by Brian Doyle
Is Billy Batson!
22
Granny’s Umbrella
FLAP SLAP, flap. I’m heading home.
The streets are full. People are kissing and dancing. Bobby soxers and old men. Flags are waving. Car horns. Noise makers. Confetti. Snakes of people. Kids cheering, dogs barking, babies and old people being pushed in carriages and chairs, boys running and darting in and out, girls laughing and flirting and fixing each others ribbons.
Here comes Mr. Lipshitz in his wagon. He looks awake. His wagon is full of kids banging pans and pots with sticks. His horse looks like he’s walking straighter than he usually does. He’s celebrating too.
It starts pouring hot rain.
“It’s only a shower! Just a shower! Keep dancing! Let’s get soaking wet!”
There’s blocked traffic. Dynamite caps exploding under the wheels of the streetcars. Decorated cars and ice trucks and milk wagons, beer in the gutter, church bells ring, firecrackers, rockets, whistles, bonfires, little parades, sticks and pots, banging, rubbing washboards, blowing old bugles, burning and hanging Hirohito, stringing paper on the wires, soaked to the skin, sirens, streetcar bells, school bells, train whistles…
In the middle of the lacrosse field on Angel Square there’s a piano sitting. A guy is playing “Roll Out the Barrel!” and a little crowd is singing it.
All of a sudden an awful thought covers me like a big black blanket.
Mr. George is going to do the same thing to Billy as he did to me.
There’s a stack of horseballs steaming in rainwater. The horseballs remind me of Buz Sawyer playing hockey. Buz, the best stick handler on the street.
In the winter we use a frozen horseball as a puck. The street is our rink. We use the snowbanks as the boards for the rink. The rink is five blocks long. Cobourg Street from Rideau down to St. Patrick. Everybody on the street plays. Buz can stickhandle a frozen horseball through everybody all the way down the street. There’s usually two teams. Buz is on one team. Everybody else is on the other team. He starts at the top of the street and stickhandles the frozen horseball for five blocks through every kid in Lowertown who wants to try and stop him.
He’s also the best shooter.
He can wrist shot the frozen horseball and knock the mailman’s hat off. He can drive one through your mail slot. He’s the best. I wish he was here right now. He’d tell me what to do.
I knock on Mrs. Batson’s door and she answers it.
“Martin,” she says. “Billy’s not here. He’s gone to the show with some boys from choir.”
“Mrs. Batson,” I say. “There’s a bad man at choir and he’s going to try and hurt Billy.”
Mrs. Batson lets me in the house. I’ve never been in here before.
I tell some about Mr. George and me. Not all. Not much. I’m too ashamed. Just enough. I tell her Billy’s in the show with Mr. George. She grabs her purse.
“Let’s go,” she says. And we hurry out the door and down the street.
We’re the only ones not celebrating.
Laughing and crying, kissing and hugging, shouting and climbing, cannons and air raid sirens, loud radios and record players turned up full, throwing everything up in the air, riding on the roofs of cars and streetcars, drums and baseball bats and tin pans, homemade costumes, men on crutches, kids in bathing suits in the rain, butter pails to pound, “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!” An old woman is crying against a post. Smoke bombs, toilet paper streamers, firemen, police, and the crowds sing “Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun!”
Mrs. Batson buys two tickets and we go into the Français theater. On the screen Abbott and Costello are marching with all the soldiers. When all the soldiers turn left Costello turns right by mistake. Everybody in the theater is laughing.
“Billy! Billy!” Mrs. Batson calls out. “Billy, where are you?”
People in the seats are telling her to sit down. Sit down and shut up. We go right up to the back. I see Mr. George get up and go out the aisle on the far side and run down the stairs. Billy is sitting there. We go in to him. He’s crying.
We say come with us were going home.
Mr. George has disappeared. Run away.
Back at the Batsons’ house I tell Mrs. Batson and Billy more about Mr. George and Heney Park.
