Growing Up Ivy

by Peggy Dymond Leavey

  “I’ve got myself a contract to grow peas this summer.” The big man leaned against the door frame. “Ten acres of ’em, for the canners in Larkin. I sure could use your help, Charlie. I’ll pay you, too, of course.”

  That’s the part Charlie was waiting for.

  ***

  It turned out to be a very good year for peas. When the crop was ready to harvest, Edwin Fennell rode the horse that pulled the pea rake along the rows. It was Charlie’s job to pitch the heavy green vines up onto the steel-tired wagon.

  Because the peas were so abundant, the horse could only go a short distance before the long tines of the rake were full. It would then have to be dragged off the field and the vines shaken out before they could continue. It was slow, tedious work in the hot sun.

  By the time Charlie drove the wagon to the factory, there was often a wait of several hours to get it unloaded. Sitting on the wagon seat under the blazing sun, watching Fennell’s pair of horses flick flies off their backsides, Charlie decided there must be an easier way to make a living than farming.

  Mr. Fennell’s five-acre field of tomatoes, where Charlie and Aunt Rena, with the energy of someone half her age, had laboured as pickers, netted the farmer only forty-five dollars. No one wanted to buy his oats, even at twenty cents a bushel. Where had the good years gone?

  When the season was over, Mr. Fennell told them that it was the five hundred dollars he got for his crop of peas that meant the difference between bankruptcy and being able to hang on to the old Bayliss farm.

  That made Charlie feel a little better. “But, by George,” he said to his friend Delbert, “when next summer rolls around, I’ll find myself another way to make some money.”

  17

  Mr. Matthie

  The new schoolteacher arrived in September. Mr. Matthie was tall and balding, with a pencil-thin moustache. His coat hung on his thin frame like the clothes on a scarecrow.

  There weren’t too many of Charlie’s old pals left in school now. They were needed to help support their families and had gotten certificates that permitted them to quit school before their sixteenth birthdays.

  When Charlie suggested he do the same, Rena encouraged him to stay in school. “Sure, we could use a little more money,” she said. “But you go to school as long as we can manage here. Least till you write your high school entrance.”

  For now, the barter system served them well. Rena’s mustard pickles or a few jars of her pumpkin preserves could be traded for some meat for the table, or the occasional bag of coal for the Quebec heater in the front room.

  For a lady’s coat she’d cut down and remade to fit a child, Rena was able to get some patching done on the roof of the house, and if Charlie did odd jobs for the neighbours, he would often be paid in plums or apples.

  When Mr. Matthie came around to the house, hoping to board with them as the previous teacher had, Aunt Rena quickly agreed.

  Garnet Bayliss had slipped away in his sleep the July just passed, but there should be no tongues wagging over Mr. Matthie living at Rena’s. Charlie was the man of the house now, and at fourteen he was tall and well muscled after his summer on the farm.

  Although Mr. Matthie didn’t smell half as good as Miss Taylor had, the man loved to go fishing, and that made him all right in Charlie’s mind.

  But when the ice melted the following spring, and Charlie could have been spearing pike in the Pechart River with the other boys, Mr. Matthie was right there in the Bayliss kitchen, making sure that Charlie did his homework every night.

  “I’m counting on you to pass that entrance examination,” the teacher said. “You don’t want to end up peeling tomatoes at the canning factory for the rest of your life.”

  Late in May, the local priest made a call to the Bayliss home. None of the Baylisses had been churchgoers, but that didn’t stop the priest from calling around. The coins on the collection plate at the church of St. Basil’s-on-the-Corner were getting a little sparse these days.

  The priest had ridden his bicycle out to the farm, and his cassock and black hat were coated in dust. After a cold drink in Rena’s kitchen, she’d led him outside, into the shade of the elms that grew between the house and the barn where Charlie was chopping wood.

  “It’s good to see a strong young man helping his auntie,” remarked the priest. “I have a regular parishioner in town who could use a hand once in a while. If you are willing, young man.”

