Summer of 1986, me and my best friend Joey riding our bikes from Frederick Street up 11th to Conrad Hill.
Just talking about all the important things in life. You know what I mean: ways to get extra lives on the Super Mario arcade; whether we’ll get more Star Wars movies, how the VHS version of Back to the Future had a "to be continued" all of a sudden, and all the secret stuff we heard about people around town.
Joey telling me about how there are satanists in town, and that his cousin worked at the hospital and said a bunch of people in black robes came to the morgue and did a ritual on some dead guy. Which was new to me. We both talking about about Disco Dave, who Joey heard got in a car accident and got his head banged up when he was in high school a bunch of years ago — drinking and driving — and since then you would see him standing on the side of the road waiting for the bus vigorously rocking his body back and forth. I tell him about the MacDonald’s son dying in that insane car accident just outside of town — the MacDonalds who run the paint store — when he was buried they had a pump hooked up to his grave to keep water away from his body, just in case he came back from the dead; people who know them said they kept his bedroom exactly the same way he left it.
For a small town, Prince Rupert was loaded with strange people and goings on, this much was true.
But the one we both only knew some pieces of was Army Boots. How she lived alone and never left her house and no one would ever visit her…ever. I’d heard she had fallen in love with one of the American soldiers who came to Rupert back in World War II. How he took her out dancing, and told her he would marry her, and be with her forever, and all that stuff. Until he broke her heart.
Joey heard she had fought with her parents about being with him, and how everyone called her names for hanging with the Army men, let alone the Americans. I knew the part where her Dad used to hit her, and lock her out of the house, and how sometimes if someone back then walked by the place super early she could be seen asleep on the stoop. How she was positive this love she felt for that soldier was one of them movie loves, and soon she would be taken back to the U.S. and be Mrs. Whatever his name was.
The whole town seemed to know the story about how once the war was over the Americans packed up so fast that she barely made it to the harbour in time to see his ship pull away from the dock. They just dumped all their garbage into the harbour and took off.
Joey said he heard that she dove straight in the chuck — she was gonna swim after him, moving as if she might swim along side that boat all the way to America. They say she was sure he just got whisked away so fast that he just couldn’t stop for her, and once he saw her from one of the port holes he’d turn the boat around and bring her on board. He didn’t.
The other soldiers on the boat deck laughing at her, calling her names, and throwing things at her like she was no one. Some guy, Joey said he heard, threw a pair of boots at her — shoelaces tied together. Hitting her in the head, and she dropped in the water face down. She must of looked dead or something, so someone from shore waded in to pull her up. Her eyes were deep black and her sockets red with tears and salt water.
The story was she grabbed them boots that hit her, and with her dress clinging to her like skin, she walked home. She used the boots to smash the window on the door of her parents’ house, and never left.
When Joey and I got to the top of Conrad hill, we nodded at each other and let gravity speed us down, we whooshed left onto ninth ave and finally stopped about half way. Joey and me letting our bikes fall to the sidewalk as he motioned for me to crouch down behind a car with him.
Joey now speaking in a hush, "That’s it. That’s where she lives."
Joey pointing across the street at a faded yellow house with brown trim and a chainlink fence around a small yard; four concrete stairs leading up to the pathway through the yard to the front door.
"Army Boots." I said with what I hoped was awe and respect.
Joey hit me, "You can’t say her name. Don’t ever say it. She might get you."
I rolled my eyes, but immediately turned to the house for fear he was right.
Joey said, "She’s got landmines all over the yard so no one can get close to her."
"Landmines? I never heard that." I said back.
"All true. You know Jason from Roosevelt school?"
"No."
"Well that doesn’t surprise me." Joey turned his attention from the house and leaned against the car and slid to the ground, I did the same.
He went on, "Now get this. So my older sister, Keri, dated this guy who went with some other guys who went to Roosevelt like, I don't know, six or seven years ago, maybe. And one of them was this kid named Jason. Well, they were drinking up at the empty house on Roosevelt Crescent and got to playing truth of dare. Anyway, that was the dare: to go walk up and knock on Army Boots’ door. So he does. Well, he tried. He got one step and poof, he was gone."
"Gone? Like?"
"Gone. Red mist. They said red mist."
As we sat there on the sidewalk, the concept of all that floating there in the air like dandelion seeds, our storytelling interrupted by the squeaking wheels of one of those grocery carts. An old man had stopped and was
about to cross the street, when he noticed us hunkered down behind the car. Nervous, we stood up failing to look inconspicuous.
"Are you spying on the house across the street?" he said holding his hand beside his mouth conspiratorially.
Me and Joey looked at each other and Joey said defiantly, "No."
The man said, "Army Boots. That’s what they call her right? Army Boots?"
I quickly shhhed him for fear of what she might do to us.
Joey said, "Sounds right."
The man took this long pause and then pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. He said, "What have you heard?"
I said, "Aw, we don't know nothing." I then quickly added, "What do you know?"
