S

  “Mafia hit man arrested in Florida confesses to Ottawa killing.”

  “Miami police revealed today that Bruce MacGregor, a known professional hit man, has turned snitch and is expected to give up some big names in the crime business in return for protection and reduced sentences...”

  The paper says he’s already admitted to over a dozen murders including one in Ottawa, Canada, earlier this week.

  Then it says MacGregor stated that he had a local accomplice but that he had no knowledge of his identity.

  Then it says this: “Unofficial spokesperson for the Ottawa police suggested that there might possibly be a local reluctant eye witness not identified as yet, who could hasten the arrest of the driver of the van, who is probably from the Ottawa area...”

  A reluctant witness...

  That’s me!

  Connie Pan is staring at me.

  “What’s wrong with you, Spud?”

  All of a sudden I feel cold.

  XI

  “A reluctant witness who could possibly soon come forward, unofficial police spokesperson says...”

  That’s me. The reluctant witness.

  And who’s the “unofficial police spokesperson”? Is it Detective Kennedy? Probably. I knew she knew I was holding back, lying. My mom knew there was something wrong. The Cyclops knew I was holding tight to a secret. Dink the Thinker knew there was something bothering me. Connie Pan is now looking at me funny.

  I’m not as good a liar as I thought.

  Maybe I should call a meeting.

  They could all meet me in my yard tonight at midnight and I could open up the hole in the snow, let them hear what’s in there. “Now hear this,” the hole would shout...

  Right now Dink the Thinker’s telling Connie Pan and me about what happened to his dad at the acupuncture clinic.

  We’re standing outside Mademoiselle Tarte au Sucre’s classroom. I’ll stand around here as long as I feel like it because Tarte au Sucre never checks attendance and doesn’t know my name, anyway. Dink and Connie have spares.

  Dink’s telling Connie Pan how acupuncture started in China. It seems funny, when you think of it. Only Dink the Thinker could do a thing like this. Tell somebody from China all about China. If Dink the Thinker was Chinese, he’d probably be going around telling Canadians all about how maple syrup got started.

  “Acupuncture started about 4,500 years ago in China. They believed the body was made up of two forces, Yin and Yang...”

  Along come Roddy and Fabio, a couple of really exciting intellectuals.

  Roddy likes the words Yin and Yang.

  “Yin-Yang! Yin-Yang!” says Roddy, who thinks we’re talking about something else entirely. He’s got his eyes shut and his tongue is slobbering in and out and he’s doing a Michael Jackson with his crotch.

  “Yin-Yang this!” says Roddy, the world’s finest and most intelligent show-business personality and conversationalist.

  Connie Pan is side-spying Roddy out of the corners of her eyes, like maybe a poisonous blow-fish is taking a swim near her head. She moves a little closer over to me.

  “Hey, Dink!” says Roddy. “Up your Yin-Yang, eh, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I know what you mean, Roddy, and thanks ever so much for including me in your thoughts,” says Dink the Thinker. Dink can be pretty sarcastic sometimes. Dink doesn’t even look at him when he says this. As far as Dink is concerned, Roddy is too far down the food chain to pay any attention to.

  Now, Fabio wants to talk to me. And I know what he wants to talk about. It’s his favorite subject.

  “Hey, Spuddo, you know that van, you know, when they whacked that guy, if you see that van around your house, why don’t you get a rocket launcher and KA-BOOM! Blow it A-WAY! HA! HA! HA!”

  “I saw it this morning, Fabio,” I say, “but for some crazy reason, I just didn’t happen to have my launcher with me at the time.” I can be sarcastic sometimes, too.

  “Oh, yeah, right! You got a rocket launcher? Tell me about it! HA! HA! HA!” says Fabio. He must have had a bowl of steroids for breakfast this morning. He’s so big and puffed up, he looks like he might burst.

  “Well, you’re right, Fabio. I haven’t got a rocket launcher. You got me there!”

  “Hey, Dink,” says Fabio. He swells himself up like the Pillsbury Doughboy, “Where’d ya get all the muscles, Dink?”

  Dink has about as many muscles as a mop handle.

  “Hey, Dink,” says Fabio. “How’d you ever get to be such a nerd-dweeb?”

  “Have you ever heard of William Gates?” says Dink. He moves over a little closer to me. I can tell he’s got a real zinger ready for Fabio. Trouble is, Fabio probably won’t even get it.

  “Who?” says Fabio. His eyes look a bit glassy. Maybe he had two bowls of “stereos” this morning.

  “William ‘Bill’ Gates,” says Dink. “He’s a multi-billionaire. He’s produced most of the world’s computer software. He’s one of the planet’s most powerful men.”

  “Yeah. So?” says Fabio.

  “Bill Gates is also a nerd-dweeb,” says Dink.

  “Oh, wow, whoopee-turds!” says Fabio, and body-checks his pal, Roddy, in through Tarte au Sucre’s classroom door, and goes in after him. There’s a crash as Roddy wipes out on a desk in there. What a mental giant!

