Boy O'Boy

Copyright © 2003 by Brian Doyle

Second paperback printing 2003

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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

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.

M
Y 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.

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.