The Journey Prize Stories 22 (7 page)

As soon as he got in the front door he could hear the
TV
on in the basement. He ran up to his room and took off his uniform and put on jeans and his New England Patriots T-shirt. He went to his bedside table and took out the two twenty dollar bills and slid them into the front pocket of his jeans. Then he picked up his croquet set and opened it up on the bed and looked at it for a minute. The wooden case was pitted and missing the yellow ball, but everything else was in good condition. He'd found the set in the basement last summer, looked up the rules in the
World Book Encyclopaedia
, and taught himself to play. He'd asked his mother where the set came from and she
said his father must have gotten it somewhere, but that she couldn't remember him ever playing. Leo thought his father had probably played croquet a lot, and that his mother had just forgotten. He almost always played croquet by himself, but he knew it was more fun playing against someone else, even if they weren't very good. One time he'd played against Francesco in the backyard, and another time against his mom, and he'd beat them both pretty easily. He decided he'd ask his uncle to play a game in the backyard, even though he knew what he would say. He brought the croquet set downstairs and set it by the fridge, poured himself a glass of chocolate milk, and got four peanut butter cookies out of the bag in the cupboard. He unlocked the deadbolt on the basement door and stood at the top of the stairs and called out, “Uncle Oscar, it's me Leo.”

“Leo,” said his uncle, “come on down, my man.” Mr. Tibbs flitted past Leo as soon as he started down the stairs. His uncle was slouched on the couch, watching a soap opera, and Mr. Tibbs ran over and sat on his stomach and curled up in a ball. Uncle Oscar had started shaving again and his hands had stopped shaking a while ago. He wore the same clothes he'd been wearing the day he showed up, except now over his Sepultura T-shirt he had on a ratty red and black button-down shirt that Leo's mom used to wear when she worked in the garden.

“You want a peanut butter cookie?” Leo asked.

“Too healthy.”

“Is that a good show you're watching?”

“Nope.”

“Uncle Oscar.”

“Leo.” Uncle Oscar picked up the remote from the cushion beside him and turned down the volume.

“How long were you a dope fiend for?”

Oscar laughed. His belly shook and Mr. Tibbs raised his head and glared at Leo and then set his head back down.

“On and off for three years.”

Leo took a sip of chocolate milk. “What's going to happen if you don't pay back that money?”

Oscar closed his eyes and sank back in the couch.

“I'm going to pay it back.”

Leo finished his cookies and set his milk glass down on the floor. He reached over and picked up his uncle's Ibanez guitar and held it in his lap. Uncle Oscar opened his eyes and looked at him for a second and then turned back towards the TV. Leo tried to play an E chord, but two of the strings were broken. He tried to write a song by plucking one string at a time, but he couldn't think of a tune that he liked. He thought his uncle might offer to show him how to play something, but Uncle Oscar just kept watching
TV
. Leo put the guitar back down and turned towards the screen. There was an old woman lying in a hospital bed and another woman in a fancy purple dress who was shouting at her, but the volume was turned down so low it was impossible to hear what they were saying.

“You going to move out of here?” asked Leo.

“Soon.” Oscar nodded. “Very soon.”

“Is it safe?”

“I can't stay down here forever.”

“You want to play croquet in the parkette with me before you go?”

Oscar looked towards the basement window. “How'd you ever start playing a game like that?” he said.

“I have asthma.”

“I know that, Leo.”

“You remember when I was a baby and you were visiting and you'd just got your custom Harley? You put your helmet on me and held me up next to the bike in the driveway and Mom took a picture, or maybe it was my dad.”

“I don't remember that.”

“It's in the picture album upstairs. Are you going to get another bike when you get money again?”

Oscar stretched his legs and stroked Mr. Tibbs behind the ears and Mr. Tibbs flicked his tail. “I think maybe I'll get a car,” said Oscar.

“What's faster, a motorbike or a car?”

“It depends on the bike and it depends on the car, but most of the time I'd say a bike's faster.”

“Why would you get a car then?”

“Sometimes cars make more sense.”

