Читать книгу Blood of the Donnellys - David McRae - Страница 6

Squirming at the defence lawyer’s table in the Toronto courthouse, I wiped sweaty palms on my grey dress pants and ran a finger under the starched collar of my white shirt. I wanted desperately to loosen the knot of my red tie and shed the blue blazer I was wearing. Mom had bought these clothes for my trial. Our lawyer had insisted I be well dressed to make a good impression for my courtroom appearance. I faced a charge of committing damage to public property over one thousand dollars.

“It’ll be over soon, Jason. Be brave!”

I turned around and nodded at Jennifer’s warm smile. Jennifer was my twin sister. Her freckled face and auburn hair matched my own. We both carried our tall fifteen-year-old frames with good posture. Jennifer had supported me through all my bad times, yet I now remembered our last fight, one of too many in the past few months.

“Stay away from them, Jason!” Jennifer warned me. “They’re jerks!”

“What do you know, Stilts?” I sneered. “I choose my own friends!”

Jennifer’s face grew red at the nickname that teased her about her height. “I ... I know you skipped school four times in the past month. I know you’ve been hanging around the mall with Derek and Kirk. They’re too old for you and they deal drugs.”

“Says who? Besides, I’m fifteen and they’re only seventeen. What’s two years?”

As I slammed my bedroom door, shutting her out, I felt a twinge of guilt when I saw the wounded look on her face.

Not long after that the police arrived at our front door to talk to my parents and me about the shoplifting at Zellers. The officers laid no charges. They had no real proof. The police found none of the stolen CDs in my backpack or anywhere in our house, but one witness insisted she saw me lift the discs and tuck them into a side pocket of the pack. She was right. I did steal the discs, but I’d slipped the stolen property to Derek and Kirk, who escaped through the mall’s underground parking lot. Nevertheless, my parents grounded me. Despite my harsh words to Jennifer, though, she never once criticized me and gave me the benefit of the doubt about my innocence.

Now, in the courtroom, I glanced quickly at my sister again, then at my parents. How did I get here? I stared at the judge’s empty podium. It and the room’s tables and chairs gleamed with a golden oak finish. The walls were off-white from the ceiling to midpoint where oak wainscoting completed the decoration. A heavy blue carpet covered the floor, and tall arched windows lined the street wall. The windows revealed the glowering grey skies, slushy streets, and dirty snowbanks of late January. The dreary outside winter weather did nothing to warm the stark setting of the courtroom.

“When is that judge going to get here?” I asked my lawyer, who was sitting beside me.

Mr. Roberts squeezed my arm gently. “Not long now. You’ve done the right thing, son.”

I sighed. Everything that had happened over the past several months seemed a blur. My failing report card from first-term Grade 10, my absences from high school, the shoplifting incident at Zellers — they were all jumbled together. Then there was the business at Becker’s ...

“How’s it going, Jas?” Kirk asked, a sneer on his face. Both he and Derek were slouched against the big maple tree outside our school on a blustery October afternoon. “We gotta job and we need you!”

“No way!” I protested. “The heat was really on me after Zellers, and things are finally starting to cool down.”

Derek leered as he pushed his chest into mine and leaned closer. “But they could get warmer. One quick call to the right people and you’re toast, my friend!”

I hated the deep-throated chuckle Derek used when he had control of someone.

“You wouldn’t dare!” I gasped.

“Don’t bet on it,” Derek said menacingly, his cold blue eyes drilling into my own.

I flinched, then dropped my gaze to the ground. “W-what have you got in mind?”

“That’s better!” Kirk said, grinning at my surrender to Derek’s threat. “The pop machine at Becker’s is an easy touch. You’ll see.”

I agreed to meet Derek and Kirk at the local variety store in the late evening after it closed. When I got there at midnight, the lights in the place were off. I took up sentry alongside the pop machine not far from the front door, nervously watching for my mother to drive by on her return from a night shift at the hospital. It was past my curfew. If she spotted me, I’d really be in trouble. Shivering, I retreated into the shadows.

A few minutes later a sports utility vehicle screeched to a stop in front of the Becker’s. Derek emerged from the driver’s side, and Kirk got out of the front passenger seat. Both headed immediately for the pop machine.

