Somewhere I Belong Page 19

  “Sir John A. Macdonald sir,” Curtis replied.

  “Very good. Now can you tell us the year Prince Edward Island joined Confederation?”

  Curtis shot out the answer: “1864, sir.”

  “That was the year of the Charlottetown Conference, Mr. Murphy,” Old Dunphy said. “You may take your seat.”

  Connor raised his hand. “1873, sir.”

  “Very good, Connor. Now, can you tell us who was premier at the time?”

  “James Stewart … sir?” Connor didn’t sound so sure.

  “Sorry, Mr. Murphy, off you go,” Old Dunphy said.

  Michael Daley raised his hand. “Samuel Leonard Tilley, sir.”

  “That was a good answer, Michael, but the wrong one. Tilley was the chairman of the Charlottetown Conference.”

  Michael Daley retreated to his seat. His sister, Nora, was dispatched over the same question.

  Old Dunphy grinned and rocked back on his heels. “James Colledge Pope. It was his third time as premier.”

  The schoolroom grew warmer as the morning progressed. Even with the windows wide open, the air felt close and stale. The little kids in the front row began to squirm. Everybody else seemed intent on the sunshine that beckoned through the open windows. The clock at the front of the room said ten minutes to ten. I thought about the apple juice Aunt Gert had packed in my lunch tin, about how thirsty I was. I looked up at the water pail and wondered if Old Dunphy was getting thirsty too. Up on the platform, he pulled out a hanky and wiped his brow. We weren’t even halfway through the morning and his face was already red.

  When Old Dunphy had run through the questions on the board, he opened his textbook and searched for more. He dispatched grades four and five on questions about the origins of the Island’s early immigrants and the name of the Indian tribe that was already living there when the settlers arrived. “Scotland and Ireland,” he said. “The Island’s Indians called themselves the Micmac.” Grades six and seven got stumped on the Island’s first discoverer—Jacques Cartier—and where the first long-term settlement had been established—Port la Joie, in what is now Charlottetown. He chose even more difficult questions for grades eight and nine, and dispatched them in like manner. When he finally closed his book, Larry was the last one standing.

  Old Dunphy turned to him and asked, “Can you tell us when Samuel Holland conducted Prince Edward Island’s first land survey and how the land was divided up?”

  If my brother loved any school subject, it was history. He had excelled in it back home. He had read all about the American Revolution, about slavery and the Civil War. And he was always going to the library and looking up stuff in the encyclopedia. But I was surprised that he knew so much about Prince Edward Island.

  “1764,” he replied. He gave the details of the land divisions and the number of counties, parishes, and lots. Then he told Old Dunphy how it was all auctioned off on a single day, in London, England. And before our teacher could pose the last question, Larry rhymed off the answer: “This meant that anyone settling on the Island had to pay rent for the land they cleared and farmed. And if they weren’t a landowner, they couldn’t vote or run for politics.”

  “That leads us to the next critical question, then, doesn’t it Mr. Kavanaugh,” Old Dunphy said.

  Larry waited.

  “Tell us about the uprisings, would you.”

  Larry thought for a moment. This wasn’t a subject we had covered in school. But Granny had told us about our own family’s land troubles. They dated back fifty years, to when Grandfather William was a young man and just starting to take over the farm from his father.

  “The farmers were paying rent to the landlords, sir,” he said. “And when they wanted to buy their farms, the landlords refused to sell them because they made money from collecting the rents. So the farmers stopped paying them and staged uprisings all over the Island.”

  “So then what happened?” Mr. Dunphy asked.

  “First the sheriffs threatened to seize their livestock in return for payment and then they threatened to throw the farmers off the land.”

  Mr. MacPhee had been standing quietly at the side of the room. Now he moved up the aisle and stood in front of Larry. “Your mother’s a Lanigan, is she not, Larry?”

  “Yes, sir,” Larry replied.

  “I think I recall an interesting story about one of the Lanigans being involved in the Northbridge Uprising. Scared the sheriff off, I hear tell. Did your mother ever talk about it?”

  “Granny did.” Larry smiled up at Mr. MacPhee. “She said when Grandfather William heard the sheriff was coming to throw his family off their farm, he hauled a cannon out onto the road and aimed it in the direction he figured the sheriff would be coming from.”

