Where I Belong

by Alan Doyle

  “Fer frig sakes, b’y. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides.”

  “Right, right,” I’d say. “Now, is that every time?”

  “Yes. Sorry it’s so boring, Alan, but yes, every time.”

  Poor Bern, he was so good at numbers and equations that he would later get an engineering degree and a master’s in business. Yet in our young life he was saddled nightly with the task of teaching me to add and subtract.

  Mom and Dad would stand over our shoulders for a half-hour or more to ensure we did something. Anything.

  “I wants four pictures of ye on the wall with them sashes from the university around your necks, you hear me?” Mom was adamant we’d all get post-secondary education, and Dad agreed. Their insistence paid off. Kim, Bernie and Michelle all were high honours students, and my grades were often described as “good enough.” All of us graduated from university. Of course, I finished the last few of my courses towards a bachelor of arts degree from the back seat of the Great Big Sea van. But the point is: I finished. We all did. These days, pictures of grandchildren have replaced many of the photos of us kids on Mom and Dad’s wall. But Mom and Dad still proudly display the four photos of us with them sashes on.

  All four Doyle children “with them sashes,” just like Mom always wanted. These photos are proudly displayed in my parents’ home.

  When homework was done, me and Bernie usually played some kind of sport. If there was enough daylight still, we played catch or he would take shots on me in our makeshift net out on the gravel driveway. We’d use a tennis ball or whatever we could find. The trick was to not only stop the ball but to do so while dodging the many small rocks and bits of gravel that would come flying with every shot. In the dead of winter when the after-supper skies were too dark, we’d set up a game of spoon hockey in our short hallway on the first floor of the house. We’d get two spoons and make a ball out of tinfoil and blast each other with it. You’d be surprised how easy it is to cut your face with the sharp points of a tinfoil ball.

  Inevitably, fights would break out. Me and Bernie had some wicked ones. Once, he threw a pellet gun at me so hard that it went right through our bedroom wall and landed in Mom and Dad’s bedroom.

  Me and my brother, Bernie, circa 1978. Don’t let the clean clothes and angelic smiles fool you.

  “Bernie,” Dad asked, “what in the Jesus do you think you’re doing throwing a gun at your brother?”

  “Alan won’t die!” was his answer.

  The worst fights occurred when we decided we would take on the roles of our favourite professional wrestlers. Off came our shirts and away we went with swings and kicks in a mock-wrestling match in the kitchen. Once, I decided to try to compact my brother into a small package, a wrestling move made famous by pro wrestler Jimmy Superfly. To my complete surprise, it worked quite well. Like, really well. Bernie went down like a neat ton of bricks and gasped in pain on the floor. He was acting it out perfectly, just like they did on TV. I climbed the kitchen chair and onto the table like I was about to finish him off from the top ropes with a flying elbow, but I paused when I finally noticed the realism of his acting was a little too perfect.

  Bernie turned white as a sheet and pointed to his shoulder without saying a word. I got down and helped him to his feet. His shoulder was not where it was supposed to be at all. It had been forced down around his right nipple. The look on my face must have scared the shite out of him because his eyes widened with mine. Of its own accord, his shoulder started to migrate back to its home, slowly at first as it drifted up his right side, then it quickly clicked right back in its place. The bones and muscles made a grotesque snap. Bernie fainted and hit the ground like a man who’d been shot. I was not far behind him. To this day, his shoulder pops in and out of place with alarming ease. The kitchen wasn’t used as a wrestling arena very often after that incident.

  But these rows and mishaps were not as frequent as you might imagine. My brother and I got along fairly well. We often retreated to our room to listen to the radio or records. I learned so much about music from Bernie, as he had such a keen ear and appreciation for good tunes. To this day, he is one of the most musically literate people I know. Most nights as a kid, I’d sit on the bed and he’d DJ, explaining why he thought one Boston song was way better than the other. Or why the Little River Band must have at least two awesome guitar players as there were always complementary parts happening simultaneously. We practically memorized Billy Joel’s The Stranger, Supertramp’s Paris, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell and Pat Benatar’s Crimes of Passion, just to name a few.

