The Ravine (2 page)

One Sunday afternoon Jay and I cycled over to the church, even though in order to do so it was necessary to follow the streets (Langstaff to Juniper Way up to Dunedin and across) and it would have been much quicker to just walk across the field. But it was a glorious late spring/early summer day, so Jay and I jumped on our bikes and pedalled over. By coincidence, Norman Kitchen had done the same thing, so after the Cub meeting the three of us met up by the bike stand. Kitchen hollered at me, “Hey, Phil! Let’s do something!”

“Jay and I are going for an adventure,” I said. I was fascinated by the concept of having an adventure, which was what all the boys on television had. They had adventures effortlessly, all they had to do was walk outside, but I understood that this was make-believe, and that if I wanted to have an adventure I was probably going to have to bike somewhere. “You can’t come.”

“Why not?” demanded Norman at a pitch. “I could be your sidekick!”

“Jay is my sidekick.”

“I’m not your sidekick,” muttered Jay, who had busied himself
with some bicycle maintenance, namely, readjusting the clothes pegs that held the trading cards that were purred by the spokes. “I’m your brother.”

One of the reasons Jay had busied himself was to get distance from me and my nastiness to Norman, so I drew a breath and reconsidered. “Tell you what, Kitchen. You can’t be the sidekick. But you could be the fat guy who drinks too much and does the cooking and gets killed.”

“Okay!” he agreed.

I pulled my bike out of the rack and leapt into the saddle. “Let’s ride!”

The area where I grew up is now simply part of Toronto, but when I was a boy it was a separate entity. It lay a few miles to the north of the downtown core and was separated by wide tracts of undeveloped land. Don Mills (Canada’s First Planned Community!) and the city were connected by the Don River, which once teemed with salmon, although nowadays a fish would have a better chance of survival in a cheap motel. Anyway, as you all remember from your Earth sciences, rivers form valleys over vast stretches of time, even a sluggish thing like the Don. The Don Valley was, in sections, parkland, where the woods were tamed and beautified, and walkways ran between beds of cultivated flowers. But there were other areas that were just left alone. The pathway would stop abruptly, and the forest would loom dark and dense.

This was my best shot at adventure, I figured, so I led Jay and Kitchen down into the valley, and we cycled with gleeful fury through the manicured woodlands. And then the path stopped, abruptly, and we leapt off our bicycles and stared ahead to where a forested slope descended to the river. I could spot another body of water, too, small and round. Part of the river had been diverted and formed a stagnant
pond. And although no boy on television had ever encountered adventure at a stagnant pond, I said, “We’re going down there.”

“I don’t want to,” said Jay.

“I know you don’t want to. But you have to. Besides,” I said, “it’ll be fun!”

The pond had been created by chance, the edge of the river running into a berm, water sloughing off into a depression, a small regular bowl. I’m guessing out in the middle it would have been perhaps three or four feet deep. Around the edges it was only a few inches, and it was easy enough for us to remove our shoes and socks and (seeing as we were already wearing our Cub shorts) go wading into the muck.

“Why are we doing this?” demanded Kitchen, who soon had a leech on his shin. I judged that the kind of thing he’d rather not know.

“We’re looking for stuff,” I told him.

“Like what?”

“The tadpoles are turning into frogs. They look really weird. They got tails but they’re growing legs. They’re like little monsters.”

“So?”

“So, Kitchen… whoever finds the weirdest one wins.”

“Wins what?”

“I don’t know. They get to keep the little monster tadpole, I guess.”

“I win,” announced Jay quietly. The sleeve of his Cub shirt was wet with muck up past the elbow and he had his huge hand wrapped around something; he held it up to his eye and peered into the hole made by his thumb and fingers.

Kitchen and I slopped over. “Let’s see.” Jay brought up his other hand, cupped the two together and then fanned them apart slightly so that we could see the creature caught in the fold. It was not quite frog, and therefore horrible looking, saddled with a long tail that was
spotted and decaying. This thing also had a huge bump on its head, a cancerous growth or something.

We stared at this
rara avis
for a long moment, and then we heard a voice. “Hey, kid. What’ve you got there?”

