serial fiction

Delroy and the Cheese — Part Seventeen

Urban Renewal in the Great White North

This is the seventeenth chapter of an 18 chapter series about life in a Canadian tree-planting camp. If you’re new, you may want to start at the beginning or go to the complete list of Delroy and the Cheese chapters.

We continued to work on the lot throughout the afternoon. A truck stopped beside us while we were working. It was Dennis, the guy that Susan had chatted up with when we were still looking for Delroy’s cheese.

“Hey there,” he called out to Susan. “Did you ever find your cheese?”

“Nope. We’re working on something new now. It’s a passeggiata.”

“A what now?”

“We’re trying to get people to walk down this road.”

“What for?”

“To make the pizza guy happy.” She nodded at Mario’s place across the road.

Dennis got out of his truck and inspected what we’d done so far. He looked up and down the road. He crossed the street and looked back at what we’d accomplished.

“It looks great close up,” he said. “But from ten feet away you can’t spot there’s anything there. You need something bigger.” He stared into space a bit, then snapped his fingers. “You need an Inukshuk. Maybe a couple of them. One at each end of the block.”

“What’s that,” asked Susan.

“It’s a pile of rocks that kind of looks like a person. It’s an indigenous thing. It’s used to give directions. Kind of like a signpost. Except made of stone and sort of people-shaped. They’re cool. Trust me.”

“Sounds good. Let’s do it.”

“The trick is, we need some rocks. Big ones. Ideally, flat ones so we can stack them right. I’ll round up a buddy and we’ll go rock hunting.”

A little after Dennis drove off, the two old guys I’d met the first time I went to Mario’s showed up. They each carried a tray of bedding flowers. We planted those along the sidewalk leading up to and away from the tires planted with wildflowers. Then Sean, the guy who sold me my $40 pizza, dragged a hose across the road from the pizza place and told us Mario had said we could use it to water the plants.

“Be careful, though,” he said. “If somebody slips or something because the ground is wet, it’s all on you. I’ll deny everything. Just bring it back when you’re done.”

Dennis and his friend showed up a couple of hours later and we helped them build an Inukshuk at each end of our little flower garden. It was starting to get dark by the time we’d finished. I was proud of what we’d accomplished. We went across to the pizza place to get Mario to come out and have a look but Sean said he wasn’t there.

“He had some errand he had to run. He left me in charge. If you’re looking for free pizza, you’re out of luck.”

“We’ll show it to him tomorrow,” said Andrea. “It’s too dark to see much now anyway.”

But the next day, when we went to call on Mario, he wasn’t there either. There was just Sean. He didn’t know where Mario was.

“He asked me to open up this morning. Said he wasn’t sure when he’d make it in.”

We were disappointed. The crew was due to come into town that evening. We’d gotten nowhere with tracking down a suitable cheese for Delroy. Fixing up the lot had taken our minds off the fact the next time we saw Griff he was probably going to fire us, and we would have no excuse to hang around Fort Nelson anymore.

With the crew coming into town we knew that time was coming. I was dreading it, but if we had to go, I wanted to make sure that Mario saw what we had created before we left town.

We kept working on the garden throughout the day. A few of the townspeople stopped by to see what we were doing and to check out the Inukshuks and the flowers. One of them was a forester from the mill who’d been out to our camp.

“Looks pretty good,” he said. “Those tires could use a tad more color, though.” He climbed into the back of his truck and rummaged around in the toolbox. He came back with a couple of cans of orange spray paint.

“We use this for marking trees,” he said. He carefully sprayed the tires until they glowed bright orange. The flowers now seemed to be sprouting from half-buried pumpkins.

We headed back to the hotel in the afternoon to change into our fancy duds and wait for the crew. This time I did wear the disco boots along with the navy blue suit.

The crew rolled into town at about 7 pm. There was still no sign of Mario. The crew bus rolled up and disgorged about 50 filthy planters excited as school children. They checked into the hotel four to a room. Some headed for the laundromat. Some headed for the bar. Some went in search of food.

Everyone loved our outfits. We had to keep repeating the story of where we got them and why we were wearing them. We told everyone about the garden as well and said they should go check it out.

We saw Griff briefly, but he was busy sorting out advance money for the crew and trying to keep things at least partially under control. He didn’t look pleased to see us and we figured we should just leave him be. We would talk to him later about whether we still had jobs.

We saw Delroy as well. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, but Susan dove straight in. “We’re really sorry about the cheese,” she said. “We shouldn’t have taken it and I definitely shouldn’t have eaten it and we’re just really really sorry. And we looked everywhere but there is no pecorino to be found anywhere in this town.”

Delroy didn’t say anything. He just stared down at his shoes. I couldn't tell if he was angry or embarrassed.

“But isn’t it nice to be back in civilization for a change?” asked Susan, brightly. She pushed him lightly on the shoulder.

“Yes,” said Delroy. He looked up from his shoes and said, “This sidewalk is very clean.”

“How do we look?” asked Andrea. She and Susan did a twirl. I pulled up my trouser legs to show off my boots.

Delroy studied us carefully. “You look very nice. Very civilized.” He paused. “Those boots are wicked.”

“Hey, do you want to grab a beer with us?” suggested Andrea.

“Nah,” said Delroy. “You all look so polished. I wouldn’t fit in with you guys.” He looked down at his clothes. He was wearing a collared brown long-sleeve shirt with a pair of battered, clean-for-camp but dirty-for-town, blue jeans.

“No problem,” I said. “I bought two suits. You can wear the other one and you’ll fit right in.”

“I don't know. It doesn’t seem right.”

“I’ll even let you wear the boots,” I said. I shot one foot out in front of me to show it off.

This seemed to appeal to Delroy. “What size are they?”

“Size 10, I think.”

“I’m usually a nine and a half,” said Delroy.

“Close enough,” said Susan. “You boys go get changed. We’ll wait for you down here.”

Next chapter:

If you’ve missed some of the story you can find all the previous chapters in the post below.

Want to make sure you don’t miss the next chapter? Subscribe to get an email whenever I publish anything new.