Читать книгу Eavesdroppings - Bob Green - Страница 26

18 Cinders Tell All

One summer day in l940, Grenfell Davenport said we should visit Janet Winter who had just moved from a house on east Main Street to a big home on the crescent above Queen’s Square. Janet was always moving and going to different schools, but we thought we should keep track of her because she was the only girl we knew who would kiss anybody. She was ten years old.

So we recruited Kenny Lee and Jim Bastin at the East Street dump, where they had been picking over odds and ends, and headed for the crescent on the west side. We found her house by asking where the new girl with the skinny legs lived. She was really pleased to see us and suggested we visit the animal pens in Victoria Park. There she introduced us to two girls who would soon be her classmates at Dickson School.

The sound of a steam train whistle prompted Grenfell to suggest we pop up to Barrie’s Cut to visit the spring where the hobos camped. He claimed to have sat by their fire at night and drunk beer with them. So up we went along the trail through the hawthorns (all subdivisions now) and down to the spring. It is still there beside the tracks just south of Simpson’s sawmill. There we splashed around until we were pretty well soaked and one of Janet’s new friends started to cry.

“Don’t worry,” Grenfell said. “We can all dry off on the bridge.”

Close to the spring a high wooden bridge carried the lane to Linton’s farm over the tracks in the cut. It was a favourite thrill of boys to stand on this old bridge and brace the exhaust of a train blasting up the grade. Now we could hear a train rumbling over the Grand River bridge and heading our way. We told the girls we were really in luck, that we could stand on the bridge while the train passed under and dry our clothes really fast.

The girls, except for Janet, didn’t like the idea, but Grenfell told them they hadn’t lived until they had had steam up their skirts. Janet, who was precocious, said it would at least be safer than sex. So we dared each other onto the bridge and watched the roaring black smoke approach. The wooden bridge planks had two-inch-wide cracks between them, and we positioned the girls over them for their maximum pleasure. Actually, we wanted to see if their light summer skirts would blow up. They couldn’t hold them down with their fingers in their ears.

The freight, westbound on the heavy grade, had two locomotives blasting with every pound of steam they could muster. The advancing tornado raised the hair on our necks, and we stuck our fingers in our ears and closed our eyes tight. The lead engine’s exhaust shook the bridge and exploded up through the cracks, firing sparks up trousers and skirts. To top it off, the engineer, spotting us, blew his whistle. The power of a steam whistle six feet beneath you is enough to shake the fillings out of your teeth.

We were reeling so much from the first engine that the second, the most powerful, caused the girls to scream. After it passed and the bridge settled down, we stood shaking our heads and patting bituminous gases back down our pant legs. I pried cinders from my eyes.

“My skirt blew up,” Janet said. “Did you peek, Grenfell?”

“How could I see with cinders in my eyes?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t get cinders in your eyes if you hadn’t peeked,” she said. “I’m telling my mother.”

The only boy who didn’t peek was Jim Bastin, who went to the Gospel Hall and could be trusted. Grenfell, Kenny Lee, and I all went to First United and couldn’t be trusted. What’s more, Kenny, because he wore glasses, didn’t get cinders in his eyes and gave us such graphic descriptions of the girls’ underwear that we wondered about the state of decency on the west side of town. Jim Bastin even said he wished he had opened his eyes.

We talked about that time on the bridge for weeks afterwards while we picked over odds and ends at the East Street dump. Of course, more sensational things have happened in the years since, but not much more.