The Falls (2 page)

“My old man? You don't know anything about my father.”

“I know who you are,” he said. “I know who your family is,
Hunter
. I went to school with your old man.”

My father's last name wasn't Hunter, and besides, this guy looked way too old to be the same age as my father . . . the age he would have been if he were alive.

“I remember your old man racing around town, thinking he was somebody 'cause he had some beat-up old Harley and a leather jacket! I remember. And I remember him knocking up your mother—she was hardly older than my Candy is now—and then not being man enough to stick around and—”

“Shut up, you fat old fart!”

His face froze mid-sentence. He took a step toward me but I didn't budge an inch. My fingers curled up into fists. He was bigger than me, but I knew I could get in a couple of licks before he hit me. I might even be able to pop him, and he'd be so stunned that I'd dance away before he could lay one on me . . . it wasn't like he'd be able to catch me once I got a few feet away.

“Beat it!” he yelled as he reached out and poked me in the chest with a finger.

I brushed his hand away.

“You want a piece of me?” he bellowed. His breath was a foul combination of alcohol, cigarettes, and stale food, all mixed in with the smell of sweat coming off his clothes and body. I backed away a step to get away from the terrible odour.

“I'm through being nice!” he screamed.

Through? I hadn't seen any “nice” so far. He suddenly spun around and fled through the door, leaving it wide open behind him. What was he doing? A tingle went up my spine. He wouldn't just leave and—

“I'm gonna break you up good!” he screamed as he charged through the door again, swinging a baseball bat in front of him!

I put a hand on the top of the railing and leaped off the porch, clearing the flower bed and landing on the grass, tumbling over and rolling. I looked back in time to see the bat slam down on the railing—right where I had been standing!

“You wanna chase after my little girl, do you?” he screamed. “Let's see how fast you can run with two broken legs!”

I scrambled to my feet and ran off his property, jumping down to the sidewalk before I stopped. I was safe there.

“I ever see your face around here again and this bat is gonna do all the talking for me!” he screamed. He slammed the bat down against the top of the railing again and one of the spindles shattered!

I cringed.

“Beat it, you loser!”

“Look who's talking!” I yelled back. “You want to see a loser, look in the mirror sometime . . . that is, if it doesn't crack!”

“Come on up and say that, you little coward!”

“I'm not the one who had to go and get a baseball bat because he wasn't brave enough to face me without one!” I yelled back at him. “You were too chicken to face me man to man!”

His expression changed from anger to outrage and he got all red in the face. He dropped the bat to the floor of the porch and started lumbering down the stairs.

I didn't want to fight him, with or without the bat. He was fat but he was also big. I crossed the road and started down the street.

“Running is probably the first smart thing you ever did in your whole life . . . loser!” he bellowed.

I turned around and gave him the finger, but I kept moving.

He kept yelling—the same thing, over and over. His voice got fainter and fainter until I turned the corner and his words were gone completely. I could still hear him inside my head, though—the same words echoing around and around and around.

“You're a loser . . . a loser!”

 

 

 

 

I
TURNED ONTO CLIFTON HILL
. The neon signs hadn't even been turned on yet, but the road was already jammed with cars packed with tourists, people who'd come from all over to see Niagara Falls, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. At least that's what it said on the postcards and T-shirts. I didn't even know what the other six were but I figured the Falls had to be number seven on the list.

I could sort of understand that people might want to see it, but living here you soon realized that it was nothing more than some water falling over some rocks and kicking up a bunch of mist. Nothing worth driving hours and hours, much less
days
, to see. They'd all crowd around at the railing,
ooh
-ing and
aah
-ing at the sight and the sound and the mist, all excited. Well, all excited for a few minutes. After that it was just more of the same. So after taking a few pictures they had to figure out what they were going to do next. They'd spend the rest of their time—and money—going to the House of Horrors, or the IMAX theatre, or the Guinness World Records Museum, or eating in one of the hundreds of restaurants, or maybe gambling at the casino.

Some of the locals didn't like the tourists crowding everywhere. Some of the tourists could be really annoying,
but I knew we had to be grateful. If the Falls didn't attract them—and then bore them—people like my mother wouldn't have jobs. She was a blackjack dealer at the casino. So I guess those tourists put food on our table and a roof over our heads. I knew that—and I knew what it was like to have neither. We lived here because those people, those tourists, just kept on coming, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year . . . to see some water falling over some rocks.

Carefully I crossed the street, threading my way through the traffic, watching out for those drivers who were too busy looking around trying to see the Falls to watch where they were going. I cut down an alley that led me away from the bustle of the business district and onto my street.

The traffic sound faded away but I could still hear a faint roar—the sound of the Falls. There was no place in town you could go to escape that sound. I read once where a long time ago, the winter was so cold that a massive ice dam choked off the river and no water could get through—so the Falls stopped falling. It was the middle of the night but the sound—or I guess really the lack of sound, the silence— woke people up. And they got out of their beds and left their houses and went and stared at the rocks, the place where the Falls
was
, but
wasn't
. Finally, after hours, while everybody in the entire town stood there watching, the water broke through the ice and rushed down the dry riverbed and roared over the Falls. Man, even I would have driven days and days to see
that
happen.

I walked down the long driveway of a house. I had to go to the back door—the door that led into the part of the
house that my friend Timmy and his father lived in. I knocked on the door and listened. There was no answer. I knocked louder. Even though it was almost eleven I was sure I was waking him up. He didn't need to sleep any more. I started to pound on the door and—

“Keep your shirt on!” I heard a voice yell from behind the door. It opened up. It was Timmy. “Hey, Jay, man . . . what are you doing here?”

