The Greyhound Read online

  THE GREYHOUND

  John Cooper

  THE GREYHOUND

  A NOVEL

  Copyright © John Cooper, 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Project Editor: Michael Carroll

  Editor: Nicole Chaplin

  Design: Jesse Hooper

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  www.dundurn.com

  Dundurn

  3 Church Street, Suite 500

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5E 1M2

  Gazelle Book Services Limited

  White Cross Mills

  High Town, Lancaster, England

  LA1 4XS

  Dundurn

  2250 Military Road

  Tonawanda, NY

  U.S.A. 14150

  This book is dedicated to my grandson

  Cooper Thomas Bevan

  Run hard, run fast

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author would like to acknowledge the following people and offer my sincere thanks for their continuing support: my agent Bill Hanna; Nicole Chaplin, my editor at Dundurn Press; Jerry Amernic; my wife, Maria, and my children, Melissa, Tyler, and Cole; Caleb Bevan; Yvonne Cooper; Denise Doogan (who was inspirational during a discussion of “tin can vans” a few years ago); and Larry Hill.

  APRIL

  Danny was glad to be inside the church: outside, it was sunny and very warm. The church was cooler, if somewhat dank. He looked down from the second step of the stairs leading from the doorway to the basement, and watched his father work. Jack hadn’t seen him yet.

  Danny glanced outside where he’d parked his bike. He didn’t have a lock for it, so he’d leaned it precariously against an iron railing, and it looked like it might fall over at any moment. He doubted it’d be a target for thieves: it was old, the paint on it had started to chip away, and one tire was going bald. Who would want a bike like that anyway? he thought. His father had told him to ride over to the church, and he’d toss the bike into the back of the van so they could drive home together, “the way we used to.” But Danny could hardly remember a time when his father had driven him home from anything.

  Danny watched as Jack took a big broom — the kind they used in schools, with a wide, flat brush and the handle dead centre — and pushed bright yellow sawdust down one side of the hallway, then up the other side.

  Jack was working in the near dark; but the muted light that came through the basement windows made it seem cooler, and easier to work too. Down here in the dark, Danny imagined the colours pouring in through the stained-glass windows in the main part of the church upstairs, a mosaic of crayon colours splashed across the sanctuary toward the giant cross that hung at the end. He imagined the bright colours just touching Jesus’s sculpted toes on the crucifix.

  The wall going toward the community room was lined with posters. Bright colours and happy faces. African faces set against a backdrop of sparse trees and small cooking fires on redbrick earth. Far away. “Help us help our brothers and sisters in Darfur. Come out for our pancake breakfast.”

  Danny had been learning a lot about the issues that were creating so much pain and bloodshed for the people in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The war and suffering had seemed so far away, but they’d come right into Danny’s life: the one friend he’d made since they’d moved was Ben, a refugee from Darfur who went to his school. Impossibly tall, Ben towered over everyone else, but was shy, kind of awkward, and exceedingly polite. He was still learning English, and was just as uncertain about his future in Canada as Danny was about his own new home. Danny was fifteen years old, and this town was new to him. Everything had changed and the past few months felt like falling down a hill and landing on concrete.

  Danny could hear Father Rivera above, talking to someone in the church, somewhere in one of the pews. Telling them things would be all right.

  His father looked focused, thick eyebrows pinched over his glasses. Danny knew this job wasn’t what his old man wanted. His father’s job at the church was, well, a job. He also worked at Danny’s new high school and would shuttle between one job and the other, earning what he could for the family.

  Danny struggled to understand what had happened to his father. But thinking about it was like swimming in the ocean and feeling the tide pull at you: no matter how hard you try to swim anywhere, you just get pulled farther and farther away, and eventually, you’re just too tired to swim. You have to work with the current to get anywhere. Danny’s thoughts about his father were like that. They pulled at him until they tired him out.

  From what Danny knew of it, Jack’s list of accomplishments was long: a former swimming champion, an advertising executive whose creativity helped sell the Whiz Bang laundry detergent that everyone was using (“Whiz Bang! Your laundry never looked so good! ”), an amateur table-tennis champ, a former corporate supporter of the David Suzuki Foundation, and, when he was younger, a volunteer with Katimavik and Greenpeace. But now, pushing the broom, his face creased and mouth pinched, his knuckles shiny, bulbous, and bumpy from arthritis, Jack resembled an old bird, a hawk or an eagle maybe, that had been knocked out of the sky. Lost, alone, and hurt.

  They’d moved to the new town after Jack had lost his job because of alcohol. His career was ruined. The family tried to hang onto their house in the old town. It was a big house, and the backyard that led down to a ravine that Danny used to imagine was a jungle. There was a ravine near the new home, but it just isn’t the same, Danny thought.

