by Brian Doyle
The end. The beginning. Poor Phil.
Your father worked in the same office as his friend Horrors Leblanc.
“Horrors was always a good sport,” your father started, changing the subject. “Once we took a fish, a catfish, and nailed it with a half a dozen roofing nails, the short nails with the big heads, to the underside of Horrors Leblanc’s wooden chair that he sat in every day at his desk.
“Soon the fish began to rot and stink and everybody in the big office who came up to Horrors’ desk would wonder why it was that Horrors smelled so bad.
“Horrors searched everywhere — all through his desk, emptied out all the drawers, and even took up the rug and looked — but couldn’t find out where the horrible smell was coming from. He never thought to turn his chair upside down and look there...and for days and days everybody in the office was saying, ‘Why is it that Horrors smells so horrible?’”
He wanted you to see the humor. But you wouldn’t.
“Was it funny?” you said.
“Yes, it was FUNNY!” he said. “Anyway, Horrors is lending us his car because of this very important trip we have to take.”
You were silent.
“Very important trip,” he repeated.
You were still silent. You knew that if you asked what it was, he wouldn’t tell you. You looked at the scar on his forehead right between the eyes.
“Most important trip this family will ever take.”
“What trip? Where are we going?” you asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
6
Wedding Pictures
I’M IN the truck waiting for Randy.
Grampa was okay this morning. Because he slept so nice. Sometimes when the slippage is on he doesn’t sleep so calm. Sleeps like a freight train. Last night he didn’t know who I was. But he knew me this morning very well. That was good.
“Revelly! Revelly!” he shouted me awake. Imitating a bugle. “Revelly! Up, Martin! Up, my lad!
“Clay lies still but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not keep.
Up lad; when the journey’s over
There’ll be time enough for sleep.”
He has called out this poem many times to get me up. I know it off by heart. Grampa Rip loves poems.
Back to me in the truck.
We’re moving now and Randy’s silent for quite a while.
Then, “Know what a coincidence is, Boy? A coincidence? It’s two things that happen together and turn out to be a big surprise.”
Here we go.
“Looked at yer job application. Seen yer address. Somerset Street. Number 511, Apartment 4. Right across from Dumb Donald Park. Here’s what you call a coincidence! I used to live there! Right across the hall. Apartment three. Right across the hall from four! Can you imagine?
“I lived there before I got married. Before I worked for Pure Spring.
“And do you know who lived right where yer livin now, with yer grandfather what’s his name — a funny name, Mr. Rip is it? You know who lived there? Can you guess? Guess. Guess who lived there!”
How am I supposed to guess this? What does he want?
“Esther Williams?” I say.
“Ya can’t guess? I’ll give you a hint. It’s something to do with where we were yesterday.”
Yesterday! Gerty. Gerty McDowell. McDowell’s Grocery and Lunch on Sweetland. Sweet Gerty.
Gerty lived where I live now?
“Was it Gerty McDowell?”
“Gerty McDowell! Who the hell is Gerty McDowell? What kind of a guess is that? No! Yesterday. The Russian Embassy!”
I’m thinking was it pumpkin head, the guard?
“No guess, pretty boy? Well I’ll tell ya! It was Igor. Igor, the famous Russian spy guy. Igor Gouzenko! Yeah! He lived right where yer livin’ now! Blew the whistle on a bunch of Commies in Ottawa! Big scandal. The RCMP came. The Russians came. They wanted to kill him because he ratted on them. He worked at the Russian Embassy. He was a cipher clerk. Figured out code messages. Secret stuff. And he lived right where yer livin’ now! He’s famous. And ya never heard of him! Kids these days! Don’t know anything. It’s all they can do, some of them, like my last helper, to get to work before 7:00 A.M. in the morning!”
I think I do remember something I heard on the radio about Igor. Igor the Russian who changed sides. He wasn’t exactly a spy. But I don’t want to argue.
“You don’t say 7:00 A.M. in the morning. A.M. is the morning. A is for ante. M is for meridiem which means noon. It’s Latin. You say 7:00 in the morning or you say 7:00 A.M. You don’t say both. It’s redundant to say both.”
