Boy O'Boy

by Brian Doyle

  And I’ve been in Lenny Lipshitz’s house, number nine Papineau. The time I went over to give him back the money from the GAMBLING.

  His mother gave me some gefilte fish. I didn’t like it but I didn’t say anything.

  Lenny said he really liked gefilte fish but I didn’t believe him.

  But I’ve never been in Billy Batson’s house. My mother told me once that she thought Mrs. Batson was ashamed of something.

  Or was hiding something. I forget which.

  I’d like to see a picture of this ideal father he has.

  And so, in my place, Martin O’Boy’s, I have to go. There’s yelling and hollering.

  My brother Phil is probably under the bed barking like a dog.

  6

  Cheap and the Perfect Twin

  I’M SITTING on the edge of my mother’s bed. My father slammed out of the house after the fight. Phil’s asleep in our room.

  My mother gets me to feel the baby inside kicking. Kick, kick. Like a little fist punching under a soft blanket. Kick. He wants to get out. Let me out. I want to be in the world!

  I tell my mother about the fat ladies’ race at the street dance.

  “My God, what will they think of next! Those parties are getting out of hand. What self-respecting woman would go in a thing like that? All that flab jiggling and flopping and bouncing around!”

  My mother tells me about the two ladies the other day. The ketchup lady and the turkey lady.

  “They think we’re not taking proper care of you. They said that at school last winter you weren’t dressed warm enough with just your big sweater and that you were caught GAMBLING and that you planned some violent summer activity in art class and they saw your rubbers instead of shoes. You’ll go first thing in the morning to get the shoes. I gave you the dollar.”

  Cheap comes in and jumps on the bed with us. He looks sad with his missing ear.

  I’m wondering if he worries about anything like I do. Does he ever wonder about anything? Or does he just wait around for something to come along?

  “You’re the perfect one,” my mother says, stroking my head. “You can’t be causing trouble now, can you, sweetheart? Phil is trouble enough, don’t you think?”

  Cheap is starting to purr. Getting comfortable.

  The baby is kicking.

  “You’ll have to mind Phil tomorrow, you know.” “Why?”

  “Granny’s funeral. We have to go to the funeral.” “Why can’t I go to Granny’s funeral?”

  “Because you have to mind Phil.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Batson or somebody could mind Phil.” “I couldn’t ask her to do that. You can’t ask anybody to do that.”

  “What about Horseball’s mother or one of the older sisters? Maybe one of them.”

  “No, I couldn’t. And don’t call him Horseball. It’s not nice. Call him by his real name. What’s his proper name, anyway?”

  “Horseball.”

  “No. His real name.”

  “Horace, I think. Something like Horace.”

  Back in my room I look at Phil there asleep in his bed. He looks so calm. I go in the bathroom and in the mirror there, I try to look like Phil.

  I open my mouth wide like I’m howling and I make my eyes as big as I can and I pull my hair back hard until what I see in the mirror scares me.

  Back in my bed, Cheap sleeps with me. Half on the pillow beside me.

  I think I love Cheap. Do I?

  I don’t know if I love anybody else.

  I sing “Moonlight Becomes You” to Cheap.

  He wiggles his only ear. He likes Bing Crosby.

  When I talk to Cheap he squeezes his eyes shut. And if he’s on the bed, he pulls on the blanket with his claws — first the right paw, then the left. Just like you see kittens doing when they suck milk from their mother.

  When I stop talking, he opens his eyes and looks at me and stops kneading his claws. His eyes are wide open. He’s saying, “Talk to me some more. I like when you talk to me…”

  My mother told me that when grown-up cats act like that it means they didn’t get enough love when they were babies.

  Soon I’ll get Cheap some catnip. There’s lots of it growing in Lenny Lipshitz’s yard. Lenny’s father told me that if I took any catnip out of the yard I’d have to pay ten cents for a handful but Lenny says never mind paying, just go in the yard at night when the old man’s asleep and steal it.

  Cheap loves catnip. He rolls around in it and wrestles with it. His eyes get a crazy tilt in them and he looks like, if he could, he would sing a big musical number — something like Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis when she sang “The Trolley Song.”

