Defender

  Back after Stick took a beating from the class bully, Caveman Connor, Vega tried toughening Stick up, showing him some moves.

  He was safe whenever I was around. Nobody tried anything with me towering beside him to back him up.

  But like Vega said, “Stretch can’t always be there to save you. She ain’t your bodyguard.”

  The problem was Stick had toothpick arms and twiggy legs—no power. So Vega had nothing to work with trying to train him.

  “You’ve got zero muscle,” she told him. “But a huge head. You’re like a walking lollipop. So that’ll be your weapon.”

  Then she taught him how to head butt, making him practice on a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll.

  “That other kid’s nothing but a big fat mouse,” she said. “But you and me, Stick, we’re ghetto rats. You’ve seen those things—born mean, with needle teeth and razor claws. If they don’t start fighting first thing, they get eaten. That’s what you are, a baby rat.”

  He nodded, looking about as mean as a fuzzy puppy.

  “Don’t waste time on punching and kicking, just get in close. You gotta jump him and hold on tight. Then, bang!” Vega knocked heads with the stuffed toy, demonstrating how to pull your head back before whipping it forward and making contact. She explained how to do the most damage without knocking yourself out at the same time, instructing Stick on angles of impact and where his own skull was thickest.

  “Right here.” She tapped his forehead. “Aim with that. If you’re coming in low, you can catch him under the chin. That’ll stun him. Crack him on the nose and you’ll get him bleeding. If he slips around behind you, snap back and try to catch him in the teeth.”

  She got Stick wrestling Mickey and practicing till he was breathless and dizzy.

  “Banging heads,” he said. “Won’t that hurt my brain?”

  “What brain? Just knock that fat mouse out.”

  And so, the next day at lunch in the school cafeteria, when Vega spotted Connor heading to the washroom, she told Stick to go for it. “Now’s your chance.”

  “I hide from him. I don’t go looking for him.”

  “Be the hunter, not the hunted. Surprise is a weapon too.”

  So me and Vega followed Stick as he trailed Connor to the boys’ room. There were a few guys in there, which meant an audience. Vega gave Stick a shove.

  “Do it!”

  Connor was turning to see what was going on when Stick crashed into him, and half hugged, half tackled the bigger kid. It was a short, messy fight, with the other kids looking on in shock, some cheering for Stick. The Caveman got a few shots in, trying to break Stick’s hold, and our boy hanging on tight. Stick’s first head butt caught Connor on the temple, knocking him off-balance. Then Stick hammered the top of his skull up under Connor’s chin. They both went down, rolling on the floor. Somebody started crying, and there was a lot of blood. Connor had bitten his tongue when their heads smacked, and he was gushing. I went over to Stick, who was sitting stunned on the tiles, blinking dizzy and dazed up at me.

  “Wow,” he kept saying. “Wow.” He tried to stand up, but his legs were all rubbery and he tumbled to his knees. “What happened?”

  Vega was shaking her head, but with the ghost of a smile. “Get him up, Stretch.”

  Connor left him alone after that, but Vega never did toughen Stick. While she was a rat, he was always going to be more of a hamster.

  “When?” he asks me now.

  “Huh?” I didn’t catch the rest of what he just said. “When what?”

  “When was the incinerator chute sealed up? If we know that, it’ll give us an idea when the girl was dumped in there, right? Some kind of range for when she died.”

  “It’s been shut like that for as long as I can remember.”

  “But can you find out how long?”

  I think; then it hits me. “The logbook.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have to keep records of all repairs and renovations done in the building. City regulations.”

  “So you can check when the shaft was patched up?”

  “The old logs are down in storage. I could dig them up. That might give us a timeline.”

  And it could give us more. Because those books don’t just show what jobs were done. They show who did the work.

  Who buried her in the wall.

  NOBODY COMES HERE. This section of the basement is locked off, and you need the master key to get this far. Not that there’s anything dangerous or forbidden. It’s just claustrophobic corridors and empty rooms, like some kind of bunker or nuclear fallout shelter that we’ve never had any use for.

