Crabbe

by William Bell

  I knew how to get to the lake and where we had put in that summer. There was a fishing lodge called Ithaca

  Camp on the shore of the lake — a bunch of cabins owned by a fat, friendly Greek with eight kids and a collie. You could launch a boat or canoe there for two bucks. But at the edge of the camp, a flat, calm river meandered into the lake. I knew that a side road crossed that river about half a mile upstream from Ithaca Camp.

  If I could hide the car in the bush near that bridge, get downriver past the camp and across the lake before dawn I would simply vanish. It would be like crossing the magic threshold in a myth.

  Once I’d worked this out — over a period of a year or so — the rest was easy. So in the early spring of my final year I began to get serious about the preparations.

  My Father had stored all the camping stuff he’d bought for our glorious weekend in the wilds way back in a corner of the basement. I think he wanted to forget about his attempt to get two people who had trouble being in the same room together without some kind of spontaneous combustion breaking out to turn into pals over the course of one weekend. There were assorted packs, a little stove, a hatchet, knives, a pot set including dishes and cutlery, ropes — a whole store full of stuff. It was all piled behind and under old bundles of newspapers, magazines and boxes of forgotten junk. (My parents like to pretend this messy and dark part of their house doesn’t exist.) When they were out one night, I went down and lugged what gear I wanted up to my room over the garage. Then I carefully replaced the junk and, just to be sure the place remained unvisited, I banged the light bulb to break the filament.

  Once I had the stuff in my room I had to clean it and stow it out of sight of the maid. She isn’t the hardest worker in the world so if I suggest there are areas of my room that don’t need attention she willingly goes along with me. The little stove went up on the top shelf of my closet, rolled up in the sleeping bag. The pot set and hatchet went into a big steamer trunk that I keep all my unused sports equipment in. The trunk is hardly ever opened because I’m not very sporty: when my Father used to have a flare-up of optimism and think maybe I could become a jock he’d buy me some expensive implement that was designed to hit, bash, or catch a ball, as if the mere presence of the object would add muscles to my frame and competitive spirit to what he often called my pansy mentality. I hung the packs in the closet behind my clothes. That done, I was ready for phase two.

  I had to get hold of clothing and food in such a way that I left no clues. The clothing was easy. I picked out some old T-shirts, sweaters, socks, underwear and jeans, gave them to my Mother and told her they were no good. She always gives our old clothes to the Salvation Army — after she has them cleaned by the help.

  I waited until they were ready and told her I’d drop them off at the collection bin which is in a shopping centre parking lot on the way to school, but I kept them instead. So I managed to get two sets of clothes that no one would miss. They couldn’t trace me if they didn’t know what I was wearing.

  The food was easier but took longer. I grabbed it from the kitchen when Cook, a grouchy old Polish lady who is as near sighted as she is short-tempered, went home after work and my parents were out at one of their boring parties. I’d slip downstairs from my little eyrie and snaffle a few tins at a time. Just a few. The grumpy Polski is pretty sharp about her provisions. I added to this stockpile by buying what looked like useful and tasty stuff from local milk stores.

  The food, as the spring wore on, gradually filled two of the big canvas canoe packs. That left a third for other gear and a small nylon haversack for clothing. By the end of May I was ready.

  I figured I’d leave on a week night before my final exams, those big important keys that would, my parents deeply hoped, unlock dozens of university doors for me. In their fantasies I was to win piles of scholarships, much acclaim, and be the second summa cum laude of the Crabbe Clan (You Know Who was the first) and, eventually, I was to be famous. I’d be a rich corporate lawyer, a brilliant physician (specialist of course) or a big gun exec in a company that had wealth and power. I’d be My Parents’ Son. That was the plan.

  But I would not even write those phoney and moronic exams. I would slip quietly behind the curtain of the forest. I’d show them. By god, I’d show all of them.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 4

  I don’t know about you, but I sort of believe in omens. I’m not superstitious or anything like that; it’s just that, sometimes, things fall into place for you (or on you). That’s how I decided exactly which night to move out. Three “conversations” I had that day convinced me that the bridges behind me were pretty well burned.

