Revenge on the Fly Page 4

  When everyone was seated and had stopped talking, Mr. Morton introduced the man. “Girls and boys, join me in welcoming the city of Hamilton’s esteemed health officer, Dr. Roberts.” Mr. Morton began clapping and we all joined him, stopping when he cleared his throat to continue. “Dr. Roberts is here to talk about an important threat to everyone’s well-being. I know you will give him your fullest attention. Dr. Roberts?” He gestured toward the man and we all applauded together till Dr. Roberts stared us down.

  After the room had quieted down a second time, he unrolled a large poster inch by inch, revealing a drawing of a huge fly. The creature had hairy black legs and feelers that seemed to grow from cherry-pit eyes. Dr. Roberts called one of the taller older boys to the stage to hold the poster up for him.

  The fly on the poster had its wings spread across the chest of a smiling sweet child. A little baby girl, just the way I remembered Colleen—or was it Baby Maureen from the boat? Their faces had blurred into one in my mind. Across the top of the picture the words read, Kill the Fly and Save the Baby. I felt my face grow hot.

  Dr. Roberts finally spoke. “The importance of cleanliness cannot be underestimated in keeping the citizens of our city healthy. Boys and girls, we must dispose of our garbage carefully and keep our streets and alleyways clean in order to avoid our worst enemy.”

  He knocked the back of his hand against the drawing of the fly. “This seemingly harmless insect loves excrement and rotting food. It lands in it, lays its eggs in it, and then, boys and girls, it lands on your food.”

  Next to me, a girl gasped and looked sick.

  “Not only does it land and walk on your bread, it spits, defecates, and wipes its legs on it.”

  Shrieks of horror came from the younger children in the rows ahead of me.

  “And so the fly spreads germs. If it doesn’t immediately poison our food, it kills us by giving us horrible diseases. Typhoid, consumption, summer complaint—the fly spreads them all, leaving dead babies and adults in its wake.”

  Why hadn’t someone in England shared this information with us? My mouth went dry and I found it hard to breathe. In everyday life, the insect was so common and insignificant. Blown up large on the poster, however, it was easy to see it as a menace. Something that small had killed my mum and sister. We had so many of them in the flat; it made sense that they were the cause. To think, I hardly bothered swatting at them, either. I was so poor at it.

  There were many on the boat too. Sweet Baby Maureen. If just one had landed on her bottle of milk it could have caused her illness. I squeezed my eyes shut so that my tears wouldn’t spill. No family anymore save for my father. And no Mrs. Gale with us either, all because of this disease-spreading menace.

  “The fly is our worst enemy.” Dr. Roberts looked straight at me as he continued. “And as such, it is everyone’s duty to swat and kill these death carriers. Boys and girls, we are declaring war on the fly.” Dr. Roberts shook his fist in the air.

  “Hurrah!” I cheered along with the rest of the students and teachers in the assembly.

  “And I am here to announce an exciting competition that the Hamilton Spectator is sponsoring. Beginning June 15 and ending July 6 we will be counting how many flies you catch each day. And the winner—the boy or girl with the most dead flies—will receive fifty dollars.” There were second, third, fourth, and participation prizes, too, ranging from twenty-five dollars down to two.

  But that first prize was easily a few weeks of Father’s wages back in England. Twenty-five weeks of board with that witch Madame Depieu, only we wouldn’t have to live with her anymore! We could rent a furnished house for a month and even more.

  “We are not the only city to declare war. Many towns across Canada have already done so, as have cities in Europe and Australia. Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States of America, has successfully vanquished the foe and declared itself a flyless city. In addition to rewarding fly catchers, we are also holding a composition contest. Convince others to kill flies in an essay and you could win one of two prizes of five dollars.”

  Students cheered less for this proposal. I could understand why! Putting words on paper couldn’t be half as satisfying as smashing down the miserable creatures that had caused my family so much grief.

  To my left, Fred pounded his fist into his hand. “I’m going to win,” he declared, his usual creamy smile stretching across his face.