“Latin. Smarty boy, eh, Boy! Yer not one of those, are ya, pretty boy? A smarty pants sissy, you know what I’m sayin’? A homo, a faggy, a fruity fruit, an airy fairy, a little pansy wansy nancy, a queer duck?...”
Randy smells like Aqua Velva shaving lotion and BO. His fingernails are dirty. His ears are scaly. His skin is rough. His teeth are brown and crooked. His voice is high and hoarse. He’s skinny and he always looks like he could use a bath. His hair is full of Wildroot Cream-Oil grease. His hair is big and there’s a fat coil of it hanging down the middle of his forehead that bounces up and down when he’s excited. Like now.
Randy’s always telling me about himself. What a great dancer he is. What a great lover he is...
“Anyway, he escaped, Igor did, and to this day — that was six years ago, nobody knows where he went. And the Ruskies, they’re still lookin’ for him. Fer a long time they had agents conducting surveying at the apartment building, sittin’ in the park across the street all day...”
He means surveillance, not surveying.
“Those were the days when I lived there. Right across the hall from where you live now! Single guy like me. All the women I wanted.
“Those were the days. Boy! Every job I had there’d be women around who wanted Randy. I did roofing for a while. Doing a roof one time in Rockcliffe Village where all the rich people live, a woman took me right off the roof right into her bedroom window. Randy the roofer! Right into the rich woman’s bed! How ‘bout that?
“And I delivered bread fer a time. When the sign in the window said NO BREAD TODAY, that was the sign that her husband was away...Randy the breadman...And for a while I was a driving instructor teaching people, women, how to drive a car. They’d be so scared driving around the Experimental Farm I’d take them into the backseat and calm them down. ‘Oh, Randy!’ they’d say. ‘When do I get my next lesson?’ And another time I was a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman. Boy, you wouldn’t believe it. ‘Come on in, Randy, and demonstrate yer vacuum!’ Right there on the living-room rug if you know what I mean. Those were the days...”
While Randy is babbling away about himself I’m thinking about Gerty, her eyes. Did I see my own eyes in hers? How is that possible, how can that be? Does that mean I love myself?
My window is open. There’s a warm spring breeze. I’ve got the shirt-sleeves of my Pure Spring shirt rolled up. With my elbow out the window like this, my biceps muscle shows the rolled-up sleeve tight around it.
Grampa Rip showed me how to build up my biceps. With two cans of Habitant pea soup. Large size. One for each hand. You lift the cans from your waist up to your chin — left, right, left, right — one hundred times each.
I wonder if Gerty will notice my muscles. Habitant soup muscles.
We pull into the yard of Persephone’s Grocery, a big store on Beechwood Avenue.
Randy gives me my instructions. Many instructions. Instructions to steal.
Looks like I’m doing all the work this time. All the stealing.
“What are you going to do while I’m carrying all of these cases?” I say.
Randy looks at me. Squints his eyes. Looks at me hard.
“See the guy standing, waiting at that big shed there? He’s in charge of what goes in and what comes out of that shed. He’s gonna want cream soda, Honee Orange, Grapefruit ’N Lime, Mi
nted Grape and, of course, ginger ale. First I’ll go in with him and check it out. Then we’ll come out. He’ll have it written down. He’ll tell you how many. Here’s what you do. You’ll put one less full case than he says. One full case less of each color. Got it?”
“I don’t want to do this...”
He squints hard at me again.
“Mr. Mirsky’s going to be very, very disappointed in you, pretty boy, when I have a little chat with him. Show him your birth certificate.”
I tear the wallet out of my pocket, unzip it.
No birth certificate. He has stolen my birth certificate!
“Don’t worry,” says Randy, real friendly. “It’s safe with me for now. You’ll get it back later. I promise. Now, let’s go! Partner.”
“He’s going to see me...”
“He won’t be lookin’ at you...”
“Why not? That’s his job, isn’t it?”
