You wake up in the night. Just lie there. It’s 3am. You’ve not been sleeping well over the past year. Don’t open your eyes. If you do the next thing is you’ll be looking at your phone, reading the news or worse, logging into work. You think it’s work that has been keeping you up. It’s the new job. You moved to Portland to take up the role. A move you made with your wife and two daughters after you left your job back in Wisconsin. Sure you made more money, but when the valuation of the company dropped the firing began. Good people lost their jobs. You had to start firing your coworkers, your friends, people you had worked with for years. New people came on too. People you didn;’ know. You would hear things, things about the country, about politics. ‘You’re from Egypt aren’t you someone had said in the cafeteria. I thought that was on the no fly ban.’

It’s better here now in Portland, but you think you’d be happier back in Canada. You’d sleep better there. When you were a kid you could sleep right through the night, even if your parents had friends over. You remember they went through a fondu party phase and would stay-up really late. You knew this because they’d be pleased when you said you didn’t hear anything and that you didn’t like fondu.

You move your leg under the blanket. Somethings in the way. It’s the dog. You don’t like the dog up on the bed. You’ve said to your wife that it sends the wrong message and that the dog will start thinking it’s human. When you were a kid, Richard Bradley had told you about dogs. ‘You’ve got to be a dog boss or the dog will take advantage. Richard lied alot, but this sounded to be true. You had brought up the idea of having a dog with your mum. You thought she might be able to soften up your dad to the idea. This was around time Richard had framed you up for stealing. You remember seeing him standing outside your house, looking suspicious. He shifted his weight from one snow boot to the other. You had gone outside and stood there in the winter cold with him, stood there and waited for him to explain himself, to apologise, to say he was going to tell the truth and get you out of trouble. You imagine the view you would have had standing there next to Richard. You can see your street like an old polaroid developing in your mind. You remember standing there with Richard and picture the small two bedroom bungalow, maple tree, garage and basketball hoop which was your house. ‘Richard had asked if you wanted to play Atari. But nothing about the other stuff. Close your eyes again. It’s too early to get up. Go back to sleep, back to you and Richard standing there. You look round to the memory of the field that stretched out along the West side of Aaron Avenue, the field behind Fairlawn plaza, the shopping mall. It’s a housing estate now, but back then that field was full of stuff a kid might discover, tracks of footsteps, discarded things from the shops, a carton of sodden cigarettes, an appointment book, an Indian arrowhead, a boulder that rose up out of the grass like a headstone and Fairlawn Plaza itself, full of stuff the adult world had created, so it was important. The mall contained Cantors bakery, Candian Tire, Steinberg's grocery store and Shoppers Drug Mart, this was the pharmacy. The flickering memory traced the steps you and Richard took down Aaron Avenue to the Gladman residence. You remember being right outside David’s door. The fear of the pharmacy lingered in your thoughts, but only kitchen smoke, dark and pungent that dissipated into dream.

