The Second Son (29 page)

“But if she still wants to go out with me, it’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, she’s not going to be dating Mike, not really. He’s too young for her, don’t you think? He’s still only thirteen.”

If I hadn’t been so anxious to hear her answer I would have walked in and smashed him one. Instead I clenched my fists and listened harder.

“Well, girls do favour older boys, I’ll grant you that. Just don’t let your hopes get too high. Mike has his good points, too, you know.”

And I had hopes of hearing what those good points were. Not Andrew. “Maybe,” he answered, “but I’m sure she still likes me best. That’s why she got her father to let me drive in the parade. I’m going to ask her if she wants to ride with me. She’s probably expecting me to, don’t you think?”

I don’t know if my mother answered that question. I was already out the back door and headed for Gail’s house. I confronted her out by the pool, where she was laid out on one of those fancy lawn chairs they had, reading a book. She had on a pair of short shorts, and one of those summer blouses you could almost see through. I had to work at maintaining my moral edge. “How come you asked your father to let Andrew drive the Model A in the parade?” I blurted out as soon as I got close. “Are you going to ride in the truck with him?”

She tipped her head back and gave me one of those smiles. “Hello to you, too, Mike Landry. Who told you that?”

“Huh?” She had me there. “Uh, Andrew said . . .
he
said it.”

“Well,” she drawled, smooth as peanut butter on toast, “I haven’t talked to your brother in weeks. And for your information, it was my mother’s idea to let him drive that old truck, although I can’t imagine why.” She put her nose back in her book, like she was dismissing me.

“Yeah, but are you going to ride with him?” My suspicions were yet to be allayed.

“Now, Mike,” she laid the book on her lap, faking exasperation, I was sure, “how could I do that, when I’m going to be riding Prince Charming in the parade, in my new rodeo outfit?” Then, at the surprise on my face, she added, “It’s no big secret. Everybody knows.”

“Not me,” I complained. “You never told me.”

“Well, we just decided the other day. My mother took me to Montreal on the train. To find an outfit. You knew I went to Montreal. I told you.”

“Not the reason. You didn’t tell me the reason.”

“Mike! I don’t have to tell you everything. What’s the matter with you?”

There was no way I was answering that. I had this idea that even talking to her about Andrew would do him more good than me. I just jammed my hands deeper in my pockets and muttered something like, “Nothing. Forget about it.”

“Okay,” she laughed as she hid behind her book again. I turned to go, but she had an afterthought. “Hey,” she called, “big Mike.”

I turned back. “What?”

“You mean pardon,” she said.

“Eh?”

She smiled and shook her head at my stubbornness. “I have to ride my horse back to the farm. After the parade. Want to come with me? My father will pick us up later.”

The farm was two or three miles out of town. That sounded like a date to me, a long date. “You mean ride on the horse, with you?”

“Of course, silly. I didn’t mean for you to run along behind me.”

I flinched at that image, thinking of Uncle Andy. She didn’t notice. I don’t think Gail thought about stuff like that, the bad things in life. I don’t think she had any experience with bad stuff, at least not enough to recognize the signs. “Okay,” I finally answered. “I guess the horse can carry two people.”

“I guess so,” she bragged. “Prince Charming’s a big horse. Sixteen hands.”

What a dumb name for a horse, I was thinking as I tried to be funny. “I thought he had hoofs.”

“Hardy ho, ho. Very funny, Alice.” She must’ve gotten that off some television show. The MacDonalds had this twenty-four inch set with some monster aerial they could turn up on the roof and bring in all those American channels from places like Plattsburgh and Syracuse. I was still wondering what it meant when she came up with another suggestion. “Hey, we’ll have to ride past the dam. Wanna take a little detour, go for a swim?”

I tried to stay calm. “I suppose, if it’s hot enough.”

“Hot enough? It’s the first of July.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I was already conjuring up fantasies of being alone with her at the dam.

“I’ll ask my mom to make us a lunch. We can have a picnic.” Obviously her fantasies were taking her on a different path.

