The Agony of Bun O'Keefe

by Heather T. Smith

  PENGUIN TEEN CANADA

  an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company

  The following works are referenced in the novel:

  The Agony of Jimmy Quinlan, Robert Duncan (writer/producer),

  National Film Board, 1978.

  Excerpt from “At the Quinte Hotel,” from Poems for All the Annettes, copyright 1973, 2012 by Al Purdy. Reprinted by permission of House of Anansi Press Inc.

  Excerpts from Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss, Trademark™ and copyright © by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. 1940, renewed 1968. Used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  First published 2017

  Copyright © Heather Smith, 2017

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jennifer Griffiths

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Smith, Heather, 1968-, author

  The agony of Bun O’Keefe / Heather Smith.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 9780143198659 (hardback).—ISBN 9780143198666 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8637.M5623A63 2017 jC813′.6 C2016-905832-8

  C2016-905833-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952308

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v4.1

  a

  To Kathy Stinson, mentor and friend.

  And, always, to Rob.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Acknowledgements

  She yelled, “Go on! Get out!” So I did. It wasn’t easy. The path to the door was filled in again. I tried to keep it clear. But it was like shoveling in a snowstorm. There was only so much I could pile up on either side before it started caving in again. Not that I left the house much.

  At one point I had to turn sideways and suck in. I wondered how she did it. She was over three hundred pounds. As I inched forward I saw frozen smiles through a clear plastic bin. Barbie Dolls, $10 As Is.

  I knew without looking there’d be some without limbs.

  I tripped on a lamp and fell on a bike. She didn’t even laugh. The only sound was the tick-tick-tick of the bike’s spinning wheel. I watched till it slowed to a stop.

  I took one last look at her before I disappeared behind a mountain of junk. She was nestled into a pile of garbage bags, a cup of tea balanced on her chest, and I wondered, how will she get up without me?

  Boxes and bags lined the walls. As I squeezed down the hall I said therianthropy over and over ’cause I liked the way it bounced in my mouth. It was one of the words I said out loud when I hadn’t used my voice in a while. It meant “having the power to turn into an animal.” I’d read it in an old anthropology textbook and I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if my mother could turn herself into a hummingbird? That way she could flit in and out through the piles of junk that filled every nook and cranny of the house. It was a nice thought, her being a shape-shifter. Maybe, I decided, that’s how I should remember her.

  —

  I walked down our laneway with my arms crossed over my chest. I had forgotten my jacket. I wouldn’t go back for it. Not after the trouble it took me to get out.

  I counted Mississippis down the long gravel road. By the time I reached the highway I’d had two coughing fits. She did the trek every day. An empty wagon on the way into town, a full one on the way back. I figured she had exceptional lungs.

  At the main road I stuck out my thumb. What I knew about hitchhiking came from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It came home in a box of VHS tapes. When I told her we didn’t have a player she said, “There she goes, never satisfied, always asking for more.” When I pointed out that I had asked for nothing and was simply stating a fact, she didn’t talk to me for days. Months later a VHS player showed up and I popped in the tape. I watched it on the floor model TV she’d pulled home on a wooden toboggan. It had a missing button so I had to change the channel with a pair of pliers. The screen had fuzzy lines going through it, which made the movie even scarier. The hitchhiker wanted to kill people. I had no intentions of killing anyone so I figured there was no harm in sticking out my thumb on the main road.

  I went to St. John’s. Seemed as good a place as any. Only two hours away and easy to disappear into.

  —

  I figured there were places for people like me, people whose mother said, “Go on! Get out!” After all, there were places for people like Jimmy Quinlan. He was in the box with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He drank too much alcohol and lived on the streets of Montreal. Just one of the many “derelict human beings in Canada—living their lives around a bottle of cheap wine, rubbing alcohol or even, on a bad day, aftershave lotion.”

  I watched the documentary so much I’d memorized the script. Alone in the house I’d recite it. Sometimes I’d say aftershave lotion, over and over, putting the emphasis on shave, just as the narrator had. I’d copy his gravelly voice too. I’d say, “Quinlan’s nerves are raw,” till I wasn’t me anymore; I was a faceless man in the TV.

  I walked along Duckworth Street and asked the first person that looked like they might know. I waited till he finished his song.

  “Any missions around here?”

  “Missions?”

  “Yes. Where alcoholics with no homes go.”

  He smiled. “You’re an alcoholic, are you?”

  “No. But I have no home.”

  “Sorry. I don’t know of any missions.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I must have looked doubtful ’cause he said, “Why are you asking me? Do I look like a homeless alcoholic?”