Putting the cloth back in his pocket the old man said, "Oh, just the usual. The boots — you already know about the boots, right? The boots; the sailor boy who up and left her without warning. Just left her with memories and a pair of his old sailor’s boots."
Both Joey and me looking at each other with wide eyes and mouthing, his boots?
"You know about the landmines?"
"Yeah, we know about the landmines. Killed a kid with them," said Joey as I side-eyed her house, thinking I saw the curtains move, and then the hairs on the back of my neck all started dancing and goosebumps went all up my arms.
The old man said, "Now, I don’t know if I heard anything about someone dying. And I would know I live around here. You would think I would of heard something like that. Uh huh. Landmines."
He went on, "I did hear it’s more mines than grass. Heck I heard if a big bird, like an Eagle, ever stopped for second to rest on that grass that bird would be no more."
He looked at us, deep in our eyes."It’s what I heard, but no, no one dead as far as I know."
"We heard that too. Some of that. All because someone broke up with her?"
The old man said, "That poor woman wasn’t broken up with, man. She was broken. That young, dumb sailor boy didn’t know what he had. You ever see her?"
We both shook our heads. Joey said, "Oh no. No way."
"I’ve seen her," said the old man. "I knew her back then. And let me tell you boys something. Prince Rupert never once saw a more beautiful sight in all its days. Every man-jack of them sailor boys were lining up to sign her dance card and then, you know what they did? They lined up again to dance with her."
He had his handkerchief out again, this time going over the back of his neck. "You boys may know beauty one day but as sure as you’re born I tell you you won’t ever know her kind of beauty."
I said, "So then why’d you think this guy left her?"
The old man said without much of a pause, "I bet you a dollar that guy asks himself that very question on the daily. Sometimes boys do dumb things and only later realize how dumb they were.You’ll see."
"Never left the house," said Joey. "Just her and those boots. Alone. Guy was a jerk."
"I think he knows," said the old man looking across the street. Joey picked up his bike, "We gotta get outta here, it’s almost dinner."
I picked mine up and got on and pointed it down the street. With one foot on a peddle I stopped and looked back at the old man. Clean shaven, ironed pants with a knife-sharpe crease, weathered skin, some tattoos peaking out from under his sleeves.
He nodded to me and said, "At ease." Then smiled and crossed the street.
Joey was already down the street and waiting for me at Bacon Street towards Henry’s B-Y market where we would stop to buy candy before we headed home. I didn’t move, one foot on the road, one on a peddle I watched the old man roll his basket across the road and push open the gate of Army Boot’s house. I don’t think he even knew I was still there, he was whistling to himself and smiling like he did something he got away with.
Sure as the nose on my face that old man walked right up to that door- didn’t explode into red mist- and as he was, I guess, looking for his keys, the door opened and a old woman greeted him. The woman smiled at him this wide smile, her eyes full with endearment some people talk about when they see God- a smile I think everyone hopes their own special someone has for them when they see them.
They kissed, and the man must have said something because the old woman that just had to be Army Boots laughed and put her arms around him and pushed her nose into his neck. I don’t know what it was that came over me but my eyes just teared up, I had this deep joy percolate up from my heart and fill me with warmth. I quickly wiped my eyes because I was compelled to not miss a moment.
When my vision cleared the couple seemed to change. They were younger — teenagers — standing taller, it seemed. They were vibrant there- almost glowing. And, what the old man said was true, the woman we all called Army Boots was beautiful. I lost my breath a little- the vitality; the energy that came from her like an aura, I was drawn to soak in every last second of this woman.
Army Boots, what awful name for someone so lovely.
Pulling me out of the trance I was in, was Joey calling to me from down the street. I only turned to look at him for half of a half of a second before I looked back at the young lovers but they were gone, they were older again; an old man and an old woman stealing kisses on a stoop. The woman turned back into the house and the old man pinched her bum and they both laughed. The door closed and they were just a past story now.
When I caught up with Joey at the store, he asked me what had taken me so long and I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was whatever I saw or didn’t see was for them and them alone.
Joey asked if I thought the old man was lying about Jason not being killed by the landmines and I shrugged and then Joey shrugged.
Looking over the candy selection Joey said, "You know about Tracy the Amazon?"
I said I hadn’t.
"She’s this woman who hangs out in the alley behind the Belmont downtown, and she’ll show you her boobs for a quarter."
"Oh yeah?" I said.
"Yup," he said. "My Dad says she’s crazy."
Picking up a string of Lotsa Fizz candy, he added, "He said she used to be a man- that’s what I heard, and we should stay away from her."
"Really?" I said, absent-mindedly fingering some rolls of Rocket candy. For some reason, now, I wasn’t sure what Joey’s dad said was true. That there might be a lot more to the story we may never know.
Joey said, "But I think we should go check her out tomorrow after cartoons."
"I don’t know," I said after thinking about it a bit. "I don’t think so."
Finally settling on some Junior Mints, I said, "You wanna sleep over tonight? My Mom said I could rent a Nintendo."
And like water, the conversation moved to other things that kept our attention until the light in the sky turned orange and we made our way home.
- James Cochrane, Port Moody
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