  When me and Stick were kids I’d steal the key and we’d dare each other to race through the maze, where one wrong turn could get you lost and never heard from again.

  I used to follow Dad everywhere when I was little. He took me down here, and I thought this section, with its long hallways of shut doors, was the building’s jail, where the bad tenants got locked up for not paying rent, playing music too loud or fighting with their neighbors. I remember holding on to Dad’s belt the whole time we were here, in case one of those prisoners reached out from a dark cell and dragged me in.

  The sound of my steps breaks the deep silence. In the long stretches between lights, pools of shadows gather. At the end of a hallway I stop to listen. Was that the echo of my own steps? Or something else? I strain my ears.

  Getting jumpy, that’s all. I’m alone here. I’m sure.

  Turning a corner, I come to storage room 33. My hand shakes slightly as I unlock the door.

  A breath of stale air wafts out as I reach in and find the switch. In the light from a single low-watt bulb I see stacks of boxes and a beat-up table and chair. All the Zoo’s old records are in cardboard boxes labeled with marker. Invoices, forms and reports, decades of paperwork and long tubes that hold blueprints for electrical and plumbing layouts. And the logs.

  I know the incinerator was shut down before I was born, back when Toronto was known as the Big Smoke because of its smog. The garbage chute must have been sealed up around then too. So I decide to work my way back, starting with the year of my birth. I grab a box that covers the decade leading up to when I was born, and sit at the table.

  The log is crammed with notations, documenting an apocalypse of floods and fires, plagues of mice and roaches, bedbugs, toxic molds. Boiler breakdowns, dead appliances, accidental electrocutions from faulty wiring, plumbing problems and shattered windows. The logs list the repairs and who did the fixing.

  As I go through the years, I find Dad’s initials beside the jobs: TG for Ted Greer. He’s been superintendent since he took over from his own father, who died when Dad was in high school. Dad got stuck with the job because he had to help support the family and take care of his mother.

  Dad’s older brother Jake’s initials are nowhere to be found. Uncle Jake likes to say the janitor gene skipped him. Jake escaped and started his own construction company. He’s got a huge house out in the suburbs.

  There’s no reference to the incinerator. I finish up one box of logs and take another down. A different set of initials begins to appear, mixed in with Dad’s. DG, his father, Douglas. Dad was helping out long before he became super.

  Now I’m the helper. Dad says we make a great team, calls me a natural problem solver.

  After my sleepless night, the writing is starting to blur together when I finally spot something. Incinerator shut down. Gas line blocked.

  The date is eight years before I was born, when Dad would have been fourteen. The initials beside the note are DG.

  Searching further, I find this: Incinerator drawers removed. Floors 15–25. Walls plastered. DG.

  In the following week, the drawers for the lower floors are removed. Different dates, same DG next to them.

  I flip pages. Where is it? Come on.

  There! Six months later: Incinerator room. Chute drywalled shut. But no initials. Nothing to indicate who did that final job, sealing in
the body. I try comparing the handwriting with the earlier notes, but it’s all scribbles. Can’t tell if it’s the same.

  But DG did the rest of the work.

  I sit back and rub my face. Did he put her in there? Did she know him, my grandfather? Did he do it?

  I check the dates again. Why so long between when the walls were patched on the floors above and the sealing up of the chute in the basement? Maybe there was no rush because nobody could toss any trash down the shaft with the drawers plastered over. And they got distracted by the constant repairs. So it could wait, that final closing of the chute.

  Or maybe there was no rush till there was a body to hide.

  HERE’S WHERE I go to get away from everything. To breathe.

  The roof is off-limits. But I’ve got the key to the kingdom. It’s quieter twenty-six stories up, high above the traffic and wrecking crews. The air seems a little cleaner, and I don’t have to worry about fitting into the world. No ceiling to crowd me. Nothing but sky.

  Me and Stick sneak up here to be alone, so we don’t have to worry about anybody busting in on us. We roll out yoga mats to make a love nest between the tall ventilation fans where we can be together, hidden and safe from snooping eyes.