I feel like we’re in a movie. Billy is Captain Marvel and I’m Alan Ladd. When I’m explaining to Mrs. Batson, she’s Veronica Lake or maybe Dorothy Lamour or maybe Barbara Stanwyck or maybe Judy Garland. I tell some more about what happened in Heney Park. I let it out bit by bit as the movie camera goes around us sitting there. I’m not me saying this. I’m Alan Ladd so it’s all right. I tell some more. Not all. Not everything. Just some. Now there’s dramatic movie music playing in my head. Tell more. Tell all. Enough.
Now Billy tells. About being in the show with Mr. George. It’s the same with Billy. What Mr. George did to me. Mrs. Batson is crying. If only Mr. Batson were around. Mr. George did stuff to Billy in the organ pipe loft too.
Now Billy hates Mr. George too.
If only Mr. Batson were around. He could go and maybe kill Mr. George.
Now the movie we're in is changing.
On the wall is a photograph of a handsome man. Its Mr. Batson before he got sick. Mrs. Batson starts telling about him. What he was like. A kind, smart man.
This was before they moved to Papineau Street. Billy was just a baby. Mr. Batson started to get sick. He’d disappear for days. Come home dirty and torn. He got fired from his job at the paper mill and got a job at the slaughterhouse.
The slaughterhouse.
Everything is going slow in Mrs. Batsons and Billy’s living room. Everything seems so slow. And getting bigger. The picture on the wall. Mrs. Batson’s voice. Before they moved to Papineau. The slaughterhouse. It feels like we’re all under water in here.
“And then,” Mrs. Batson is saying, her voice getting slower and bigger, “one day he came home, his face bleeding. He’d been in a fight or something, in Strathcona Park, near Baron Strathcona’s fountain. His eye was badly damaged. He later lost it. Lost his eye. Had to have a glass eye put in. After that, in the hospital he attacked some people and he was arrested and put away eventually—brain disease…very sad…”
Mrs. Batson’s voice trailing away…
My granny!
Oh, Granny it was you wasn’t it? You were so brave. You stopped suddenly and turned around near Baron Strathcona’s fountain and you…
Should I tell them, Granny, that it was you?
I wish you were alive and here right now to help me! To help us!
23
Crown Imperial
WHILE I'm getting ready for church, putting on my good shirt, my mothers moaning on the bed. She’s talking about when Phil was born. When I was born.
“It was the hottest day of the year that day when you twins were born. Everything was sticking to everything. I could see the sweat on the doctor’s face. The nurse’s uniform was soaking wet. I could hardly breathe it was so hot. In that room at the Grace Hospital there was only one window. No breeze at all. They had a fan blowing but it was just blowing more hot air in. And then the doctor said to put an ice bag on my head but they were out of ice so they were putting cold cloths on me…then they put you twins on me, one in each arm and everything was soaked…
“You and then Phil…”
While she’s talking I’m looking in her good drawer where I’m not supposed to look unless she’s there.
My father’s out in the yard with Phil.
The drawer that smells of perfume where she keeps her best things. Secret silk handkerchiefs and lace and braid and brooches and barrettes and letters and a long hat pin with a carved head. This little drawer about the size of a shoe box in Lefebvre’s Shoe Market slides in and out as quiet as satin.
It’s the best part of the house, this drawer.
When I was a little kid I wanted to get in and live in this drawer. Crawl inside it and stay there in th
e dark and never come out. With the perfume and the silk and the letters that smell like Blue Grass perfume.
Away from Phil.
On my way out the door I grab Granny’s umbrella.
I knock on Billy’s door and we take off for church choir.
We have a plan.
Nobody knows this but Billy and me, but we’ve quit choir.
We’re never going back. We don’t care what anybody says.
We don’t walk the usual way. We don’t want to come to the back of the church where Mr. Skippy or the choir boys or Mr. George will see us. And we don’t want to be early.
There’s a big crowd going to church this Sunday. Biggest crowd ever. The church is full. It’s because of the end of the war.
