The Journey Prize Stories 24 (23 page)

If I’d stopped to think about it just for a minute, I probably wouldn’t have said it. But it just came out: “Okay, five dollars.” Five dollars was a lot. But I really wanted her to come. I didn’t want to be alone with Dad. He was always grouchier when it was just him and me. He was scary when he got mad. And he never knew what to talk about with me so it was uncomfortable and we both ended up saying all the wrong things. I’d heard them talking once, him and Mom. He said he’d tried to talk to me and I just wasn’t receptive; and Mom said he had to
get over it, he had to get over the idea that someone will be how you imagine them to be, and just accept them. “You can’t change people, Sam,” Mom said.

“Really?” Janie said. “Five dollars?”

“You can have my five-dollar bill.” I said. It wasn’t any five-dollar bill. I got it when I started babysitting last summer. It had come straight from the bank: it was crisp and smooth and flat, like a page from a brand new book. There was not a single crease in it.

Janie’s eyes lit up. “You mean it?”

I nodded. Mom came into the kitchen. I thought she would make Janie change her mind, but she didn’t.

“Show me.”

All of a sudden, the sound is turned back on. Dad shouts and swears. He looks angry. The wheels and now the hood are under water.

I went to our bedroom and pulled it out from under my mattress. “Here,” I said, walking back down the hall.

Janie took the five-dollar bill and looked at it closely, both sides. I counted. She didn’t say anything for at least thirty seconds. “Okay. I’ll come.”

She laid it on the table, lined it up lengthwise and folded it in half once, and then again. She slipped it into her jeans pocket and bounced around the kitchen, patting her pocket and making little dance steps with her feet and squealing. Then she tilted her chin up a little and smiled so her teeth showed.

Dad opened the screen door and called, “You ready, Dawn?”

Mom looked at him. “Last chance this season, like you said. Have fun!”

“Janie’s coming!” I said.

Dad looked from me to Mom.

Mom nodded. “She wants to. Just take them both. I’ll get my work done this way.”

Dad unclips his seatbelt, flings his body onto mine, and rams his shoulder against the door. He’s sitting on top of me now, all of him, pinning my legs to the seat. He pushes against the door again and it opens a crack. Ice cold water seeps in. He undoes my seatbelt and flings it to the side. The buckle whacks my cheek. He smashes my hip against the door, over and over, pushing me hard against it. The door opens a little more and water gushes in. He stops and takes a huge breath and looks into the back seat and makes a long, loud howl.

We piled into the pickup truck, me in the front and Janie in the little seat in the back. Dad backed out of the driveway.

“Looking forward to seeing your cousins?” Dad asked.

“It’ll be boring,” Janie said.

“Is that what your mother says?” He pulled onto the Yellowhead Highway.

“No, Dad,” I said.

“Are we stopping at Jack’s on the way back?” Janie asked.

Dad didn’t seem to hear. “Man, I hope Rick’s still out there. We were pretty slow getting going.” He tapped the steering
wheel with one hand. He was already annoyed. “Hey, Dawn,” he said, turning to look at me. I hated it when he did that, when he turned to look at me and not at the road. I wanted him to watch where he was going. He wiped his forehead, pushed back his hair. “Mom said to ask you about your reading. How’s it going?”

For just a moment, I wished Janie wasn’t there. I hoped Janie wouldn’t pipe up that it had been weeks and I still hadn’t finished the book I’d started. Or that she was nearly done the Narnia books. I looked out the window at the fields covered here and there with patches of snow. “Fine, Dad,” I said finally.

Dad’s not angry. He’s frightened. Water fills the footwell. It rises over my ankles and up my calves to my knees and then over the seat. We’re sitting in water. I’m running out of air.

Dad shoves my shoulder through the gap in the door and out into the lake. He’s forcing me out of the truck, but I grab him, first his head, then his shoulders, and hold on as hard as I can. I don’t want to go without him.

“You know, I was never good at reading either,” Dad said.

“I didn’t
say
I wasn’t good at reading,” I said. I just took longer. I liked other things more.

“Christ. What I mean is, I had to work at it too. Reading isn’t everything.” He smacked the steering wheel and looked out the window. “I just wanted us to have a good time together, you know?”

“I know, Dad,” I said. “It’s okay.” I felt sorry for him. I didn’t know why, but he seemed to get angry all the time. I looked down at my jeans. They were brand new Levi’s, bought with my own money. I was wearing them for the first time. I was excited when I got them, but now when I looked at them I felt sad.

Dad pulled off the highway and onto a gravel road. It was huge, Lake Wabamum. The sky was grey-white and the lake was grey-white. We were in a gigantic grey-white dome. The sun was low in the sky. Dead grass poked through the patches of snow near the road.

“Look at all those guys! What was your Aunt Helen talking about, not to go on the ice so late in the season? She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about! I sure hope she didn’t talk Rick out of going. Aunt Helen, your mother, they have no idea.”

“Uncle Rick always waits for us, Dad,” Janie said quietly.

He squeezes my fingers together so hard I think they’ll break, but he keeps squeezing till I let go, and then shoves me out into the water.

It’s not cold. It’s just like nothing. I shut my mouth tight to keep the water out.

Dad dives into the back seat and grabs the buckle on Janie’s seatbelt. The inside of the truck is full of water now. Janie’s hair is wet and floats around her face. Dad unclips her and pushes against the door. Her face and hands are pushed hard against the window, her hands banging at it, her lips flattened against the glass.

Dad followed the gravel road along the shore for a while and then turned onto the packed-down snow where the others had driven onto the ice. He turned so hard I grabbed the dash.