Kicking The Sky Part 11

"Let me write you a note."

Edite tore off a blank corner of the newspaper, then got up to look for a pen. I stared at the coffee grounds sticking to the inside of her mug.

- 5*

SAt.u.r.dAY MORNINGS were quiet at our house, except for the sound of our screen door slamming when Senhora Rodrigues delivered her fresh cheese. Before cleaning, my mother went to Czehoski's on Queen Street for Polish cold cuts and to Future Bakery for sliced rye. She'd do her banking before heading to Kensington Market, where all the rest of her grocery shopping was done. My father started the morning early with a bas.e.m.e.nt excavation job. He'd be home for lunch and then get ready for the afternoon disciples. My mother called them visitors, which made them sound like friends or family. James was going to take over in the afternoon, dumping the truck's load of dirt in one of the city's landfills.

I stood outside James's garage in the morning, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way we were taught in gym cla.s.s.

The light in the garage was powdery. My eyes inched over a bicycle frame that hung from a hook, across to the hot plate, to a few baseboard heaters, unplugged and piled against a wall, over the s.h.i.+ny blue trunk and up to the window in the door that burned in the morning sun.

James stepped out from behind the curtain. "I know why you're here. You want me to quit."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Would it have made a difference? I thought you were old enough to understand."

"What do you want?" I said.

"Extra cash. The baby is on the way. When your dad offered me a trucking gig on Sat.u.r.days I didn't think twice. My hope is he'll like my work and he'll offer me a few weekdays too. Look around you. This ain't no way to live, especially with a kid. I want to get something better for me and Agnes and the baby."

"But we're helping you."

"Yeah, I just don't want this to get messed up."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, we gotta keep an eye on Manny, for starters. He's getting sloppy. If that little p.r.i.c.k gets caught stealing bikes, it leads the cops back to me. And then what? Who's gonna take care of Agnes?"

"So tell him to stop."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"You know how much a baby costs?"

"Well, Ricky and me can-"

"Ricky is a problem too. You and I both know about Ricky and what he does. He can't get caught down on his knees," James said. Dribbles of pee blotted my underwear. James took a step toward me. "He was doing this s.h.i.+t long before I came around. You just need to know that I'm offering him a kind of protection, that's all." Instantly the room turned hot. I couldn't look at him because all I kept wondering was what else he knew. "Ricky came in here crying the other day because at the billiards, Amilcar's dad, Poom Pooms or something, bent down and peeked through the hole."

"What did you do?"

"Let's just say I'm taking care of it."

Next thing I knew I was pounding my pedals along Queen Street, racing so fast that I pa.s.sed a streetcar, James's last words-"Don't leave!"-pulsing in my head.

Sunday morning, I woke to the sound of stones being thrown at my bedroom window.

I pressed my face to the mesh screen and yelled through clenched teeth, "Are you nuts? What time is it?"

"That thing freaks me out," Manny said, glaring at Jesus on our lawn.

My father had spruced Jesus up by applying s.p.a.ckle to its chipped nose and painting its flaking face. The sacred heart, the size of an India-rubber ball, burst through Jesus's robes, s.h.i.+ny from a fresh coat of glossy red nail polish. My father had also cut some Plexiglas in the outline of the tub, caulked and screwed it in place, trapping Jesus in a sweating coffin.

"Manny, it's seven in the morning on a Sunday."

"I like to work early," he said. "Listen, if you don't want to come, let me know. Believe me, I like working alone." Before he even finished the sentence I had started to get dressed. I didn't need him to get any louder and wake up my parents. I slipped on my shoes when I got to the front gate, then followed Manny to the mouth of the laneway opposite ours. This was not our territory. It was Amilcar's. "Follow my nose. It always knows," Manny sang in Toucan Sam's dorky voice.

"I don't like this."

"Then stay home!" Manny shot back.

"I'm coming."

"Hey, is it true about the vampire lady?" Manny asked.

"What did you hear?"

"Is it true, then? Did she stab you?"

I rolled down my tube sock.

"I don't see anything," he said.

"It was a sewing needle, but man, did it hurt. See, it's a bit red there."

Manny looked unimpressed.

"The place went mental so my dad closed the garage early."

"What did she look like?"

"Old, hunched over and wrinkly, wearing a long black dress with a black shawl and kerchief tied under her chin."