The sign outside the front of the church says this:
A Day of National Thanksgiving
Today a special pipe organ recital
CROWN IMPERIAL
by
SIR WILLIAM WALTON
organist:
Mr. Theodore Donald Samuel George
Theodore Donald Samuel? Read everything. What a name! T.D.S. George. A name we hate.
Billy knows all about the piece, CROWN IMPERIAL, that Mr. George is going to play. Mr. George is very proud of his playing. Specially this. On this day of National Thanksgiving. Billy has turned the pages for him when he practiced over and over again. Billy knows all about CROWN IMPERIAL.
Now the people are all in church and we can hear the organ and now the choir singing and carrying the cross in to take their places.
O God our help in ages past
I sing along like Bing Crosby. So does Billy.
Now we hear the Reverend start the service.
Now we go around the back of the church and in and down and then up the side stairs to the organ loft.
I lift Billy up and he reaches the key to the door. We open it and go into the pipe room and close the quiet door. We can see through the slats in the wall Mr. George down there sitting at the organ. We can see Mr. Skippy and the choir. We can see Reverend and quite a bit of the audience.
But nobody can see us because we're in the dark.
Billy told me all about the piece Mr. George is going to play for everybody. The piece he’s so proud of. CROWN IMPERIAL.
Look at him sitting there. He can hardly wait to show the hundreds of people out there what a great and wonderful player he is.
CROWN IMPERIAL is about eight or nine minutes long. It was composed to celebrate the crowning of King Edward number eight but he quit just before they could crown him so they played it for his brother King George when they gave him the crown instead.
Maybe Mr. George thinks he’s King George, sitting there. He can hardly wait to blow these Sandy Hillers right out of their seats with CROWN IMPERIAL.
Billy told me the piece starts off with the TOCCATA, a big wild loud exciting show-offy part for about two and a half minutes and then it goes quieter and nobler and majestic into the PROCESSIONAL where the king probably walks up to get his crown but then Mr. George gets to play the TOCCATA again only even bigger this time and then the PROCESSIONAL over again this time more noble and majestic and then the CODA gets played. The big finish, Billy calls it. In the CODA you think it’s going to end but it never does.
And there’s one long high note that sounds like a trum pet that is played so that you think that the CODA is actually over but it’s not.
“It’s never over until it’s over,” Mr. George told Billy.
That’s when he had Billy up here in the organ loft and showed him the exact pipe for that one long high note.
Poor Billy…
What Mr. George made him do up here.
Mr. George loves this part best of all. The big finish. He loves it when the audience thinks it’s over but it’s not. It’s Mr. George, the boss of the whole audience. Mr. George will tell them when it’s over. He’s the boss. He’s the king. Mr. King George.
Six times he plays that long, long trumpet note which is a very high C, says Billy. Five times. Each time you think it’s over but it’s not. Then, finally, the sixth time, it is actually over.
Billy takes me to the pipe that is one of the smaller ones. There’s a piece of tape stuck on the side of the pipe. You can barely see it in the almost dark room.
The most important pipe. “Trumpet-C” the tape says.
This is Mr. George’s main note.
We whisper, Billy and me, into each other’s ears, going over our plan. Everything’s ready.
I’m holding my granny’s umbrella. I show Billy the sharp end.
“I have to tell you something, Billy,” I whisper into Billy’s ear.
“What?” whispers Billy into my ear.
“Remember your mother said your father was in a fight or something and got his eye poked out?” I whisper.
“Yes?” whispers Billy in my ear.
“It was my granny who did it. He tried to attack her and she poked this sharp end of this umbrella in his eye.” “Your granny?”
“Yes.”
Billy stares at the long sharp point. He feels it with his fingers. Touches on it. There are tears on Billy’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry it was her who hurt your daddy.”
“It’s okay, Martin,” whispers Billy. “It’s not your fault.”
“Was he really once a nice man?” I whisper in Billy’s ear.
“That’s what my mother told me,” Billy whispers. “But I don’t remember.”
“Maybe he wanted to be but he couldn’t,” I say, forgetting to whisper.