  But the family had to sell it. Rosemary, Danny’s mother, was as a social worker and she just didn’t bring in enough money. And, what’s worse, Jack had driven drunk and hit someone, who had then sued him. So his finances were ruined even more. They sued him good, or bad — good for them and bad for us, Danny wrote in his journal. He was keeping the journal at the suggestion of the psychiatrist his parents were making him see. He wrote in it, but he didn’t feel a sense of ownership of the words. I’m just marking time. Pleasing other people instead of pleasing myself. All these notes are placeholders of someone else’s life.

  Dad had grown up in this new town, and knew some people there, so they’d moved into a bungalow. The bungalow they moved into was small, and Danny had to share a washroom with his sister, Susan.

  “It’s nice. The house is nice,” Rosemary had said. Nice was her word for anything, whether it was really amazing-fantastic-incredible or something that was just so-so. Danny had heard her say it so many times he felt it was tattooed into his brain: NICE. Like how his father had Chinese characters tattooed on his arm, which, he said, spelled out “looking for trouble.” Where he got the tattoo, or why, Danny wasn’t sure. But he imagined it wasn’t so nice.

  Yet nice wa
s a word that Danny’s mother loved. Nice. It was her way of smoothing things over. Be nice. Play nice. Isn’t that nice? Danny rolled it around in his head. I’m nice. Susan’s nice. According to Mom, the whole freakin’ world is nice.

  But Susan really wasn’t nice. She was seventeen and ready to move out, and Danny didn’t see much of her. She was going to university on a volleyball scholarship in the fall. She was taller than Danny, and had inherited her father’s wiry frame: genetics were on her side. She always wore her black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and with her hardcore approach to everything, it wasn’t a surprise that she was no pushover on the volleyball court. Her arms had grown from pipe-cleaner-thin and bony to lean, ropey, and muscular. She was ripped. Scary in a way. She looked the part of a student athlete, but her face had a hard edge to it, a threatening look that said “don’t mess with me.” Danny was on the receiving end of that look a lot. So Danny wouldn’t mess with her. Susan was angry most of the time, which was good for volleyball. When she spiked the ball it would scare hell out of the opposing team. She was also really secretive, and Danny imagined her secrets locked away inside some vault inside her room, inside of her.

  Danny’s room overlooked the new house’s backyard. There was a fence made of wooden planks, eight-feet high, one of those fences where, to see into the neighbour’s backyard, you had to put your face right against the fence and look at an angle. There was a pine tree in one corner of the backyard, and Danny couldn’t help but be impressed by it, even though it was just a pine tree: it had a thick trunk with rough, gnarled bark, and branches that were so large they looked like miniature Christmas trees. The whole thing was about fifty feet tall. He hated to think about chopping down something that was so strangely beautiful in its own way, but he couldn’t escape the thought that you could probably get ten smaller trees out of the one big one.

  Along the side of the yard was a weedy old vegetable garden. “Here’s the job that you’ve been looking for,” Dad had said shortly after they moved in. “You can clean up the veggie garden and grow some cucumbers and tomatoes for us this summer.” Danny had just discovered an old piece of paper on which his great-grandfather had drawn, in pencil, the layout of a garden he’d planted back around the time of the First World War. In scratchy pencil but neat script it said, “Victory Garden.” That’s what I need, Danny thought, a victory. And if it takes a garden to do it, so be it.

  “I’m good with that,” Danny had replied. “We can put in some green peppers, too. Mom can use them.” He was looking forward to becoming a backyard farmer that summer.

  Danny was broken from his reverie when his father, seeing Danny standing on the stairs, smiled and called out, “Good to see you, Danny.” His voice warm and thick. Danny felt his heart leap a little. No matter where he was, no matter how bad things might seem, Jack always seemed to be a hardcore optimist. “Let me finish up.”

  Ten minutes later he came up the stairs, paused to say goodbye to Father Rivera, and they were out the door. The sky had clouded over a bit and the air was cooler. They put the bike into the back of the van and drove home.

  MAY

  “I’M HOME!”

  Jack’s voice boomed through the house. The budgie, Yellow Bird, chattered in the kitchen. Rosemary was outside hanging laundry and Danny was in his parent’s washroom. He opened the medicine chest and looked at the small line-up of little bottles of prescription medicines that his father took — that he knew his father had to take now — though Danny was never told much about whatever it was that made his father grow a little more tired each day. Must be old age, he thought to himself.

  He’d spent a chunk of his afternoon with his bedroom door closed, working on his computer, surfing the Internet for information on a school project. He wanted to go back to his room, but his father’s voice was insistent — “Hey, where is everyone?” — and he changed his mind. Jack’s voice sounded cheerier, healthier, which give Danny an odd little lift; he sensed that somehow, something was different. For months Jack had been quiet, more serious than ever before. He seemed to be focusing on some distant task or point in time, as if he were working off a debt.

  Danny quickly went to his room and glanced at the computer screen. He saved the information he was looking for — on The Old Man and the Sea — and then switched it off. Dad was still talking in the hallway; his voice had gotten softer and more mellow, almost soothing. It wasn’t the way he usually spoke to Rosemary, and anyway, his mom was still outside, but Jack was talking to someone, and Susan was still out.