"That describes every old lady in our neighbourhood."

"Yeah, but I never saw her before. Turns out her son had driven in from Buffalo to bring her to me. Anyways, she spoke in whispers, not in English but in Italian, I think." There'd been something different about the old lady. Her eyes. Her eyes burned like someone's much younger. They were caramel coloured and her pupils sparkled. If I told Manny that, he'd think the heat in the garage had rewired my brain.

"So what happened?"

"She bent down to look at the lapa but her hand and chin moved to my feet, like she was going to kiss them." Manny made a disgusted face. "That's when she p.r.i.c.ked me."

"I heard she bit you."

"No. My dad heard me yell and he drew her back but not before she swiped some blood from my leg and sucked her finger."

"That's crazy, man."

I had him hooked now. "My dad dragged her out as she licked her lips and kept chanting something."

I didn't tell Manny that my eyes had locked with the old woman's and I had seen things that scared me. They weren't objects or places, but more of a feeling that made me think of James and Emanuel Jaques and my parents. It was hard to explain ... it seemed like the person I was now was not the person I would've been if Emanuel Jaques had not been murdered, if James hadn't dropped into our world out of nowhere. I'd never have the chance to be that boy again. Manny would think I was delusional if I told him any of that.

"Where's Ricky?" I asked, willing myself to shake it off.

"You know he can't leave till his old man gets home from work and crashes."

Manny walked slowly, bending down to stuff his pockets with stones. So I did the same.

Ricky's father was a phantom. Since Ricky's mother took off, the only time his father left the house was to go to work. When he got home he'd sit on the couch in front of the TV drinking wine until he pa.s.sed out. Ricky waited for him with his breakfast: five eggs, sunny side up, splotched with piri-piri sauce, five pieces of b.u.t.tered toast (one for each egg), and a caneca of coffee, black. Everything had to be perfect, just the way Ricky's dad liked it, right down to the way the ashtray was angled on the breakfast table. "Or else-" Ricky had said once, letting the threat hang. Ricky tried to sleep when his father did, and woke when his father went to work. He almost never went to school, and James called him Hoot. Ricky would tell us things he had heard or seen in our backyards or laneway when everyone else was asleep.

We never dared set foot inside Ricky's house. His father's belly, according to Ricky, was the size of a beach ball, but the rest of his body was thin and the skin hung off his shoulders. I imagined he was like the beast in Lord of the Flies.

"Did you finish the book we got?" I asked Manny.

"Yeah, it should be called Flies on s.h.i.+t."

"I liked it."

"I don't get it."

"What don't you get?"

"I just don't think that's the way it happens. They're stranded, right? They're far away from any kind of rules. So the first thing they do is they make their own laws. That's stupid right there. You're finally away from them all, all their fights and lies, and then you go and make the one thing you hate-rules." Manny shook his head. "Doesn't make sense."

"Look at us. We're in an enemy laneway trying to steal bikes. Look at your brother, he's creating his own rules by marrying Amilcar's sister. Your parents are flipping and-"

"Don't talk about my brother."

"I'm just saying-"

"I know what you're saying. My brother doesn't steal, he doesn't kill."

"My father killed that pig. We are animals. Just like the kids in the book."

"Your father didn't kill the pig to survive. He could have just gone to the butcher or the grocery store. He did it because he's a pork chop and it's the kind of thing they did back home." Manny climbed up the downspout like a monkey. He scrambled along the roof before sitting on his b.u.m and looking over the laneway. Silence as he fished out a cigarette from his hair and lit it. "But you're right. We're all animals," he said, looking down at me and spitting his laser spit through the side of his mouth. "We do things because we can. Why does a dog lick its b.a.l.l.s? Because it can. I'll show you."

"What, you're going to lick your b.a.l.l.s?"

"I'm going after the big one," Manny said.

"Manny, don't even think about it," I said.

"Look, you don't want to be here, fine. Just don't go on talking about what's right and wrong, rules and all that c.r.a.p. Do you ever hear yourself? Do you ever look yourself in the mirror after your dad's ripped off a bunch of people who believe in you?"

"You're an a.s.shole."

"I'm an a.s.shole? I don't sit on some throne and have people kissing my stinking feet."

"f.u.c.k you!"