“Why?”

Uncle Oscar said nothing for a minute and watched the
TV
screen and stroked Mr. Tibbs's back. A man in a tuxedo had come into the hospital room, and he was trying to get the woman in the purple dress to leave. “Let's say you got some friends across town,” said Uncle Oscar, finally, “and you want to get over there to play some croquet.”

“In Mississauga,” said Leo.

“Sure.”

“I don't know anyone who lives in Mississauga.”

“We're pretending.”

“How many friends?”

“How many of those hammers you got?”

“What?”

“Croquet sticks.”

“Mallets you mean?”

“How many?”

“Six.”

“Let's say you got four friends over in Mississauga who want to play, and a buddy from North York who wants to play. That makes six of you. They got the perfect field in Mississauga. Nice and flat. Green grass.”

“That's what the parkette is like,” said Leo. “We can go there right now.”

“They got some pretty girls over in Mississauga,” Uncle Oscar continued, “who want to watch you play. How you gonna get you and your buddy over there, and all your gear without no car? What you need is a car.”

“A Camaro ss.”

“Good choice,” said Uncle Oscar.

Leo imagined a field in Mississauga with wickets all set up and some girls there, who were cousins of Francesco's girlfriend, Isabel, and they were all wearing bikinis because it was so hot out. He imagined he was on the highway driving over there on a Harley and he had his favourite croquet mallet strapped to his back with a leather strap that he had custom-made. Francesco and the other guys there had bikes too, but they were Hondas. No one had a Camaro.

“How many girlfriends have you had?” asked Leo.

“Too many.”

Leo wondered how many that might be. Then Uncle Oscar picked Mr. Tibbs up with both hands and set him down on the floor. He turned off the
TV
and said, “Leo, I need to take a crap. I'm going to go upstairs and take a crap. Then after we can go to that parkette and play some croquet before it rains, mano-a-mano. You cool with that?”

“I'm cool with that,” said Leo, “if you want to.” He tried to sound like he wasn't too excited, and then he waited before his uncle had gone all the way upstairs before he followed. As soon as Leo heard his uncle close the bathroom door, he realized he had to take a crap, too. Drinking chocolate milk always did that to him. He went up to the bathroom door, pressed his ear against it, and tried to hear what was going on inside. The fan was on and he thought he could hear his uncle singing or talking to himself, but he couldn't be sure. Leo stood there listening for a long time and eventually he wondered if his uncle was jerking off, or maybe getting high. He thought maybe there was a way to get high from shampoo or toothpaste that he didn't know about.

“Uncle Oscar,” he yelled. “What are you doing in there?”

“What do you think?” his uncle yelled back.

“Are you going to be much longer?”

“Almost done.”

“Do you want to see that picture before we go?”

“What picture?” said Uncle Oscar. Then he said, “Oh yeah. Sure.”

Leo started to walk up and down the hall, and tried to think about playing croquet instead of thinking about using the bathroom. He wondered if he'd be able to beat his uncle too,
and he figured that he probably would. Then he wondered if maybe there was some other place he could take a crap, like in a bucket, and then get rid of it later, but then he heard a flush and the door finally opened and his uncle came out.

“The picture album's on the shelf in the living room,” said Leo.

“Sure,” said his uncle.

It smelled terrible in the bathroom, but Leo went in and sat down on the toilet right away. The seat was warm and there were brown bits of Mr. Tibbs' hair on the pink and white linoleum floor. Leo leaned forward and closed his eyes, his shoulders resting on his bare, skinny knees, and he tried to imagine what it would be like to do cocaine. He wondered if it was like playing a really good game of croquet, but then he thought it had to be even better than that. He thought it might feel like taking 500 dumps all at once while driving down the 401 on a Harley while a girl in a bikini was watching you. He decided he'd be willing to spend all of his birthday money to give that a try.

