Son of a Critch

by Mark Critch

  The priest arrived, but he couldn’t get near the little shack. Mercedes and her mother were animal lovers. Actually, they were more like animal hoarders. They’d never come across an animal they didn’t adopt. Dogs and cats roamed the property freely. It was unknown just how many pets they had, but if you picture an episode of Hoarders and then replace the Rubber Maid containers full of expired medicine and empty pizza boxes with dogs and cats, you’ll get an idea. A few of the larger dogs were tied up in the yard, and they weren’t used to visitors—or corpses. They strained at the end of their ropes, bringing the priest to the end of his. The police were called, as was the animal control unit, and eventually the funeral home. The property saw more visitors in one day than it had in Mercedes’s entire life. “Oh, my God, missus,” she lamented, “you’re all I got in the world now. Mom always said that if anything went wrong, Mr. Critch would take care of me. I’m some glad to have ye.”

  I smelled a con. I’d never laid eyes on this woman in my life. And now her mother’s dying wish was to send her to our house like Superman’s parents sent him to Earth from Krypton? I wasn’t buying it. Dad came home from work expecting supper and found the daughter/sister he never knew or wanted. Mercedes relived her harrowing tale, yet again, as Dad “mmm hmmmed” from behind the privacy screen of his newspaper. He had a masterful way of shutting out the world when it suited him, and I envied him that skill.

  After a supper peppered with “Oh mys” and “Shockin’s,” Dad suggested a family outing. Of course, he had no intention of joining us. It was more of a suggestion for everyone else in the house to get out.

  “Well, Mercedes, you better feed your dogs before they eat your cats,” he comforted.

  The three of us—me, my mother, and her older adopted daughter—set out into the woods to a shack full of hungry animals who’d now grown accustomed to the smell of death in the house. Watching her make her way in the darkness back toward her little home, I was reminded of Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back. I wondered if she’d impart some wisdom learned from living off the grid. Perhaps she’d reveal some ancient way in which we’re all connected, like the Force. “Oh, my, missus,” she said, “be careful now the fairies don’t get you. I’d imagine they’d be out powerful strong tonight. Turn your pockets inside out, now, just to be safe.” Nope. Guess not.

  We could hear the dogs barking long before we even got to the house. Margarine containers of food and water were empty and the hounds were ravenous. I felt like Little Red Riding Hood coming face to face with the Big Bad Wolf, except we were a little too late to be bringing Granny any treats. The dogs tugged at their chains so viciously that some were pulled up onto their hind legs and I worried they might choke themselves. They were both excited to see their owner and furious that we’d stepped onto their territory. Mercedes went up to each one, nuzzling their noses to her face even as they howled for our blood.

  “Oh my, that’s all right,” she cooed. “Mrs. Critch will take care of us now. Poor thing. There, there. Shockin’. It’s going to be all right.” I’d always wanted a dog, but this was overkill: there were enough dogs here to run the Iditarod. We tacked through the labyrinth of hounds and made our way inside the tiny shack.

  The first thing I noticed was that the ceiling had caved in at a forty-five-degree angle, making it look as though the roof could collapse at any moment. The air smelled damp, and somehow the inside of the house was colder than the outside. This was what realtors call “a handyman’s dream.” Mercedes lit candles instead of turning on a light, even though there were several lamps around. This struck me as odd.

  The sounds of wildlife surrounded us. The dogs barked and howled outside, but from inside there came an even greater cacophony of animal noises. I strained in the dim candlelight to spot their source. Then something brushed against my leg and I jumped. Smaller dogs had the run of the place. I realized then that I was walking on newspapers; they’d been placed all over the floor, a giant doggy diaper.

  “Those are indoor dogs,” Mercedes explained as she made her way around the room, lighting even more candles. Our chances of getting out alive went down with every match struck. “I can’t let them outside or else the big dogs will get at them. Shockin’.”

  “How many do you have?” I asked by way of making conversation. I wanted to know whether it would be the collapsed ceiling, fire, or bloodthirsty German shepherds that got me first.

