Cardboard Ocean by Mike McCardell

Author:Mike McCardell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781550176650
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Published: 2014-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

The Strongest Men on Earth

I loved the mornings after my mother had company. The ashtrays were full and many of the butts were long enough to light again, plus I had my pick of five brands. I didn’t like the ones with lipstick. I sat by the tree smoking and not feeling well. I blew smoke up into the tree but it did not have the same look as the morning before.

Then I looked at the dumbbells and almost got excited. I picked up the box and looked at Joe. In six weeks I would be like him, and Tommy better look out. Rocky too.

The doorbell rang and I stuffed out the cigarette into the overflowing ashtray. I didn’t want to get caught smoking in case it was some grown-up at the door. They might tell my mother and she would be mad and then I would have to listen to her tell me how bad smoking is and promise not to do what she did but to do what she said. And my head was hurting.

I opened the door and Vinnie and Tommy and Joey and Jimmy Lee were there.

“You’ve been smoking in the house?” said Joey.

“How’d you know?”

“Because it’s still coming out of your mouth.”

I shut my lips.

“Gee, you’re lucky,” said Tommy. “You don’t have a father. I have a father and I can’t smoke in the house. If he caught me he’d kill me. But you only have a mother. I bet she doesn’t even hit you.”

Then a voice came from the top of the stairs.

“Would you please close the door? The heat is going out.”

Mrs. Kreuscher.

But I could not let it look like I was being told what to do by a woman, especially one who was the landlord.

“I’ll close it in a minute,” I shouted.

“Please,” she shouted.

“In a minute.”

“I’m sending Mr. Kreuscher down.”

I pushed the boys back and stepped outside.

“You don’t want to fight with him,” I said. “He used to be a weightlifter.”

I closed the door behind me and felt the cold air go through my shirt.

“Darn, it’s cold out here,” I said.

“We know how to get strong,” said Joey. “We figured out who the strongest men are around here.”

I was thinking of Joe Weider.

“The garbage men,” said Vinnie. “They can lift hundred-pound cans with one hand. If we were garbage men we could do the same.”

I knew the cans weren’t a hundred pounds because my mother had weighed herself at the drugstore with one of those scales that you stand on and put a penny in.

“This can’t be right,” she said. “I’m not 110,” she said. “I was never more than a hundred pounds.”

I could not imagine the garbage men picking her up over their heads with one hand even if she left ten pounds on the ground. But still, they were strong.

We were off from school for the rest of the week for Christmas vacation and we worked out a plan. We would have the strength of garbage men, then no one could touch us.

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