The Crystal Furnace

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those that have lost it.”

Somerset Vaughan, Of Human Bondage

I

THERE WAS A RED-BRICK HOUSE in Riverdale the neighbourhood kids relished visiting because there were greater freedoms to be found there than in any other household on either side of the railroad tracks that divided Riverdale from posh Riverdale Heights. Built nearly a century earlier and situated on a working-class cul-de-sac among a cluster of bungalows, the house had been handed down through three generations of Roses and had begun to show signs of premature decay.

Rainwater was not being channeled properly by the gutters and had seeped beneath the roof’s shingles, damaging the decking and rotting the rafters. Over the years, the leak saturated the attic insulation and softened the interior of the exterior walls, permitting mold to take hold in the drywall and spread along the seams.

The patriarch of the household, Andy Rose, was rarely found at home, and when he was, he was as indifferent a parent and homeowner as they came. He kept midnight hours, sleeping in short stints during the day and seldom leaving the house before nightfall, which suited the Riverdale kids just fine and led to suspicions that he might be a vampire—though Terry liked to say a silver bullet would have been more to the point. Andy always seemed to be hitting the ground running, with no time for the domestic routines the neighbours kept up with so carefully.

The matriarch, Olivia Rose, try as she might, could not rein in her two impetuous sons, Terry and Caleb, given her own predilection for daylight hangovers and her habit of crooking her elbow before noon. She was nearly as vaporous as her husband during the daytime, making semi-occasional appearances in the kitchen to retrieve provisions from the refrigerator and cupboards before returning to the bedroom and locking the door behind her.

Every afternoon, Olivia rinsed her cup in the sink and left it upside down to dry. Sometimes she paused while crossing the living quarters to scold Terry and Caleb into guilt for leaving soiled cloths, plates, and glasses scattered across the hardwood floor, which was scored and creviced like the palm of a farmhand from the children’s innumerable games—seraphical during the day when their father slept, and diabolic at dusk when he left.

“Is there anything to eat?” Caleb asked his brother, who busied himself carving runes into a piece of wood he had retrieved from the forest at Sherman Oaks, fashioning it into a staff with the help of a few sanding pads and varnish, which gave the stick a wrought, fibrous texture that shimmered and beguiled his fantastical nine-year-old imagination.

“There’s bologna in the fridge, Chancey,” Terry replied, with no little consternation written over his face, so focused was he on the detail of carving new runes into the wood—protective spells he had copied from a book on magic he had found at the Riverdale Public Library and now faithfully transcribed onto the staff with the help of Firebrand, the true-blue pocketknife his father had gifted him when he turned nine earlier that summer.

“Go fetch the bologna and the bread and I’ll carve you a sandwich,” Terry added, knowing his mother would skin him alive if he allowed Caleb, who was three years his junior, to handle a kitchen knife.

“Don’t call me Chancey, you cheesedick,” Caleb said, as he bridged the gap to the kitchen with one feckless leap from armchair to ottoman, which sagged and gasped under his weight like an overworked mare, and then vaulted once more to the last pillow before the flexure of the armrest, his weight causing the stuffing to spill through a tear in the tatterdemalion fabric.

“The cheesiest dick of them all,” Terry uttered absentmindedly, unfazed by his younger brother’s taunt.

II

TERRY LET ABELARD COUNT THE MONEY the gang had scraped together over the last few weeks because he was their unofficial bookkeeper, but also because Abelard wasn’t like the rest of them. Having come from an upper-middle-class family that lived in a three-storey house in Riverdale Heights—his father a chartered accountant to boot—Terry figured counting money must have run through the family bloodline, and being leader of the gang meant giving his friends jobs they were suited for. Randolph, for instance, was as reliable a runner as they came. So when they decided to spend a little of their hard-earned bounty on provisions like five-cent Hubba Bubba gum, Randolph was the right guy for the job, because he was quick, never messed up an order, and always came back with the correct amount of change.

In the dreary, unfinished basement of the Roses’ house there was an old, octopus-like McClary furnace that acted as the official treasury for the array of coins the gang had gathered from allowances, pickpocketing, and sheer dumb chance. There were so many dents and cavities in the old McClary “Crystal” furnace that hiding the gang’s purse was a cinch. Terry had even taken to scattering the coins in seven different directions throughout the furnace for “security purposes,” as he called it. One time, Abelard caught Terry in the midst of one of his finicky shuffling deposits and decided to interrupt him, even though he knew Terry was not to be disturbed while down in the pit with the octopus.

