Boy O'Boy

by Brian Doyle

  Copyright © 2003 by Brian Doyle

  Second paperback printing 2003

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to

  1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / Douglas & McIntyre

  720 Bathurst Street, Suite 500, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2R4

  Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West

  1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

  National Library of Canada Cataloging in Publication

  Doyle, Brian

  Boy O’Boy / by Brian Doyle.

  ISBN 0-88899-588-1 (bound).-ISBN 0-88899-590-3 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS8557.087B69 2003 jC813’.54 C2003-902985-9

  PZ7

  Cover photography by Tim Fuller

  Design by Michael Solomon

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Acknowledgments

  The writer of a tale always needs other people s help to get it right. I would like to thank Marilyn Kennedy for processing the material and keeping it on track; Mike Paradis for his sharp-eyed editing and helpful feedback; Desmond Hassell of Parkdale United Church, Ottawa, for his pipe organ instruction; and my longtime partner in concocting musicals and other illegal products, Stanley Clark, who trained my ears to hear “Crown Imperial.”

  I am also indebted to Jeanne Safer s excellent study, The Normal One: Life With a Difficult or Damaged Sibling (The Free Press, New York, 2002).

  This book is dedicated to my sister Fay, of Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, and my brother Mike, of Clayton, Ontario.

  And to Sandy Farquharson, who wears a sleep mask.

  And to Debra Joynt, of Chelsea School, a great teacher.

  Table of Contents

  Baron Strathcona’s Fountain

  The Turkey Lady An the Ketchup Lady

  Papineau Street and the Aztecs

  Mr. George and the Choir Cat

  The Ideal Father

  Cheap and the Perfect Twin

  New Shoes

  Trap Door Spider

  “Who’s Coming to Me!”

  A Crazy Man

  Poor Billy

  Organ Pipes

  The Show

  A Bad Bing Crosby Habit

  Buz

  Ice Cream Sundae

  Heney Park

  The Riddle and a Letter

  “Happy Birthday!”

  Mr. George Borrows a Boy

  That’s What You Get

  Granny’s Umbrella

  Crown Imperial

  Bounty

  Sorriest Organ Player

  1

  Baron Strathcona’s Fountain

  MY GRANNY died last night.

  “Death will come and take her tonight.” That’s what they said. Death came and Granny died. But she was still there. Death didn’t take her away. It was a big black car that came and took her away.

  I was named after her. Her name was Martina. I am Martin. No a on the end. My last name is O’Boy. I’m Martin O’Boy. Some people try to call me Boy O’Boy. But I don’t like it.

  My father was sleeping downstairs on the couch with the spring sticking up. My mother yas sleeping on the floor beside the bed upstairs where Granny was. This morning early before the sun came up the men came and got Granny and drove her away in a big black car.

  Now, I guess, my mother and father can go back to their own bed.

  Last night we were all standing beside the bed: Dr. O’Malley, Father Fortier, my mother, my father, my twin brother, Phil, and Cheap, my cat.

  My granny stopped breathing. I heard the last breath she let out. It was a long breath. Like a long sigh.

  Oh…

  Dear…

  Me.

  It sounded like she was very, very tired. So tired.

  Father Fortier was saying the words.

  Dr. O’Malley was nodding his nods.

  A few hours later I went back in to see her. To see my granny.

  The doctor and the priest were gone. Phil, my twin, was asleep. My mother and father were down in the kitchen, arguing, but not very loud.

  I go in to see Granny.

  The light from the hallway cuts into the room. Her dark shape. There on the bed. Is she breathing? No. The bed, did it creak? No. Darker than night on the other side of the room.

  Her legs feel hard like logs floating in the river. Arms like the marble of a statue. Cement feet. Hands like stone. Fingers like carrots in the dark cold storage. Her face of glass — cold, thick glass.

  My granny dead. Her hair like silk. Her head like the heads of the iron soldiers at the war monument…

  The men came and covered her and put her on a stretcher and they grunted and groaned with her all the way down our narrow stairs when they carried her.

  I remember Granny specially in the winter when she’d come over almost every day. She lived on Robinson Avenue over in Overbrook near the slaughterhouse. She used to walk all the way down to our house almost every day from there. Past the slaughterhouse, down the path through the thick, tall dark tunnel of bush along the Rideau River, through Strathcona Park, up to Baron Strathcona’s fountain, over to Rideau Street and down Cobourg Street, past Heney Park to the corner of Papineau Street and our place.

  Granny was very beautiful, even though she was old. She had long, long curly hair and big blue eyes. My twin brother Phil would run to the door when she came in and so did I.

  We’d feel her cold fur coat with some of the fur out of it and I’d laugh at her fogged-up glasses. When she came into the hot hallway out of the cold her glasses would fog up right away and she wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

  “Ah canna see a thing,” she’d say. “Ah canna see but ah ken it’s ye wee ’uns!”

  She talked that way because she was from Scotland.

  And we’d feel her coat and I’d reach in her pockets and look for candy she always had there and I’d put her umbrella in the corner for her and help her take off her coat.

