they would have suspected something.”
“No idea?” Jack said, shaking his head.
“None,” Sam replied. “And then the kids start running off. What is it the kids find so alluring out there? We find most of them downtown, living in cardboard boxes. Squalid. Selling their little asses to feed themselves. How bad could life be at home? And worse, there are some of them we never find. Never. Some days I think I’ll wake up one morning and find that everyone on the planet has disappeared.” Sam took a swallow of beer.
Terry stepped into the bar and looked around.
“Shit!” Jack said. “Kid’s looking for his mother.” Sam turned and looked down the bar at Terry.
Jack moved down the bar and spoke to Terry for a minute. The boy left the bar. Jack returned to Sam.
“Poor kid. He’s locked himself out and he can’t find his mother. Didn’t have the heart to tell him where she is. Left earlier with a tall drink of water. Probably shacked up at the Islington House. Guy must be seven feet. Fella named Hank. Strange hombre. Dressed in black like Johnny Cash. The guy is obsessed with the year 1950. A regular encyclopedia on the subject.”
“Didn’t she lose her husband a few years ago?” Jack nodded. “Ten years ago.”
“Has it been that long? Didn’t people think he ran off with Joe Mackenzie’s wife?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Crazy Joe’s wife could have run off with a dozen different guys. Did I tell you the time I found her out back 35 in a snowbank, drunk out of her mind, getting ploughed under by some guy? She was one crazy broad. Mary’s husband, I can’t remember his name, only came in here a few times. Nice guy. Quiet. Not the sort of fellow to run off on his wife. He was real close to Terry. Used to see them everywhere together. Very sad. Mary took it bad but it was worse for the kid. Started acting out in school. What a handful he became. Getting in fights. Skipping classes. Mary started sleeping around. A woman raising a son by herself gets lonely.”
“He’s not a bad kid,” Sam said. “I’ve had a few run-ins with him.
Teenagers are difficult. It’s a tough time in your life and then to lose your old man…”
The two men were silent for several moments. Sam sipped at his beer.
Jack turned and looked up at the television. Championship Darts was on.
“What do you know about this Hank fellow?” Sam asked.
“Nothing more than I’ve told you. Talk to him for five minutes and he’ll bore you to death with information. But he does seem to have mesmerized Mary. Talking about disappearing, did Mary ever tell you what happened to a girlfriend of hers?”
Sam shook his head.
“This is going back quite a few years. Twenty years. Before your time.
A group of them, kids really, went down to Echo Valley, near the Mackenzie farm. Drink a little wine, make out-you know the ritual. I guess they got pretty hammered one night. Mary passed out. When she awoke the next morning, one of the kids was missing. She woke the others.
They didn’t think too much of it at the time. Figured the girl had gotten up and taken off home. Later that day, the girl’s parents started phoning around to all of her friends. She had never come home. There was a big search. Her friends were all taken down to headquarters.”
“And they never found her?”
Jack shook his head. “That’s what I heard. It was like she fell off the edge of the world. Cops put it down as a runaway. Doesn’t make sense for a kid to run away when she’s out partying with her friends.”
“Where do her folks live?”
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “After a year or so, they moved away.
That’s what I heard. Went out west someplace. I think those kids knew more than they were saying. Mary doesn’t like to talk about it.” Sam stared at Jack for some time.
“What did I say?” Jack smiled.
“I don’t know,” Sam replied. He shook his head. “Did you ever get the feeling that something was going on around you, but you have no idea 36 what? Like a blind man standing on the edge of a precipice with an urge to dance.”
Jack looked at Sam and smiled.
“Did you just make that up or did you read it somewhere?” Haircut
Hank’s legs stretched out over the barber chair and across the room.
George snapped his gum and draped a white sheet over Hank’s chest.
“Hell of a big man,” George said, snapping his gum. “It’s like your feet are in a different time zone. My brother-in-law was pretty tall, but he’d look like a dwarf next to you.”
Hank smiled.
“Guess you’ve heard all the tall jokes?” George said with a smile.
Hank nodded. “Ad nauseam,” he responded.
“What’ll it be then?” George asked. Hank described how he wanted his hair cut.
George took his scissors and began to trim.
“Had a guy in here last week who had a bald spot on top. Said he wasn’t bald. Just had outgrown his hair.”
George laughed. Hank grinned.
“Height don’t matter to a man,” George continued. “But you don’t like to see a tall woman. Looks freakish. We had a woman working over at the drugstore who was close to six feet. She used to come into the shop here for a haircut. Wouldn’t let her in a salon. What brings you to the Six Points?”
“Is that what they call it?” Hank replied, his eyes closed.
George nodded. “Crossroads of three main streets-Bloor, Kipling, and Dundas. Been a village for over a hundred years. Not that I’ve been here that long. Married the daughter of a barber and inherited this place.
Not that I’m complaining. Hair’s been good to me. My father-in-law worked in here with me for years.”
“Did your father-in-law ever hear stories about strange disappearances in the area?”
George stopped for a moment and thought.
“That’s an odd question.” He paused for a few moments to think.
“Mentioned something about disappearances in the thirties. During the depression. Lot of folks moved through the area. No one paid much attention. And then there was a time right after the war. There was a slew 37 of disappearances when Shipp started throwing up the houses around here. Lot of rumors. Why do you ask?”
Hank smiled and closed his eyes.
“Just making small talk,” he said.
George snapped his gum and laughed.
Margaret
“What did you do?” Adelle asked Cathy, her eyes wide with anticipation.
Cathy leaned across the restaurant table in the booth the two girls occupied. “I kissed it!”
Adelle clapped her hands, leaned back, and laughed. Cathy smiled.
“You didn’t!” Adelle cried.
The waitress arrived at the table to take the girls’ order. With her hair pinned up, her thin bosom-less body, and the low sarcastic voice that slipped out of the side of her mouth, she was, for the girls, the anti-fe-male. Her name was Margaret. The girls looked up with disgust.
Couldn’t she see that they were talking? The girls ordered.
“You dragged me over here for a Coke and two straws?” Margaret said with a snarl.
Cathy looked up and smiled with as much charm as she could garner.
“We are having a conversation,” Cathy said, enunciating each word as if she were speaking to someone who did not understand the English language.
Adelle turned and raised her eyebrows, giving parenthesis to Cathy’s declaration.
Margaret tapped her pencil on her ordering pad, leaned to one side, and smiled. “We are running a business,” she replied. And then leaning over the table, added, “And if you ladies give me any more of this snotty business, you’ll no longer be welcome in this establishment.” The two girls were silent for a brief moment before Adelle added, “I’ll have toast.”
Margaret returned to the counter.
“Where is she coming from?” Adelle cried.
