Res Judicata (3 page)

He got up. “Okay. You ready?”

He rolled back down into the bowl. He was my best friend. Now he was bugging me too.

I picked up the hunk of junk I call a skateboard and went home.

Child Labor Laws
Legislation that protects children by restricting
the type and hours of work they perform.

Ipushed open the door. I smelled chicken.

I knew it.

Biff was at it again.

I kicked off my shoes and walked down the hall. Andy was lounging on our “new” love seat, reading
The Catcher in the Rye
for like the four hundred and thirty-third time. She tossed it on the broken
TV
we use as a coffee table and said, “Hey, you're home late. Where were you? Down at the bowl?”

She smiled.

I didn't.

Since when did she smile when I went to the bowl after school? What happened to the “don't you have homework” lecture? Too busy for that these days? Got something better to do? I just ignored her.

I gave this big sigh. “Don't tell me it's chicken again! Who does Biff think he is? Colonel Sanders or something?”

Andy scrunched up one eye and hissed at me. “I've told you before. Don't call him that. His name's not Biff!”

Biff poked his head out from the kitchen. He was wearing a
Kiss the Cook
apron over his also-ironed T-shirt.

He went, “Hey! Whoa! Andy! What're you doing? You crazy?”

Andy hesitated for a second. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. Biff didn't know it yet, but I figured he was toast. Nobody pokes their nose into our family business and gets away with it. Nobody tells Andy what to do. My guess was she was going to boot him out of there before the skin was crispy on the drumsticks.

I stood back and waited for her to blow, but she didn't. She just looked up at Biff and smiled again.

Smile. Smile. Smile. What did she think this was, the Miss Congeniality Pageant?

“What do you mean?” she said, all ha-ha-ha.

“Oh, come on! Think about it,” he went. “Which would you rather be called? Dougie or
Biff
?” He said it out one side of his mouth with this big blast of air.

She laughed. “You got a point.”

“Hey, I can't take any credit,” he said. “It was Sport's idea. Smart kid you got there.” He raised an eyebrow and wiggled his head around. “Biff Fougere. Yeah. I like that.”

He waved his spatula at me. “Now c'mon, Sport! Wash your hands. Grub's on the table.”

I was getting the distinct feeling that I'd lost this round.

I fumed all through supper. Not only did I have to put up with my best friend accusing me of being jealous; I also had to sit there while Andy and Biff interrogated me about my buddies and my classes and my favorite movies and stuff like that. I had to eat another one of Biff ‘s “wholesome” meals, and I couldn't even ask for seconds in case he started thinking I actually liked it.

I woofed the food back and then just had to wait around until they were finished. (There was no way I was leaving those two alone together. The nuzzle-o-meter was forecasting a major disturbance.) I started reading the newspaper.

Andy pretended that having the
Herald
spread out all over the table while she was trying to eat didn't bother her. “Anything interesting happening in the world today, C-C?”

My normal response would have been to just sort of grunt in her general direction, but then something caught my eye.

“Why, yes,” I said. “In fact, there is.”

I spun the paper around and pointed to a big ad for Boarders' World. “Whaddya know? You're in luck! Long boards are on sale. This week only. You can finally pay me for that factum I wrote!”

Andy did one of those laughie sighs and went, “Skateboards! I don't know why you want a new skateboard! The one you have is perfectly good. Now, Dougie—I mean Biff—could I have a little more of those delicious—”

“No, it's not!” I went. “And, anyway, that's totally beside the point. You
promised
me a new board!”

I'd interrupted her. I'd spoken in a disrespectful tone of voice. And I'd nailed her on that promise. She might not blow up at Biff, but she sure would at me. I prepared for blastoff.

She just flattened out her eyebrows and shook her head. “Do you have any idea how many toxic chemicals go into making those things? All that resin and fiberglass. It's disgusting! Honestly, skateboards must be every bit as bad for the environment as nuclear warships or suvs. Really.” She looked at Biff. “Aren't I right?”

He went, “Well, that might be a
bit
of an exaggeration...”

