Spud in Winter

by Brian Doyle

  “Any time you want,” I say.

  “We will do these names first,” she says.

  We have the list of names of the E.S.L. group. Connie Pan has a world globe and she has little tags pinned on the globe showing where each kid comes from. They all come from the top half of the world. Not one of the eighteen new Canadians comes from below the equator.

  Seven who come from closest to the equator come from the Philippines and Vietnam. Since they come from the hottest places, they probably haven’t got very many rinks, so they might not be able to skate very well. But you never know.

  Six who come from farthest away from the equator like Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Estonia and Romania are probably good skaters. They have lots of ice to skate on there. But you never know. The five people from China, Lebanon, India and Iran are probably in-between skaters, but, you never know. Especially about skating.

  You ask some people, can they skate. They say yes, they’re really good skaters. You go skating with them, they can’t even stand up.

  You ask some other people, can they skate. They say just average. You go skating with them, they wind up going around like Elvis Stojko!

  Connie decides to divide the new Canadians into groups of three. Each group will have a captain, who is probably a good skater, from the north, but you never know.

  Here are the teams:

  I Alexander Baraev – Russia (Captain)

  Roberto Adriano – Philippines

  Jose Rafael Aguasin – Philippines

  II Julia Rabinovitch – Russia (C)

  Imad Derbas – Lebanon

  Kim-Yin Ng – China

  III Cristina Tofan – Romania (C)

  Yue Li Situ – China

  Becky Nguyen – Vietnam

  IV Eric Horvath – Hungary (C)

  Vy Tran Thuy Nguyen – Vietnam

  Vu Pham – Vietnam

  V Yevgeniy (Eugene) Snitko – Ukraine (C)

  Bo-An Trong Tran – Vietnam

  Uyen Tran – Vietnam

  VI Alexi Vaskovitch – Estonia (C)

  Fatima Haq – India

  Amir Karbalaei Hassan – Iran

  We’re on the floor working on the cloth signs.

  In comes Mrs. Pan. She looks at me one way, walks around the other side, looks at me again, walks back, looks at me again, walks back, looks me over again.

  “Good morning, Bignose! Not acting weir today?” “Good morning, Mrs. Pan. No, not acting weir today. Acting weir all finished,” I say. I’m trying not to imitate her, but it’s hard.

  I’m on my knees on the floor. Mrs. Pan is standing in front of me. We are face to face. We are the same height. Connie is standing behind Mrs. Pan, looking at me.

  “Big mess in yard last night,” Mrs. Pan says. “Ladder moved. Snow all broken. Many feet stepping...”

  Connie Pan is behind her, watching me, having lots of fun.

  “You know what happen to yard, Bignose?”

  “No, I don’t, Mrs. Pan,” I say, very polite.

  “Who could be...?” says Mrs. Pan. “Move ladder, run all around!”

  “Aliens, maybe?” I say. “People from outer space? Visitors from other planet?”

  “Ya,” says Mrs. Pan. “Maybe visitors from this planet, maybe, eh? This planet!”

  Behind her, Connie Pan, making faces.

  I go back to cutting the pieces of cloth on the floor. Mrs. Pan puts on about seven coats and goes outside to help her husband get the taxi packed so he can get to the airport.

  The phone rings. Connie answers.

  It’s for me. It’s my mom, calling from the cultural center.

  Detective Kennedy called.

  She wants me to call her right away at the police station.

  It’s important.

  XVI

  On Saturday afternoon, Connie Pan and me are at the police station standing beside Detective Kennedy and the computer artist.

  The face of Beefaroni is being drawn on the screen by the computer artist.

  Make his face more square. Put his eyes wider apart. Make his lips look like they’re carved out of wood. Draw a little mustache, like with a pencil. Now, rub it out. Make the eyebrows thicker. Join them up in the middle. Now, his eyes are smaller. And his forehead comes out more.

  His hair, make it bigger. More curly. No, wavy. Higher. Fatter hair. A little longer. Sideburns bushier. Big waves.

  “Hey, this is great hair!” says the computer artist.

  Detective Kennedy takes us into her office.