“Yeah, it should be fun.” I remember leaving her with exactly those words. I know because I had reason to think about them later. A lot.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for what happened that day. And there were any number of individual decisions that could have been made to alter the course of events. It would be so much easier just to believe in fate. For a while there, that’s what I did, just to survive. I don’t know what the others believed — Andrew, my mother, my father, the MacDonalds. Then again, it wasn’t fate that decided how my parents and Andrew came out of it. That was more my doing.

I still think none of it would have happened if Andrew hadn’t started bragging, that night before the parade. We were alone in the TV room. My mom was down at the park helping the Lions Club set up their bingo tent, and the old man was over at the Kinsmen Club helping decorate the float. Andrew tried to make it sound like a peace offering.

“Hey, Mike,” he said, “you know I’m riding in the parade tomorrow. With Gail, eh?”

He was on the couch and I was slouched in the armchair across the room, determined not to bite. “Big deal,” I muttered.

“Didn’t you see us this afternoon, over at the MacDonald’s? Decorating the truck?”

“So what?” I knew better than to trust him.

“I was thinking you might come over and help us.” His voice sounded like he was grinning. When I refused to respond he went on, “So, we were talking, eh? And Gail gave me an idea. How would you like to ride in the truck tomorrow, in the parade?”

“Huh,” I grunted, stung but not yet wounded.

“Waddaya say,” he persisted, “wanna ride in the truck?” He only slanged his words like that when he was trying to pretend he was one of the guys.

I finally gave him a sideways look and a backhanded question, “What would I have to do? Look stupid and wave to the crowd?”

“I dunno, maybe you could wear one of Dad’s old clown suits. You’re almost as tall as he is. Mr. MacDonald is going to have a big barrel of candy, to throw to the crowd.”

“Naw, I don’t think so.” I was still suspicious. “I’m not putting all that paint on my face.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” he grinned. “Gail and I were thinking you could just go as yourself. You know, Snaggletooth the Clown.”

Why the fuck did he have to say that? Would things have been different if he hadn’t? Said those exact words? I’ve asked myself a thousand times and more over the years. It wasn’t the first time he’d called me that. But why that night? Was he just being cocky after an afternoon with Gail, having decided she got him in the parade so she could start up with him again? Or was he being deliberately cruel, still jealous of my new standing with Gail? Who knows what she really said to him that afternoon? One thing for sure, I would never have told him about our plans for the next day, if he hadn’t called me that name. I practically spit at him, “Keep your stinking parade, jerk. Gail and me are going on a picnic after.”

He forced one of his phony laughs and tried to brush it off. “Baloney. She’ll be going to the park, like everybody else.”

“Shows how much you know, big shot. We have to ride her horse back to the farm, me and her. And we’re stopping at the dam.”

I could see by the stunned look on his face that I was finally getting to him. So I rubbed it in. “And we’ll be going swimming, too. Skinny-dipping, probably.”

His lips got all quivery, like he was going to cry. As it was he revealed himself with one of his rare swear words, “You’re a goddamn liar. You’re making that up.”

“Ha, just wait and see.”

THE DOMINION DAY PARADE
always kicked off from down at the train station, just a few blocks from our house. We liked to go over around eleven and watch them get organized. Of course, that year Andrew and Gail were in the parade, so I was pretty much on my own, slipping around on my bike, checking things out, enjoying all the goingson. Everybody was saying how lucky they were with the weather, clear and sunny and not too hot. It was a lot of fun to see how excited they were getting, trying to line up all the floats just right, with the people who had to walk getting pretty tired of just standing around, waiting for everybody to show up and take their places. Some of the floats used horses and wagons and it was always a big laugh when a horse dropped a load and someone had to run around looking for one of those big wide coal shovels so they wouldn’t have people stepping in that nice fresh horseshit.