  “So what happened then?” Mr. MacPhee was grinning, like he already knew.

  “When the sheriff saw that cannon, he turned tail and ran.” Larry laughed. “Only thing was, he didn’t know it wasn’t loaded.”

  “You really know your Island history, Larry.” Mr. MacPhee practically beamed at my older brother.

  “Granny sometimes tells us stories,” Larry replied.

  I never thought of Granny’s stories as history, but I suppose they were.

  Mr. MacPhee glanced back at the clock and then at Old Dunphy. “It’s hot in here. Shall we let them go out a bit early?”

  Old Dunphy rang the bell for recess. Then he grabbed the tin cup from his desk and held it up to the school inspector. “Would you like a drink Mr. MacPhee?”

  I watched Mr. MacPhee inspect the cup and then the water pail, and held my breath. I let it out again when he politely declined. Then I watched Old Dunphy’s meaty hand plunge the cup into the water and lift it to his mouth. He drained it, then stood back and wiped his mouth. He looked confused for a moment, and checked the cup. He bent down and examined the contents of the water pail, dipping his fingers in, raising them up to his nose, and sniffing them. Then he moved across the platform toward the window and popped his head out.

  “Curtis Murphy, would you come back in, please? I need you to pour out the water—it’s gone brackish in the heat already. And refill it, too.”

  I finally relaxed—nobody else would be drinking the water I’d brought in, and Old Dunphy wouldn’t be able to pin anything on me.

  By noon, the room felt like a furnace. We ate our lunch outside, then filed into the schoolroom to find Mr. MacPhee standing beside the pot-bellied stove. His navy blue blazer still hung from a chair on the platform. He had removed his bowtie, and the collar of his pinstriped shirt stood open. Old Dunphy’s bowtie sat on his desk, the papers around it now neatly arranged. His white cotton shirt stuck to him in pools of sweat, exposing his bulging belly.

  “Mr. MacPhee is going to present this afternoon’s lesson.” Old Dunphy beamed at the school inspector and smiled a fake smile. “It’s a science experiment, is it not?”

  Mr. MacPhee nodded at Mr. Dunphy and scanned the room. “It’s sort of a science experiment. But I suppose it’s a bit of a civics lesson too.” His eyes lit up as he turned to the front row. “I’d like everybody to gather ’round. Perhaps the little ones could stand in front so they can see better.”

  I liked Mr. MacPhee. I liked the way he circulated the room and remembered everybody’s name. I liked how he took a personal interest in the topics we were working on. And the way his eyes sparkled when he smiled reminded me of Uncle Jim.

  We all crowded around the pot-bellied stove. Mr. MacPhee stood beside it and pointed to two glass jars that each contained a clear liquid and to the two saucers beside them. One of the saucers was empty. On the other sat a fat, wiggly earthworm, the kind Uncle Jim dug up from the garden before he went fishing.

  I supposed that Mr. MacPhee must have been satisfied with what he had seen in our classroom that morning and had decided to have a bit of fun.

  �
�Look at this big, fat, wiggly worm.” Mr. MacPhee placed the earthworm on his palm and held it out to the little kids. It looked as if it had just been dug up; it was coated with mud. Old Dunphy edged around him and peered over his shoulder.

  I knew this experiment because our teacher back home had done it. It was supposed to show us how bad alcohol was.

  Mr. MacPhee asked one of the little kids in the front to open a jar and pour water into the saucer. “What do you think will happen when I put him in the water?”

  “He’ll get all clean,” Bridget MacGee said.

  “Yes, he most certainly will,” Mr. MacPhee replied.

  “He’ll likely drown,” Curtis Murphy said.

  “Let’s put him in and see.”

  Mr. MacPhee put the worm into the water, picked the saucer up, and held it out. The worm squirmed and poked up its head. “What’s it doing now?” he asked.

  “He’s having a swim,” Nora Daley said.

  “He’s getting fatter,” Pat Jr. said.

  “Well, he might be having a swim,” Mr. MacPhee said. “But do we get fatter when we go for a swim?”

  The little kids, in the front row, shook their heads.

