Authors: Inger Ash Wolfe
Hazel Dorothy Micallef was fourteen and a half. Her mother had finally allowed her to begin saying “almost fifteen.” She’d been born in Port Dundas and lived her whole life there. In her attachment to the town, she thought of it as something that she owned.
She had just finished her afternoon shift at her father’s store. One of her chores was working four hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Her father gave her a little spending money at the end of each shift, never more than a dollar unless it had been particularly busy. Despite the addition of the security guards – the most twitchy-looking people in the store, she thought – her father seemed no less perturbed by the possibility that thieves were filching from him. Once you learn suspicion, he warned her, you won’t unlearn it. He’d taken to locking the stockrooms during the day.
“Here’s a half dollar,” he told Hazel. “Go get your brother and take him for an egg malt or whatever he likes.”
“Floats.”
“He’s a bottomless pit,” her father said, smiling. He kissed her hair. “Be good.”
She decided to take the long way home and smell the air. She rode her bike up Porter Street to O’Neill Street, the most northerly corner in town. The smallest houses in Port Dundas were on O’Neill. Their backyards gave on to the Kilmartin River, and beyond it, the shale bluff that had been one of its banks. There was some danger of falling rock, and the houses on the north side of O’Neill were planted as far forward on their lots as possible.
Hazel rode the dirt curve at the end of the street to the covered Clasper’s Bridge. Dirt trails led up from there to the top of the bluff. One of the trails was more than two hundred years old: it started here and ran along the top of the riverbank all the way out of town.
She rode back toward Main Street and was about to cross when she heard someone calling her name: “Hey, Micallef!” There was a person waving from the mouth of Candlestick Alley. It was Gloria Whitman. She was grinning to beat the band.
“C’mere!” Gloria hollered.
Hazel rode over. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head:
What in creation is that girl up to now?
“Hi Gloria. What’s the fuss?”
“I need a lookout.”
“A lookout?”
“Can you stay here for
one
minute? Just stay on your bike?”
“I don’t know, Gloria. I’m supposed to get Alan and take him out.”
“Can’t he wait one minute?”
“I guess …”
Gloria’s eyes were red, like she’d been rubbing them. “Watch this,” she said, and she darted out.
Hazel retreated farther into the alley’s shadow and waited on her bike. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was looking out for. In the October sun, people milled back and forth on the sidewalk before her like a pantomime. Their voices reached her as a dim clangour. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be going on.
Just as Hazel had this thought, Gloria burst back into the alley. She was out of breath, laughing in delight. “Get ready!” she cried.
“Get ready?”
She mounted Hazel’s bike, pushing her forward off the seat. “Go!” she shouted. “Start pedalling!”
“Not unless you tell me what this is about!”
From the street came a female voice: “
STOP THIEF
!”
“Ready now, Micallef?” Gloria gripped Hazel’s shoulders. “Go!”
Hazel had no choice. She bore down on the handlebars and started pedalling. Gloria had the build of a ballerina, so it was nothing to ride with her on the seat, but it didn’t allay Hazel’s anxiety.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Go across the bridge.”
Hazel doubled Gloria over the Kilmartin Bridge. “What did you steal?”
Gloria held up a pack of Luckys in front of Hazel’s face. “Didn’t see me take ’em.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“That was Carol. We’ll be clear of her another hundred yards. But the Chink had his back turned the whole time.”
“That’s disgusting, Gloria. Don’t call him that.”
“Mr.
Lim
. He was busy stacking apples. I just
slipped
my hand behind the counter and took the first pack I felt. Ruckys! Pretty rucky, huh?”
“I gotta go, Gloria. Nice to see you and everything.”
“Oh god!” she said. “She’s coming. Ditch the bike!” Gloria scrambled up the dirt and stone path that went serpentine to the top of the bluff. “Come on!”
Hazel dropped her bike in the leaves and ran after Gloria Whitman. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest that she could hear it squeak, and she was halfway up the path before she realized that there was actually no one behind her. “Gloria, stop!” she called. There was no answer. Hazel slowed down to catch her breath. Then she walked the rest of the way up. When she got to the top, Gloria was sitting at a picnic table under a sign that read
KILMARTIN BLUFF PARK
. She was smoking a cigarette.
“Took you long enough.”
“What are you playing at?”
