Never Sleep Three in a Bed

by Max Braithwaite

  Well, we were all listening to this with our jaws hanging open. Attack Art Forester? Might as well talk of attacking Jack Dempsey who, as heavy-weight champion of the world, was well known by every Prince Albert kid as a ruthless killer in the ring. When his father had gone, we hastily counselled Nigel to pay no attention to the advice. Nigel agreed.

  Well, the very next day, when two or three of us were in the Spencer backyard and Nigel was playing with one of his snakes, along came Art. He stopped, looked around to make sure no adult was present, and came in through the back gate. We all tensed up. Art always made other kids tense up.

  “What ya doing, Spencer?” Art barked.

  “Oh just playing with my snake.”

  “Snake! You play with those things? I might have known a juicer like you would do anything. Give it to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I know a little game with snakes. You hold onto them by the tail and crack ’em. Breaks their neck slick as anything. Hand it over.”

  The rest of us little kids watched this thing petrified. To kill a kid’s pet snake! But Art could do it, we knew right well. We’d watched him collect baby frogs out on the shore of the big slough once, put them in a jar of water and set it on the fire to boil.

  “No,” Nigel said, and put the little snake behind his back.

  “What are you talking about?” Art gave the smaller boy a hard shove that sent him over with such force that he let go the snake. Art plunked his big boot down on the reptile’s tail and held it there. “Now,” he said, “I’ll show you how this is done.”

  He reached down and gingerly took hold of the snake’s tail and lifted it up. But before he could crack its neck something hit him in the pit of the stomach like a battering ram. It was Nigel Spencer’s head, propelled forward with all the force of his wiry, eighty-five-pound body. All the wind went out of Art and he sat down heavily, releasing the snake which one of us immediately captured.

  Before Art could struggle to his feet or even gasp out a startled “What the hell?”, Nigel Spencer was on top of him yelling like a mad fiend and pounding away with both fists on the big boy’s face. There was a lot of force in those blows, too, and they were doing some damage. Finally Art struggled to his feet, brushed the smaller boy aside and stood glaring at him. The rest of us watched, as the forum crowd must have watched and waited for the lions to pounce on the Christians. We knew it would be murder, but we were helpless to move.

  But nothing happened. Brushing off his clothes, Art muttered something like “Jees … the little juicer’s gone crazy. You should be locked up. I’ll get you for this.” Then, staring blankly at the blood on his finger that he’d wiped from his nose, he stomped out of the back gate.

  The funny part was he never did get Nigel. He threatened often enough, but never actually molested him again. He was never quite sure just what might happen to him if he tried.

  One of the best things about Prince Albert was the bush. It filled every vacant lot, of which there were plenty, and completely surrounded the town. On the south side it was mostly trembling aspen, white birch, choke-cherry, willow, balsam, pincherry, some hazelnut, poplar and Saskatoon berry. North of town, across the Saskatchewan River, were sand plains, with great forests of jack pine, spruce and tamarack. We loved them all.

  But mostly we loved the bush south of town which surrounded the big slough. The rushes along the shore were filled with nests of red-wings, terns, pintails, hell-divers, and a host of other birds. The woods back from the shore contained innumerable crows, jays, song-birds, magpies, hawks, and others. There were squirrels and cotton-tails, and weasels of all kinds. And now and then we would even see a moose or a deer.

  That big slough! The path to it from town wound through the bush, and as we raced down it in the hot days of July we shed our pants and shirts as we ran, ready to plunge into the water as soon as we hit the shore. Then we would swim and wade out into the beautiful, black, soft, squishy muck that covered the bottom, and plaster the stuff all over our bodies, and make mounds of it on the shore. To this day I don’t feel really good in water unless I can sink in nice, slippery, gooey muck up to my ankles.

  We’d spend the entire day there, perfectly happy. When we weren’t in the water we were looking for birds’ nests in the reeds, chasing frogs or salamanders along the shore, eating Saskatoon berries or raspberries, or building huts.

