Chapter 4: Wild Cherry Pits - Asbestos

May 1986

On the school bus that took us home for lunch, the feral children of Mitchelltown were uncontrollable. We were the rowdiest, dumbest, and poorest in the school. Miners’ kids mostly. School was almost out for the summer, and the driver, his head hunched between broad, aging shoulders and big mitts glued to the steering wheel, had given up even trying to keep us in line.

Lunch hours were especially unhinged. On that day, Joe Guay was shoving a pair of girls out of his row. Joe had little tanned biceps and a killer platinum-blond mullet, and though tank tops weren’t allowed at school no one ever had a word to say about his. Sometimes there were bruises on his neck and face; his father was fresh out of prison. Simple assault. Bilodeau was a handful too, congenitally unable to talk without yelling. He seemed to pronounce every syllable with his jaw, not his mouth, accentuating his heavy-lidded eyes that gave him a dimwitted look. Not exactly a stretch. And then there was Ève Blais and her little brother. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses and tried to keep a low profile, especially on the bus. But this year Ève was the first girl in our grade to grow breasts. They just sort of showed up out of nowhere one day, along with acne on her forehead and chin that gave her slightly porcine but very pretty face a shiny look. We’d all noticed her breasts at the same time. It was surprising, in fourth grade. Of course Provost the public menace was first to point and yell, Little titties little titties little titties. He’d brushed up against the pious young Ève’s breasts, covering up his move with a fake sneeze, and fondled them while making a joke about doorknobs, and of course he’d constantly sneak up and snap her bra strap. Provost also liked to whisper it in her ears, Little titties little titties little titties, out by the running track and in the line for the pencil sharpener. But Provost didn’t go home for lunch. He lived in Saint-Daniel, too far away to get a spot on the lunch bus. I think he was fine with not having to see his parents until after school. I’d only ever seen his dad once.

One thing I could count on was that Provost would be there every day, waiting to torment me the moment I got off the bus. He was the third-smallest kid in our two fourth-grade classes, after me and Poulie. Sometimes he’d shake me down for pocket change, or keep it simple and demand whatever I was holding: my gym bag, Nerds candies, a juice box, my notebook. Or he’d unleash rapid-fire punches on my shoulder, or put me in a wrestling hold, an armlock or a sleeper hold. Say uncle, he’d demand, all up in my face with his bad breath and unbrushed teeth. His shirt was usually smeared with Chef Boyardee. Mikaël Drouin’s sister, Cindy, wore big fluorescent pink lightning-bolt earrings, and perfume too. She reminded me of Jem in Jem and the Holograms. Cindy was two years older than me, in sixth grade.

There she stood, towering in the aisle between the bus’s twin rows of seats. Hey Dubois, Boy George or Michael Jackson? she called out in front of everyone, and then stood, open-mouthed and squinting, almost languorously waiting. Michael? I struggled to get it out. Wrong answer. She rolled her eyes and clucked, spun on her heel, and strode over to the front of the bus, where she plunked her tape right into the stereo above the driver’s head; he didn’t bat an eye. A girl group, pop, one of the songs was ‘Venus.’ Usually, though, CKLD-AM, Voice of the Appalachians, would already be on as we filed onto the bus. I liked it. At 12:05, after the regional news and weather, they did the obituaries. One time the announcer said, Unfortunately, no deceased to report today. I was the only one who chuckled.

I kind of liked Cindy’s songs. That dumbass Lachance was hyper as ever. His dad had just bought a hot air balloon and was spending every free moment in his gravelled yard, gluing it together with a paintbrush. Lachance wouldn’t shut up about that balloon. Wait till it’s fixed. If you make fun of it, I won’t let you come for a ride. As if I wanted to. Lachance’s hair was always buzz-cut with clippers, except for the bleached bangs he was forever pressing down on his brow.

Péloquin was all about the dirty jokes. He was grossing out Peggy Poirier with a filthy story – I caught something about he put his dick in his poo and something or other about a moustache. Pépin laughed with his hand over his mouth. Cindy Drouin was all What was that? I wanna hear!

Binette was spitting his wild cherry pits into the open windows of passing cars. He was wearing his Montreal Canadiens jersey, Claude Lemieux, the feisty Number 32. Binette was confident, The Habs’ll take the Cup tomorrow. Poulie grumbled back, No way. Michel Goulet and his Nordiques had won their division, only to be knocked out by the Whalers in the first round. Then, Number 32 himself had sent the Whalers packing, the night before, in overtime, with his tenth goal of the playoffs. The Habs were just one step away from their twenty-third Stanley Cup. Poulie the diehard Nordiques fan had sworn he’d never watch the Canadiens. Not even if they made the finals. My favourite Canadien was Petr Svoboda, Number 25, but I also liked Stéphane Richer, Patrick Roy – surely Rookie of the Year! – Mats Näslund, Bobby Smith, Chris Chelios, and Guy Carbonneau.

I figured if we didn’t win the Cup that year, we’d take it the next season. In the evening I’d get to watch the first period with my dad, in silence, and then I’d have to go to bed. You know the rules, he’d say. I’d find out who won the next day on the radio.

I said See you later to Poulie as he got off at his stop. I was next. When we reached my corner, I went up to the front of the bus, started down the three steps. My ball cap was yanked from my head. There in the front row, leaning his elbows against the barrier, was Métivier, a high schooler who rode our bus to get home whenever he got suspended from school for the day. He had my hat in his hand and a dirty sidelong grin. White-blond hair, wide-set, squinty eyes, and a fifty-yard stare. We called him the R-word, but he wasn’t. Just evil, in my mother’s English. We should have left him for dead the previous winter, buried under a small avalanche on the Mitchell Hill dump. Poulie was the one who heard him yelling, and we started digging. We’d just happened to be walking by. Our life-saving efforts made a deep impression on Poulie, who kept saying that Métivier would have died if it hadn’t been for us. I would have liked to find that halfwit dead, blue from the cold and cyanosis, his hooded eyes frozen open.

Before I could say a word, he put my cap back on me, taking care to grind it down by pressing the heel of his fist into my head. The button on the top hurt my scalp. I squealed as quietly as I could. When I got home, I took off my cap, which was pulling my hair. A giant spit-saturated wad of gum was stuck in my hair, on the crown of my head. The pink bubblegum smell made me want to throw up. I cried as my mom cut out a hunk of my ash-brown hair, matted with gum down to the scalp. I didn’t touch my lunch. Luckily my dad was eating with the guys from the mine, like he did every Friday. He just would have told me that I had it coming. Don’t even look at him if you don’t want trouble. I pictured his dead eyes. I pictured myself burning his eyes out of their sockets.

Thirty minutes went by. My food got cold, but I wasn’t crying anymore. Now I was shaking with rage at the thought that when I got back to school at 1:05, Provost would be waiting.