Spud in Winter

by Brian Doyle

  She’s not mad at me anymore. She’s part of it now. The way it should have been from the start. My partner. No more secrets.

  It’s stopped snowing. The city is beautiful. The temperature seems warm. It’s only minus 28 on my veranda thermometer. Almost not dangerous.

  I feel excited.

  Is that the sound of fire alarms, or was that in my dream?

  The new snow is poured over everything like whipped cream. Everything available is loaded with snow, with the heavy thick cream, sagging with the beautiful weight. Every tiny twig, of every stem, of every bough, of every branch of every tree, is loaded with every flake that it can take! I look back down Anderson at the path I’ve made. My path and my path only.

  It’s exciting, but as I turn onto Booth Street, I feel there’s something missing. There’s a gap somewhere. Up Eccles Street, past Dink the Thinker’s, I can still feel that there’s something not there that should be there...

  As I plunge around the corner onto Cambridge Street and look up towards Somerset, the streetlights there seem to have an extra glow now that the snow has stopped. It’s like the lights are waiting for a big show to start. A big song with lots of people dancing.

  Connie Pan is waiting out in front of her house. The fur of her hood makes a round frame for her face. She reminds me of an old photograph on a wall of somebody’s great-grandmother when she was young and beautiful.

  When I tell her how sorry I am, she says a short sentence that she has ready. I can tell she planned it, practiced it.

  “Don’t protect me, Spud. Include me.”

  Under the streetlight, she shows me a key. The key to the Hong Kong Beauty Salon, and to Beefaroni’s photograph, which we’ll hand over to Detective Marilyn Kennedy, who will give it to the newspapers, and then, Connie Pan is right, everybody in the Ottawa Valley will know what Mr. Beefaroni looks like! Not just us!

  There’s a lot of action up on Somerset Street. As we get closer, it gets more like chaos. There’s sirens, flashing lights, sounds of shouting, a glow in the sky.

  A fire! Near the Hong Kong Beauty Salon! As we get closer, we can’t believe what we see.

  It’s the Hong Kong Beauty Salon that’s on fire!

  There’s fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, plows, cars everywhere, pointing in every direction. There are three ladders against the walls and firemen walking in and out of the smoke on the roof. There are two hoses pumping water into the black smoke.

  There’s ice everywhere. Walls of colored ice flowing down off the roof and plunging out the windows. A river of ice gushes out the front door and spills down the steps. The big window that you could look in and see the people in the chairs getting their hair done is gone and yellow ice is oozing out of the gap like pus.

  Connie and I both see at once.

  The counter where the appointment book was kept is a twisted, black wreck.

  And the drawers, where Beefaroni’s picture should have been?

  They don’t exist anymore.

  The Polaroid is burnt up.

  Holding hands, Connie and I pick our way over frozen hoses and equipment, past the roaring pumper truck, to the officer in the police car. His door is open and we can hear his radio growling.

  We explain to him that we are witnesses and could he call Detective Marilyn Kennedy to see if she’s trying to find me.

  We watch the firemen struggle with the ice and snow. The Hong Kong Beauty Salon is toasted. The shops on each side are saved. There’s Eddie Wong, the owner, just got here. He’s going around like a crazy man. He’s swearing away in English and Chinese. He walks right by Connie, doesn’t even see her. He’s lost his mind. He’s tearing his clothes, he’s beating his hat against the side of one of the fire trucks. He’s throwing his mitts on the ground, he’s jumping on his mitts and his hat, grinding them into the filthy snow.

  “Poor, poor Eddie,” says Connie Pan. “His whole life is doing hair...”

  The cop in the car calls out, “Detective Kennedy’s on her way!”

  Along comes Dink the Thinker. He’s half asleep. Behind him, his dad. He’s not half asleep. Dink’s dad doesn’t sleep much. Dink’s dad has black circles under the black circles under his eyes. Connie and Dink talk about apologizing. They’re friends again. Dink says he has an idea about maybe the Hong Kong Beauty Salon had a photo of Beefaroni...

  Go back to bed, Dink. We’re way ahead of you!

