Somewhere I Belong Page 14

  The next morning, I went down to the kitchen expecting to see the same stern look on Granny’s face that I had seen the day before. I expected everyone else to be doing the same tiptoeing around, trying not to stir things up they had been doing all week. I had decided I was going to ignore all of this, go straight to the mudroom, pull on my boots and jacket, and head out to the barn. And I was going to do it happily, the way Larry did. So I wore my barn clothes and didn’t bother to wash my face or comb my hair.

  As I entered the kitchen, Granny was standing at the counter with Helen, showing her how to extract a newly baked loaf of brown bread from a pan. Helen was holding a knife and edging it around the bread, trying not to cut it; Granny was leaning over her, directing her hand. Ma was circling the table, pouring steaming coffee into mugs. Aunt Gert was in the parlour, stoking the fire. Larry and Uncle Jim weren’t there, so I figured they were already in the barn. I had my eyes fixed on the mudroom door, intending to follow them, and was halfway across the kitchen when Granny turned to me. “Well, look who’s up.” A smile lit up her face. From her look of genuine love, you would never think she had been so upset with me the day before. It made me feel better about myself. It gave me confidence that I had started the day out right.

  That is, until Helen turned around and quipped. “Nice hair, P.J.”

  I opened my mouth, intending to tell her to shut up, then reconsidered. Even my sister’s early morning sarcasm couldn’t break my resolve.

  Ma put the coffee pot on the table. “That wasn’t called for, Helen.” She calmed herself and turned to me. “Pius James, wherever are you going in those old clothes?” I knew Ma and I knew that tone of voice. It said, “I’m trying to be serious here, but I’m really hiding something.”

  “Out to the barn,” I said, in my most matter-of-fact voice. Where does she think I’m going this time of the morning, anyhow?

  Ma hesitated, her voice uneasy. “Not this morning, dear. I mean, your Uncle Jim says he doesn’t need you to help out just now.”

  She was grasping at something, I could tell. Larry and I always knew when Ma was trying to divert us. And we always carried on doing whatever it was she didn’t want us to do, just to get her going. But this time, I couldn’t tell if Ma wanted me to stay in the house because she wanted to have another chat, or if Uncle Jim was still upset with me and she wanted me to leave him alone. I thought he and I had made it up, the previous day. If we hadn’t, I intended to fix it.

  “Larry’s out there—I’m goin’ too.” That would get her—Ma was always trying to even things out.

  My mother’s eyes darted toward Granny, pleading. Then Helen butted in a second time.

  “Uncle Jim said you’re not allowed in the barn.” She sure looked pleased with herself. Helen always stuck her snot nose in where it didn’t belong.

  “Mind your own business, know-it-all.” I forgot all about my new resolutions. And if Ma hadn’t been there, I would have really let her have it.

  Helen shrank back and edged toward Ma.

  “That’s not it at all, Helen,” Ma said, trying to avert a fight. “Your Uncle Jim just thinks your brother needs a little break. He thinks perhaps—”

  “He thinks you need more time to settle in, is all,” Granny said. “He thinks maybe you had too much excitement the other day.”

  “He’s still mad at me, isn’t he?” I was thinking about Larry, out in the barn, hogging my uncle all to himself. And me being left out again.

  “He certainly isn’t,” Ma said. “I’ve never seen your uncle mad at anyone. Now you go upstairs and get yourself ready for school, or you’ll really be in trouble.”

  Ma, Granny, and Helen were sending out mixed messages—Ma, that everything was fine; Granny, that I didn’t measure up; Helen, that I had upset Uncle Jim and it threatened to spill over into the next week. When Larry returned from the barn alone, this only confirmed my feelings.

  “What were you doing?” I asked.

  “Chores,” he replied. “Same as always.” The way he averted his gaze said something was up.

  We ate breakfast. Then Larry, Helen, and I dressed for the weather and piled out the back door. The days had lengthened. The sky was a clear blue brushed with cirrus clouds that stretched beyond the back field. It was cold, but not as cold as the heavy Arctic air that had offered a dry burn to every breath. Across the yard, the shed doors stood wide open, exposing Uncle Jim’s jaunting sleigh to the still, morning air. The barn door opened and Uncle Jim moved stiffly across the snow-packed yard, leading Lu toward the sleigh.

  “Where’s Uncle Jim off too?” I asked Larry.

