Boy O'Boy (12 page)

And there’s one long high note that sounds like a trum pet that is played so that you think that the CODA is actually over but it’s not.

“It’s never over until it’s over,” Mr. George told Billy.

That’s when he had Billy up here in the organ loft and showed him the exact pipe for that one long high note.

Poor Billy…

What Mr. George made him do up here.

Mr. George loves this part best of all. The big finish. He loves it when the audience thinks it’s over but it’s not. It’s Mr. George, the boss of the whole audience. Mr. George will tell them when it’s over. He’s the boss. He’s the king. Mr. King George.

Six times he plays that long, long trumpet note which is a very high C, says Billy. Five times. Each time you think it’s over but it’s not. Then, finally, the sixth time, it is actually over.

Billy takes me to the pipe that is one of the smaller ones. There’s a piece of tape stuck on the side of the pipe. You can barely see it in the almost dark room.

The most important pipe. “Trumpet-C” the tape says.

This is Mr. George’s main note.

We whisper, Billy and me, into each other’s ears, going over our plan. Everything’s ready.

I’m holding my granny’s umbrella. I show Billy the sharp end.

“I have to tell you something, Billy,” I whisper into Billy’s ear.

“What?” whispers Billy into my ear.

“Remember your mother said your father was in a fight or something and got his eye poked out?” I whisper.

“Yes?” whispers Billy in my ear.

“It was my granny who did it. He tried to attack her and she poked this sharp end of this umbrella in his eye.” “Your granny?”

“Yes.”

Billy stares at the long sharp point. He feels it with his fingers. Touches on it. There are tears on Billy’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry it was her who hurt your daddy.”

“It’s okay, Martin,” whispers Billy. “It’s not your fault.”

“Was he really once a nice man?” I whisper in Billy’s ear.

“That’s what my mother told me,” Billy whispers. “But I don’t remember.”

“Maybe he wanted to be but he couldn’t,” I say, forgetting to whisper.

“Maybe,” whispers Billy. “Or maybe not.”

“Are you sad, Billy?” I whisper.

“No!” says Billy. “SHAZAM!” says Billy. “Let’s get Mr. George!” says Billy, forgetting to whisper.

Reverend is starting his sermon now.

We go over our plan again.

It will happen during the CODA, the last part. The CODA is one minute and twenty seconds long. Not a long time to get the job done.

I’m looking out at all the people. I don’t know anybody in this audience. There’s nobody here from Lowertown. These people are all from Sandy Hill. They’re all wearing pretty nice clothes. The Sandy Hillers. And they’re all looking at Reverend doing his sermon. They’re looking at him but they don’t seem to be listening to him.

Some of them look like they’re going to fall over. Go to sleep. Reverend has a very boring voice. They always have a nice sleep when he does his sermon.

Now Reverend says he’s going to deliver a short sermon today because he wants to leave room for the very special presentation on this day of National Thanksgiving — Mr. T.D.S. George on our wonderful pipe organ playing CROWN IMPERIAL by Sir William Walton, Master of the King’s Music.

Now I think I see the ketchup lady and the turkey lady.

There’s one more hymn and a few more prayers and the service is just about over. The choir doesn’t sound very good, I don’t think, without me and Billy in it.

Mr. George is going to start playing. He raises his arms up in the air and attacks the organ keys like he’s an animal attacking its prey. Now he’s playing the TOCCATA like mad, waving his head around and raising his shoulders and throwing his chest in and out! The sound here in the pipe room makes you feel like your teeth are going to fall out.

“Look at him,” Billy yells in my ear. “He didn’t act like that when he was practicing.”

Darce the Arse is turning the pages for Mr. George. Darce the Arse will be Mr. George’s next victim in Imbro’s Restaurant and then Heney Park.

The audience is wide awake now.

Who could sleep through this?

They’re all watching Mr. George writhing and squirming and stretching while he’s playing. Some of them are pointing. They think he’s strange.

Now the grace and majesty of the PROCESSIONAL gets Mr. George moving around on his organ bench like he’s some kind of a dancer or somebody trying to kiss the air…

Now the TOCCATA again, bigger now, noisier and then the PROCESSIONAL again and now…

“Get ready,” says Billy.

The audience looks like they’re wondering what’s going to happen now. Mr. George starts the CODA. He looks like he’s going to explode.