  “We have certain phones tapped and we know that your friend Faroni has called these people several times looking for money to get out of town with. We don’t know where he’s called from. We’ve heard them say this about Faroni: ‘He’s got the witness in his house.’ It’s been said a couple of times. ‘He’s got the witness in his house.’ We’ve been back, of course, to where he was living and he’s long gone from there.” Detective Kennedy pauses, waiting...letting it sink in like she likes to do...

  “I called you right away, you being the witnesses,” says Detective Kennedy. She’s trying to drown Connie and me in her eyes.

  “What do you think they mean?” she says. “He’s got the witness in his house?”

  Connie looks at me. Am I hiding something again, she seems to be saying.

  “I hate this Beefaroni!” she says. Detective Kennedy smiles.

  I’m thinking.

  I’m thinking about it all Saturday night down at Dow’s Lake while Connie and Dink and I try to build Connie’s sculpture, “Funny Canada.” Nothing is working and Connie’s getting frustrated. The mermaid body doesn’t look anything like a mermaid and forget about trying to put fish scales on it. And the tail doesn’t look like a bird’s tail. It looks like a beaver’s tail. The head is flat, that’s easy, but the medicine bottle is impossible. And the jaw of a moose? Forget it. A moose nose would be easier. We try to spray-paint the bottom in gold but it doesn’t make sense. An ox tongue? Can’t do it. St. Louis du HA! HA! Doesn’t work. Hardly any of it works. Three arms and five fingers are OK. But a blunt pen? Forget it. It looks like a cigar. The rear balls we don’t even try.

  Next to us, another group is doing Bart Simpson. And it’s pretty good. They’ll probably win. It’s not Canadian but nobody seems to care about that.

  A little farther down, Roddy and Fabio are building a huge ice-penis.

  Connie gets disgusted and we give up and go home. It’s too cold, anyway.

  On Sunday I help Connie finish the signs for the E.S.L. skating party.

  We make one more sign saying “Follow Me!” Connie is going to wear it on her back, once she gets the teams organized. It’s the best sign of all. It’s really flashy and is done with fluorescent spray.

  We go over to Dink the Thinker’s to make the final plans for skating on the world’s longest skating rink.

  Dink’s dad was at a hypnotist yesterday. This is the last, he’s saying. He’s tried everything to quit the weed. He’s tried nicotine gum. It gave him toothaches. Nicotine patches. They kept him awake at night. He tried making his apartment a non-smoking area with posters all over. He even had a big blow-up poster of a guy named Wayne McLaren who was that cowboy, the Marlboro Man, in all the cigarette ads. (He died of lung cancer.) Didn’t work.

  He tried breathing deeply, eating celery, laser therapy, behavior modification, habit substitution, acupuncture and now, hypnosis. He tells us about what happened at the hypnotist’s office.

  “I was in a group in his office. We were all sitting in a row. He was in his office chair on wheels. He kept pouring water in water glasses and drinking out of them and lining them up on his desk and talking about when we were kids. Then he’d wheel over on his office chair and speak to each one of us individually about when we were kids, before we started to smoke, and taking sips of all these glasses of water. I started thinking about the girl in grade two during the Remembrance Day ceremony peeing on the stage. I remembered her name and everything! Imagine! I can
remember her name but I can’t remember the name of my best friend in grade two! You always remember the people’s names who did embarrassing things when you were a kid but you can never remember the name of the kid who came first in the class or the kid who got killed by the streetcar! But I remember the name of the kid who belched during grace at the birthday party! This is what I was doing at the hypnosis session. I couldn’t stop myself! I don’t know if it was the water or what! I could remember the name of the kid who blew snot all over the birthday candles. I could name you the kid who spit in his chocolate milk. And the kid whose balls fell out during the gymnastics show! I can’t tell you the name of the kid who saved me from drowning one time, but I can tell you the name of the kid who farted in church, who puked on the bus! I don’t remember the name of the teacher who taught me how to swim but I’ll never forget the kid’s name who pooped the big log in the pool that day!”

  Dink’s dad’s got three cigarettes going at once while he’s telling us this. Connie Pan and I, we’re laughing so hard, we’re crying.

