By nine o’clock on Sunday morning, a week after Riel and I had rescued the coyote, I was already up, polishing off my tea, toast and marmalade. The last few mornings, I had actually woken up without a stupid headache, and I wanted to make the most out of the good feeling and the great weather.
Mokey would soon be on his way to church, and Riel would be having a “sleep-in,” something he had started doing on Sundays since before Christmas. I had too much energy to lie around reading, so I decided to try out the old skis Uncle Dan had given me—this time for real.
We kids were prevented from sliding down the little hill at the very back of the school and shooting out onto the playing field below because that was where Paddy, our school janitor, dumped the clinkers from his huge furnace in the basement. Over dozens of years, the discarded clinkers had made the slope something like a lava field on the side of a volcano. But, to the side of that hill and off the upper playing field, the littlest kids especially could sled or toboggan down the short, more gentle hill toward the lower field to their hearts’ content.
I had already tested my skis on this little kids’ hill a week before, and had fiddled with the bindings until my overshoes, with runners inside them, worked like they were supposed to. Now I wanted to learn if they, and me, could pass a bigger challenge, a run down Egg Hill. A quarter of a mile farther south from the school, near the auto court, it offered the greatest view and the best sled rides of any of the river valley hills.
The day before had been cold and clear, perfect for a new flood on the school skating rink and the miniature sheet of curling ice next to the school. Paddy flooded the curling sheet with a garden hose, spraying on hot water taken from the school. The town fire department gave the skating rink a fresh coating of ice every second Saturday, using help from some of the grade seven and eight boys “volunteered” by Army. Riel, Mokey and I joined in for the fun of it. The firemen would connect the hose from the fire truck to the hydrant on the corner, the boys would help drag the huge hose, and within an hour or two, the rink would be like glass.
Unfortunately for another “volunteer work gang” from grades four through six, which obviously included us Three Musketeers and other guys, it had snowed heavily overnight. I realized as I walked past the rink with my old skis and poles over my shoulder, that as Army’s work gang, we would have to spend a few hours later that afternoon scraping the new snowfall off the ice.
For the moment, though, the sky was blue, the powder snow fresh, and my skiing adventure was waiting for me. It was darn cold, but I was ready for it. The bottoms of my rubber overshoes weren’t so sure, however, squeaking and screeching and crunching as I walked along the snow-packed roadway.
In a few minutes I was standing on top Egg Hill, enjoying one of my favourite views in the whole world. Only the jack pines and the leafless poplars along the banks revealed the lazy, snow-covered curves of the river, which wound along the bottom of the valley. The river was as white as the flats outside the rim of trees and the prairie that went on forever above the hills. Below the twisting ribbon of white, the water was constantly pushing its way towards the frozen wasteland of the Far North.
The cold air opened my nostrils more than usual. But smells were hard to make out. I guessed again that it was because everything was frozen. The dry cold was making sounds sharper, and clearer, too. I heard the echoes of animal calls, including a coyote whose bark floated up from the valley. I wondered if maybe the bark was from our rescued coyote.
After choosing a spot, I tromped down a place where I could lay out the skis without having them disappear beneath the snow. Quickly taking off my mitts so I wouldn’t freeze my fingers, I fit my overshoes snugly into the bindings. Then I adjusted my toque so that my ears and forehead were covered, and pulled my mitts back on. After finally slipping my wrists through the ski pole straps, I was almost ready for my first truly challenging ski run.
I took a deep breath, pushed with the poles, and slid off the top of the hill.
Like he had done before my water-ski jump nightmare the previous summer, all Uncle Dan told me about snow-skiing was to make sure the bindings were tight and to squat down to keep my body over the centre of the skis. I guessed for myself that leaning too far forward would cause me to crash. I had also already figured out that I should keep the skis side-by-side and not let them cross. But I knew nothing about how to turn.
Within maybe ten yards of pushing off from the top of Egg Hill, I realized that skis went a lot faster than a toboggan. I was out of control. Two streams of snow flew off the pointed tips of my skis, and the spray blinded me. I was in a crouch, but tipping forward and back like I was doing push ups in mid-air. If I had felt the least bit like I knew what I was doing, I might have enjoyed the ride. As it was, I didn’t know what I was doing and I was terrified.
