sit in the office for hours, and her parents had to come and sign forms. I remember her math book sitting on Mr. Weissman’s desk, the brown paper cover with a dark red splotch. Some people say that every time Jenny Tierney hits a kid with her math book, she peels off the brown paper and puts it in a scrapbook. She’s got pages and pages of other kids’ bloody noses, beat into brown paper.
We all rush off to class with Jenny Tierney watching us. She waits until we’re all on the way off to class before she follows, her hard-heeled boots ringing on the tiled floor.
In the morning we sell lemonade. I stir in sugar, the wooden spoon tight in my mitt. You can’t just pour in the sugar and stir, or it all settles at the bottom. You have to do it slow-like: a little water, a little sugar, a little more. Mullen doesn’t like to stir ’cause he says it takes too long, but I don’t mind. Who’s in a rush? Some water drips off the spoon into the sugar, makes little grey clumps. I try to pick them out and sugar gets all stuck in my mitt, bits of mitten fuzz stick in the sugar. I take off my mitt and drop a fuzzy sugar clump onto my tongue.
The trick is making sure you don’t get any seeds in the pitcher. I pull off my mitts and squeeze the wedges into my palm. The slimy little seeds squirt into my hand. They try to slip through my fingers. They want to get into the lemonade. Lemon seeds are tricky like that, they know that everybody hates them, so they try to sneak up on people. Because if no one wants you, you might as well ruin it for everybody. If they get in there they’ll hide behind the ice cubes and wait, then sneak into your mouth and spread slime all over your tongue, make you gag and choke, and they’ll laugh and laugh, jump down your throat, right into your stomach, and who knows what they’ll get up to down there. I squeeze the juice into the pitcher and throw the slimy seeds out on the road. That’ll teach them.
Deke pulls up in his rumbly car. Deke drives a silver El Camino, the only one in town. Everybody always stops and points when Deke drives by, slow-like, window rolled down and elbow sticking out. He leans out the window with an unlit cigarette stuck to his bottom lip.
What are you kids doing?
Well, Deke, we’re making lemonade. Figure we’ll sell some and then go to school.
You should come for breakfast with me, says Deke. Thought I’d get some breakfast. He bats at the cardboard air freshener, knocks it up against the windshield. You sell any lemonade today?
Nah, I say.
That’s ’cause it’s too cold, Mullen says.
It’s because people are chumps, I say. They don’t appreciate the value of our product.
We sold a glass to Constable Stullus yesterday, I say. He was measuring between people’s cars and the curb with a tape measure.
That son of a bitch gave me a ticket, says Deke. Next time put vinegar in his lemonade. Or bleach. That’ll teach him.
What do you want, Howitz?
Deke bats the air freshener. Just seeing how the boys are doing.
Mullen’s dad lifts the top of the mailbox with his index finger, peeks inside. They have to be at school, Howitz. Don’t have time to go running around. Yeah, sure thing, says Deke. Mullen’s dad goes back inside.
Let’s get some breakfast, says Deke. The cigarette still hanging off his lip. Hey, Mullen, you want some breakfast?
Mullen whistles. Well, the thing is, Deke, my dad doesn’t like you very much.
No, Deke says, I guess he doesn’t.
So I ought to just stay home and go to school.
Think you’ll sell any more lemonade? I ask Mullen.
He snorts. Nobody’s going to buy any damn lemonade.
Well, I guess not. See you at school.
Yeah, says Mullen, school.
So I was at the post office, getting my mail, Deke says, driving down Main Street. He takes a black plastic comb out of his jacket, starts combing his hair, one hand on the wheel. From the P.O. box? I ask. Yeah, from the P.O. box, says Deke. The Davis Howe Oceanography office. And you know the building across the street from the post office? That empty building with the papered-over windows? They aren’t papered over anymore, I say. Deke puts his comb back into his pocket. Chews on his cigarette filter. That’s right, he says.
There was some woman in there a few weeks ago, I say. She had a measuring tape. Measured everything. Is that right? Deke says. Yeah, measured the walls and the doorways and the spaces between the electrical outlets. You ever seen her before? No, Deke, I never saw her before. No, Deke says, neither had I.
The car stalls at a stop sign. Aw fer Christ, Deke says. He grinds the engine a few times. When the car finally starts, it coughs like an old woman at the drugstore, like a good throatful of snot. Maybe we should let her warm up a bit first, Deke says.
I yawn. Yawn so wide it makes my head ring. I hold a hand up in front of my mouth.
Holy, kid, says Deke. Need a little shut-eye there?
I guess so, Deke, I say. Yawn a little more.
What are you doing getting up so early anyway? Looks like you need some more sleep. What good’s it do, getting up hours before you need to go to school?
Sometimes you’re just up, Deke. It’s not like I don’t want to be sleeping.
I know I’d be in bed if I could be. Hey, you want to see my vacation pictures? They’re in the glovebox.
Deke’s glovebox is full of maps: Lake Athabasca Region, the Columbia Ice Fields. There’s a packet of photos from a drugstore in Calgary.
Pine trees and mountains. Deke holding the camera out in front of him, in front of a waterfall. Where’s this, Deke? That’s just outside of Dawson City, he says. In the Yukon. I flip through the pictures. A moose on the highway. Other cars all stopped around it, people standing around taking pictures. Doesn’t get much more beautiful than the Yukon, says Deke.
I like driving in Deke’s car ’cause the seats are wide and scoopy, with leather padding. Deke’s car smells like Deke: cigarettes and chocolate bars and cardboard air fresheners shaped like pine trees. His Banff park passes take up a quarter of his windshield: 1973 through 1986.
We stop at the truck stop in Aldersyde. Just leave your lunch box in the car, he tells me. All the guys at the truck stop know Deke. They punch him in the shoulder and tell him jokes – they must be pretty funny I guess, ’cause everybody laughs. We sit down in the coffee shop. I try to get a look back behind the counter but I don’t see Hoyle the waitress anywhere. Everything else is pretty much the same, though. Deke scratches his cheek and they bring him a cup of coffee. Scratches the bridge of his nose. They bring me hot chocolate, with little marshmallows.
That guy’s got a real chip on his shoulder, Deke says, blowing the steam off the top of his coffee. You know that, kid? A real chip. You have to watch people with attitudes like that.
Mullen’s dad used to be a geologist, I tell Deke, in Winnipeg. He used to know where oil was. You ought to see all his books – shelves and shelves of them, the hardcovered kind, without jackets. With the names stamped onto the sides.
Deke sniffs and sips his coffee. Guys like that, he says, where do they get off? It’s not like I don’t work damn hard. What was he doing living in Winnipeg if he was a geologist?
I dunno, Deke. My hot chocolate is still too hot. I pick a marshmallow out with my spoon and slurp it up.
Mullen get teased a lot at school?
Kids tease Mullen but Mullen doesn’t care, I say. They tease him a lot ’cause he’s short and lives down the hill.
So they don’t tease you, then?
Well, I say, I guess so. I’m his best friend. But things have been different lately. We got Roland Carlyle, this sixth-grader, sent up for mail fraud. Kids aren’t so likely to tease Mullen now.