Andrew had left the house early and was already there, with the Model A parked right behind Gail and her horse. Big surprise. You could tell he was trying to look all serious, strutting around like he owned the truck and checking under the hood like he really needed to. Gail’s father was there, too. Him being the mayor, he got to ride out front, right after the pipe band, up on the back seat of that red Cadillac convertible Mr. Lauzon the car dealer would lend them every year. Gail followed a few floats back, with that palomino horse all done up in a fancy western saddle and harness, and her in that cowgirl outfit her mother had bought for her in Montreal, with white leather boots and a big white Stetson. She hardly looked at Andrew.

There must have been a dozen or more floats that year, representing different businesses and clubs in town. The Lions had a float made to look like that island they had cleaned up in the middle of the Pond, for people to picnic on and such. It still looked to me like an old hay wagon with a few bales of hay covered in crepe paper, but I guess most people knew what it was supposed to represent on account of that miniature pagoda on top. It had some of the members riding on it, dressed up in their purple hats and those yellow sashes they wore across themselves. And they had a bunch of fireworks on display, with a big sign saying they would be setting them off from the island that night at ten o’clock. This was the first time for such a big display and everybody was looking forward to it, especially all the little kids who would get to stay up late.

The other clubs were there, too. The Kinsmen had a float, and my dad was already on board, getting the candy ready for the kids. You could hardly tell it was him, with that clown suit and all the paint he had on his face. He looked happy up there with the other Kinsmen, laughing and joking and squeezing those big brass horns like kids at a birthday party. He sure didn’t look like the kind of man who would shove half a pack of cigarettes down a kid’s throat. Maybe belonging to a club like that brought out the best in people.

The Knights of Columbus and the Richelieu just had members marching that year, in their fancy capes and funny hats, and those swords that most of us guys would have given their eye teeth to own. I remember one time Skinny Proulx snuck his dad’s sword out of the house and we all took turns chopping down cattails with it. Poor Skinny was locked in the house for two weeks after his old man found all those green stains on his sword. The 4H Club had a big float, with a couple of farm kids and their prize-winning calves riding right up there with them. They were holding their halters real tight and I figured there’d be a couple more piles of manure to worry about by the time they got to the park.

When they finally got everybody lined up and ready to go, most of the kids would race ahead up to Main Street where the crowd was the thickest. Some kids liked to follow behind the parade on their bicycles. Normally I liked it better if I could find a good spot to watch the whole parade go by, one by one. A good spot was important if you were going to get any of the candy they would throw into the crowd. Even Mr. Peanut, that crazy guy dressed up in the Planter’s Peanuts costume with the top hat and cane, would be throwing little cellophane packages of peanuts. You had to watch yourself, though. I got one in the eye once and it was no fun. There were always people out to watch along the whole route, just not so many as downtown, along Main Street where everybody would come out of the stores to watch.

The pipe band started revving up right at twelve. I liked the drums best, with that a-rat-a-tat-tat beat they always made. As soon as the pipers got worked up to full blast they started leading the parade down McDougal Street over to the north end of Main Street. From there the whole procession would head south, all the way through town, past the business district, to the French church and the south end of the park, where the rest of the July First celebrations would go on. That day I dropped my bike off at home and took the shortcut across town to the end of the parade route, where I could meet up with Gail and ride back to the farm with her. I don’t remember much else about the parade. I was watching it all right, only my mind was really on Gail and our plans for later, at the dam.

It was hard to miss Andrew. He was smiling and waving to everybody, even though he was driving our dad’s old truck with advertising for Allied Foods hanging all over it. I guess he had forgotten that part in all the excitement of the day. Maybe it was easy, up there in the truck, to forget that the Landrys had lost most of what they’d owned and were “mortgaged up to the hilt” for the rest. Or maybe that’s all he was thinking about. And he was only pretending to enjoy himself. It sure makes you wonder, given what happened later.

When the parade came to an end, I rushed over to find Gail. She was back at the main gate by that time and already had the picnic basket up there on the horse with her. Damn, that horse was big. She laughed at me when I tried climbing up from the ground. “Wait a minute,” she said, “I can’t pull you up from down there. We’ll go over to the fence and you can get on easier.”

At the fence she asked me, “Have you got your bathing suit?”

“Yeah,” I grinned, “under my clothes. What about you? Is it in the basket?”