The Water Tower

By: Ben Bielert

He always tied his shoes. Never just slipped ‘em on. Tied ‘em. Every. Goddamn. Time. That was just the way Danny Turner was. Methodical, calculating to the point of impracticality. You might be wonderin’ about the times when he was in a hurry. That’s just it, Danny was never in a hurry. Not a single person in Moosetree Junction ever saw it. No matter what, Danny moved deliberately and he rarely seemed flustered.

Moosetree Junction, funny name isn’t it? It was Danny’s home for the 19 years I knew him. Still is my home, always has been. We’re just a little place, way up north in Alberta. The town was originally just a trade post back in the old days. Now its main exports are beef and high school graduates, the drop-outs stick around.

In a town like MJ you knew everybody, but Danny and I were the same age and lived down the same street. Even in a small town this is a bit of a big deal. We played together all the time. I can still remember havin’ him over for my very first sleepover. We were both just four years old. He had a nightlight that kept me up. I just talked and talked, even when he fell asleep.

In grade 1 Danny’s parents split up. Maybe it was the split or maybe other things, lord knows there were other things, but Danny developed a stutter around then too. It wasn’t so bad at first, but he really struggled with the letter D. I thought this particularly cruel considering his own name started with one. That was probably the closest I’d ever see Danny to rushing, as he struggled to stutter out a word.

It was also around then that we started gettin’ harassed by this big porker in 4th grade. Doyle all the kids called him. He preferred this to his first name, Percy. It was short for Percival. Doyle was his last name, and he had decided that it fit his personality better. Looking back, I’d have to agree. He was certainly more of a Doyle than he was a Percy. Nobody smaller than him ever dared call him Percy, and almost everybody was smaller than Doyle. Doyle was relentless, wherever Danny and I went, he’d follow. Now that I think of it, I can’t be sure if the stutter got worse or if it actually developed in the first place thanks to D-d-doyle.

I have this memory of once when we were still fairly young, maybe six or seven, and Doyle was ragging on Danny in the schoolyard.

“What’s my name, Danny?” He asked.

“L-leave me alone.” Danny said.

“L-l-leave me a-l-l-lone.” Doyle said, sneering.

“Let off.” I said.

Doyle grabbed the front of my shirt and gave me a good shake, brandishing his fist. “Stay out of it.” He growled. “This is between me and D-d-d-d-danny.”

He pushed me back and wrapped Danny up in a headlock, demanding that he utter his name. He was like some demon unsatisfied until Danny had managed to say it three times.

“D-d-d-d-dolyle!” He managed, the first one was always the biggest trick. Danny repeated his name in fast succession then, hardly stuttering at all. “Doyle, D-doyle!”

Danny had grasped Doyle’s arms and was trying to struggle free, but I could see Doyle tighten his grip on Danny. “Pretty good, Danno, I do believe your stutter is getting better.” Doyle taunted.
“Hey, now–” I started.

“Percival Doyle!” A woman’s voice shouted from behind me, making me jump. Doyle started himself and roughly released Danny. It was Mrs. Saunderson, the teacher on duty that day. She marched up and grabbed Doyle by his arm.

“We were just playin’!” Doyle shouted as she dragged him inside.

Danny and I were ecstatic. We felt like freed inmates that lunch hour, but it was short-lived. Two lunches later Doyle caught Danny and I skipping stones by Scotsman’s Creek behind the school. Both of us took an awful beating that afternoon, and I mean bad. It was a level of savagery that no adult would dare unless he had lost all control, the sort of violence only a child who stood no risk of criminal charges would inflict.

As I lay in the dirt, battered, bruised, eye swollen half-shut, and vomit drying on my shirt I heard Danny struggling to comply.

“D-d-d-d-d-doy-d-d-” The wet, sick sound of fist connecting with bloodied face and Danny crying out, I shuddered and wretched what little contents of my stomach were left.

“Doyle!” Doyle shouted. “No wonder your dad is leaving you and your mom. Probably can’t stand having a worm like you for a son.”

“D-d-d-d…” Danny struggled.

For the love of God, Danny, I thought.

I can still remember the sick smacking of flesh on flesh after that. There was a whimper of pain and then, thankfully, “Doyle!”

“Good job, Dannyboy.” Doyle said, giving Danny a noogie and a little slap on the cheek. “Now was that so hard?”

I glowered at Doyle, gritting my teeth. I wanted to punch him, to make him hurt, but when he jolted in my direction with a balled-up fist, I jumped.  He laughed, shaking his head as he walked away.

Was I coward? Maybe, but I was also a child. Doyle was a child too, sure, but he was twice my size and far more violent.