  “He’s smoking worse than ever,” says Dink. “The hypnosis just made him worse.”

  Dink’s dad goes in the other room and turns on the TV.

  We get down to work.

  Our plan for the skating party is this.

  We’ll skate from Dow’s Lake to the other end. It’s the opening of Winterlude, so the crowd will be huge. The paper says there will be 100,000 people there.

  It’s a long way to skate, so the E.S.L. skaters will be hungry when they get there. If they get there. You never know.

  Stuff can happen. You can break a skate lace. Get too tired. Fall and sprain something. Freeze your face.

  Connie Pan wants to order hot beavertails for everybody. A beavertail is a big, flat, delicious chunk of fried dough filled with jam or garlic cheese or whatever you want.

  Beavertails take a while to make and there’ll be lineups so Connie wants us to phone ahead, when we’re about three-quarters of the way there, so the beavertails will be ready.

  We’ll use Dink’s cellular.

  Dink will wait by the pay phone in the warm Arts Center restaurant to get the call. Then he will get in line and order all the beavertails.

  Dink writes the whole scheme up in his scientific writing style on his computer: Obtain specific orders for beavertails from each skater. Post beavertail contact man next to public phone in Arts Center. Phone contact man at 3/4 way through course...

  I take Dink’s cellular and go home.

  I grab a quick supper and check the temperature. Pretty good. It’s only minus 25. And no wind chill. A clear night. Perfect for skating. My mom is going. Mrs. Pan. Even Dink’s dad. Everybody’s going. Down to Dow’s Lake. Not far from my place.

  I get dressed warm but not too heavy. It’s half past six. I sling my skates over my shoulder, shout at Mom I’ll see her later, stick the cellular phone in my side pocket and button the flap, go down the back stairs into my yard.

  It doesn’t look like there ever was a hole dug in the snow here.

  It’s a beautiful night. Sky clear, lights on, winter twinkling, snow in my yard piled around like all the shaving cream in the world.

  What Detective Kennedy heard over the phone, “He’s got the witness in his house,” is still stuck in my head. Stuck there like a piece of ice on a wool mitt.

  I go out the brown doors of my yard. The street is packed with hard smooth snow.

  I’m standing exactly where I stood when it all started.

  When I became the witness.

  But, wait a minute!

  Something’s missing.

  Where’s the laneway man?

  XVII

  That’s what was missing!

  After the dream I had about Beefaroni dancing with my mom and then when I walked over to Connie’s and then the fire.

  Something was missing.

  And then, the gap, when I walked home after I fell off Connie’s ladder — the thing that was wrong.

  And there it is right down the street. The laneway man’s laneway is not shoveled. It’s full to the brim with snow!

  Where is he?

  Could it be?

  Maybe I’m not the witness, after all.

  It’s the laneway man.

  Beefaroni thinks the laneway man is the witness!

  A taxi pulls up in front of the laneway man’s house. I move closer. There’s somebody coming down the plugged laneway. He’s up to his knees in the snow. He’s carrying skates.

  The man reaches the taxi, yanks open the back door. The light from inside shows his face. He’s got a big fur hat on but I can still see enough in the quick light.

  It’s him.

  It’s Beefaroni!

  “Dow’s Lake!” he says to the driver and gets in and slams the door.

  XVIII

  The taxi starts to pull away. I run up and grab the back bumper and get into a crouch.

  The hard-packed snow is perfect.

  Let’s ride!

  The whole time I’m hanging onto the bumper of the taxi, a video is rolling on all the screens in my head. No matter where I look, the same show is playing.

  It’s the Beefaroni show.

  Beefaroni, checks out his tinted window, looks at brown doors, nobody there, pulls out and starts away. And there, leaning on his shovel, is the laneway man. Nobody else around. Beefaroni thinks, did this guy see or didn’t he? He looks like he’s only interested in shoveling but maybe he saw. Beefaroni decides to wait. Maybe he saw, maybe he didn’t. But then, in the paper, it says “reluctant witness”! Beefaroni thinks it must be him, goes to his house, breaks in...I can’t see any more...it’s too awful.