  The hut we had in the bush near the big slough was the greatest. It was designed and engineered entirely by Hub, while the work was done by all of us. Even as a boy of twelve Hub knew everything, and could do everything. At least that’s the way it seemed to me. He got none of his information from books, because he never read, and certainly none of it from school, because he played hookey so much.

  He had, however, an inborn sense of the practical. He knew how to do things almost instinctively, and he had wonderful powers of observation. He could, for instance, put together anything he could take apart. As soon as he obtained something new, from a bicycle to an old gramophone, he immediately took it apart meticulously, and then put it together again. After which the intricacies of that particular mechanism were locked forever in his mind and he could apply the knowledge to any similar problem.

  He was, too, amazingly resourceful. We didn’t build the hut out of logs or anything as difficult as that. We built it out of new lumber that we pinched from various construction jobs around the place. (We never stole. That was sinful. We just “pinched”.) Anything that wasn’t nailed down we considered fair game. This included boards, shingles, tarpaper, nails, two-by-fours, and even little windows from an old chicken-coop that was being torn down. We put them all together, and we had a hut. We even lined it with some beaver-board that somebody was foolish enough to leave out, and that gave a space to store things.

  Ah–that hut. It was our refuge, our haven, our own private place. Here we roasted spuds that we’d pinched from gardens on the edge of town, kept our magazines with racy pictures of Theda Bara, and smoked dried leaves. I suppose every boy has smoked dried leaves. They taste terrible. You pick them off the trees–ones on the ground are too moist–and you roll them up in bits of newspaper, being careful to see that stem ends don’t puncture the sides. Then you get a box of matches–nothing less than a big box will do–for you must light the cigarette after every puff. Then, oh the taste of musty leaves, ink and sulphur. It burns your tongue, stings your throat and belabours your nasal passages. Wonderful!

  We never took girls to the hut. This was our pre-girl period and we wanted nothing to do with them. For we were at the age when girls were mysterious creatures–they were just beginning to bother us, that’s what it was–to be acknowledged only by gruff words, pushes, thrown snowballs, and braids dipped in inkwells. In fact, through teasing a girl my career almost came to an abrupt end. We were coming home from school on a cold January day. My coat collar was turned up so that I couldn’t see much. The street, naturally, was devoid of cars. We’d been teasing this girl all the way home. I said something to her and she took after me. Looking back over my shoulder to see how close she was, I ran smack into the side of a delivery truck. I bounced back into the snow-bank, bruised but unbroken. A split second sooner, and I’d have been directly in its path. Would have served me right, too.

  In winter, the hut was headquarters for our rabbit-snaring enterprise. I don’t know why we snared rabbits; we certainly never ate them or used the fur. Perhaps it was just for the fun of being out in the deep, silent woods in winter, finding the rabbits’ well-worn trails, and setting our wire snares over them. As often as not, when we came to inspect the snare, a weasel or fox or lynx would have been there ahead of us and demolished our victim.

  Or maybe it satisfied that deep, primordial urge to stalk and capture, reminding us that, in terms of the age of man, we are but a few seconds away from that hairy hunter whose life depended upon what he could catch.

  And it brought us face to face with a stark and brutal fact of life when we came up
against the hermits.

  I suppose every town has its mysterious people who appear on the streets at dusk. Men who to kids represent the dark world of mystery and evil. Ours were the hermits. Sometimes when we’d be playing outside in the evening we’d see them plodding along the middle of the road that came into town from the south–never on the sidewalk–each with a gunny sack over his shoulder. They were dressed in ragged caps with ear lugs, black scarves wrapped around their faces, scruffy buffalo-hide coats tied around the middle with rope, and tattered moccasins. If we felt secure enough, we’d hide behind a garage or a tree in the yard and shout something witty like, “Yeah, hermit!” or “Beaver!” But they never lifted their shaggy heads and turned to look at their tormentors. Just plodded on down the middle of the road. Obviously a wicked pair.