  “Nine,” she said nonchalantly as she lit some Holy Candles in one corner of the room, illuminating a daybed covered in tattered blankets. A picture of the Pope was taped above it, and next to that a faded picture of Hank Snow in a pink shirt, smiling beside a guitar, his name inlaid on its fretboard in mother of pearl. Hank stood in front of a map of the world, and the guitar case beside him was covered with stickers from places where he’d played: Pennsylvania, Mexico, Paris, and so forth. In big white and yellow letters he bragged “Hank Snow—I’ve Been Everywhere.” How strange that Mercedes’s Mom had that picture above her bed and yet she’d never been anywhere else herself. Mercedes said her mother had been bedridden for months now, and that when she was healthy she’d hardly ever left her humble home. Had she looked at each sticker on Hank’s guitar case and wondered, “What is Paris like? Is it warm or cold in Pennsylvania? How long a drive is it to Mexico?” That picture of Hank’s guitar case had been her only window on the world.

  I was shaken from my reverie by a metallic clanging noise and a hissing that sounded as if someone had tied some snakes together and tossed them on a grill. “Oh my, get away from that, you,” Mercedes scolded into the darkness. “Them dogs is after the cats again. Shockin’.” My eyes adjusted to the gloom, revealing the strangest sight I’d seen in my short life. Against the wall was a wall of cats.

  To keep her cats from being hurt by the dogs, Mercedes had taken to keeping them in cages—hamster cages. The cats were stacked in towers of temptation that the dogs encircled at every opportunity. And to the cats’ horror, the dogs would try to climb the stacks and knock them over whenever Mercedes left the house. They’d paw at the cages as the cats would hiss and yowl their disapproval.

  Their hair puffed out, their ears flattened back, their tails twitched in fury. Occasionally a tail would make its way between the bars, to the delight of the dogs who snapped at it, sometimes catching an errant tail to topple a cage to the floor. In their little cages the cats could neither move nor defend themselves, and they gnawed at the bars until their gums bled. Mercedes’s house was like a shady Russian circus.

  Mercedes shooed the dogs into a bedroom, closing the door behind them to give the cats some uninhibited playtime. She popped their cages open and they slowly climbed out, regaining circulation in their legs. As they stretched themselves and shook their heads I imagined them thinking, “I had it better as a stray.” She poured a giant bag of cat food into bowls, cups, and boxes, and the weary felines ate quietly.

  “My​God​Mercedes,​You​Can’t​Live​Like​This​Girl,​” my mother said, growing stronger as each new dramatic element revealed itself. “Sure​With​Your​Mother​Gone​You​Can​Sell​This​Land​And​Get​A​Nice​House​For​Yourself. Sure​You’d​Get​A​Million​Dollars​For​This,​Girl.”

  Mercedes had gotten offers to sell in the past. Developers were always on the hunt for a patch of land to turn into a car lot or a gas station along the busy thoroughfare, but Mercedes’s mother had never known a life outside their home and any would-be-developer soon found the dental records of a German shepherd permanently stored on his arse.

  “Oh, I don’t know, missus. I don’t know about that. Shockin’. My God, missus, I couldn’t leave here. I still feels Mom here, see, missus? I wouldn’t go nowhere else, missus. No.”

  Even the priest tried to get her to move. As did some distant relatives who turned up one day to suggest that Mercedes sell the property for as much as she could get and then come live with them. Health inspectors arrived. Some of the animals were taken aw
ay. After a couple of years, Mercedes finally sold the land and moved into a cul-de-sac in the city. The neighbours complained about the new woman on the block with the army of wolves on her lawn, and soon even more of her precious pets were confiscated. She always regretted her decision to sell. Every day she’d leave her fancy new house and slowly drive her car all the way out to park by the side of Kenmount Road, just to be close to her home.

  Surprisingly, Mercedes did own a car. Before he died her father had taught her to drive, and his old car still worked pretty well. Back then she’d make her way down the road when she absolutely needed to, but she kept running afoul of the law. Mercedes wouldn’t dare go over twenty kilometres an hour, and so she’d often get pulled over for driving under the speed limit on Kenmount Road. The cop would invariably let her off without a ticket once he spied the three or four hamster cages full of cats in the back seat. Sometimes it’s better to just not get involved.