  “Town,” Larry replied, his voice hesitant. By “town,” Larry meant Montague. It seemed odd that Uncle Jim would make a mid-week trip there, unannounced and in the jaunting sleigh, when he hadn’t gone since we had arrived.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Didn’t say.” I knew he was lying. I also knew that, no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn’t get the truth from him. If Larry wanted to keep a secret, his mouth was like a trap door.

  I trudged along behind Larry, Thomas, and Pat Jr. on the way to school, wondering why nobody had said anything about Uncle Jim’s trip to Montague. At Granny’s, even a simple telephone call was cause for discussion. Everybody wanted to know who it was and what they were saying, particularly because the party line and the penchant for gossip meant the whole community would know, anyhow. Now it appeared that Uncle Jim was on some kind of top-secret mission.

  Patrick and Michael Daley walked out onto the road ahead of us, but we didn’t see Nora. Patrick scooped snow from the side of the road, slapped it into a ball, and heaved it at Larry. Larry stepped aside and Patrick missed him by several inches.

  “You’re lucky this time, Kavanaugh,” Patrick scoffed. Then he turned and swaggered down the road with Michael.

  Larry slowed his pace and fell in with the rest of us. He knew when Patrick Daley was itching for a fight, and Larry wasn’t dumb enough to give him one.

  As we approached the MacIntyres’, the house looked eerily quiet. Smoke slowly streamed from the chimney and the curtains were drawn. Snow covered the footpath that had led from the back door to the road, meaning nobody had stepped outside the house since the storm three days before. The yard was a smooth, white sheet; snow banked up against the doors of the barn and the shed.

  Helen hurried ahead of us and picked her way up the drive. Maggie exited the back door and secured it shut. Then she moved across the yard to meet Helen, her feet sinking into the snow. Her arms were wrapped around her books. Her navy blue tam was pulled snugly over her forehead. The sun reflected off the snow and onto Maggie, taking away all of the shabbiness around her. She smiled and listened to Helen. Then she moved in behind her and followed the footprints my sister had made in the snow.

  For weeks, I had tried to find a way to talk to Maggie. I wanted to walk beside her and carry on a friendly conversation, just like Larry and Helen did. We sat together all day. We did our math together. So I wondered why she made my throat go dry and my tongue tie up.

  As Maggie approached the road, I watched Larry slip her books from her hands, like he had been doing since our first week there. Larry had never been interested in girls. He liked reading books and playing sports and being an altar boy at church. I thought, perhaps, he was helping Maggie because she was poor. That perhaps his reaching out to her was an extension of the work he and Dad had done at Holy Cross Church back home. My only consolation was that in June he would be completing grade nine. In September, he would be heading to Prince of Wales Normal School, in Charlottetown. Maybe then I would have my chance.

  As we approached the school, I thought about walking Maggie across the schoolyard. But Larry was already waiting at the gate. He handed Maggie her books. Then he turned to me, grabbed my right hand, and flapped it in the air. “Remember, P.J., this one’s the one you wr
ite with. You don’t want to be getting Mr. Dunphy upset.”

  I don’t know why he had said that; it seemed like weeks since Old Dunphy and I had had a run-in. And when he came for his usual Friday evening dinners at Granny’s, he even faked an occasional smile. But there was Larry, airing out the subject of Old Dunphy’s discontent, like a pair of worn-out underwear strung across a clothesline for everyone to see. My face flushed a deep red as Larry’s voice carried across the schoolyard. In the distance, Patrick Daley shook Johnnie Condon’s right hand in the air. “Hey, leftie,” he scoffed.

  I glanced over at Maggie and watched her follow Helen across the yard. I waited for everybody to disappear into the schoolhouse. Then I entered, wondering what the day would bring.

  Old Dunphy was copying sums across the blackboard as we entered. Michael Daley was carrying the water pail down the aisle as it was his turn to fill it. When he returned, we stood and said the prayer and sang the anthem, like we always did. I listened for Maggie’s sweet whispering of the Our Father and her crystal-clear rendering of “God Save the King.” But her breath was short and raspy. At the end of the anthem, she pulled out her hanky and coughed. Then she sank into her seat and heaved open her desktop as if she were lifting a heavy weight.

  I glanced up at the platform, then leaned toward her. “Are you all right, Maggie?”