I just picked my friend up off the ground after he’d left, and we made our way home.  

We avoided that filthy sonofabitch like the plague from then on. Entire lunch hours were spent just trying to evade Doyle, but he followed us wherever we went. We came to hate him, truly despise him, and we wished he were dead. I know it’s terrible, but it’s the honest truth. I have never hated someone so much in my life as I hated Percival Doyle. He beat the shit out of us at least 4 more times between the first beating and when we were in grade 3.

It was during the third grade, and I can’t remember when exactly, that something happened. Come to think of it, it was before Christmas, I can remember because I had no bruises when I opened my presents that year. Danny got really sick and was out of school for a few weeks in late October and early November.

I thought that my number was up. Without Danny, Doyle would vent all his anger towards me and destroy me in no time. But then something interesting happened, Doyle didn’t attack me. He didn’t stalk me; he didn’t do anything. When the first three days had passed and I was not only unscathed but also completely un-harassed, I figured it out. It was Danny he was after.

What had my friend done? Why did Doyle hate him? I couldn’t imagine anything worth the punishment we’d endured.

The next few weeks were glorious. I could actually enjoy lunch and recess. When Danny came back things had changed, we could all feel it. I didn’t sit with Danny on the bus, and I didn’t go talk to him at lunch. If he had come and hung out with me, I wouldn’t have turned him away, but he knew something was different. I had begun to hang out with others, no longer being Doyle’s punching bag had made it so that other kids were willing to play with me. Danny avoided the group and he avoided me. Doyle tracked Danny down every day without fail. I stayed safe and kept away from Danny.

I remained untouched and Danny continued to be harassed by Doyle for a while, but eventually the evidence of the beatings began to lessen. Danny’s mom and even the teachers had finally begun to take a more active interest in what was happening. It was less than a month after this that Danny’s dad completely split, just packed up his old VW rabbit and left. Nobody in MJ ever heard from him again, least of all Danny.

The next few years passed with little incident for me. Danny became stranger and his stutter worsened, but at least he wasn’t without a friend. He had developed a new constant companion, Tiny.

Tiny Tina Bell was so nicknamed because of in part her name, but also because she was the chubbiest girl in the 4th grade. Danny and I were in the 5th grade when Tiny and he became friends. Joined together by their mutual social exclusion, the two often wandered the periphery of the school grounds. Doyle had moved up to the high school which went from grade 8 onwards. Moosetree had only one elementary school and one high school, so Danny would someday be a grade 8 in a school with Doyle the Sophomore.

This might not have been such an important detail, except for who Tiny just happened to be. Of all the people that my old friend could have replaced me with it just had to be Tiny Tina Bell.  You see, Tina’s mom was previously Audrey Bell, and before that Audrey Hampson. Currently, Audrey’s last name was Doyle because she was married to one Andrew Doyle, father of Percy Doyle. Yup, that’s right, Danny’s only friend and ally in the entire world was Percy Doyle’s sister, well, stepsister… as though that would be a saving grace.

I first noticed Danny and Tina were friends at the end of grade 5. The two were all but inseparable during recess and lunch.  Every moment that they could they seemed to be spending together, and I wasn’t the only one to take notice. The other kids taunted them, and I know that Danny took a licking or two from Doyle. He’d move in his real deliberate way, and I would know that something on him was badly bruised, some mark hidden by clothing. Tina and Danny didn’t seem to give into the pressure, they began hanging out together outside of school, too. I had long since stopped keeping too close of tabs on my old friend, but I would run into Tina and Danny on our street despite the Doyle/Belles living across town.

There was an old, abandoned property down our road still referred to as Rand Farm after the last family that had lived there. Nobody had taken up residence there for over a decade, the old man had died, and his sons had long-since moved away. They didn’t bother to come back for the place. I guess one son, some lawyer in Ontario, occasionally came back and paid for some upkeep but then he had only been out once since the old man had died. For the most part the property was deserted, the grass grew long, fences fell into disrepair, the odd window would get broken by trespassers and not replaced.  The Rand property spanned a hundred or more acres, but the most prominent feature was its water tower. The old structure shot up above the landscape on girders and gave those that were brave enough to climb it a view for miles around. The old steeple was starting to show some signs of neglect, rust mostly, but it was still as solid as ever.

When we were friends, Danny and I threw rocks at that old heap of tin. It was always rewarding to hear the ping when you hit it. I still threw rocks at it when no one was around. Only problem was, there was always someone around then. I’d bring my bike through the old hole in the fence, and across the overgrown driveway, but there they’d be.

