Thomasina got Mr. Stack to cover for her in health class. When she called Wayne’s house from the staff room phone, there was no answer. Treadway was at the back end of the garden scraping rust off his traps and rubbing seal fat on them, and Jacinta was at the Hudson’s Bay store, walking up and down the cleaning products aisle, looking for a bar of Sunlight to wash Treadway’s socks before he went on the trapline. Wayne sat on the couch next to the coat rack with his hands up his shirt, warming his belly.
“How much does it hurt, on a scale of one to ten?”
“Five. I’m waterlogged. I’m ready to burst.”
“I can see that.”
“Am I weird?”
Thomasina rubbed her hands and laid them on his abdomen. She was glad no other teachers were in the staff room. “Do you mind if I take you to Goose Bay to see Dr. Lioukras?”
“Is he Greek?”
“Guess what his first name is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Apollo.”
“It’s not.”
“It is. In Mexico there are all kinds of guys named Jesus. And in Greece there are Apollos and Athenas all over the place. I had a taxi driver called Hermes.”
“Did he have wings on his feet?”
“Wayne, there are things I wish someone had told you when you were small. But they didn’t. And it’s not my place to tell you now. But you know what? It looks like no one else is going to. I’m going to take you to see Dr. Lioukras. If your father isn’t going to deal with it, well, that’s his problem. And your mother…”
The principal, Victoria Huskins, came in looking for her stash of coffee filters. Thomasina Baikie went silent and Wayne knew he and Thomasina had embarked on a clandestine adventure.
“Hi, Wayne.” Miss Huskins thought children could not hear her unless her voice pierced their layers of dull incomprehension. How she had come to be principal Thomasina Baikie did not know. Rather, she knew and wished she didn’t. Wayne was not scared of Miss Huskins like some of the younger students were, but he felt uncomfortable when she was in the room. The previous week, when she was checking the washrooms, she found excrement on the floor behind one of the toilets and announced her discovery over the school PA system. “Someone…” The speakers cracked and hissed over the heads of the kindergartens, grade ones, twos, threes, and fours. The grades fives, sixes, and sevens heard it too, though their bathroom was on the second floor. When Miss Huskins made an example of anyone, she wanted the lesson broadcast to all. “Some student has deliberately done their poo and left it on the floor against the wall in the first-floor bathroom. Who has done this?” She left a long pause. The students were silent. “I will find out. The person who has done this had better come to my office and own up now. It is filthy, and it is wrong, and whoever has done this will not get away with it.”
Thomasina sighed, looked at her class, and said, “I hope that woman goes into treatment soon.” Everyone but Donna Palliser and her attendants had felt sorry for the anonymous child who had obviously had an accident. Why did the principal not know it had been an accident? But no one discussed it. Everyone but Thomasina was afraid to speak up.
Victoria Huskins licked her thumb and blew on the coffee filters to separate one, and said, “So you’re sick today, Wayne?”
He nodded.
“Stomach flu is going around.”
“It is,” Thomasina said.
“A couple of Gravol should keep you out of trouble till you get home. Have your parents been called?”
“We’re trying to get hold of them now.” Thomasina said nothing about driving Wayne to the hospital.
Miss Huskins got the coffee machine gurgling, then moved the pot aside and slipped her cup under the stream. Drips hissed on the hot plate. “Hopefully the whole class will not get it. Hopefully the entire school will not come down with projectile vomiting. Try to come back before you miss too many math classes. What are you doing in math right now, Miss?”
“Decahedrons.”
“Don’t forget to have his parents sign the P-47.” Miss Huskins went off with her mug that had a happy face on it from last year’s winter carnival.
Thomasina said, “I’ll take you in the truck.”
“Are we allowed?” Wayne liked the idea of escaping in the middle of a school day. But he did not know what his parents would think. “I can walk home. I can tell my mom you looked at my stomach in gym class and thought I should go see Dr. Lioukras and she can take me tomorrow.”
The coffee smell filled the staff room. Thomasina looked out the window at gold clouds. Everyone had such a small life it nearly drove her crazy. Perhaps it had driven her crazy.
“You told Miss Huskins I had the stomach flu?”
Thomasina looked at the floor and shoved her glasses up her nose. “I let her think it, didn’t I.”
Wayne thought Thomasina might stop the truck at his parents’ and tell them she was taking him to see Dr. Lioukras. He thought they might go get a couple of Teenburgers and a root beer at the A&W in Goose Bay. But Thomasina drove fast down the main road and did not stop. The main road was featureless. Wayne hated it. It had a dark green stretch that went on forever between Croydon Harbour and Goose Bay. Thomasina did not speak and he wondered if she was making a mistake. What would happen when Miss Huskins realized they had taken off in her pickup without his mother and father signing that form?
“What does P-47 stand for?”
“Bureaucracy. Victoria Huskins’s world. A world in which — do you know what a morgue is?”
“I saw one on TV.”
“Every corpse has a ticket.”
“Around its feet?”
“We’re in a world where every person, or plant, or animal, or any entity whatsoever, has an explanatory ticket on it. P-47s are part of that.”
“Do you think we should try to phone my mom again, when we get to the hospital?”
“Are you afraid of Miss Huskins?”
“She already freaked out about the poo.”
“Do you feel like I’m kidnapping you?”
“Kind of.”
“I guess it could seem like that.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be thirteen next March the seventh.”
“You know my birthday?”
“I do. So you’re twelve. I’d call twelve the age of reason. So would every major civilization since the dawn of humanity. Twelve is when you wake up and you look around and you understand things. You know if your parents died that night you could figure out how to live in this world. I remember that about being twelve.”
Thomasina had four vertical lines going down her face. Sometimes they were laugh lines and sometimes they weren’t. Wayne found them serious and good. They made him trust her even though she was taking him from school in her truck in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.
“I remember the clarity of being twelve. Do you feel it?” She put the radio on. With music in the cab, the road out of Croydon Harbour was not so lonely.
“I don’t know.” Wayne did not know whether he felt clarity or not, but he was glad Thomasina was addressing questions about his body, questions his clothes, his parents, his school had covered up. He had seen Dr. Lioukras not that long ago and the doctor had not explained anything. In fact, the doctor had put him to sleep.
“How do you know Dr. Lioukras? Did you see him in Greece?”
“I saw him before I went to Greece. I went to see him and asked him to give me a local’s itinerary. I didn’t want to take a bus tour. He’s the one who told me how to get a pass to run the original Olympic track. He told me his favourite lunch counter in Athens and said to order the vine leaves stuffed with rice and mint, and some tiny lamb meatballs. He told me what kind of coffee to drink at what time of day, and he gave me the name of his daughter’s bookstore. That’s where I got the Greek bracelets and the music for our dance.”