  First, my phys ed. teacher, Fat-Ass Grant, accidently discovered the Crabbe Family Secret. Which is kind of ironic because if ever there was a moronic excuse for a teacher Grant was it. He was king of jock city, the phys ed. department, and his idea of a stimulating lesson was to blow his whistle, roll a couple of basketballs out onto the court, and yell, “Okay, scrimmage! Warm up for ten minutes!” and waddle back into his office where he’d lower his two hundred into an old swivel chair and flip through a sports magazine for the rest of the period. Grant was lazy as well as fat. His T-shirt tail never did make an acquaintance with the elastic waistband of his track pants, so there was always a band of greasy-looking flesh visible. His rear end was huge. That’s what got him his nickname. There was a rumour that he was a frustrated basketball-player-reject who was on the booze regularly. I guess that qualified him for what he discovered about me.

  I hated phys ed. and everything about it-the swamp smell of the locker room, the silly chirp of running shoes on the hardwood gym floor, the idiotic pointlessness of memorizing football rules or playing basketball with dozens of mini-Grants. So, usually, after Fat-Ass hit the swivel chair, I’d slip into the locker room, change, sneak out of the gym and grab a coffee across the street at Stephano’s Grill. The Wednesday I’m talking about, I was sitting on the wooden bench putting on my socks when in walked Grant. He actually looked surprised when he saw m, as if he couldn’t understand my passing up the joys of the court.

  “What’re you doing in here, Crabbe? You sick? The period isn’t over yet. Why aren’t you out on the floor? I said to scrimmage.”

  “Yea, didn’t feel too well, Sir. Thought I’d get dressed ‘n take it easy. ”

  Grant’s eyes became active. He stared at me. He thought he was on to something, like a fat, track­suited bug with his feelers doing overtime. I had stood up when he came in and, while I spoke to him, lifted one foot to get the second sock on. Mr. Cool. I should have stayed put. Because when I lifted my foot I lost my balance and sat down clumsily, half on, half off the bench. Then all off. My butt splotched into a small puddle of shower water. I laughed quietly, embarrassed.

  “Oops! Sorry, Sir.” What an idiot — apologizing for falling down. After all, it was my ass in the water.

  He smiled the smile of a teacher who’s got you dead to rights, and said with a sneer, “Crabbe, you look in bad shape.” Then he walked over to me: His shoes squeaked on the floor.

  “Stand up,” he commanded.

  I hauled myself to my feet, with a soggy rear end and one naked foot.

  “Now get dressed. We’re gonna have a talk.”

  I quickly got into the rest of my clothing, grabbed my books and athletic bag and followed him out of the locker room.

  Half way down the main hall he stopped and turned and said, “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you, Crabbe?”

  “What? Who, me? Drinking? No sir, ” I lied, not believing for a second I was going to talk my way out of this one.. “What gave you that idea? Just because I slipped? The floor was wet. ”

  “Crabbe, I know a slip from an alcoholic stumble.

  You didn’t slip. ”

  I gave up hope.

  “Yeah, well I guess you would know the difference, Sir,” I said sarcastically.

  Grant’s face got a little more tense. “Don’t get smart, Mister. Open t
hat bag.”

  Before I could protest he yanked my bag out of my hand and began to rummage through it, finding nothing but seldom used gym clothes, worn out ballpoint pens and crumpled up paper.

  He didn’t give up.

  “Okay, Crabbe. Let’s check the locker.”

  “What do you mean?” I stammered.

  “Your locker. Let’s go check it. Where is it?”

  He started down the hall again, barging along with a sense of mission. My locker was right outside the main office and we stopped in front of it.

  I thought I’d try one last time.

