Tag: Toronto

Another excerpt:

“I remember one evening, a school night, it was about midweek.
I was running late and it was as cold as ice outside. I had
been at my friend’s house and was now on my way home, taking
a shortcut through the park, alone with my thoughts and my
futile attempt to stay warm. There was a cruel frost in the air that
froze one’s breath into that visible plane of CO2 stillness:
opaque, inert, foggy, dull whiteness that seemed to just hang
there in mid-air, motionless, wafting for a second or two, then
disappearing wistfully until followed inexorably by the next
sustained exhaled breath.

I sauntered down to the area of the rink. The usual bandits
were not there. In fact no one was there except a lone figure
holding a fire hose emitting a jet-streamed rush of water over and
on to the ice surface. The natural light of the half moon and its
reflection off of the snow and ice surface made it somewhat
surreal watching this stream of water jet forth from the nozzle
like liquid crystalline, then arc its way up and over some invis-
ible barrier, then down and out it went splattering onto the
surface of the ice, flowing and emanating outward in what
appeared to be rippled waves of smooth liquid velvet sheets
across a frozen yet clear, rejuvenated expanse. Ironically, that
cold blast of water resembled a cauldron of steam, exploding like
an expansion crack when it made contact with the surface and
frigid coldness of the ice.

The caretaker just stood there, like an automaton, as if
watching and admiring the outcome of his work from afar. He
would move the hose from side to side, then up and down a few
times, as if coaxing, then directing, the stream to do its magical
work, somewhat like a maestro conducting a movement. He was
old, about forty I would guess, crusty, with the wrinkled face of
someone who made his living working outdoors. He had a low
forehead from what I could see just shy of his toque. His was a
square face with a set strong jaw and a bulbous crooked nose
masking a dark, brooding inset pair of eyes. From time to time
one could see a slight glint but that only came to light as part of
the draw on his rolled cigarette. The exhaled smoke, combined
with his frozen breath, gave the impression of a magician’s folly
with nature’s illusion of turning water magically into ice.
He saw me, looked down at me, smiled I think, or perhaps
smirked. The cigarette was burning red hot ashes from the corner
of his mouth as both hands were needed to control the pressure
of the water hose.

“What can I do for ya, young lad?” he offered in a lyrical
brogue.
Somewhat embarrassed and off guard I returned: “Just watching,
sir, that’s all. Tomorrow this will be an awesome piece
of ice.”
“Aye, with any luck, if the weather holds.”
Silence.
“So, this must be some neat job you have here, looking after
things at the park?”
“Yes, but this is only part of it. I have three other rinks to
look after besides this one.”
“Wow” was about all I could muster. Then, continuing on:
“When I grow up, I want to have a job like this. So cool.”
He chuckled. “No you don’t, and no it ain’t,” he said rather
emphatically. “I have to do this. You don’t. I have no other
choice. You do. So stay in school.”
“But school sucks. I hate it. The nuns, the priests, the rules,
and the strap.”
He chuckled somewhat.
“It’s not funny.”
“Oh, I know. I know it’s not funny. But thinking back, I got it
good too from those nuns and priests. Real good. But not here.
Over in Ireland, where I come’d from, where I grew’d up—those
priests and nuns were the devil’s own, the devil’s fire brigade.”
“Really,” I thought aloud, “just like here?”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “They’re everywhere. With fire and
brimstone they spoke, with the brimstone and fire they breathed.
And they sure set the standard for all of the physical pain and
grief that a Catholic young lad or lass could harbour, without
being dead, the world over.”
“What school do you go to?” he asked.
“Our Lady of Peace,” I answered.
He looked right down at me and into my eyes, into my very
soul it seemed.
“Is that so,” he said. “Well, I think they had a school for it
over there as well. Our Lady’s School of Perpetual Abuse, I
would think. For they knew how to give it and we got it good,
day and night. Black and blue we was, then black again. The
thing is though we fought back, but in such a way that the
bastards never knew they was being conned. We had a lot of
laughs outsmarting them, doing that. That was the key for us to
survive in these schools.”

He chuckled but in remonstrance, remembering perhaps that
it would seem to be a memory hidden or repressed.