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You had knocked on David Gladman’s front door while Richard Bradley remained on the street. Richard had been too afraid to join you. He still wanted you to take the blame for stealing from the pharmacy and had warned you to leave David alone. Speaking to David would mean Richard would have to admit being caught with the stolen toys by his parents, and that he had been unable to stick to the story that David had told him to say, that he had just found the stuff behind Fairlawn plaza. Richard’s Dad was a parent that spanked his kids for stuff they did wrong. That’s how your name must have come out of his mouth, someone to spare him the pain, anyone, just not David. David had opened the door and greeted you by saying. ‘What do you want loser.’ David was a sandy haired boy, slightly chubby, generally quiet at school, but known to have been in several fights. Standing there you had thought what you’re supposed to say when someone calls you a looser. David stood there and waited, pretty sure you had no idea what to say, and that maybe you were a looser, whatever that was. You just stood there thinking about the ‘Big dust-up’ The ‘dustup’ was what kids called the fight between David and a big kid from a junior high school who had come visiting his so called girlfriend. ‘You stole some stuff,’ you said finally. David didn’t say anything to that. You said that you and Richard were taking the stuff back to the store. You looked over to Richard hoping he’d come to help explain things, but you notice that he has retreated further down the sidewalk. You turned to David’s fist bound up under your nose like a fleshy stone. ‘Take off,’ he said simply. His fist meant there was a real risk you could be pummeled like a piece of meat. It hovered there under your nose for what seemed like a real long time. It provided you enough time to think about how frightened you were, but it also occured to you that there might be possibilities that would come from being in a David Gladman dust-up. This could be your chance to be more than the kid with the cool lunchbox, a chance to be someone with real world concerns, worries of a bigger kid, someone who held the real prospect of being beaten up. But what really held your feet to David Gladman’s front steps was the fear of becoming a convict. ‘I just want to take it back, you said as a David withdrew his fist and with narrowed eyes still fixed on you closed the door, but not before saying,’beat it pizza face’. Pizza face was a condition that older kids got. He was making a reference to the pimple that had begun to form on your cheek. But it wasn’t anywhere near real pizza face. You should have said that. And you thought of the other things you might have said later, “fat face,” for example. But this would have made your situation worse you decided and anyway pizza face was less true than calling him fat face, so you could live with that.

‘He wants to keep the stuff,’ you said to Richard. ‘Yeah,’ said Richard obviously unsurprised by the revelation. He looked in his shifty way down Aaron avenue road toward your place, toward Fairlawn Plaza, far away from the Gladman residence. .

‘You wanna come to my place tomorrow’ you had said crossing over Lenester avenue. Richard walked next to you but didn’t respond. You hoped he felt badly about framing you-up for stealing. But even if he was the cause of real trouble for you he was still your friend. ‘I think we should launch the rocket.’ Richard said, ‘yeah ok.’ and then lied, ‘I’ve finished Lady Pacman at the donut shop.’

The rocket launch didn’t go well. It was the kind of rocket that you filled with water at the tap and then pumped the chamber with air. The more air you were able to pump with your kid arms, the higher it was shoot up. But that day was particularly cold and the water just freezed inside the rocket so that when you let it off it just keeled over. Richard had said, ‘I thought you were an astronaut,’ and reminded you that his father had been in the space program before becoming an airline pilot. That was when you came up with the idea of boiling the rocket. Your mum was outshopping which was good because you had a feeling that boiling the rocket was a bad idea and that your mum would have stopped you and said something else about the world you had never thought of. ‘How long are you going to let it boil,’ said Richard as you struggled with the timer on your digital watch. ‘Ok take it out now.’ You poured out the water and the rocket which carren to the bottom of the sink. You could see that the sides of the rocket were slightly misshapen from the heat, but otherwise it had been cleared of ice. Rockets are engineered for high heat you had explained to Richard.

Outside, you began to pump the rocket again. It took a lot of strength, but you pumped it enough for was you thought would make a blast off. You were starting to notice a small bubbling at the spout of the rocket when Richard nudged you with an elbow. You looked up to see that he wanted you to notice that it was David Gladman. You froze. ‘Hey pizza face,’ he said. ‘Hi,’ you replied reluctantly. ‘Come here,’ he said. He was wearing a blue winter toque which had a spherical pom-pom at the top which bobbed as he cocked his head in a come-over-here angle. This made him look not nearly as tough as you knew he was.

‘That house there,’ said David pointing to the only other house on the street with a basketball hoop fixed to the garage like yours. ‘That house is packed with araabs,’ he said as if he was revealing an important shameful secret. This made you feel embarrassed for him. The kind of embarrassed feeling you had felt the time you farted in elevator before Mrs. Ferris joined you on the tenth floor. That was another thing about David that you remembered. People said that he pretended to be racist, like it was a big talk thing to scare people. This wasn’t something you believed until you heard him say a-rab. You thought maybe his father was behind the biggetted talk as he was from a long ago time, maybe another century. Also there was the fact that someone had said Mr. Gladman had the AIDS disease and that was the real reason for the dust-up at school. ‘That’s Nasser’s house,’ you said. ‘They’re from Lebanon.’ ‘Like I said, A-raab. Actually they’re Christians like us.’