“He won’t be doin’ his job.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll be looking at these...” Randy takes a handful of photographs out of his shirt pocket. “I’m going to show him my wedding pictures...” says Randy.
He wants three cases of cream soda, three of Grapefruit ’N Lime. On the dolly, I deliver two of each into the shed, pile them on some already full cases. He wants four Minted Grape, he gets three. Six Honee Orange, he gets five. He wants ten cases of ginger ale, he gets nine. The ten cases are piled up on top of the other colors, burying them. You can’t tell how much has been delivered.
The whole time Randy and the guy in charge of shipping have their backs to me whooping and ho-ho-ing and giggling. Not seeing me at all, not watching.
Time to take out the empties. Now Randy’s helping. Even the shipping guy is helping. And we’re all counting — counting twice, double-checking, seeing everything is accurate. Twenty-six cases exactly...oh, Randy, you are so honest...the exact amount of empties.
The shipper pays Randy for twenty-six cases of drinks. He doesn’t know it but he only got twenty-one.
Time to go. The shipper shakes hands with Randy and even slaps him on the back! Good old Randy. See you next time!
We’re on St. Patrick Street heading west. Randy’s telling me all about how he is like a fisherman’s lure to women. He is bait! A juicy worm. And when they’d bite, he’d hook them and pull them in, right in the boat, all the women...
“You see, I’ve got the charm, the wavy hair, the teeth, the muscles, the aftershave. I’m a great dancer. I’ve got the know-how. They can’t resist. I’m bait...”
I’m looking at the pictures...wedding pictures?
Naked men and women. Dozens of photographs of real people doing everything you could think of to each other — lying down, standing up, upside down, up on ladders, two men and a woman, two women and a man, two men and two women. Sticking, licking, dripping. A woman with a donkey, a man with a sheep...
I look up. An empty logging truck is slowing down in front of us. I’m yelling, “Watch out! STOP!”
Randy’s pushing me. “What’s wrong with you! Don’t you think I know how to drive! What’s wrong with you! Smarten up! Straighten up! What ‘r’ ya afraid of...I’m going to run into somebody?...”
He’s yelling stuff at me. I feel sick. I lean out my window and throw up on to the pavement. Randy pulls over. I get out. I’m hanging on to a foot rail on a telephone pole. I’m retching. The wedding pictures are all over the sidewalk.
“Hey, you puked all over my pictures!”
Randy is trying to help me stand up.
When I was small, my friend Billy Batson and I used to climb up telephone poles like this one. But Billy’s gone now from Papineau Street where we used to live and it’s a secret where he went because his mother wants to live where his crazy father will never find them.
Up and up those foot rails we’d climb so high, Billy and me, almost to the wires on top and look out, pretending we were on the mast of a tall ship at sea, and we’d shout, “Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy! Pirate ship ahoy!...”
Like we were heroes in a pirate movie and nothing, nothing could ever hurt us.
7
Exploding Trees
CHEAP ‘S FUR is ruffling and his eyes are half closed and his only ear is flapping in the wind. He’s in the basket of my bicycle. We’re heading to Sweetland Avenue on this Sunday in the spring. Watch out we don’t get the front wheel of the bicycle caught in the streetcar track, eh, Cheap!
We’re on Laurier Avenue heading toward the Sweetland Grocery and Lunch and Gerty McDowell.
The bells of St. Joseph’s Church are dinging and donging. You can see the bells up there swinging. And the clap-per in each bell waiting to hit each pretty curved side.
Grampa Rip planted some catnip seeds this morning in a pot and we put it in the windowsill.
“The sun and this water will do the work,” says Grampa Rip.
There are girls skipping rope on the sandy sidewalk. There are melting lumps of snow disappearing down the laneways. And little rivers running.
Another robin!
Spring is trying to come.
The trees want to explode.
And the flowers want to drive their heads up through the soft earth in all the parks.
This afternoon, right after lunch, Grampa Rip left the apartment all dressed up in his watch and chain to go to McEvoy’s and another funeral wake. I’ll be home at five to meet him and we’ll make the supper together.
