Too Close to the Falls (11 page)

I slid on my rear end across the Bakers' yard and into the Schmidts' when I saw something dark under me. I looked down, and gaping at me was a squirrel, frozen as an ice sculpture two inches below the surface. Through the layer of ice I could see his frenzied look as he'd tried to make it to safety before he was shot by the storm's icy stun gun. His paws were lifted, frozen in position, and his eyes looked desperate, pleading for a way out. I knew the Schmidt brothers would want to see this specimen. I tried to put a stick in to mark the spot, but the ice was like concrete and I couldn't make a dent.

I had to go up the Schmidts' steps on all fours and crawl onto their milk box to reach the bell. The Schmidts were Lutheran. We learned in school that Martin Luther was a man who broke away from the Catholic church to “abuse himself,” whatever that meant. Worried, I had asked Mother Agnese if the Schmidt brothers could get to heaven if they weren't Catholic, and she said they could have “baptism by desire” if they were ever in a terrible accident and still go to heaven. My father told me not to bring it up — so I didn't. Besides, Franky Schmidt was so old, it seemed to me he'd
figured out most things, so he had probably already figured out how to get to heaven.

I stood waiting for the doorbell to be answered while their yappy dog, Skippy, barked incessantly. Mrs. Schmidt was amazed that I'd made it across the street, although she said as soon as she heard the bell she knew no one else would be out this early. Her hair was in pincurls, as it was most of the time. She even wore them to Helms's grocery store with a stretchy scarf that went around the bobby pins on the back of her head and tied on her crown with a grosgrain ribbon. I think she actually believed that scarf hid the pincurls. I guess she thought no one noticed the bumps, or else they simply assumed she had a lumpy head. I couldn't figure out when she actually took the pincurls out. Maybe after I'd gone to bed or when I was at school.

She was always concerned about things like where the boys were going, and what they ate and when they would be eating next. This fussing seemed odd to me. Wasn't that their business? She told me not to touch any wires, as some live ones were down, and not to go near the streets, and to be sure not to go near any hills because we would be out of control, and on it went.

Franky was three years older than I was, and Dicky, his brother, was my age. They both nodded their hellos to me while Mrs. Schmidt told them, as they pulled on their leggings and boots, that they were to be very careful and not to go anywhere near the escarpment and not to go sledding because of the dangerous conditions.

Franky said dismissively, “Ma, don't worry.” (I tried calling my mother “Ma” once I'd heard Franky use the term, but she said, “To whom are you speaking?” so I stopped.)

Mrs. Schmidt got all in a state saying, “I
mean
it, you boys. There is wind on top of cold and you know what that means.”

Dicky kept clicking his bootstraps, making no eye contact, and Franky answered, “It means wind chill factor, Ma, I
know
.”

She acted as though they were heading off to war or something. My mother never asked me where I was going. I don't know where Mrs. Schmidt got off with all this prying. “Franky,
where
are you going?”

With his hand on the doorknob, he said, “Out. I'm going
out
. That's why I put on my coat.”

She folded her arms across her full-length apron. “That's it, Mr. Smartypants,
that's it
.” She stomped over to the foot of the stairs and yelled up, “Frank,
Frank, Frank Senior
!”

Mr. Schmidt came thundering down in steel-toed workboots, wearing navy overalls with
Niagara Mohawk
written on the front pocket. The printing was arched over a yellow streak of lightning. He was carrying giant orange gloves with huge suede gauntlets. He grabbed Franky's collar as Dicky kept working on his boots and shouted, “Tell your mother where you're goin' to be at,
mister
.”

Mrs. Schmidt, sounding terribly fretful, said, “Frank, tell them not to do anything dangerous!”

Mr. Schmidt shouted, “
Nothing dangerous!
Now do you hear me?”

Who wouldn't hear him? They heard him in Canada, for Pete's sake. I marvelled at this ritual kerfuffle they always had before Franky or Dicky went anywhere. With all this repeated interrogation, neither boy ever told his parents the truth about where we went, in all the years I knew them.

We started out the day on an impressive note by sliding right
down the porch stairs and seeing who could slide the farthest. Even Franky, who rarely expressed admiration, acknowledged that the buried squirrel was impressive. After we'd climbed on the tree branches that had fallen, Dicky said, “The coast is clear. Ma turned off the kitchen light and has gone to the basement to get the laundry off the line.” At that moment they went into the garage and got their sleds and I went home and got mine and we headed up the middle of the empty street.

We knew how fast it was going to be when the sleds kept hitting the back of our booted legs. Suddenly Franky announced in a staccato blast,
“Blood Symbol!”
We all immediately reached in our pockets and pulled out our red Pez dispensers. We each popped a Pez into our mouths. The great thing about Pez is you could accomplish the whole procedure with your mittens on. The Blood Club always wore something red, and we always carried our red Pez. We challenged others and “went for Blood”; that's how we got our name. To get into the Bloods you always had to be brave and never be afraid of the Thunder Roads — they were a gang headed by the Canavan brothers, who all lived on Fourth Street. There was a truly elaborate initiation procedure in order to be received into the Blood Brotherhood. In fact, since our membership had to be renewed seasonally, initiation comprised the greatest part of our activities.

It began with “vining” in the spring when the river flowed like a torrent. You had to swing on a long vine over the Niagara Gorge just a few miles below the Falls and at the moment when you were fully suspended over the water and could hear whirlpools gurgling like Gerber's babies under your feet, you had to yell “Blood Brothers,” swing back, and hook onto the cliff rocks.