  She nodded her head, then eyed a warning toward the platform. Old Dunphy was putting his chalk down, dusting off his hands. And smiling. If our teacher was a jackrabbit like Uncle Jim said, it looked like this was going to be one of his “up” days. To my relief, we passed a normal day.

  When Mr. Dunphy rang the bell, Larry collected Maggie’s books before she had even put on her coat. We walked on either side of her as she made her way across the yard and down Northbridge Road. When we reached the MacIntyres’, Helen lingered at the end of the drive and watched Maggie trudge up the path toward her house. My sister had made a real effort at being friendly with her, but Maggie was shy, and now she was sick. Helen watched her struggle over the snow, weighed down by an armload of books.

  “I should go and see if she’s all right,” Helen said. Her shoulders slumped and her satchel hung low down her back.

  “It’s probably just the flu, Helen.” Larry put an arm around her. “Nora Daley was out today. There’s something going around. We’ll likely see Maggie tomorrow.”

  Further down the road, Uncle Jim stood up in the jaunting sleigh and waved at us. Then he sat down and slapped the reins, urging Lu to pick up her pace. As she reached the end of Granny’s drive, she slowed up as if to turn. Uncle Jim fought with the reins and directed Lu straight up the road toward us. Then he whoa’d her up, jumped down from the sleigh, and rushed around to the storage box in the back.

  “Lookit what we got here.” He threw open the storage box, and pulled out a large, oblong package wrapped in brown paper.

  Larry rushed toward him. “You got them!”

  “Just like I promised.” Uncle Jim placed the package on the ground in front of the sleigh, stood back, and smiled.

  Larry tore it open. The rest of us looked on, curious. Brown paper flew across the snow. Then Larry dug a hand in and pulled out a pair of brand new stock skates. Their blades were shiny and sharp, their leather straps stiff and new. “Look here, P.J!” He passed them to me and returned for another.

  Uncle Jim had bought me my first pair of brand new skates. They were just like the ones I had back home, only better, because they weren’t hand-me-downs from Larry. Larry and Helen each got a new pair too. And there were even double-bladed ones for Alfred. It felt like Christmas, only better, because it was a complete surprise. But it was little awkward fussing over the skates in front of Thomas and Pat Jr., when there was nothing for them. They stood back and watched, empty-handed.

  Helen ran up to Uncle Jim and threw her arms around him. Larry looked up at him and grinned from ear to ear. I held onto the skates, turned toward my uncle, and was just putting the words together, when Pat Jr. said, “Um, maybe we better go.”

  “Hold on now.” Uncle Jim’s eyes lit up. “There’s something else here.” He reached under the front seat and found six shiny, new, wooden hockey sticks with black lettering along their shafts, and passed one each to Larry, Helen, me, Thomas, and Pat Jr. The last one was for Alfred. “We’ll likely have to cut this one down to size.”

  Pat Jr. held his stick in both hands and turned it. “Wow, an honest to gosh Victoriaville.”

  Thomas stared at his stick in disbelief. “I never even seen one of these.” He looked up at Uncle Jim. “Thanks.” I thought he was going to cry.

  “Don’t be givin’ me too much credit,” Uncle Jim said. “This was your Aunt Martha’s idea.”

  I looked up at him sceptically. “Ma?”

  “Well,” Uncle Jim said. “Your grandmother had somethin’ to do with it too.”

  The next week was Holy Week, the week before Easter. On Holy Wednesday afternoon, Old Dunphy stood in front of his desk, gripping his pointer in both hands. “Report cards go home tomorrow. I would advise you all to be here to collect them yourselves.” He paused, slapped the pointer onto a palm, and forced a smile. “If you choose to stay home, I’m sure your parents wouldn’t mind making a special trip in to see me. It would be a grand opportunity to discuss your progress. Or your lack thereof.”

  On the way home, Pat Jr. told us Old Dunphy always handed out report cards on Holy Thursday so he could ruin Easter weekend. Pat Jr. also told us he and his brother, Percy, always held a hockey tournament on the pond behind his house, so they could get Easter weekend back. The Thursday afternoon of it, anyhow, and the Saturday—Good Friday and Easter Sunday we had to go to church.

