All the Broken Things (10 page)

Gerry dropped the chain at Loralei’s collar and stood back, keeping a grip only on the leash handle. Loralei did not move from her spot in the middle of the ring. She simply sat and watched Bo as he leapt from foot to foot, gesticulating at the crowd and at her, leaning in sometimes to test the extent of her calm, to test her ability to just sit and wait.

The more tempestuous men in the crowd began to insult her now, yelling that she was chicken. Then more joined in. Their derision caused a shift in the crowd, and all leaned in now and yelled. They wanted to
see
something.

“Give him a slap, Loralei,” someone called.

“Give us a show.”

“Give ‘er!” yelled someone else, and people laughed, breaking the tension, and this is the moment when Bo bounced against her.

His whole weight meant nothing to Loralei. So he yelled, “Hunh!” and threw himself at her chest again and then once more. It was like running into a furry tree. He luxuriated in her smell. The awful stench reminded him of the melting spring earth in parts of High Park, of the raw of unwashed body. Loralei lifted her right paw then and drew Bo to her, sat back on her haunches, and clasped her other paw over the first.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” crooned the announcer.

She hugged him, the referee circling in wonderment.

Bo scissored his legs like he was running, but they were an inch or two off the ground so he ran in vain. And then Loralei lifted her great hulk and began a slow upright walk around the ring, Bo clutched to her.

Bo felt the space there between the bear’s arms and his own body. He clasped onto her neck fur tight and faced her as best he could. Then Loralei released him in
a heap on the ground and tried what she had accomplished with Wolfman, but Bo saw it coming.

He twisted right and got to his feet, got behind her and pulled on her shoulder. She tipped, and then she was on her back, rolling. He took the opportunity to kneel on her belly and pin her arms and legs as best he could. Strange to straddle a bear—he tried to imagine it was Ernie as she writhed back and forth, which did test his imagination what with the smell and the glinting fangs.

She held back, he knew. She pulled her punches. She was letting Bo win. Bo glanced over at Gerry at the end of the chain and caught the wink meant for Loralei. She pretended to struggle while the referee counted to ten, and Bo pretended to hold her. Then it was over, and the bear went to Gerry for treats, and the love of the crowd washed over him.

Bo was a star.

The referee held the squirt bottle and let him drink. He was parched. The water went over his face and down his body, washing away some of the bear fur stuck to his sweat. “Good work, kid.”

The thing was over before it had really started. But still. Bo looked out into the swarm of clapping people, and there was Max Jennings, smiling, shifting a wad of money from his fist to a money sac on his belt.

O
N THE WAY BACK
, it was quiet for a long time in the truck. Bo knew Gerry was pleased, not angry, and that the quiet was contentment. He looked back through the cab window at the bear, trying to spot her through the tear in the tarp. He knew he could not see her but he looked anyhow. He hoped Loralei would notice him checking on her.

“She pulled back, Gerry,” Bo finally said.

“She’s five hundred pounds, Bo Jangles,” Gerry replied. He shook his head, once, and smiled at him with his eyes. “I pulled her back.”

“How?”

“I trained her. Like I said, you can train the wild out of most any creature if you get it young enough.”

“The chain, then.”

“It’s a prop, is all. The people in the audience feel safer if she’s chained. The truth of the matter is that if my darling wanted to, she could bound right off the chain and I’d never see her again. She doesn’t follow the rules of the chain. She does what I want. She looks at my hands. She can read most any signal I give her by now. She’s four years old.” He grinned, and added, “She’s all mine.”

“Where do you keep her?” But Bo was thinking, how do you keep a bear? And more, how might he keep one?

“She lives in the yard by my house. Outside Grimsby.”

Grimsby. It sounded so desolate, like in a horror movie. But “in the yard.” That you could keep a bear in the yard, he thought. That was marvellous.

“Grimsby,” he said.

“She’s staked. On a rope. She has her own kennel. She’s comfortable.”

The truck hurtled down the highway toward home, images whipping past him—trees, rocks, signage, the flit of deadfall—Bo imagined a beautiful bear walking in circles in his backyard, a groove forming under her as she satellited the hated peg.

“That guy Max—”

“What about him?”

“I don’t like him.”

“Well, he’s very unlikable but he pays the bills.”

“He’s really your boss?”

“You could say.”

“So he owns the fair?”

“He owns the sideshow, and that’s a lot.” Gerry looked over at Bo. “Hey,” he said. “What did Max Jennings say to you, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Bo said.

“He told me to give you this.” Gerry opened the glove compartment and pulled out a stack of papers that turned out to be the contract Max had showed him earlier. Gerry handed it to Bo, and said, “Me and Max are both hoping you’ll sign on for the rest of the fall season.”

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, coming out of church, Father Bart stopped Bo. He bent down to whisper, “You took something, Bo.”

It was true. He had slipped an extra Host off the plate at communion. One had melted on his tongue, the other was by now likely crumbled in his pocket. He took one regularly for Orange.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stealing is very serious,” said Father. “Stealing from the church is especially sinful, of course. Where is your mother?”

Father Bart knew very well his mother did not linger after mass.

“She went home before Communion,” Bo said. “For my sister.”

“Please tell her I need to speak to her. She’ll likely know what I want. It’s urgent.” Father Bart pursed his lips, then let out a long breath and seemed to relax. “Why did you take the Host?”

“For Orange.”

“She isn’t old enough. You know this. She has not received the Sacrament.”

