Chapter 8: Fahrenheit - Asbestos

Saturday, February 2, 1986

The red needle on the outdoor thermometer pointed at zero. I was sure of it.

It’s way colder than that, said Poulie, contradicting me.

We were in front of the Jovi corner store, at the foot of Mitchell Hill. A dry wind, faint but biting, lashed our young cheeks, which stiffened in the polar cold. Even our habit of stocking up on cherry gum was on ice.

Save for the grey smoke rising from chimneys, the neighbourhood lay still. Nothing stirred but a light blowing snow; made visible by the cold, it sparkled under a clear steel-blue sky stamped with a huge white-and-gold sun.

We turned our squinting eyes toward the row of houses across the street, searching for two where no one would be home. After talking it over, we chose to cut between the peppermint-green house and the one belonging to Madame Lessard, an elderly woman living alone who was unlikely to see us in her backyard.

The snow that had accumulated over more than two months was driven into high, tight-packed banks, making it easier for us to step over the sagging wire fence at the back of the Lessard house. On the other side, we stood atop the filled-in ditch, the little stream beneath it buried under snow and, surely, frozen solid. Before us rose a tailings heap, the one we called the ‘Corner Store Dump.’

Though not by any means the tallest, this dump had other things going for it: it was steep, and close to the street. The blinding climb up its blue-and-white slope would be the first half of our morning outing, and after we’d slide down on our Krazy Karpets.

It’s really cold, Steve. My feet are frozen.

I told him we’d do just one run. The climb would warm us up, and the race down would be our reward. I was also hoping to show Poulie how you could see his house in the distance through the bare trees. The distant sight of it would unleash dreams of comfort, steam rising from the cups of the hot chocolate surely awaiting once we at last got there.

No way it’s zero. It’s at least minus a thousand.

I suggested we could run up the hill. Easier said than done. The snow was much thinner on the slope, and our boots broke off hard crusts, exposing grey sand cracked into small frozen, slippery crevices where we soon lost our footing. Having to carry our rolled-up Krazy Karpets tucked under our arms was no help. My eyes teared up from the cold, but I kept my focus. I was enjoying the sun above our tuques, even as its light stung my eyes. My frozen cheekbones pulled the skin tight over my face. The climb hadn’t seemed long, but when I neared the top of the dump and registered the steepness of the slope, I was so dizzy I had to sit down and groggily plot out the fifty-yard descent to Madame Lessard’s yard.

My hands were cold, my face was cold, and one of my boots had chunks of ice in it. Poulie had caught up. He was less out of breath than I was, but still grimacing.

Did you see how steep it is? We can’t go that way!

I slowly got back to my feet and muttered: Yeah, I know. But over there doesn’t look so bad.

Wherever, but let’s go already. I’m freezing!

I’d just noticed that Poulie’s tuque was too small and sat high on his forehead.

A tingling sensation came over me – a slow, cold burn that numbed me as I scanned the polar surface around us in wonderment. It was like a huge, crinkled wheel of Brie. An otherwise invisible wind gently swept the snow from the ground of our moon. With watery eyes I looked skyward: the sun had captured my attention and launched a replay of the Challenger explosion in my mind.

Since that fateful Tuesday, I’d been haunted by questions. How long had the astronauts remained conscious after the shuttle burst into flames in that vast blue sky? Had the cabin depressurization killed them instantly or did they die on impact with the ocean – travelling at more than two hundred miles per hour, according to the news reports that trickled in over the following days and evenings? At the exact moment of the explosion, had it been hot enough to melt their skin? Or had the astronauts felt a terrifying cold? Or both at once, like a raging fever that wracks you with long shivers?

Poulie cut off my reverie with a practical question. How are we going to stop before the fence?

We’d walked over to a gentler slope above one of the last yards on Mitchell Hill. Far below in the ravine, the crossbar of a wooden fence protruded from the snow, and a blue shadow revealed a ditch in front of it.

The ditch should stop us.

Two Krazy Karpets – mine, long and red; Poulie’s, short and blue – hurtled down the slope like Genghis Khan’s cavalry of archers on the Mongolian steppes. Lying flat on our stomachs, head first and boots in the air, with our little fists clenching the twin handles cut into our plastic sheets, we hit the slope with an astonishing and unexpected speed. With the icy snow pelting our faces, we couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t ready ourselves for the ever-stronger jabs of the hill’s bumps against our chests. But even if there had been a way to slow down, we weren’t about to chicken out now.

Our race came to a crashing halt at the bottom of the ditch. The impact squeezed our lungs as the ground made acquaintance with our reddened faces, contorted with fear and hurt. We were totally winded, our eyes momentarily panicked as we gasped for air. Then we groaned as we struggled to our feet, only to discover that our boots were in a stream of water beneath the crust of snow we’d broken through in our unhinged enthusiasm. The icy water seeping in through the seams of my moon boots was our signal to return to base.

Sheepishly and without a word, we scrambled back to Poulie’s house, our unfurled Karpets carving trails in the snow. Along the way, I remembered that I’d forgotten to show Charlélie his house from above, but kept the thought to myself.

As we reached the house, out of breath and exasperated, Pit was coming back from grocery shopping. Inside the hallway, we pulled our feet, shrivelled and blue, from our wet boots and noticed the bloom of frostbite on our faces, our cheekbones white and burning like four suns under our eyes.

Pit scared me a little when he said we could have lost our cheeks. I imagined mine somehow sliding off my face.

Dad, tell Steve it’s below zero.

Sure is! It’s almost minus twenty. I think you saw zero Fahrenheit on your thermometer.

The distinction was lost on me. Camille made us two mugs of Quik hot chocolate and got back to her dissertation. Pit put away the groceries and we watched figure skating on TV – Brian Boitano beat another Brian (Orser) – and there were chips to eat and running commentary from Pit, a serious fan.

I remember so little, and I remember all of it. I was happy.

I got to stay for the evening and sleep over too: a winter honeymoon.

Pit took an afternoon nap on the couch, his snoring mixed with our quiet laughter, waking with the four o’clock blast. Our games, and the darkness outside, and a new snowfall, a fire in the living room fireplace, dinner (homemade pizzas, choose-your-own toppings), and then Hockey Night in Canada, Habs against the Kings. I don’t remember if it was the second or third period when I fell asleep on the couch, or when Charlélie and I were sent off to bed together with unbrushed teeth.

That night the sky covered the house in a dusting of winter.