He has a hundred eyes. His little jaws are working up and down. The reddish brown hair that grows down both cheeks nearly to his chin looks like fangs. His long arms and fingers are moving up and down and across the keyboards and reaching to push and pull the organ stops and tap the buttons so fast that he seems to have many arms and his legs with the seven wounds are dangling and feeling and probing under the organ on the pedals in so many directions that he seems to have more than two.

He doesn’t look human.

Mr. George plays the first high Trumpet-C.

“Now!” says Billy and he taps the Trumpet-C sleeve down two inches.

The second of the six high C notes of the CODA is

now too high. It sounds like somebody just stabbed somebody in the stomach with a rusty butcher knife.

The audience’s mouths fall open. They can’t believe their ears. Mr. George is looking at his keys. He looks like he’s been struck by lightning.

I grab my granny’s umbrella and start on the bigger pipes, the middle notes, bring down each sleeve as far as I can.

Now the CODA sounds like a war.

I pull down more sleeves. All these notes are now too high.

Mr. George keeps playing. He looks like he has both hands inside bees’ nests. No matter what he does, it sounds horrible. He’s trying different chords. He won’t quit. Granny’s umbrella pulls down more sleeves.

The third high C is a strangling cat screaming.

The CODA is now an earthquake.

People in the audience are covering their ears. Some people are trying to leave. Kids are screaming.

The fourth and fifth high C sound like all the sickness in the world and the CODA is now an atomic bomb.

Mr. George is frothing around his mouth.

He’s still playing, trying different keys, different buttons. I’m pulling down every sleeve I can with my granny’s umbrella handle. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

The last high C is a volcano. The walls of the church are rumbling. The stained-glass windows are shaking. The people are pushing and stumbling to get out of their rows. The world is coming to an end.

Mr. George is finished. The last awful chord rings off the walls and ceiling like a dying monster.

Mr. George sits there. He looks like he’s been shot.

The Sandy Hillers are yelling, “Oh my God!” and stumbling out the door. Reverend is trying to calm people down.

Billy and me, we’re hypnotized now by what we’ve done.

Now Mr. George suddenly stands up.

He looks right up at the organ loft. He’s looking right at us but he can’t see us through the slats. He moves.

“Let’s go!” I say to Billy. “He’s coming!” “SHAZAM!” says Billy.

We head out and into the hall. Too late! He’s coming up the stairs two at a time. The only place to hide is behind the open door.

He’s breathing very hard. Now he stops breathing. He’s right beside us on the other side of the door. He goes quiet into the pipe room.

“I know you’re there, Batson. And maybe O’Boy too, eh? My two summer boys. Well, what you did to Mr. George’s piece that he worked so hard on wasn’t very nice! Was it? I know you’re in there hiding. Why don’t you come out and confess to Mr. George? Come on now. The fun is over. Let’s have a little talk…”

I have the key to the door in the left pocket of my shorts. When Mr. George is far enough in the room, Billy and me, we slam the door shut and I lock it with the key.

Then we run.

Outside the church the Sandy Hillers are in shock. “That organist must be crazy!”

“If my ears are ruined I’m going to sue him.”

“Where did Skippy Skidmore get a useless tool like that!”

“They say that he likes to fiddle with little boys!” “Reverend should fire the likes of him!”

All of a sudden I say to Billy, “I forgot my granny’s umbrella!”

“You can’t go back!” says Billy.

“I have to,” I say. “I can’t lose that umbrella!”

I run down the back stairs past the choir boys coming up.

“Boy O’Boy,” they’re saying as I push past them on the stairs. “Where ya been, O’Boy?” “You’re late O’Boy!” “You shoulda heard Mr. Georges special recital!” “It sounded like when an insane asylum burns down!”

I go up the side stairs. Granny’s umbrella is on the floor outside the locked door. I go and pick it up.

“I can see you, O’Boy!” whispers Mr. George. “It was you!” I can see one of his awful multiple eyes at the keyhole.

“No!” I say. I feel like shoving the pointy sharp end of the umbrella into the keyhole.

“I’m going to catch you, O’Boy. And when I do, I’m going to hurt you! I’m going to hurt you in a way you’ll never forget. I’ll find you. I’ll find you and I’ll get you. And when I do, you’re going to be a very, very sorry boy!