  Charlie rested on the ax handle and listened.

  “The lady probably won’t be able to pay much, but you’d be doing a real good deed. She lives all alone and is too proud to ask for help. What do you say?”

  It was Rena who spoke up first. “I could spare the boy for part of a day,” she said. “And whatever the lady cares to give him, in exchange for his time, will come in handy.”

  “I’ll tell her to expect the lad,” said the priest. “Hers is the only house with a picket fence around it on Arthur Road. You know the street next to the tracks?”

  Charlie assured him that he did. But after walking the five miles into town the next day, Charlie discovered that what the lady of the house wanted was for him to shovel chicken manure. As if he didn’t have enough of that to do at home.

  Her weekly cleaning of the henhouse over the winter had resulted in a large pile of dung, and now that the weather was warm, it had to be moved to the farthest corner of her yard.

  When he was finally finished the job, and hot and stinking of chicken manure, Charlie was handed a box of soda biscuits for his labour. He had no money to pay for a cold drink at Coon’s as he’d hoped, so he just headed home instead, stopping off for his first swim of the season in the Pechart River.

  Although the ice had been out of Misty Lake — the source of the Pechart — for a month, the waters of the river, flowing swiftly south and passing through Larkin on the way to Lake Ontario, were still frigid.

  Charlie left his cap and boots onshore and waded out in his overalls. He forced himself to swim upstream against the current until his arms and legs grew tired. Then he let the river carry him back to the place where he’d entered the water.

  He had climbed up the riverbank and was cutting through the ditch to get to the road again, when he spotted a man swinging a golf club through the long grass. A large house rose above the bushes on the left.

  “Hey, sonny.” The man was talking to him. “Did you see a golf ball down in there?”

  “Wasn’t really looking,” Charlie said.

  The man, who was short and round in the middle, was dressed for a game of golf, wearing plaid socks that met the bottom of a pair of knickers — Mr. Matthie had called them “plus-fours.”

  “I’ll go have a look,” Charlie said, and he slid down to the ditch again.

  “Mind yourself,” the man said. “That looks like poison ivy in there.”

  “Oh, I had poison ivy once,” Charlie said, choosing to forget the miserable days he’d spent spotted with clumps of dried baking soda. “It was nothing, just a bit of an itch.” He held up a white ball. “Is this it?”

  “Why, thank you, son. Say, you wouldn’t happen to be looking for a job, would you?”

  “Sure. Who isn’t?”

  “They can always use caddies over at the Shady Dell Golf Club. It’s where I play on Saturdays. Drop by sometime, if you’re interested in making a little extra cash.” The man reached out to shake Charlie’s hand. “Name’s Harry Pike.”

  Only a few businessmen from the area could afford to play golf at Shady Dell during the thirties. It was doubtful that the club could have survived without the wealthy men from Toronto driving out for a day on the links.

  The town had converted some vacant land into a municipal golf course, on the other side of the river. You could play all day there for fifty cents, carrying your own mid-iron and putter.

&nb
sp; Charlie had no idea what a caddy did to earn his pay, but by the time he got home and remembered that he’d left the box of soda biscuits on the riverbank, he’d decided that caddying was likely much better than cleaning henhouses.

  ***

  The day before school got out for the summer, Charlie took their boarder fishing for the last time. Mr. Matthie would be going home in a few days, and in September he’d be teaching at a school over in Dillfield.

  The fishing was good in Misty Lake, over on the next concession. So good, in fact, that, using a couple of Charlie’s spinners with worms attached, he and Mr. Matthie could go out late in the afternoon and, within a half-hour of casting out, catch enough pickerel for the supper table.

  Charlie guided the little flat-bottomed boat that he kept hidden in the bushes, down the grassy slope to the water. Grabbing the rope on the bow, he pulled the vessel back to the shore so that Mr. Matthie could board.

  “Step right into the middle there, sir,” Charlie said.

