As the old folks would say

by Hubert Furey

  “A happy St. Patrick’s Day to ye all,” he roared, as he gripped the door facings from the outside in an effort to steady himself.

  Being a basically polite man, he attempted to dislodge his number twelve–plus logans by alternately scrubbing his feet on the opposite leg, all the while swaying and plunging like a big freighter caught in a crosswind off Chalky Point. The fact that the logans were tightly laced to the top didn’t deter him in the least, and he stood there for a considerable time making a genuine attempt to remove the snow-covered boots.

  Having accomplished this objective to his satisfaction—the logans remained securely tied—he wedged himself with difficulty through the kitchen door, Arctic parka and all, and plopped down on the edge of the cushioned bench immediately inside the door, driving snow and snow water in every conceivable direction.

  My parents and their guests went on playing a game of six-handed auction—where the dealer picks from the pack, and where my stepfather, God rest his soul, regularly placed the ace of hearts when he dealt—and I was left to tend to Tiny’s wants. You may gather that they were not a whole lot different from the demands of any of the other male visitors who came to visit, except that in Tiny’s case he didn’t wait to be asked.

  “Give me a drink of rum!” he roared.

  For anybody unaware of his particular character, the effect would have been terrifying, three hundred and eighty-five pounds and all. For us it was, as the Americans on the bases called it, standard procedure. It was the way he was when he was drunk. He meant no more harm than if he were offering a head of cabbage from his fall garden.

  “Give me a drink of rum,” he ordered in the same bellowing tone. “I wants to wish ye a happy St. Patrick’s Day.”

  He had doubtless forgotten that he had already expressed this wish a considerable number of times while he was trying to take off his logans in the back porch.

  “We’re goin’ to have an early spring,” he observed, totally changing his tone in the direction of the card players, who hadn’t paid him the least attention up to this point, and who, for the duration of his visit, pretty well ignored him, a fact which didn’t seem to bother Tiny in the least.

  The kettle was still hot on the back of the stove, so I mixed him a regular drink of dark rum with hot water and sugar from the ingredients on the sideboard, and he took it with a monstrous unsteady arm, downing it at one gulp. Then, without any break or hesitation, he thrust the empty glass back to me with the same roaring demand, and, mindful of past Christmas experiences, I refilled the glass obediently, which disappeared in the same direction as fast as the first one.

  Thrusting the glass back to me almost instantaneously, he roared a third time, “Give me another drink of rum, and I’ll sing ye a song.” For one fleeting moment, as the poets say, I thought of refusing, to spare myself what I knew would be certain torture, but I thought better of it—even if he shifted his weight he could hurt someone—and returned the glass to him a third time filled.

  * * * *

  He drained the glass of hot rum with the same backward bodily motion as before and returned the glass to me empty, declining my offer of a refill with a soft guttural sound and a wave of his big hand. He had drunk all three drinks in less time than I took to pour them, but that was it. Three drinks he wanted, three drinks he asked for, and three drinks he accepted, not one more. Then, true to his word, he announced his intention to sing, and a shudder could be observed around the card table.

  As much as I dreaded it, I could only be a mournful victim of what was about to transpire.

  “I’m going to sing ye a song now,” he boomed. “I’m going to sing ye an auld Irish song. About a little b’y and his pore mudder.”

  Then, resting his big forearm on his thigh, he leaned his torso a bit to the right and began something that sounded like the dying wail of a tormented banshee, in a very, very, very loud voice.

  It wasn’t “Johnny on the Reef,” but it was something akin to it, about the aforementioned “little b’y” and his “pore mudder,” and I thought I understood the part where the boy left home when he was young, but that was as far as I got. I picked up a later reference to the “pore mudder’s” heart breaking, but I couldn’t be sure, and anyway it was somewhere in the eleventh verse, and by that time I had begun drinking big drinks of hot rum myself, out of sheer survival.