Tina and Danny had taken to climbing the old tower. The two set up on the narrow walkway of the water tower and would lay content for hours on their little perch. After the first couple times of finding my spot of solitude not so isolated, I started scoping out the tower from a distance on the road. If I looked really hard, I could often see Danny, dangling his gangly legs off the edge. I don’t think there was a day that summer those two didn’t go up there at least for a little while. They would play cards, or read, or listen to music on Danny’s Walkman. I always wondered why that place was such a sanctuary for them on those long, hot days. I thought of asking my old friend, but Danny had become repellent in my young mind, something cursed, so I stayed away.

It was in Grade 6 that I discovered the power the water tower had. That was the year that Doyle attended an inter-school field trip to Edmonton. 230 kids from grades 5-12 went on that trip. 230 kids. Many of them, me included, watched as Percy Doyle stepped up to the high dive.

229 kids either saw or heard about Percy Doyle fainting, rolling, and falling into the water below. The lifeguards had to pull him out. Doyle had a weakness.

More and more Danny and Tina hid up that tower. It wasn’t ‘til Grade 7 that there was anything else really to tell. The three existed in a sort of uneasy truce. I watched from afar, warily. I had new friends and kept busy with my own life, but I had a morbid curiosity about Danny and Doyle.

One Friday night near the end of Grade 7, I came across the two on my way home. I was cutting behind the grocery store near the old railway tracks after catching a movie. That’s right, a movie. Moosetree Junction did have a theater, and it boasted one whole screen. Behind the grocery store there was a leveled area of gravel that ran back a couple hundred feet and lengthwise it went several hundred feet as well. I was scuttling along the railway tracks, but there, on that platform and silhouetted in the moonlight, were Danny and a much larger Doyle.

“I-I’m t-telling you. Leave h-h-her alone.”

“It ain’t none your b-b-b-business. Better get your nose out before I bust you up something fierce.”

“N-n-no. Y-you bust m-me, and I’ll t-t-tell everyone.”

Doyle erupted, screaming like a man possessed. He seized Danny and suplexed him savagely. He kicked him in the ribs until Danny spat up hot sick before Doyle kicked him again.

I don’t know what I would have done next. I was frozen for a moment, but then something compelled me to move. I hadn’t decided if I would run or intervene, but I didn’t have to. The night was eerily quiet, Doyle towering over Danny. Danny spat, but hardly made a sound. Gravel crunched under my footstep and Doyle whirled around.

What do you want?” He sneered. “You want to save your old boyfriend?”

I said nothing.

“Get out of here.” Doyle snarled.

I shook my head.

Doyle cursed and hocked a loogie. Glaring at me, he knelt down beside Danny and whispered something in his ear, and then he stomped past me, shouldering me hard as he went.

I went over to Danny and offered my hand, helping up.

“Thanks.” He said, weakly.

“I didn’t do much.” I said.

He gave a crooked grin, holding back a grimace of pain and wrapping one arm around his midsection. “Better than nothing.”

The next day Danny and Tina didn’t leave the water tower. I thought about climbing up to join them, I could hear their voices catching on the wind from in the overgrown field on the Rand property. They were having a very heated conversation, Danny kept talking in a low and methodical way, but I could hear the rise and fall of the pitch of Tina’s voice. I decided to leave them, and I walked slowly back to my house, kicking rocks as I went.

The next week, Tina went to live with her dad a couple towns over. Danny and I became friends again in the years that followed, but never quite so close as we’d once been. Oh we’d shoot pool down at Dagmar’s Hall, or grab the odd burger or a catch a flick together, but the wariness to his friendship, maybe a wariness to mine too. Danny began to use the school gym regularly during the 9th grade. He made new friends and eventually joined a few school teams.

By grade 10 Doyle was out of High School altogether and moved to Calgary. Just packed up his stuff and drove his Mercury Cougar right out of town. Danny had become quite the athlete and a specimen, he was a star of the rugby and basketball team. His popularity soared and the rest of high school breezed by for him.

We grew apart during those years of his heightened popularity, I was never one for sports and having your piece of poetry elected for the school paper, or having your essay picked to represent the school in a provincial contest didn’t exactly help a guy become popular. But, in our senior year our social circles began to overlap a little again. It was at a bush party in grade 12 that I talked to Danny for the last time.

We were both drunk and he comes up to me. He moved deliberately, as always. Deliberately, but with purpose, the same way he went after the ball on the court or field. I could see in his eyes that there was a rage burning, but he says to me all calm as hell, he says.

Why didn’t you do anything?” His stutter and any trace of it was completely gone and had been for a couple of years.

I’m pretty out of it at this point so I just say stupidly, “Huh?”

