by Brian Doyle
“And we’ll have to get rid of that cat of yours,” he said over his shoulder to you in the backseat. “Have him put down. It doesn’t hurt. You use chloroform. You know there was cat hair in my coffee the other day? And on my toothbrush one time? I must have been drunk or something that day. Buying an old scruffy cat like that...”
Did Cheap know he was alive? you thought. Did he know he could die? Somebody could have him killed? Did he wonder if anybody loved him? Did he care? Cheap, he could be strangled, murdered tonight, now. Nobody would stand up and say this is wrong. Who protects Cheap except you? You’re in charge of his life. If he lives or dies it’s up to you.
And Phil? Who cares for Phil now?
THE TRIAL. You are accused of the heinous crime of not caring for your twin brother Phil...
You lay down on the backseat. Rest. Tired, maybe sleep. You would go later and see Phil sometime, you guessed. He looked at you. His eyes said he’d see you soon, you thought. Maybe he even waved.
The snow was driving straight into the windshield. You could get hypnotized. Watching the snowflakes come hurtling straight at you out of the dark, out of nowhere. You could start to imagine you were diving down, not speeding forward but down, down, a no-bottom hole right through the planet earth and out the underside and deep, deeper into outer space and the snowflakes glittering in the headlights of Horrors Leblanc’s car and there were stars whizzing past in a galaxy like a long hallway as you dove, dove deeper into the nowhere faster than light goes...
And in your dream you were hurtling through space with Phil and Phil was laughing and singing and he knew all the words and how smart he was all of a sudden.
“Wheeee!” Phil screamed with delight!
Phil was singing just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz singing, “Birds fly over the rainbow...”
Phil, smarter even than you, Martin, smarter than you!
Phil, happy, singing his little heart out, laughing at the whizzing stars, “Why then oh why can’t I?”
And now there was a Bang...Bang...Bang... and a shaking and a screaming of metal and glass.
And there was silence. Then a hissing sound.
And you were buried alive in the dark there for a long time — maybe you were still asleep, you thought — and then sirens and car doors slamming and voices and then a light shining and then another and another.
And you were wedged in down on the floor and facing up and one of the lights showed you something sitting in the corner of the backseat.
Snowflakes coming in. Where was the roof of Horrors Leblanc’s car? He was going to be very disappointed by what you’d done to his new car.
They got you out and in the ambulance.
Out the window you saw them uncover something in the snowbank. The light shone on it. They put it in a sack.
Your mother’s body was still in the front seat of the car with your father’s.
When you started feeling bigger, Grampa Rip and you talked about flat-bed trucks. Empty flat-bed trucks. If you run into the back of a parked flat-bed truck that has no load on, the flat-bed of the truck acts like a large horizontal knife and it comes right through the front window, shaving off the top of the car and also the heads of people sitting up in the front seat.
Your head is like a heavy ball sitting on your shoulders, attached only by a few skinny muscles, some flimsy bones and some veins.
You could knock a person’s head off with a baseball bat if you hit it right, the same as you could knock a small pumpkin off a gatepost.
Grampa Rip told you that when his friend Mutt McDowell was in the First World War he was running toward the enemy and the soldier running along beside him got his head knocked off his body by a shell and the soldier ran, kept running for more than a few steps before he fell over.
You were almost well enough then to talk about it but not for very long.
You had felt so small for so long.
19
Big Now
SOMETIMES I pinch Cheap’s skin and fur at the back of his neck — pull on it a bit like I guess his mother must have done to carry him around when he was little before he was taken away from her and shoved in a pet store window and sold for ten cents as a joke because he only had one ear.
When I do this with Cheap he closes his eyes and turns toward me and looks up at me and goes all soft like he wants me to kiss him.
I’ve showed this to Gerty. We laughed about it. She asked me to try it with her.
Now I’m trying it with her on the park bench right next to the Gray Man’s park bench.
A couple of weeks ago, Grampa Rip wrote to “Mr. John Smith” and soon after, Igor Gouzenko showed up, got his papers, told us he’d been offered five thousand dollars for the complete package, promised he’d send us a ten percent bonus. That night we had a party — Gerty and I found Sandy and brought him — and Igor was happy and tried to teach us a Russian dance. Sandy was the funniest trying it.
Grampa Rip wanted to invite the Gray Man, but one peek out the round window and we knew he was off duty. Igor told us he wasn’t worried about the Gray Man.