I went, “See!”

She just sort of chuckled at how cute guys and their tiny brains can be. “Okay, well, maybe not quite as bad as suvs, but when you consider that skateboarding is primarily a male sport—”

I went, “What are you talking about?! There are plenty of girls down at the bowl! Why do you think I go there? And what does that have to do with the environment anyway?”

Andy was trying to sound all calm and reasonable. “Nothing. I'm just saying, when you factor the toll on the environment in with the sexist nature of the sport, you start thinking differently about skateboarding. You understand what a huge negative impact it has on society, and you realize that you should avoid it at all costs. That's all I'm saying.”

She smiled and dug back into her mashed potatoes.

I stuck my chin out and barked like some guard dog on a chain. “All you're saying is you don't want to pay up!”

“That's not what I'm saying at all.” She dabbed the corner of her mouth with her sleeve as if she was the Queen of England or something. “I'm just noting that, after much reflection, I have begun to have some moral qualms about contributing to a sport that is so at odds with everything I believe in...”

Biff had been pretty quiet up to this point. He
splopped
another big cow patty of potatoes onto her plate and said, “I don't know, Andy. Seems to me there's lots of good stuff about skateboarding too. It's great exercise. It gets the kids outdoors. It...”

He didn't understand. Logic wasn't going to work. He was just giving her time to come up with another lame argument.

This called for the big guns.

I went, “Oh, we're talking moral qualms, are we? Well, I'm having some moral qualms myself! As you know, there are child labor laws in this country, a minimum wage and strict rules against practicing law without a license—all of which you broke when you made me write that factum! Frankly, I can't help thinking the law society might like to hear about some of your business practices...”

I grabbed the phone. “I believe their twenty-four-hour complaint line is 423-1...”

Biff went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, there. Let's not do anything we might regret.” He took the phone from me and put it back on the counter. I was all ready to tell him to butt out, but something about his face made me stop. It was like he was sending me coded messages through his eyebrows or something.

He turned back to Andy and said, “You know, Sugar, one of the things I love about you is that you're such a moral person.”

Andy was looking at him, but I know she was mentally sticking her tongue out at me. She loves being right.

He sat down and put his arm around her. “I'm afraid this time, though, morality's on Sport's side. You
did
promise him a skateboard if he wrote that factum. I know because I saw the video—and the factum. To tell you the truth, I thought he did a pretty good job on both.”

Biff must have realized he'd gone a step too far there. He said, “Smart kid. He obviously takes after his mother.” The guy was smooth.

Andy's lips had turned into a perfectly straight line. She wasn't happy. I could tell Biff knew that too, but he just kept smiling and rubbing her shoulder with that big hand of his.

With the other one, he tapped the newspaper ad. “You know, $89.99 sounds like a pretty good deal to me. And look! It comes in blue, yellow and ‘neon freak-out,' whatever that is. I think it's worth looking into.”

Andy tossed her hair back and twitched her chin up a few times, but something in that old anger-management class must have gotten through to her. Either that, or Biff did. She took a big nose full of air and looked down at the paper as if she was actually going to consider buying the skateboard.

Biff leaned way back in his chair and gave me a big thumbs-up. I'd have smiled except Andy might have seen me. She'd have been screaming “Conspiracy!” then for sure.

He clunked his chair back down on the floor, slapped his knees and said, “Okay then! While you're looking at that, why don't I dish out some of my famous apple crisp? Sound good, Sport?”

I nodded.

“Great! What about you, Andy?”

She didn't move. She just sat there, hunched over the paper, like some crazy monk in an old horror movie or something.

“Andy...?” he said. “A little apple crisp? Andy? Yoohooo!”

He touched her arm.

She looked up from the paper. She had this wild gleam in her eye.

She said, “This is amazing! Un-be-lievable!”

I had a sudden, horrible glimpse into the future. How could I have been so stupid? This was just the type of thing she'd do.

I went, “Oh, no. Oh, no you don't! Don't even
think
about taking up skateboarding! No mothers allowed. Strictly forbidden. Off limits. Haven't you seen the signs?”