A beautiful boy. But you won’t be beautiful anymore! I’ll take away that beauty from you!”

You already have, Mr. George.

I leave with my granny’s umbrella.

Mr. George is pounding on the door.

“Don’t sleep at night, O’Boy! I’ll be thinking of you, my beautiful Boy O’Boy!” he screams.

T
HE TROOP ship, the
Andrea Doria,
came home to Montreal yesterday. Buz will be here this afternoon! At the Union Station! He’ll get off the train at one o’clock! Buz! The wounded war hero! Our Buz!

I can tell him about Mr. George. I think I will tell him. I’m minding Phil out in the yard. I’m practicing on him. Pretending he’s Buz.

“Buz,” I say to Phil, “there’s a man at choir, the organist for the summer. He was always being nice to me, giving me money and buying me ice cream sundaes at Imbro’s.”

Phil’s nose is running. He’s trying to stick a stick that he has in my eye.

Start again.

“Buz, a man at choir cut a piece of his cape so the choir cat wouldn’t have to move.”

Phil is trying to stab my cat Cheap with the stick. Cheap runs under the back shed.

“Buz, the organist at choir said he’d give me one of his war medals if… Buz, would you give away one of your war medals to some kid?”

Better go in. My father’s home for lunch and there’s arguing. Sometimes if I’m there they’ll stop for a while.

My mother has burned a pot of macaroni and cheese on the stove. The kitchen is full of smoke. Phil is howling and choking. My father takes him out in the yard and puts him on his long rope. My mother is at the kitchen table. She’s leaning back. Her belly is a way out.

“Any time now,” she says. “Please, God! Or why don’t we wait until it gets just a little bit hotter!”

I slip out the front and call on Billy and we head over Angel Square and up to the Byward Market and up to the Union Station. At the station there’s Laflammes running around and Lenny Lipshitz and a bunch of people from Cobourg Street all probably there to welcome home Buz.

There’s a band getting ready to play on the steps in the station going down to where the trains are. There’s a huge crowd of people carrying flowers and babies and flags.

Now everybody’s yelling,’’The train is here! The train has arrived! The troops are home!”

Now the station man pulls open the big iron gates and we see some soldiers and sailors walking in from the platform carrying big duffel bags on their shoulders. People start walking toward them. They start walking faster. Now people are running into each other’s arms. There’s squealing and crying and laughing. Now more sailors and some airmen but no Buz yet.

Behind us, on the stairs, the band starts playing.

But there’s something else exciting happening. People are stumbling down the stairs, sliding down the brass railings.

Everybody’s yelling about money. Somebody giving money away. Somebody crazy. A crazy old guy throwing money around. A nutty millionaire is giving away fifty-dollar bills! Anybody in uniform! Hurry, he’s down over there! It’s crazy McLean from Merrickville! The millionaire nut from Merrickville is in town and he’s gone berserk! He’s giving everybody in uniform a fifty-dollar bill! My stars! Hurry!

The crowd is moving this way and that way all of a sudden, like minnows all together.

The soldiers and sailors and airmen coming through the gate are laughing and cheering. Somebody’s giving them fifty dollars. Come see! Come see!

Then I see Buz. Then I see Mrs. Sawyer running and hugging Buz. Now the nut millionaire is going over to Buz. Right up to him. Gives him a fifty-dollar bill. Buz salutes him and smiles his handsome smile. Buz has a cast on his wrist. His war wound.

I run up to Buz. So does Billy. Buz shakes hands with us. He’s bigger, a lot bigger than when he left. Now he gives us big hugs. He’s with two other guys. Two friends of his — big sailors. He tells us their names. They hug Mrs. Sawyer. They have nobody to hug. They have to take another train up to Maniwaki. Somebody will hug them up there.

I can hardly pay attention to all of it. I’m just looking at Buz.

Oh, Buz! We thought you’d never… does your wrist hurt.. .did your plane crash.. .were you scared, Buz…were you…did you get your medals, Buz…

Now Buz is looking over my shoulder. He turns me around. He puts his air force cap on me. He straightens it. It’s too big. Like my shoes.

Here comes the millionaire again, right for us!

He’s got a fistful of fifties!

“Salute!” Buz says. “Salute him!”

I salute. The millionaire gives me a fifty-dollar bill out of his fist. He steps back and looks me up and down.