“He is no danger to me now,” said Igor. “His heart is not in it any more. Soon he, too, will defect to Canada.”
Then Igor asked Grampa Rip what was locked in his big strongbox that was so heavy.
Everybody helped pull the box out into the living room and gathered round while he turned the key in the big padlock.
Full of pennies, nickels and dimes!
Just like the great-grandaddy of the bowl on the hall table.
“For a rainy day,” said Grampa Rip, and he cried a little bit. “Been saving it almost all my life! For a rainy day. And no rainy day yet!” We picked up handfuls of the coins and ran them through our fingers. Grampa Rip gave two fistfuls of them for Sandy’s pockets.
“Some of it will come in handy for Martin to go back to school,” says Grampa Rip, putting his arm around my shoulders.
It was, Gerty said, the best party she was ever at.
And I said I agree with you, my sweetheart.
It’s 4:00 P.M. in the afternoon on a lilac-and-tulip day in the slanting sun.
Billy Finbarr, the paper boy, is watching us while he’s folding up his biscuits to throw at the houses.
The Gray Man is sidespying us, too.
There are two squirrels in the maple tree above us, watching. A couple of pigeons, eyes like buttons, are watching.
There’s Sandy on his rounds, marching across the park. He sees, too.
There’s Grampa Rip coming up the street in his funeral wake clothes, now turning into the apartment, his back and shoulders looking happy. He waves and sees, too.
I pinch the nape of Gerty’s neck right where the hairline grows in downy wisps. Like a little kitty she laughs and purrs on purpose and turns toward me and looks up at me, imitating Cheap, and goes all soft, like she wants me to...kiss her...
But I can’t. Too many eyes looking. Even Smitty outside Smitty’s Smoke Shop is standing outside his shop, looking across at us in the park.
And everybody on the streetcar that is rumbling by, even the driver, is looking at us. And the priest standing on the porch of St. Elijah’s Antiochian Orthodox Church looking up from his book is looking at us.
Billy Finbarr, paperboy, comes across the street to our bench.
“Hey, Billy,” I say. “What’s on the front page today?”
“First day of summer!” says Billy Finbarr to me, but he’s looking at Gerty. “I’ve seen you before,” says Billy.
“This is Gerty McDowell, Billy,” I say, trying to get rid of him.
“Hubba! Hubba!” says Billy, moving his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx does in the movies.
“Cut it out, Billy!” I say. “You’re too young for that, ya little shrimp.”
“Not too young to know,” says Billy, stealing from Nat “King” Cole’s song.
Gerty laughs, her skin like white roses brushed in pink.
“If you
ever need anything, Gerty, I live right over there — 337 Lyon Street, two doors from the church, second floor. See the balcony?” says Billy, making his eyebrows jump again.
“I see it, Billy Finbarr,” Gerty says, and then gives him a smile that makes me mad enough to go and shove Billy head first down the nearest storm sewer.
“Scram, Billy,” I say, but not mean, more friendly.
After a while Gerty puts her head on my shoulder.
“The Gray Man,” she says in my ear. “I wonder how long he’s going to sit there?”
“Probably forever,” I say, talking too loud on purpose. “I wonder if he is stupid like Igor said.”
I’m pinching Gerty’s nape, my eyes half closed, when I feel a shadow over us.
The Gray Man stands blocking the glancing sun from the west. He’s very tall, has large hands and a chest like a big wall. He has a low voice. He has hardly any Russian accent.
“Not stupid,” he says. “Not stupid at all. How’s your friend Igor doing? I saw him, you know. Don’t worry, I won’t report it. Soon I’ll join him. As a Canadian citizen, I mean. You young people think you know everything. You don’t know how lucky you are. You don’t realize that to be born in Canada at this present time in history is the greatest gift that can be thrust upon any person on this planet. I’d think very seriously about that, if I were you.”
He leaves, strides away down Somerset Street, doesn’t look back, disappears.
Time to walk. Gerty takes my hand. We walk across Dundonald Park and into the summer that’s starting. I’m getting to feel pretty big right now. Not disappearing like I was.
“Do you think we will be together always, Martin?” she asks.
“I don’t know, Gerty,” I say. “I don’t know about that. Guy like me, the way I am. All I know about is today.”
“I think we will,” says Gerty.