During one of the times I could actually see in front of me, I thought I could make out a hump in the snow coming up fast. I was only a third of the way down the steepest section of the hill, and I knew there were lots of badger and gopher holes ahead.
I later learned on my climb back up the hill that it was a huge, snow-covered clump of sagebrush that eventually got me.
My right ski was the first to fail me as it slid under the hump, and I stopped as dead as if I’d been grabbed by an invisible hand. With a sickening crack, my left ski toed in, and I began to somersault through the air. Since I didn’t feel any pain, I figured it wasn’t my leg I had heard break.
Tumbling and cartwheeling, I ploughed through the snow, my ski bindings tearing loose and leaving my skis to scatter over the hill. Smothered in the cold white stuff, I felt like a hot doughnut rolled in sugar.
I landed head down and face first, and probably would have laid there to make sure that I hadn’t hurt myself, but I needed to breathe. I desperately dug myself out, stood up and shook myself off. Somehow the ski poles had stayed strapped around my wrists. I knew I was lucky one of them hadn’t poked a hole in my gut, or put out an eye. Or, equally, that I hadn’t broken a leg before the skis decided to take off on their own.
Completely pooped, I started trudging back up the hill.
Pieces of ski gear stuck out of the snow. I found the ski that wasn’t broken first. Its binding was a little mangled, with a few of its screws torn out. The other ski lay a bit farther up the hill. The binding on it was in perfect shape, but its tip was broken clean off, the ragged point stuck in the clump of sagebrush that had caused my wreck. Looking back down the hill from there, I figured I must have tumbled over a dozen yards before ending with my puss in the snow.
Feeling fortunate that I hadn’t broken any bones, or hadn’t just up and killed myself, I gathered the bits and pieces of ski gear, and plodded towards home. Along the way, I wondered if Uncle Dan hadn’t purposely given me the skis so I would kill myself. That way he’d get to keep Gramp’s shotgun forever. But surely he couldn’t be that mean.
I was back home within an hour of leaving, just in time to hear Mom and Pearl going at it.
“You never do anything with me,” my little sister accused my mother.
“That isn’t true, Pearl,” Mom came back. “I take you to movies, we go shopping, and we go for walks together.”
“I mean ‘do stuff’, like skating or tobogganing together,” Pearl whined.
“But you don’t know how to skate yet, Sweetie.” Mom had a point.
“And I’ll never learn how if someone doesn’t teach me.” My sister was close to letting loose the tears.
“That’s something that Buddy can do better than I can,” she added. Mom wasn’t a skater. Somehow I’d been sucked into the argument. I needed to nip this thing in the bud. Without thinking, I became a peacemaker.
“Nobody can go skating until the rink is cleared off from last night’s snowfall,” I said, “but I think I’ve got an even better idea. How about we go tobogganing?” I was already dressed for it, and it was a great day, so I figured why not?
“See, Pearl? That’s a great idea. You and Buddy can go tobogganing together.” Mom sounded really relieved.
I knew when I had made the offer that Maisie was out of the picture. Just the day before, Maisie, Pearl and a couple of other girls had been playing on the school swings. Going against everything we kids had ever been told, Maisie had touched the tip of her tongue to one of the steel poles that held up the swings. The rest was painful history.
It happened to kids every year—including to me when I was seven, about the same age as Maisie. They did it mostly because others taunted them, or because curiosity eventually won out. But no matter why it was, kids every winter ended up with their tongues stuck to frozen poles.
Every time it happened on the school swings, whether on a weekend or a holiday, kids raced across the street to the Hoganson place to get help for their friend. As quickly as it took to run a pot of hot water, Mrs. Hoganson performed her magic, pouring the water over Maisie or my or whoever’s tongue and the pipe it was stuck to, warming everything enough for the pipe to let go. Unfortunately, in Maisie’s case a teensy piece of her was left behind.
So, Maisie was housebound for the day, upstairs reading or playing with dolls. Nan told her that the best way for the tiny bare patch on the tip of her tongue to heal was to keep her mouth shut, and the best way for that to happen was to stay upstairs alone where she wouldn’t be tempted to talk.
“No, Mom,” I said in response to her suggestion, “I mean that Pearl, me and you should go tobogganing.”
“Yay! That really is a super idea, Buddy,” screamed Pearl.
