Spud Sweetgrass by Brian Doyle

Author:Brian Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd.
Published: 2006-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

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They arrest you for riding your bike on the Queensway. They arrest you even worse for riding your bike on the Queensway in the middle of the night. But I’m tearing down the Queensway on my bike.

I’m following Dumper Stubbs’s truck west on the Queensway.

He left the Elmdale Tavern and went out Wellington to the corner of Parkdale. I thought he was going to turn right on Parkdale and go down to Westboro Beach. He has a full barrel of grease in the back and I was sure he was going down to the beach to dump it. But no, he turned left, he didn’t signal, and went up Parkdale and took the Queensway West ramp.

And I’m following.

* * *

Yesterday the Chrysler New Yorker with the wire wheels let me off on Highway 417 at Rideau Road. The guy driving said he was a zipper salesman. He must have been telling the truth because the back of the Chrysler was full of boxes of different kinds of zippers. He was a big fat guy with hair growing out of his nose. He kept telling me all about zippers and fasteners and Velcro and asking me if I had a zipper for the fly of my pants or did I have Velcro or what? Then he told me about how everybody in the world practically had at least one zipper, except maybe some people in some tribe in the bush in New Zealand or somewhere, but think of it, five billion zippers in the world. If he could sell just one zipper to everybody in the world he’d be a billionaire! I was wishing Dink was here to tell him some stuff about the Big Bang Theory or quasars or something to get his mind off zippers and specially get it off my zipper!

That’s the trouble with hitchhiking. There are so many weirdos driving around.

From there I hitched a ride on a cement truck back to the grease depot.

This guy was even worse. He had a whole lot of naked pictures hanging on his windshield and he kept trying to get me to talk about them. Probably related to that famous hotshot teacher, Mr. Boyle. Then he said he had some more picture, better ones, films, at home and did I want to go over and check them out.

“Yeah sure,” I said. “And I got a friend with a camera, maybe he could come over and take your picture. My friend is six-foot-five and plays defensive end for the Ottawa Rough Riders.”

“Hey,” this guy said, “you got an attitude son! That mouth of yours could get you in a whole lotta trouble!”

“Let me out of here,” I said.

Connie Pan and Dink were gone, of course, and there was nobody around. I grabbed a macaroni and cheese loaf sandwich out of my saddle bag and as I was eating it and getting ready to take off, along came Rainy Day Delaney and the red-headed guy in his truck.

No, Rainy Day definitely never heard of a guy named Dumper Stubbs and nobody by that name ever came out here to the grease depot.

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