She waved her arm at me. “Skateboarding? Forget skateboards! Look at this!”

She
shushed
the paper back toward me and pointed at an article right above the Boarders' World ad.

Manslaughter
The unlawful killing of a human being without malice
or premeditation, different from murder,
in that murder requires malicious intent.

“ HERO” JANITOR CHARGED WITH

MANSLAUGHTER

by Julia Rivers

Court Reporter

Last year at this time, Halifax Regional Police called university maintenance man Charles (Chuck) Dunkirk a hero. Now they're calling him something else: the accused
.

Yesterday, the publicity-shy forty-eight-year-old was formally charged with manslaughter in the death of world-famous American inventor Ernest Sanderson
.

It's an odd twist in a story that started out as a heart-warming tale of personal sacrifice
.

Dr. Sanderson's invention of Gleamoccino, the widely popular coffee drink that “whitens your teeth while you drink it,” made him one of the world's wealthiest men, but his true passion was for something considerably less glamorous: the Atlantic sea louse
.

It was, in fact, this tiny crustacean that brought the Stanford-educated biologist to Halifax last year for a three-week
research stint. During his short visit to the city, the 66-year-old Dr. Sanderson became better known to Haligonians—and their traffic cops—for his high-speed cruises down Spring Garden Road in his vintage Lamborghini convertible
.

Late in the evening of February 4, just three days before his planned return to California, Dr. Sanderson was working alone in a lab at Chedabucto University. No one else was in the building at that time except Chuck Dunkirk, a janitor in his second week on the job
.

Mr. Dunkirk had just sprinkled a powdered cleaning compound on the third-floor hallways when he heard a cry for help. He ran toward the noise and saw Dr. Sanderson trying to put out a small fire. In an attempt to smother the flames, Mr. Dunkirk threw the cleaning compound on the fire
.

Unfortunately, the cleaning compound exploded and caused the fire to send off a thick black smoke. Mr. Dunkirk fought his way through the noxious gases and managed to drag Dr. Sanderson out of the lab. Mr. Dunkirk called 911, but by the time emergency personnel arrived seven minutes later, the visiting professor was dead of asphyxiation
.

Mr. Dunkirk himself was treated for smoke inhalation and released from hospital the next day
.

As word of the tragedy spread, Mr. Dunkirk was hailed as a hero. Despite worldwide media interest, the soft-spoken Cumberland County man steadfastly refused any recognition for his actions. In his only phone call with the press, he passed on his condolences to the Sanderson family and maintained that he was not a hero—”just a simple boy from backwoods Nova Scotia.
”

Now, at the urging of Sanderson's grieving widow, Chuck Dunkirk has been charged with manslaughter. The announcement of the charges sparked an angry protest yesterday outside the
Halifax Courthouse. About a dozen protesters marched with signs declaring “Chuck Dunkirk is not a murderer.
”

“I absolutely agree,” said Crown Attorney Michael Lambert, who brought the charges against Mr. Dunkirk. “Chuck Dunkirk is not a murderer. A murderer kills his victim on purpose. No one is claiming Mr. Dunkirk meant to kill Dr. Sanderson. We recognize, in fact, that he was actually trying to save him. Unfortunately, although Mr. Dunkirk meant well, we contend that he should have known better than to throw an explosive substance on a fire. That's why we have no choice but to charge him with manslaughter.
”

Manslaughter is defined as the unlawful killing of another without “malice aforethought.” In order to win their case, the Crown will have to prove that Dr. Sanderson died because Mr. Dunkirk did not act “with the care and caution of a reasonable person in similar circumstances.
”

Asked how difficult that will be to prove, Mr. Lambert said, “It's a pretty straightforward argument. The bag of cleaning compound was clearly marked with a printed warning as well as the international symbols for combustibility and poison. Mr. Dunkirk was a trained maintenance man. We feel confident that a jury will decide that his use of the compound on the fire was negligent and, as a result, will convict him of manslaughter.
”