  “If you hate farming, Charlie, as much as you say you do.” The teacher had picked up his favourite topic of conversation again. “You really should continue your education, broaden your horizons.”

  Charlie wished that Mr. Matthie wouldn’t use these fishing expeditions as opportunities to lecture him about staying in school. He had passed his entrance, but he wasn’t sure what he should do next. In another month he’d be fifteen, and he was thinking seriously about looking for work.

  “I can’t go to my regular school, now that I’ve finished Senior Fourth,” Charlie said.

  He shoved the boat out, and when the water was up to his knees, clambered aboard himself. “The high school’s in Larkin, you know. And that’s five miles away.”

  “That shouldn’t bother a strapping young man like you. Why don’t you get yourself a bicycle? Maybe someone in the neighbourhood has a car even, and would agree to give you a lift. You just need to ask around.”

  “Mr. Fennell has a car,” Charlie said. “A McLaughlin Buick. But he can’t afford the gasoline to run it, so now it sits out in the yard behind his house. He lets me tinker with it sometimes.”

  “Oh, there’s much to learn about automobiles, Charlie,” the teacher said. “The internal combustion engine. Stay in school and learn some study skills. You’ll never regret it.” He passed Charlie the worm can. “These hard times will not last forever, my boy.”

  18

  Meeting Mary Alice

  “Caddy for you today, sir?” Charlie Bayliss stepped up to the car in the parking lot at the Shady Dell Golf Course. Harry Pike, owner of the Larkin Pants Factory, was unloading his clubs from the rumble seat.

  “Good lad,” Mr. Pike said. “Bert here yet?” The manager of the canning factory in Larkin was Mr. Pike’s usual partner.

  “He’s waiting for you on the porch, sir. Greens are still a little damp.”

  “Looks like a fine day,” Mr. Pike declared. “We’ll get in nine holes before the sun gets too hot.”

  Charlie hoisted the strap on the heavy canvas bag over his shoulder and strode off toward the clubhouse.

  He liked to be the first caddy to show up at the golf course on Saturday mornings. Harry Pike always came early, and Harry Pike had turned out to be the best tipper among the local golfers.

  If Mr. Pike wasn’t coming, Charlie hung around, hoping to be hired by some other golfer looking for a lad with a strong back to carry his bag of clubs and a keen eye for searching the rough. He wasn’t often disappointed.

  As soon as word got out that there was money to be made at Shady Dell, other youths from the community began to flock there to get their share of the wealth. Only the most dedicated, however, would stay on when the summer days grew long and hot, and the mosquitoes thirsted for blood in the trees along the fairways. Among this handful was young Charlie Bayliss.

  With Charlie having more and more frequently to work without pay on Mr. Fennell’s farm, the caddying job meant that he was still able to contribute a little money toward expenses at home. If his tips were especially generous, he might have enough left over to get into the movies in Larkin with Delbert Coon and the boys.

  No sooner had he started the caddying job than Charlie learned that he could resell any unclaimed balls he found at Shady Dell over at the municipal golf course. After closing time, with the owner’s blessing, he’d go searching between the trees and wading out into the pond. Even the ditches outside the golf course could yield a few stray balls from time to time.

  ***

  The baseball games between the Farmers and the Townies had begun to attract a loyal following of spectators, including a growing number of young ladies.

  At first, it was just a handful of younger sisters of the players who tagged along, then a neighbour girl would happen by, or a visiting cousin or two. Audrey Millcroft, the eldest daughter of the town’s lawyer, had her own car, and she had no trouble filling it with her friends on game nights. Before long, the boys had a regular audience of teen-aged girls cheering them on.

  Some time in early August there was a new girl in the Millcroft car. Her name was Mary Alice Flint, and word was that she had her eye on the good-looking redhead, Charlie Bayliss.