  “Really, Sir. My locker’s my own prop —”

  “Wrong, Crabbe,” he interrupted. “The locker belongs to the school and it’s on loan to you. Any teacher can demand access to it. Which is what I’m doing. Open up.”

  Hoping the fat creep’s heart would give out before I finished the combination of the lock, I did as he demanded and opened the door. He took a quick look at the mess inside the locker, then he wrapped his beefy fist around the thermos bottle on the top shelf.

  “What’s this?” he said gleefully. “Didn’t eat your soup today?” He shook it and heard the liquid sloshing around inside. Enjoying his triumph, he took a drink.

  A lot of people would say I had a drinking problem. I’d have denied that. People only have a problem if they can’t get what they want. My parents gave me a solid allowance and seldom asked me to account for it. I always had money for liquor. Buying it was easy. I’d drive to a suburb any time my supply ran low, and buy in quantity, mumbling some baloney about a party for my parents’ anniversary. Then I’d use it up gradually, as needed. I used Silent Sam vodka, almost impossible to detect on my breath. I never got drunk. True, sometimes on a particularly bad day, begun by a tense breakfast with the riot squad, I’d begin to lose a bit of coordination (that’s how Grant got me) by the end of the day, but that was rare. I didn’t think I was a problem drinker. Far from it.

  And I wasn’t alone. My Mother swallowed valiums every day; my Father drank heavily, if you counted the wonderful business lunches and what he poured down at home; lots of kids at school smoked grass regularly and drank at parties. I was no different.

  So I was a little put out when Grant turned me in to the principal. He marched me right in, shoved me into a chair in the “salle d’attente” and went into the Beet’s office as if he were a spy and had found the secret to end the war. I was a little scared, but not much because all this occurred after my plans had been laid. My only fear was that this would mess everything up or lead to expulsion from school. If I were expelled I couldn’t make my point.

  But I should have had more faith in the system (remember The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner). When I was ushered into the Beet’s office — we called him that because he was short, stocky, florid in complexion, big eared and completely bald — he was sitting there with my student record open in front of him.

  “Sit down, Crabbe,” he said, man-to-man. “I see you’re in a bit of trouble.”

  Frazer tried to be very English most of the time, so he thought understatement was clever. He made me retell the story of my being caught by Fat-Ass, then gave me a little lecture about relying on a drug “like a crutch.” How could a man with a bulbous nose on which the veins look like bright red highways and whose hands were stained with nicotine be such a hypocrite? Did dopes like Grant and Frazer think they were kidding anybody?

  He ended up by letting me off. No punishment. Why? Because I was an honour Student, scholarship material, graduating whiz kid. And, although he didn’t mention it, because my old man was Rich and Influential and they both belonged to the same golf club. If I’d gone into that office with dirty jeans, messed-up hair and faceless parents he’d have crucified me. But the system protects its own.

  I left, smiling inside, but contemptuous of the whole stupid arrangement. But the smile soon faded. He might phone home.

  Dinner was, to use the Beet’s understatement, a little tense. I knew my parents had got the call because my Mother was unusually precise in her table manners and overly polite to me. “Be kind enough to pass the chops to your Father, dear” — that sort of thing. Nothing could penetrate her good breeding, or the valium and dinner wine.

  My Father was Dressed for Dinner as usual. He was very exact in his opinions about manners and appearances. Good breeding again. The brass candelabra was in place — a quirk of my parents. It stood in the centre of our dining room table on a hand-crocheted, ivory­coloured doily — a great, ponderous imitation Something-or-Other that clutched three white candles. It wasn’t even impressive. It was just silly.

  So picture this: There was Father Crabbe, wealthy corporate lawyer, dressed formally in a dark suit at one end of our six foot oak table; there was the thin Worried Mother placed at the centre of one side, dressed in a burgundy pant suit with a hint of jewelry and her hair dyed a kind of blondish colour; and, opposite Dad was My Son the Problem, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, a little smashed (for this pow-wow I needed help), trying to read Father’s mood through the groping brass arms of that stupid contraption, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  All the ingredients for a third-rate soap opera.

