Pure Spring

by Brian Doyle

  While we eat, Mr. Gouzenko keeps lifting up his teacup to click it against ours. Toasting.

  Grampa Rip and Mr. Gouzenko can’t stop talking about everything. What it was like right after the war when he lived here with his wife Svetlana and his little boy. And when he exposed the spies in Canada and how the Russians, his countrymen, tried to kill him.

  How he escaped with his family. Then they talk about the old days before the war on the farm, how Grampa Rip’s old-time farming in Canada was almost exactly the same as Igor Gouzenko’s was back in Russia. How they had no telephones, no electricity, no tractors, only horses, and how hard they worked and what fun they had.

  And while we are finishing eating, Mr. Gouzenko looks at his watch and points to our radio on top of the icebox.

  “May I turn on radio?”

  Then he fiddles around the dial until he finds what he wants.

  “Toronto Symphony,” he says. “Tonight Tchaikovsky!” And soon the radio has a huge orchestra with every instrument playing, and Igor Gouzenko is standing at the table waving his arms like an important conductor, conducting our radio on the icebox.

  While Mr. Gouzenko conducts the radio, Grampa Rip goes up high in the kitchen cupboard and takes down a bottle of whiskey.

  “Ah, Jameson!” says Igor. “My favorite! After vodka, of course!” And now everybody’s laughing and the radio’s back being off and Grampa and Igor are talking about the good old days without electricity and Igor is saying something about moths...

  “The moths, at night. Before lightbulbs, only flames in lamps. Moths must be careful. Fly around flames. Dangerous.” He’s looking at me. “Too close to flame, wings get burnt up. Must be careful!”

  “Our friend is talking about the moth and the flame, Martin. Young love. Dangerous. ‘Thus hath the candle singed the moth. O, these deliberate fools!’” says Grampa.

  “Poetry! To poetry!” says Igor, and up go the glasses again.

  “Man who loves poetry is man I trust. You have education. Is good! You go to university when young?” Igor asks Grampa Rip.

  “University! No, I didn’t go to school at all! Not for long, anyway. Just long enough to learn to read and write. But my grandfather, Hack Sawyer, set me on the road to learning. He showed me how to educate myself while working. I had many, many jobs that required no brain at all. Hack showed me how to memorize poems while digging a ditch. How to read great novels while I ate my lunch. How to study the encyclopedia while standing on an assembly line with the other robots! Hack Sawyer was a genius!”

  I’m proud of Grampa Rip, how he explains to Igor about his past.

  And now, about Igor.

  He lives somewhere with his family in Canada. A secret. Nobody must know. Dangerous for him and his family. The Russians still want to hurt him.

  And now they are talking about danger and how dangerous it was for Igor that night and other nights when the Russians were looking for him and they would have killed him if they’d found him because he told Canada how many spies they had spying in Ottawa for the Communists.

  And Igor tells how to protect yourself if you’re in danger.

  “Distract, then act! Distract, then act,” Igor says. “Just like in nature. Do what mother partridge does when fox comes too close to nest. Pretend to be wounded and limp away. Fox will follow. Then when fox is far from nest — fly to safety.”

  Now quiet. Now glasses raised.

  Really quiet now.

  Igor leans closer to the table.

  We all do. Lean in. Heads close. Something coming. “I have confession to make,” he says.

  It’s 3:00 A.M. in the morning. Everything is so quiet. Even the oil furnace isn’t saying anything.

  “I am not here for nostalgic, memory of old days. I apologize. I lie. But now I trust you. I tell you truth.”

  Mr. Gouzenko tells us about that night. How the Russians broke down his door. Our door. How he hid in another neighbor’s apartment. How he escaped. How he came back. How he gave papers in English to the police. How the government moved his family. How he became a Canadian hero. How he still lives in a secret place somewhere in Canada. How he needs money.

  “...and why come back here?” Grampa whispers.

  “To get something. Something valuable. Something I can sell for money for my family.”

  “Something?”

  “Papers. Papers in Russian language.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. In apartment in floor.”

  “Where? What floor?”

  “In bedroom.”

  We go into the bedroom.

  “Under bed.”