“About Doyle. Why didn’t you ever do anything?”

I shook my head. “I dunno, Danny. You said I did something, that night behind the grocery store. You said that it was better than nothing.”

The two of us were away from the fire and the rest of the group. I could see the outlines of the others against the backdrop of the fire. Someone threw a log on the flames and sent a stream of sparks into the night sky.

Danny just stares at me, and even in the low light I could make out the expression on his face. I could see his hands ball up into fists and then how his fists shook and trembled. His voice was as level as ever, but almost a whisper now. “Was it cuz you were afraid?” Somewhere a cricket creaked, and I could hear the crackle of the fire.

I nodded my head. “Of course I was afraid. But what about you? Why didn’t you stand up to him? Ever take a swing?”

“I did, that night, I did. I stood up to him and told him to leave Ti-… told him to stop what he’d been doing. I wasn’t doing it for me. I woulda never turned my back on you like you did me.”

“What was I supposed to do, Danny?” I said, and my words came out slurred and louder than I intended. Some of the others were looking over at as and pointing.

Danny just fixed me with a glare and said quietly, “I know I shouldn’t hate you, you didn’t do all those things all those years. But you let him. You knew, and you let him. It was only when it was right in front of you again that you did anything at all. Don’t you think that makes you a bad guy too?” Then he just walked away.

I didn’t follow him, I didn’t do anything, I got sick in a bush shortly after that, and I never talked to Danny again.

Tina moved back from her father’s the next year.

There was no question in anyone’s mind that she and Danny were a couple now. They spent what moments they could together. Danny had a job out at the old Petersen Mill and Tina was finishing grade 12, but in the evenings, they could be seen around town. They went to the theater, the bowling alley, and, of course, the water tower. I would park my truck out by the Rand property sometimes. Once I saw them out there that autumn, Danny’s legs, not gangly anymore, dangling down from the top walk, the two of them looking over the unkempt property and toward the sunset.

The Christmas that year Doyle came home, drove in one night while everyone in Moosetree Junction was sleeping. Tina began spending more time at Danny’s. I saw her car parked there every day on my way home from work.

Boxing day was the last time I ever saw any of them. I had gone to a Christmas dinner at a friend’s and was stumbling home at 2 am. We had drank more rum and eggnog than was wise, but it was the holidays. The night was cold and dark, and I was freezing because I hadn’t dressed warmly enough. The warmth of the fire and the booze felt a distant memory now, my shoes were soaking through.

That’s when I saw a point of light in the distance. I wanted to get home, needed to get home, but something made me walk towards it as quickly as my drunk and frozen legs could carry me. As I approached, I saw it was twin beams of light shining through the supports of the water tower and lighting up the old Rand homestead. The light’s source was none other than a Mercury Cougar that sat running. I recognized it almost instantly as Percival Doyle’s. Snow had begun to fall, and fat flakes were coming down, I could hardly feel my hands or feet, but I crept ever closer to the strange scene. That’s when I noticed two figures standing beside the truck talking, my heart leapt and then I realized that it was Danny and Tina. She was visibly upset, but he reached out for her and then held her and spoke in even tones. I couldn’t pick up the words, just the inflection over the rumble of the engine. It reminded me so of that day after the grocery store when I sat in the field and could only hear their voices on the breeze.

I peered around the scene, watching them for a bit and scanning the darkness for Doyle. When I didn’t see him, I decided to be on my way, but then I realized that Danny was watching me. Tina’s head was buried in his chest, but he was watching me. He was looking in my direction, and his eyes were trained right on me. Even in the darkness, he had somehow spotted me. I crept away, but he never took his eyes off me.

Doyle left town the very next day, unceremoniously as he had arrived. Just packed up his stuff and left before he even said good-bye to his dad.

The next week, Danny was sick and missed his first day back after the Christmas break at the mill. Al Zimmerman said he looked ghastly when he came back to work, but he worked until the weekend and then gave his two week’s notice.

It was later that month that I heard Danny and Tina had left town, headed to live somewhere in BC if the rumours were true. It wasn’t until months later that word reached MJ that Doyle was missing. His boss had just thought he’d quit and not told him, and it wasn’t until his dad tried calling him for the fourth time and hadn’t heard back that he got worried. His car was parked by his apartment and all of his stuff was there, but Doyle had completely disappeared.

I wish that I could see Danny again, I don’t know what I would say, but I wish I could. I’ll still go out to the Rand property from time to time. I hope to see Danny’s legs dangling, or hear the sound of him and Tina talking just carried on a breeze, but it never happens. Sometimes I still throw rocks at the old water tower, but it just doesn’t make the same familiar ping.