Blue Vengeance Read Free Page A

grinning from the back seat.
    Dirty rotten asshole of a friend.
    Aunt Dot greeted them. Barbara Blue was behind her, supporting herself on two canes. She only used them both when she was extra tired. That’s what she said. Since Cookie died she had been extra tired all the time. She probably would have used her wheelchair but it was too big for the house.
    She waited till Mrs. Carter left to say, “Go to your room, Danny. I don’t want to look at you.”
    He fought back tears as he trudged upstairs. He sat in his chair, stared out the window, and thought about how they didn’t even get a chance to look at the guns.
    A little later Dot brought him a snack of fancy sandwiches left over from the funeral. He didn’t eat them. They were cold from the freezer and they made him think about Cookie, which was worse than thinking about his so-called friend.
    When he went to the bathroom he heard them talking. His mum said something nasty about Mrs. Carter’s high heels and then, “My dear lost boy.” She had tears in her voice when she said it.
    Dear lost boy
. That sounded promising. Maybe it wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought. They were talking so quietly he couldn’t grasp any more words. She sure hadn’t spoken to him as though he was her
dear lost boy
, but there it was. Hard to fathom, but there it was.

4
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    Danny couldn’t get out of his bedroom chair. Could not.
    From where he sat he had a view of the Red River and beyond it the pale green suburb of Riverview. But he didn’t see it. Sometimes he caught a movement, a car or a passing bird, but if someone were to ask him to describe what was in front of him, he wouldn’t be able to say. Cookie was his only thought.
    He was eating a melted Jersey Milk chocolate bar, taking no pleasure from it. There was a fine line for Danny between a soft Jersey Milk and one that was too far gone. This one was past its best because he hadn’t been alert to the rays of the sun on the table by his side.
    A muted rage took a turn through his system and left as quickly as it came. It reminded him that he needed to do something, something connected to Cookie, but he didn’t yet know what it was. There were only inklings.
    His fingers were sticky from the chocolate. He licked them absently and wiped them on the front of his T-shirt. His thin body was lost inside of it. It had belonged to Cookie, who had been taller than him and plumper once, though not in recent months. According to their mum, she took after their dad’s branch of the family. Danny couldn’t know this for sure as he didn’t remember his dad, and his mother said there were no photographs. She had often bemoaned the fact that it was Danny with his lean build that took after her side.
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    â€œIt’s more important for girls to be slim,” she had said.
    â€œWhy?” Cookie and Danny both asked at the same time.
    â€œIt just is,” said their mother in the unsatisfactory way she had of answering their questions. “Honestly, when I was young, people compared my shape to that of a wasp.”
    When they both looked blank she added, “You know…I went in in the middle; I had a waist.”
    She also had a sting.
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    It was Cookie who had taught him about the pleasure of soft chocolate. He hadn’t known it since she died and he wondered if it would ever come back, and if it did, if it would be lesser somehow. A lesser pleasure.
    Two weeks had passed since her death. The time had gone by in a blur — fog all through it, like at the graveside service.
    Uncle Edwin went home after a week. He and Aunt Dot farmed a half section near Baldur, a couple of hours southwest of Winnipeg. Aunt Dot stayed on. She brought Danny his meals and encouraged him to have baths, even tried to jolly him out to the yard once for a game of catch, but mostly she left him alone. No one mentioned school.
    Paul had dropped over a few times,