by Brian Doyle
Also by Brian Doyle
Boy O’Boy
Mary Ann Alice
The Low Life
Uncle Ronald
Spud Sweetgrass
Covered Bridge
Easy Avenue
Angel Square
Up to Low
You Can Pick Me Up at Peggy’s Cove
Hey, Dad!
Spud in Winter
Spud in Winter
BRIAN DOYLE
Copyright © 1995 by Brian Doyle
New paperback edition 2006
10 09 08 07 06 1 2 3 4 5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright
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Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801, Toronto, Ontario M5V 2K4
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program
the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP)
and the Ontario Arts Council.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloging in Publication
Doyle, Brian
Spud in winter
ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-755-5 – ISBN-10: 0-88899-755-8
I. Title.
PS8557.087S58 2006 jC813’.54 C2006-902347-6
Printed and bound in Canada
Thanks to Ian McKercher who introduced us to
Mongolian Fire Pot fun. Thanks to Mike Paradis for giving me B. Faroni.
Thanks to the Glebe Collegiate E.S.L. students for
allowing me to borrow their beautiful names.
Thanks to Ryan Doyle for filling me in on CISTI.
And thanks to Jenny Doyle, my funny sister-in-law,
for giving me the school memory sequence.
Let this book be dedicated to our second grandchild
who, at this writing, waits in the wings to make an
entrance and be named.
I
I can replay it all any time I want to. Or even when I don’t want to. My brain channel just goes on and plays it over. Sometimes it comes on a whole stack of screens, large and small screens, a whole wall of screens. I look away from it but then, I can’t help it. I have to look back. It’s hard to look away. It’s like being in a big TV warehouse sale, looking at a wall of TVs, all playing the same channel. Your eyes jump from screen to screen. You try to get away. It’s hard. You have to look!
The man comes out of Rocco’s Cafe on the corner of Anderson and Rochester Streets, across the corner from where I live. He comes down the three snowpacked stairs and walks up Anderson Street on the north side, walking slow, lots of time. Only a few steps.
Each step crunch-squeaks on the tight snow.
He walks past a brown van with no side windows. After he’s past the van he turns left into the small parking lot behind the cafe and heads towards his car.
He flicks his cigarette into the snowbank and fishes in his pocket and takes out his remote. He’s fitting the remote in his hand. Now he’s pointing the remote at his fancy car, getting ready to unlock his fancy door. Now he’s taking the second-last step he’ll ever take in his life.
He’s dressed in a pair of perfect, pressed, light-blue pants, shiny gray boots with high heels, a black belt with a fancy leather buckle, a bright-pink long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned down the front. He has no undershirt on. He has a big silver watch, diamond-shaped cufflinks, different-colored rings on his fingers and a gold chain around his neck that hangs down in the hair on his chest, and one small earring. His hair is curly and tight to his head.
He’s carrying his overcoat. It’s a record-cold day and he has this beautiful fur coat. But he’s not wearing it, he’s carrying it.
He’s carrying it because he’ll soon be in his car and it’s warm in there because he’s left it running and it’s all heated up just waiting for him.
He’s just had a nice hot cup of espresso coffee at Rocco’s Cafe, put his beautiful fur coat over his arm, waved goodbye to his friends there and walked out to get into his heated car.
His breath curls around his head like steamy perfume.
Out of a small square hole in the end of the van comes a narrow pipe.
The pipe jumps and there’s a crack, then a boom and then an echo off the houses on Rochester and Anderson Streets, the corner where I live.
The man, who just had the nice hot cup of coffee, dives head first into the side of his car and then bounces off the frozen parking lot. His arms and legs and his head don’t seem to be his own anymore. He flops down there like a doll made of cloth.
The man in the pink shirt is now down on the snow beside his fancy car. The burglar alarm in his car is yipping away as the echo of the rifle fades.
The man’s fur coat is partly over his legs, and there’s blood growing in the snow.
It’s playing on all my TV screens at once. The screens of my mind. I have to look.
The pipe disappears into the square hole in the rear of the van.
The van begins to move slow away from the curb.
It’s cold. It’s minus 31 degrees and sinking.
The tires creak and crack on the frozen solid snow of the street. The sun is bright but there’s nothing warm about it. The exhaust from the van piles up behind it like steam from a chipwagon. The windows are tinted. You can’t see the driver.
The van is a ghost.
But wait!
The driver is leaning close to the window to check his mirror as he begins to pull away from the curb. And now. Yes.
Now I see him.
Just for a second. No, not a second. Not that much.
Less than that. Just a glimpse.
Just a flash.
But it’s not enough. Or, no! Maybe it’s too much!
My memory is a stop-action. A freeze.
The driver’s face, close to the tinted window for just a flash.