  “No, sir,” the rest of us said.

  The inspector opened the second jar. This time, he poured some of its contents onto the second saucer. “Let’s see what happens when we give him a little drink of gin.”

  Just as he picked the earthworm out of the water to immerse it in the gin, I heard a shuffling sound, and Old Dunphy stepped away from the group. He looked pale and stricken. Beads of sweat ran down his face.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said. Then he turned, edging around us. When he reached the door, he glared back at me. The anger in his eyes said I was in for it.

  The door slammed and Curtis and Connor Murphy burst out laughing. I took a breath and tried to brush off Old Dunphy’s accusing stare. Next to me, Pat Jr. had a hand to his face and was suppressing a grin.

  “You like this one, do you, boys?” Mr. MacPhee said. He thought we were laughing at the earthworm that now lay shrivelled and motionless in the clear liquid. “So what do you suppose is happening here?”

  Pat Jr. raised his hand. “I know this one, sir.”

  “Tell us, then,” Mr. MacPhee said.

  “The worm’s dead,” Pat Jr. said with a straight face. “That means you got to keep your fishing worms away from the gin—it’s bad for ’em.”

  Mr. MacPhee laughed again, “Close, Mr. Giddings, but not quite.”

  The school inspector held up the saucer and the earthworm that now lay dead in the clear liquid. Then he went on and on about the evils of alcohol the way Granny did when Old Dunphy had been for dinner and had got so drunk that one of the uncles had to escort him out the back door. He was just starting in on the subject of bootlegging when Old Dunphy stormed through the back door, looking pale and drained. He marched across the room, put a hand on my shoulder, and hissed into my ear. “Go back to your seat and stay there until I say so. We are going to get to the bottom of this, I can assure you.”

  The strapping was worse than the first one. Old Dunphy told Larry, Helen, Pat Jr., and Thomas to go on home and that I would be along when he had finished with me. He escorted Mr. MacPhee to his motorcar and waited for him to disappear down Northbridge Road. Then he returned to the schoolroom, his jaw clenched, his eyes bulging in anger. He stomped up to his desk, ripped open a drawer, and grabbed his “little friend.”

  “Turn around,” he barked. “Put your hands out—both of them.”

  I stepped away from him and put my hands behind my back. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Sorry!” Old Dunphy was screaming now. His spittle sprayed across my face. “You’re sorry. What about me? Whatever did you think your little prank would do to me, huh?”

  His face was in mine now, with its fat, swollen flesh and fish eyes. He threw out a hand and put a vice-like grip on my arm. When I looked down at it and then up at him, he took a breath and calmed himself.

  “We’ll do it your way, then. We’ll do it one at a time.” He yanked my arm, grabbed my hand, and peeled open my fingers. Then he raised up the strap and landed it, hard, on my palm.

  I gritted my teeth and sucked in a breath. No way was I going to cry.

  “How’d you like that, huh?” Old Dunphy said. Up went the hand. Down came the strap, a second time and a third.

  My palm stung; it reddened and began to swell. I gritted my teeth and took in slow, tempered breaths. I felt tears come and fought them back.

  On the fourth hit, Old Dunphy twisted his wrist and the strap landed side-on, cutting through skin that had already begun to blister. This time, I screamed.

  “Ha!” Old Dunphy stepped back and smiled, still gripping my hand.

  As nasty as he had been, I had never seen this side of him. He seemed to be taking joy in watching me tremble, in seeing the tears course down my face and my palm bleed.

  “Looks like we’re done with this one. Shall we do the other?”

  “No you don’t.” A deep voice boomed from the back of the classroom. Larry had been waiting outside the whole time, listening through the open window. “He’s had enough—you let him go.”

  Ma paced the floor, clutching Old Dunphy’s note. Thanks to the party line, she already knew the details of what had transpired that day—both the prank and the strapping. But she wanted to hear about them from me.

  “What were you thinking!” She practically spit out the words. “Castor oil in the drinking water? Your uncle’s fermented cider? You could have made everybody sick.” Then she glared at me. “You’re suspended! Mr. Dunphy said can write your exams, but otherwise, he doesn’t want to see you for the rest of the year. This is unbelievable, Pius James. Whatever got into you? And I can just imagine what your report card will look like.”