  Dink’s dad says he hopes that this fire wasn’t caused by a cigarette smoker.

  “We’ve got a bad enough reputation as it is,” he says. He’s trying to smoke with mitts on. His cigarette is burning the wool of his smoking mitt.

  A police car makes one whoop sound.

  It’s Detective Kennedy, rolling down her window.

  “Get in,” she says.

  We do.

  I introduce Connie to her.

  “She’s a witness I didn’t mention to you.”

  “What else didn’t you mention?”

  I tell her everything, describe everything. Connie tells her everything, describes Beefaroni. Tells how I didn’t let her in on it until now, trying to protect her.

  “Men, eh?” Detective Marilyn Kennedy says to Connie Pan, and winks one of her large blue eyes at both of us.

  A tall, handsome fireman talks private to Detective Kennedy.

  She knows him. Calls him Andy.

  Then Connie tells her something that makes her hit her radio and get pretty excited.

  She tells her Beefaroni’s address.

  We hear fireman Andy talk about chemicals. Obvious. Arson.

  Connie and I look at each other.

  Just what we were thinking.

  Beefaroni, breaks in, looks all over, can’t find his picture. He thinks it must be there somewhere so he sets fire to the place. That’s what happened. Beefaroni destroying his identity.

  Connie and me and Dink and his dad walk down Cambridge and watch the two police cars park right in the middle of the road in front of number 206. The cops go in. We stand around. They’re not going to find him. He’s not there. Didn’t think he would be.

  Detective Kennedy talks to the supervisor of Beefaroni’s building.

  He’s got on a big parka and boots, but you can tell he just put them on over his pajamas. He’s telling the cops that Beefaroni was never around much.

  “Was only here for three months. Never around much. Fancy dresser. Great hair. Loved his hair!”

  The superintendent’s own hair is sticking out under his hat like dried leaves. He hasn’t got great hair. And his teeth are clicking together. He’s cold. The minus 28 is running up under his pajamas.

  Connie Pan and me, we’re smiling.

  Detective Kennedy asks us if we’ll help the police artist draw a picture of Beefaroni. She’ll call us soon to make an appointment with the artist.

  “This is the weekend so we’ll have to make arrangements. Won’t be able to get it in the paper till Monday or Tuesday...”

  Time to go home. It’s over. They’ll catch the Beef eventually. Just a matter of time...

  Back down to Connie’s narrow house. The house is now wearing a very heavy white hood. It looks like a skinny nun with sad eyes for windows.

  Connie has no house key. She pulls out of her pocket the key to the Hong Kong Beauty Salon. We look at it in the light of Connie’s streetlight. Wrong key.

  Connie sadly drops the key into the snow, and it disappears just like it would if she’d dropped it into the ocean. Don’t need that key anymore.

  She decides not to get her mother out of bed to let her in. Too much fuss.

  I’m glad of this. I don’t feel like getting insulted by Mrs. Pan. Connie decides she’s going to go in the back shed window. She crawled in there once before when she forgot her key, but not in the winter.

  The snow clouds are gone. There’s a moon up there and some stars.

  We go around the back of her house in snow up to our waists. The window she’s going in is too high t
o reach. She says she used a ladder last time, the ladder that is leaning up against the old garage. There’s the old garage, but where’s the ladder?

  On our hands and knees we dig for the ladder. We find the first five rungs of it. The next five rungs are deep into a few layers of crust, the same layers as you might come across while digging a hole to say a secret into.

  I wrench the ladder back and forward till it loosens up. We’re making quite a bit of noise. Putting our shoulders under the rungs, we dislodge it from the grip of all the snow that came down so far this year, on what is now maybe the planet’s newest coldest capital city.

  Under the window against the wall of the shed, there’s a wooden bench down there somewhere. We shove the ladder down into the snow until it stops somewhere over where the bench should be.

  The moon helps by shining his light on our work.

  I test the ladder with my weight, and it sinks a little more and then holds.

  Connie climbs up the ladder and pushes in the window. It’s on hinges and it isn’t locked but it’s stuck, and she has to whap the frame a couple of times.

  More noise.