I see him now. I might as well have his picture in my wallet. Or in a locket around my neck. I might as well have his picture in a frame on my bureau in my bedroom.
His face is square and strong. His jaw is dark, almost blue where he shaves. His eyes are wide apart. His lips are carved, like out of wood, and his little mustache is neat and could be drawn there with a pencil. His eyebrows are thick and almost meet each other over his nose. His forehead juts out over his small black eyes. His hair is big and black and perfect. You can tell he takes very good care of his hair. You can tell he loves his hair. That he looks in the mirror at his hair every chance he gets.
The muscles in his jaw are clenched, making his face hard.
He looks right at me but I don’t know if he sees me or not. I’m leaning up against the old brown doors that lead into my backyard. The doors and my coat are the same color.
Can you look right into a person’s face without seeing that person?
I hope so.
I hope so because I know this guy.
He’s a regular customer of my friend, Connie Pan.
Connie Pan does this guy’s hair all the time at the Hong Kong Beauty Salon where she works!
She’s often told me about him, and we laughed about how much this guy was so madly in love with his own hair! This is the guy!
And, one day, when I went into the Hong Kong Beauty Salon, she secretly poin
ted to him as he was looking in the mirror. He was putting on his scarf. You don’t need to look in a mirror to put on your scarf. But he was looking in the mirror, watching his hair as he put on his scarf. His freshly done hair. Loving his hair!
Did he see us, in the mirror, watching him watching his hair?
This guy, who helps murder people, has had the beautiful, delicate hands of Connie Pan in his hair!
II
Call me Spud.
My real name is John. John Sweetgrass. But everybody calls me Spud. Except my mom. She calls me Johnnie.
I first got called Spud when I got a job in a chip-wagon. Working with potatoes.
That was only last summer. It seems so long ago now. But it’s really only a few months ago that I met Connie Pan and then got kicked out of school (not because of Connie Pan!) — Ottawa Technical High School on Albert Street — and when I got my picture in the paper and when they said, under the picture, that I was a hero.
A hero for helping to catch a polluter named Angelo “Dumper” Stubbs.
My friend Dink the Thinker helped me to catch Dumper, but Dink didn’t get his picture in the paper.
My guidance teacher says that one of the reasons I got back in school was that getting my picture in the paper was good for my “self-esteem.” I told my guidance teacher, The Cyclops, that I felt bad that Dink didn’t get praised up, too, for what he did, how he helped me.
“That doesn’t matter,” says The Cyclops (everybody calls him that because he only has one eye). “Your friend Dink doesn’t need any more self-esteem.” Then The Cyclops looks right at me with his one eye. “He already has enough self-esteem,” says The Cyclops.
How can you have too much self-esteem? Guidance teachers. How do they know if you have enough self-esteem or not? Do they have a self-esteem meter wired into your chair that registers your self-esteem while you sit there, getting guided?
Anyway, they sent the slob, Dumper Stubbs, off to jail and I’m back in school with Dink the Thinker and Connie Pan and it’s pretty good. Mostly it’s pretty good because the teacher who got me hoofed out in the first place isn’t here anymore. Mr. Boyle, hot shot, is gone.
He’s probably half drunk somewhere, sitting in some strip joint watching the women take their clothes off while they’re standing on his table. Well, he can’t do that at Valentino’s on Somerset Street anymore because Valentino’s burned down a little while ago. Dink and I caught him coming out of there one time.
I guess things just got too hot in there.
Self-esteem.
I used to think self-esteem was when you got all steamed up about yourself. All puffed up because you were full of hot air.
My father once told me he knew an old Abo chief who was so full of self-esteem that he put on his huge, fancy, full headdress of beautiful feathers one day and got so proud of himself that he blew up.
My father said there were feathers coming down out of the sky like snowflakes for days and days after. A blizzard of feathers. A self-esteem storm.
My father was a funny man.
He was an Abo.
An Ojibway type Abo.
He’s dead now.
I loved him.
He died of a brain tumor.
I told my guidance teacher about the old Abo chief who exploded.
The Cyclops didn’t laugh or smile or anything. People who don’t laugh shouldn’t be allowed to be teachers.
I’ll probably go back to the chipwagon business next summer. Mr. Fryday, the Classical Chip Man, doesn’t need as many people to work for him in the winter, so he laid me off.
But we’re still friends.
I see him, now and again, making his rounds to some of the chipwagons he owns, all named after classical music composers.
My wagon was called Beethoven’s Chips. Maybe you’ve heard of it.
Mr. Fryday is very good for my self-esteem. He’s always praising me up every time he sees me.
He always says something like “Spud Sweetgrass! Always a pleasure to meet again with an industrious and bright representative of the younger generation such as yourself!”
And if we’re near one of his wagons, which is mostly where I run into him, he’ll say, “Have an order of Mr. Fryday’s Classical Fries, Spud Sweetgrass my boy! On the house!”