  I keep lawn chairs up here too. I drag one over for the best view. Down the corridor of skyscrapers I can catch a peek at Lake Ontario, and the sailboats drifting by.

  I sit and try to make sense of this mess.

  If it was Dad’s father who sealed up the chute, he must be the one who dumped the body inside. Stuffed her in that garbage bag like trash and hid her in the wall.

  Who was my grandfather, anyway? I never knew him. He died before I was born—died young, from a stroke. But everything I’ve ever heard about him is ugly and awful.

  When we were all out at my uncle Jake’s house for Thanksgiving a few years back, Dad’s big brother started talking about the bad old days, living in the shadow of their old man.

  Me, Dad and Jake were down in the basement, playing a game of snooker on the pool table. Jake was about six beers deep by then. Not raving drunk, but getting there.

  “Like growing up in a minefield,” he said to me as he lined up a shot. “You never knew when your next step might set the old man off. And when he went off, he went way off.” Missing his shot, Jake leaned in close, breathing beer fumes on me as Dad frowned at him. “They called him Mad Dog. Mad Dog Doug. Remember, Teddy, how his face would go all red? Like he was going to blow.”

  Dad tried to cut him off. “She doesn’t need to hear this.”

  But Jake was picking up speed. “And there was nowhere to hide in that little rathole apartment. Don’t know why you’re still living there, brother. Come work for me. Get you out of the Zoo.”

  “I’ve got a job.”

  “That’s not a job. It’s a curse,” Jake said, waving his pool stick around. “Anyway, you couldn’t escape old Mad Dog. You were his favorite punching bag, Teddy. He hated you best. Hated you for being so big, when he was so small—five and a half feet of mean and vicious. Hated you for getting in the way when he went after Mom, and taking it for her.” Jake gave me a drunken grin. “Kid, your dad really knew how to take a beating.”

  “Shut up, Jake.” Dad pulled me away, taking my stick and setting it on the table.

  “What, am I wrong? We all got a taste of his fists, but you were his favorite. And you never fought back, never threw a punch. You’re a giant, brother. Could have squashed him like a bug if you tried.”

  Dad was leading me upstairs when Jake called out something that’s stuck in my head ever since. “But you got him back in the end, didn’t you, Teddy? Beat Mad Dog without laying a hand on him. You got the last laugh.”

  Dad kept me away from Uncle Jake for the rest of that Thanksgiving. Later, when I asked him what that final remark meant, Dad said, “Ancient history. Forget it.”

  All I know for sure is my grandfather smacked them all around, even my grandmother. She lives with Jake and his wife now.

  Gran’s a shy, gray lady who barely talks above a whisper. She used to have a little garden up here on the roof, and there are still a few broken pots and planters lying around.

  So, Mad Dog was an abuser. Still, it’s a big step to murder. And what happened to the girl was the work of a psycho.

  If Mad Dog was the killer, why would Dad be covering up now, after all these years? No excuse would be good enough, no explanation would make sense.

  My gaze shifts across the rooftop to the incinerator chimney. If that furnace hadn’t been shut down, the body probably would have been burned to ash, erased and forgotten.

  For my whole life, that body was buried beneath me. Did Dad know it was there all this time? He seemed surprised when I came running to tell him what I had found.

  But he’s hiding it now. Keeping a secret.

  It’s like a shadow cast over my life, and over every minute with him.

  Like it was all a lie. I never really knew Dad.

  DAD’S OUT WHEN I come down from the roof. I poke my head in the kitchen and find Mom making lunch.

  “Hey, Ty, where you been? I got up this morning and everybody was gone.”

  “I was just hanging with Stick.”

  “Hungry?”

  I realize I’m starving. Been so obsessed I forgot to eat.

  “I could eat a herd of horses,” I say, before realizing that’s one of Dad’s lines that always made me giggle when I was little.

  “How about a herd of grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  “Triple cheese deluxe?”

