Boy O'Boy

by Brian Doyle

  “Road of Life,” then “Ma Perkins,” then “Pepper Young’s Family,” then “Right to Happiness.” The programs calm Phil down. It’s the music and the quiet talking.

  Cheap comes in the room yawning.

  The sun is slanting in the window.

  Billy goes home.

  Now my mother and father are at the door.

  They are quiet. Not fighting.

  Granny’s in the ground now.

  9

  “Who’s Coming to Me!”

  ON A SIGN near the door of the Protestant church there’s the story of who St. Alban was. I read it again. I read it each time I come to choir practice, even though I’ve read it before. I can’t help it. The sign tells the story of how St. Alban was the first Christian martyr in Britain.

  A martyr is somebody who gives up his life for other people. Like the beautiful Aztec boy with his heart ripped out, I guess.

  There was a priest on the run from the Romans because it was the sentence of death if you were caught being a Christian. In this modern world you’d get fried in the electric chair — in old Sparky like in Crime Does Not Pay comics which my mother doesn’t want me to read or Sheena the Jungle Girl because Sheena never has very many clothes on. Anyway, you’d get scourged and beheaded. Scourged means whipped with whips until your skin falls off.

  This priest talked Alban, who was a Roman soldier, into being a Christian. One night the soldiers came looking for the priest on the run and Alban hid the priest under some hay and put on his robes and gave himself up to the soldiers and said he was the priest.

  Then the soldiers scourged him and just so he’d never do that again they beheaded him.

  That’s how you get to be St. Alban.

  Into the church. Now the ten stairs to the dark landing. I’m late. I can hear the singing. Skip stair number nine. Hang on to the railing that you can’t quite get your fingers all the way around. Hop to the landing. Then turn right in the dark and go down five more.

  But wait, there’s somebody with me on the landing.

  “Sh!” he says. “You’re late.” Big hands on me. He lifts me down the five stairs to the doorway to the choir hall. He looks out.

  “Okay!” he says. “All clear. Go!”

  It’s Mr. George.

  Mr. Skippy’s back is turned. I slip into my place and pick up my hymn book and start singing.

  Mr. Skippy turns for the “Amen!”

  “A miracle!” Mr. Skippy says. “A boy is invisible and only seconds later, he’s visible! How can this be possible? An empty bench becomes an occupied bench. Oh, this modern world! What will they think of next! Sing well, my summer boy!”

  Everybody’s smiling.

  Mr. George takes over the piano. Mr. George is the summer piano and organ player.

  At choir recess Mr. George has a game he plays with the younger boys. We move all the chairs and benches back. He pretends there’s a line across the middle of the room. The older boys go outside and sneak cigarettes.

  Mr. George gets on one side of the line and he stretches out his long arms. He says he’s the goalie. He stretches, bends out his long legs — there’s something funny about his legs, the way they are joined — and stretches out his long arms and his big hands and he moves back and forward across the line.

  We can only go one at a time. We run and try to get by him. We’re like a soccer ball trying to get past Mr. George, the goalie. He moves back and forward, back and forward. His face is there, the thick glasses, the brown red hair down his cheeks, his bottom teeth over.

  The boys, one at a time.

  “Five cents if you get by me! Five cents if you get by me and touch the wall! Line up! Everybody gets a turn.”

  Mr. George’s eyes are burning behind his thick glasses and his red brown hair is flickering in the choir-room lights above.

  The first boy goes. He runs at Mr. George and then ducks at the last minute under Mr. George’s arm and makes it to the wall. Mr. George fishes into the pocket of his army pants and comes out with a nickel and flips it back to the wall without looking. He never takes his eyes off us. With the thick glasses and the lights above he has many eyes. He’s hypnotizing us.

  The boy picks up the nickel after it bounces off the wall. He laughs and jumps up and down and spits on the nickel and puts it in his pocket and pats his pocket.

  “This is easy!” shouts the boy. “I want to try again!”

