Dink the Thinker is fidgeting around my wagon. His foxy face is all over the place. He’s moving the trash pail, picking up the salt and putting it down, dropping a drop of vinegar on his finger and licking it, staring at my customers while they wait for their orders to come out, sighing when they can’t find their money, rolling his eyes when another customer shows up, counting the funny-looking vegetables in the boxes lined along Somerset Street in front of the Mekong Grocery, kicking the tires of my truck.
I know what’s wrong with Dink the Thinker. He’s got something important to tell me. He can hardly wait. And I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to make me guess what it is that he can’t wait to tell me.
He takes my picture with his imaginary camera.
It’s lunchtime and Somerset Street is busy. My wagon is in front of the Mekong Grocery. Down Somerset Street there is Pacific Video, the Sunshine Coin Wash, Valentino’s Strip Club, Vietnamese Sub, Chinese Traditional Acupuncture and Hong Kong Computers.
Up Somerset Street there’s the Shahi Tandi Indian Cuisine, the Bangkok Grocery, the Noodle Express Restaurant, Mee Fung Pastry, the Chinese Fashion Corner. Then Bell Street and Arthur Street and the Hong Kong Beauty Salon where Connie Pan works part time.
Dink the Thinker can’t wait. Even though there’s two customers waiting. Dink can’t.
“Guess who I saw going into Valentino’s?” says Dink. Valentino’s is just down Somerset Street across from the Lao Thai Grocery and Fax store. In Valentino’s, while you’re eating your lunch or drinking beer, a woman will climb up on your table and take all her clothes off.
One time last summer, Dink and I ran in the front door of Valentino’s and out the back door while the waiters ran all around trying to catch us. We were in there just long enough for our eyes to get used to the dark.
Men sitting at tables drinking beer and women with no clothes on dancing on the tables.
Well, not exactly no clothes on, Dink the Thinker said; they had shoes on. And one of them had glasses on.
Dink always has to get everything exactly right. Like, if you said to him one day in November, “Look Dink, all the leaves are off the trees,” he’d probably say. “Well, not exactly. There’s one leaf hanging on to the top of that maple tree, see, over there?”
“Come on, guess,” says Dink. “Guess who I saw going into Valentino’s?”
“Dumper Stubbs,” I guess.
“Wrong,” says Dink. “Guess again.”
“Mr. Fryday,” I guess again.
“Wrong,” says Dink. “Guess again.”
The thing about Dink is that even though he can’t wait to tell you, he’ll make you guess all day long unless you force him to tell you or bribe him.
“Captain James T. Kirk of the Star Ship Enterprise,” I say.
“Wrong. Guess again.”
“Control agent Maxwell Smart. I don’t know, Dink. Tell me. Who?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“How would you like one order of Beethoven’s Classical Fries, on the house?”
“Sold. On the wagon, you mean.”
Picky picky. On the house. On the wagon. Sometimes Dink the Thinker can bug you.
“It was your favorite teacher, the famous hot shot, Mr. Boyle,” says Dink. “I took his picture. It was perfect. Imagine, if I had a real camera?”
I give him the fries and pretend to take his money because a customer is coming.
Funny how you’re always surprised when you hear of a teacher doing stuff like drinking beer and getting naked women to stand on his table. Or you hear of priests doing stuff. It can sort of make you sick.
All of a sudden something comes rushing into my head. I can see myself standing outside Valentino’s when Mr. Boyle comes out. And guess what I see myself, hear myself say to him? I say, “You do that at home all the time.” Sort of like on “Jeopardy!” The answer first. And then Boyle gives the question. “Do what at home?”
“Get women with no clothes on to stand on the table while you’re sitting there drinking beer.”
It’s one of those things that you have to imagine because it never happens. Who ever gets to pay back his teacher like that?
Who ever gets to catch the teacher, who got him kicked out of school, coming out of a place where women take off all their clothes except their shoes and stand on his table while he’s drinking beer?
