We did get some good toys at Christmas, though, from our uncles and aunts, but we always destroyed them in a few days. Josh dismantled them to look inside and see how they were made and never put them back together, and Jerry and I simply abused them.
Down in our basement, I chucked a half-painted red block of wood across the concrete floor at Leeroy, trying to pretend it was Superman. It bounced and stopped dead in its tracks—definitely not Superman. Leeroy let out a sigh. Thirty minutes after reaching my house, I knew he was bored out of his mind. I began searching around for a way to keep us occupied. Then it hit me. I did have something Leeroy didn’t have. Something way better than even his mountainous hoard of awesome toys.
“Leeroy,” I said, so excited I just about shit myself. “Want to try something?”
“Sure,” he said, unenthused.
I walked over to the fridge and yanked on the handle. The seal on the door broke and revealed a massive stack of Labatt 50 beers piled sideways, one on top of the other. They formed an odd pyramid shape that almost touched the bottom of the freezer. There must’ve been over three feet of them—ninety at least. The brown bodies of the bottles seemed to sweat and gleam in the neon basement light. “Brown pop,” I said to Leeroy.
My dad used to give me sips of it when I lived with him in Sudbury, especially when I was crying. I remembered it tasted horrible but I drank it anyway, and the more I drank without complaining, the louder my dad and his friends laughed. They laughed loudest when Dad put me on the counter and I’d piss in the kitchen sink like they did.
Grandpa, too, loved brown pops, and it was my job to bring them to him when he came home from work every night. “Baby Boy!” he’d holler from his purple armchair in the living room. “Gimme a cold one.” I would drop whatever I was doing, go grab one from the fridge, and run it upstairs. An empty bottle was always waiting for return by the side of the coffee table. If I was fast enough, and he was in a good mood, he’d give me a karate chop to the leg, then rub my hair. “That’s my boy,” he’d say through clenched teeth.
“I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried them,” I said to Leeroy, “but my grandpa loves them, my dad does, too. They say it puts hair on your chest.”
“Hair?”
“Yeah.” I stepped back so Leeroy could look inside the fridge.
“My dad drinks these, too, so does my mom. But not this kind.”
I grabbed one and shut the door. The cold glass felt nice. “This metal thing on the wall, that’s the opener.” Leeroy examined it.
“You just put the cap in at an angle, under the top tooth.” I showed him. “Then you press the bottom of the bottle. The lid will come right off. I do it all the time for Grandpa.” I could tell by the way he’d been looking at the opener that he’d never opened a bottle himself. When I pressed the bottle toward the wall, it hissed, and the cap fell and danced on the ground by our feet. Before I lost my courage, I hoisted the bottle to my lips and took a big swig. I could tell Leeroy wanted to try it, too. I gulped with all my might and almost vomited. A second later my stomach convulsed, but I said, “Ah,” and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Give it to me,” Leeroy demanded. He snatched the bottle. It was clear he wanted to impress me. The swill he took was bigger than mine, and his eyes bulged. He spat it out over the back of the bar. “That’s disgusting.”
I rescued the bottle from him before he dropped it. The brown pop still felt warm and bubbly inside my guts.
“No! I want to do it!” he yelled and yanked the bottle out of my hand. His chug was even bigger than before. This time he kept it down. Success. He smiled and let out a huge burp, and we both giggled.
By the end of the third bottle, I had a pressing urge to pee. I attempted to walk to the washroom, but couldn’t see right, and my legs gave out halfway to the stairs. I fell in the middle of the floor and pissed myself where I lay. Leeroy, too, tried taking a few steps, but his legs buckled, and he veered off and slammed headfirst into the bar. He looked like a disoriented cat that tumbles sideways after being spun round and round. As he toppled to the ground, the bottle fell and smashed on the floor. We howled with laughter, our legs and arms writhing.
My grandmother must’ve heard all the commotion because before I knew it, she was standing over the two of us, hands on her hips. “What in God’s name are the two of you up to now?” Her nose sniffed at the air. We continued giggling, unable to collect ourselves, and totally unafraid. She grabbed my shoulders and hoisted me onto my feet. “Dear Lord, are you drunk, Jesse?” She let go of me. I fell toward her, grabbing her shirt for balance. She had her answer.