  On Thursday morning, we fidgeted through arithmetic and penmanship, itching to burst out the back door and into the long weekend. My mind wandered from the egg hunt on Easter morning to the huge ham dinner after Easter Mass and the hockey tournament on the Giddingses’ pond. Old Dunphy marched up and down the aisles, slapping his pointer on a palm and ordering us to quiet down and get to work. He had the same eye-piercing look of concentration Uncle Jim did when he was reining in the horses.

  We ate lunch huddled around the pot-bellied stove, then rushed outdoors. When Old Dunphy leaned out the doorway and rang the bell, we reluctantly filed in, wishing for the day to end. He grabbed his pointer from the blackboard ledge, moved to the edge of the platform, and watched us strip off our jackets and fling them over their hooks in the cloakroom.

  “I’ll wait ’til you settle down,” he said. His glasses were perched on his forehead. A stack of large, brown envelopes lay strewn across his desk. “It doesn’t matter to me how long it takes; I’ve got no particular place to go.”

  You could always tell Old Dunphy’s mood by the way he handled his pointer. If he trod lightly around the room, so his brace didn’t rattle so much, and held it straight up his back, he was in a good mood and you could count on staying out of trouble as long as you did your work. If he stomped his heavy black shoes over the floorboards, making his brace rattle like the bells on Uncle Jim’s sleigh, and stabbed his pointer into the floor, chances were that somebody was going to get it. If he stood at the edge of the platform with his glasses perched on his forehead, slapping his pointer onto a palm, he was winding up to a full-out lecture.

  “I’m looking at a real bunch of slackers here.” He slapped that stupid pointer. “I’m sick of the absenteeism.” Slap. “I’m sick of the homework that doesn’t get done,” slap, “of the sorry excuses,” slap, slap, “of the sloppy work you do when you’re here,” slap. “And I’m sick and tired of the disrespect.” When he slammed the pointy end into the floor, the little kids along the front row gasped. The rest of us sat upright, hands folded on top of our desks, barely daring to breathe.

  His eyes narrowed as he settled his gaze on the back row. I wondered if he was singling out Patrick Dale
y; surely it wasn’t Larry. “If you don’t come to school with your homework done and do your schoolwork to the best of your ability when you’re here, you’re showing disrespect to me, you’re lying to your parents, and you’re sabotaging your future.” He aimed his pointer across the room. “But if that’s what you’re fixed on doing, there isn’t a thing I can do for you. Except, I suppose, to invite you to repeat the year all over again, starting in September.”

  He stepped back and grabbed a stack of envelopes off his desk, then returned to the edge of the platform. “Every one of you needs to shape up.” He held up the envelopes in his fleshy hands. “From what I’ve seen here, a number of you might just as well get a pick and shovel and dig ditches along the Hillsborough Bridge.” He was talking about the government project in Charlottetown, the one Uncle Ed and most of the other men along Northbridge Road had worked on over the winter. I glanced back and saw Johnnie Condon and Matthias Creed leaning over their desks, scowling back at him. “I want a backside in every seat until the end of June. No excuses.”

  Old Dunphy waited a moment, then nodded a half-nod as we silently stared up at him. Nobody flinched. He glanced down at the little kids sitting bolt upright along the front row and grunted. He adjusted his glasses to the end of his nose and smiled a fake smile. Then he held up the first envelope and called up a girl in first grade.

  “Kathleen Bambrick.”

  Kathleen eased from her seat and waited at the bottom stair of the platform, eyes to the floor.

  Old Dunphy looked down over the rims of his glasses. “I won’t bite.”

  By the way Kathleen stepped up the stairs and inched toward him, it was clear she wasn’t so sure. When he bent down and held out her card, she took it then scrambled back to her seat like a mouse fleeing a mangy cat. Old Dunphy waited for her to be seated, then flipped through the envelopes and read them out in alphabetical order. The first to third grades formed a line in the centre aisle and inched toward the platform. Their arms were ramrod straight, their fingers were curled into tight fists. It was a ceremony of sorts—like Holy Communion at Sunday Mass. Old Dunphy reached out to shake each hand, his meaty fingers swallowing them up. He spoke in a low voice, passed out the envelopes, and watched them troop away from the platform. Our teacher always went easy on the little kids, no doubt fearing they’d pee their pants and run home wet in the freezing cold. Afraid he’d catch it from one of the moms. Or maybe it was like Uncle Jim said, that he didn’t bother picking on kids until they reached grade six.