  What was inside those lumpy sacks they carried? Something too awful to mention aloud. Babies, maybe, that they’d stolen and killed and were delivering to their master, the devil. Art Forester, who purported to know everything, boasted that he knew what they carried, all right, but he wouldn’t dare tell. When pressed he would shake his head mysteriously and wink. When we finally found out, it was more terrible than we’d even suspected.

  We arrived at the hut one Saturday morning, Nigel Spencer, Gord Perkins, “Pants” Roberts and I. There had been a light snow in the night and as we ran down the path to the hut we were surprised to see fresh footprints leading up to the door–and none leaving. And what footprints–big, sloppy ones that had been made by big, sloppy moccasins, obviously. Curling lazily from the stovepipe that stuck out the side of the hut was a thin coil of smoke. Somebody was in our hut.

  In a hurried whispered conference, we decided against running the mile back to town for help in favour of sneaking up and peeking in our little window. Pants Roberts (he got his nickname because he always wore his father’s cut-down army pants that bustled in the back scandalously) was finally persuaded to sneak up first. I think we used the specious argument that since he was the shortest he’d be the less likely to be seen. Anyway, he went, while the rest of us stayed back on the path, shivering from the 20-below temperature and ordinary funk.

  Pants made it up to the hut all right, and peeked in the window. But he was so absorbed or horrified by what he saw that he neither signalled for us to come nor returned to tell us. Finally, after gesticulating wildly to him, we managed to summon up the courage to follow him. Pants pointed to a small space that was clear of frost to which we could apply our eyes. Gord Perkins looked first, and we had to pull him away so that Nigel could see. Like the others, Nigel made no comment but motioned me to take my turn.

  At first I couldn’t see a thing because the light outside was so much greater than that inside. But by shading my eyes with my mitts I finally made out two dim figures. The hermits! They’d taken off their huge coats and their caps with the ear lugs and were sitting close to our little heater. Their gunny sack lay on the floor beside them, and from it they were taking something more horrible than a dead baby–garbage. Bits of frozen meat and bread and vegetables, dirty, miserable stuff that they were heating on the stove and devouring ravenously.

  But it was the look of the men themselves. Without their coats they were so thin and dirty as to make one weep. The smaller was no more than fifteen years old, judging from his form and manner, but his face was that of an old man. I turned away. I couldn’t look any more.

  The four of us turned and walked down the path. No one spoke. We’d never seen destitution like that, and it shook our nice safe sense of security. This was what could happen to people, and did. Many a night I lay in my bed and saw the withered, chapped-lipped, scabby, rotten-toothed face of that boy. I can see it still.

  The hermits never stopped at our hut again, although we left food in the hope that they would. Evidently they had been overcome with hunger and cold, and stopped there to rest before continuing their long trek to their own miserable home in the bush. We often saw them on the road, on their way to and from the restaurants down town, from whose garbage pails they grubbed their food. But we never yelled at them any more.

  9 Never Sleep Three in a Bed

  People often say to me–“How lucky to be raised in a big family.” The comradeship, love, warmth of the family circle–give and take–outings together. Okay. That’s true enough at times. But there are other things, too, like fights and arguments and humiliation and frustration. I don’t say I’m unlucky to have been raised in a big family. I wouldn’t have changed it. I know those seven other characters helped develop my personality–the good and the bad of it, the strong and the weak. And who but a fool would want to change the way he is?

  One thing certain, life was never dull. Just holding your own with that bunch–surviving–required endless versatility and stamina.

  Betty was born in 1922, and for a few years after she was able to sit up in a high chair, ten Braithwaites sat down at table for every meal.

  And what meals they were! I always thought my father to be a most quiet man, but then I rarely saw him except at meal time, and there was always so much yammering from us kids that no adult had a chance to say anything.

  There was one cardinal principle to which most of us were true–never do anything that anybody else wants you to.

  A simple request like “Pass the salt” would bring a snarling rejoinder. “Why should I? It’s just as close to you as it is to me.”

  “It is not.”

  “Is so.”

  “Just measure and you’ll see!”

  Dad sat at the end of the table and Mother at the foot. Ranged along each side, in order of age, were the rest of us. The biggest boys, being the eldest, were up beside Dad; then Doris and Phyllis, Hub and me; Betty and Denny, the youngest, on either side of Mother.