“What are you doing?” I whispered hoarsely at them. Both teens were carrying crowbars.

Kirk tossed me a third bar as they reached me, then they started prying the lock on the machine’s door, while I stood awkwardly to one side.

“If you’re not going to help us, stupid, keep watch!” Derek growled as he heaved his weight on the bar against the door. The shattering plastic and the grinding metal made a lot of racket. Then, just as the lock snapped, all three of us heard something moving inside the store.

A man rushed out, waving his arms. “Hey, you punks! Stop!”

Kirk, Derek, and I froze. Who was this? The store’s manager and clerk should have been long gone.

Before I could react, the charging man collided with me on the sidewalk in front of the pop machine. Derek and Kirk had bolted to the SUV and were already roaring down a side alley. The man gripped me by the shirt collar and hauled me into the store. The police arrived minutes later. The man who had grabbed me was the owner of the store. He had been doing some late-night inventory work. I had been caught red-handed.

The police handcuffed me and took me to the police station for questioning. After a phone call home, my parents arrived at the station with Mr. Roberts, the family lawyer. After several hours of questioning, the police released me, as a young offender, to the custody of my parents. As we left the station, Derek and Kirk stepped out of another squad car. I stopped and watched the two shuffle toward me.

As we passed one another, Kirk growled under his breath, “Keep your mouth shut, punk!”

Later I learned that the police had stopped Derek for speeding at a hundred kilometres an hour in a sixty-kilometre zone. The police had recognized the two teens from the descriptions radioed to them. Their SUV belonged to Derek’s dad, who had reported it stolen earlier that afternoon. Upon searching the trunk, the police had discovered two small packs of marijuana.

Then came the last of a series of meetings with Mr. Roberts. My parents and Jennifer had accompanied me. “Jason!” the lawyer cautioned. “You’ve been identified at the scene. If you cooperate with the police and the Crown attorney, you’ll get a maximum of thirty hours of community service with no criminal record, especially since you’re not involved in the drugs.”

At first I stubbornly refused. “Not a chance!” I told him. “I won’t rat on my friends.”

“Jason, please!” Jennifer cried.

“Mind your own business, Stilts!” I snapped.

I even shut out the sobs of my mother. “They know me, Mom.” I told her. “They’ll find me.”

“No, Jason,” my father said, “they won’t.” He stood before me, staring deeply into my eyes. I had never seen such a concentrated look from him before. “Listen to Mr. Roberts. It’s the only chance you have.”

Finally, I agreed to testify through a closed-circuit television that fed into the courtroom. Kirk and Derek received sentences of thirty hours of community service and twelve months’ probation for possession of marijuana, with an additional twenty hours of community service and fifteen months’ probation for attempted robbery. They began serving their sentences concurrently. Derek’s dad dropped the charges on the stolen SUV.

Focusing again on the vacant podium in the courtroom, I cursed the tardiness of the judge, then risked another brief look over my shoulder. I wished I hadn’t. Dad was staring at the high ceiling. His gaunt face seemed even more drawn than usual. The hollow sockets around his eyes were deeper, and the black rings were darker. His immaculate black hair normally shone. Now I noticed a cowlick at the back of his head, and his hair was uncombed. His blue pinstriped suit, though neatly pressed, hung loosely over his thinning frame.

Mom was slumped in the bench seat and was shakily removing her tinted glasses. As she fidgeted with her dangling auburn curls, I gasped at the redness encircling her eyes. Quickly, I blinked back tears.

“All rise!”

I jumped at the echoing command from the court clerk. Everyone stood. Mr. Roberts and the Crown attorney bowed to recognize the judge’s entrance. A short, stout man in a long, flowing black robe with a red shoulder sash climbed the few short steps to the judge’s bench. We all remained standing until the judge seated himself in a high-backed leather chair. The judge opened a thin brown file folder, adjusted his half-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and studied the case documents.

“Jason Stevens!” he barked.

Mr. Roberts nudged me, and we both got to our feet and faced the judge.