And then I always say, “You mean, on the wagon, Mr. Fryday!”
And he always laughs and lets his gold tooth twinkle.
“On the wagon! Of course! What a delightfully bright young man you are!” We always do this. In fact, I’m getting kind of sick of it to tell you the truth.
And then I always notice that he hasn’t changed that dumb sign in the window of his chipwagon. The same sign he has in all of his wagons. “Come in, we’re open!” says the sign. This sign is foolish. What it says. You don’t go in a chipwagon. You stay outside the chip-wagon. You stand outside on the sidewalk.
But I don’t bother mentioning it. It isn’t worth it. I tried to get him to change those signs in his wagons when I worked for him, but he just didn’t seem to get it.
But, as my father would have said, his heart is in the right place.
You could drive yourself crazy thinking about these sayings.
What does that really mean, anyway, “Your heart is in the right place”?
What happens if it’s in the wrong place?
What my guidance teacher, The Cyclops, doesn’t know is that I have enough self-esteem. I’ve had it since that night when I was nine.
When my parents left me alone all night on the shore of One Man Lake, with only a knife, a fishing line and one wooden match. And in the morning, when they returned, I was sitting by my fire cooking a fish for breakfast. Victorious! I survived!
My mom likes to go over to the Village Inn across the street after work to have a rye and ginger ale and talk with her friends at the table where they all used to sit when my father was alive.
She always sits in the same place.
Beside the empty chair. My father’s chair.
Where he always sat.
Nobody ever takes that chair when my mom and her friends are there. Now and then, maybe a stranger might try to sit in it or ask to borrow it but somebody always politely says no and explains it all.
Explains how my father, the Abo who played the trombone, was so loved by everybody and is so missed by everybody.
There’s only one person allowed in that chair. That’s me, John Spud Sweetgrass.
When I go over to the Village Inn sometimes to see my mom, I sit in the special chair beside her and it feels good. I like the way the others look at me and talk to me. I feel special.
Self-esteem.
III
It’s all in the paper. The Ottawa Citizen. A known criminal named Al Laromano is shot in the parking lot of Rocco’s Cafe on the corner of Anderson and Rochester Streets in Centertown, Ottawa.
Right where I live.
Don’t get me wrong. Living around where I live isn’t dangerous.
Nobody is afraid to go out at night alone around my place. You can go out all by yourself and nobody will attack you or mug you.
It’s the safest place in Ottawa around where I live.
A girl could go out at night all by herself for a walk or to the store and she wouldn’t be scared.
Grampas or grannies aren’t afraid to sleep out on the veranda by themselves on the hot summer nights.
A kid can go down to the park and the parents don’t have to worry.
It’s a safe place to live.
Except for the criminals.
If you’re a criminal, you have to be careful. You might be wiped out by the other criminals.
Around my place, the criminals are always trying to get rid of the other criminals.
And they often seem to have funny names when one of them disappears or gets killed and you read about it in the paper.
Once my friend Dink the Thinker saw in the Ottawa Citizen the name of a guy who was killed after he stole a whole
pile of money from a road construction company. His name was Hammer. Jack Hammer.
Dink started making up names that would be good for different criminals. The first one he made up was the name of the head of a gang of cigarette smugglers. Nick.
Nick O’Teen.
And the museum thief, Art Gallery. And Vic Tim, the hit man. And Mort Tuary, the body parts salesman. And the car cannibal, Axel Grease? And the guy who hijacked the huge Head and Shoulders transport truck? His name? Dan, of course. Dan Druff.
And Stu, the bank robber who locked himself in the vault by mistake? His last name? You guessed already! Pidity!
But back to Al Laromano.
The paper says it’s part of a crooks’ war and that Laromano is a suspect in another murder where two guys were gunned down in a cafe on Booth Street.
Right near my place.
The paper also says that Laromano was associated in some way with another guy, Paddy O’Doors, who was found sticking out of a sewer near a cafe on Eccles Street.
The street Dink lives on.
Then another guy who was running away from two other guys last summer tried to go through a plate-glass window like they do in the movies and got cut up into many slices, like a big salami.
That happened on Cambridge Street, the street of Connie Pan.
Then the paper says the police won’t say if there’s a witness to this latest shooting or not. The police won’t tell if anybody came forward and told them that they saw something.
Then the paper says that the police think if there was a vehicle involved then there was probably more than one person who committed this crime. The crime of murder.
All day in school today I’m going around in a dream. Everybody’s asking me what it’s like to live on a street where murder is committed right outside your bedroom window.
The scene yesterday is rolling and replaying again and again on the screen of my mind.
It’s like seeing the same part over and over again from a movie they’re advertising on the Movie Channel. You get so used to it you know it off by heart. And you get to hate it.