  Under the bed is Grampa’s strongbox. We move the big bed. We slide the box out from the wall. Igor is almost as strong as both the movers Frankie and Johnny.

  With Grampa Rip’s hammer and crowbar we take up some floor boards.

  There’s a cloth bag with wood handles. Igor takes it carefully up and opens it. He takes out a handful of papers tied with a cloth ribbon. He unties the ribbon. Flips through the papers.

  He looks up. His face is tight.

  “Important pages missing. Nine pages. Package is not worth much money without complete pages. Rare historical documents to sell to archives. I need money. For my family. I am discouraged. Almost worthless unless complete.”

  My mind is a merry-go-round. Randy’s place. A dirty book shelf filled with old newspapers and magazines. A dusty, stopped clock. A folder on the top shelf.

  There’s something fluttering its wings inside me. These words come out of my throat like spring birds chirping.

  “I know where those missing pages are.”

  Have I grown another head?

  You’d think so, the way Igor and Grampa Rip are staring at me.

  15

  Sandy and Strawberry

  TRUCK NUMBER 15 is on Sussex Street. Number 24. It’s the prime minister’s house. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. He just moved in with his wife. Randy tells me that all prime ministers will stay in this fancy mansion from now on. Randy can’t wait to get in the house, figure out a way to steal from the prime minister of Canada.

  “They’ll have lotsa parties here. Need a lotta soft drinks. To mix with their hard drinks. Get it? Soft? Hard?”

  Yes, Randy. I get it. Very funny.

  We pull into the circular driveway. There’s a big black shiny car in front of us. A distinguished old man gets out.

  “It’s him!” says Randy and piles out of the truck and rushes over and sticks out his hand for the prime minister to shake.

  “You may deliver the ginger ale at the rear of the house, young man. We’re having a house warming! And best wishes to you and yours,” says Prime Minister St. Laurent. He has a beautiful voice and hardly any French accent and a kind face. His blue suit is pressed perfect. He stands very straight. He sounds very wise.

  We deliver the six cases of ginger ale around the back to a man in the kitchen with a white hat on.

  I’m back in the truck thinking about Mr. Igor Gouzenko and how disappointed he was about the missing papers. He was even more discouraged when I told him who had the papers. He said he remembered Randy and knew what a crook he was because he was caught twice stealing cigarettes from Smitty’s Smoke Shop and he said that if Randy ever found out that the papers were valuable he’d never give them back.

  He said he’d take the cloth bag full of documents back home with him and that he trusted us not to tell. He was going home to think things over. He left a post office box number and a fake name in case we wanted to write him a letter. We laughed when he told us his fake name — Mr. John Smith.

  My mind is very busy thinking about Gerty and what she said to me. Where she kissed me. I’m also very tired.

  Discouraged, disappointed. Igor was...off into the night he went. Sleepy...not much sleep...Igor...

  Suddenly Randy’s back!

  “Hey, wake up Mr. Sleepy Brain! Couldn’t figure a way to get by the guy with the white hat. Maybe next
time. Picked up this, though. Sitting right on the kitchen counter. Pretty snazzy, eh?”

  He shows me a silver table cigarette lighter shaped like a beaver with CANADA engraved on the beaver’s tail.

  “This is going to look real snazzy on my mantelpiece, right, Boy?”

  I’m wondering if maybe everything in Randy’s apartment is stolen.

  I’m so tired I can hardly stand up.

  Back home after work now and it takes a minute or two for it to dawn on me that Grampa Rip’s not here.

  Lost again.

  I go down to the corner of Somerset and Bank.

  In front of Fenton’s Bakery there’s a small crowd. It’s Sandy, Grampa Rip’s friend who brought him home, putting on a show.

  Sandy marches everywhere he goes. He learned to march in the war. His army uniform is khaki colored and there’s a stripe on his shoulder. He marches all over the city every day. People sometimes give him money. But it’s mostly food people give him. The breadman might give him a loaf of yesterday’s bread or sometimes the milkman decides to give him a pint of milk if the bottle has a little chip out of the top of it or the vegetable man will give him a turnip or a couple of carrots or a big onion and once I saw a grocery man give him a whole dozen of eggs because one of the eggs in the box was cracked. Sometimes the butcher might give him a hunk of unsliced bologna or a few wieners and then maybe the fishman, when he was in a good mood, might give him a catfish or a slice of pickerel or a part of a grass pike.