Two boys stood by the side of the stagnant pond. Both were tall, sprouted violently by adolescence. Although they shared certain clothing and characteristics—jean jackets, jeans, black running shoes, height and build—they were very dissimilar. One was fair—actually, fair is putting it mildly, he approached albinism. The kid didn’t have pink eyes or anything, but the blue of his irises was so light that it was virtually invisible. These eyes, these white eyes, the boy kept popped open in apparent surprise, although one would think that the sunlight would rush right through and sear his brain. So he gave the impression of blindness, although it was this boy who had demanded, “Hey, kid. What’ve you got there?” His hair retained a dazzling whiteness even after maybe half a tube of Brylcreem, and about half a tube is what it would require to create the particular creation he wore. The sides were combed up and the hair met in the middle, actually high above the middle, of the boy’s head. Some of this wave rushed back to form an intricate design, what was commonly called a duck’s ass, while the rest of the wave pushed forward with increasing volume until it exploded in front of his forehead, by which point it had achieved the firm roundness of a breast or buttock.

The other boy’s hair was rather less ambitious. The boy himself wasn’t, I mean, he had obviously upswept and teased and Brylcreemed and moulded, but the hair itself just wasn’t up to it. The hair was sandy and tired and would have been happier on the head of a bank manager. It lay on top of his head like tangled bedsheets, and no doubt contributed heavily to his air of bitterness. Which was obvious. His face was twisted with it, unfortunately, given that his face was none too pleasant to begin with. To top things off—to jack up
the bitterness levels—he had acne, quite severely. It looked as though pimples were battling whiteheads for possession of his very soul.

His role in life was immediately apparent—he accompanied the blond, better-looking boy wherever he went, echoing his words and emulating his actions. “Yeah,” he said now, “what’ve you got there?”

“What have I got where?” asked Jay quietly.

The blond boy took a step forward. “There. In your hands.”

I answered, “Just a tadpole.”

“It’s almost a frog,” said Jay, “except it has a tail. And it has a bump on its head.”

“No kidding. Let me see.”

“I was just about to let him go.”

“Him?”
said the blond boy. “How do you know it’s a
him?”

“He doesn’t know,” I said.

“Did I ask you?” snapped the blond boy, and all of a sudden I understood that I had found a little more adventure than I had bargained for.

He addressed himself to my brother once again. “Does it have a little dick or something?”

“No. Maybe it’s a girl.”

“Bring it here,” demanded the boy. “Let me see it.”

“Yeah,” said his companion. “Let’s see it.”

“I was just about to let it go,” Jay insisted.

“Come on, little buddy. Let me see that thing.”

Norman Kitchen spoke now, and he spoke at a normal volume. I realized that he was petrified. “Show it to them, Jay.”

“J?
Is that your name,
J?
”

“Yeah, it’s his name. Jay,” I answered.

The blond boy shook his head with mock puzzlement. “But it’s only one letter long. Hey, Terry.”

“What, Ted?”

“What kind of name is only one letter long?”

Don’t think it was lost upon me that they’d used each other’s names. This signalled a reckless disregard—at least it always did on television, the cannier criminals wincing when their foolish henchman identified them. That neither of these kids winced had a double implication: 1) they were both kind of stupid and 2) they would probably have to kill us.

Ted looked us over, Norman and me. “What’s you guys’ names? Hey, you. What’s your name?”

“My name is Norman!”

“That’s a nice name. And you, with the glasses?”

“Phil.”

“Jay, Norman and Phil.” Ted drew ever closer, so close that the toes of his black running shoes stuck into the pond’s watery muck. He extended his hand toward my brother. “So let me see the froggy thing, Jay.”

Jay thought about this for a moment and then started toward the shore. “Look at it and let it go,” he said quietly. Jay put the creature into Ted’s extended hand and backed away.

Ted was, for a moment, startled by the sight of the little monster, possibly even terrified. But he managed to squelch this emotion; I suppose, given adult retrospection, that this was how Ted dealt with all of his emotions. He squelched them, and let them fester and infect somewhere down deep. “This thing,” said Ted gravely, “is a freak. This thing should never have been born.”

Terry picked up the cue. “Put it out of its misery.”

“Good idea,” nodded Ted. “I’m going to put it out of its misery.” Ted curled his hand into a fist and tightened. We heard little bubbly sounds and a long kind of whistle, like a teakettle or something. Ted threw the remains over his shoulder and wiped his hand off on the backside of his blue jeans.