  He swayed and thumped his fist on his knee, stamped his foot on the floor, and snapped his head sideways as if he were winking, while his body moved in unpredictable jerks and spasms thinking it was in time to the rhythm of the song, if indeed there was rhythm.

  At one point he stood up and waved his cap in the air with great sweeping motions, shouting to the top of his voice all the while. We all thought he was going to dive headlong straight into the woodbox, but he regained his balance and sat down again without ever missing a word.

  He slowed down considerably toward the end, becoming almost solemn as he pronounced the last seven words of the song—“As the pore young lad marched home.” We all presumed “the pore young lad” had been to war and had come home safely to his mother, but none of us were really sure. Then he sat contentedly, looking very proud of himself, obviously waiting for some compliment from his victim audience.

  True to their culture, the card players poured profuse adulation on his very energetic performance—in a totally detached manner—while at the same time concealing sighs of relief at the termination of what my stepfather would describe as “crucifying a song.”

  This contradiction between feeling and expression, considering the circumstance, they considered in no way hypocritical.

  * * * *

  The song over, Tiny straightened himself up and turned toward the door to leave. Probably overcome by the exertions of the day, or by the travails of the lad and his pore mudder, he turned to me and asked the question that turned the rest of the evening into the hilarious sideshow it became.

  “Would you give me a ride up?” he asked, not considering the request in any manner out of the ordinary. “Me old legs are not what they used to be.”

  It was a sincere admission of the effects of a lot of work and a lot of age. For those of us who knew him, his sudden transformation into the quiet old Newfoundland dog once again was no surprise. In the final stage of Tiny’s drinking, a stage where some other men would get loud and argumentative, even belligerent, Tiny merely got tired and sleepy, and wanted nothing better than to go back to his home and go to bed.

  * * * *

  That’s when the little blue Viva re-entered the story.

  It was all I had to offer to transport Tiny’s three hundred and eighty-five–plus pounds, encased in layers of protective warm clothing and the bulky Arctic parka, and I could see problems looming on the horizon, or inside the car, whichever you prefer. My pretty neighbour had been just behind the living room door laughing her head off the whole time, and she laughed even harder when she heard the request.

  She had her own sense of humour, and I suppose she was trying to envision Tiny’s massive proportions jammed into the tiny little matchbox on wheels that did me fine at one hundred and thirty-five pounds. When I looked at her, I was envisioning other things, but the Butlers’ catechism of my school days kept appearing as my walk-on conscience, and I had to content myself with asking her to accompany me to Tiny’s house.

  Deep down I hoped this would be the beginning of a successful ruse—like when you asked a girl at a parish hall dance if she wanted to go out to the door for some fresh air, and everybody, including the girl, knew exactly what you were asking. But for practical reasons I needed somebody with me.

  Escorting home a drunken man in a Newfoundland outport of the time—if you weren’t the police—was fraught with its own dangers, principally from the drunken man’s wife, who invariably blamed the one escorting him for having made her husband drunk, irres
pective of the true facts of the case.

  So the trick was to have an excuse to leave the situation as quickly as you could. So I made it up with my pretty neighbour to demand that I leave on a prearranged signal.

  That way I could play the polite taxi driver, not offend my potential host, or get too heavy a scarafunging from an over-angry Newfoundland wife, all in the bargain. If everything worked according to plan, there would still be time to show my pretty neighbour the Lookout and investigate the freshness of the air at that altitude.

  We both dressed for the outdoors and followed Tiny, or attempted to follow Tiny, as he weaved his way through the back porch. He glanced down to ensure that his logans were on, having forgotten entirely about his unsuccessful attempts to take them off earlier, made a feeble attempt to draw his parka tighter around him—it just wasn’t big enough—then stepped unsteadily onto the large Kelly’s Island rock that served as a back step, aiming himself in the general direction of the little blue Viva.

  “Where’s the car?” he slurred, looking over the little vehicle directly ahead of him. Subconsciously, even he was anticipating problems.

