Blackfly Season

18

KEVIN STRETCHED, AND CLOSED his eyes. He had spent the entire morning in Red Bear’s cabin under the watchful eye of Red Bear himself, stepping on the dope and packing it into ever-smaller packages. It was torment to be so close to ecstasy and yet forbidden to taste. He thought long and hard about shoving some into his pocket, but Red Bear was never more than a few feet away, talking quietly into the telephone, making deals.

Now Kevin was lying on his bunk, trying to write a poem about Karen, his last girlfriend in Vancouver. So far, he hadn’t had any luck with the females of Algonquin Bay, so he thought about Karen quite often. Strictly speaking, Karen had been someone else’s girlfriend and, despite her one-night adventure with Kevin, she had chosen to stay that way. Kevin summoned her image in his mind. That mouth, those sweet blue eyes, that silky blond hair. Unfortunately, his thoughts had a tendency to turn lustful, and lust was not conducive to good verse. He had crossed out a dozen opening lines, each one worse than the last.

The door opened, and Leon stepped inside, a dark silhouette against the sunlight.

“Don’t you ever, like, go outdoors, man?”

“I’m working.”

“Working?”

“Yes, Leon. I’m working. Writing. Some people do actually consider it work, you know.”

“Oh, excuse me. What are you, like, William Asshole Shakespeare? Ernest Asshole Hemingway?”

“You’re letting the flies in, Leon. I just got rid of the last one, and you’re letting them in again.”

Leon shut the door behind him. “I hope you’re writing a screenplay. That’s where the money is.”

“Never,” Kevin said, and snapped his notebook shut. He felt under the bed for his shoes. “I wanted to ask you something, Leon. The day Terri left, you drove her to the train station, right?”

“What are you going on about that again for? I told you. I’d been back from Toronto, like, thirty seconds and Red Bear says, ‘Hey. This is Kevin’s sister. She needs a ride to the station.’ She was in a hurry.”

“Yeah, I know she was pissed off at me. But I called her place in Vancouver and her roommates haven’t heard from her.”

“I got no answer for that. She didn’t give me an itinerary, man. I only just met her. Far as I know, she was catching the train to Toronto. After that, I got no idea.”

“I’m getting kind of worried. Normally, she would’ve called me by now. I don’t know where she can be.”

“She’s probably with friends in Toronto. Why not? Anyways, we got other things to worry about. Red Bear’s got a little job for us.”

“Shit. What now?”

“What are you talking about, man? We got the easiest gig anybody ever dreamed up. He makes the big contacts, sets up the big scores. All we gotta do is mule the stuff around once in a while.”

That was true. Mostly, all Kevin had to do for his money was occasionally meet one of Red Bear’s mysterious contacts downtown and put him together with some product at an agreed-upon location. Easy as pie.

“Man, you must be the laziest bastard in the world,” Leon went on.

“I just told you, man, I’m working on my poetry. Anyway, what’s he want us to do?”

“Toof’s been shooting his mouth off to the wrong people. Got to have a little talk with Canada’s favourite pot-head.”

“Nobody listens to Toof. He’s a harmless goof.” God, Kevin thought, I’ve been thinking about rhyme too long.

Leon snatched at a fly. “I didn’t say we have to beat him to death. We just got to have a talk with him.”

Later, when they were in the car, Kevin said, “So what’s the deal? Why have we got to talk to him?”

Leon attacked the gearshift and the Trans Am roared onto the dirt road. “Red Bear wants us to convince him to stop blabbing our business to the entire world.”

“So why doesn’t Red Bear talk to him? He’d be a lot more convincing than you or me.”

“It’s called delegating responsibility, Kevin. Red Bear actually wants us to do some work, you know what I mean? And he don’t mean writing.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“Just get him to stop, that’s all. How we do it is our business. But if Toof doesn’t stop, that’ll be Red Bear’s business, and you know what? I don’t want Red Bear mad at me, do you?”

A Toyota Echo cut them off as they turned onto the highway, and Leon leaned on the horn. “Asshole. I oughta run him into a rock cut.”

“So who’s Toof supposed to have been talking to?”

“Apparently, the little jerk let slip that we had some business with the Viking Riders, and somehow it got back to Red Bear. Is that bad enough for you, or do you need like a detailed transcript? You wanna go back to camp and cross-examine Red Bear on the subject?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Me either.”

They didn’t speak the rest of the way into town.

Toof was an easy person to find most afternoons, because Algonquin Bay has only two poolrooms: Duane’s Billiard Emporium and the Corner Pocket. He wasn’t at Duane’s but someone said they’d seen him earlier and he was heading over to the Pocket.

They drove up Sumner and made a left onto O’Riley. The Pocket was a couple of blocks up, handily located near Ojibwa High, which was why Toof liked to hang out there. He’d hustle the after-school crowd of boys and make himself a few bucks.

Unlike Duane’s, which was run by a closet thug with a head shaped like an anvil, the Corner Pocket was run by an old couple. They were constantly in a bad mood, and no one knew if that was their normal demeanour or if catering to successive squadrons of teenage boys had soured them.

The old man glared at Kevin and Leon over the cash register as they entered.

They found Toof at the bar, drinking a Cherry Coke and scarfing down a Turkish Delight chocolate bar.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” Bits of chocolate clung to his snaggletooth. He pointed to Leon’s feet. “You’re wearing your fancy hiking boots again. You going mountain climbing?”

“Gotta go for a drive,” Leon said.

“Gimme twenty minutes, eh? I wanna take this guy out.” He pointed with his Coke at a beanpole of a youth who was clearing a table with one decisive thunk after another.

Leon took Toof’s Coke and placed it on the counter. “Now.”