He was in the bathroom for a while. He used a lot of toilet paper and it took two flushes to get it all down. When he went back downstairs the photo album was still sitting on the shelf and his uncle wasn't there. He took the album off the shelf and sat down on the carpet and flipped through the pages until he found the picture of him and his uncle and his uncle's custom Harley. The colours were fading into yellow and green, but Leo thought it was still a pretty good shot and he peeled back the clear cellophane from the page and held the picture in his hands. The bike was low with handlebars that went up high with leather tassels on the end, and the gas tank had a
skull and a lightning bolt painted on it. His uncle had told him what kind of Harley it was and what kind of engine it had, but Leo could never remember. The bike was parked on an angle in the driveway and Uncle Oscar wore black jeans and a black motorcycle jacket with red padded shoulders and he held Leo up in front of the bike. Leo wore a diaper and his blue T-shirt was riding up so that his belly was showing. His uncle had one arm underneath Leo's bum and legs and with his other hand he was holding the motorcycle helmet on Leo's head. Leo's hands were balled into little fists and the helmet was way too big for Leo, so that his whole face was showing through the hole in the front, and he was grinning. His uncle looked younger, and he was smiling too, like he was very happy, and Leo wondered if it was because he was pleased to be holding his nephew or if it was his new bike or a mixture of the two.

Mr. Tibbs came and jumped in Leo's lap then, and Leo pushed him away. He got up and took the picture down to the basement but Uncle Oscar wasn't there. His uncle's boots were gone, but his guitar was still lying beside the chair where Leo had left it. Leo shoved the picture in his left pocket and went back upstairs and looked around and nothing else seemed to be missing. He went to the front door to check and found it open. He tried to remember if he'd locked it when he came home, but he couldn't be sure.

“Fuck,” he said. He thought his uncle might have left a note on the kitchen table, but there wasn't one. For a moment he thought something bad might have happened to his uncle, but then he thought about it some more and decided he'd probably just left all of a sudden, so he wouldn't have to say goodbye.

Then Leo called his mother at DivaMax and told her how he'd let his uncle upstairs to use the washroom, and how they'd planned to go to the parkette and how Uncle Oscar had left. She didn't say anything at first, and then she sighed, deeply, and he couldn't tell whether it was him she was disappointed in, or his uncle. Then he told her he'd told Francesco about Uncle Oscar, but that Francesco didn't seem to care, and his mother told him it didn't matter, that he shouldn't worry. He felt like he had to say something else. He didn't know what else to say, so he said, “Ramon's a drug dealer.”

His mother was silent for a second, and then she said, “Why did you tell me that, Leo?”

“Because it's true,” he said. “What are we going to do about Uncle Oscar?”

“It's okay, Leo,” she said. “We'll find out where he's gone when I get home.”

“Okay.” Leo hung up the phone. His mother hadn't sounded as angry as he'd expected and this made him feel guilty, as if he'd been the one who'd done something wrong, and not his uncle. He went to the living room window, and peered out through the drapes. The sky looked very grey but he felt like he couldn't just sit there and wait for his mom to come home. He knew he'd start to go crazy and his asthma would act up, and that the only thing to do was to go to the parkette and play croquet by himself. That was the only thing that would help him relax. He looked out of the window again. It was going to rain for sure.

When he stopped at the front closet to put on his raincoat, Mr. Tibbs came running up and rubbed himself against the door like he did whenever he was upset about something.
Usually Mr. Tibbs didn't like people at all, and Leo couldn't understand why the cat liked his uncle so much. He picked up Mr. Tibbs in both hands and looked him in the face and said, “Why did you let him get away?” and when the cat meowed and squirmed and pawed at his face, Leo threw him feet first towards the couch. Then he went outside as quickly as he could and locked the door behind him. Immediately his raincoat felt heavy and sticky against his neck and the bare skin of his arms. “Fuck it,” he said, and set his croquet set down and took off his raincoat like it was a pain in the ass. He bunched it up and shoved it inside the mailbox and then picked up his croquet set again and headed towards the park. When he came to the corner, Ramon was still there, sitting in the Camaro ss. It was not until Leo was halfway across the street that Ramon called out to him.

“Hey,” said Ramon. “You come back for what we talked about before?”