The Agony of Bun O'Keefe

by Heather T. Smith

  My (his) flannel shirt was long. A good nightshirt, I thought. I peeled off my jeans, put my glasses on the bedside table and crawled under the covers.

  Busker Boy threw his jean jacket on the dresser. “Warm enough?”

  “No.”

  He took a leather jacket out of the closet and laid it over me. “Wear this tomorrow.”

  He took the elastic out of his hair and peeled off his black T-shirt. A bear-claw necklace hung around his neck.

  He folded the comforter in half and got in between the layers.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  I didn’t know why he was asking permission.

  “Okay.”

  “Is anyone looking for you?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to tell me why you left.”

  “She told me to leave.”

  “I think we both know there’s more to the story than that.”

  Was there?

  “Anyway, I’m here if you need to talk.”

  It took a lot of energy but I lifted my head up. I was hoping he was wrong but there they were—wooden floorboards. I could hear the heartbeat already.

  He reached for the lamp between us. “Time to get some sleep.”

  He was about to pull the chain when I reached out and touched his hand. “Can you leave it on? Till I fall asleep?”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  A while later I woke up. It was dark. I turned on the light and hung over the side of the bed. I shook Busker Boy by the shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  “I thought of a good title for a song. ‘Temporary Accommodations (I Can’t Wait to Get Out).’ ”

  “What?”

  “I meant to say it earlier. But I forgot. Use parentheses though, around the last part.”

  I’d seen it done before on cassette tapes she’d brought home. Like, “Take My Breath Away (Love Theme from Top Gun)” and “I Ran (So Far Away).”

  He fumbled for the light. “Okay.”

  I touched his hand. “Can you leave it on? Till I fall asleep?”

  He nodded. “Good night, Bun O’Keefe.”

  When I woke up he was sitting at the end of my (his) bed with a newspaper.

  “Oh. You read.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  I did?

  “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, you know.”

  I pressed rewind.

  Oh. You read.

  You sound surprised.

  Oh. You read.

  Oh. You read.

  “I was just stating a fact. Not everyone reads. My mother never did. We never had anything to talk about.”

  He put the paper down. “Sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “Snapping at you. Your mother.”

  “You didn’t snap. And my mother’s my mother.”

  He passed me a bag. “I got you this when I picked up my paper. No ants.”

  The muffin was warm and the milk was cold. I didn’t normally cry but I felt like I could.

  He flicked open his paper. “I can read the headlines out loud and we can talk about them if you like.”

  No one had ever read me anything before. “Okay.”

  He scanned the page. “Let’s see. President Ronald Reagan is accused of selling arms to Iran.”

  “That means weapons,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  “I found a book once called A Farewell to Arms. I wondered if it was about amputees. But it was about war.” Busker Boy’s lips curled into a smile. I couldn’t see why. There was nothing funny about war.

  I changed the subject.

  “Ronald Reagan was in a movie with a monkey.”

  “He was?”

  “Yeah. And his nickname is the Gipper. Reagan, not the monkey.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “His father called him Dutch, though. ’Cause he looked like a fat little Dutchman.”

  He laughed. “You should write his biography.”

  “There already is one. It came home with a toaster oven. The sticker said twenty-five cents.”

  “Twenty-five cents for a toaster oven? Wow, that’s cheap.”

  “No, I meant the book.”

  “I know. I was joking.”

  “Oh.”

  He kept reading.

  “Here’s a good one. Mike Tyson won a world boxing title.”

  “Boxing is also called pugilism.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s in the dictionary.”

  “You read the dictionary?”

  “You don’t?”

  I was surprised. It was the most famous book in the world.

  Someone hammered on the door.

  Busker Boy peered over the paper. “Someone is pugilizing the door right now.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t a word but didn’t say so.

  He leaned over and twisted the knob. A cloud of smoke puffed in first, then a man that looked like the guy from The Shining (which also came home in a box with Jimmy Quinlan). He rolled his cigarette from the middle of his mouth to the left. I wondered if he used his tongue or if it was a trick of the lips. He stared at me and spoke out of the right side of his face. “Who do we have here?”

  Busker Boy said, “Nobody.” As he walked to the nightstand he pulled my blankets up around my waist.

  The man’s cigarette rolled from the left to the right and back again. Smoke drifted through his nose like a dragon.

  Busker Boy took an envelope out of the drawer and tossed it to the end of the bed.

  Dragon Man reached for it but kept his eyes on me. “Why don’t you come to the attic, little one, and tell me a story?”

  I looked at Busker Boy. “I could. I know lots of stories.”

  Busker Boy walked to the door and shut it in Dragon Man’s face. “Why would you say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “That you know lots of stories.”

  “ ’Cause I do.”

  He gathered his bedding from the floor. “Don’t ever go up to that man’s room. Don’t even talk to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not a nice person. Can’t you see that?”

  I couldn’t so I said so.

  “You have to be more careful. You can’t just talk to anybody.”

  “I talked to you. You’re nice.”

  “You didn’t even ask my name.”