  And my twin brother Phil would have a candy in his hand and start howling for somebody to take the paper off for him.

  Granny always had her umbrella with her. Even in the winter. The black umbrella with the very sharp point on the end.

  My mother once told me that a long time ago one summer around when I was born a man came out of the slaughterhouse and started following Granny down the path along the Rideau River and she started walking faster and so did he and she started running with her long hair flying and he was running too and she had her umbrella with her because it looked like rain and she stopped suddenly and turned around and stabbed him in the face with the black umbrella with the very sharp point on the end and he bent over with his hands covering his face and then she ran up to Baron Strathconas fountain and stopped there to get her breath and she turned around and looked back and he was gone and maybe she poked out one of his eyes…

  And so after that she always had her umbrella with her, rain or shine, summer or winter.

  I often picked up the umbrella and played with it. Playing sword with it.

  In the last few days of school this year before the summer holidays the teacher, Miss Gilhooly, was trying to waste time. She made us draw a picture of some summer activity that we would be involved in when
the holidays came, if they ever did come, something that we could imagine we would be involved in.

  So I drew a picture of a beautiful lady with long hair driving a sword right into the eye of a ghoul with blood and jelly squirting out and the ghoul shouting, screaming, “EEEEEE!” in big red letters and a slaughterhouse behind and Baron Strathcona’s fountain right there.

  Everybody in the class got their picture back but me.

  Then school was over.

  And sometimes when Granny came visiting, she brought Grampa with her. He’s from Scotland too. He never said anything so I never knew if he talked funny like Granny but he probably did.

  In Scotland when he was young he was a famous soccer player. In the summer in our little yard, I’d throw my rubber ball at him and he’d bounce it back to me with his bald head. He could make the ball go anywhere you wanted it to go.

  We hung a barrel hoop on our apple tree that never has any apples on it and he used to bounce the ball through the hoop with his head every time.

  In the house in the winter he could hit our cat, Cheap, every time with the ball, but if Granny caught him doing that she’d yell at him.

  “Dinna do thot!”

  He never said anything back. He’d just smile.

  And sometimes he’d look at me for a long, long time until I would get feeling strange and I’d leave the room.

  I have so much curly blond hair and he has none — not one hair on his head. Was that what he was thinking? That he’d like to have some hair?

  Then he got a stroke and now he’s in the Home sitting in a chair looking out the window all day long. I wonder, when we sometimes go to visit him, what he’s thinking now, looking out the window.

  My father says he probably wishes he was back in Scotland.

  In the Highlands.

  That’s where his heart is, my mother says. I like that. When she says that. About where your heart is.

  I don’t know where my heart is.

  2

  The Turkey Lady

  An the Ketchup Lady

  I’M SITTING on our front step hugging my knees. We have no veranda. Just a cement step and then the sidewalk. Our door is two doors down from Cobourg Street, on Papineau Street.

  I’m thinking about a few things. I’m thinking about how the war is almost over and how every day now there’s soldiers and sailors and air force men coming home and there’s always parties in the streets at night.

  And I’m thinking about my birthday coming soon and I’m wondering if I’ll get a present this year. Last year I got a cat with one ear for my birthday.

  And also I’m thinking about tonight when I get to go to sing in the Protestant church choir on King Edward up the hill past Rideau Street from the Little Theatre.

  Two ladies come along.

  I sit and look at them. It’s morning right around the time when the ice truck comes. When the truck comes I can reach in the back — the driver lets me do it — and get a piece of ice to suck. It tastes like ice but it smells like wood and wet sawdust.

  But I can’t go to the truck now because of these ladies standing in front of me, talking to me. The truck is delivering next door to Mrs. Sawyer. We don’t get the ice delivered because it’s too expensive. It’s cheaper if I go to the ice house with the wagon and get it myself.

  A streetcar goes by on Cobourg. One of the tall ones. With the long face. He says Cobourg Barns on his forehead. His eyes are the tall windows. His little round nose is the headlight. His mouth is the catcher. He’s not smiling. He never smiles.

  “You must be Martin,” one of the ladies says.

  The ladies have beautiful clothes on. They both have colored umbrellas but it’s not raining anymore. The sun is out and there’s steam coming off the streetcar tracks and parts of the sidewalk.

  Sometimes the water truck comes along and washes the street. I like to sit on the curb and let the water spraying from the truck splash on my feet. But this steam is because of the rain, not the water truck.

  The street smells clean.

  Our step is broken in half. I’m sitting on the higher part. I have on socks and over the socks I’m wearing rubbers. I have no shoes. My rubbers are held on by elastics the same color as the socks and the rubbers. Black. My legs are white. Except for the scabs on my knees from falling on the road playing soccer with a tennis ball with Billy Batson. The scabs are brown and red. My short pants are brown. I have a pocket in the left side but there’s nothing in it. I have on a white undershirt. My sweater is wool and the color is gray. It’s getting hot so I’ll take it off but I can’t right now because these two ladies are here now, looking down at me.