  “You grate, I’ll grill.”

  The way we make the sandwiches is with a slice of good old rubbery processed cheese covered in shredded Monterey Jack and a thin shaving of chili pepper cheddar to give it a spicy kick.

  I can hear Squirrel in the living room talking to Animal Planet on the TV. Like it’s a conversation and the people on the screen are talking back.

  “Look out for the lion,” he’s saying. “It’s sneaking up on you.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask Mom.

  “He left a note about picking up some plumbing parts. Been gone all morning.”

  I shred while she butters and stacks the slices. Between me, Mom and Squirrel we can eat half a dozen easy.

  “Don’t think he slept at all last night,” Mom says.

  What kept him up? What’s he thinking? All I’ve got running through my head is, Why, why, why—

  “Why what?” Mom startles me. I must have been thinking out loud, I’m so groggy and out of it.

  “Why?” I try to make something up quick. “Why Dad? I mean…what was it about him? Why did you go for him, way back when?”

  A good save, and a safe topic.

  “I had my eye on Teddy, from around the block and school. You couldn’t miss him. Whatever crowd he was in, he was above and beyond, head in the clouds. And he had his eye on me too. But who didn’t, back then? All the guys were chasing me. They used to call me Red Hot, and not just because of my hair. Don’t laugh, it’s true. So anyway, you know your dad, he goes in slow motion. He was taking forever to make his move, so I told him to quit staring and ask me out already.”

  “So, just because he was big and tall you went for him?”

  Mom flips the first sandwich on the frying pan with a buttery sizzle.

  Squirrel is chattering in the other room: “Watch out. Lion’s hiding in the grass.”

  “That’s how he caught my eye. But he caught my heart with the way he was so much the opposite of me. I was out of control and out of my mind most of the time. And here he was so big and solid, something to hold on to. I’d lived fast before, had some fun. But what I really needed was how he slowed me down. He kept me from cracking up. Kept me sane.”

  She slides two grilled cheeses onto a plate for me and starts another.

  “And your father always had that sexy, smoky voice.”

  I laugh. For me it’s more of a comforting, deep bearlike rumble, but Mom calls
it whiskey smoke, though Dad has never touched a drop or taken a puff.

  “Plus, Teddy’s got those great big hands.”

  I cough. “I’m trying to eat here.”

  She grins, enjoying scandalizing me.

  Squirrel’s yelling at his show. “Look out! Lion’s coming. Run. Run!”

  Mom nibbles on some shredded cheddar. “Back when I met Teddy, it was just me and my mother against the world. She kept losing jobs, and we moved around so much we stopped unpacking and just lived out of our suitcases. Riding the eviction express, she called it. Wasn’t her fault, just a run of bad luck and bad guys. Our last stop was a roachy little apartment down the block from here in the Weeds.”

  That dump got torn down years ago.

  “My mom worked two jobs. When I ran into your dad, being around him gave me this new feeling, one I’d never felt before. Made me feel like there was a place for me in the world—beside him. He felt like…home.”

  She leans her hip on the counter, watching me eat, smiling about something.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re so much like him. On the outside and inside.”

  I just look at her. I’m not even sure who Dad is anymore.

  “Ever catch him in a lie?” I ask.

  She frowns. “Teddy Bear? He couldn’t lie to save his life.”

  Right. Maybe I’m not the only one who doesn’t really know him.

  “He’s lousy at it,” Mom goes on. “He has too many tells that give him away whenever he tries to stretch the truth. You know, the way he won’t meet your eyes, or keeps trying to clear his throat like there’s something caught in there. And he’ll start twisting his ring like it’s itching his finger. I always know.”

  When he told me I was seeing things, he was looking everywhere but at me, and coughing like he was choking on his lie.

  Squirrel shows up now. “Dumb zebra. I warned him. Now he’s lunch.” He sniffs the cheesy air. “Lunch?”

  Mom flips a sandwich onto a plate for him.

  “You know they can’t hear you,” I tell him. “The TV animals and people.”