“Mind your own business, Poindexter,” Terry said. “You might know a thing or two about counting money, but you don’t know anything about guarding it,” he added angrily, peeking at Abelard from behind one of the octopus’s large round ducts with its galvanized housing to make sure he was not being spied on. Abelard begrudgingly took him at his word, which is what the gang usually did with Terry, despite the occasional challenge or two.

Lavinia had come up with the bright idea of changing the coins into paper money during her last visit, and Terry thought that was bang-up thinking. So he collected all the coins from the hollows of the octopus-shaped furnace, and the gang made a collective trip to Don’s Milk on Munro to make the exchange. But Don—a second-generation Korean who had inherited the convenience store from his father—was sick and tired of the neighbourhood kids’ many comings and goings and of constantly being on the lookout for them stealing, even though that hardly ever happened, and he denied them the currency swap, full stop, especially since they had not committed to buying anything during that particular stopover.

“Change is for customers only,” he said.

“We don’t want change, we want money,” replied Heloise.

“Oh, forget it,” said Terry, and he summoned a quick meeting outside Don’s Milk to discuss matters further. Their hard-earned booty had been collected and saved toward purchasing a feast of sorts from one of the neighbourhood burger joints, a place by the name of King’s Park that was located, coincidentally, on King’s Park Boulevard, not too far from the Roses’ house. The burger joint was locally known for its thick Neapolitan milkshakes and French fries, which were cut thick and extra fluffy on the inside, as opposed to the crispy shoestring fries McDonald’s sold, which never filled anybody’s belly.

Most of the gang had already been to King’s Park with their parents, but it was a big deal for Terry to go with his friends—and with his friends only—and for the gang to pay their own way. That was important, too. Terry’s parents had never taken him or Caleb to King’s Park, so he had never had the expansive feeling the others did of being able to order the trifecta of a burger, fries, and milkshake in one fell swoop. Thirty dollars would cover seven King combos: one for himself, Abelard, Aeneas, Caleb, Heloise, Lavinia, and Randolph. This was Terry’s grand plan for the summer, and everyone decided to tag along.

Through prudent gathering and disciplined spending, they had amassed twenty-four dollars in only four weeks, which was a lifetime to some children their age, and they were now only a stone’s throw from dining at the court of the King. Perseverance was key. But Terry knew the gang was growing restless for a little adventure, and being a good leader meant knowing when to push and when to pull.

“Seven Chupa Chups will cost about seventy cents, bringing the purse down to twenty-three dollars,” Terry said. It was hurtful in the short term, but in the long view, paper money was more legitimate than coin and would motivate the gang over the last hump toward their final goal.

“Make the deal,” said Aeneas, and Terry agreed. When those two agreed, usually everybody else did too.

III

“COME DOWN FROM THERE, YOU DUMMY!” Andy scolded Terry, who had climbed to the top of a neighbour’s home to get away from his father, who was likely to tan his back after catching Terry lifting a five-dollar note from his coat pocket. “I promise you nothing will happen.”

“You’re lying,” said Terry, leaning back from the edge of the roof as if he were taking in the sunshine, his feet dangling over the gutter, kicking the trelliswork that had enabled him to climb. It was precisely this posture that angered his father even further, because Terry looked so unfazed—unfazed at being caught in the act of pickpocketing, unfazed at being chased down the street by his father’s powder-blue Stingray, unfazed at having scaled the rose trellis alongside the neighbour’s house in a matter of steps like a crazed alley cat, sitting on the edge of the roof as if it were the edge of a pier, with the wide blue expanse before him. It pissed Andy off because he wished he could have seen things with the same pluck and sense of entitlement as his eldest son. But as soon as Andy became aware of why he was so angry, he let the feeling go, and his tone changed.

“Let’s go home, kid,” Andy said, straightening his clothes, tucking his shirt into his pants, and brushing a couple of loose hairs from his shoulder that may or may not have been his own—he didn’t want to think about his speculative hair loss now. “It’s not worth it.”

“I’ll be home later,” said Terry.