  Ever-resourceful Bernie rigged a wire clothes hanger out our bedroom window and up to the eaves and back down to an old radio we got from one of our uncles. Late at night, we could pick up stations broadcast from Detroit and Upstate New York. We’d lie there for hours listening to American soul and rhythm and blues, music we’d never get to hear on any local station.

  Later, in his very early teens, Bernie saved up enough money to actually buy his own TV, which benefited me tremendously as we could lie in bed and watch hockey till Mom and Dad forced us to turn it off and go to sleep. That TV came in especially handy when we figured out that the French-Canadian station had a program called Bleu Nuit that came on after midnight. Use your imagination.

  Most days ended with Bernie in his bed and me in mine across from him with my head up against the footboard. This made throwing a tinfoil ball easier and allowed for more important question-and-answer sessions. Lob and catch. Wonder. Lob and catch. Suppose. Lob and catch. Repeat.

  Bernie and me posing in our fancy front entrance.

  “Bern, do you think Barbara Ann Chase would go out with me?”

  “No. I really don’t. Do you think this Gretzky fella is going to be as good as everyone says?”

  “No, he’s not on the Montreal Canadiens and they have all the good players. They’d have him if he was as good as everyone says. You think Pat Benatar would ever play here in Newfoundland?”

  “Not a chance. We’re going to have to get on a plane to see her, I’d say.”

  “Yeah, some chance of that. We’ll probably never see her.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Frig, b’y, I’m starving. Can’t wait for breakfast. Did Mom make bread today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Deadly.”

  And sometime after that, we’d fall asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  For most of my young life, there were two convenience stores in Petty Harbour. At different times a third or even fourth one came and went, but mainly there was one on the Catholic side and one on the Protestant side. The Protestant store was run by the Weir family, and it was called Herbie’s. We Catholics had Harbour Grocery, or Maureen’s, as we all knew it. I’m not sure if the owners’ religious affiliations had anything to do with the fact that their stores (and the shopping experience in them) could not have been more different.

  Herbie’s, the Protestant store, was—and still is—a traditional local shop with real showcase crystal-clear windows and freshly marked specials handwritten in white letters each day. It was like Christmas every day in that shop. A lovely older couple, Herbie and his wife, Marguerite, were always neatly dressed. They kept their store in tip-top shape, inside and out. One or the other would always greet me with a smile as I walked in, the pleasant tring of the door chimes ringing out after me. “Hello, Alan Doyle. We rarely sees your happy face over here!”

  The long, straight softwood floor in that store reminded me of a fancy ship’s deck. The boards ran perfectly parallel from the coolers with chilled milk, juice and pop to the counter, which boasted a neat wooden top with a glass showcase underneath, where rows of candies and chocolate bars were displayed right at a little boy’s eye height. Behind the counter were impressive high shelves with vertical dividers displaying perfectly ordered cans of soup and plump bags of flour and rows of fancy molasses.

  To the right of the cou
nter, a few large bins held fresh carrots, potatoes, onions and so on. A small hallway led to the back of the store, where there must have been larger coolers and freezers, as that’s where Herbie or Marguerite would go to retrieve the large hams, bolognas, turkey loaves or roast beef.

  “I’ll have six slices of ham, please,” I’d say to Herbie and I’d wait for the show. He’d put the meat on a perfect wooden cutting board, and despite his shaky hand, he cut every slice himself. When Herbie was done, he’d tear a square of crisp brown paper from a wide horizontal roll and he would wrap the cold cuts into a tidy package. On the top, with a wide carpenter’s pencil, he’d write, “Ham $1.10.”

  The final touch was my favourite, as Herbie would reach for a length of white string. If you traced the end of the string with your eye, you’d see it hung from a small metal loop in the ceiling, where it turned ninety degrees and ran just below the white-painted ceiling boards all the way back to the very top of the wooden shelves. There, a large, magical, pyramid-shaped spool of white line sat, never seeming to increase or decrease in size no matter how much string Herbie used.