  Why would he even bother? It was clear his family had plenty of money. I looked across at his smug face and recalled his behavior when he had to sit down in the spelling bee. He’d made a stupid mistake and instead of laughing at himself, he had sulked. Such a poor sport. Did he need to win to keep himself above everyone else? How unfortunate for him, because I wasn’t going to allow him his victory. Father and I needed those fifty dollars. And it wasn’t only about the money for me either. I wanted to kill every last fly to avenge my mother and sister’s deaths.

  Chapter 5

  For the first part of recess, we remained inside the classroom, eating whatever snacks we had brought from home while Mr. Samson visited the staff room. Fred stood up the moment Mr. Samson left the room. Good, I had the desk to myself. I took out the only snack I had, the sandwich Madame Depieu had made me for lunch. Lard on rye. For the second day in a row. She’d complained both times to Father that she wasn’t getting paid extra for le garçon and she shouldn’t be put to this extra expense, never mind that she was charging us double the usual room fee. Nor was I getting paid for helping her with serving supper or clearing dishes. I had to bite my tongue not to tell her where exactly to stuff her sandwich.

  But now the salty fat on the heavy bread tasted wonderful and I only wished she’d made me two of them.

  Rebecca smiled at me from her seat and nibbled at a cookie. It was a friendly smile that gave me light and hope, almost like Father’s grins.

  “I’m going to win that fly-swatting contest, Rebecca,” Fred boasted loudly, waiting till she looked his way to leap onto his chair and then on top of our desk. He reached up with a rolled notebook to swat one flying near the light on the ceiling. Then he caught the body and dropped it into his pencil case. He raised his arms in the air as if commanding an audience to applaud. Then he stepped down and grinned at her in particular, as though waiting for her to swoon.

  “All those germs. Are you going to wash your hands?” Rebecca asked him.

  “She’s right,” I added, disregarding his sudden scowl. “That fly wiped his feet in dung, after all.” I wrinkled my nose and winked at Rebecca. She giggled.

  I chuckled too. Having a laugh on the well-dressed boy who looked down on me felt grand.

  He stared at his fingers, his scowl buckling. The other students stopped to watch what he would do. If he washed his hands, he would be carrying out a girl’s orders. He glanced up at Rebecca again, his scowl straightening.

  “No need to wash. I’m done eating anyway.” Suddenly, he grinned. “But I have this offer…” He held up an orange. “To any of you who promises to bring me one hundred flies tomorrow, I’ll give you a piece.”

  At least three boys jumped from their seats to line up for wedges of the orange.

  He turned to me. “What about you, rooming-house boy?”

  How had he known? Was it the way I dressed or my sandwich? “I’m not a rooming-house boy.”

  “You came from Depieu’s boarding house. I saw you this morning.”

  “That’s just until our own house is ready.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. When Father found Uncle Charlie, or Uncle Charlie found us, we would be moving in with him.

  But right now Fred’s orange looked good. The color of a sunrise, Mum had said last Christmas when Father bought her one. She’d shared it with me and the sweet juice had run down my chin.

  If I could bite into one of Fred’s bribes, maybe I could taste our last Christmas all over again.

  Ginny stepped forward to beg a piece of orange.

  Fred sneered at her. “Ginny Malone, you
’ll never catch a hundred flies by tomorrow. Go away.”

  She stared hard at Fred for a moment. Then she pulled off an elastic band from one of her braids. Carefully she stretched it across two fingers and pulled at it with a thumb and forefinger. She aimed the band toward the window, where a cluster of flies buzzed lazily. Whap! Three dropped from the glass.

  I grinned. The rest of the class went silent.

  Ginny pulled the band off her other braid and repeated the movement. Another group of flies fell.

  “I’ll have them for you by the end of recess. Save me a piece of that fruit.” She walked closer to the window, curled her hand into a fist, and studied the cluster. Suddenly, her fist snapped out quick as a lizard’s tongue.

  Nothing buzzed in that corner any longer. Ginny dropped the flies into her own pencil can.

  Fred turned to me again. “So, rooming-house boy, what do you say? Going to let a girl beat you at this?”

