by Brian Doyle
I was glad when he stopped. All those meanings were making me dizzy.
That night I told Mrs. O’Driscoll as many of the meanings as I could remember. She said that O’Driscoll would say that none of those meanings were quite right.
“He’d have a better one than those,” said Mrs. O’Driscoll. “He’d say it meant ‘Light the Light!’”
After I thought about it I thought she was right. Her translation was the best one. Light the Light. It had a nice ring to it. It was also a line from her favorite song.
Make my bed, light the light.
I’ll arrive, late tonight.
Blackbird, Bye, bye.
In his office Chubby got into his chair and made a face because it hurt him so much to sit down. He hung his cane over the arm of the chair and took a little while to get his breath while he opened a brown envelope and took out some papers.
“He shouldn’t have pushed you off the front steps,” he said to me, looking over his glasses. He was talking about my first day at school.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he hurt you?” He took his glasses off and slowed down his puffing.
“No, sir.”
“He shouldn’t have done that, you know. That wasn’t fair.”
“No, sir.”
“You were doing a handstand.” He put his glasses back on.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you make the gym team?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good for you,” he said, and coughed a few times. “I have a happy thing to tell you. I have a very pleasant job to do here. I have something to say to you that you will be very pleased about. And your mother... your guardian, Mrs. O’Driscoll—she’ll be very pleased about it too.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I was getting sick of saying yes, sir, but that was all I could think of.
“He didn’t hurt you when he pushed you down the stairs?”
“No, sir.”
I have a very pleasant duty to perform this morning. A legal matter. A person has asked me to deliver to you a check on this day, the last day of the month, a check for fifty dollars. I cannot give you the name of the person who directed me to give you this check. The only thing I can say to you is that for every month you stay in school, this school, you will receive a check for fifty dollars.”
Chubby sighed as if he had just lifted a big weight and then passed over to me with his fat fingers a piece of paper.
“That is a check,” he said, “for fifty dollars. On the last day of each month I’ll be giving you a check for this amount. You will come into my office here and pick up the check on that day. It’s not from me, you understand, although I sign it.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the humming in the English teacher’s room and the Hi-Y guys. The office was quiet except for a clock ticking. I got my mind away from the English teacher and the Hi-Y guys and looked at the check Chubby had pushed over his smooth desk at me.
The check said this:
Royal Bank of Canada
Pay to the order of Hulbert O’Driscoll
The sum of Fifty Dollars.
And then it said;
W.D.T. Atkinson (In Trust)
“What do I do with this?” I said.
“You go and cash it,” said Chubby. “I’ll give you a letter of identification, signed by me, that you keep with you to show to the bank so they will cash the check for you. And another letter to Mrs. O’Driscoll, explaining that she will be your advisor about how to handle this sudden windfall.”
At the Royal Bank on Bank Street they read the letter, phoned Chubby at the school, talked to each other about it, pointed at me, had a little meeting, brought the manager out of his office, had another meeting, looked at my clothes, phoned somebody else, filled out some forms, stamped about ten pieces of paper, counted out the money in tens, started smiling, put the money in an envelope, licked the envelope, smiled some more, and gave it to me.
I folded the envelope in half, put it in my pocket, and walked down Bank Street, over the bridge, past the Mayfair Theatre, down the hill to the Uplands Bus Terminal, and got on the bus.
With my hand still in my pocket covering the envelope I sat down beside one of the rich people and rode home.
All I could think of the whole time was what Chubby had said.
“Sudden windfall,” he said.
“Lord strike me dead,” Mrs. O’Driscoll said. “Sudden windfall all right!”
We sat down at the kitchen table and forgot all about supper. Mrs. O’Driscoll got out the photograph album and we looked at some pictures of O’Driscoll. In all the pictures he was standing there, legs apart, hands on his hips, his shirt open, his hat tilted on one side.
We were talking about the money. Who could it be? Who was giving us this money?
Maybe it was Mr. O’Driscoll. It was just like him, Mrs. O’Driscoll was saying. Just like something he would do.
“That’s just like something he would do. He probably didn’t drown in the war after all. After he said, ‘If I don’t see you in the spring I’ll see you in the mattress,’ he jumped into the ocean and probably swam to some island or something and married the witchdoctor’s daughter and became king and opened up a diamond mine and is a billionaire and feels so guilty that he’s sending us fifty dollars every month. Just like something O’Driscoll would do. Swim to Africa or somewhere and move in with the Queen of the jungle and talk her out of all her gold and become a trillionaire and send us fifty dollars just to tease us. You can’t fool me, O’Driscoll. I know it’s you!”
Then she said some more about O’Driscoll and how he was probably living with the Queen of Sheba or somebody.
“Well, she can have him!” Mrs. O’Driscoll said. “She’s welcome to him. And more power to her!”
Then Mrs. O’Driscoll said that O’Driscoll probably swam all the way to Hawaii or somewhere and moved in with some mermaid who had jewels in a chest sunk down in the ocean and convinced her to give him all her treasure, and he’s now a multi-zillionaire and he’s sending us fifty dollars.
“Is he sure he can spare it!” said Mrs. O’Driscoll out of the corner of her mouth.