  He’d take the end of the line and wrap it around the package of ham. He had this cool way of making a knot without needing to cut the line to tie it. Then, with a quick double flick, he’d snap the string exactly where the knot ended. There was not a millimetre of twine wasted in the entire process. He’d pass me the finished package, and I’d feel like I was holding a grand gift in my hands from Santa himself.

  Herbie’s Store in Petty Harbour, present day. The store is as perfect as it ever was. Note the string that runs from the ceiling (top right) and the roll of brown paper wrapping (right), both ready for tying up neat little packages.

  “Thanks, Alan Doyle,” Marguerite would say with a lovely smile. “Bring your happy face back soon, honey.”

  I loved Herbie’s. Too bad I almost never got to go there as a kid.

  As noted, Herbie’s was on the Protestant side and we almost never shopped there. No one ever told me I shouldn’t. No one ever said we had to stay on the Catholic side to spend our money. We just did. Like many things in my young life in Petty Harbour, we did things one way because they had always been done that way.

  When my mother sent me to the store, I didn’t even think to ask which. I knew she was sending me to Harbour Grocery, or Maureen’s. I only got to go to Herbie’s when Maureen’s was closed, which was never, or if I went to Maureen’s and she didn’t have what Mom asked me to get, which was almost never, or if word got around that a health inspector was banging on Maureen’s door trying to get in, which happened more than I care to say.

  This portrait of Herbie and his daughter, Sherri, still hangs in the shop.

  Maureen was old when I was young. She lived alone in the back of her store. She had a son, but by the time I was about ten, he had moved away to go to school. I confess I don’t know for sure what kind of living arrangements she had at the back of her store, but I suspect she had a kitchen and a bedroom. She never spent a lot of time back there anyway. Instead, she spent every waking hour behind the counter of her store, watching a small black-and-white TV about eighteen inches from her face. Most often, customers who walked in and stood in front of her counter were greeted by her right ear, because she was always facing that TV. Harbour Grocery was manned, or womanned, by Maureen and Maureen alone. I must have seen her in the store thousands of times, but never once did I see her outside of it.

  To enter Maureen’s store, you had to climb a set of uneven, broken grey concrete steps. They were in such a state of disrepair that it was tough to find a tread that was level. In the winter months, the holes and crevasses in the steps filled with water and froze into patches of treacherous black ice. This would have been far less of a problem if the steps had a handrail of any kind to hold on to. Slipping on Maureen’s front stairs was a common event. One false move and you were flying feet first over the side of the steps and down, arse first, onto the rocky ground below. If you happened to break a glass bottle on your landing, there was no sense asking Maureen for a replacement or a refund.

  “That’s yer own stupid fault. Sure ya knows the steps are slippery. Now get out of my store, ye bastarding Doyles!”

  Ye bastarding Doyles. That’s what she called me and my whole family, cousins and all, from as early as I can remember. What she meant by this christening I cannot say. Did she mean we were all bastards? That our parents were not married? This was clearly not true. Maybe she was making reference to the generations of musicians in my family who she perhaps presumed went around knocking up gals and making piles and piles of bastard children. I don’t know.

  Maybe her crankiness towards us had something to do with the fact that my uncles, the town musicians, once made up a song about her to the tune of “Goodnight Irene.” I won’t provide the entire rendition here, but towards the ultimate verse, there was mention of a “sex machine,” which rhymed quite nicely with “Maureen, Goodnight Maureen.”

  Yeah. This song may have had something to do with her apparent dislike for us Doyles.

  In any case, for many reasons beyond the fact that Maureen was not a fan of the Doyles, it was no fun going into her store. Once atop the concrete steps, you often found the door locked if Maureen was in the kitchen or washroom. There was sometimes a handwritten sign stuck with a dart into the thin-panelled door. It read: KNOCK HARD. But when you knocked hard, you’d be greeted a few moments later by Maureen, unlocking the door while shouting, “Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph, don’t beat the door in!”