  “No one’s going to beat me, I assure you,” I answered him. “But why would I give my catch to you? I don’t want any food you’ve plastered your dungy fingers on.”

  Ginny Malone twisted her head around, interrupting her hunt. She squinted at me. For a freckled girl she could carry quite the mean look. Her lips pulled into a sneer.

  Perhaps I’d said the wrong thing. After all, she and three other classmates wanted that orange, touched by fly-germ fingers or not. I hadn’t meant to insult them. Wouldn’t I have grabbed at a piece myself if I really thought Fred would let me have it?

  “Citrus gives me a rash,” Rebecca sighed, fluttering a pleated paper at herself like a fan. She winked at me and I assumed she was fibbing to annoy Fred.

  “Me too,” I squeaked in a girl’s voice, happy that at least one person in the class was on my side against the braggart. I fanned myself with my hand and batted my eyelashes.

  Rebecca giggled, showing a lovely milky-toothed smile.

  Perhaps she would be my only friend in this school—in this whole country even. I smiled back at her.

  Later, when no one was watching, I walked to the waste paper basket and took out a piece of Fred’s orange peel just to smell it. Ahh! Piney like Christmas. I couldn’t help myself. I took a small bite and chewed at the bitter spicy skin.

  “Garbage picker,” one of Fred’s followers cried.

  “I need the peels to catch flies,” I lied.

  “Well, it’s mine,” Fred exclaimed. He dashed over and snatched it away. “If you want to make any money from this contest, you should sell your catch to me, ’cause you don’t stand a chance at winning. Not while I’m entered.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I told him, and grinned as broad as Father always did when he wanted everyone to be sure of him.

  When Mr. Samson returned, we were sent outside for the rest of recess. Just a few trees grew along the grounds of Central Public. Most of the property lay wide open with plenty of room for a soccer or rugby match. Still, no one really wanted to play any games. The girls and boys all scattered looking for likely fly homes. Two boys fought over the dustbin and knocked it down. Three other boys ran for a steaming manure heap in the street left by the horses drawing the ice wagon.

  I would have run after it myself but Rebecca strolled alongside of me under the shade of the trees.

  “My father tells me flies are attracted by white surfaces,” she told me. “Milk, for example. That’s why babies get sick so frequently.”

  Smart as well as pretty, I thought.

  “Just because your father is a doctor doesn’t mean you know everything,” Ginny growled. Slam! She swatted her shoe against a cluster of flies on a nearby fir tree. She peeled them off to collect in her bag.

  Rebecca smirked. “Maybe not quite so hard, Ginny.”

  She glared at Rebecca. Without the elastics, her braids were unraveling like fraying rope.

  Suddenly, her hand snatched out into midair.

  Rebecca flinched.

  Ginny smirked now. Then she uncurled her fist and smiled at the dead thing in her hand. “Rebecca Edwards, with milk or no, you will never catch as many flies as I.”

  “Oh, but I don’t want to. You can have all your dead bugs and Fred Leckie too as far as I’m concerned.”

  From the skin beneath the fray of her braid right up to her forehead, Ginny flushed a bright red. She fancied Fred, did she? So it was clear, make an enemy of Fred and you made one of Ginny too. Still, I felt sorry for her. Did she think she could ever catch enough flies to make him stop sneering at her?

  Chapter 6

  At the end of the day Mr. Samson held up a hand as we stood in line to be dismissed. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is only the thirteenth of June. You have two more weeks of school and three weeks to the end of this competition. Pay attention in class and save your fly-killing efforts for after school, better yet for summer vacation. Please file out in an orderly fashion.”

  The students ahead of me fair flew from the building. They likely had friends to play ball or ramble the park with, whereas I had nothing but this competition. I crossed the street to the Blink Bonnie and headed directly for the stable.

  Father was brushing Beauty, the chocolate-colored horse. When she snorted at me, flicking her black tail, flies scattered into the air.

  I stared after them, wondering how best to catch them. “Hello, Father.”

  Father turned to face me. “Hello, Will. What the devil are you looking at?”

  I pointed at the deadly pests. “Dr. Roberts told us they cause all our diseases.”

  “Flies?”