“What do you think I'm doing?” I asked. “I'm here to see you.”

“You woke me up, man,” Timmy said, as he stretched and rubbed his eyes.

“You're already dressed,” I pointed out.

“I went to sleep in my clothes,” he said. “It saves a lot of time in the morning. So, why are you pounding on my door so early?”

“Early? It's practically noon,” I said, smudging the truth by an hour or so. “Come on and I'll buy you breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Timmy asked, and he perked up. “Like bacon and eggs?”

“Like a coffee and a donut at the Donut Hole.”

“Even better. Let's go.”

“Don't you want to wash up or change your shirt?” I asked.

“It's not
my
shirt that's dirty,” he said, pointing down at my T-shirt, which had come untucked again, revealing the stain. “Let's go.” Timmy slammed the door shut behind him.

“Don't you have to lock it?” I asked.

“Why? There's nothing in there worth stealing. So again, what are you doing up so early?”

“Again, it's not early, and second, I was already out.”

“Out where? Wait . . . did you go see that girl . . . what's her name?”

“Her name is Candice, and yeah, I did.”

“Stupid. You gotta play it cool. You should have waited a day or two before you went chasing her,” Timmy said.

“Like I need to take advice about girls from you,” I chided him.

“What's wrong with taking it from me?” he asked. “I get more than my share of the babes . . . actually, I get some of
your
share as well. You're just lucky I didn't decide I wanted that little Candice girl for myself.”

“You? She's got way too much class for you!”

“Yeah, right. So how did it go?” Timmy asked.

“Not good.”

“She blew you off?”

“Her father wouldn't let me see her,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“He wouldn't let me see her. He told me to go away.”

“What did you say to tick him off?”

“I didn't even get a chance to say anything. He answered the door and told me to go away.”

“Why would he do that?” Timmy asked.

“He said I was a loser and he didn't want his daughter hanging around with a loser.”

Timmy started laughing. Just the sort of support and understanding I was looking for.

Timmy pulled open the door of the Donut Hole. “After you . . . you loser,” he said, bowing at the waist.

“Shut up or you'll be buying your own donut.”

I walked into the smoke-filled donut shop. Most of the booths were filled—mostly with people who looked as though they hadn't slept last night. Red eyes, rumpled clothes, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other. Some of them probably came straight here when the casino closed and were just killing time until it opened again.

“Next!” barked out the woman behind the counter.

I stepped forward. “Two coffees and a couple of donuts . . . What do you want, Timmy?”

“Double-chocolate,” he said.

“Two double-chocolate donuts and a couple of coffees.”

“
Large
coffees,” Timmy added.

“Two large coffees,” I echoed. “One just cream and the other double-double.”

“Make that
triple-triple
,” Timmy said. “That way I can get enough cream and sugar to keep me going until lunch.”

The woman grunted out a response and went to fill the order.

I turned to Timmy. “I don't even know why we come here,” I whispered. “The donuts and coffee all taste like cigarettes.”

“That's one of the reasons I
like
coming here,” Timmy said. “Besides, it's close and it's open.”

“We should go to a real donut place.”

“This is
real
,” Timmy said. “Maybe the problem is it's too real for you.”

“Too real? How can it be—?”

“Four-fifty,” the woman said as she plopped down the donuts and the coffees. One of the coffees sloshed over
the top and onto the counter. She didn't seem to notice, or maybe she just didn't care.

I handed her a five-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” I said.

She grabbed it, grunted out something that might have been “Thank you” but could have just as easily been “Screw off,” and walked away.

“It's the friendly service that keeps
me
coming back,” Timmy said.

I pushed a lid down onto one of the coffees and Timmy did the same with the other. I grabbed one of the donuts. “Let's get out of here. I want to get away from the smoke.”

“You know, that wouldn't be a problem if you took my advice and started smoking,” Timmy said as he trailed after me out the door. “Instead of complaining, you could just inhale real deep, and it would be like getting your first smoke of the day for free.”

“
You
inhale. I'm planning on using my lungs for a long time and I want 'em to keep working. Let's just go to the park and sit on a bench,” I suggested.

Timmy peeled back the lid of his coffee and took a big sip. “Wrong one,” he said, making a face. “No sugar,” he explained, and we changed cups.

We walked across the grass of the park. It was soggy underfoot. That was partly the dew, and partly just from the mist that came off the Falls. We weren't even that close but the mist found its way to places far from the river.

The park was practically empty. Except for us, the only person around was some guy lying on a bench on
the far side. Maybe he was sleeping it off, or maybe he just didn't have any money or a place to crash. We stopped at a picnic table and I sat down on one side, Timmy on the other. I sank my teeth into the donut. I was hungry, and the taste of the chocolate was still slightly stronger than that of the cigarette smoke.

Timmy had set down his coffee and pushed the last little bit of the donut into his mouth. He then pulled out a small pocketknife, opened it up, and started carving something in the table.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Timmy shrugged. “Ask away.”

“Do you think . . . do you think I'm a loser?”

“You?” Timmy asked, sounding surprised.

That made me feel better. “Yeah, do you?”

“No way.” He kept carving away at the table. “I
used
to think you were, though.”

“Used to? What does that mean?”

“A long time ago. Like back in Grade 7.”

“I'd just moved back here in Grade 7 . . . I didn't even
know
you,” I said.

“I didn't know you either . . . not really.”

“But if you didn't know me, how could you think I was a loser?”

“Well . . . I don't know,” Timmy said. He kept cutting into the top of the table. It looked like he was carving his initials.