Brilliant light, like the tail of a falling star, shot across the crisp morning air. The flash was bouncing off the frame of Amilcar's bicycle, the big one, a ten-speed that had been stripped and chromed. Manny knew he could get at least fifty bucks for it.

It was too easy. Amilcar wouldn't have just left his bike there. It was a trap.

Manny crept up the laneway, signalling me to stay back, but I followed. He lifted his feet, careful not to kick the gravel. Amilcar was nowhere. Manny got close enough that he touched the bike, brushed the handlebars the way the models did on The Price is Right.

In one fluid motion Manny had hopped on the bicycle and thrown the kickstand up with his heel. I heard rustling behind the tall, narrow gate that divided the two garages. I saw Amilcar through the slats, leaning against the cinder block of the garage, his pants dropped to his knees. It looked like he was taking a leak.

Manny looked back only once, punched the air with his pinky and index finger spread wide, like he was at a Kiss concert. He gave out a kind of primal cry, and then broke into a song about choking the chicken on a Sunday morn.

I looked back and caught Amilcar scrambling through the gate. He had pulled up his pants but his buckle was still undone. He spat from the corner of his mouth and his cheeks bounced up and down. He was fast. Manny had already turned at the elbow in the laneway. He'd be far gone by now, but Amilcar had seen who it was. He wheeled around toward me.

I raced up Palmerston, pumping my arms, my legs burning, past the entrance to our laneway. I looked over my shoulder. Amilcar was gaining on me.

I reached the synagogue at the top of Palmerston and turned in the laneway. Amilcar was getting close. This is it, I thought. I'd never make it to James's garage. Amilcar would catch me and beat me to a pulp.

I turned into the neck of our laneway. I stopped and bent over to heave. Only spit came out. I grabbed at my heart, tried to calm it. I thought of all those people who came to be healed because they believed. It was a joke; I couldn't even save myself. I leaned against a garage door and shut my eyes tight. The door wobbled a bit, then opened, and I stumbled into darkness.

"Where are you, you little s.h.i.+t!" Amilcar yelled. "I'm gonna cut your f.u.c.kin' head off."

Through the gaps in the boards I could see Amilcar in the laneway, banging on garage doors, turning handles. I guided my hand up the door, slid the latch to lock it.

"I'm going to kill you! You better not go to sleep because I'm going to hunt for you, you f.a.ggot."

I looked around the garage, the mould and dampness from the packed earth tickling my nose. It was too dark to tell whose garage it was. I tasted the copper of my blood. I must have bitten my lip when I fell in. I looked out again. Amilcar was close enough that I could hear him breathe.

"I know you're in there," he whispered, before banging twice on the garage door with his fist. "Come out or else-" He tried the next garage and pounded at its doors before heading to the next one.

"I really don't care," I heard myself saying, much louder than I had expected.

"You're in there, aren't you, you little f.a.ggot." He rattled the handle of another garage, then tried to kick the door down. "I'm coming for you and your friend, s.h.i.+thead."

My breath filled my ears so I couldn't hear anything else. That was, until the pop of a firecracker snapped my attention. I looked out with one squinted eye and saw Amilcar leaning against the opposite garage, a string of firecrackers in his hand. A cat, splotches of ginger against white, rubbed itself along his s.h.i.+n. Amilcar grinned, exposed the dark gap between his front teeth. He separated a firecracker from the row and brought the end of it to his mouth, the way you would suck the icing off a birthday candle or moisten a joint-something Manny had shown us once when he had stolen one from his brother's glove compartment. The cat mewed and wove between Amilcar's legs in a figure eight. Its tail was erect, quivered. Amilcar bent down to pet the cat's head. With his other hand he drew the moistened firecracker from his mouth and screwed it into the cat's a.s.s. The cat only raised its rump to let him. I held my breath till I thought I would burst. Amilcar flicked his Bic, lowered the flame to the wick. The spark lasted a mere second before it cracked. The cat popped off the ground and dashed in circles screeching, dragged its hind legs up a wooden fence and disappeared over the top. Its screams faded into the distance.

"And I'll do it to you too," Amilcar said.

I inched backwards, into the garage, watching through the crack as Amilcar's figure got smaller and smaller until it was gone.

I looked at the old garage door I had fallen through. It was wooden and swung out to the sides.

I tried to swallow. My knees trembled and I could feel the tears building. Then I heard the scratch of a match.