  I’m in a crouch, hanging onto the bumper. Rochester Street is perfect for sliding. No other time of the year could I do this. All other times, the salt would have cleared the street to the pavement. Now, my boots glide along the hard surface.

  At the second red light at Gladstone, I pull out Dink’s cellular and call Detective Kennedy. It’s her machine.

  I leave a message about the laneway man and that Beefaroni’s heading for Dow’s Lake and I’m following.

  There are hundreds of people walking with skates over their shoulders. Everybody heading for the world’s longest skating rink.

  The taxi turns down a side street and stops at the light at Preston. I call Dink’s house but he’s already left.

  There’s a huge traffic pile-up. Everybody’s going skating.

  The taxi creeps onto Preston Street and suddenly I’m on my face!

  Pavement! This is a main street. This street is always black. Horns are honking. I get up and start to jog. My mitts are stuck to the bumper of the taxi. I get to Carling and catch up to the cab at the red light there. The cars are moving slow. I pull my mitts off the bumper and walk while I watch the taxi pull into the parking area at Dow’s Lake.

  There’s a swarm of people here. I watch the big fur hat on Beefaroni’s head get out of the cab and move through the crowd. He heads over towards the first change shack and goes in. There’s skating music playing over speakers and people are taking off on their skates across the lake.

  Winterlude is beginning.

  There are line-ups all over for hot dogs and coffee and hot chocolate. There are sleighs with bells on them and old people strapped to toboggans being towed by skaters. There are babies tied to skaters’ backs and lovers taking off, holding hands. There are people who can skate like the wind and people who can hardly stand up. There are families getting organized, groups making plans, kids crying, people fixing skates, boys helping girls tighten their skates, girls fixing boys’ scarves, show-offs buzzing in and out, people doing figures, people standing there helpless, people going the wrong way, people skating on their ankles, people crawling, people lying on their backs, people skating off into the dark with their hands behind their backs, couples dancing on skates, people skating in threes and fours arm in arm, people tied together with rope, people helping other people w
ho look like they’re going to die, people singing, laughing, crying, kissing, puffing, blowing, sniffing, complaining, cheering, calling, teasing, waving banners, dragging streamers, carrying sparklers, flashing flashlights, waving fluorescent mitts. Skate blades are gleaming in the colored lights.

  I go into the change shack. It’s jammed with people. Beefaroni’s in the corner on the edge of a bench taking off his boots. He’s putting on his skates. I get a spot on another bench where I can keep an eye on him through the crowd.

  In comes Connie Pan with a couple of her E.S.L. skaters. She starts handing out their name cloths and helping them put on their skates. She sees me and comes over. She starts talking about getting the beaver-tail orders written down.

  “I want to share something with you,” I say to her, without looking at her. I won’t take my eyes off Beefaroni. “Beefaroni’s sitting right over there. Don’t look over. I’ve called Kennedy. They’re coming. Don’t look at him. Keep getting everybody ready...”

  “I will share something with you,” says Connie Pan, her eyes wide with excitement. She pulls out the Polaroid of Beefaroni from her jacket.

  “Eddie Wong had it in his pocket the whole time. He was going to make a before-and-after poster of some of the customers!” Now Connie’s eyes narrow. So that’s why he burned down the beauty parlor. He couldn’t find the photo!

  She looks slyly over at Beef.

  Beefaroni has caused us to fight. He burned down the place where she works. Now, is this skating party going to be ruined, too?

  Connie hates Beefaroni. You can tell by the way she side-spies him out of the corners of her eyes.

  More E.S.L.ers come in. Connie is getting them together. Getting their skates on, their name cloths pinned on. She’s talking to the captains. Things aren’t the way we thought they’d be. One of the Russians says now he’s never skated before. The guy from the Philippines, it turns out, has won some skating medals. You never know. The Estonian, who said he often skated, turns out he’s often skated alright, but only on roller skates! You never know.

  And, Fatima, the girl from India, when Connie asked her if she could skate, she just shrugged her shoulders. Well, now she’s already out on the ice doing triple axels! You never know.