But I stopped listening to Mrs. O’Driscoll because another idea was starting to come into my head. I started thinking about Miss Collar-Cuff. It was Miss Collar-Cuff who was giving me the money. Because of how sad she seemed to be. She probably wanted me to be her grandson, but she was afraid that I wouldn’t and so she was giving me this money and keeping it a secret.
I was thinking that I might look right in her face next time and see if I could see in her eyes the secret she had. Or maybe I would tell her about getting the money and then watch her face to see if it said anything. To see if an expression came over her face that was different or if she looked away so I wouldn’t be able to tell.
That’s what I would do. I would tell her about Chubby giving me the check and see what she did. I would tell her maybe when she came in the room when I pretended to be asleep. When she came in to look for a long time at me when she thought I was asleep. Or when I was reading to her.
I went out in the hall to see if there was a lineup at the toilet. Mr. or Mrs. Blank must have been in there because Nerves was standing there staring at the door with his face all squeezed up.
I practiced on Nerves, pretending that Nerves was Miss Collar-Cuff.
“Somebody is giving me fifty dollars a month, but it’s a secret,” I said to Nerves. “Mrs. O’Driscoll thinks it’s Mr. O’Driscoll, but it can’t be. He was drowned in the war. It’s not him. And it’s not Chubby. It’s somebody else. Do you know who it is?”
Nerves studied the floor for a while then raised his ratty little eyes slowly up to mine. His head was still down and his eyes were rolled up looking into mine. He was looking very mysterious.
Then he fell over and played dead.
What a dog.
Just then we both looked down the hall. A stranger was coming out of Mrs. Fitchell’s unit. He didn
’t have black hair. He didn’t have red hair. This one was bald.
12 Uppity
“SOMEBODY is giving me, us, fifty dollars a month, but it’s a secret,” I said to Miss Collar-Cuff.
“Mrs. O’Driscoll thinks it’s Mr. O’Driscoll, but it can’t be. He was drowned in the war. It’s not him. It’s somebody else. Chubby will give me a check for fifty dollars at the end of each month but he won’t tell where it comes from.”
I was reading to her from War and Peace when I said it. I stopped reading as I had planned, looked up over the book right at her eyes, and said it.
She looked at me for a long time before she answered.
“That’s a wonderful thing, you and your mother receiving this money. The fact that you don’t know where it’s coming from might be a little disturbing, but, on the other hand, the source of this sudden windfall being anonymous might make this monthly allowance all the more pleasurable. What a fascinating mystery it is!”
What a sentence! It was just as long as some of the sentences in War and Peace. And she said “sudden wind-fall” just like Chubby did. And the sentence sounded like she had it planned. But her face showed nothing.
Then she said, “Now that you are a young man of means, do I assume that you will no longer remain in my employ and that I should begin searching for a replacement?”
“Oh, no, Miss,” I said. “I have to stay at least until we finish War and Peace!”
“Ah, good, Hubbo, my friend. Although I doubt that we will last together that long. We will try our very best, won’t we?”
The next Thursday from the big bed I tried again to get her to talk about the money but she just came out with a sentence even longer than before.
So I gave up.
One day Mrs. O’Driscoll and Fleurette and I discussed Denny’s problem with Melody Bleach.
“Sounds like a hopeless case,” said Mrs. O’Driscoll. “O’Driscoll used to be like that about me. Followed me around for about a year before I ever really noticed him. Wore out four pairs of shoes running after me, he told me later. I didn’t believe him, though. He only had one pair of shoes as far as I ever knew. Of course, he was always exaggerating. You could never get the truth out of him. Denny will survive, though. Don’t worry about him. Soon as his pimples go away, he’ll be fine. And that Melody person. Really dumb, isn’t she? Didn’t you say she comes last in the class all the time?”
Mrs. O’Driscoll was right. Melody Bleach did always come in last. But what I didn’t tell her was that Denny was coming second last. And he used to be so smart. Used to come at the top all the time.
What Mrs. O’Driscoll said about Denny’s pimples gave me an idea. I would use some of the money to take Denny to a doctor and maybe get rid of his pimples. Make him feel better. More proud of himself.
On the way home a few days later I told Denny about the appointment I had made for him at the skin doctor. The dermatologist.
It wasn’t hard to talk Denny into going to the appointment. He was in such a daze you could have told him to jump off the Bank Street Bridge into the canal and he would have.
Fleurette and I steered him down Fifth Avenue and into the doctor’s waiting room. Everybody sitting around the waiting room was covered with pimples. We had never seen so many pimples.
“A lot of pimples in this room,” whispered Fleurette.
They called Denny’s name and he went in.
While we were waiting I started talking to Fleurette about the Boys’ Hi-Y and my problems with the application.
“What do you want to join that stupid club for? Those morons keep walking through my school in their little gangs and their nice clothes making smart-aleck remarks and bumping into the girls and laughing. They really think they’re something but they’re not. Everybody hates them. Except the girls who are really brainless. They like those Hi-Y guys because they have money. Take them out to restaurants and stuff. But you should hear what the Hi-Y guys say about the girls after, behind their backs. You’re not going to be like that, are you?”