I change the subject. I tell Dink all about yesterday’s E.S.L. volleyball game and how all the players liked Connie Pan the way she did everything. I don’t tell Dink all about how I liked Connie Pan the way she did everything magic with the net and the whistle and her printing on the aprons and the invisible ball and her little hands and her cute nose and my big nose that her mother said made all Canadians look the same.
Now, my regular customers start coming around; the waiter with the piece out of his ear from the Nha Hang Vietnam Restaurant just down the street and the owner of the Wah Shing Gifts and Pots Store across the street and another regular customer, the doctor from the Acupuncture Clinic who always wears the straw hat and the girl from Asia Video across the street and the guy who sets up the balls at the Vietnamese Pool Hall, who looks like his pants are going to fall down any minute now.
Then along comes Connie Pan on her lunch break from her part-time job up at the Hong Kong Beauty Salon and right away Dink can’t wait to tell her who he saw going into Valentino’s for lunch today.
“Guess who I saw going into Valentino’s today,” he says to Connie Pan.
For some reason or other I don’t want Dink to start talking about that in front of Connie Pan. Maybe it’s because she’d be embarrassed or shy about a subject like that or maybe it’s because I don’t want Dink to tell her that we ran through there last summer with the waiters chasing us, just to see what it was like. I don’t want Connie Pan to know I did that.
So I change the subject.
I start telling Connie Pan and Dink and the guy from the Bangkok Grocery up the street, who is standing around eating his fries, all about Mr. Fryday’s song and how he wants it to go on TV and on the radio. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is on, the Second Movement, playing nice and quiet. I’ve got it turned down low.
We’re having a very nice time.
Then I start telling them all about how when Mr. Fryday first started in the chip business he parked his wagon right in front of a restaurant on Rideau Street and got into big trouble with everybody. What happened was, people were buying potato chips from Mr. Fryday’s wagon and then taking them into the restaurant and sitting there with a glass of water and eating the chips. They were even using the restaurant’s salt and vinegar which was on the table, and, like the owner was shouting to the cops after, even using his ketchup and his serviettes and his forks!
So the owner started kicking the people out of his restaurant and a fight started out on the street because the owner pushed one of them and spilled her chips on the sidewalk and she said the restaurant guy should buy her some new chips because she hardly had eaten any of them. And he said she only had a few left in the bottom and her boyfriend said are you pushing my girlfriend and punched the restaurant guy in the mouth. Then Mr. Fryday got out of his wagon and the dishwasher from the restaurant and two waiters came out and a big brawl started and Mr. Fryday had his pants ripped right off him. And somebody threw a restaurant ashtray through the window of Mr. Fryday’s truck. And a bunch of punkers came out of the Video Arcade next door and were rocking Mr. Fryday’s wagon trying to tip it over when the cop cars came screaming up.
That’s why Mr. Fryday never parks in front of a restaurant. There’s all kinds of restaurants in Chinatown on Somerset Street in Ottawa and Mr. Fryday’s wagon is parked between them, not in front of any of them.
I give Connie Pan a loonie and ask her to feed the meter for me.
I like the way she takes the loonie in between her thumb and forefinger and slips it in the meter. Then twists the handle.
We’re having a nice time.
But, all of a sudden everything is ruined.
Because here comes Dumper Stubbs in his filthy truck with the big ugly steel bumper on the front to pick up the trash.
When he dumps my trash he hits the can against his grease barrel and it makes a dull, heavy clunking sound.
It’s like my dad used to say. You’re having a lovely garden party and a skunk shows up!
After everybody leaves it gets quiet and I start Beethoven’s Fifth at the beginning of the First Movement.
Purple clouds are rolling in and the sky coming over from the west is black. There’s a wind blowing dirt and papers up in the air. A woman goes by holding her veil with one hand and her long dress with the other.
For the first two movements of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 to play on my disc player in my wagon it takes exactly seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds.
Exactly seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds after I start Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, I see Mr. Boyle coming up the street from Valentino’s towards my wagon. As he gets closer I can see he’s staggering a bit. The wind is giving him a bad time. The kind of wind you get in the hot summer after a long heat wave and before a big storm on Somerset Street in Chinatown in Ottawa.
I can tell he’s not going to see me here in my wagon. He’s going to walk right by. Unless I do something.