  “No, no,” says Mr. George. “You have to go to the end of the line. Everybody has a turn! Who’s next? Come on. Let’s go!”

  The next boy runs up. He’s like a little fish. He dives between Mr. George’s jointed legs and escapes to the wall. Everybody cheers. Mr. George flips another nickel over his shoulder.

  “Next boy! Next boy! Hurry! Hurry! Next boy! Who’s coming to me!”

  Billy is next. He steps up. “SHAZAM!” says Billy. BOOM! He flashes around the end of Mr. George’s hand, quick as Captain Marvel. Five cents please.

  I’m the next boy.

  I’m thinking of when I play soccer with a tennis ball. To score a goal I push the ball to my left, then I pretend I’m cutting to the right and then I keep to the left and kick the ball into the net.

  I run toward Mr. George and move to the left and then pretend to go to the right. Mr. George moves over and for a minute I think I’ve got him, but my shoes…

  My shoes, my Lefebvre’s Shoe Market special, on sale, way too big cork-soled runners tangle me up and I can’t change back to my left and he grabs me and pulls me into him and squeezes me. I’m squirming and I’m mad and trying to get away because I don’t want to be the first one caught.

  I hate to be no good at something.

  I can feel his rough whiskers on my neck and his hot breath in my ear.

  But now I feel his arms relax and start to let go and I hear him shouting, “He’s getting away! He’s getting away!” and he lets me slip away and I’m to the wall.

  I hear the coin hit the wall. It sounds a little different. Heavier. I pick it up. It’s not a nickel.

  It’s a whole quarter!

  10

  A Crazy Man

  THERE’S something happening, something bad happening on Papineau Street. Its the middle of the night and everybody’s up — even Phil. My father’s pulling on his pants and my mother’s wrapped in her big nightgown that’s like a big white towel with a belt tied over the top of her belly. I get some clothes on Phil and we go out into the street.

  There’s a big crowd. There’s two policemen with flashlights talking to Mrs. Batson.

  Billy’s standing across the street.

  “Somebody came in our house and now he’s in there and he won’t come out!”

  Billy’s scared. He’s not saying SHAZAM. He’s shaking. The police are shining flashlights in the Batsons’ windows.

  The street is filling up. A police wagon drives up. Ringing his bell. A whole lot of Horseball Laflamme’s big family are out watching. Maybe all of them. Lenny Lipshitz is there and his mother. And here comes his father. See how wide awake he is! And Mrs. Sawyer is now talking to Mrs. Batson. Now she puts her arms around her and Mrs. Batson puts her head on her shoulder and sobs.

  There’s a whole lot of people from Cobourg Street and from down on Augusta and even from across Angel Square maybe.

  If s almost like a street dance or a party.

  “A crazy man is in the Batsons’ house!”

  “He tried to kill the Batsons!”

  “He pounded and pounded on the door and then he broke the door because they wouldn’t let him in.”

  “Who is he?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Why is he crazy? What’s the matter with him? Is it because of the war? Is he a soldier?”

  “No, he wasn’t in uniform. At least not a vet’s uniform.” “Looked like whites. Like hospital clothes.”

  “Maybe he’s from the loony bin.”

  “The nut house.”

  “There’s lots of
them running around.”

  “I think it’s because of the war.”

  “The war is almost over except for those Japanese!” “Do you think they’ll ever give up?”

  “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  Two policemen push in the door. There’s something holding it shut but they get it open and go in with their flashlights and their sticks.

  One policeman’s got a gun.

  There’s a lot of shouting. The policemen come out holding a man in white clothes. The man looks wild. He’s a short man with a big head. There’s blood on his knuckles and his cheek is bleeding.

  “The policeman hit him with his stick right in the face!”

  The wagon shines a searchlight on the man. They take him to the wagon. His feet are hardly touching the road. He glares at Billy on the way by. His face is full of something. Terror. And there’s something wrong with one of his eyes. He has a glass eye.

  “He’s terrified!”

  “He’s crazy!”

  “He’s nutty as a fruitcake!”

  “He’s a raving lunatic!”