Mom protested. “No, I don’t think so.”
An hour later Mom, Pearl and I were standing on Egg Hill with Mokey’s three-seater toboggan, which I had snagged from his place. After much arguing and grumbling, Mom had finally given in, got bundled up and came with us. Pearl, feeling like she now owned the world, had joined me in insisting that we should go down Egg Hill.
Despite my skiing accident, the hill was still my favourite tobogganing run because it was fast and went on forever. Pearl had never been down it before, and while Mom used to take runs as a kid, she said she hadn’t tobogganed in over a dozen years. She told us that the last time she had gone down Egg Hill, there had been a barbed wire fence cutting across the hill, about two-thirds of the way down. Her friend Yvonne Switzer had almost had her head ripped off by it, bailing out just in the nick of time. Even still, it took dozens of stitches to close the wound she got across her throat. Mom said Yvonne was lucky the wire hadn’t cut through a major artery in her neck.
I could tell Mom was nervous when she sat down at the back of the three-seater. Snuggled between Mom’s outstretched legs behind me, Pearl, on the other hand, was as excited as I had ever seen her. Pushing off, I knelt down in front and hung onto each side of the nose of the toboggan, ready to steer.
Pearl and Mom screamed all the way, shrieking in harmony. By the time we finally slowed to a stop on the flats a half-a-mile later, they had been doused by tons of snow. Yet, both of them wanted to do it again, maybe Mom even more so than Pearl. That’s how I knew it was a truly great ride!
When we finally made our way back to the top of the hill, Mom wasn’t quite as keen anymore. Being a smoker, her lungs were screaming, and she warned us that she wouldn’t be able to climb the hill again. This sent Pearl into fits because we had agreed to make at least three runs. Eventually she agreed to just one more—and to wait five minutes to let our mother catch her breath.
Mom sat in the snow, breathing deeply. I was glad she hadn’t brought along her cigarettes. I figured she might light up while we were waiting.
When she had rested, we were off again.
As it would be our last run, I chose a steeper part of the hill in hopes of getting even a better ride, and immediately we were rocketing down the slope. Screams from the females behind me echoed throughout the river valley.
It wasn’t a big bump, probably just a gopher hole, but when we hit it, it launched us. I heard a different kind of squeal behind me, and I looked back to see both of Mom’s feet in the air, the desperate grip she had on the ropes down both sides of the toboggan being the only thing keeping her onboard. She was screeching like a scalded cat. Pearl had managed to stay firmly anchored behind me, and was sporting the biggest grin I had ever seen glued to her face.
It was the second, bigger bump—likely a badger hole—that did us in. We lost Mom right away. Pearl disappeared from the toboggan soon after. Realizing that I had lost my cargo, I bailed out and rolled over, taking the toboggan with me.
When I stood up, I shook and patted the snow off me. Digging it out of my ears and from down my neck took a little longer. I looked back up the hill to discover we had only made it halfway down.
Pearl was already on her feet, jumping up and down twenty-five yards above me, her giggles making me laugh too. Mom was probably the same distance above Pearl, but she wasn’t laughing. Instead, she was plodding uphill, planting one foot slowly in front of the other. I set off after her.
Mom was wheezing badly as we reached the top, her body coated in snow. Frosty the Snowman came to mind.
“You did that on purpose, Buddy Williams,” she accused me.
I swore I hadn’t, but that didn’t stop her from stomping off in a huff, heading for home. Pearl and I decided to make one more run before following her. After a last great ride, we made some perfect snow angels.
It only took The Three Musketeers and a few more trusty knaves a couple of hours to get the ice on the school rink cleared off later that afternoon. Even with the usual breaks for a few snowball fights, which we could get away with on school grounds on weekends when Army wouldn’t catch us, we made short work of cleaning the snow off the skating rink. Mounds of snow four feet deep were piled up outside the sheet of ice. The boys in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades were expected to clear a new snowfall from the rink within two days. We worked on the honour system. We were never paid for clearing the snow, or got any special favours in school, but we got to use the ice like everyone else from our neighbourhood did.