  Every time anybody gives Sandy anything, even if it’s just a nickel or a small apple or a handful of gooseberries from the fruit stand, Sandy clicks the heels of his army boots together, stands as straight and tall as he can and gives you the best army salute you ever saw. The salute is so tight that when his fingers reach just above his eyebrow, his whole arm bounces three times just like it’s on a spring or something.

  Everybody in Ottawa knows about Sandy’s salute. And everybody enjoys it when he gives one. And when there’s a little crowd like this one in front of the bakery — six or seven people — Sandy makes sure everybody sees the snappy salute and the little crowd laughs and gives Sandy a little bit of happy clapping.

  Sandy eats the rest of the piece of chocolate cake the lady in Fenton’s Bakery gave him, turns facing the store window, clicks the heels and Snap goes the salute!

  The show is over.

  I go up to him and look down into his squeezed-up face. Even in his big boots, Sandy is short. He must have been the shortest soldier in the war.

  “Have you seen Grampa Rip tonight?” I say.

  He tells me yes with his face. Sandy doesn’t talk.

  “Where?”

  Sandy turns to go up Somerset Street and then stops and looks back. I follow him up past Borden’s Dairy Bar and into the stable.

  Half dark in here. Squint to see. We go deeper into the stable and up a ramp. You can hear the horses chewing and sneezing. Sometimes thumping, tails switching against wooden stall walls. The huge stable smells warm and friendly. Brown smell of horse and harness, hay and oats. Sweet horse shit.

  Sandy points.

  There’s Grampa Rip lying down on some bales of hay in one of the empty horse stalls, on his back, peaceful, in his funeral suit, his watch chain glistening, snoring a little bit, a small smile on his lips, a tulip in his buttonhole, his open hand on his head.

  The horse in the next stall says something in his throat to say hello to us. Grampa’s eyes open.

  “I love the smell of horses,” he says. “Don’t you, whoever you are?”

  “It’s me, Martin, Grampa Rip. Sandy showed me where you went to. It’s time to go home.”

  “I’ve had many different jobs in my lifetime, boys. I’ve been a ditch digger, a paver, a caddy, a door-to-door watch salesman, a tugboat cook, a stonemason, a roofer, a bricklayer, a lumberjack, a log boomer, a pig slaughterer, a manure spreader, a harness maker, an elevator man, a boxcar loader, a railroad man, a bottle washer, a farmer, a mailman, a dynamiter, a sewer worker, a teamster and many, many more... I’ve seen it all. One of the jobs I had for a while was milkman for Borden’s Dairy, years and years ago. My horse’s name was Strawberry, one of the first berries of spring. Strawberry knew my milk route as well as I did. I remember, on hot days, she liked me to put a chunk of ice in her mouth to cool her off. I came looking for her tonight.

  “She knew every house and store to stop at. You didn’t have to tell her. You didn’t even have to pick up the reins to steer her. And if there was a sign in the window — NO MILK TODAY, THANK YOU — she wouldn’t stop. She’d go on to the next. I swear she could read the signs. Yessir! And between stops I’d read and read my books!”

  “Time to come home, Grampa.”

  “You know, boys, in the old days,” says Grampa Rip, “in spring in the Ottawa Valley we had contests, games, cross-cut sawing, rip sawing, needle threading, big picnics, everybody there, potato peeling, pancake eating, eggs boiled in maple syrup...pour maple syrup on everything, on each other, pour maple syrup all over the boys and girls and we bathed ourselves in the sacred dew of the maple tree...”

  “Time to come home, Grampa Rip.”

  Sandy and I help him up and brush the straw off his suit.

  “Home?” says Grampa. “Get my horse, Strawberry. She knows the way. Strawberry, my old loyal horse. Take us straight home, no questions asked.”

  There’s a warm spring rain touching tender our faces. We walk the short way home.

  At the apartment door Sandy gives us a special salute. We go in. Grampa gets in his chair and I get five dimes out of the Grampa-is-lost bowl.