  “He’s not all there!”

  “He’s got a screw loose!”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  The bell on the wagon is ringing. Phil is howling.

  The policemen go in the house with Billy and Mrs. Batson and shut the door. You can see them in the living room talking quiet to Billy’s mother. The wagon is gone.

  Everybody’s heading out. The party is over.

  All the Laflammes go back in their place. How do they all fit in there?

  There’s hardly anybody around now. My father carries Phil into the house. My mother and Mrs. Sawyer are talking and shaking their heads. Then Mrs. Sawyer goes in and shuts her door quiet, so quiet. The lights are going out on Papineau Street.

  My mother and I are left. We’re standing in front of our step. She looks long at me. In my eyes. There’s deep sadness in my mother’s face.

  “That man,” she says to me, “is Billy Batson’s father…”

  Billy Batson’s father!

  11

  Poor Billy

  I WAKE UP yelling. Because of a horrible dream. I dreamt I woke up and I was just like Phil. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t go to the toilet, I couldn’t catch a ball, I looked horrible in the mirror, like a fish, I had goobers in my nose, food hanging out of my mouth, yellow slime in the corner of my eyes, crooked teeth.. .and howling like a wounded animal…

  In my dream I went outside. Phil was trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk.

  Phil is talking. He’s explaining science: “If the temperature were 95 degrees on a hot summer day like today and the cement was sufficiently new and smooth, the sand in the cement mix being of a fairly high percentage of minerals for conductivity, it is conceivable that one could literally fry an egg on the sidewalk…” The egg is sizzling away on the sidewalk. I’m trying to say “Phil” but my mouth doesn’t work. Suddenly Phil crawls over like a crab and with huge jaws clamps on my leg… I’m pulling, pulling away but I can’t escape… I’m trying to kill Phil with a big iron bar…

  While I’m waking up and yelling out of my dream I see Phil over in his bed, lying on his side, looking at me.

  I get up, take Phil downstairs and have some snap crackle and pop and try to feed Phil some to help my mother but he spits most of it out and then tries to throw my bowl on the floor.

  My mother is talking about Billy’s father.

  “Count your blessings,” says my mother. “At least your father is in the category of normal Sort of.”

  It’s time for ice so I get my wagon out of the shed.

  On the front step our enamel basin is lying upside down. My father probably kicked it out the door when he was leaving for work. He works for the Civil Service. He calls it the Silver Service. His office is in the big Connaught Building on Sussex Street. He calls it the Cannot Building.

  The Cannot Building on Such and Such Street instead of Sussex Street.

  He often boots around our enamel basin. He boots it downstairs, or into the cellar or out into the yard or up against the wall. There’s not much enamel left on the basin and it’s full of dents.

  And sometimes he kicks Old Faithful but not so much because the dent in it is so big Old Faithful doesn’t shoot up as high as it did the first time he booted it.

  On the way up St. Patrick Street and over to St. Andrew I’m thinking what my mother said about Billy’s father. How the Batsons moved in on Papineau Street about six years ago before the war and how she always thought there was something odd about Mrs. Batsons story about Mr. Batson being sent over before the war even started. And how she told Billy that his father was a war hero and how Billy then made up the rest of the stuff about what a great dad he was and how nice he was to everybody and all that about how they’d build things together and how nice he smelled and how kind he was.

  Poor Billy.

  They locked his daddy up in the loony bin because something happened to his brain and he started attacking people. Jumping out at strangers and chasing them.

  On St. Andrew Street there’s a lot of broken bottles and streamers and party hats lying around. They must have had another big street dance for the repats last night.

  I wonder when Buz is coming. Soon, I hope.

  Wait! Here comes Ketchy Balls! I hide behind a telephone post. He doesn’t see me. He must live around here. I’ve never seen him in the summer. He looks different. He looks almost human. Almost like a real person. He hasn’t got his suit on. Probably hasn’t even got his stick with him. But you never know. He probably does have his stick with him. Hits kids all summer just for practice.