  He looked nothing like Jimmy Quinlan or the other derelict human beings. For one thing, he had teeth. But he was begging, which is what Jimmy Quinlan did within the first two minutes of the film. He stopped cars and people on the busy streets. “Bonjour, monsieur! Bonjour, monsieur!”

  “You look like a normal person,” I said. “But you are begging.”

  He gathered the loose change from the guitar case in front of him. “I’m not begging. I’m busking.”

  “So you have a home?”

  “I never said that.”

  “So you don’t have a home.”

  He fit his guitar into the guitar-shaped space and squinted at me. “Who are you?”

  “Bun O’Keefe.”

  He sna
pped the lid shut and hopped to his feet.

  “First time in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Hitchhiked.”

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not? I wasn’t going to murder anyone.”

  He gave me a funny look and headed down a steep hill toward the harbor. He didn’t say good-bye so I followed. When he went into a coffee shop, I stood behind him in line, and the girl behind the counter said, “You two together?” and I said, “Yes.” She asked me what I’d like to order and I didn’t know ’cause I’d never ordered anything before so she suggested tea. I said no in a voice louder than I had meant—I was sick of tea—it’s what I drank to keep my stomach from growling. She suggested hot chocolate and I said yes ’cause I hadn’t had one since my father left.

  My mother called me presumptuous once, after I’d asked her what was for supper. I wondered if I was being that now, so I looked at Busker Boy, but he just nodded at a table and said, “I’ll bring it over.”

  I sat on my hands till he came, then wrapped them around the mug.

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out a thick flannel shirt. “When you run away in November, you should wear a coat.”

  His voice was calm and even, like the narrator of Jimmy Quinlan. It was smoother, though, and softer. All the expression was in his dark brown eyes.

  I put my lips to the mug, letting the steam fog my glasses. “I didn’t run away. My mother told me to leave. So I did.”

  “How old are you? Twelve?”

  “Fourteen.”

  I read an article about small talk once. It said if you want to create a bond with your conversation partner you should mirror them, so I said, “How old are you? Twelve?” He laughed. “Twenty-one.”

  He looked me up and down. “You’re small for fourteen.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Not at all. Look at me.”

  I did. He was short but thick and bulging with muscles. Stocky would be the word.

  “As long as you’re strong, that’s all that matters. Are you strong?”

  I could shift my mother’s boxes out of my way when need be. “Yes. I’m strong.”

  He grinned at me. “Your Smurf shirt kind of threw me off, too.”

  It could just as easily have been the Bionic Woman or Starsky and Hutch. Both came home in a box called vintage. I told my mother that something from a decade earlier couldn’t be called vintage, that seventies stuff didn’t count. She called me a smartarse and told me to go away.

  I pressed rewind. My head whirred.

  Your Smurf shirt kind of threw me off, too.

  “Are Smurf shirts only for twelve-year-olds?”

  “Most girls your age dress way too old, that’s all.”

  “Smurf hats are called Phrygian caps. They symbolize freedom.”

  He looked at me like I was making things up. But I don’t tell lies.

  “That coffee stinks.”

  A gentle laugh. “Who are you?”

  “I told you. Bun O’Keefe.”

  “I like you, Bun O’Keefe.”

  Once, I stuck a knife in a toaster ’cause my bread was stuck and I felt a jolt. When he said, “I like you,” I felt the same way—it wasn’t just a surprise, it was a shock that zinged.

  “They called me weird the year I went to school. ’Cause I say things that pop in my head.”

  “You only went to school for one year?”

  “Kindergarten. No one said, ‘I like you, Bun O’Keefe.’ ”

  He said, “That’s sad.”

  I said, “Is it?”

  He stared into his coffee.

  I said, “Did you know that if you smile, even when you’re not happy, your mood will improve? It’s a scientific fact.”

  The corners of his lips curled upward.

  I said, “You look like the Joker from Batman.”

  I liked his laugh. It fluttered like a leaf on the breeze.

  I took a sip of my hot chocolate.

  He took a sip of his coffee.

  I wondered if he was trying to create a bond.

  I said, “Want to know the difference between a real smile and a fake smile?”

  “Sure.”

  “With a real smile the orbicularis oculi muscle contracts and makes wrinkles around your eyes. Has that ever happened to you? I don’t think that’s ever happened to me.”

  Lines covered his forehead. I was about to tell him he was contracting his frontalis muscle when he said, “Are you hungry? I can get you a cookie.”

  “Two please. No ants.”

