THE FIRST APARTMENT.
Arlo came into the snack bar with a big silver tea tray, came up to me as I was sketching and asked if I wanted to buy it—then taking a look over his shoulder he picked up the silver tea tray, nodded goodbye and rushed out the back door. In came Constable Furlong:
“Did you see Arlo?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have a silver tea tray?”
“I’m not sure.”
“He stoled it from a wedding,” Furlong said. He gave me a quizzically angered look, and out he went after him, down over the hard embankment toward Arron and watched as Arlo started wading across with the tea tray above his head.
“Arlo—put the tea tray down or you will drown. I am not going in after you—that is rough water—I can’t swim and I am not going in after you, you little sawed-off prick. Put the tea tray down or turn around now and come back.”
“I’m about to lose my balance, Constable Furlong—”
“Put the goddamn tea tray down—”
“Stop yelling! I am trying to turn around—it is difficult conditions—stop yelling or it’s your fault.”
“I am not yelling—”
“I am not losing this tea tray—I almost had a buyer for it.”
“It is not your tea tray, Arlo.”
“It is very difficult conditions here—very difficult conditions—so if I drown it is your fault!”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
Arlo turned and came back, dropped the tea tray and ran, so Constable Furlong, well over two hundred pounds and only five foot seven, could not catch him.
Constable Furlong was our only village constable here (there was supposed to be two for the village of Arron Side) and he tried to do his job. Arlo and Arnie were trouble for him. Living in the white apartment building with their simple-minded mother and their sister Mary Lou they were constantly snatching things. But both of them were likeable. And Oscar Peterson liked both of them and tried as best he could with them, especially after he began to hang out with Mary. But even before then he had a soft spot for them, gave them work in his hay field or yard, some days buying them Dixie Lee fried chicken.
Arlo and Arnie had razor-sharp, almost photographic memories—and this came into play in many ways. They knew the combination of every lock in our stores along here, knew the exact key for any truck in the Forestry lot, knew every television show or newscast, and what time it would be on, at any time of week. Knew to the minute when Constable Furlong would make his traumatic tour in his old second-hand paddy wagon—had it down to the minute. They knew what guards were at the asbestos plant, where they would be at any time of night, and they could open the tool shed or the machine shop or any of the trucks at will. And they did all of this as a lark, not to injure or hurt anyone, but simply because they could, and they made up contests for each other.
One contest came the day after they saw a milkshake being made at the centre snack bar. They spoke of how it was made almost the entire day. And then:
“Arlo.”
“Yes.”
“Get up—get dressed, hot-wire one of the Raskin trucks, go into town, sneak into the centre snack bar, make two cheeseburgers—and—”
“And?”
“And a milkshake—chocolate—and get back here by—3:25 and you win.”
“What time is it now?”
“Two o’clock.”
“What do I win?”
“My undying respect.”
“What else?”
“You like those cowboy boots—you can have my tan leather boots. But if you don’t get back in time, I take—”
“What?”
“Your transistor radio. And your pillow—I get your good pillow. That’s if you don’t get back. But think, think—cowboy boots.”
“I need 3:40”
“Okay—3:40. Go now!”
And this was done almost to perfection, except the milkshake wasn’t as chocolaty as Arnie preferred and he did mention this in passing.
Many said Arnie was smarter, but it was almost impossible to tell. Both were brilliant little minds who lived on a dustbin heap at the edge of Arron Side—farther away from the main Arron Brook than any other dwelling, certainly miles from any other apartment—a desolate affair where one would question the wisdom of putting four families together, isolated from all else around.
But the Raskins had built it for company men, who came with their families and never lived there but went to the new apartment complex upriver. So these apartments were rented to those who had nowhere else to go and little money to take them. Most were on some sort of societal aid; more than a few had been in small-time trouble. Their heroes were all darker than them—that is, their heroes had disobeyed the moral law of the world, and managed to say it was a moral surety to do so. A few did work for the Raskins, but drifted in and out over the years.
This is where they were left alone, because their mother worked at the asbestos plant doing laundry in the big industrial machine, and walked out of the blue laundry room in the evening toward the Gall Road that took her toward the apartment.
It was where young Mary Lou tried her best to dress them, and keep them clean, but she was a child wanderer as well.
It was mid-June of a particular year when they were awoken by a party, out in the hall, and stood at the door in their underwear listening to unfamiliar voices of men and women, and saw under the weak parking floodlight a giant convertible car that to those two children was a strange emblem of success.