“Just trying to inject some fun into your day, Hazel. When we were kids, you were lots of fun. Full of ideas. Never a dull moment. Now what?”
“What do you mean,
now what
? I see you all day long at school, Gloria. You can’t miss me that much.”
Gloria blew out an elegant smoke ring. “You going to the prom with Andrew?”
“Prom’s not for months.”
“I know he likes you. He said something interesting to Ray Greene.” She held the pack out to Hazel.
“I don’t want your ill-gotten gains.”
Gloria got up from the picnic table and walked away. “OK. See ya.”
Hazel felt a burn on her cheek: embarrassment coupled with something else – need or hunger. Even though Gloria was apt to make stuff up, it was true that people told her things. Boys lost their composure around her and spouted all kinds of nonsense. Maybe Ray
had
talked to her about Andrew Pedersen. “Hold on!” Hazel called. “Wait up.”
The leaves had started to turn at the beginning of the month and now colour rang down like a curtain, brightening the trees that lined the county’s roads, its backyards. The wind pushed the dry leaves around in the branches above their heads as they walked along the path high over town. Hazel remembered the last time autumn had come so late, in ’53,
when they’d gone swimming at Thanksgiving. She’d turned ten the spring of that year. It struck her now that maybe something was wrong, that summer shouldn’t last so long. Gloria said she could live in a climate like this – sunny, breezy, blue skies, warm enough for just a sweater – every day of the year. But Hazel said she’d miss winter and summer both.
Gloria was going to turn fifteen at the end of January, but they had always been in the same grade. They’d been friends since they were little and the difference in their ages wasn’t apparent to anyone. Gloria was small and fragile-looking, not quite birdlike, but sinuous and light, like a red squirrel or a mink. Her father called his daughter Grace Kelly, but no one would have thought Grace Kelly squirrelly. Hazel was more a Rosie the Riveter type. Big hands, strong legs.
From the top of the bluff, you had a view of the town entire, its streets sitting in the middle of forest and field like stitches in a sock. “You want some of this?” Gloria offered Hazel a small, battered pewter flask.
“What is it?” Hazel said.
“Brandy. The cheap stuff – you know, VS.”
“You’re full-service today. Where’d you steal that from?”
“It’s not stolen if it stays in the family.”
“What do you know about brandy anyway?”
“I
read
.” She took a little slug of it. “Rich French people drink it. Although they drink VSOP: Very Special Old Pale. This is just Very Special.”
“Too bad for us,” Hazel replied. “Won’t your dad smell all
this smoke and booze on you?” Out of another pocket, Gloria produced a package of peppermint Chiclets. Hazel took the flask and drank a drop out of it. She’d had sips of her father’s beer or her mother’s Amaretto, but not something this strong. It made her cough. She held her hand out for the gum.
They continued along the dirt path, which wound in and out of pine forest to the edge of the rock face and back again. At the bluff’s most southern tip, hunks of Canadian Shield with tenacious pines growing through it formed a feature called the Lion’s Paw. On one side, the rock paw towered a hundred feet over the town and, on the other, over hectares of forest.
Both girls knew the sides of the bluff had formed the original riverbanks: they’d been taught this bit of history repeatedly, from kindergarten. The Kilmartin and Fraser rivers had once met below the town, but the Fraser had dried up in the early 1900s. East of the townsite, its bed formed the foundation of Highway 41 all the way to Fort Leonard.
Many times both girls had walked in this forest with school groups and gathered pine cones or identified birds. Now they took the edgemost path – worn by generations of walkers, “back to the tribes that once wandered freely over all of this land.” The lessons had been drilled into them.
There were newer legends. Gloria led Hazel to the Passion Pit on the side away from town. The Pit was a depression where people burned bonfires and drank bottles of Labatt’s 50 and Carling Black Label. It was hidden
by the trees, although everyone knew where it was. There, Gloria lay down on her back on one of the flat slabs of granite that lined the bottom, surrounded by vines and lichen. She knew how to lie elegantly, with one knee bent. Boys had been looking at them ever since they were eleven, but now they were really looking, although neither girl was sure if they wanted to look back yet. “What did Andrew say to Ray Greene?” Hazel asked.