“Omm . . . Phurtttt . . . Haazzz . . .” I tried explaining what we’d done but nothing but bafflegab came out. Leeroy was cackling beside us, rolling dangerously close to the broken bottle. Grandma stood him up before he cut himself. She tried to scold us but started laughing until she wheezed, tears rolling out her eyes. I’d never seen her laugh so deeply over something I’d done. It made me feel good.
She got us upstairs and gave us a few drinks of water and some bread, and changed my pants. “Now get outside and walk it off,” she said, shooing us away. “Like two miniature drunken sailors, you are.”
We eventually fell asleep under a neighbour’s tree a few houses down the street. When I woke up, Leeroy was gone.
ROBIN’S EGGS
MY FRIEND BRIAN, WHO LIVED down the street, told me he had a secret one day and that if I kept my mouth shut he’d show me. I promised not to tell a soul, and Brian showed me a robin’s nest in his backyard. Every day Brian and his family put seeds beside the nest to feed the mother robin before she went foraging in the afternoon. She would leave at the same time every day—4:30 p.m. on the dot.
I remember looking at the eggs in wonder. There were three of them, and they were so beautiful—bright baby blue, tucked into the yellowed grass and mud of the nest. I imagined the eggs carefully positioned by their mother’s feet, protected under her soft feathers, and guarded by her watchful eye.
Brian’s mother called him in for dinner. “I’ll wait for you and watch over the eggs while you eat,” I said. Assured, he left. As soon as he did, I grabbed the eggs, put them in my sock, and ran home. On the way I slipped and fell and broke the eggs. Shocked at what I’d done, I threw the sock in the sewer, then hid in my grandparents’ basement.
About a half-hour later Brian and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. T., showed up at our door looking for me. Mr. T. was a police officer but was kind to me and my brothers, and sometimes even played catch with us neighbourhood kids. Mrs. T. was even nicer, always baking up batches of cookies for Brian and me when we played Montezuma’s Revenge on his computer—the only high-powered computer on our street.
My grandmother searched the house and found me behind a stack of boxes.
“I’m really sorry,” I said when I was confronted about the eggs and told them what I’d done.
Brian cried. He was heartbroken.
“Why did you steal the eggs?” Brian’s mother asked.
I broke down into a blubbering mess. The more they asked me, the more I bawled. But I didn’t tell them why I did it.
My grandparents gave me the licking of my life, but I didn’t break: I still didn’t tell them why I stole the eggs.
When I saw Brian the next day at school he wouldn’t talk to me.
The truth is, when I saw the three eggs tucked into that nest it reminded me of my brothers and me and our home in Saskatchewan. I thought of how much that mother robin loved those eggs and how well she and Brian’s family took care of them, and I got jealous. The eggs had their mother, and my brothers and I didn’t anymore. So I took the eggs. I thought that if I had them, in some way I’d have the same love the eggs had, and that would mean that in some way I’d have a mother’s love again.
ATTABOY!
AS SOON AS I COULD hold a screwdriver and control a jigsaw—when I was about six years old—Grandpa trained me to use tools.
G
randpa believed in an honest day’s work. He told us he was raised by his grandfather, Pappy Peter McKinnon, after his own father, a coal miner, passed from a heart attack. He used to say that if a man didn’t have callused hands, he couldn’t be trusted and didn’t really work. He also said that your word was your worth, something that meant life or death when he grew up during the Depression. Because of his beliefs, I never heard Grandpa lie, never, not even if it hurt him to tell the truth.
“If a man knows how to build,” Grandpa said as he wrapped my small hands around the circular saw, “he owns the world. Anything is possible. It’s like large-scale Legos, just with sweat and more thinking.”
Grandpa steadied the five-by-eight plywood board on the sawhorses, positioned my hips and arms, and continued with his lesson. “I built my own house, once, in Ottawa, just to see if I could do it. Nice house, too. And I had to work one of these saws all the time. After I teach you, you’ll know how to do it for life.”