The two of them had just stolen the questions for the math and social studies exams from Sister Beazley and had been up late looking them over.
“Pretty breezy exams, I would say, Arlo.”
“Pretty breezy, Arnie—but can Mary Lou pass it?” (Mary Lou had already missed two grades, and was back with them.)
“I will sit beside her—”
“Yes, but sitting beside her is no guarantee.”
They had not slept very long when the noise from the street climbed the stairs and became bedlam outside their apartment. This had often happened, but tonight it seemed different. It did not go away, it did not diminish. And there was some insistence in the yelling that said, “We are the young who demand to be heard, in spite of law or order.” That is what it said. Who this noise was addressed to was anyone who disagreed with the premise.
It was dark and silent and very hot in their living room, with only one light from the fish tank they shared.
“What do you think we should do, then?” Arlo said, wearing tan leather cowboy boots, even when he was in bed, so every night Arnie was reminded what he had lost when he looked over and saw the toes of the boots pointed in the air.
“I think we should go out and see them—and tell them we are in bed, and that we are waiting for our mother and have a social studies exam. And that there is no need at all to wake us at this godawful hour.”
“Yes, that’s sure to wise them up,” Arlo said.
But just then someone banged on the door and the both of them ran into the kitchen and stood behind the small breakfast bar.
“Ya, so what you want?” Arlo said.
“Is Donna there?” came a voice.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Out and about,” Arnie said. “Who are you?”
There was silence.
Then, “I’m your long-lost cousin.”
He asked to be let in, this cousin, and Arlo went to go to the door, but Arnie held him back.
“Come back tomorrow—”
But just as he said this, there was a kerfuffle and Mary Lou said: “Hey, let me in—Arnie—Arlo—”
And a loud laugh.
“Hey boys, your pretty sister is out here—with all us wolves.”
And the boys, those dearly loved little specimens, who lived in the smallest of apartments in this white clapboard building, opened the door to someone who couldn’t love, because they loved their sister.
His name was Stroud. He was dark-complected. He had been out of jail for three weeks, and drunk almost every night.
He was Arnie’s and Arlo’s long-lost cousin, fourth removed. But he was a closer relation to Oscar Peterson who he never liked. Oscar was older, and once in a while babysat him as a boy. He tried to get him to stay in school. He bought him a red bookbag with a leather strap that Mel sold. He bought him a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, socks and shoes, and Mel had sold them all.
Stroud didn’t like Oscar’s old-fashioned ways—and ridiculed him incessantly, mocked him when he saw him.
Everyone in this community knew Mel Stroud’s name. Feared this name. He liked the idea of people pointing to him and saying: “There he is—Mel Stroud.” He liked it too when people called him dangerous. He liked the idea of being dangerous—and having cars stop for him so he could cross the street anywhere he wanted in our small village. He liked his mother imploring people to pay no attention to what others said, that he was a good man much misunderstood.
He liked the pretence of being a good man misunderstood because of his having a rough life. He liked it when people said he had a rough life and he would smile sadly as if he knew he could not describe the pain, but didn’t want to anyway, for their sakes. He was always giving testimony about his youth, about all the people he had helped, and about the men he had fought. But sometimes, in noticing his eyes one saw a glint of desperate resentment that no citation could quell.
The absolute disregard for Raskin Enterprises, his fury at anyone who had something, was increasingly obvious over the years. Or he especially disliked someone who worked for something.
By sheer happenstance and luck, this night would lead to Albert Raskin himself.
The criminal element cannot be underestimated in any movement toward political or economic change.
Mel came to their apartment because some four years before he had loaned their mother Donna Toomey three hundred dollars so she could move here and take up residence, after their father died—and he now had remembered this money. He needed it back. When he came in, it was almost as dark as ink. He walked over to the fish tank, and combed his hair under the white tank light while looking at the small tiger fish, and said:
“Boys, it will be great to see your mommy again. Did she ever mention me?”
No one knows how it happened, except perhaps for Oscar Peterson, who finally went to the police; but presently Arnie and Arlo were seen running errands, driving in the back seat of the huge Pontiac Coupe de Ville, so that only their heads were visible. And soon their names became familiar as the youngsters to go to if you needed something from Mr. Mel Stroud. For he had cards printed that said just that: Mr. Mel Stroud, advocate for rights of the individual.
These rights had to do with the marijuana laws at the time. Or so people said. And the boys had cards printed as well: Arnie and Arlo, consultants.