  “Right in front of you, Mr. Morton,” I replied graciously, terrified at that point that he might step on the car by mistake. He would have done a lot of damage.

  We guided him toward the vehicle, one on each side trying to support him, which presented its own unforeseen problem. Every time he lurched my knees buckled as I tried to support his weight. I had visions of crumpling to the snow under the human tonnage, never to be found again. The fact that my pretty neighbour would be somewhere on top in the distant height, having being dragged down herself from the other side, was no consolation, since, at this point, she would be too far up in the air to be of any romantic value.

  We stopped beside the door on the passenger side, where I again contemplated the size of the problem which loomed up in front of us, or between us, again, whichever you prefer. Simple observation told me that the car was much too small, and Tiny was much too big. I scratched my head with an unsteady hand as I racked my brain for some simple solution.

  There was none.

  We would simply have to get him into the car the best way we could, so we pointed him in the direction of the open door, then set out to manoeuvre him into the front seat, pushing and straining with all our might. The only help that Tiny could give us was to co-operate with the downward attraction of gravity as he toppled forward in the direction we were pushing.

  Gravity, however, proved to be too helpful.

  Our last determined thrust got him forward, but, as the outport wit would say, not forward enough. Tiny got stuck; his massive bulk solidly wedged between the doorposts of the car, his feet with the number twelve–plus logans resting securely on the outside. We tugged in every which way we could, in a vain attempt to dislodge him, but the effect was the same as the efforts of two very small mice trying to displace a very large elephant.

  Tiny didn’t budge an inch.

  Meanwhile, we were more than happy he wasn’t getting upset, and were congratulating ourselves on our not upsetting or provoking him by our continued futile efforts.

  A loud, long, drawn-out snoring from inside the car told us we need not have worried. Tiny, having totally succumbed to the effects of the alcohol and the exertions of the afternoon, and having found a position of relative comfort to rest his tired mind and body, had fallen sound asleep.

  We were faced at this point with what my learned friend at the university would call “somewhat of a conundrum.” Since we couldn’t get Tiny in any farther, we had to get him all the way out in order to get him all the way back in again—try the attempt, as it were, from some other vantage point.

  My pretty neighbour was no help. She was already past the point of hysterics, resting her head on her elbows on the car to keep from falling to the ground from sheer laughter. She eventually summoned up enough energy to detach herself from that position and find her way around to the other side and, as it turned out, provide a solution to our mutual problem.

  She positioned herself on the front seat, then pushed with all her might on Tiny’s snoring head as I tugged with all my might on his parka from the opposite direction.

  You have to give the modern outport woman credit for unbelievable strength. Tiny came free, but he didn’t exactly ease back gently and thank us in polite tones. My pretty neighbour, perhaps unschooled in the laws of physics that govern such instances—large bodies in motion tend to travel very fast and that sort of thing—pushed with such force that she sent Tiny hurtling from the car like a rhinoceros catapulted from a gigantic slingshot. I just had time to dive into the bank of snow by the porch door to escape instant obliteration.

  I watched from the snowbank as the solidity of the porch and the immensity of Tiny met each other by the clapboard walls, shielding my eyes against the splinters that would emerge from the explosive contact and envisioning the large hole that would result. However, the house had been built solidly, with thick, rinded spruce for uprights, and except for a minor shuddering of the building on impact—and a bit of shaking on the foundations—not a piece of wood cracked.

  The only real damage that occurred was the interruption with the card game inside. My stepfather at that point was in the act of dealing, and the unexpected jolt had sent the cards flying across the table. He had to reshuffle the deck a second time to ensure that the ace of hearts was again on the bottom of the deck.

  However, the impact did create another problem for us on the outside. To his drunken and confused mind, the collision with the porch was nothing less than a treacherous blow from behind, and Tiny immediately assumed he was in a fight.