“Something about a sweater you wore last week. Don’t think too much about it. Men are either dogs or brutes and most of the time you don’t know until it’s too late.” She laughed:
Hee hee hee!
“You sound like a demented monkey,” Hazel said.
They fell to a companionable silence. Hazel had been considering whether to go to the Hallowe’en dance. She hadn’t brought it up with Gloria because dressing up in costume was far below Gloria’s station, supposedly. She wondered if Andrew Pedersen would go. He was in grade twelve, but he talked to her. Not shy, but not very forward either. He was planning on studying law at the University of Toronto. She was going to go to teachers’ college. Probably in Barrie. She was imagining her features together with Andrew’s when she heard a crack from above the Pit. Footsteps. She sat up and Gloria raised her head.
“Smells nice down there,” came a voice. Gloria pinched the cigarette out. A girl was coming through the cover toward the rim. “You got another one of those?”
It was Carol Lim.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Gloria.
Carol came down anyway and waved at Hazel. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Well?” she said to Gloria. “Do you have another one? I mean, if I stole the whole pack I’d give
one
away.”
“Well, you didn’t steal this pack, did you?”
Gloria’s audacity was breathtaking. Carol said, “At least I’m old enough to smoke.”
“You’re old enough to wear a muumuu,” said Gloria.
“You’re drunk!” Carol Lim thrust out her hand for the flask. “Gimme.”
Gloria tossed her the cigarettes instead. “Empty. Too bad for you. Go back to the old folks’ home.”
“You’re not that much younger than me, Whitman.” Carol’s long, pale face was momentarily obscured by smoke. She shook out the match. “But I’m a lot more experienced.” She was in grade thirteen in Port Dundas’s only Catholic school. She took a theatrical drag on the cigarette and exhaled perfect smoke rings.
Gloria smiled at her. “You’re bad,” she said. “Give me my pack.”
“Go steal another one,” said Carol Lim. “You two got boyfriends?”
“Not as many as you do, I’m sure,” Gloria said. This time her laugh came out more like a snigger.
“
You
done it?”
“Sure,” said Gloria.
“None of your business,” said Hazel.
“Virgins, huh?”
“Believe what you want,” said Gloria. “Better not get pregnant.”
“I bet your father would have something for that.”
This made Gloria Whitman spring to her feet. “Whaddya mean?”
“Never mind.”
“You better get out of here!” Gloria stepped toward her, bristling. “You people are lucky he has time for you.”
“Us people? I was born here. In fact, I got here before you did!”
Gloria shoved Carol hard enough to make her stumble back a couple of paces. A pendant on a silver lace swung out from her neckline. “I hope you know karate.”
“Karate’s Japanese, round-eye.” They stared at each other. Carol shrugged her clothing straight and tucked the pendant – a heart with a rabbit emblem – back into her shirt. She took a final drag on the cigarette and flicked the glowing red butt at Gloria. “I’ll leave you lesbians alone,” she said.
She went back up the side of the pit and continued out of sight.
Hazel snuffed out the cigarette with her shoe. “What was
that
about?”
“Yeah. She’s royalty, ain’t she? She’ll be begging my father for rubbers before long.”
“I mean, she didn’t seem to mind you’d stolen something from her father.”
“She’s a queer one, Carol. Hates her parents. Know why she wears a rabbit around her neck? Because she’s gonna breed like one.” She laughed again, but it wasn’t a titter, it was a low, mean sound. Hazel didn’t like this side of Gloria, this cruel, cutting side. She’d say anything. Everyone knew the Lims and everyone liked them. She changed the subject to something she knew Gloria would be happy to talk about. “So … have you really? You know,
done it
?”
“Don’t be crazy. I don’t want some sweaty pig slobbering all over me.”
“Not yet,” said Hazel, and they both said
“ugh.”
They left the little depression in the woods and began walking back, heading north into the trees on the town-side of Kilmartin Bluff Park, and the light there drifted down, almost material, and lay on the forest floor like scraps of coloured paper. Hazel got on her bike. She smelled her own breath. It was possible there was still brandy on it. She’d kept a piece of Gloria’s gum, and she popped it into her mouth. She rode slowly over the Kilmartin Bridge and felt the air flow over her face. She went up Main Street to McConnell, where she turned left and rode down to Chamber Street. Their house was number 39. When she got home, her little brother was waiting for her.