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the train station along with hammer and nails in case John Pilkie broke the windows of the hospital van.
    In the living room, Little Louie’s yellow hair and heavy-lidded eyes were drawing smiles from the men. “What can I give you, gentlemen?” she asked in her high, girlish voice. “A little milk and sugar? Or do you prefer cream?” The prisoners blushed or grinned and took a teacup from her tray, while my aunt helped them to lumps of sugar.
    John Pilkie took off his brown fedora and pushed his cowlick back from his high, rounded forehead. As he slipped off his raccoon coat, he started to cough. It was a low, hollow-wheezing sound like the noise of a rubber plunger going into a human chest.
    â€œThat’s a nasty cold you’ve got,” Little Louie said.
    â€œSorry ma’am. I’m just getting over one.” He gave her his big, dimpled grin. “They don’t heat the rooms where I live, eh?” Then he said something in a lowered voice. She smiled back a little reluctantly and hurried off with her tea tray. When he realized my aunt wasn’t returning, he glanced around. I held my breath, waiting for him to knock down Sib Beaudry and make a break for it. But he stayed where he was, so I let my eyes follow his around our comfortable living room, and it was as if I, too, were seeing it for the first time: our two big bay windows along with the double parlours with the matching coloured tiles on their fireplaces; the plump chintz furniture whose print was slightly faded because my grandmother believed bright chintz was vulgar; our brand-new black-andwhite Zenith television with a mahogany console; the soft red tongue of carpet unwinding down our front stairs; and the life-size oil painting of my mother, Alice. Hanging near my mother’s portrait was a glass cabinet holding my father’s hockey trophies.
    John (I began thinking of him as John long before I called him John to his face) stared longest at my father’s cabinet. Was he thinking about his days with the Rats? Or did he miss playing hockey? He must have sensed someone looking. Turning around, he caught my eye and winked. I stepped back into the kitchen, and sat down at our kitchen table. Breathing hard, I opened Big Louie’s history book again and forced myself to read about the Indians using crude oil to seal their canoes. They didn’t understand oil’s potential and neither did Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant Governor, Colonel John Graves Simcoe. He barely mentioned the oil seepages he saw in 1793 near Bothwell, Ontario, not far from my mother’s hometown of Petrolia. It was up to Mrs. Simcoe to scribble in her husband’s journal: “a spring of real petroleum was discovered in the marsh by its offensive smell.” Nobody knew what to do with the oil seepages until a man named Charles Nelson Tripp used the crude oil to make asphalt. In 1857, Tripp sold seven boats of asphalt to the French government to pave Paris streets. “Seven boats of asphalt! How about that, Sal?” I asked as she swept by with a fresh pot of coffee.
    â€œMouse, I don’t have time for your studentin’!” Sal pronounced “studentin’” the same way she said “touristin’,” her word for what summer visitors did in Madoc’s Landing. She didn’t worry about dropping the “gs” from her “ing” verb endings, although Big Louie said it was the mark of an uneducated person. After Sal left, I scribbled “not bad for us Canucks” in my Scholastic notebook, and underlined “seven boats of asphalt” three times. I didn’t hear the kitchen door swing open.
    â€œMouse, do you want to meet a killer?” Sal asked. When I looked up she was standing there with John and smiling as if she were introducing me to a movie star. John and I stared nervously at each other. Then he started coughing again, making that low hollow-wheezing sound.