  Fortunately, he didn’t pick a human target as his intended opponent, as an angry, drunken fighter might do. He merely stood in one spot in front of the porch, growling and grumbling menacingly to everything and everyone within earshot, and flailing his arms like a giant windmill about to become airborne, generating air currents that stirred up snow across the yard.

  My pretty neighbour interrupted her laughing long enough to ease between the flailing arms and encourage him toward the car, all the while speaking in soothing tones and essentially returning him to the big old Newfoundland dog he always was.

  * * * *

  We finally got him in the car, got the door closed with difficulty, and except for the fact that Tiny once again fell asleep in the warmth of the car and snored all the way home, driving the short distance to his house was uneventful. We arrived at his yard beneath Cooper’s Mountain, got him out with surprisingly little difficulty, and helped him to the door of his little saltbox.

  Tiny’s diminutive wife must have been equipped with that new sonar. She was waiting in the open door, arms akimbo, ready to take on a regiment.

  Years of weightlifting had not prepared me for the moment.

  Her greeting was typical of the transplanted Irish Newfoundland woman.

  “Well, you great bitches’ divil . . . ?”

  It didn’t help that she was looking at both of us, and I was glad the pretty neighbour was with me. At that point I could forgo the immoral aspirations for some simple female protection. Tiny’s wife was only a small woman, but I had heard too many stories of little people throwing bigger people off the head of the wharf.

  Fortunately, in that respect, she and Tiny were well-matched. Neither were capable of hurting or harming a fly. Once she felt she had performed her dutiful condemnatory ritual at the door and Tiny, towering over her, had muttered something in an apologetic tone about “just coastin’ . . .” she turned and beckoned all three of us in.

  * * * *

  Once inside the house, rum and hot water were produced—sherry wine and dark fruitcake for my pretty neighbour—and we were treated royally indeed. Tiny, now wide awake after his two short naps, acted as host. He didn’t sing, although he did
recount a number of stories about pirates and Irish “rogues” and how the priest hid on the British soldiers back in 1756 and all of that, and so long as he was supplying the hot rum I was ready to believe the stories.

  In fact, I was having such a good time that I forgot all about my prearranged plan to leave early. When my pretty neighbour started winking and nodding her head in the direction of the door, I thought she was finally hinting at going out for some fresh air. Inwardly ecstatic at the turn things had taken in my direction, I hurriedly gulped my last drink of rum and followed her to the car.

  I needn’t have rushed. She was only interested in going to the dance. Which was just as well. What with all that snow we had dumped on us by Sheila’s Brush, they probably didn’t have the road to the Lookout plowed, and I’d had enough fresh air for one night, anyway.

  We went on to the dance at the Velvet Horn, as I had intended at the beginning and, as they used to say about the bean suppers in the social notes on radio a spell ago, a good time was had by all.

  * * * *

  It’s a long time ago since I had that little blue Viva, which no doubt by now is well consigned to rusty oblivion, and if it wasn’t for Tiny Morton, I’d have nothing but bad memories of that little car.

  Both Tiny and his wife are dead now, God rest their souls.

  He got sick a year or so after that, and he died while I was teaching along the coast. His little wife died not too long after. That St. Patrick’s Day was the last time I heard him sing. Funny thing is, for all his bellowing and stomping, for a long time after I missed his annual visit.

  Mind you, for all my nostalgia, I still don’t know if I could endure another verse of that “little b’y and his pore mudder”; but that’s the crazy thing about Newfoundland. You don’t want it when it’s there, but you miss it when it’s not there, and you’ll search through all God’s creation to find it and bring it back the way it was when it’s gone.

  Oh, we have all kinds of tapes and records and discs, and the best sound systems that money can buy, and every kind of fancy singer doing songs on radio and television you’d want to listen to, but every so often I get to thinking about Tiny Morton, and I feel a little sad. It’s like all those other nice things in the past that have gone and will simply never come back.