This is a Young Shell Adventures story - “Bruised Innocence” What I remember best was the guy running at us, with a crazed look in his eye, blood pouring from his busted lip. “I keel you, I keel you…” he yelled, looking like nothing else that I had ever seen in all six years of my life. I had spent the day with my Dad at his used furniture store, just puttering around, and sneaking peeks at the various nudie magazines that were one of the bigger selling non-furniture items at that time. The store had a vast selection of items for sale, including lamps, table and chair sets, and stuff that the newer residents of the Beach (which is what the area between Neville Park Blvd., and Coxwell Avenue in Toronto was called at that time) called “objets d’art”, but which my Dad called junk. Either way, the store was a cool place to hang out, and, if I got bored, the park was across the street, as well as the Beach Public Library, where they occasionally showed Disney movies for free. It had been an okay day, and on the way home Dad was going to drop off a new mattress close to our house. After he had loaded it onto the truck, I hopped into the front seat, and we were on our way. As we turned up Rhyl Avenue, it seemed odd to me that we were the only vehicle on the road. Not that Rhyl was a well-traveled route, but it did seem odd for it to be so quiet during the rush hour. Then the white Volkswagen smacked into us, with a sound like thunder just before a big storm. I heard the screaming of the crazy man with the funny accent that turned out to be French-Canadian; most Torontonians called them “pea soupers”, which always struck me as funny, and this crazy man had been driving on the wrong side of the road, so the accident had been his fault, and he was cited by the officer for doing so. He had grabbed my Dad by the collar and started shaking him, saying over and over again, “I keel you, I keel you!” I noticed that his car was scrunched up in such a way that it resembled nothing so much as a bloodied fist. As I looked closer, I could see a woman, his wife, I guessed, who had smashed her head into the windshield, and then I knew why the guy was so crazed. At the very least, the woman had “wheep-lash”, as pea soup shouted over and over again in his strange, guttural accent, which, along with the threats to kill my Dad left me feeling quite uneasy; I started to cry. It wasn’t long before three police cars as well as an ambulance had showed up, with combined wailing sirens that made my ears feel like they were bleeding. There were also a lot of people who showed up to have a look at what was going on. Even though one policeman had started to direct traffic around the accident scene, it was like a madhouse to me, and I felt relieved when my Dad came over to me. “You need to go home now, Shell, and tell your Mum that I’m okay, but I have to go with the policeman to the station – tell her that I’ll call as soon as I can.” I could see that the pea souper was already in the backseat of one of the police cruisers, and his wife had already been taken away in the ambulance. I was still crying a bit, and hugged my Dad tight, asking if I could go with him, but he shook his head no; he seemed dazed, and his usual smiling face was oddly stern as he spoke to me. “Go with Uncle Cyril, he’ll take you home, Shell, everything is going to be okay.” Uncle Cyril was a close friend of the family who was a policeman. Even though he was not a blood relative, my brothers and sisters and me all thought he was a neat guy, because of his cool Irish accent, and his appealing habit of pulling quarters from behind our ears so that we could go and buy candy or pop. Uncle Cyril quickly maneuvered us away from the accident to take me home. I waved at my Dad, who seemed different to me -- maybe it was how sad he looked, but I noticed that he had tears in his eyes, too, and I didn’t know why. “That guy is gonna kill my Dad,” I said to Cyril, “he’s gonna kill him!” I was crying hard now. I didn’t want to lose my Dad, he was my best friend. Cyril said that nobody was going to kill my Dad, and he reached over and pulled one of those quarters from behind my ear, but it did nothing to make me feel less upset. He even turned the siren on, but I was still blubbering as the car came to a halt in front of our house. My Mum came out to see what was up, but I ran into the house. I went upstairs to the room that I shared with my brothers Gary and Scott. Scott, my little brother, was away at camp, and Gary, my older brother, was still at the fish-shop, where he delivered orders of fish and chips on his bike. I hid under my bed, convinced that I was never going to see my Dad again, and I soon cried myself to sleep. I’m not sure how long I had been down there when I felt someone shaking me, pulling me out from my hiding place. “Shell, what th’ Hell are you doing down there?” It was my Dad, who had not been killed by the crazy French guy after all. I was so relieved that I jumped into his arms, and hugged him tighter than I ever had before. “I thought he was gonna kill you, Dad,” I said, through sobs. Dad said nothing, but hugged me back, and kissed me on the cheek. It was the first time that I realized that he was not invincible, and that feeling hurt my heart a little, but it seemed to make me treasure him more -- my hero, my Dad.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 10:14:34 +0000
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