Mel had a lifetime of misconduct, but had taken everything he could from the idea of being a target.
“They target me—no one else—Furlong targeted me many times—and up in Newcastle and Chatham it was worse—so I have a lot to forgive, lot to forgive.” He told this to the young boys one afternoon, as they were driving around in his second-hand Coupe de Ville.
He looked and acted as a rural boy gone urban, with that cologne he preferred, the hair always neat, the shirts well pressed, the jeans with a crease. He thought these little boys were nuisances, wanting to sit in his car, playing with the eight-track, trying all the buttons, looking under the hood checking the wiring and the plugs. But he desperately liked Mary Lou, and as he often said about girls, something that came from some small thought: “Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher.”
This was the same thing Shane Stroud said.
This prurient ideal showed in his bold stare and his slick pants and high boots, the three rings on his fingers and his dull lack of appreciation of the glory of the world.
Little did any of these people know—Albert, his mother, a woman called Henrietta, a woman named Faye Sackville and Mel Stroud—that someday one cap of mescaline would link them all together on the bridge where young Annie Howl fell, link them together in a way none of them would wish.
So these boys were nuisances. Yet Mel one day suddenly realized that these boys were more than boys, they were brilliant little fellows—never forgetting who came in and out of the apartment, never once losing track of Constable Furlong. Not once forgetting a penny during a negotiation over anything their mother bought, from groceries to a toaster. In fact it was these boys who held the money, handed it out to their mom or their sister as the need arose, paid the bills, worried about the heating and lights, argued with the superintendent when he happened to come around. They were the ones who fixed Mary Lou’s bicycle, helped her with her homework, washed the clothes, fed their fish, cleaned the fish tank, took care of the three stray cats. They were the ones who ran a lemonade stand near the asbestos mine, sold sandwiches to truckers, baloney and tuna fish.
Soon with the same innocence and perspicacious thrift they were selling amphetamines to the truckers, Dexedrine and Benzedrine, had them in little packages of seven, and had hashish and marijuana, had names and addresses they kept in their little heads, and each bought a new pair of blue jeans, and a cowboy hat.
They were capping mescaline, and had bought Mary Lou her own stereo record player for her room. They were children, and did not know that these might be harmful things. They in fact had been infatuated with the idea that it was only people like Constable Furlong who might be upset with ingredients like these, and it was harmless enterprise.
“A new generation has finally come,” Mel told them. He said this with the tone, the manner of a visionary, putting hash on a pin, as fine as an idealistic boy.
“A new generation—yes of course,” Arnie said, “that’s what it is.”
“What does Jerry owe us, Arlo?”
“Thirty-seven dollars and ninety-eight cents.”
“You have that list of buyers?”
“In my head.”
“In your head—who can vouch for your head?”
“Arnie will vouch for my head—he has the same list in his head too.”
So they would sew the pills under their cowboy hats, and in their coats, and tuck them in their boots. And no one was nicer than Mel. No one was kinder, no one more perspicacious, no one less demanding. Sometimes his brother Shane would come around, and pick up some ingredients to sell.
“The fixins,” Arlo would say.
The one man concerned about all of this, the one who in the best way he could stood up to Mel Stroud and Shane Stroud, was Oscar.
But now Oscar had the love of his life to take care of, Mary Lou Toomey. Yes, he was much older than she was, but she had never had a chance. She came to him one night some years before, and said she was in trouble. She didn’t even know what sex was really—but she was with two or three boys, down at the beach, and now she was in trouble. And her mother had told her the year before, “You get your arse in trouble you are on your own,” and so here she was, worried and desperate.
“Then I will take care of you—and the child,” Oscar said. This was not unreasonable since Oscar had tried to take care of her and the boys for ten years.
And so as if to have a white wedding, at the age of sixteen she moved to live with Oscar Peterson.
“She shouldn’t be there,” Mel complained to Donna, “she should be here in the apartment—that child should have been decently aborted and she should be home. Bring her home and I will take care of her.” Then he left the table. He spoke sorrowfully about the sorrow of women, as fine and as decent as anyone could, or would. As fine as a writer of popular novels.
“No, I don’t want no peach cobbler,” he said with sad moral discretion. “I waited for it all day—but now I don’t think I want no peach cobbler at all.”
In that distant time, when things like this were more common, people still remembered the little girl in a maternity smock, sitting on a wooden chair, husking corn near a pile of truck tires, living with Oscar Peterson. Everyone thought he had knocked her up, and everyone whispered about it. But she was sixteen, the age of consent. And what they did not know is that Oscar had not and would never sleep with her. But knowing she was not bright—knowing she was the object of lust and stupidity—he would protect her.