I didn’t know what to say for a long time, so we sat in silence in the skin doctor’s waiting room.
After a while, Denny came out with the doctor.
Fleurette and I looked at the doctor’s face. He had more pimples than Denny. His face was a mess of scars and splotches.
“Now, apply this salve three times a day and take one of these pills every day after supper,” the pimpled doctor was saying to Denny as I paid the nurse.
“It’s sulfur,” Denny told us later on the Uplands bus. Denny already had some of the salve on his face. It was skin-colored and looked like makeup. As the bus got warm I could start to smell the stuff. It was sulfur all right. It smelled like rotten eggs. In fact, Denny smelled quite a bit like Mr. Tool’s stuffed owl.
We got off with him to have a visit and see what the Dorises thought of our plan to get rid of Denny’s pimples. The Dorises were all sitting around the kitchen watching the potatoes and the kettle boil for supper.
All the Dorises agreed that something had to be done and everybody talked about pimples for a while, the history of pimples, the effects of pimples, how pimples can’t ruin your life but can do a pretty good job trying to spoil everything.
The smell of rotten eggs from Denny’s salve was getting worse. One of the Dorises told him to move away from the stove and maybe he’d be more comfortable.
“To be a success in life, you can’t have pimples,” I said. I said it, but it didn’t sound like me. I could feel Fleurette’s eyes go dark on me. I was starting to sound more and more like the guidance book.
“I suppose you couldn’t join the Boys’ Hi-Y if you had pimples,” Fleurette said to me. Her black eyes were narrow and her lip was curled up. She was pretty mad at me about this Hi-Y stuff, I could tell.
Everybody talked some more about Denny’s disease, and just before Fleurette and I left the oldest Doris piped up with something new.
“If this sulfur doesn’t work we’ll try the sand.”
Sand?
“A teaspoon of clean sand every Saturday night. Boil the sand, take a big teaspoon of it every Saturday night after your bath, with a glass of warm milk to wash it down. Cured all of those things in my day.”
Everybody said that this would be worth a try, and then Fleurette and I left to walk home to Uplands Emergency Shelter.
“Why did you say that about success and pimples? You sounded like somebody in that stupid guidance book. And why are you trying to join that awful club with those awful people? And Mrs. O’Driscoll told me that you’re getting pretty uppity since you started getting that money. Maybe you should go to the doctor and get some of that rotten egg salve to put on your brain.”
She never said another word and when we got into Building Eight she slammed the door.
Only Nerves was there in the hall. With his nose up in the air. He was mad at me too.
13 Feel Street
IT WAS COMING UP to Christmas and the teachers were getting us ready for exams. In science we were doing the grasshopper all over again.
I was drawing those hairs or whatever they are on the grasshopper’s tibia or his femur or whatever that part of his leg is called, when I heard some pounding at the front of the room. When I looked to see what all the fuss was about I noticed that Mr. Tool had gone berserk. He was pounding his head on the blackboard. His forehead, bang-banging on the blackboard. Then he picked up the cage with the snake in it and fired it across the room. Then he started ripping his charts down off the rollers and throwing test tubes at the class and at the windows. The Hi-Y guys had driven him crazy.
Then he tore two or three spouts off the sinks, and the water gushed up to the ceiling.
“I hate you!” he was screaming at us. “I hate you!” he was screaming while he threw some of his little dead experimental pigs at the class.
Then he picked up his horse skull and threw it through the glass windows of the cabinet where his stinking owl was sitting there gl
assy-eyed, staring at him. Then he picked up the owl and started ripping the feathers out of it. Then he started throwing all his stuffed rodents and the little logs and tree limbs they were stuck to out the window.
Then the vice-principal came in and started talking to him and taking him out, and Mr. Tool was saying, “...how can I go now, the period isn’t over. I have to teach them the grasshopper...they have to know the grasshopper for the exam. Did the bell ring? Where’s the bell? They don’t know their work...what am I going to do? I hate them. Don’t you see? I hate these students. I want to kill them, kill them and put them in bottles on the window sill...put them in formaldehyde...cut them up in pieces and give them to my fish...kill...kill...!”
He was pretty mad at us.
School got out early because that day they had a sock hop, which was a little dance in the gym with your shoes off and just your socks on. We went and stood along the wall and sat along the wall on the long benches and leaned up against the wall where the mats were hanging, leaning on the mats at the sock hop against the wall.
Sliding our socks on the glistening floor.
In the middle of the floor the head boy and the head girl were dancing. The record that was playing was the song “Dream.”
On the other side of the gym the girls were standing around talking in little bunches and leaning against the wall and the mats and standing there in their socks and laughing and covering their lips with their fingers.
The head of the Girls’ Hi-Y turned the record over and played the song, “Golden Earrings.”
The head girl and the head boy were out there dancing again.
One of the Hi-Y guys tried to shove me out on the floor and we had a bit of a wrestling match. There were quite a few wrestling matches along our wall.
Then we saw Melody Bleach walk in, not clicking, and stand by herself. She touched her hair a bit, pushed it a bit with her fingertips every few minutes. She didn’t look so scary without her high heels on.