Our plywood scrapers had 2” x 2” handles, and easily pushed the light layer of snow to the sides, especially if the pushers wore skates and could dig in as they went. The last task was to use our scoop shovels to toss the piled-up snow over the sides. Twelve-foot-long planks, which formed the edge of the ice surface, were held by spikes partly driven into the ground. Our rink had no other “boards” around it, not like those around the indoor rink. The planks came together in square corners, with no curves around the ends of our homemade outdoor arena. At either end of our two blue lines, four poles with electric cables strung between them were connected to a power box. Each cable had four light bulbs dangling from it to make night skating possible. A switch on the side of the metal box let the last skater turn out the lights.
Our gang was so good at our rink clearing that I had time to take a longer route on my way home to shovel off Gramma Davis’s sidewalks. The almost-blind old lady invited me in for milk and cookies, but I got out of it by promising that I would drop by one night in the coming week to play Canasta. Her brief disappointment turned to happiness when she realized she was soon going to enjoy her favourite pastime.
Riel, Mokey and I were back at the rink skating up a storm as soon as we could gulp down supper. Smooth ice made the practice drills that our hockey coach had put us through more fun. Even though I wasn’t playing league games anymore, thanks to smacking my head on the ice, I could still enjoy the sport. Mokey tried to defend against Riel and me, but never stood a chance. He couldn’t skate backwards worth a darn.
As usual, we only got to play with sticks and pucks at night until girls or adults showed up. Sure enough, a half-an-hour after we got there, Dorothy Badgely and Oksana Semaniuk arrived. They laced up their figure skates and laughed their way around the rink. Within another half-hour, a dozen guys and girls from the neighbourhood joined in. Even a few adults came to skate.
Riel and I started racing each other, dodging and weaving between skaters as we zipped and zoomed around the rink. Each time we flew by Dorothy, Riel came so close she would scream and giggle. The previous winter, Dorothy had become Riel’s first girlfriend. But they only went out for a few walks, and together took in a couple of movies. A month later when they both agreed to call it quits, Riel said that it just wasn’t in the cards—whatever that meant.
Dorothy was standing alone beside the makeshift boards when we raced by on another pass. This time I was closest to her, and as we came nearer, Riel, who was on the inside of me, body-checked me right into her. The force made Dorothy and I fly into the snowbank along the edge of the rink, ending up in a jumble of arms and legs.
“Sorry, Dorothy,” I said right away, looking down at her pretty face. I was so close to her that I was glad I had brushed my teeth after I ate. “Riel made me. He checked me into you. Are you okay?”
Her surprised look switched to a smile. “Sure. It was fun.” She laughed as I dug her out of the snow. We went back to skating separately.
Every open-skate night had to include a few rounds of Crack The Whip. On the first round the “whip” had about a dozen bodies in it, and I got to “crack” it.
By the third round of the game I was at the end of the whip, with Dorothy in front of me in line. Riel was doing the cracking. Dorothy had the grip of a grizzly bear so hanging onto her hand was easy. Unfortunately, Oksana in front of her couldn’t hold on like Dorothy could.
It was Riel’s third crack at cracking the whip that made Oksana lose hold of Dorothy’s hand and sent Dorothy and me tumbling into the snow once more.
We came up laughing again.
Asking her for a couple of turns around the rink just popped out of my mouth.
“Why not?” she giggled.
It was on the second go-around that I started to realize how really pretty she was. The blonde hair poking out from under her blue toque made a perfect frame for natural pink lips, a cute tiny nose, and bright blue eyes. I couldn’t help noticing that those eyes sparkled, and it may have been that sparkle that made me reach out to hold her hand. A smile come across my face when she let me.
In addition to being thankful for having brushed my teeth, I was happy that I had wet my hair before combing it. The water added a bit of a wave to the front of my red mop. I perched my toque on the back of my head, which I thought made me look my best.
On our third circuit, we were still holding hands and laughing a lot when I looked around for my buddies and discovered that they had gone. With school in the morning and Mokey having to be home early, I figured Riel had decided to take off with Mokey when he left. Oksana seemed to have also bugged off. Even though everyone was gone, Dorothy and I were getting along so well that I just kept skating round and round.
Finally Dorothy said she should be thinking of getting home, so I helped her off with her skates and tugged my way out of mine. It felt good to get them off. With both her skates and mine dangling from my hockey stick, and the stick balanced on my shoulder, we headed down the road. Somewhere during our walk from the rink to the auto court, where Dorothy’s parents rented a half-dozen tiny cabins to travelling salesmen, I took her hand again.