  She kept driving out to her former property even after the house was torn down. Long after the trees were cleared away, she still spent her days in her car by the side of the road. She drove out there even after a culvert replaced the footprint of her former home. And she kept doing this right up until she died in 2007. By then she had only one dog left. Now there’s a subdivision and a Walmart where Mercedes used to live with her parents and their animals. Every time I pass that spot I still look, half-expecting to see her parked by the side of the road, full of regret.

  * * *

  —

  Eventually, the Chinese restaurant opened to great fanfare. It had a real fish pond inside, which was quite fancy by the standards of the day, and by all accounts the food was quite good. The mysterious man in the car named his new business Jade Gardens. Whoever the man was, he was doing pretty well for himself. Jade Gardens always seemed to be busy. The strange thing was that there seemed to be even more cars in the parking lot after the place closed. The parking lot would be empty at closing time and then, one by one, cars would come to refill it.

  One afternoon a member of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary solved the mystery. Someone knocked on our door—the third such occasion—and I left my spot on the floor in front of the TV to investigate. To my surprise, it was a police officer. I assumed he was looking for my father to pass along a tip about a moose hit-and-run or some other type of big-city crime. “Dad’s at work,” I told him before he could even say a word.

  “Who is in the house?” he asked abruptly. “That’s a rather personal question,” I thought. I told him it was just me, my mother, and the cat. Just then the back door opened and Dad came barging in, making a liar out of me. The old man was worked up like never before. He was on the case.

  “Good God, Mark,” he said, making his way to the front door. “Leave that man alone. Can’t you see he’s working?” “He’s the one bothering me,” I thought as I happily went back to my after-school TV viewing. Dad turned his attention to the cop. “Now, when’s it all going down?”

  “The boy can’t stay there,” the cop said matter-of-factly. “Nobody can be in the front of the house in case of a stray shot.” What? Nobody can be in the front of the house? But the TV is in the front of the house and The Edison Twins was coming on. There must be some mistake. And also—did he say “shot”?

  With a police officer in the house and her husband home from work early, Mom came running around the corner like a cat on fire.

  “Mike! What​Are​You​Doing­Home​So​Early! Oh,​My​God! What​Are​You​Doing​Here,​Officer? No​One​Is​Dead​Are​They? My​God,​Who’s​Dead? Mark? Is​Mark​Home? Is​Mark​Dead?”

  A loud squawk came over the officer’s radio as he struggled to make himself heard over the human siren that was my mother. “Everybody needs to move to the back of the house, please. Right now.” Being a child, I did the exact opposite of what I was told. I looked out the living room window and saw several police cars pulling into the parking lot over at Jade Gardens. Cops already on the scene quickly formed into columns and made their way into the restaurant. “Get away from that window!” the officer bellowed. Reluctantly I backed away from the window playing a scene that could rival any on the TV set next to it. “They’re raiding Jade Gardens!” I shouted. “Cool!”

  “Raiding?” my mother shouted as the cop tried to push her to the dining room. “What​Do​You​Mean,​Raiding? Are​There​Bugs? I​Knew​There​Was​Something​Weird​About​That​Crowd​Over​There! Wouldn’t​Even​Come​In​Out​Of​The​Car. Too​Good​For​Us,​See? Wouldn’t​Talk​To​Newfoundlanders​Because​We​Weren’t​Chinese! That’s​Racist!”

  My mother’s charges of reverse-racism went unchallenged as Dad and the cop chatted on. I climbed underneath the dining room table, hoping for a stray shot to come flying through the window and embed itself in the wall as a conversation piece.

  “How many are there?” Dad asked, lighting a smoke.

  “Now, Mike,” the officer countered, “you know I can’t tell you that. But off the record, now—”

  “Can’t be off the record, but I won’t report it until it’s official,” the old man bartered. It was fascinating to watch him work. I’d heard him on the radio and had even seen him record a voice report before, but I’d never seen him work a source. No way would he give up a scoop when it was happening across the street and one of the players was in his own dining room.