“Maybe,” whispers Billy. “Or maybe not.”
“Are you sad, Billy?” I whisper.
“No!” says Billy. “SHAZAM!” says Billy. “Let’s get Mr. George!” says Billy, forgetting to whisper.
Reverend is starting his sermon now.
We go over our plan again.
It will happen during the CODA, the last part. The CODA is one minute and twenty seconds long. Not a long time to get the job done.
I’m looking out at all the people. I don’t know anybody in this audience. There’s nobody here from Lowertown. These people are all from Sandy Hill. They’re all wearing pretty nice clothes. The Sandy Hillers. And they’re all looking at Reverend doing his sermon. They’re looking at him but they don’t seem to be listening to him.
Some of them look like they’re going to fall over. Go to sleep. Reverend has a very boring voice. They always have a nice sleep when he does his sermon.
Now Reverend says he’s going to deliver a short sermon today because he wants to leave room for the very special presentation on this day of National Thanksgiving — Mr. T.D.S. George on our wonderful pipe organ playing CROWN IMPERIAL by Sir William Walton, Master of the King’s Music.
Now I think I see the ketchup lady and the turkey lady.
There’s one more hymn and a few more prayers and the service is just about over. The choir doesn’t sound very good, I don’t think, without me and Billy in it.
Mr. George is going to start playing. He raises his arms up in the air and attacks the organ keys like he’s an animal attacking its prey. Now he’s playing the TOCCATA like mad, waving his head around and raising his shoulders and throwing his chest in and out! The sound here in the pipe room makes you feel like your teeth are going to fall out.
“Look at him,” Billy yells in my ear. “He didn’t act like that when he was practicing.”
Darce the Arse is turning the pages for Mr. George. Darce the Arse will be Mr. George’s next victim in Imbro’s Restaurant and then Heney Park.
The audience is wide awake now.
Who could sleep through this?
They’re all watching Mr. George writhing and squirming and stretching while he’s playing. Some of them are pointing. They think he’s strange.
Now the grace and majesty of the PROCESSIONAL gets Mr. George moving around on his organ bench like he’s some kind of a dancer or somebody trying t
o kiss the air…
Now the TOCCATA again, bigger now, noisier and then the PROCESSIONAL again and now…
“Get ready,” says Billy.
The audience looks like they’re wondering what’s going to happen now. Mr. George starts the CODA. He looks like he’s going to explode.
He has a hundred eyes. His little jaws are working up and down. The reddish brown hair that grows down both cheeks nearly to his chin looks like fangs. His long arms and fingers are moving up and down and across the keyboards and reaching to push and pull the organ stops and tap the buttons so fast that he seems to have many arms and his legs with the seven wounds are dangling and feeling and probing under the organ on the pedals in so many directions that he seems to have more than two.
He doesn’t look human.
Mr. George plays the first high Trumpet-C.
“Now!” says Billy and he taps the Trumpet-C sleeve down two inches.
The second of the six high C notes of the CODA is
now too high. It sounds like somebody just stabbed somebody in the stomach with a rusty butcher knife.
The audience’s mouths fall open. They can’t believe their ears. Mr. George is looking at his keys. He looks like he’s been struck by lightning.
I grab my granny’s umbrella and start on the bigger pipes, the middle notes, bring down each sleeve as far as I can.
Now the CODA sounds like a war.
I pull down more sleeves. All these notes are now too high.
Mr. George keeps playing. He looks like he has both hands inside bees’ nests. No matter what he does, it sounds horrible. He’s trying different chords. He won’t quit. Granny’s umbrella pulls down more sleeves.
The third high C is a strangling cat screaming.
The CODA is now an earthquake.
People in the audience are covering their ears. Some people are trying to leave. Kids are screaming.
The fourth and fifth high C sound like all the sickness in the world and the CODA is now an atomic bomb.
Mr. George is frothing around his mouth.
He’s still playing, trying different keys, different buttons. I’m pulling down every sleeve I can with my granny’s umbrella handle. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.