  “I knew the names of all twenty-three kids in my kindergarten class. There was no advantage as far as I could tell.”

  He threw his comforter and pillow into the closet. “Just promise me you’ll never go near the landlord.”

  What I knew about promises came from Horton Hatches the Egg. It was a library discard and the pages were tearing away from the spine. I read it until the cover came off. Horton had promised a bird he’d sit on her egg while she went on vacation. He sat through rainstorms and snowstorms and was even caught by hunters who put him in a traveling circus. But through it all he stayed on the egg, saying:

  I meant what I said

  And I said what I meant.

  An elephant’s faithful

  One hundred per cent!

  I’d never made a promise before.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Now, let’s go busking.”

  He pulled on his big black boots. I pulled on my white Keds. She found them for $2.50 at a garage sale. “That there is a pair of premium shoes,” she’d said. I pointed out the hole in the big toe. Not that I cared what I wore on my feet, but the use of the word premium seemed inappropriate, so I told her. She called me a smartarse and told me to go away.

  Sometimes, my mother laughed at me. Once, in a box from the thrift shop, there was a bikini. It looked like the one described in Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself—a halter top with ties around the neck and the back. In the book, a boy untied the girl’s top and sang, “tidd
ly winks, tiddly winks.” The whole passage confused me—why did he untie it and what were tiddly winks? I had never been swimming and was never likely to, but I thought I might like to try on this bikini. My mother laughed when she saw me: “Grow some tits.”

  Busker Boy laughed at me, too, when I put on the leather jacket he’d given me. But his eyes were warm and he said, “You’ve got some growing to do, Bun O’Keefe.” I felt like laughing with him. So I did. Not my usual laugh, the crazy haw-haw-haw I’d perfected from Planet of the Apes, but my real one. I hardly recognized it.

  Before we left I asked him if he could do my hair like his. He spun me around gently by the shoulders and combed my hair with his fingers. He gathered every strand and wisp loosely at my neck. I closed my eyes. After a few gentle twists and tugs, a long braid hung between my shoulder blades.

  He passed me my glasses. “Don’t forget these.”

  When I put them on he said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but they look way too small for you.”

  “I don’t mind you saying.”

  I think he might’ve been waiting for me to say something else but I didn’t know what, so I said, “I’m somebody, you know.”

  “What?”

  “You said I was nobody.”

  “I did?”

  He looked up, as if the memory was pinned to the ceiling.

  “Oh yeah. I did, didn’t I?” He slung his guitar on his back. “I didn’t want to introduce you to the landlord, that’s all. Of course you’re somebody. You’re a very special somebody.”

  I wondered what that meant, to be special.

  On our way downstairs, a girl with big eyes came out of the kitchen. She said, “It’s my day off but you-know-who’s working today,” and Busker Boy grinned really big, and I said, “Who’s you-know-who?” and Big Eyes said, “I like your hair. It’s bleepin’ gorgeous.”

  I was more confused by the gorgeous than the bleepin’.

  She touched it. “A perfect strawberry blonde.”

  Her hair was a fake orangey-red. Like Cyndi Lauper’s on the She’s So Unusual cassette cover. My mother bought it at a garage sale and when she gave it to me she said, “I thought you could relate,” and then she laughed and I didn’t know why.

  “This is Bun,” said Busker Boy. “She’s staying awhile.”

  “Doesn’t she have a home to go to?”

  “No. That’s why she’s here.”

  “No one’s missing her?”

  “There was nothing in the headlines this morning.”

  Big Eyes stared at me. “We’ll get in trouble, you know, if you’ve run away from home.”

  “I didn’t run away. My mother told me to leave.”

  “So your face won’t be all over the news tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It should be here where it always is, stuck to the front of my head.”

  Big Eyes burst out laughing. “Come to my room tonight, Bun. I’ll curl your hair.”

  “Okay. I can tell you a story if you like.”

  I looked at Busker Boy. He winked so I knew it was okay.

  —

  On our way downtown we stopped at a candy store. The walls were lined with bins. I read the names out loud. Bottle Caps. SweeTARTS. Airheads. Runts. Sour Patch Kids. Busker Boy handed me a bag.

  “How much should I get?”

  “As much as you want.”

  He held the bag open and followed me from bin to bin.

  “Why did that girl say ‘bleepin’’?”

  “She wants to swear but can’t.”

  “Why does she want to swear?”

  “She’s trying to change her image.”

  “Why?”

  He answered but with his eyes on the checkout.

  “Her mother was pressuring her to go into a convent. So she split.”

  “Split what?”

  A girl behind the cash waved to him. He passed me the bag. “Meet you up front.”

  I read the price per pound sign. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad and wondered what my mother would make of it. He said “as much as you want,” so I took one more scoop of Runts and tied off the end.

  I laid my bag on the counter and the girl weighed it without looking at me. She had a candy pacifier in her mouth and when she told me the price she pulled it out with a pop! Her lips were wet and shiny.

  Busker Boy reached for his wallet. “She’s with me.”