  I stood there, taking in Ma’s anger, searching for words. Larry stood beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. Helen and Alfred sat at the kitchen table and watched in silence. I wanted to tell her everything, but didn’t know where to begin. I hung my head and held out my bloodied palm.

  “Holy Mother of God!” Ma said. “Charlie Dunphy did that to you?”

  “He did more than that, Ma,” Larry said. “He’s been rotten to P.J. ever since we got here.”

  Uncle Jim saw my school suspension as a chance to finish opening up his new field. First he put salve on my hand and wrapped it in a thick bandage, then he took me out to the now half-completed tract of land.

  “I gotta learn you how to operate this here plough,” he said.

  We were out by the field. Larry and Helen had left for school. Lu was standing in her harness, stretching out her neck, trying to reach the grass. The blade of the plough had been dipped into the turf, ready to begin tearing open more ground.

  “You gotta wrestle with it,” Uncle Jim said. “Keep it in a straight line.” He held a handle of the plough and gauged its height to my head. “You just take it up the one row ’til you get the hang of it. And watch them rocks. That plough hits a big one and that handle’ll send you clear into Sunday.”

  There were a few other things I learned that day, too. Like when Uncle Jim took his breaks—hourly—and what Granny had waiting for him in the kitchen: hot tea biscuits, butter, and honey. And tea with milk and three heaping teaspoons of sugar. All this work was looking way better than school.

  By mid-morning, Uncle Jim and I were sitting in the kitchen over a plate of newly baked biscuits. Nobody else was around. He sipped his tea, then put his cup down.

  “Musta bin somethin’, seein’ Charlie Dunphy make a dash for the outhouse. It’s bin years since I seen ’im run for anything.”

  Of all the adults in the house, Ma was the only one who seemed upset over what I had done to Old Dunphy. Now Uncle Jim sat with a smirk on his face. “What I can’t figure out
is how you did it, Pius James.” This seemed like a serious question, but Uncle Jim was still laughing.

  “I got a little help,” I said, laughing back at him.

  “You’re not tellin’ are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “The way I figure, Charlie Dunphy’s bin askin’ for it,” Uncle Jim said.

  “I don’t like being treated like a dummy.”

  “That what he does?” He wasn’t laughing now.

  I nodded.

  “Who would ever say such a thing ’bout you?” Uncle Jim said. “If you asked me, I’d say you’re near smart as Larry.”

  I put my teacup down and looked at my uncle. This was the first time since I arrived at Granny’s that anyone had called me smart. I took a breath and looked at the ceiling. Then I glanced at the kitchen window, at the icebox that stood between the kitchen counter and the doorway. I didn’t want Uncle Jim to see me cry. “He called me a slow learner. He makes me sit in the dummy desk.” I started to shake. Tears began to fall. “He got out his strap and…he turned into a lunatic!”

  Uncle Jim got up and moved beside me. “Listen here, young fella, nobody ’round here ever called you a dummy. Nobody thinks you’re any such thing. And Charlie had no call to strap you like that.” He lowered his voice and put an arm over my shoulder. “He’s got his problems. I reckon he treats you like he does ’cause something inside o’ him makes him do it. Charlie’s an angry man. And he don’t belong in a classroom with you kids. Nevertheless, he’s there.

  “Now, I’m not going to tell you to respect him—he don’t deserve it. But you can’t stay clear of ’im, neither—he’s your teacher, right?” He thought for a moment. “You know what the trick is with Charlie? It’s like with most fellas: you gotta develop some kind a relationship with ’im. Maybe talk to ’im, try to understand what he’s all about.”

  This sounded like something adults did. I never heard any of the kids at Northbridge Road School talking to Old Dunphy except to answer his stupid questions. I looked at Uncle Jim and shrugged my shoulders. “After what he did to me?”

  He poured me more tea. He added milk and sugar and stirred them in. “You’re stuck with ’im, Pius James. We gotta figure out somethin’. He keeps on givin’ you a hard time, you let me know, okay?” He grabbed a biscuit off the plate and handed it to me. “In the meantime, you get this here into you. We’ve got work to do.”