Somewhere I Belong (23 page)

“But he's mean to me,” I said. “He treats me like…and then the strapping.” I looked up at Dad. “What would you have done?”

“Certainly not that.” Dad thought for a moment. “I hid the strap
one time.”

“You did? I mean…you got strapped?”

“Once or twice,” Dad said.

“But…why?”

“Got bored; acted up.” Dad smiled at me. “I had a teacher who was after giving the strap for just about anything. If you didn't sit there with your mouth shut, or raise your hand to speak—out it came.”

“Sounds like Old—I mean, Mr. Dunphy,” I said.

“I know some of what you're going through, Pius James. But I can only imagine the rest.” Dad hovered closer. “Want to talk about it?”

I looked up at him and searched for words.

Dad helped me find them. “Why don't we do it like we did before. This time I want you to give me a list of some of the things you like about the place and some of the things you don't.”

The first question was easy. I could list off a whole lot of things, like Uncle Jim and Lu, and Pat Giddings Jr. living right next door. About the hockey games at the Giddingses' pond. And having a first cousin like Thomas Lanigan right across the road. I was even ready to tell him about Maggie MacIntrye. Almost.

As for the second question, I hardly knew where to begin. First,
nobody had even asked me if I wanted to move away from Everett—I didn't. Then, I missed my friends. I missed playing baseball at Glendale Park—we hardly ever got to play baseball at Granny's because of chores and homework. And I never thought I'd miss my school. But compared to what I had experienced here, maybe it's what I missed the most.

I looked at Dad and summed it all up. “I want to go home.”

“Well, you had your chance, Pius James,” Dad said. “Aunt Mayme
even sent the train fair. Too bad you had to go and—”

“I didn't know!” I said.

“Even so. That stunt you pulled on Mr. Dunphy was way worse than anything I ever did.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You already said that.”

“What about Ma? Do you think she'll change her mind?”

“You know your Ma. It'll take some going before she does.”

I looked up at him. “You know that baseball Babe Ruth signed after that game we went to?”

“Don't even talk about that, Pius James. You're not being fair to
your Ma.”

As quickly as Dad had appeared, he faded away. And the bright
yellow orb gave way to the dull blue dawn. I lay there, trying to sleep, as my mind ran through Dad's final comments.

I had finally drifted off to sleep when the barn door banged open and Uncle Jim came in carrying a mug of hot cocoa. He climbed the ladder, sat in the hay beside me, and placed the steaming mug close to my nose. Its rich, chocolatey smell was a relief from the stench of the barn.

“I hear tell you're quite the ball player,” he said. “Third base, eh? I'm no expert, but I reckon you gotta be a tough little fella to play third. Some big galoot comes runnin' right into you and yer mashed potatoes. That's what they tell me, anyhow.”

I kept my head down and my eyes closed, pretending to sleep as the steam from the hot cocoa rolled over my face and up my nose. My stomach growled at its rich aroma. And Uncle Jim talked and talked, about baseball, about the fields, and the new shoes he was making for Big Ned and Lu. About anything that came into his head.

The steam abated and the mug cooled. Then my sense of injury gave way to the feeling that I was letting my uncle sit on a pile of brittle hay, in the chill morning air, and carry on a one-sided conversation, when he was only trying to be nice. I started to feel less sorry for myself and a little ashamed. I pulled back the blanket, sat up, and edged beside him.

“Ma's not going to let me go, is she?”

“Listen, Pius James,” Uncle Jim said. “I feel as bad as you do. We'll just have to figure out a way, that's all. But knowin' your mother, it's gonna to take some figurin'.” He picked up the mug of cocoa. “Get this
here into you, then go and get your breakfast. I need help with the
jauntin' wagon today. I'm off to Boughton Island Monday mornin' and it needs spiffin' up.”

He got up and moved toward the ladder. “I wouldn't give up yet;
there's still time.” He left me with a hope so faint, it almost hurt to feel.

Old Dunphy wanted Pat Jr. and me “clear of the place,” but he had to let us write our exams. This meant that Uncle Jim had to hitch Lu up to the buckboard and run us both to school every morning for a week. He and Lu had to wait, in the heat, for us to write our exams. Then he had to take us home for lunch and back again in the afternoon. It seemed this whole episode had its consequences on more than just Pat Jr. and me. Uncle Jim had to work late into the evenings, preparing the new field, switching Lu off with Big Ned. The wheat crop got planted later than planned. And the harvest wouldn't be as good.

On the last day of school, Old Dunphy practically threw our report cards at us.

“Out! And I don't want to see either of you 'til September.”

I raced out the back door, hoping that meant we wouldn't be seeing
him stogging his face at Granny's dining room table any more. And
pestering Aunt Gert.

As it happened, we did see him pretty soon after. When Pat Jr. had got suspended, Jaynie Giddings had got indignant and telephoned Mr.
MacPhee. Being the fair man Mr. MacPhee was, he had said that he
would look into it, and that he wanted to hear what Pat Jr. and I had to say about the matter. He met us at the schoolhouse, and talked to
us and took careful notes, while Mr. Dunphy waited outside for his
turn. He asked us about the tainted water pail and the incidents that had led up to it. When he had finished, he put his pen down, and said, “You seem like good boys. You don't strike me as the types who get into trouble.” He sat back and thought for a moment. “If I were to ask each of you for a single word that explained why you did this, what would it be?”

Pat Jr. and I looked at each other, and said, “Bully.”