  Then he heard a small, thin whine, like a garden gate opening. It was a dog; a dog that was anxious or uncertain. Then he heard his father’s low, even voice. “That’s okay, girl, that’s okay.” He sounded honey-sweet and warm.

  Danny ran out of his room. There, by the front door, was a tall, brindle greyhound, Jack firmly holding its leash. It turned its long nose to Danny and wagged its tail slightly. Dark, moist eyes looked at him, but also into him, like this skinny dog knew all of Danny’s secrets.

  “Isn’t she a beauty?” Jack asked of no one in particular. The screen door from the backyard swung shut with a slam and Rosemary came in carrying an empty laundry basket. The clothespin she held between her lips fell with a clatter into the basket.

  “Jack, what did I tell you about getting a dog?” she said. They’d obviously talked about it before, but Danny hadn’t been privy to it.

  “I said I was going to get a dog, I just didn’t say what kind of dog,” Jack answered. He reached down and scruffled the dogs ears. “Sit, girl.” The dog sat. Her head reached almost to Jack’s hip and she pushed her long nose against his hand. “See? She’s already at home. What do you think of her? I think she’s a beauty!”

  Danny held back. He thought she was an ugly dog, scrawny and bony, and her skinny face reminded him of a rat. Her long skinny paws were like a rabbit’s feet. He didn’t understand why Dad would like this dog so much.

  Mom was first with the questions.

  “Where did you get her?”

  “Tom Hill over in Mission House works with these dogs.” Tom was an accountant, Dad had known him for a few years. “He has two himself. They’re retired race dogs. They run for a couple of years, then they go to adoption agencies and they’re placed in good homes.”

  Good homes, Danny thought. Our home’s a good home? He looked around at the green wallpaper, the brown couch, and the way-too-small television (everyone else he knew had big, flat-screen TVs). He couldn’t help but feel a little lift, though. The dog was looking right at him, straining her bony muzzle in his direction.

  “See, she wants a friend. She’s looking at you, pal.”

  “Does the dog have a name?” Rosemary asked.

  “I’ll leave that to Danny. When she was racing, her name was Long Shot. What do you think, Danno?”

  “How about just ‘Long?’” Danny said. “Like, so long, dog, gotta go, you loser.”

  “Come on, son, give her a chance. Every dog has a tail to wag and a tale to tell.” He paused. Danny knew a story was coming. His father paused that way every time there was a story to tell.

  “This dog reminds me of my time in Florida.” They moved to the kitchen, and the dog moved quietly just behind Jack, as if she were looking forward to another of his long-winded stories. Long Shot sat at Jack’s feet, then, got up and quietly moved over and put her head on Danny’s leg, resting her chin on his thigh. Her dark eyes looked up at him searchingly.

  * * *

  Danny opened his diary the usual way:

  Dear Craphead:

  I don’t get it about Dad. He is too quiet and too calm. He should be feeling like crap, but he seems to have his head together about stuff. He seems serene and it’s creeping me out. He goes to his AA meetings and comes home and reads his John Irving book and talks to me like nothing happened. But we lost our house beca
use of him! Dr. Feinman says I have to get over it, to forgive my father and recognize that I have to take control of my own life. Stop blaming people. I’m trying to do that, but why am I so angry?

  The dog Dad got was ugly! Scrawny, and ribs poking out, and she has kind of a skinny face like a rat. I call her Ratface, but not when Mom and Dad are around.

  * * *

  Danny was in a rush. It was almost 7:00 a.m. and he had promised himself that he would be out running before seven. It was a cool morning, and the air smelled of dampness that could settle easily into one’s bones. He finished eating his energy bar, gulped down some Gatorade, and bent down to lace up his shoes. He was so focused on getting ready to run that he didn’t notice his mom standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “Have you ever thought that you might be pushing yourself a little hard?” she asked. “We’ve only just moved here. You might want to relax a little more.”

  The remark irritated Danny, and his face showed it. “Mom, you don’t have to be a social worker with me. You know I have to get back into a routine. There’s a whole list of judo tournaments coming up and then a big tournament in a few months. I need to be ready.” He pulled a piece of paper and a stubby pencil out of the pocket of his hoodie. He added a note to his list. “I have running to do, then weights, then breakfast, then school,” he said as much to himself as to his mother.

  “Just don’t push yourself too hard.” Rosemary’s soft voice had already trailed off, lost in the wind, in the early morning twittering of birds and a lone dog barking on another street. Danny was already running up the street. He pushed the ear buds in as he jogged along the road, his thumb spinning the dial to find his favourite song. He veered slightly on the road, his shoes grinding on the finely crushed gravel as he moved to avoid tripping over a fat cat that lived two houses down. The cat was crouched by the curb, its ears laid back, watching a robin on a front lawn. The robin danced around the lawn, bobbing its head, listening for worms, and the cat was engrossed, watching it. Danny narrowly missed the cat’s tail, earning a warning hiss. What’s with these cats around here? he thought. They act like they own the whole neighbourhood.