  I nodded. “There’s a fifty-dollar reward for the student who kills the most of them.”

  “To be sure, that is a lot of money.”

  We watched as the flies settled back on Beauty’s rump. As I stared at those flies, Dr. Roberts’ words rang in my head. Typhoid. Consumption. Summer Complaint. The fly spreads them all, leaving dead babies and adults in its wake.

  Suddenly, I felt a murderous rage the likes of which I’d never felt before. If I’d had a gun, I would have shot the insects right then and there. “Imagine, those stupid flies made Mum and Colleen sick!”

  Father came over then and wrapped me in his arms. “Ah, Will, hard as it is for us to accept, perhaps it was just their time.”

  I broke away from his embrace, shook my head, and bunched my fists. “I mean to make the flies pay!” I shouted. Then I took a deep breath to calm myself. I told him about Ginny Malone swatting the insects with her hair elastics.

  He chuckled at that.

  “Some of the boys—and Ginny—can catch them with their bare hands. I…I’ve never been able to do that.”

  Father raised his eyebrows. “You should always try to use your head over your hands, my boy.” He picked up a newspaper from the seat of the carriage, rolled it up and smacked at the wall of the stable. Three flies dropped. “Newspapers are great for expanding your mind…and killing insects.”

  I reached down to pick them up.

  “Go find something to put them in first. Look in the garbage shed outside.”

  I stepped out of the stable where dark green grass grew. To the left a big stone church bordered the property. Walking ’round the back, I saw yet another small wooden building that might have been a shed for Mr. Moodie but a home for others, certainly for the flies. I heard the buzzing before I even unlatched the door. Another good spot to kill flies. A group of them continually circled and landed on top of a smelly trash bin. I spotted a large brown-and-yellow container at the top of the pile marked Magic Baking Powder. That was a great name. In my mind I turned it into Magic Fly-Killing Powder. It would be my lucky container. I picked it up and removed the top. Then, quick as Ginny did, I squished a fly with the lid, scraping the body off into the tin.

  “That will teach you to kill babies.”

  The insect looked like a raisin with wings, not very deadly at all. I trapped a few more with the lid, then flipped them into my hand and squeezed them dead. “That is for baby Col
leen.” Five flies dead already. Fred Leckie had a promise of four hundred flies just in payment for the orange slices he gave out today. Of course, these five in the can wouldn’t be enough to win, but according to Dr. Roberts each one of them might have laid five hundred eggs within the next three or four days. I tried to picture the five hundred flies and ended up shaking my head to get rid of the thought.

  I headed back into the stable and picked up the flies Father had felled.

  “Do you need to have killed them yourself?” Father asked.

  “The prize for the most flies is fifty dollars and another boy is hiring everyone in class to kill flies for him.”

  “Never you mind what the other children do. There are plenty of flies in here for you to kill all by yourself.”

  As he watched, I dropped his flies into the dust bin in the corner.

  “I will give you my weapon though.” Father handed me the rolled-up newspaper.

  As I swatted, Father mucked out the stalls, shoveling manure into a large barrel. “They like to lay their eggs in the dung,” Father explained. “As long as we clean up the manure within the week, we kill a lot of the maggots.”

  One horse snorted when I smacked the newspaper roll against his stall door.

  “You gave old Blue a start there, Will. Can you swat more gently?”

  I tried. It was easier to get a less-squeezed body into the can anyway. The Magic Baking Powder container was almost full when Father said we needed to go. If I had counted right, there were 385 flies in there.

  We washed up under the pump and headed back to the witch’s house again. This time we climbed the stairs in our sock feet, carrying our shoes so there could be no complaint.

  “Vite, vite. It is time for supper,” she scolded, “and you did not help today!”

  The beefy smell of stew made my mouth water. She rushed us to the dining room where the other eight boarders already sat. They shoveled their food in quickly, grunting, and stopping only occasionally to drink.

  Madame Depieu banged a bowl of stew in front of me. Just as she had yesterday, she twisted my hands around to check them. “Pas mal. That is good. I run a very clean house and I like my boarders to be clean too.”