  His forehead crinkled even more.

  “Raisins,” I said. “No raisins.”

  Alone at the table, I wrapped the flannel shirt tighter around me and leaned forward, letting the steam from my drink fog my glasses.

  —

  I sat with him under a sign that said Fred’s. He gave me a pair of gloves and a hat from his backpack. They were too big but I didn’t say so. He played lots of stuff I recognized from the records that filled our bathtub. Bob Dylan, Queen, The Beatles. Lots of stuff I didn’t know, too, and after each one, I’d say, “What was that?” and he’d say, “Violent Femmes” or “The Clash” or “The Cure.” I found a paper cup on the ground and held it out to people passing by. I shook it in time with the music until Busker Boy asked me to stop. So I did.

  After a song about a guy who plays guitar with spiders from Mars I asked, “So are you homeless?” and he said, “Temporary accommodations. I can’t wait to get out.”

  So I told the passersby. “He lives in temporary accommodations. He can’t wait to get out.”

  Sounded like a good song title. I’d suggest it later.

  Three times I emptied the cup into his guitar case.

  When he packed up I said, “What now?”

  “Home. It’s late.”

  “Yeah, I’m tired too.”

  He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and buttoned up his jean jacket. We walked for ages.

  “What’s this road called?”

  “Water Street.”

  “It’s long.”

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  I couldn’t stop yawning. “Yawning is called oscitation.”

  He said hmmm to let me know that he heard me. I liked that.

  “The average yawn lasts six seconds. I read it in a book.”

  A man staggered toward us in the opposite direction. Busker Boy grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me across to his other side, near the road.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked.

  When the man passed, Busker Boy pulled me back on the inside. “He was drunk.”

  “Homeless too?”

  “Maybe.”

  It got real quiet as we walked, and I filled the empty space around me the way I usually did—with words. “There are about five thousand Jimmy Quinlans on the streets of Montreal, maybe even more in Toronto and Vancouver. No one dares guess the exact number of derelict human beings in Canada.”

  He looked at me funny again.

  “It’s from a documentary.”

  “And you memorized it?”

  “The voice too.”

  “You should get out more.”

  “Why?”

  “Fresh air is good for you.”

  “Why?”

  “It makes you feel more alive.”

  As far as I could tell you could be no more “more alive” than you could be “more dead.”

  I breathed in the cold, salty air. It caught at my throat and made me cough.

  “Are you sick?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You have a cough.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  We kept walking.

  “I wish I could un-read that.”

  He looked around. “Un-read what?”

  “The poster on the pole we just passed.”

  “What did it say?”

  “ ‘An Evening of Edgar All
an Poe: Selected Readings.’ ”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “ ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ came home in a box. I wish I’d never read it. I’ll never sleep tonight now.”

  “How come?”

  “Somebody murders somebody else and dismembers the body.”

  “Maybe you should stick to books about yawns.”

  “I’m tired. How much longer?”

  “Not long.”

  We walked uphill through a dark park. I heard whispers and grunting and laughter.

  “Do you have wooden floorboards in your temporary accommodations?”

  He thought a moment. “Yes. Why?”

  In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the body was hidden under the floor and the murderer was convinced he could hear his victim’s heartbeat through the planks.

  “Just wondering.”

  Under the streetlights ahead, a strip of row houses, each a different color.

  “We’re here.”

  We entered the sixth one down, yellow with a blue door.

  Six, yellow, blue.

  Six, yellow, blue.

  Six, yellow, blue.

  I had no reason to believe I wouldn’t be invited back so I memorized it.

  The door opened to a steep staircase. When we got to the top, Busker Boy said, “You okay?” and I said, “Why wouldn’t I be?” To our left, there was a sparsely decorated living room overlooking the street. To the right, a kitchen. Busker Boy pointed straight ahead. “Can you handle one more flight?” I said, “Why wouldn’t I?” I counted the steps in my head. At fourteen he said, “You sound pretty wheezy.” I said, “That’s just how I breathe.”

  At the top there was a landing. Around the landing, five doors. Four were closed, one was open. Busker Boy pointed to the open one. “Bathroom.”

  There was a door with a treble clef on it. Seemed fitting. Except for the sparkles. “Is that yours?”

  “No. Mine’s over here.”

  He moved to the door at the back of the house. There was another small staircase to the right of it. “Attic. Don’t ever go up there.” He turned the knob and said come in. So I did.

  It was a small room, containing only a bed, a dresser and a side table. He grabbed a comforter and pillow out of the closet and put them on the floor.

  “You can have the bed.”