  And when she saw me, she would roll her eyes. “I should have known that if someone were beatin’ down my door, it would have to be one of ye bastarding Doyles!”

  I’d silently follow Maureen inside, careful to stay a couple of paces behind. The floors were dark, and what they were made of, I could not say. The walls were dark-grey panelling—or so I suspected. They were so covered in ancient, torn posters for Hostess Chips or Vachon Cakes or Pepsi that it was hard to say what was underneath it all.

  Like Herbie’s, the front wall of the store had a big picture window, but almost no light penetrated the old beer posters covering the panes. Duct tape snaked along the windows, masking the cracks. The whole place was dimly lit, and a layer of dust coated everything. It would’ve been tough for anyone who was claustrophobic, germophobic or anything phobic to spend any amount of time in Harbour Grocery.

  And then there was the counter, which the door hit every time you opened or closed it, eliciting the same complaint from Irene every single time: “Mind the counter! And close the door! Were you born on a raft or what?”

  The counter occupied an entire wall. The glass cases underneath were either empty or filled with old newspapers or single rolls of toilet paper, or other things a young boy would never find appealing. Behind the counter, cardboard boxes were haphazardly stacked up to the ceiling, some cut open on the sides so you could see they held aging cans of tomato soup or dish soap. Some boxes were tipped on their sides, flaps torn in the cardboard to reveal grubby Kraft Dinner boxes or dusty ketchup bottles. Everything was in a state of disarray but also within just a step or two of Maureen’s stool, which was permanently positioned next to her glowing black-and-white TV. She would sit lording over this mound of stuff and somehow she knew exactly where to reach when you asked for something.

  Request a bar of soap and she would slide the box of paper towels to one side, lift the tins of Vienna sausages and take a bar of soap from a plastic bag underneath. Ask for a can of condensed milk and she would lean back a few inches and reach behind some playing cards for a hidden can. She’d slide it across the counter but often had to pull it right back to wipe the layer of dust off the top of it with her shirt or apron.

  “So, what are you in for now?” her right ear would say.

  “Mom wants a half-pound of bologna cut thick for supper,” I’d say.

  “I’ll get you your half a pound, but you got to slice it yourself. What, do ye want me to come
to your house and fry it for ye too?” I waited, not sure how to proceed. And then she’d say, “Go to the back cooler and get me the bologna.”

  I’d creep along the back wall of the rectangular room, which was lined with coolers and old fridges and a deepfreeze or two. Near the back was an industrial-sized cooler with pop and beer, and in the bottom of it was an open shelf for meat. Next to a mailbox-shaped processed ham cube, a roundish roast beef and a turkey loaf, I located a long tube of bologna. I lifted it out of the cooler and walked it to the front of the store. I had to stand on my tippytoes to roll it over the top of the counter.

  Maureen would take the bologna, grab a huge butcher’s knife from underneath a pile of something and hack off a piece about twice as thick as a hockey puck. She rarely stood to do this, using only her arm and wrist to push the knife through the wax coating on the meat. All the while, she’d bite down hard on her tongue as it poked out the left side of her mouth. Then she’d push the severed chunk of meat into some plastic wrap or tinfoil, jam it into a used plastic shopping bag and slide it back to me across the counter.

  “That’s around a half-pound, I suppose,” Maureen would say, though she always gave a bit more than that.

  I’d pay her and carefully say, “Thank you, Maureen.”

  “Finally, a bastarding Doyle with some manners,” she’d say as I’d turn to leave. “Now close the door behind you! Were you born on a raft or what?”

  FORTUNE’S FAVOUR

  Great Big Sea is a Bastard.

  So reads the press release for the band’s Fortune’s Favour album.

  And it is true. We know who our mother is, but who is our father? Your guess is as good as mine.

  We are a band forefathered by the Clancy Brothers and Def Leppard; we are the progeny of the Pogues and my uncle Ronnie’s band; we’re the love child of Freddie Mercury and the Catholic Book of Worship. As for the mother of Great Big Sea, there’s no doubt she’s the Wonderful Grand Band.