“Mr. Stevens, you’ve been charged with mischief to private property over a thousand dollars. You’ve entered a plea of guilty, which has been confirmed by your own lawyer and accepted by the Crown attorney. Is that your wish?”

“Yes, Your Honour.”

“As you have no prior records and you’ve cooperated with the Crown’s office to bring this incident to a speedy close, I accept the plea of mercy from Mr. Roberts, your lawyer. You are hereby sentenced to thirty hours of community service in Toronto to begin immediately. Do you wish to address the court?”

I glanced at Mr. Roberts. “Your Honour,” the lawyer said, “the Stevens family is taking up residence in the village of Lucan near London at the beginning of February. That’s just a few days from now. I respectfully request that Jason be allowed to begin his sentence after his family has arrived in Lucan and settled in their new home.”

The judged peered over his tilted glasses as Mr. Roberts continued. “Prior arrangements have been made for Jason to assist his grandfather in a community history project to update the archives at the new museum wing being set up in Lucan. He’ll also be involved in community research and service for senior citizens at the Lucan nursing home.”

I looked sharply at Mr. Roberts and then at Dad, who returned my gaze and nodded briefly to let me know the decision was final.

“Your request is granted!” the judge said. “Court adjourned!”

Mom cried softly as Jennifer dashed through the swinging gate that separated the spectators’ seating from the court area and threw her arms around my neck. I returned the warm hug. Mom soon joined us, and we stood in a group clinch for several minutes.

I watched Dad over Mom’s shoulder. Slowly, he rose from his seat. He seemed older to me — more stooped and paler than before. I clutched Mom and Jennifer more tightly as Dad moved toward us. I waited. Dad touched my shoulder and smiled. I recognized the familiar glint in his eyes. He was a caring man, and I knew he’d forgiven me.

The pangs of guilt started almost immediately as Dad led us to the back of the courthouse. They increased as we stepped into the freezing wind whipping around the parking lot. Even the warmth of a heated car and my family’s forgiveness didn’t diminish the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. How would I ever repay my family for its love and support? The task seemed impossible. I didn’t know where to turn for advice or comfort. My guilt had even pushed Jennifer away.

The family sat silently in the car as we drove home for one of the last times. As Mr. Roberts had said, we planned to leave in a couple of days for Lucan. Dad was taking a job as a freelance writer and photographer with the local Lucan newspaper. Mom began her new nursing job in nearby London soon, too.

Mixed with the guilt was the resentment of the move. Jennifer and I had been born in Toronto and had lived our whole lives in the small two-storey three-bedroom house in suburban Etobicoke. Since the trial had begun, I’d had no time to really say goodbye to my friends, especially my best one, Sam.

To top it off, working with Granddad on a community history project appealed even less to me. I knew it would only be three or four hours on Saturdays after the museum closed, and that by March break my sentence would end, but Granddad, a retired history teacher from the local high school, was rather eccentric.

On previous visits I’d noticed that people politely smiled with what appeared to be pity upon greeting Granddad. I saw, too, that they shrugged and shook their heads as they passed by. I loved Granddad dearly, but his research project on the Donnellys, an Irish-Canadian family that had been slaughtered by a vigilante mob more than a hundred years ago, and the ghostly sightings at their former homestead, only made people see him as a kook even more. On some occasions, unknown to Mom and Dad, teenagers teased Granddad in downtown Lucan. Nothing serious enough to call the police, but enough to make me angry and embarrassed.

Granddad always laughed them off, simply saying, “Kids will be kids!”

As soon as Dad turned into our driveway and shut off the engine, I pushed open the rear passenger door and stalked into the house. Jennifer tried to catch me as I fumbled with the key in the lock, but I broke away from her, went inside, scrambled up the stairs, and slammed my bedroom door. Turning on my stereo, I parted the curtains to look at my family, who were still outside. I never wanted to hurt anyone — especially Jennifer — but that’s exactly what I did every time.

My sister was wiping away tears as she leaned against Mom’s shoulder. When my stereo erupted in an echoing thud of heavy metal music, Jennifer glanced up at my window. Quickly, I jerked the curtains closed.

“Let him be for now!” I heard my dad say as he tried to soothe Jennifer. “He’ll be fine in a day or two. You’ll see!”