Trent McMaster, a mealy-mouthed neighbour, always tried to get into the Bloods just because he lived on our street. Franky and Dicky called him Trent Masturbator, which I believed was a Lutheran term for McMaster. Whenever Franky, Dicky, or I left the edge of the gorge to perform stunts on our bikes, Trent always came screaming after us, “Guys, I was just vining — I swear — but you missed it!”
Sure
, Trent. Whenever we climbed up to our tree clubhouse, his mother said someone had to hold the swing rope. Trent told her we shook it when he was halfway up, and she gave us a big lecture on how he had asthma, and how mean we were. Trent's mother told my mother that it would be an act of Christian charity to allow Trent to enter the Blood Brotherhood. I told my mother that if Trent's mother thought we were having someone in the Bloods who still had training wheels on his bike, then she must have been from the Twilight Zone. My mother agreed that it was my club and my life.

Trent's mother and mine were friends and in the same study club. As a dry run for their club presentation on emerging African nations, they made Trent and me assume the role of the trial audience. Trent clapped at the end. Trent's father was a researcher at Carborundum and he worked late like my dad. Both Trent and I were only children. A lot of people made a big deal about us being only children, but I didn't really get why. So often, much too often for my taste, the four of us went out to dinner together. As Trent's mother was fond of saying, “What's the point in cooking for one measly person?” I even had to go to the Ice Follies with him and to some plays put on by Stella Niagara, like
Saint Bernadette and the Burning Bush
. He liked it so much he wanted to go
again
. As if this wasn't bad enough he was also in my class at school, and on
Sundays we went for brunch after mass with his family. The only silver lining in this deal was it was dead easy to win money off him, particularly at the bowling game, even though his mother frowned on his betting. My mother said it was sometimes best to turn a blind eye to some things in life. I only hoped he wouldn't show up that cold morning and start his annoying routines.

As the three of us trudged along in the snow, I felt we were a family — the Blood Family. I wanted to remember that moment because I was perfectly happy. Could I freeze-frame that second of glittering ice, in the paradise of belonging? I wondered how big people remembered particular things or moments of time from long ago. It's interesting that people have figured out how to pickle, freeze, dry, and cure foods, how to preserve history in a book, events on television, but how do you preserve a moment in your memory?

Everything we did together was exciting. Our Blood clubhouse even had a fold-down table where we made battle plans. In the summer we went to the dump, hid behind abandoned fridges and stoves, and then popped out with our guns, firing a long red smoky row of caps. We went behind Schoonmaker's Restaurant and made forts out of empty beer cases, complete with lookout towers. We took my moronic dog Willie with us and shouted, “Yo, ho, Rinnie” when the Thunder Roads attacked us; however, all Willie ever did was look confused, walk in bewildered circles, and eventually go to sleep in a beer case.

As we approached the corner I said to the other Bloods, “Let's go to Hooker's Hill.”

We marched along silently, the snow crunching under Franky's big boots. Finally he said in a deadly quiet tone, while looking
straight through me, “Hooker's Hill is for girls. We're going to the escarpment.”

Girls!
I knew how dangerous it was when “girls” were mentioned. I didn't want to skate on
that
thin ice. Flashbacks crept into my mind like a dirty fog. The mere thought of my previous existence, which I had fortunately shed like a snake's skin, made my chest feel like it was bound in my grandmother's peach-coloured corset, the one with the long white bones in it. I could only take short shallow breaths when I thought of the time I'd spent with Susie and Judy Baker working on the Lennon Sisters paper dolls. Cutting them out took days on end of sitting still and clipping on a straight line, which I never managed correctly. Then Susie, three years older, ran the show like a drill sergeant. “OK, get on those prom dresses.” We marched the doll of the day under the skirted chairs of the living room to dress her in her strapless gown with cummerbund and matching shoes and elbow-length gloves. As soon as we got there, Judy would say, “Time for the Miss America Pageant! Get out the swimsuits and cover-ups,” and on it went. If I was really lucky even
they
would get sick of paper dolls and we would haul out our Betty Crocker bake sets, work all morning making a tiny cake the circumference of a coffee cup, and then have to do all the dishes, which were not nearly so tiny.

Now that I was in the Bloods, I knew where I belonged. My mother was upset about my new life. She said I was filthy every day and I could get polio from the dump. My father said, “She has the rest of her life to be a girl.” Did he think I was going to play paper dolls later in life? I knew I couldn't flinch from whatever feats were demanded of me by the Bloods.

As we stood on the lip of the gorge, Franky said, “This is the last winter to sled here; they're building a power project, because next to the Falls, this spot has the greatest drop-off.”

We looked over the edge. Dicky threw a stone, and it took a long, long time to land. Perched on a jetty, at the bottom of the gorge on the river side of a one-lane winding road, was the Riverside Inn, with its pathetic pink martini flickering in neon, and an arrow pointing to its two-car parking lot. It was built on a rock, and part of its dilapidated winterized porch was cantilevered over the river. It was two hundred years old and had once been used as a depot for the Underground Railroad. It had two basements cut into the rock, one with a trap door. Sometimes we slithered along the ground pretending we were slaves who had just escaped from Georgia.

Trent's mother said Marge Welsh had no right running a tavern. Even Father Flanagan said that men who left mass before the collection to go to the Riverside Inn were taking their chances with a God who sees all things. My mother said Mrs. Welsh's husband had taken ill and, with six children to feed, she had no choice but to run the tavern. Once, when I was hanging up coats at my mother's bridge club, Mrs. Aungier said that Mrs. Welsh's daughter got “in trouble” at the Riverside Inn. No one spoke, but they shook their heads in horror. When my mother told my father at breakfast the next morning, he said, “Girls who go to the Riverside Inn get into trouble — poor Mrs. Welsh. She's really had her cross to bear.”

My mother shook her head and said, “I know I couldn't have sustained all her privations. Fortunately God gives the heaviest cross to those who can shoulder the load.”