Blue Vengeance Read Online Free PDF

were far too many of them, and she objected on the grounds that they didn’t seem to help anyway.
    â€œDo you want me to suffer, Dot? Is that it?” said Barbara.
    â€œOf course not, Barb, of course not. I just worry that you’re overdoing the pills, that you lose track of them sometimes.”
    â€œI’m a big girl, Dot.”
    The eggs on Danny’s plate looked a little too jiggly this morning. He liked them sunny side up, but with no jiggle to them. Dot’s mind hadn’t been on her cooking.
    Edwin drove in to pick her up. They left the cupboards and fridge full of
eats
, as Edwin called them, and a brand new pile of money in the kitchen drawer. The money in the drawer was nothing new. It always arrived by way of Dot.
    Barbara got off the couch to say goodbye to her sister. It was the first time in a couple of days that Danny had seen her upright, and he wondered if the whole time he had stayed in his room, she had stayed on the couch — if she had remained horizontal except for her ghostly appearances on her way to the bathroom in the night. She put a hand on his shoulder now, a feeble unwanted pressure, and he forced himself not to shrug her off.
    â€œTake care of your mother, son,” Edwin said as he started up his Olds. “She’ll need your help now more than ever.”
    Those words hit Danny hard in the gut. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would have to look after anybody but himself. It reminded him of one Hallowe’en, when he was much younger. His teacher had passed out cards with little slits in them that were supposed to be filled with dimes. The whole scheme was called
The March of Dimes,
and it was to help people all across Canada who had been crippled by polio. Danny had thought that it was up to him to take his dime card to them wherever they lived and he wondered why none of his classmates looked as alarmed as he felt, with his silent questions about train derailments and dog sled travel to the Northwest Territories where he imagined some of them lived, in particular the ones he was responsible for. He was afraid to ask anyone for details, so he hid the card in a shoe box at the back of his closet and did nothing more about it. After a week or so, when the subject hadn’t come up again, he stopped worrying.
    He had a similar feeling now, when Uncle Edwin mentioned taking care of his mother. At first he had been relieved that Dot was leaving, but now he understood that he hadn’t given any real thought to the meals that had turned up three times a day, or the clean clothes that fluttered and snapped on the clothesline. He did not doubt that he could cook and do laundry for himself — he and Cookie had been doing that for years. Well, mostly Cookie; he had helped. But when he thought about looking after the human lump on the couch, it seemed way harder than taking dimes to the Arctic Circle.
    Dot kissed her sister on the cheek and Danny on top of his head and gave Uncle Edwin a look that went along with the way Danny felt. If she were to speak then, he was sure her words would be:
Edwin, don’t scare the boy
.
    When she was settled in the passenger seat she rolled down the window. “We’ll come in to town and check on you from time to time.”
    â€œWhen?” Danny said.
    He knew it would be hard for them to get away. Farmers couldn’t just up and leave anytime they liked, or anytime their sister lay limp and pathetic on a chesterfield. He had spent a week with them a couple of summers ago and watched them rise with the sun and work all day long. He had helped, but not very much; mostly he had sought out modest adventures with two brothers from a neighbouring farm.
    Dot took his hand and squeezed.
    â€œSoon.”
    She looked at her sister as she spoke. The line of her lips went straight across, no up or down to it.
    Danny watched them drive away. He was on his own.
    When he turned around, his mother was gone. He glanced