  7

  New Shoes

  IT WILL be hot today. I’ll have to go for ice after I get home with the new shoes.

  I walk up Clarence Street past the Lee Kung Laundry. Steam is coming out the door all the time. Smells like boiled potatoes.

  It’s garbage day on Clarence Street. I walk by the garbage wagon. The horses are covered with horse flies and the wagon and the garbage men are covered with garbage flies. The guy throwing the cans up to the guy on top of the wagon is looking at the rubbers tied on with elastics I’m wearing instead of shoes.

  “Great lookin’ pair of special kind of shoes ya have there!” he says. And he laughs a big laugh.

  A large juicy fly flies into his mouth. Good.

  Mr. Lipshitz’s horse clops by pulling Mr. Lipshitz and some bedsprings and bottles and paper and rags and bones. Mr. Lipshitz looks like he’s asleep.

  At the corner of Clarence and Dalhoozie is Lefebvre Shoe Market. From here up Dalhoozie Street I can see the Français theater. Playing is Hold That Ghost starring Abbott and Costello. Its about a haunted castle. Costello is sitting at a table and a candle on the table starts to move. Also, a wall turns around and he disappears.

  In Lefebvre’s Shoe Market there’s a party. Somebody came home from the war. There’s sandwiches and ice cream and Kik cola and beer and whiskey.

  The sign in the window says:

  Cork-Soled Runners—

  99 cents!

  A man who is pretty drunk laughs at my rubbers, pulls off the elastics, shoots the elastics at another man and a girl eating sandwiches.

  Across the store in the back part some people are singing a French song that’s something like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and one big woman is choking she’s laughing so much.

  My big toe is sticking through a hole in my right sock.

  “That’s nice and cool, eh, for a hot summer day! Air conditioning! The latest thing! Hey, look at this, everyone! Air conditioning! The latest thing!”

  He gets a pair of the cork-soled runners out of a pile of them in a bin. He puts them both on me and ties them too tight. They seem to be way too long for my feet.

  “Perfect!” he says and stands up, staggering backwards a bit. “A perfect fit!”

  “I think they’re too big,” I say. He bends down and feels for my toes in the shoe. He pulls the shoe hard from the back so that my foot pushes into the front of the shoe. He feels my toes.

  “See! There’s your toes, right there where they should be. A perfect fit!”

  “I think they’re too big,” I say.

  “Tell you what. You go out and take a walk around the block. Try them out. You’ll see. They fit! And look how nice and brand new they look! Go ahead, try them out. And, hey, don’t forget to come back and give me the ninety-nine cents!”

  I leave the store and walk up Dalhoozie Street past the Français theater and around the block.

  These shoes are so long they flap when I walk. Each step slaps the sidewalk. Something like Mr. Skippy Skidmore only twice as bad.

  Slap, flap, flap, slap!

  People on the sidewalk are looking at me and my shoes and whispering to each other.

  I go back into Lefebvre’s Shoe Market.

  I can’t find the man who told me to go out and walk around the block and try out the shoes.
/>   The party is not as loud now. Most of the people are gone. A short woman with a big chest and lots of teeth comes over. I explain to her about the shoes.

  “Did you pay for the shoes?” she says.

  Should I lie? Should I lie, Granny? I could lie. I could say yes I paid for the shoes and then I could keep the dollar and nobody would know. Better not. Granny might be watching.

  “No,” I say, looking right at her. “No, I didn’t.”

  “You owe ninety-nine cents,” she says.

  I give her the dollar. She gives me back one cent. “Thank you, dear,” she says. “Come back again!”

  “But these shoes don’t fit,” I say. “They’re too big, too long.”

  “We can’t change them now. You already wore them outside. Look at the bottoms. They’re all scuffed. I can’t sell those shoes to somebody else. We don’t sell used shoes here at Lefebvre’s Shoe Market — serving Ottawa since 1910!”

  “But they’re so big!” I say. “They go slap, flap.”

  “Too bad. Who told you to walk around outside in these shoes?”

  “A man. A man who works here.”