  The window opens and she leans in and hooks it to the ceiling inside. She crawls through and disappears but then appears again immediately. She’s kneeling on a cupboard in there. She’s resting out the window on her arms. The moon is reflecting, showing her face framed in fur.

  She leans her cheek on her mitt.

  Oh, I wish I was the mitt on that hand!

  She doesn’t seem to want to go in.

  “I promise I won’t leave you out again,” I whisper as loud as I can. “From now on, we share!”

  “Promise?”

  “I swear.”

  “You swear by what?”

  “I swear by...the moon...”

  “The moon changes...many times.”

  This is quite a romantic conversation we’re having. I’m getting a little bit hoarse from whispering so loud.

  “The moon only looks like it’s changing. Actually it’s the same old moon all the time.” This is starting to get pretty complicated.

  From inside the house somewhere there comes the sound of Connie Pan’s mom.

  “Connie. Connie...” Then some Chinese words meaning where are you, what are you doing up, why aren’t you in bed.

  “I have to go...” says Connie.

  “Goodnight, Connie,” I say, looking up.

  “This ladder, will it hold your weight, Spud?” asks Connie.

  Mrs. Pan is yelling long sentences in Chinese. I climb a few rungs until my face is even with Connie’s.

  She kisses me on the lips.

  She taps me on the nose.

  “Goodnight, Bignose,” says Connie.

  She laughs like a quiet whispering bell.

  She shuts the window.

  I fall backwards off the ladder into the soft snow.

  On my back I imagine I’m in a camera close-up. Now the camera is fading back, up. Now you can see the roof of Connie Pan’s narrow house, you can see me lying in the yard in the snow, arms out, legs apart. Now you see the whole of Chinatown, now I’m only a small X, now the whole city, now the whole winter night, Canada from space, the planet Earth from the moon, now only a speck in space and time...

  On my way home, down Anderson, I’m getting the funny feeling I had before. The feeling of something missing...a gap...something is there because it’s not there...

  But the gap goes away. It is filled now with Connie Pan’s whispering laugh, the feel of our lips together, the feel of having no weight, falling out of the sky into her backyard snow, soft falling like an angel, through the perfect and beautiful and frozen air of her backyard, falling off her beautiful ladder, seeing her disappear into her perfect window, lying in the cold, warm snow like a perfect speck in the universe...

  XV

  After I make breakfast I’m going over to Connie Pan’s to help her get ready for her E.S.L. skating party on the Rideau Canal, the world’s longest skating rink.

  Connie also wants me to help her do a snow sculpture for Ottawa Tech at the snow sculpture contest on Dow’s Lake. She wants to make a statue of a creature made from the funny names of places she found in her Canadian geography book.

  Here’s what she wants to make. The creature will have the body of a mermaid, because of a place called Mermaid, in Prince Edward Island. It will be holding a blunt pen because of Blunt Pen, N.W.T. It will have its rear end painted gold for Gold Bottom, Yukon. It will have balls at the back for Rear Balls, Nova Scotia. It will have three arms for Three Arms, Newfoundland; five fingers for Five Fingers, New Brunswick; an ox’s tongue for Ox Tongue, Ontario; the tail of a bird for Bird Tail, Manitoba; a flat head for Flat Head, British Columbia; a hat shaped like a bottle of Tylenol for Medicine Hat, Alberta; the jaw of a moose for Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. And it will be laughing because of the Quebec town which is called St. Louis du HA! HA!

  I don’t know how we’re going to make this out of snow, but that’s her plan. She’s going to call it “Funny Canada.”

  Someday Connie Pan will be famous.

  The statue will be hard to do, but getting ready for the party on the world’s longest skating rink will be easy. Dow’s Lake is the beginning of the rink. You skate from there about eight kilometers all the way down the Rideau Canal to the Parliament Buildings, where the canal empties into the mighty Ottawa River. Right near my all-time favorite statue, the statue of Samuel de Champlain, the first of all the new Canadians.