Under the street lamp on the corner near her place, she looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. I didn’t want our night to end. It just came to me to ask her to wander over to Egg Hill, which was less than a block from where she lived. I dropped our skates and my stick beside the driveway that led into the auto court. We laughed as we made and threw snowballs in the moonlight, the big moon guiding us to the hill. I hoped the Northern Lights, which had been showing off lately, would make themselves seen again.
When we got to Egg Hill and looked out toward the valley, it was kind of spooky in the moonlight. But then, almost on cue, the Aurora Borealis—Nature’s winter fireworks—started exploding above us. We laid ourselves down on our backs beside each other on the snowy slope and watched the show, our breaths making puffs of steam that floated upwards into the icy cold.
As we stared up, Dorothy was the first to speak, “Holy cow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Northern Lights dance more brightly.”
Electric green neon ribbons flashed across the dark sky. And then, like a feisty wind blowing without mercy through a ripe wheat field, the green curtains began sliding and gliding across the heavens. I swore I could hear sizzles and pops, and told Dorothy I did. She said she didn’t, but I wondered if the lights played a certain kind of music that only some people could hear. The air around us never smelled stronger and sweeter and more full of life. I hoped this might be what it was like to be drunk.
We followed jagged lines of green that once in awhile were tinged with pink, purple and blue, only to have our stares ripped away by yet new brilliant outbursts. We were so in awe that we almost lost sight of the pulsing, twinkling blanket of stars that popped and hopped from a black velvet backdrop. Dorothy brought my attention to some she could name. If ever anything described the word magical, it was what I was seeing above me.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Dorthy asked quietly beside me.
Instead of answering her, I rolled over and kissed her. I hadn’t planned it, but something inside my head must have told me it was okay to try. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Her lips had looked so natural, so pink, so inviting, and I found out quickly that they were also warm and soft. For the few seconds we were connected, I thought I tasted juicy fruit gum. It tasted good, and she smelled great. Everything felt so outstanding, it made me all tingly.
It was her “Mmmm” that woke me out of my daze.
I had also run out of breath, so I drew back, only to realize that my nose was running. I could tell from the salty taste leaking over my top lip that it wasn’t the wetness that comes with a bad cold, just the kind your nose lets go when it’s cold out. Still, it was icky, and I wiped my upper lip with the back of my mitt quickly. I worried for a second that Dorothy might think I was wiping off her kiss, but then I realized this might actually have been better than the truth. In the dim moonlight, I was suddenly sure Dorothy knew exactly what I was doing, because I saw her wipe away my mess from her face too.
As my heart sank, I was at least relieved that Dorothy couldn’t see my all-too-familiar red blush racing up my neck and over my face. I knew my leaking nose had ruined the moment.
All I could think to say was, “I guess we’d better be getting home.”
“I suppose,” she answered.
Above us, the Northern Lights disappeared, as if someone had turned off a switch. Just as quickly, my first romance vanished with them.
When I walked into our classroom the next morning, Dorothy was surrounded by a clutch of girls that was non-stop giggling. That is, until they broke out in laughter that sounded like donkeys braying. Oksana pointed at me over Dorothy’s shoulder as I entered the room, and when the bunch of them turned to look, the whole group started laughing again, even louder.
Dorothy was obviously spilling the beans about my runny nose betraying me the night before. My blush started to rise, so I made a detour into the cloakroom. Riel and Mokey showed up behind me while I was taking off my overshoes and hanging up my coat. I was happy to have allies arriving.
“Where’d you guys get to last night?” I asked.
Neither answered right away, and I knew something was wrong when Mokey looked at me with a sad face. Riel’s look was nasty and was made a lot worse by what he had to say.
“Go to hell, you traitor,” he blurted out, spinning around and storming out of the cramped room.
“Waddjya have to go and do it for, Buddy?” Mokey’s voice sounded more like he was accusing me than asking a question.
I guessed that Riel was mad at me for only holding hands with Dorothy. I doubted he had heard yet that I kissed her, too, but I knew he would find out soon enough. Mokey looked away, hung his coat glumly and disappeared after my angry best friend.
I could only hope Riel wouldn’t stay mad at me for long.