  Nobody could lift a fork until Dad said Grace. He would drop his head and mumble, and we would all lean forward trying to catch what he said. In all the years I ate with him I never made out a word of it. I strongly suspect he was petitioning the Lord to get us through one more meal without casualties.

  Then he would begin dishing up the meat and potatoes. Always meat and potatoes. More often than not, the meat was round steak, which must have been a lot cheaper then than it is now. Certainly it was a lot tougher. Before frying, Mother would belabour it for half an hour with the sharp edge of the butcher knife, but it had little effect on its leatheryness. There were boiled carrots sometimes, usually pickled beets, and often turnips. Those were the vegetables that we could grow, and that would keep.

  Usually there was onion gravy on the potatoes. We consumed great quantities of fried onions in our house. (I was intrigued to learn recently that scientists have now discovered fried onions prevent the collection of cholesterol in the blood vessels. Interesting.)

  Denny and I wouldn’t eat the onions, of course, so Dad had to painstakingly strain them from our helpings. Mother was great for cabbage salad, too, and Denny wouldn’t eat that either. Said it was poison. So the rest of us would try to persuade him to eat it, and there would be a fight. For along with our absolute refusal to be persuaded of anything, each of us was an indefatigable persuader of others.

  No matter how furious the fighting became, Dad hardly ever interfered. Not so with Morley. “Look out, now,” he would yell when the racket became too loud, “or I’ll reach out!” Reaching out was not just an idle threat, either. He had a long arm and a hard hand, so that when it made contact with the side of your head you knew that you’d been hit.

  Since Dad dished everything from in front of him, an equal distribution of food was difficult. Each kid would hang onto the plate handed to him until he could ascertain whether or not the next one coming would be larger. Thus we developed strong grips. And since the first to finish was also the most likely to get a second helping, we all became fast eaters. Otherwise, you stood the risk of being undernourished and small–like the runt in a litter of pigs.

  There was rarely anything left for second helpings, however, for Da
d never did develop that fine sense of proportion that would make everything come out even. Often as not he ran short before he dished his own plate. Then he would look forlornly down the table and say, “Whoops-seem to be a bit short here.” Trying to get any food back from the rest of us would be equivalent to putting your hand in a tiger’s cage at feeding time. No wonder he was a lean man.

  When the first course was finished one of us would look expectantly at Mother and chant, “Puddin er pie er fruit?” Sometimes there was Saskatoon berry pie, or chocolate pudding, which we always called “blamonge”. (It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that “blamonge” is white pudding from the French “blanc mange”.) Sometimes there would be apple pie, but the great days of the barrels of apples from Ontario were past, and apple pie was seen only on special days.

  There was much laughter at our table, too. Usually it came after the meal was finished, and the older ones were having their tea. Mother had a good Irish wit, and she was full of stories. She would advise us, for instance, to be sure to learn to cut our fingernails with our left hand in case we lost the right one.

  Denny and I laughed easily, often at nothing. I think the worst of all the bad things about growing old is that you lose the capacity to laugh at little things. We would go to church and giggle so uncontrollably at the antics of the choir conductor that we’d have to leave. We’d kill ourselves over some secret joke at the table until Doris would be ready to scream. Laughter–that’s what being a kid is.

  And competition? Supposed to put mettle in your soul. Well, we had plenty of it.

  For example. In a big family, treats are doled out by the parents carefully and exactly, so that each kid will get precisely as much as the others. If they don’t, there is a battle. All right, each kid has got his chocolate bar, or his seven jelly beans, or his two and a half cookies. He then proceeds to eat them. But there is always one kid who just pretends to eat his (this could be a girl, usually is). He hides it, waiting until all the others are finished. Then he produces it, and slowly, tantalizingly, eats it in front of the others. He’ll never share it, of course, because that would be unfair. After all, everybody had an equal amount to begin with. This little game, known as “making jealous”, is guaranteed to start a family row at any time.