  “As I was saying,” says Dink, “Yin and Yang have to be balanced in the body for you to be healthy. The balance of Chee.”

  “Chee,” says Connie Pan.

  “Yes. There are two thousand acupuncture points along the body’s meridians that carry Chee through the body. The needles inserted in the right points restore the Chee balance.”

  “Did your dad get his Chee balanced so he could quit smoking?” I ask.

  “No. The acupuncturist put thirty needles into his face, his throat and his chest and his smoking hand. He was OK until they let him look in the mirror. Then he went sort of berserk. He was supposed to leave them in for half an hour. He started ripping them out. They got him calmed down but when they told him he’d have to have this done ten more times, he said forget it and lit up a cigarette. He could hardly get it into his mouth, there were so many needles around.”

  “Then what happened?” I say.

  “They kicked him out. There’s no smoking in the acupuncture clinic.”

  After French class I stroll by The Cyclops’ office. Should I go in and tell him everything? Should I go in and call Detective Sullivan from his phone? If the driver of the van sees in the paper that there’s a “reluctant witness” who is maybe going to talk, and if the driver saw me that day, and if the driver remembers me and Connie together that day at the beauty salon, and if he decides to...

  If, if, if.

  And if I tell everything, and if it’s all in the paper, and if he decides to get rid of Connie and me so that when he is picked up there won’t be any witnesses...

  Or if he decides, since they’ve already got the shooter in Florida, if he decides just to disappear, then it will be all over...maybe.r />
  Or if he decides to get Connie, because she knows him best, then it would be all because of me...

  Or if he didn’t even see me...and I talked...I’d be telling him who I am and then it would lead to Connie...

  If, if, if...

  And if my father was here...

  If my father was here he’d say, “If you’re going to do something, do it all the way!”

  If I do tell everything, it could go all wrong. If I don’t tell, that could also go all wrong.

  It seems like I’m in a trap.

  I look into The Cyclops’ office. His desk is very neat, with the sign, Same-Day-Service-Sullivan, and his pen and pencil set and his blotter all in place, the lights off...he’s not here today.

  If he was sitting there, I’d probably walk right in and unload the whole thing on him. Then everything would start happening...

  My mind is doing things I can’t control. Say, for instance, The Cyclops slipped on the ice and sprained his wrist and had to go to the doctor, and that’s why he’s not here today. The ice is there because of this record cold spell. The cold spell is in Ottawa because of barometric pressure and movements of air masses. These pressures and movements are caused by the orbits of the planets and the angle of the rays of the sun. The sun is part of a bunch of old explosions a billion years ago in the cosmos which is caused by...I’m starting to sound like Dink the Thinker.

  Who’s controlling my life, anyway?

  A special slippery piece of ice on The Cyclops’ steps this morning causes him not to be here, and because he’s not here, my life changes...what if he stepped a little to the left or right...and who says he sprained his wrist, anyway?

  What am I talking about?

  And what if Al Laromano decided he needed to have another cup of coffee that day at Rocco’s Cafe? Then I wouldn’t have been standing there when he came out. What made him want to leave just when he did? Did he think about staying for one more? What if the waitress flashed her eyes at him, or winked at him? Would he have decided to stay...is all of this happening to me because of a wink of an eye?

  If, if, if...

  I have to decide something.

  I want to tell and I don’t want to tell.

  That puts me nowhere.

  What I have to do is wait. And, while I’m waiting, I might as well do something. Do what? Find out more. Get closer to him.

  Outside Ottawa Technical High School, Albert Street is as quiet as a funeral. It’s been snowing all day. It’s only three-thirty in the afternoon but it’s getting dark already. The snow is up to your knees.

  And it’s another record temperature.

  Minus 33 degrees. Not as cold as yesterday but the coldest day on record for this day.

  Eat your heart out, Mongolia!

  Canada will be the new champ for having the plan-et’s coldest capital city.

  And, look out Mr. Van Driver, Mr. Murderer’s Helper. Here comes Spud Sweetgrass!

  XII

  Here comes Spud Sweetgrass! Did I say that? Getting brave all of a sudden can be very scary. It’s like standing in the middle of the highest diving board when you’re a kid. You’re standing there trying to figure out if you’re going to go or not. Up to now, you’ve got a choice. You’ve got a few choices. You can go back. You can hang off the board by your hands and let yourself drop (it’s not so high that way). You can stand at the end, close your eyes and step off. You can take a run and jump off. Or you can dive off head first.

  Then, all of a sudden, you’re going to dive off. There’s no way out now. You’ve done enough just standing there like an idiot. Somehow, inside you, something clicked over, the decision is made. You’ve decided.

  Now, even if you tried to change your mind, you couldn’t. You’re going, that’s it, that’s all!

  First thing I have to do is get some help.

  From Ottawa Tech, I head down Bay Street towards Somerset.

  This is a heavy snowfall. There’s no wind, not even a breeze. The flakes are thick and close together and come straight down. You can only see about three houses ahead of you. It’s like trying to see through Connie Pan’s curtain made of beads. Only here, on Bay Street, you’re looking through a curtain of white beads, miles thick, as thick as the end of the world.