Josh cried at first when Grandpa tried to teach him to work the saw, and almost gave up before he gritted his teeth, focused, then ran the blade straight through, winning Grandpa’s admiration. Jerry flat-out refused. I assume it was because whenever Grandpa taught us any new skill it meant we’d have to use it to help him on one of his projects. Studding up the basement, ripping plywood for the skirting around the cabin down east, or building a new deck in the backyard, all were things we’d done once he’d trained us on new tools.
When Josh asked him why he made us work so hard, he said it was because his father had died when he was five years old. “That’s when I became a man,” he’d say. “I didn’t have no childhood working in the mines. But growing up without my father made me tough, like a dried piece of salt cod left out in the sun too long. Grandpappy Peter also taught me to work up on Black Point, fishing in the dory. And I ain’t letting you boys grow up without some of that hardness. Work was the only thing that pulled me and my mother out of the Depression.”
Jerry always rolled his eyes when Grandpa went into his hard-done-by speeches.
As I steadied the saw, which was about the size of my torso, I imagined how hard working the way he did must’ve been for my grandfather.
“Just hold it straight, level, follow the line, and let the blade do the work. Most importantly, don’t be afraid! I’ll catch the offcut so the saw doesn’t kick when it falls. And if it does buck, for God’s sake don’t try to grab it, just let it go,” Grandpa said. “Got it?”
“Okay, Grandpa.” I placed the face of the saw on the board, up against the clamped straight edge, my arms straining to keep it level. Both my brothers were looking on, and I tried my best to hide my fear from everyone. Jerry smirked and made a face. Josh joined in.
“Exactly. Now, press the trigger and let ’er rip. Like Josh did.” Grandpa got into position beside me and made sure the extension cord wasn’t in the way.
1, 2, 3, I counted in my head then squeezed the trigger tight. I had to fight the urge to close my eyes or run away. The whine and power of the saw frightened me at first, but I waited a second until I was comfortable pushing the machine forward. Grandpa nudged the back of my elbow and the blade moaned and bit into the wood.
“Now, easy does it, Jess. Steady.”
The smell of pine filled my nostrils as sawdust kicked down onto my foot and back toward Jerry. I kept my eye on the plywood where the saw met the straight edge. Surprisingly, the saw tugged my hands and lurched forward on its own, but I pulled back against its torque, created some resistance, and kept everything balanced. Soon the blade had run through the length of the wood and the board offcut fell into my grandfather’s hands. It looked like a baby delivered into the waiting arms of a doctor. He laughed out loud and his belly shook up and down behind his brown oil-stained overalls.
“That’s how it’s done. That’s my baby boy!”
His eyes beamed with pride as he turned to face Josh and Jerry, who stood cross-armed. Both grimaced at me. I knew I’d get it from both of them later when Grandpa wasn’t around. Despite the impending beating, I was proud of myself, even though it was only one piece of lumber.
“Thanks, Poppa,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. “I wasn’t scared at all.”
“I know. Attaboy, Jess. Attaboy.”
He reached over to the radio and turned up the George Jones song that crackled across the AM sound waves. He hummed to himself as he examined my cut, then lit a cigarette.
“Listen boys,” he said, a plume of Du Maurier smoke swirling around his stubbled face, “I got a secret weapon. No one will have a go-cart racer like ours. Trust me—we’ll never lose.” He promised us we’d build a go-cart once we learned how to use the saw. He shuffled out onto the driveway, over to the side of his van, and slapped the side panel.
“A man must drive in style, boys, with a clean vehicle. That’s his horse. You ever see knights riding around on scrawny, beat-up horses destined for the glue factory? Well, there’s a reason for that.”
Josh turned to me and said, “What the hell is he talking about? Glue factories didn’t exist back when knights were around.”
Jerry laughed and said, “He’s trying to say that after we’re finished with the go-cart we have to wash the van—again,” while he pretended he was riding a horse, swinging a cowboy hat above his head, galloping around me and Josh.