Nasser Ghadban had come out of the house while you were talking. His toque and jacket were misshapen and haphazard as if he had come out in a hurry. Noting Nasser’s snow pants you look over at his house to see his mother disappear from the living room window. ‘Rocket,’ he said. ‘He’s a retard.’ said David. Nasser did have some something wrong. That was clear, but he always seem to smile when he saw you and would never be any trouble. Your mother had said he had a syndrome.

The rocket burst into the air rising high into the blue sky. The water left a trail of steam in the cold air. It was a moment you felt anything was possible and that being an astronaut was a real possibility. Richard was just as pleased, you could see it the way he looked up in the sky. Nasser, his hand pushed in his pockets, was jumping up and down, his snow pants making a swishing sound when David started to laugh. He stopped quickly when we saw we’d noticed. ‘Big deal,’ he. You and Richard had run to collect the rocket when you saw the blue El Camino. It drifted along the side road next to Fairlawn Plaza, round the corner and stopped at the loading bay in the back of the mall. There was a field separating your street from the mall, but at 200 meters you were close enough to see the man emerge from the truck, and walk over to bang on one of the loading bay doors. ‘Come on,’ you said to Richard. ‘Let’s investigate.

You and Richard stalked into position behind a snowbank that provided a good view of the El Camino parked a few paces from your lookout. ‘That’s Maria’s Dad. I think he might be a criminal, you say to Richard. ‘Keep your head down.’ ‘He is a criminal,’ said David Gladman. You had hoped that David would have lost interest and left. But it didn’t surprise you when he came to crouch behind the same snowbank. Nasser too was swishing along in your direction. Richard asked David what sort of criminal we were dealing with and why David knew about it. David said Gerardo was his Uncle and ‘yes,’ he said, he was Maria’s cousin. ‘He’s been in cahoots with the pharmacist. He takes boxes of cigarettes from the store room and sells them. It’s a big rip off,’ Said David. ‘Where does he sell them,’ you ask. Who knows, but he makes plenty of money. As if to support David’s story, Gerardo emerged from the back of the pharmacy carrying a large cardboard box. He looked around suspiciously in the direction of your snowbank. He returned to the back door where he was met by the wireframed pharmacist who passed another cardboard box into Gerardo’s waiting arms and closed the door behind him. You were taking note of the time and the weather conditions which you would later write in your detective notebook And then, just like that, David slid down the snow bank and swaggered in the direction of Gerardo and his El Camino. ‘What are you doing here’ Gerardo didn’t look happy and was shifting his line of sight between your snowbank and David. ‘You’r a thief, ‘ said David and I’ve caught you red handed. That was the moment Gerardo swatted David with his open gloved hand causing the boy to turn away and hold his face.

You hadn’t a chance to stop him before Nasser was already on his way swishing toward the Uncle and his nephew. He held a boulder of ice in his hand. Gerardo took another swipe at David who fell to the ground with a whimper. The kind of whimper a scared boy would make. David was suddenly looking far less the bruising fighter that he made himself out to be, at least against an adult. He was in trouble, you could see it. Richard tried to run, but you managed to grab a piece of his winter coat before he blew your cover. You both looked back at the scene from behind you snowbank when Nasser arrived to take a swift cuff from Gerardo. Unlike David, Nasser remained fixed on his feet and hardly reacted on receiving Gerardo’s punch. You had never really considered how large Nasser was until you saw him measure up to a grown man. Nasser extended his hand with the dripping ice boulder as if making an offering to Gerardo. ‘What this,’ said Gerardo looking over to David who was still crumpled on the ice.

A winter storm had come through Ottawa that day and like your memory it seemed to curl up everything into a white-out. But amongst the vanishing memory you recall the spinning tires of the accelerating El Camino. And, you remember David Gladman with his bloody nose saying that he’d bring you the stuff that he stole from the pharmacy.