My brother said, “That was a bad thing to do.”

“That?” Ted gestured with his head toward where he’d thrown the little corpse. “That was
nothing.”

Our bicycles lay a few feet away. Ted now wandered toward them, pointing a finger. “These your bikes, huh?” He saw the saddlebag behind my seat, noticed the bulging and asked, “What’s in there?”

“Just some Cub stuff,” I answered. “Nothing interesting.”

Ted looked at me with those strange eyes. “Nothing interesting, huh?”

“Cub stuff,” I repeated.

“Why don’t you go away and leave us alone?” asked Jay, somewhat brazenly, I thought.

“But we’re not
doing
anything,” explained Ted with exaggerated patience. “We’re just asking questions. We’re being friendly.”

“We’re not
doing
anything,” seconded Terry, although he couldn’t contain a certain measure of malice.

“Let me see the Cub stuff,” said Ted, bending over and unbuckling the saddlebag. He pulled out a piece of rope, about four feet long. “What’s this for?”

None of us said anything. Ted found Norman Kitchen with his milky eyes. “Norman, I asked a question. What’s this for?”

“It’s for tying knots!”

“No kidding. Come here and show me how to tie a knot.”

“I didn’t get my badge yet!”

Ted turned his head toward me. “I bet you know how to tie knots, don’t you, Phil?”

“He’s good at it,” said Jay. “He’s the best in the whole pack.” I’m not sure if he said this out of fraternal pride or if he was hoping that my mastery of knot-tying would somehow impress and alarm these guys and make them go away.

“Hey, Phil,” said Terry. “Come here and tie a knot.”

My mind was frantically trying to come up with some sort of plan, and in desperation it latched onto one.

“Okay,” I agreed, “I’ll tie a knot.” I made a motion with my shoulder and waded up onto the bank. I turned around and saw that my shoulder-motion had been to no avail. “Guys,” I said to my brother and Norman Kitchen, “let me show you this new one I’ve been working on.”

They hesitated. I knew I could afford only so much encouragement, so I ventured one more sentence, evenly modulated and filled with enough big words to confuse Ted and Terry. “I’m going to do an ornamental knot, called the Four-Strand Sinnet.”

“Okay!” Norman waddled out of the pond in a very ducklike fashion. I think he truly wanted to see me tie a Four-Strand Sinnet. Jay followed reluctantly. That kid should have watched more television.

“Okay,” I said as they clustered near me. “Now, to do a Four-Strand Sinnet, I need four strands.” I had plenty of rope in my saddlebag. I pulled out three more lengths and handed one to Jay, one to Norman. “You hold this one, you hold this one, I’ve got these two, right?”

“Right!”

“Right,” agreed my brother.

“Now watch closely what I do.” This was the hard part. Ted and Terry were standing some feet distant, so I turned to them and, quelling the urge to barf, said, “I thought you guys wanted to see this.”

Terry came forward first, used to doing what he was told. Ted hung back momentarily, trying to size up the situation, but I think I’d befuddled him with that word “ornamental.” He moved, and I immediately put my plan into action, because if I had waited even a moment I would have chickened out. As Ted came at me, I brought the rope up and gave it a snap. I had timed things perfectly; the end of
the rope licked a welt across his cheek. It was painful enough that Ted covered his face with both hands and doubled over, and he howled as though mourning many deaths. Jay snapped his rope, too—we’d acquired the knack after bath times, using towels to cover each other with welts—but it didn’t quite catch Terry. Terry grabbed Jay’s sleeve, but luckily I was able to flick Terry on the ear, and he shrieked and let loose his grip and busied himself with self-inspection, reassuring himself that I hadn’t flicked his ear clean off.

Norman Kitchen appeared to be still waiting for me to tie a Four-Strand Sinnet.

“Run!” I screamed, and we bolted for the pathway up above. But I should have known that pain, even intense pain, would incapacitate Ted and Terry for only the shortest of whiles. They were used to it, after all. They’d probably lived with it every day of their miserable lives.

They got Norman first, of course, and then they got Jay, and even though I had just about made it to the pathway, I had no choice but to turn around and go suffer with my brother.