  “Okay, Mike,” the cop relented. “We’ve been watching them for a while. They’re running an illegal gambling ring. They’ve got people flying in from all over just to play there. Chinese games, you know? Big money. We knew they’d be playing today so we waited for the last one to go in and then we raided the place.” An illegal gambling ring right across the street and I never even knew. What else was going on right under my nose? Maybe Mr. Kirkland, the mechanic, was dealing in hot cars. Or maybe Mr. Kelsey was growing drugs on his farm. A whole world of underground possibilities presented themselves to me for the first time.

  Mom exploded like Mount St. Helens. “My​God,​Mike! Imagine​That! Them​Running​A​Gambling​Ring​Over​There​And​They​Never​Even​Asked​You​Over​To​Play​A​Game​Of​Cards! Some​Neighbours! That’s​Not​Very​Nice​After​All​You​Did​For​Him! That’s​Racist!”

  “Okay, Mary. That’s enough,” Dad said. “If I had been playing cards over there I’d be getting arrested now, wouldn’t I? Be quiet for a minute while I get the lowdown here now, will you? Good God!”

  Mom had never been quiet for a minute in her life and she certainly wasn’t about to start with a cop in her dining room and a restaurant full of illegal gamblers across the street. Dad shouted at Mom and Mom shouted back and the cop tried to defuse the minor domestic disturbance unfolding right in front of him, forgetting the major bust across the street. I used the distraction to crawl out from under the table to sneak another peek. Ordinary-looking middle-aged men were being led out in cuffs. Some wore suits. Some wore short-sleeved white dress shirts. All looked mortified, with their heads bowed low. There didn’t seem to be any danger of a stray shot. In fact, I didn’t see any guns at all. The casual observer would think that perhaps the cops were having the policeman’s ball at Jade Gardens that night.

  The officer’s radio squawked again, this time with an all clear. The old man ran out the door and up the bank to the station. Within minutes we heard his voice coming out of the kitchen radio with the big news. “An illegal gambling ring has been broken up by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and the RCMP at this hour. Details are scanty, but a source has revealed that high-stakes gamblers have been flying in from out of town. This is Mike Critch for the VOCM news service.”

  The next day, The Evening Telegram reported that “38 people, including 21 Newfoundlanders, were scheduled to appear in Provincial Court today to face charges related to illegal gambling. They were arrested Monday afternoon when police raided the Jade Gardens restaurant on Kenmount Road. It was a joint effort
of the RCMP and Royal Newfoundland Constabulary following a two-year investigation. Police seized equipment, including tables and dice used in a game called Pai Gow. A police spokesman confirmed they seized about $185,000 in cash, which included Canadian, United States and Chinese currency. The owner is charged with keeping a common gaming house. The others are charged with being in a common gaming house without lawful excuse.”

  I would like to add, without comment, that the arresting officer’s name was Constable Rick Shaw. True story.

  Business dried up and soon the restaurant closed its doors for good, leaving our neighbourhood a little less exciting.

  * * *

  —

  New characters and experiences seemed to be falling from the sky. A nun changeover happened at our school and we got a new principal, Sister Rosemary Ryan, who was younger than the standard nun and had short red hair. Very much a Vatican II–style nun, she came into class playing an acoustic guitar. Sister Rosemary and her fellow nuns had a great love of John Denver and would play both religious and secular music in a style that would have been reminiscent of Peter, Paul and Mary if the group had been all Marys. Her enthusiasm freshened up the school’s atmosphere, and I started the new year on a high. I was not, however, as high as some of my friends.

  One day, Fox met up with me at lunch. “I need ya to come somewhere with me,” he said, “off school grounds.” To leave school grounds was an interesting challenge. There were two kinds of kids at St. Teresa’s: those who stayed in for lunch and those who went home. There was a third offshoot—the kids who went to a takeout place—but they were beyond my coolness level.

  “Where to?” I asked. To be honest, I didn’t really care. The offer of adventure had been made, and that wasn’t something that came up often.