  “Nobody who works here would do that. It must have been just a joke. There was a little party here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a discount. How’s that? Okay? Mmm?” She goes into the till and gives me a dime.

  “There,” she says. “Shoes on sale specially for a handsome sweet boy like you! Bye-bye!”

  I decide to go home by St. Patrick Street because I don’t want the garbage men who laughed at my rubbers to see my shoes.

  Flap, slap, slap, flap — all the way down St. Patrick Street.

  8

  Trap Door Spider

  My mother’s dressed up. She’s got a purple hat on and a purple silky scarf and purple flat shoes. Her belly’s pretty big so her black dress with the purple collar doesn’t fit right. She keeps pulling down on it. I can smell the perfume she put on her silky scarf and behind her ears and on her wrists.

  I know what kind of perfume it is. It’s Blue Grass Eau de Parfum. She keeps it in a special drawer in her bureau with her silky scarf and some rings and necklaces. The drawer I’m not supposed to look in.

  Once, when nobody was around, I sprayed Phil with the Blue Grass Eau de Parfum. He hated it and he started howling. I guess he’d rather smell the way he usually smells.

  My mother never gets dressed up.

  Because she never goes anywhere.

  My father’s standing at the door smoking cigarettes. He’s waiting. They’re not fighting for a change. My father has his good hat on and his shoes are shined. He has on the suit he wears to work all the time but a different tie.

  My mothers crying a little bit.

  My father looks at my new runners with the cork soles.

  “Nice shoes ya got,” he says. “Too bad they don’t fit.”

  My mother’s always late. They fight about that a lot. Or she stays in the bathroom too long. They fight about that a lot too. Or she burns the supper. Or she doesn’t order the right kind of groceries at Peter Devine’s on the market.

  My father gets pretty mad a lot.

  But he never hits. He told me his father used to beat him with a whip and that’s why he never hits us. And he never will.

  But he sure can yell and curse and call you names and break stuff and throw chairs around and slam doors and boot basins and things around the house. One time he threw his pisspot down the stairs. Lucky there wasn’t too much in it. He keeps the pisspot beside the bed because my mother stays in the bathroom so long sometimes that he can’t wait.

  Once when she was in there for about an hour he yelled at the door, “What are ya doin’? Washin’ yerself with a Q-tip?”

  Washing your whole body with a Q-tip? A little stick with cotton batting on the end that you use to clean out your ears?

  He makes me laugh sometimes, my father does. In a cruel sort of way.

  Once, when my mother was in the bathroom for so long and he was pounding on the door with his fist so that the door was rattling and shaking, he shouted, “Yer gonna be sorry because I’m tellin’ ya fer the last time I can’t wait so don’t blame me fer what’s goin’ to happen!”

  Then he went and got a straw and a glass of water from the kitchen and he filled his mouth with water and poked the straw through the keyhole of the bathroom door and blew the stream of water into the bathroom.

  My mother was screaming, “You monster!” and he was shouting, “I told ya, I told ya you’d be sorry! A man can’t wait forever on a woman to get out of the bathroom. He’ll do anything, a man will, to empty out his bladder!”

  They’re gone on the streetcar to the funeral. First St. Brigid’s Church, then to Notre Dame Cemetery.

  To put Granny in the ground. That’s what my father said. “We’re gonna put Granny in the ground.”

  Minding Phil should be easy. He’s upstairs wagging his head.

  I can read the Ottawa Journal for a while in peace and quiet. In the paper there’s a picture of a can of Spam the same as we have in our icebox. The paper says that the Allied troops in the Second World War which is nearly over ate 250 million cans of Spam so far.

  I go to the icebox and make myself a Spam sandwich with Pan Dandy bread. The label on the can says: chopped pork shoulder meat with ham, salt, water, sugar and sodium nitrate.

  I read everything that’s written down anywhere. I can’t help it. My granny told me to always read everything. She said everything you see that’s written down, “You read it!” While I’m eating the Spam sandwich I’m thinking of my friend Buz Sawyer who lied about his age so he could go to the war and fly airplanes.