And our clasped hands clasp tighter.
“Will you come with me to visit my twin brother Phil where he’s at? We’ll take the bus?”
“Oh, yes, I will,” she says. “Yes, I will. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
This is all I can say. I’m afraid to say more. I’ll die if I say more.
The lilac trees, smelling like deep lilac, hang over us as we walk.
Die of happiness.
Dramatis Personae
Martin O’Boy - he felt so small he almost disappeared, but he got big again because of Love
Mr. Mirsky - a kind, good man
Granny - her advice stays with Martin
Grampa Rip Sawyer - much more than just a grampa
Cheap - a loyal one-eared companion
Buz Sawyer - off to be a war hero, again
Father - a piece of work
Phil - the damaged twin
Mother - the one who suffered
Smitty - he’s part of the Gray Man’s scenery
Anita - short perfumed tornado
Billy Batson - an old friend, gone
Fred MacMurray - he looks just like Captain Marvel except for his clothes
Virgin Mary - a beautiful lady in blue
Jesus - her son
The Mud Pout - an ugly woman
Frankie and Johnny - they’ll handle your valuables
Hack Sawyer - an old-time genius
Mr. Applebaum - a religious bigot
Dundonald - somebody they named a park after
Billy Finbarr - a flirtatious paper boy
The Gray Man - a “surveyor”
Esther Williams - long legs and a bathing suit
Randy - a guy whose brainpan needs to be hosed out with industrial-strength disinfectant
Mutt McDowell - an unfortunate, unsung, coughing war hero
Gerty McDowell - she’s so...
Nat “King” Cole - he sings the word “love” just right
Dermit - an old pal from sixty years ago
Kelly O’Kelly - the world’s oldest usher
Pete Lowell - a legendary streetcar conductor
Horrors Leblanc - he used to have a brand-new car
Igor Gouzenko - a Canadian hero/Russian traitor
Habitant pea soup - a biceps builder
Shipper - likes looking at “wedding” pictures
McEvoy’s - a good place to visit — if you’re still alive
Sandy - he gets around town
Matuta - a morning person
Red Skelton - a clown
Mrs. Laflamme - a former neighbor with many children
Mrs. Sawyer - she knows the neighbors’ business
Horseball Laflamme - an old friend with a not-very-nice first name
Mr. Lachaine - he owns Lachaine’s, a store
Karl Marx - he never worked at Pure Spring
Tony Bennett - he can make your life worthwhile
James Joyce - a famous writer
Ulysses - gets lost trying to get home
Waitress at Bellamy’s - experienced in damaged children
Two Carleton Place locals - weather experts
Prime Minister St. Laurent - a gentleman
Strawberry - a workhorse who can read
Doris Day - she could sing your heart out
Two men with bow ties - they take Phil for a long ride
Dorothy - she wants to fly like the bluebirds
The Soldier - he lost his head
Author’s Note
OTTAWA VALLEY people for generations have had affection for and fond memories of Pure Spring soft drinks. An Ottawa original in style and taste, the company was founded by David Mirsky in the 1920s. He started with water bubbling out of the limestone cliff at Bronson and Wellington streets known as Nanny Goat Hill. Pure spring water it was, hence the company name.
Honee Orange, Swiss Cream Soda, Grapefruit ’N Lime, Gini, Uptown and, of course, ginger ale are some of the dozen or more flavors we all came to crave.
The community-minded Mirsky family ran an honest, unpretentious business serving the mighty and the humble, the embassy and the corner confectioner with equal aplomb.
Many with memory in the region can still taste the Honee Orange sliding smooth down the throat on an endless, full-of-promise, hot spring day.
The final batch of Pure Spring colors was bottled locally in the 1990s.
We salute the Mirsky family and extend heartfelt thanks to Paul and Peter Mirsky for sharing their personal memorabilia.
PURE SPRING
1911 - 1995
Acknowledgments
The following sources were invaluable to me in the gathering of this tale.
Rick Brown
Mike Doyle
Dave Dunlap
Sandy Farquharson
Bob Gairns
A. E. Housman
James Joyce
Marilyn Kennedy
Lenny Marcus
William G. D. McCarthy
Paul Mirsky
Peter Mirsky
Paddy Mitchell
Sandy Morris
Joyce Carol Oates
Mike Paradis
Jay Roberts
Terry West
Peter Worthington