What they did not know was Oscar would never in his life have sex—though he tried once, and shook so bad, and teared up so much, he never tried again. The First Nations woman he had tried to have sex with, a woman who cared for him, finally put her arms around him and held him as he cried.
But Oscar knew what the boys were doing, her little brothers packed with brains.
So it was Oscar who asked to see Mel. He had to see him, was in fact compelled by some feeling—some secondary foreboding that came over him whenever he heard the name of that young cousin.
The meeting happened at the trailer, sometime in August of that year, and Oscar proposed that Mel leave the Toomey family alone and he would pay him money. Mel paid no attention to this request. Then he stood and patted who he called “Old Oscar” on his hard and bony shoulder, but he kept his hand there, squeezing the shoulder hard, so Oscar winced, but pretended he didn’t feel it.
“And what are you going to do, play hockey with that boy? Build him a rink? Come on, you know nothing at all about children—you shouldn’t be allowed to have one. Besides that, I will steal Mary Lou from you—you’re just an old man.” Then he laughed as if it was a joke.
When Oscar told Mary Lou to stay away from Mel she said, at that time, that she hated Mel Stroud, and would have nothing to do with him, and didn’t like the way he looked at her.
Oscar was relieved about that, and went outside and pitched horseshoes. Mary Lou sat inside the trailer listening to the sound of the horseshoes clink.
Poor Oscar, she did love him at that time, but he could, poor Oscar, not make love. But poor Oscar was no fool. He discovered what had happened to Mary Lou, little by little—backtracking until he discovered a burnt-out shore fire, too many drinks of wine, a trip up the back entrance of a big white cottage, two boys hauling a local girl by her arms up to the spare bedroom with its seashells and white walls, and there having their way with her with four or five younger boys standing around the bed.
And when he discovered that, to keep it as quiet as possible, the father, a judge in our local court, and his wife, who had connections with an MP, Oscar was given what was generally given in those days to young girls in trouble, six hundred dollars.
Oscar stood in the doorway of that white cottage, with Mary Lou beside him, in the soft heat of the day, with the foyer leading to the back stairs, looking domestically summerlike with the sunlight on the white banister, where she had been carried up that night, the boys taking her pants off her as they went.
Oscar always frightened to enter such a grand place, stood ashamed—not in the way he was dressed, like the country bumpkin he was, and not in the way he spoke, the sputtering hope of a rural man trying to protect a ragamuffin child, and washed out by upper-middle-class silence—but he was ashamed of the earth itself and of those who stood before him with the smell of flowers and damp earth in large pots outside. They were the Lampkey family from the south side of the river.
The little girl went back to the trailer with him, that long-ago day, pregnant with six hundred dollars in her hand.
“That’s a whole lot of money,” she said, hopefully. “I’m going to give some to Mom. And,” she added, “I want a rabbit. Oscar, can I get a pet rabbit?”
Her delivery was difficult. Arlo and Arnie, her mom and Oscar were there. Oscar, six foot three inches, with short cropped hair, half-mad eyes and a bouquet of yellow roses, the boys sitting in cowboy hats and jean jackets, and their mother unable to keep silent but talking to everyone who ventured in.
“Here’s her husband here—but he’s scared to go into delivery—he’s just a nervous man.” Then she would break out laughing hilariously. Then as the labour went on, she said: “Oscar—go see! Oscar—go in!”
But poor Oscar, all six foot three, sat like a stone, tears in his eyes.
That same night in another birthing room a First Nations boy named Roderick Hammerstone was born, twenty minutes before Mary Lou gave birth to Torrent Peterson.
That he would have something of a strange parallel destiny to Mary Lou’s child Torrent was of course not known at that time. He was Melissa Hammerstone’s only child. The young girl Byron had once hired taxis for to take her to piano lessons.
Mary Lou wanted to call her son Terrance, but wrote Torrent, for she did not know how to spell.
But she was not strong, filled with sneezes and fevers. So shortly after the birth of her own son, Mary Lou developed severe diabetes, and was so afraid of needles that Oscar had to give her insulin each afternoon. She would close her eyes, grit her teeth, and Oscar would sing to her about the Big Rock Candy Mountains where:
All the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again
As soon as you are in.
That always made her smile.
And then after a little “ouch” the needle would be taken away.