I turn up the volume until I figure the noodles on the shelves in the Mekong Grocery must be trembling.
Then, just as he’s passing my window, I shut Beethoven completely down. The jolt snaps his head around but he still can’t see me.
I shout. I shout the answer.
“You do that at home all the time!”
He stops but he still doesn’t seem to know where the voice is coming from.
I shout again.
“You do that at home all the time!”
He looks right at me in my wagon.
There’s steam swirling around me in the window. He’s squinting a bit. There’s thunder rumbling. The thunder crashes. The crash seems to open his eyes. He sees me now. He figures out who it is. He figures out what I’m saying.
I crank the Beethoven up as far as I can without blowing my speakers.
“How are the naked women doing today? At Valentino’s. The naked women on the tables. How are they today?”
His whole face changes. His teacher’s face grows over his real face. I can see his face changing, just like you see sometimes in a movie, a man’s face changing right before your eyes! Trick photography!
“Sweetgrass!” he shouts. “John Sweetgrass! I didn’t know you worked in a chipwagon! How long have you worked in a chipwagon? Maybe I should buy some chips from you!”
I hate the sound of my name when it comes out of Boyle’s mouth.
I shout.
“We’re not getting off on the wrong foot are we!”
The last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth is crashing away.
The sky dumps a lake of rain on us. A bolt of lightning stabs into Somerset Street in front of the Chinese Clinic.
Mr. Boyle is suddenly soaking wet. His shirt is hanging wet over his ugly beer gut. His face is red and he’s spitting spit and rain. He’s shouting something at me. Something, something “you punk!”
Something, something “you punk!”
“We’re closed!” I shout, and slam shut the window.
The two magic words, followed by “you punk!” The first word is the one used in the same way in every language on earth by everybody, according to Dink the Thinker.
The other word is “you.”
It takes exactly eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds for Beethoven to get through the Fourth Movement of Symphony No. 5.
It takes about the same time to fill Somerset Street with a roaring river of rain in a wild summer storm.
I turn the keys in the ignition and switch on the wipers. The wagon is fogged in. I have to clear a space on the windshield with my hand so I can watch the storm.
The rain is roaring down Somerset Street from up around the Yangtze Restaurant. It’s a swollen, slashing, swirling river of rain, sucking down the storm sewers and filling the roadway up over the curbs.
Beethoven is competing with the thunder and lightning. The rain is whipping from the sky like a vicious curtain in the wind. The signs of the shops of Chinatown are lifting and bending and swinging and rattling and screaming.
The water is roaring down past Jasmine’s Sports Bar and the Golden River Restaurant, past the Caisse Populaire St. Jean Baptiste Chinese Bank, past the Somerset Heights Community Police Center over Lebreton Street, past the International Driving School, the Chinese Typesetters, the Asia Pizza, over Booth Street, past the India Food Center, the Reggae Club, the Sun Ming Meat and Seafood Company and under my wagon.
Dresses that were hanging outside the Indian Fashions Shop are flying over the chimneys like witches.
A box of funny-looking vegetables floats by.
The stoplight at Booth Street is swinging wild like a broken lighthouse in a typhoon.
The guy at the Bangkok Grocery is trying to drag a box of cabbages into his store. The wind catches his door and it smashes back against his live-fish tank. The tank collapses and smashes. The fish swim out the door and take off down Somerset Street. A huge carp swims past my wagon.
Free at last!
Some smashed flat Chinese ducks float around in a whirlpool over a storm sewer.
A chain of lightning splits the street and an explosion of thunder knocks Chinatown in half.
Beethoven’s in his big finish and the timpani drums are pounding and the cymbals are crashing and the horns are blowing and howling and the fiddles are racing away and the rain is slashing down and Chinatown is floating.
All of a sudden it stops. I open my window.
There is only light rain falling.
Beethoven’s not finished, though. He’s in his last minute of his Fifth Symphony. Boom! Boom! Boom!
Beethoven wins! What a way to do a storm!
There’s no sign of Mr. Boyle. Maybe he’s been sucked down a sewer.
I wish!