“It’s not worth it, kid,” Andy said, suddenly at a loss for words. “It all catches up to you eventually,” he mumbled. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

“I’m the one doing this,” Terry said, almost uncharacteristically, though he said mysterious things all the time, and sometimes he sounded much older than his years. His father hardly recognized him in that moment, and it made him sad to think how little he knew his son at all.

“Just remember, friends are not family,” Andy said with frustration, trying to get his point across and futilely trying to convey a little more. “Get down from the roof before the neighbours call the cops.” He looked up at Terry again, shielding his eyes from the diminished sun with the palm of his hand, and then turned to go away. “I’ll see you at home.”

Terry waited for his father to hesitate, but he didn’t, and after a while Terry stopped waiting.

He stayed on the roof until the sun went all the way down, and then for some time longer. He couldn’t smell his father’s distinctive brand of cigarettes, so he probably wasn’t waiting for him in the driveway any longer, or even at home for that matter. The coast was clear.

He could have gone home to play hockey with Caleb in the basement at any time and not worried about getting skinned. But he stayed on the roof a little longer, gazing at the moon’s silver face emerging from behind the clouds, and then Terry howled and howled at his conquest.

IV

AENEAS LOOKED FOR TERRY AND CALEB EVERYWHERE he could think of—the schoolyard, the Sherman Oaks forest, the arcades—but the two of them were nowhere to be found. He went to the Roses’ home, but nobody answered the door, and all the lights were dim inside. The gang was supposed to be meeting there later in the afternoon, but Aeneas decided to get a head start on the day, having gotten clearance from his mom earlier after his daily chores were completed.

He was beat from mowing the lawn and collecting the cut grass in double time, but if that meant he got an extra hour with Terry and Caleb before the rest of the gang arrived, the aches and pains in his body would probably quiet down as soon as the three of them got to the task at hand. That task was usually an honourable game of handball at the schoolyard, which was great whenever it was just the three of them, and still pretty good when Randolph joined in. But whenever Lavinia or Heloise were around—or that sap, Abelard—everything was different, different and shitty at the same time.

Aeneas looked through the cracked, murky basement window one more time, and in the stark depths he dimly saw an old hockey card box lying on the ground, left over from their lark the previous summer, when Terry and he had saved nearly twenty dollars between them and bought an entire box of hockey cards, ending up with nearly one hundred at their disposal. The semi-reflective box lay close to the “Crystal” furnace—too close to be merely a coincidence. He had a hunch about the empty box, in fact a hunch about things in general, and Aeneas was usually pretty bang-on when he had a deep feeling in his gut.

The last time they saw each other, Terry had been looking for something to store the paper money they had recently acquired from Don’s Milk, and what would have been a better container than last summer’s prized acquisition? Aeneas would have recognized that O-Pee-Chee box anywhere. He only needed to see a fraction of it to make out the rest. That was how he saw the box in his dreams for months before the purchase and for months afterward too—in bits and bobs, like a shining object seen through a keyhole. There was no doubt about it. So Aeneas decided to head straight for King’s Park to investigate his hunch.

When he arrived at the corner of King’s Park Boulevard, his stomach rose into his throat so quickly that he nearly choked, but it wasn’t because he was hungry or sick. He saw a pair of bicycles lying in a metallic heap just beyond the front doors of the burger joint, one of the slanted wheels still spinning slightly in the gentle breeze. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and kids were scattered across the patio, contentedly licking ice cream cones. There was an air of summer bliss everywhere, but Aeneas did not have the nerve to go inside the burger joint to look for Terry and Caleb.

He walked slowly past the multicoloured patio tables with their sprung umbrellas and tried to look inside, but he could not see much beyond his own reflection in the window because of the refracted sunlight hanging low that day. The smell of charbroiled burgers made his stomach rumble, and for a moment his hunger almost made him forget why he was there, but he still did not go inside, and so he kept walking.

When he crossed the street at Mortimer, he did not notice that the pedestrian light had changed to red, and a few cars honked at him. But he kept walking, numb to everything he saw, touched, and smelled, until he reached the furthest point he had ever been from home on his own—which was not very far at all. He was hardly at O’Connor Drive, but it felt like a million miles anyway. Then he came to his senses and turned back toward home. He was sure there was leftover meatloaf in the fridge. And he wanted some now.