  Once, in school, Ketchy Balls told me I couldn’t go out for recess with the rest of the class because he wanted me to stay in and help him with a job he had to do. Ketchy Balls is not just a math work teacher. He’s also a gymnasium teacher. The job we had to do was go into a storeroom and lock the door and blow up some basketballs and some soccer balls with a bicycle pump.

  The pump was hard to push down even with two hands so he put his big hairy hand over my two hands and squeezed so hard while pushing down on the pump that he almost broke my fingers and tears came to my eyes and I yelled out.

  “Don’t be such a sissy!” he whispered to me and squeezed harder. “And don’t you dare yell, or you’ll get the secret stick!”

  E.A.Bourque ICE/GLACE is one block away on St. Andrew. I can smell the wet sawdust from here.

  I love it in the cool dark ice house.

  I drag my wagon in there. You go in the office first. You give the dime to the man and get your ticket. There’s always two men. They’re drinking beer and talking about the war. They wish they could’ve gone but maybe next time.

  Outside the office deep in the ice house I give my ticket to the man there. His head reminds me of my father’s pisspot.

  “Hi there, pretty boy,” he says to me. “Where didja get the shoes?”

  “At Lefebvre’s Shoe Market,” I say.

  “What’s wrong with them?” he says.

  “Nothing’s wrong with them,” I say.

  “They’re too long, aren’t they? Those feet, you look like a penguin.”

  “And your head reminds me of my father’s pisspot,” I whisper.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Pretty boy smart ass like you could get a slap in the ear!” he says and puts a block of ice on my wagon. Its smaller than it’s supposed to be.

  “If you hurry home with that there might be some left when you get there! Smart ass pretty boy!”

  I pull the wagon down St. Andrew and over to St. Patrick and here’s Billy come to meet me. He knows I always go for ice on this day. I’m trying to keep it in the shade. There’s already water dripping out of my wagon, leaving a trail.

  “My father says you could maybe fry a fried egg on the sidewalk toda
y,” I say to Billy. “It’s going to be so hot.” “My father used to say that all the time too,” says Billy. I look at Billy. I’m going to say it to him. I do say it to him.

  “Mrs. Sawyer told my mother that that man last night was your father.”

  Billy looks at me.

  “SHAZAM!” Billy says. “Mrs. Sawyer tells lies.” “Who was that crazy man last night?”

  “I don’t know. Just some crazy crazy man, I guess.”

  There’s a guy on the veranda of his little house on St. Patrick Street next door to Petigorsky Shoe Repair. He’s got his dog. He pets the dog and he pets the dog and he rubs the dog’s stomach and rolls the dog and he loves the dog.

  Billy can’t keep his eyes off the guy and his dog. They’re having so much fun together. They like each other so much.

  Billy wishes he was that dog.

  12

  Organ Pipes

  WE’RE A LITTLE early, Billy and me, for choir.

  Mr. George is taking five of us summer boys up to the choir loft to see the organ pipes. The room is up over the altar in the church where all the organ music comes from. There’s Billy and me and Dick Dork, Darce the Arse and Dumb Doug.

  Billy named these summer boys. We don’t know what their real names are.

  We go up a steep staircase in back of the altar.

  Mr. George opens the door to the loft with a key and then I see him reach up and hang the key back on the nail. High up on the side of the door jamb.

  “This is out of bounds, my summer boys,” says Mr. George. “Nobody’s allowed in this room unless they are with me. Is that clear?”

  In the room there are rows of pipes standing straight up and down. At one end of the row they are as big and tall as stove pipes. At the other end as thin and short as little flutes. Each pipe has a wedged hole in it part way up like in a whistle. The top of each pipe is open. It has a sleeve that Mr. George can pull up or push down to make the pipe longer or shorter. That’s the way he tunes the organ. To make sure the notes are right. If he makes the pipe just a tiny bit longer, then that one note is a tiny bit lower. If he taps the sleeve on top and makes the pipe a little bit shorter, then the note that pipe makes is a little bit higher.