  Maybe he’s having a Spam sandwich right now too. Me and Buz. I hope he’s home soon.

  We miss him. He always protected us. Me and Billy.

  I put down the Ottawa Journal and go and get one of Granny’s National Geographic magazines out of the cellar. The one I’m reading is about spiders.

  There’s a big colored picture of a special spider called a trap door spider.

  Trap door spiders dig tube-like burrows in the ground which they seal with a hinged lid or trap door. The spider holds the trap shut with its fangs until it senses vibrations made by passing prey. Then the spider rushes out, seizes the victim, and drags it into the burrow.

  Reading this I imagine being the victim.

  The trap door spider has multiple (8) eyes, 2 small jaws and fangs. It paralyzes its prey then rubs and crushes its victim. Each leg is divided in seven segments. Cephalothorax and abdomen are separated by a narrow “waist” or pedicle.

  I hold the picture of the spider up close and stare into its eyes. I’m waiting for the eight legs to scurry out and grab me. Seize me, drag me away, paralyze me, rub me, crush me.

  It’s scaring me but I can’t look away.

  Billy Batsons at the door. And Phil is coming downstairs. I let Billy in. He sees Phil. Billy’s a bit afraid of Phil.

  “SHAZAM!” says Billy and shuts his eyes. He’s pretending to change into Captain Marvel in case Phil starts acting up.

  I show Billy the National Geographic about the trap door spider. I hold the big colored picture of the spider up to Billy’s face and try to hypnotize him. Phil’s trying to bang on the magazine and maybe rip the pages. It’s no use. You can’t do anything when Phil’s around. I put away the magazine and get the rubber ball that my grampa used to bounce off his head before he went to the Home.

  We sit on the floor and roll the ball around to keep Phil busy. The ball rolls in behind Phil’s diaper pail in the corner. The pail has a big dent in it half the size of the pail.

  “See where my father kicked the pail?” I tell Billy. “My father calls the pail Old Faithful. I know what he means by that. Old Faithful is a geyser in a big park somewhere that shoots hot water up in the air once a day — never fails. I read about it in the National Geographic.”

  My mother and father were arguing and fighting about money. There was n
o money to pay the milkman. Phil was howling. Phil’s full dirty diaper pail was there on the floor. My father kicked it so hard that the water and diapers and everything else in the pail flew right up to the ceiling like an explosion of an underground geyser.

  “Right up to the ceiling,” says Billy, looking up at the stain.

  Billy’s keeping an eye on Phil. Phil can be pretty mean sometimes — try to push you downstairs maybe, or hit you with a stick or try to throw a rock at you.

  Billy’s saying his father never did anything like kick Old Faithful. Billy’s father would never yell at him or make fun of him in front of people.

  Once, in the winter, we were chopping ice in front of our door to get a big puddle of ice water to run out onto the street. My father and me, chopping ice together. Then along comes Billy with his ax to help out and after we chopped for a while my father all of a sudden says I’m not chopping right and that Billy’s a lot better at chopping than I am and a better worker than me and that I am just a useless tool is what I am.

  A useless tool.

  Billy tells me his father has a nice soft voice and never yells and smells really nice. He says he remembers how nice his father smells. He smells like leather or sweet tobacco from his pipe. Or shaving soap. My father smells sometimes of Aqua Velva.

  Aqua Velva is stuff in a bottle that stings your face after you shave. Once, while I was watching my father shave, I saw him take a big drink out of his Aqua Velva bottle.

  Billy’s lucky to have a father like he has.

  We guess he’ll be home soon, now that the war’s almost over. Him and Buz.

  There’s nothing to do but mind Phil.

  We read stuff to him out of the Ottawa Journal.

  There’s a picture of a cow advertising milk and ice cream. The cow is saying, “If it’s Borden’s, it’s got to be good!” We read that to Phil trying to sound like the cow. Phil doesn’t like it. He starts howling. Then we read him, “Kellogg’s Rice Krispies go snap crackle and pop!”

  He howls some more.

  To calm him down we turn on the radio and try and get the programs. The ones my mother listens to in the afternoon.