  Once dessert was served, we were all ready to begin the scene that we knew had been written for us by eighteen years of life together. I don’t want to record everything that was said. It isn’t necessary. My Mother got hysterical, wept, clutched her napkin in her hands, criticized my ingratitude and laid out the inventory of how lucky I was and all they’d done for me. My Father took the other line, lecturing me in what he thought was a reasonable voice about how should use my God Given Talents to make something of myself -which meant getting money in large quantities — and stay away from leftwingers, eggheads, and so on and on and on. I, as usual, attacked their entire way of life, their snobbery and materialism, saying I couldn’t be grateful for a way of life I found meaningless and contemptible — and other cruel and pointless things.

  All this began with a question from my Father: “I thought I told you if you were ever caught drinking again…” and I swear he had his third brandy in his hand when he said it. If only we could have broken the pattern we’d lived in so long. If only someone had written a new score. But there we were, playing the same piece, out of tune, out of sync, the only one we ever played, the only one we knew.

  At the end we left the table. They went their way, I went mine. Their way was another party.

  Those three conversations — with Grant, Frazer and my parents — were the omens that told me tonight was the night to go. I was as ready as I’d ever be, I thought. So I began to prepare for my escape, a little depressed, a little scared, and a little under the care of Silent Sam.

  Digression

  One thing I learned pretty quickly at high school was that it doesn’t pay to be honest, to be yourself. I had already learned to play the game at public school but at high school they stuck it to me really good. The thing was, they’d ask you questions but they didn’t listen to you; they weren’t interested in what you said. Why ask a question if you don’t care what the answer is? What the teachers really wanted you to do was guess what they wanted you to answer and if you guessed correctly (not that it was hard) you were “right.”

  But it took me a little while to learn that. For instance, our grade nine History teacher, Miss Wase, once said to us, “Now, class, I want you people to use your brains today to solve a big problem. Imagine you are all shipwrecked on an island with no adults around. It is a tropical island outside the shipping lanes so it doesn’t look like you’ll be rescued for a long time, if at all. You must organize yourselves in some way. How would you begin?”

  We all sat around a minute looking mystified. Nobody put up their hand. But I remembered this interesting book I had read a year or so before called Lord of the Flies and I thought I had a pretty good idea.

  I put up my hand. “Yes, Franklin?”

  Stupid me, thinking sh
e was really interested in my opinion. I started telling her about the novel and said that since there were no adults around we kiddies would have to form a government and democracy wouldn’t work because we were immature and uneducated and blah, blah, blah, and I ended up suggesting a dictatorship that would be temporary and then she interrupted.

  “Thank you, Franklin; that will do for a start. Now, class, let’s go back for a moment.”

  Surprised that she interrupted me, I sat down, beaming and smiling, hoping that my answer was really good and thinking this was one teacher who might like me.

  Then I looked at her face. It was clouded with anger, although she tried to hide it. My smile disappeared and a fast hot wave rolled through me. I felt wounded and embarrassed. I had ruined her lesson by jumping ahead and running through the ideas she had wanted us to struggle with all period as she led us from point to point. We were supposed to end up where she wanted us to — ready to begin a study of government in Ancient Greece.

  I realized all this in a split second of agonizing humiliation. And when I was leaving at the end of the period she said, “You know, Franklin, it isn’t necessary to try to impress me by telling everything you know. “

  The same kind of thing happened in French a couple of days later. Our teacher would ask for volunteers to go

  up to the board and I’d stick up my mitt every time.

  After a couple of times, he didn’t ask me any more.

  Because what he was doing-was, he’d get kids to put up answers he hoped would be incorrect so he could use them to teach us really earthshaking stuff like not getting “le “ and “la “ mixed up, all the while making sarcastic remarks. So it didn’t pay to be right there either.