  Delbert Coon got a ride back into town after the game one night with Audrey and the others. While he was pretending to tease Betty Rasmussen, who sat pleasantly squeezed into the back seat beside him, he was actually listening to the chatter amongst the girls in the front, especially when his friend Charlie’s name came up.

  Delbert dropped by the Bayliss place on the weekend with the news. He found Charlie washing golf balls under the backyard pump. “She likes you, Charlie,” Delbert said. “That Mary Alice girl. The blonde? The one who’s just come to town.”

  “She doesn’t even know me,” Charlie growled.

  “But she wants to meet you. She told me she did.”

  Seizing a golf ball, Delbert scrubbed it against the front of his shirt. “Look, I’m doing you a favour. I wish I had your way with the ladies. You just make sure you’re at the game on Wednesday night because that’s when I’m going to introduce you.”

  ***

  It was Mary Alice Flint that Charlie took to the movies at the Roxy the first time he ever asked a girl out. He got a lift into Larkin with Mr. Pike, after caddying all day, and he showed up at the Coon residence right after supper. He had a clean shirt with him; one Aunt Rena had just turned the collar on.

  Delbert was home with the measles, but his mother let Charlie have a wash and change his shirt before going to call for Mary Alice.

  After the movie they stopped for a cherry soda at Bartlett’s Drug Store. Mary Alice Flint was a farm girl, raised out on the fourth concession. She had moved into town to board at her uncle’s place so that she could start high school in a couple of weeks.

  They sat on the stools at the soda fountain, and Mary Alice told Charlie that she was going to be a teacher.

  “I’ve got my future all planned out,” she said. One year of normal school at the end of high school and she’d be making her own way in the world.

  “I’m going to get my own little place, too, with a kitchenette and a refrigerator, and indoor plumbing.” Mary Alice’s uncle had the dubious distinction of owning one of the five indoor toilets in town.

  “What are you going to do, Charlie?” She fluttered mascaraed eyelashes at him over her soda straw. “You’re good enough to play professional baseball, you know.”

  “Oh, yeah, a regular Babe Ruth,” said Charlie. “Only difference is I pitch right-handed.” But he blushed at the compliment.

  In the face of Mary Alice’s high ambitions, he could hardly tell her that he was through with formal education.

  At the end of the evening, when they reached the front porch at her uncle’s house, Mary Alice held her face up to Charlie’s expectantly. Charlie wa
s aware that someone was standing behind the lace curtains in the living room.

  “Bye, Charlie,” Mary Alice said, her voice all breathy. “I had a real nice time.”

  Charlie leaned in close.

  Suddenly, the porch light flicked on and Charlie took a step backward, stumbling down the three steps to the sidewalk. By the time he recovered his balance, Mary Alice was disappearing inside.

  “I guess I’ll be seeing you in school, then.” She waggled her fingers at him through the crack in the doorway and was gone.

  All the way back to the farm in the dark, even before he’d stopped limping, Charlie thought about her. He tried to recall every word she’d spoken that evening, and what he’d said, and whether or not it had sounded stupid.

  By the time he called out to Aunt Rena that he was home and that she could go to bed, he’d determined that he would go to any lengths to see Mary Alice Flint again — even if it meant having to go to high school.

  In the morning, he told his aunt that he’d changed his mind. He’d decided to take Mr. Matthie’s advice and continue his education.

  “I don’t want you to worry about money, Aunt Rena,” he said. “I should be able to work at the golf course right up till Thanksgiving, longer if it doesn’t snow. And I’ll try to pick up an odd job here and there.

  “But if I quit school now, they say there’s no steady work to be had around here. Unless you want me to go to the cotton mill, and that would mean having to pay board over in Dillfield.”

  Rena sliced the heel off a loaf of brown bread and handed it to Charlie. “We’ll try it for a while,” she agreed. “I never wanted you to sacrifice your education, Charlie. And you do have another year till you’re sixteen.

  “For now, though, there’s a bushel of tomatoes on the back stoop. If you’ll fetch it in for me, we can get started on them right after breakfast.”