Grandpa emerged from the van and caught Jerry making fun of him. “You look like a chubby version of Roy Rogers, galloping around all cockeyed without a horse or gun.”
Josh and I howled, while Jerry stood there stunned.
Grandpa never talked much while he worked, and today was no different while the four of us toiled away on the go-cart. We just kind of nodded and passed each other tools like nurses give surgeons instruments in the operating room—noiseless and quick, no mistakes. I think that’s when we were closest, when we were silently working away in the garage, fixing the van, or doing other things. When the job was done, Grandpa cracked a beer, and we all drank Coke.
“It’s a fine racer,” Grandpa said. The go-cart was all decked out with a real car seat, two-inch-thick chassis, and rope steering, and it rode on “the fastest, most durable wheels known to man!” as he put it. Grandpa had pulled a set of four elevator wheels from the van—they were yellow and small and the same colour and texture as glycerine soap.
I just about pissed myself thinking of beating the pants off the other kids around us in the go-carts they had made with their fathers.
Jerry got the first push down the block. I figured it was because Grandpa felt bad about his comment earlier. Jerry screamed down the street, smiling and laughing, hair waving in the air. We cheered him on from the driveway, and Grandpa took a swig and hollered, “Attaboy, Jerry, attaboy!”
We all lived to hear him say those words.
LITTLE THIEF
“JESSE!” GRANDMA CALLED FROM UPSTAIRS. I could hear from the crinkle of paper and foil that she was searching through an empty pack of cigarettes on the phone stand beside her rocking chair. The terse clinks of her lighter against the side of the ashtray told me she was getting impatient. “Jesse! Hurry up! I need smokes.” She broke into a fit of coughing.
Grandma without her smokes was scary. She got aggravated, which usually meant we’d get more chores. The longer she went without nicotine, the more toilets we had to wash, the more carpets we had to vacuum, and the more frequently we had to walk the dog. I ran upstairs.
“Here’s the letter. John is working today. You know the kind—Du Maurier Special Mild, the tall silver box, not the short red one. Here’s the money, and don’t lollygag.”
Going to the store was fun. I wasn’t allowed to go there usually, only when Grandma sent me. It was far outside my safe terrain, two blocks farther, past the parkette, across the schoolyard, and down the street, where I didn’t know anyone. Grandpa would warn me about the older boys who hung around outside the store, saying they were selling drugs and that their minds were warped by heavy metal m
usic. He said they were just like my dad. I wondered about my father: where he was, why he wasn’t around, and if he was still mad at me.
Was it my fault he took off? I questioned as I skipped down the street. Does he miss me like I miss him?
I rounded the corner and saw the older boys hanging out around the store pay phone, their music blaring on their silver ghetto blaster. I imagined Dad with the same kind of rocker haircut, cut-off jean jacket, and a black Ozzy Osbourne concert shirt.
“Hey, little man,” Mitch, the oldest boy, said. “Come here a second, I want to ask you something.” The other three boys were passing around a cigarette that smelled like a skunk, and they coughed like my grandma did when she woke up. I wondered how Mitch and his friends could squeeze through the hidden hole in the fence behind where they were standing. I’d seen them do it whenever the police pulled up to the store. My dad had run like that.
I got closer, my hand clutching the ten-dollar bill Grandma had given me. Mitch’s aviator glasses glinted and blinded me for a second.
“It’s cool, little man, we ain’t gonna hurtcha. Relax.” Mitch smiled at me. “You here to buy cigarettes for your granny?”
“Y-y-yes,” I stammered, my gut churning. I searched to see if Grandpa was anywhere. He’d beat me if he caught me with Mitch and his friends.
Mitch leaned over. “Can you do us a favour?” The other boys suddenly turned and loomed over me. “Can you buy us a pack of cigarettes? John won’t sell to us because our parents told him not to, but he’ll sell to you because he knows your grandma.”
My legs went wobbly. “Um . . . I’m not supposed to talk to you or anything. I’m just here to get her cigarettes. I’ll get into trouble.”
From the Ashes Page 5