  Pop Girl gave me a quick once-over then rang in the sale.

  Busker Boy asked if she had plans later.

  Pop! “Nope.”

  “You can come to my place. The landlord has darts and the gang should be home.”

  Pop! “Wicked.”

  The door jingled as we left. Busker Boy looked back through the window and so did I. Pop Girl pulled the remaining nugget of candy off with her teeth and threw the plastic ring in the trash.

  —

  I kept falling asleep on the steps of Atlantic Place. I thought it was Busker Boy’s singing, but it must have been his voice in general ’cause I dozed off again at the coffee shop while he chatted to a friend. His voice reminded me of the narrator from the Hinterland Who’s Who TV spots that came on when I was little. The beaver one was my favorite. “With all the woodcutting that the beaver has to do, it’s fortunate that his incisor teeth never stop growing. For a more complete story of the beaver, why not contact the Canadian Wildlife Service.” I figured only certain people could be narrators: patient people who could keep the script smooth and calm, people like Busker Boy.

  On the long way home I talked about space: how Venus is the hottest planet and footprints on the moon will never disappear ’cause there’s no wind to blow them away. I talked out loud till I got out of breath, then I talked in my head instead. I said six, yellow, blue to the rhythm of my feet till the house came into view.

  When we got inside Busker Boy said I should have a shower. When I asked why he said, “Because you spent half the day conked out on the steps of Atlantic Place,” and I said, “Not exactly, you put your jacket down first,” and he said, “You should have a shower anyway,” and when I asked why he said, “It’s a good idea to shower every day,” and I said, “Daily showering dries your skin,” and he said, “Good hygiene is important,” and I said, “Showering too often removes good bacteria that helps maintain healthy skin,” and he said, “You are so frustrating it’s no wonder your mother kicked you out!”

  Somehow I’d managed to make one of the world’s most patient people snap.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “She didn’t like my facts either. That’s why she said, ‘Go on! Get out!’ ”

  “I like your facts. They show how smart you are.”

  Me? Smart?

  “You don’t have to take a shower. Not if you don’t want to.”

  I had taken one the day before I left. It was a Tuesday, the only day of the week I left the house. The thirty-minute walk to the RV park was easier than moving boxes out of the shower stall at home.

  “I snapped because I’m nervous,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “The girl I was talking to today? She’ll be here soon. I’m not sure I’m her type.”

  “I think you’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

  We both smiled then, big and wide with wrinkles all round our eyes.

  “I’m going to have a shower now and then get my hair curled. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He passed me a towel. It smelled like a rainbow. I know ’cause I climbed one once in a dream.

  “Bun?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you going to smell that towel all day or are you going to take that shower?”

  I said, “But it’s full of colorful scents.”

  I was halfway out the door when he said, “Bun? That mother of yours is really missing out.”

  I was going to say on what, but decided not to say ev
erything that popped in my head.

  —

  Big Eyes answered her door in a pink crop top and yellow leggings. “Oh good. You’re here.”

  She plugged in her hairdryer and curling iron and pointed to the bed with her brush. “Sit.”

  Duran Duran stared at me from every angle.

  “Who’s your favorite?” she asked.

  I recognized them from my mother’s People magazine, the one with Princess Diana on the front. The article was called “A Romp with the Idol Rich.” I was more interested in “Malice in the Palace.” Apparently, Di was bossing the servants around and dancing the night away without Charles.

  “I don’t have a favorite.”

  “You like them all, huh?”

  “I don’t like any of them.”

  She put a hand on her hip. “You can’t be bleepin’ serious.”

  “I can be. And I am.”

  “Sorry, but if that’s the case, we can’t be friends.”

  I stood up. “Oh. Okay.”

  “Bun! Sit down. I’m only joking.”

  She sat behind me cross-legged on the bed. “Let’s brush out this gorgeous head of hair.”

  The bangles on her wrist clinked with each stroke.

  I had a kitten once. It showed up in a box marked Fabric Remnants $2.50. It sat on my lap and I stroked its fur. The rumbling beneath my hand drowned out the rumbling in my belly and I felt full, of what I didn’t know, but I was both sleepy and content. The kitten was mine, all mine, until a barbell rolled out of a toaster oven that had been placed on a bag of old coat hangers.

  There, on Big Eyes’s bed, I had that rumbly kitten feeling. My head swayed back in rhythm, and she was humming a song I recognized. I liked the way the bristles tickled my scalp, and if humans could purr, I probably would have.

  “Bun?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know what it’s like, you know. Not getting along with your mother.”

  “You know my mother?”

  She smiled. “What I mean is, I get it. Some bridges can’t be rebuilt.”

  “They can’t?”

  “Nope. So you won’t hear me convincing you to go back.”

  “I won’t?”

  “Not a bleepin’ chance.”

  I slipped my fingers in a rip in her comforter and felt the cottony fluff underneath.

  “Don’t mind the holes. They were going to throw it out at the hotel but Chef brought it home because he knew I didn’t have one.”