  I go out in the hallway and shut the door. I want to give Sandy the five dimes and I want to talk to him about an idea I have. An idea about “distract, then act.” Sandy doesn’t talk but I only have to explain the plan to him once and he gets it right away. He’ll be there. His nodding tells me that.

  Oh, Gerty. Tomorrow I’m comin’ to see you with a plan! And tonight, in my sleepiness, I’ll go to sleep with you!

  16

  The Plan

  RANDY IS in a good mood today. Today is Saturday. Today is payday. The weather is beautiful. The tulips are all over the place. He’s already stolen, with my help, twelve dollars from the first stop we made today at the Parliamentary Restaurant.

  “They’re easy on Parliament Hill. They just don’t seem to pay attention to anything. You could steal the flag off the Peace Tower up there and I bet they wouldn’t even notice!”

  I’m hoping to get him off his usual subject before he even starts so I tell him that Gerty and I went to see the Marx Brothers movies at the Rialto last week.

  “Marx Brothers. Jews. Karl Marx, the inventor of Communism, was their great-grandfather. Those Marx Brothers, they’re not funny. No Jews are funny. Oh yeah, maybe they’ll try to make you laugh while they’re picking your pocket. That’s why they get to be comedians.

  “The Jews started the First World War and the Second World War...and now the Commies...did you know... you know what fluoridization is? No, you probably don’t. Fluoridization is a plan that they’re talking about to put stuff in our drinking water that’s supposed to stop your teeth from rotting. Well, those Commies up there in city hall, most of them Jews are plotting to poison us all and take over the city...did you know that Doris Day is a Jew, her real name is Doris Von Krapelhead or some stupid thing. Come on, kid. Wake up!”

  Randy seems crazier today than usual.

  Is it because he’s in such a good mood?

  While Randy’s raving away about Commies and Jews, I’m thinking about last night. Gerty and I went walking. The more we walked, the more I told her of my plan. First I told her some, then more, then all and the more I told the happier she got. She cried, and then she laughed and as Randy might say while she laughed the tears rolled down her eyes. Then she sighed and then her eyes were on fire, set on fire, flashing with disgust and hatred for Randy.

  It was a long walk because I had to
tell her about Igor Gouzenko and the stolen papers and go over the plan with her again and again.

  Gerty likes the plan. She loves the plan. She’ll have the tulips ready. She’ll have the back garage unlocked. She can’t wait. She’s more excited than I am.

  This is Saturday. The last day I’ll ever work at Pure Spring. Randy doesn’t know this. He won’t know it until it’s too late.

  And Randy will never, ever know this.

  Last night, in the half-moon light by Baron Strathcona’s fountain, I kissed Gerty McDowell on the lips.

  We pull up in front of McDowell’s Grocery and Lunch on Sweetland.

  Gerty is in the doorway of the store. Everything is written on her face that only I can see.

  “There’s Gerty McDowell,” I say. I have put cheerfulness in my voice.

  “So that’s Gerty McDowell! Oh ho! I get it now, Boy. She’s your girl! Why didn’t you tell me? Hey, she’s a nice lookin’ piece. Wow wow wow! Way to go, there, Boy O’Boy! Look at the great hair. And the blue ribbon in the hair! Nice touch, there, Romeo. Eh? Eh? You gotta tell me all about her. What she’s like, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

  We get out of the truck.

  “I’ll go down. Check the basement,” I say.

  “Okay,” says Randy. “Mind if I have a little chat with your sweetie?”

  Instead, there’s Sandy coming out of the store just like we planned and he starts a little show for Randy. Gerty gives Sandy a sandwich. He bows. He turns. He begins to eat the sandwich. He salutes.

  I’m in the store and down into the cellar. I open the cellar window and crawl out. I can hear Sandy’s clicking heels. Now Gerty’s giving him the cup of tea. Now the show starts over. More Sandy. More heels clicking.

  I pull three full cases of Honee Orange off the truck, careful, no noise, and wheel them into McDowell’s garage. I come back. Now I hear Gerty’s voice. Sandy’s act is over. Gerty has applauded and got Randy to applaud a bit, too. Gerty is saying, “Mr. Randy, could you come in a minute? I’d like to talk personally to you...” Just like we planned. Distract. Then act!