  I’m pushing, wading through snow.

  I’m in slow motion.

  Everything is silent. The snow muffles everything. The cold numbs everything. A bus goes by but there is no sound. The bus appears, then disappears. You pass by a person walking. The person seems like a ghost in the snow. The windowsills of the houses are plugged with snow. The houses look like nobody lives in them. The bare trees reach up with their branches like claws and then fade away, up into the falling snow.

  It’s getting darker.

  Up ahead, a snow plow speeds down Somerset Street, throwing up a huge curling surf of flying snow. Like a ship, full speed ahead through the foam, a blue light spinning on the mast.

  I turn down Somerset, I follow the plow.

  It’s the kind of snow, the way it’s falling, you know it’s not going to stop.

  I cut down Cambridge Street so I can pass Connie Pan’s house. The streetlight just went on in front of her place. In the summer, one night, we sat on her porch and waited for that light to go on. It’s hard to catch it. You might blink or look away and miss it going on. I missed it that time but Connie Pan saw it. I missed it because I was looking over at Connie.

  She said the light went on so fast she thought she heard it click.

  I just saw the streetlight go on now. If it clicked, I didn’t hear it. It seemed to go on slowly, like it almost didn’t make it. Is it slower because of the snow, the cold?

  Or is it me? The whole slow-motion feeling I’m having?

  Connie Pan’s narrow house sits in the snow, looking out, like a tall, skinny, funny-looking kid with a weird, pointed white hat on.

  When I pass the house, I walk backwards for a few steps, watching the pointed hat until the whole house melts away, vanishes into the storm.

  I go down Eccles Street and climb through the snow and into Dink the Thinker’s apartment building.

  It’s hot in here, in Dink’s apartment. Dink’s dad keeps the heat up too high. By the time I get my clothes off, there’s sweat on my face. By the time I get down to my undershirt, there’s a pile of clothes on the hall chair, as high as Connie Pan’s mother.

  I’m going to tell Dink everything.

  But I have to wait because Dink is busy.

  Dink’s got his cellular phone hooked up to his computer and he’s calling his contact at CISTI, the Canada Institute of Scientific and Technical Information at the National Research Council. Dink is getting CISTI to show him on his screen everything you want to know about the doomsday comet, Swift Tuttle. Swift Tuttle is the name of a large comet, the size of Chinatown, that is supposedly going to collide with Earth and wipe us all out. It will have the impact force of 1.6 million times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

  The reason Dink needs information on the doomsday comet, Swift Tuttle, is that Dink’s dad is using it as an excuse not to quit smoking. Now that the acupuncture didn’t work, Dink’s dad is going to give up trying to quit. What’s the use of quitting, says Dink’s dad, when the doomsday comet, Swift Tuttle, is going to wipe us all out? Might as well smoke all the cigarettes we want, we’re all going into the fire, anyway!

  Dink has just found out from CISTI that the comet won’t hit for at least another 134 years. And even then, the chances are slim.

  “Oh, great!” says Dink’s dad. “Now I got plenty of time to die of lung cancer!”

  Later, alone in the kitchen with Dink, I tell him everything. The tinted windows, the face, the hair, seeing him again the day we went to the acupuncture clinic, Detective Kennedy with the big eyes, the hole in my yard, Connie’s hands in his hair, the thing in the paper about the reluctant witness, and me, frozen stiff, not doing anything...until now.

  “You were para
lyzed with doubts,” says Dink the Thinker, thinking out loud.

  “I’m going to get closer to him,” I say. “Then I’ll decide what to do.”

  “Where do we start?” says Dink.

  I like the way he says the word “we.”

  “We start now,” I say. “We’re going up to the Hong Kong Beauty Salon — find out what we can about him.”

  “What about Connie?”

  “I don’t want her to know — not yet. Not till we’re sure...”

  Dink whips out his cellular phone from a holster he has tied to his belt at the back. Like Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise (reruns only), he flips it open and dials 411 and asks for the number of the Hong Kong Beauty Salon and dials the number. It’s busy.

  “We’re going to get you a hair appointment!” says Dink. “Let’s go in and show Dad. I’ve got the Hong Kong on re-dial. I’ll whip it out, and bang, we’re through to the beauty salon. Then when I’m finished, I’ll say, ‘Kirk out!’ Come on, it’ll cheer him up. He’s pretty down since he found out we’re not going to get blown away by Swift Tuttle!”

  We’re heading back up Cambridge Street to Somerset. It’s snowing harder than ever, and Connie Pan’s streetlight looks like a deep hole in space. The walking is tough. They’ll plow the main streets tonight but they won’t get around to side streets like ours for a couple of days.

  The restaurants and stores in Chinatown on Somerset Street look like they’re all wearing white hats and scarves and high coat collars made of snow. The red and green neon signs of the shops glow through the snow cover, like they’re radioactive, like they’re going to melt.