Bo went back into the church to stand in front of the crucifix. He said three Our Fathers and two Hail Marys, which was in excess of Father Bart’s suggested atonement. The priest said he wanted to make Bo fully aware of the mortality of the sin he might commit if he did not atone
for this one. Sin was a slope, slick and irresistible. While Bo chanted the prayers, he thought of Loralei—how she smelled, how she’d hugged him, how easily she could have killed him, but that she had not.

“You understand,” said Father Bart, when he came back out into the glinting autumn sun, “every one of our actions has a consequence.”

“Yes,” Bo said, and Father nodded down at him.

Mercifully, when he reached home, the Host was intact. He placed it on Orange’s tongue, said, “The Body of Christ.” She stood, rocking to keep her balance, her butt stuck way out, her legs bent, her feet far, far apart. She stretched her mangled tongue out as the Host slowly fractured and dissolved there.

Bo watched, wondering for the first time whether her ugliness might have a value. It was strange to consider it. After Bo’s bout with Loralei, Max had sidled up to him to whisper, “I would pay for a decent photograph. I’m serious, kid. Good money.”

Good money. What was bad money?

I
T WAS
M
ONDAY
and Teacher stood at the board in white pants and a white blouse, a strip of shiny black belt slicing these. A chalk drawing of a man in a sheet took up the full height of the blackboard beside her. He carried a little harp shaped like a tulip. A strange animal stared at him from the third blackboard—three enormous dogs’ heads, the fangs sharp and their mouths open. The animal was so huge, Teacher had run out of blackboard near the top. The class chattered.

Bo huddled Loralei in his mind, the fight, the fair. He’d signed the contract even though he hadn’t understood all of it, and he’d got Rose to sign too. Then he’d tucked it under his mattress in case Gerry ever came back for him.

“Sit down, children.” Teacher waited until they hushed, then began to tell them about how this man Orpheus had lost his wife Eurydice when she was bitten by a snake.

“This is the Greek story! I looked it up,” called out Emily. “It’s the story
Sir Orfeo
is about, right, Miss?”

“Yes, Emily. It’s an old, old story. I wanted to tell it to you.” Teacher walked back and forth in front of the class. She got more animated if they paid attention, as if they had fed something in her. They were all soaking up the story—and watching her. She pointed to her drawings like they might come to life. Bo imagined her pacing back and forth at City Hall with her placard.

“Everyone has a talent,” Teacher said. “And Orpheus’s talent was singing. He played this lyre, and he sang beautifully. When Eurydice died, he was so very sad that he went to the underworld—”

“That’s like Hell,” said Emily, and Teacher hushed her.

“The Greeks believed the underworld to be a very treacherous place. Orpheus had to traverse a dangerous roadway, and cross a river with a ferryman named Charon, and somehow pass by”—here she pointed to the animal she had drawn on the board—“this monster named Cerberus.”

“A monster?” blurted Bo.

“Yes, Cerberus is also called the three-headed dog. Orpheus sang it to sleep.”

Bo shrank down in his chair. Teacher came to stand over him. “Maybe the dog was not as bad as he looked,”
said Bo. He was thinking of Orange, and of Max wanting her for his sideshow. His face crumpled, and when Teacher touched his shoulder it was too late—tears came. Bo watched Ernie scribbling a note that would be passed to Peter and on through the class. This was who Bo was, a boy made up in the stories of others. He tried to think only about the weekend and how he had fought the bear.

Teacher bristled beside him and stared at Ernie. And then back at Bo. She had seen something transmitted, not the note but the idea of the note.

“Ernie and Bo,” she said. “I want to see you both in the hall.”

Ernie glared over at Bo. The rest of the class raised eyebrows, giggled.

Teacher followed the two boys out and shut the door behind her. They stood ready to hear Miss Lily’s reprimand. She crossed her arms and was silent for a good long time. Bo looked up into Ernie’s sneer. It would be better to fight than to just stand here.

“I want your help,” Teacher said, finally. She looked to Bo and then to Ernie. “Actually, I need your help. We will be viewing a film.”

“Miss!” Ernie’s eyes lit up.

“Hush,” she said. “The film is on a reel in the A.V. room, and so is the projector. I want you two to go to the A.V. room and fetch the projector and the reel. Bo, I want you to hold the reel. It is rented and needs to be
returned in perfect condition. Ernie, you will roll the cart with the projector on it. You will not twirl, or spin, or ride on the cart. Do you both understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why I asked the two of you to do this?” she added. There was clearly a trick in this question.

“Yes,” said Bo, hoping to stop her.

“Tell me.”

Bo shook his head fast. He did not know at all.

“Ernie?”

“Because you can rely on us?”

“No,” she said. “I most certainly cannot rely on you. I asked you because I want you to work together. I want you to cooperate. Do you understand?”

They both nodded. Bo did not know what Ernie thought but he thought that he would never be able to work with Ernie, and that to have to do this small errand with Ernie was already worse than the torturous silence of Teacher. But still, a film—they would see a film.

“Teacher’s pet,” Ernie said as soon as Teacher had gone back in the classroom.

“Shut up.”

“Did she buy you right off the boat?”

“She didn’t buy me. Nobody bought me.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

Ernie and Bo arrived at the A.V. room, located the projector on its brown steel rolling cart. The reel
came in a beautiful green round metal box, clipped together at the sides. It was like a huge shoe-polish tin. A piece of masking taped across it read:
Toys
, Grant Munro, 7 minutes, 46 seconds, 1966. Short, Bo thought. But still, it was already a perfect thing carting a real film down the hall, along the terrazzo floor, carefully avoiding stepping on the steel grouting between the tiles.