  The cuffs of my sweater are coming apart. The threads of wool are hanging down. With my fingers I pull up the threads and close my hands around them so the ladies can’t see. I look like I have no hands.

  The ladies squeeze up their faces when the streetcar goes by. They can feel the rumbling of the streetcar up through their fancy shiny shoes and up their legs inside their dresses.

  One of the ladies has some wrinkles around her mouth and loose skin on her neck like a turkey. And she has blue hair. A turkey with blue hair.

  The other lady has hair the color of peaches piled up with curls and her cheeks are painted pink and her eyelashes are long and black and her eyes are like blueberries and her lips are painted with heavy thick lipstick the color of ketchup.

  The turkey lady has a watch hanging on her chest beside her glasses hanging there too. I can tell the time on the watch even though it’s upside down.

  It’s a quarter after eight.

  “We’re very sorry to hear about your grandmother. She went to sleep last night, didn’t she?” the ketchup lady says in a sing-songy voice.

  “She didn’t go to sleep,” I say. “She died.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s it, Martin, isn’t it?” says the turkey lady. I’m being impudent and I know it.

  Our door opens and my cat, Cheap, gets pushed out to sit beside me.

  “Oh, what an interesting cat!” says the ketchup lady. “What’s it’s name?”

  “Cheap,” I say. “I got him for my birthday last year. My father bought him at Radmore’s pet shop on Rideau Street for ten cents because of his missing ear. Cheap.”

  “Oh,” says the ketchup lady. She’s smiling but she doesn’t want to.

  “Are those your shoes?” says the turkey lady.

  “They’re not shoes, they’re rubbers,” I say.

  “Where did you get all that lovely curly hair?” says the ketchup lady.

  “Where’d you get your hair?” I say. Impudent.

  My granny would say, “Dinna be impudent.”

  “How old are you?” says the turkey lady.

  They always ask you how old you are. But you’re not allowed to ask them how old they are.

  I don’t tell her. She goes into her purse and takes out a paper and unfolds it.

  “Did you draw this? Martin? In school? Mmm?”

  A beautiful lady stabbing a ghoul is the picture. “EEEEEE!”

  3

  Papineau Street and the Aztecs

  THE FAMILY allowance check came today. I saw the mailman come and give it to my mother not too long after the turkey lady and the ketchup lady left the house.

  My mother got Phil ready and walked up to the bank on Rideau Street to cash the check. Each month we get sixteen dollars. Eight dollars for each kid in the family.

  Phil gets the same as me even though he’s not the same as me.

  I’m trying to figure out how much money Horseball Laflamme’s mother gets from the mailman. They have so many kids she must get lots of money. They all live next door to us at number one Papineau. There’s something wrong with Horseball’s father, Mr. Laflamme. He coughs a lot at night. You can hear him through our bedroom wall upstairs. Coughing and hacking and spitting.

  We live at number three Papineau.

  Next door to us at number five is Buz Sawyer and his mother. Buz’s fath
er is dead. Buz joined the air force and went away last winter. Mrs. Sawyer said he lied about how old he was so he could go and fly planes. Mrs. Sawyer was mad about that. We’re waiting for Buz to come back soon. Then, next to Buz is number seven where my friend Billy Batson lives with his mother. His father is at the war.

  At number nine, the last in the row, there’s Lenny Lipshitz and the Lipshitzes. Lenny’s father is a rag man. A rag and bone and junk man. He has a horse with a bent back that pulls an old creaky wagon. He drives around all day, really slow in the wagon. Every little while he calls out something that means rags, bones, junk. He sits up there on his wagon half full of bedsprings and bottles and paper and bones and he’s not sitting up straight. He looks like he’s asleep.

  Lenny Lipshitz has a face that makes you think he’s lying all the time. I guess it’s because he never looks right at you when he says something to you. He always looks away over your shoulder or down at your shoes when he talks. And his mouth acts funny when it tries to say the words. His mouth acts like it doesn’t want to say the words it’s saying.

  And his cheeks go up a bit like your cheeks do when you stub your toe or you get your fingers caught in a door.

  One day, at school, Lenny showed me a game called pennies in the pot. You dig a hole with your heel in the dirt. That’s the pot. Then from three long steps away you each throw a penny and try to get it in or near the pot. Whoever is in, or closest, gets a turn shoving the other penny with his finger. If he gets it in he keeps both pennies. If he doesn’t, it’s the other guy’s turn.

  We played quite a while and I lost every time.

  I was starting to run out of pennies when along came Miss Gilhooly, our art teacher. She was HORRIFIED and said that what we were doing was gambling and that gambling was evil and that we should give all the money back and get off the path of sin and wrong.

  In my pocket I had three cents left.

  “How much did you have before you started this GAMBLING?” Miss Gilhooly said. She had a look of great sadness on her face. She was looking at me like I was someone who just got a horrible disease and was going to get sent to a leper colony or to the Island of the Damned, like in the comics. I showed her the three cents I had left.