  Everybody in Canada, except the Abos (they were already here), comes from somewhere else. Champlain was the first new Canadian. If he showed up now, almost four hundred years later, he could come skating with Connie Pan’s E.S.L. group. And, once he got his skates on, Connie would pin the piece of cloth that she printed with his name and country on it to the back of his coat. “Sam Champlain, France,” it would say.

  It seems funny, Sam Champlain coming up the Ottawa River and stopping right near where his statue is now because he was actually looking for China.

  If he came now, all he’d have to do is park his canoe down below the Chateau Laurier there, walk up Parliament Hill, go over to Ottawa Tech, go up another hill along Bronson Avenue and he’d be right on Somerset Street in Chinatown. That would be a nice surprise for him! He could write a letter back to the king of France and tell him he found China on a street called Somerset.

  I’ll make my mom’s favorite breakfast before I go over to Connie’s. It’s early yet. Nobody’s up. I make the breakfast my dad used to make for us. It’s fried potato cakes with garlic. Because he’s not here, I cut the recipe in half for just my mom and me.

  Cook three slices of bacon in the microwave until they’re done too much. Smash them up in tiny pieces. Boil two big potatoes with lots of garlic until the potatoes are almost done. Peel and mash the potatoes and mix in three handfuls of flour, two eggs, some nutmeg, half a chopped-up onion, about three big blobs of cottage cheese, the smashed-up bacon, some salt and pepper. Mix it with your hands until it’s like a sloppy softball. Shape into two large pancakes. Fry the cakes in a little bit of sizzling hot olive oil.

  Put the two potato cakes on hot plates on a big tray with orange juice, coffee and a jar of homemade raspberry jam with my father’s handwriting on the label. It’s the last jar of a batch he made two years ago.

  My mom’s awake. She’s sitting up in bed reading. She acts surprised but I know she knows that this is coming. She’s been listening and smelling.

  While we eat, she looks at me like I’m some kind of a movie star or something.

  The perfect son. Makes his mother her favorite breakfast and brings it to her in bed on Saturday morning.

  I do some toast for the raspberry jam and bring it in just in time. And another coffee.

  “They didn’t catch your crook with the ridiculous name yet,” my mom says. She puts my father’s raspberry jam on her toast so careful, like it is melted gold.

  “This Beefaroni pers
on, does he have a brother named Mac?” my mom says, keeping her face straight like she always does when she makes a joke.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Dink and I went through all the names...the Agetti brothers, Spag and Alf...” My mom smiles.

  We have a little more jam.

  “Those potato cakes were the best you’ve ever made,” my mom says, getting serious. Then she starts to sound like Connie Pan. “You’ll share with me when you can...the things you’re doing...”

  I nod. I’ll try.

  All I can hear is toast crunching.

  “This is the last of the jam,” I say, changing the subject.

  “I know,” she says, sadness in her voice.

  More toast crunching.

  “Good, in a way,” she says. “Got to let go. We’ll keep the label on the jar...I always loved his handwriting...”

  I feel pain.

  “We’re going to stop leaving his chair empty over there at the Village Inn. Enough is enough...”

  While my mom gets ready to go out, I check the temperature and do the dishes.

  The perfect son.

  It’s minus 36. The coldest day yet. The wind chill makes it close to minus 50. On days like this, Inuit living in the Arctic don’t even go out. They stay in and sleep like sensible people. My mom and I are both going out. She’s going to work on the guy under the bed and some other projects at the cultural center and I’m going to Connie’s. We laugh about all the clothes we have to put on to go out into the cold.

  Outside the narrow house of Connie Pan there’s a taxi parked along the snowbank. The bank is almost as high as the taxi. Mr. Pan and the driver have a huge box wedged halfway into the back of the taxi. The trunk is already packed with cases and boxes and won’t shut. There are trunks and suitcases half buried in the snowbank. Is Mr. Pan just getting here or is he just leaving? You can’t tell. You never know.

  At Connie’s, I help work on the name cloths to pin on the backs of the E.S.L. skaters. While I’m cutting out the cloth I’m hoping that she doesn’t want to talk about the Funny Canada sculpture.

  “What about the Funny Canada sculpture,” says Connie. “When do we start to make it?”