I’m wearing my Pure Spring shirt because it looks so good on me. I washed it last night and this morning Grampa helped me iron it without burning a big hole in the back of it.
I have the sleeves rolled up to show my biceps. A hundred times each with the cans of Habitant soup at noon today makes the biceps swell and push tight against the roll of the sleeves.
Will she remember me?
Last night I dreamt a dream that Cheap was in love with a cat with silk stockings and pale-blue panties with rose-pink-colored ribbon trim and big blue eyes and wavy brown hair and a little straw hat with a bow and pouty lips just like Gerty’s.
Will she ever find out that I stole from her store? Will it show on my face?
I park my bike, put Cheap in his harness and leash and then my heart sinks from my chest down to the sidewalk.
The store is closed! Of course it’s closed. It’s Sunday! But wait. The lunch part is open. It’s a different door.
Cheap stays beside me while I open the door. We go in. Together. We’re partners.
There are three booths and four stools. The smell is fried onions and vanilla milkshakes.
There are two customers. Lovers, it looks like. They’re in the end booth farthest from the door. The milkshake machine is buzzing away. They’re getting a plate with two hamburgers on it. They’re not sitting across from each other in the booth. They’re both on one side. Sitting close. Hamburgers on one plate, not two.
Their waiter is Gerty. Gerty herself. She has on a long white apron tied at the back. No straw hat. A ribbon this time tying her hair over one shoulder. Blue.
I sit on the first of the four stools and put Cheap on the second stool and stroke him hard so he’ll stay.
She comes around the counter, pours the milkshake out of the metal container into a tall glass jar and punches in two straws and takes the milkshake over to the lovers. She comes back behind the counter.
I have big plans for what I’m going to say. Tell her I stole. Tell her she’s beautiful and I love her. Tell her I dreamt that my cat was in love with a female cat that looked just like her...
But here’s what I say: “Set up a vanilla shake fer me, heavy on the vanilla and a double saucer of straight cream for my partner here, the thicker the better!”
I’ve seen a thousand cowboy movies. I’m one of those cowboys ordering drinks in the saloon.
Cheap looks up at me. He’s never heard my voice like this. He thinks for a second I’m somebody else. His ear goes back.
She turns and wi
th her back to us pours the ice cream and milk and vanilla and puts it in the mixer. She pours a saucer of cream. She puts both in front of us. Her eyes are sparkling. She’s got a little smile. She got the cowboy joke right away.
“I was wondering if I’d see you again,” she says, and I nearly fall off the stool.
Soon a pretty lady comes in — a lady shaped like a pear, and comes behind the counter and takes Gerty’s apron and puts it on.
“Thank you, dear,” she says.
Gerty comes and sits on the other side of Cheap. Cheap is standing on the stool with his front paws on the counter licking up his cream that was ordered for him by some stranger from an old cowboy movie.
“Do you take your cat with you everywhere you go?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s his name? Is it a him?”
“His name’s Cheap.”
“Cheep. Like a bird noise?”
“No. Cheap. He cost ten cents.”
She thinks I’m funny! She laughs a happy laugh and throws her brown hair over her other shoulder.
“My grampa has a cat,” she says. “It just sleeps and eats and, well, you know. It’s got no personality and probably a very tiny brain...”
“Was that your grampa in the store last week?”
“Yes. He’s not feeling very well. He’s weak. He’s trying to sell the store.”
“Is he too weak to go down the cellar?”
She nods. She wrinkles her brow, making a sad face.
I knew it. That’s why it was so easy for Randy to steal from him. Randy and I. Stealing from the weak.
“When you first came in I thought you were working but it’s Sunday so I wondered. Isn’t that your work shirt...Pure Spring shirt...”
She’s peering at the shoulder. Close to me. She smells like...what...lilacs?
“Do you work here and in the store?” I ask, stuck for something — anything — to say.
“No,” she says. “Just filling in when the regular waitress is on her break.”
We go out. I put Cheap in the basket and we walk my bike down to Strathcona Park.
The water’s not turned on yet in Baron Strathcona’s fountain. But it will be soon.