Free Sunny Dreams by Alison Preston

stoop. We all rushed to his crumpled form.
    “Helen!” shouted my dad.
    Jackson had landed hands first. His eyes were closed and I thought for a moment he was dead. I crouched down beside him. Aunt Helen flung herself out the back door and over to where we had all gathered.
    “Oh, my land!” she said and knelt down next to me. “He’s broken both his arms.” She smoothed the hair back from his forehead where dirt mixed with sweat. I wished I had done that, but I was paralyzed with fear and love and not wanting to upset my dad.
    “All right, Jackie dear,” said Aunt Helen.
    Jackie. I didn’t like that.
    She took off her apron and then mine and tenderly secured his arms to his body so they wouldn’t flop around.
    “Let’s you men get him into the Buick,” she said, “and we’ll take him to the hospital.”
    “Rotten Buick,” I said and my dad looked at me, bewildered.
    If it weren’t for the car none of this would have happened. But if it weren’t for the car and the garage Jackson wouldn’t be here and I never would have met him at all. Yes, I would have. We were meant to be, as he said he and Benoit were. I believed that.
    As the garage had taken shape I had been dreading Jackson’s departure. I had even devised a scheme where I would scout the neighbourhood for Benny and him, drumming up business. I had already approached Mr. Foote, Fraser’s dad, about his dilapidated shed. That was before I knew Fraser wanted to ask me out. Mr. Foote was still thinking about it. I was sure if I kept at him he would come around.
    But Jackson would be out of commission for at least six weeks. I knew how broken arms worked; I’d had one of my own when I was twelve.
    “For God’s sake, be careful with him,” Helen said with her hands covering the lower part of her face as the men clumsily placed him on the back seat of the car. That was the first time I ever heard her use the name God in that way.
    It was decided that she would go with my dad and Jackson to St. Boniface Hospital.
    “I’m a nurse,” she said.
    “Big deal,” I said quietly.
    Helen set herself up in the back seat with Jackson’s head resting on her shoulder. At her orders I ran inside for a cold cloth and she held it against his forehead as they drove off.
    Benny and Mr. Larkin and I sat with the lunch tray, but we didn’t eat. We sipped lemonade for a while and then the men went quietly back to work. I put a tea towel over the sandwiches and took them inside to the fridge. I’d offer them again later after the horror had died down.
    I was positive that all of us were thinking about the same thing: how was Jackson, with casts on both arms, going to feed himself, wash himself, dress himself, hold himself to pee, wipe his bum after using the toilet? Dad and Aunt Helen would be thinking it, too, as they bumped down Taché Avenue to the hospital. Jackson may have been lucky enough to lose consciousness for a little while, to save himself from those dreadful thoughts for a short time longer.
    But those musings paled next to what I decided was the worst that could happen: Jackson would contract polio while in the hospital, the worst kind, where you can’t talk or swallow or breathe, and death is a certainty.
    I didn’t know anyone personally who had polio but I’d heard about the victims, like I’d heard about the people who died from the heat that summer. Heat prostration was what they called it in the paper when they reported new cases. They even counted the horses, dogs, and cats that died.
    It seemed to me that the people who died from the heat always came from the poor side of town. They were the ones who were on relief and lived on streets with names like Alfred and Logan and Battery and Martha. That didn’t need any explaining.
    But the polio victims usually seemed to come from Ashland and Rosewarne and Chestnut Street, where regular folks like us lived. And that puzzled me. When I mentioned it to Aunt Helen she suggested that perhaps