“I see,” Mr. MacPhee said. “How about I give you boys a little homework? How about you each write me an account of everything that went on at school that you saw as bullying and you mail it to me. Then I'll sit down with Mr. Dunphy and we'll sort things out.”

By “sorting things out,” Mr. MacPhee meant “investigating.” At least that's what he had told Jaynie Giddings. He had promised to report back to her and Ma by mid-August.

Back home, the end of the school year meant bike riding around the
neighbourhood, long days at Revere Beach, and playing baseball at
Glendale Park with the guys late into the evening. At the clang of the final bell, we would race down the hallway and into a wide-open summer.
Except for taking turns at the push mower with Larry and looking
after Alfred when Ma ran an errand, there were hardly any chores. I suspected that the last day at Northbridge Road School wouldn't mean the same kind of summer at Granny's. Nevertheless, I hoped I'd get to sleep in just once. But on the first Saturday morning in July, my uncle bounded down the hallway even earlier than usual and rapped on my bedroom door and Larry's.

“Up and at 'em,” he said. Then he dashed down the stairs.

I rolled over and watched the light seep through the curtains, announcing dawn. I burrowed into the bed and listened to Larry rustle around in the next room. Summer had just begun, and already, I could feel it slipping away.

Larry lumbered along the hallway and down the stairs. Being careful
not to wake Alfred, I eased out of bed, pulled on my clothes, and
followed him. Ma, Granny, and Aunt Gert were already seated around the kitchen table eating breakfast. The suit jacket and trousers Uncle Jim had ordered from the Eaton's catalogue hung neatly over the doorframe. Granny's ironing board was propped against the wall. Uncle Jim stood at the counter, scribbling on a notepad.

“You're roaring around like nobody's business, Jim,” Granny said. “You could at least sit down for breakfast.”

“Can't.” He ran a pencil down his list. “Got a million things to do
before I leave.”

All week there had been talk of a trip to Boughton Island. This meant travelling ten miles over a dirt-and-gravel road to the wharf at Lower Montague and catching the ferry down the river to Georgetown. Then travelling the fifteen miles to Launching, leading Lu and the wagon to the beach, and waiting for low tide. He would have a half hour to cross the mile-long brick-and-sand road to Boughton Island before the tide came in, provided Lu wasn't nervous about getting her hooves wet. Once across, he would be stuck there until the ocean ebbed again. It seemed like a lot of bother to me. But according to the conversations that had drifted around the house all week, Uncle Jim was keen to go.

“Jaynie Giddings tells me you're off to visit the MacCormacks.” The sly look on Granny's face said she was snooping for answers. “She said you're dropping in on a certain young lady.”

“Jaynie Giddings talks too much.” Uncle Jim grabbed his notepad
and headed toward the mudroom. When he reached the doorway, he stopped. “Genevieve MacCormack's comin' for the church picnic again this year. I'm bringin' her back to stay with the Giddings. Just saving Percy the trip, is all.” He yanked on his boots and slammed through the back door.

“I guess I must have said something wrong.” Granny smirked; she didn't look at all sorry.

“They've been writing back and forth all winter,” Aunt Gert said.

Ma smiled. “So, it's serious.”

“You should have seen him at the church picnic last summer,” Aunt Gert said. “He was dropping supplies off at the hall when he saw Gen MacCormack and Jaynie Giddings setting up their rug display. He made a huge fuss over those hand-hooked rugs. Bought every one of them. Said they were for his trousseau.”

“Must have cost him a fortune,” Ma said. “Do you think he'll ask her…?”

“Ask who what?” I said.

“Never you mind, Pius James,” Ma said.

“Uncle Jim has a girlfriend, doesn't he,” Larry said.

“You boys hurry along and help your uncle. He wants to get going,” Ma said. “And mind your business.”

Larry and I gulped down breakfast and traipsed out the back door. The sun shone brightly over the barn, promising a warm day. Even so, the cool early morning air and the stillness in the yard made me wish I were back in bed. Except for the half-dozen hens that scratched in the dirt, it seemed like everything around us was still asleep.

Uncle Jim turned in a slow circle and surveyed the barn, the shed,
and the rickety old post-and-barbed-wire fence that separated the barnyard from the back pasture. The jaunting wagon stood by the
open shed doors. Its dusty black paint and chipped red wheels blended with the dust, muck, and general decay around it. Uncle Jim stopped
turning and concentrated on the fence. “This old place could use a
good sprucin' up, whaddaya say, boys?”

Larry surveyed the yard. “It doesn't look any worse than any other place around here.”

I followed Larry's gaze. “That isn't saying much.”

Mud lay splattered over the lower part of the barn and across its uneven double doors. White paint flaked from the trim of the barn, the shed, and the chicken coop. Their once bright red paint was now
faded to a dull powder rose. The fence by the back pasture sagged
toward the barnyard, its wires rusted and stretched. That old fence didn't look to be much of a barrier for the livestock. And if Big Ned or Lu got interested in the grazing across the road at Uncle Ed's, they could take it down with a single hoof. The only tidy thing about the place was Helen's carefully hoed garden that sat in a perfect square behind the house. If there was so much work to be done around the place, I wondered why my uncle was insisting on doing such a huge favour for the Giddings. It seemed like he was dumping a pile of work on Larry and me so he could run off and fetch some girl.

“Why can't Percy go?” I asked.

“Promised
I
would,” Uncle Jim snapped back. He sure was touchy that morning.

“You got a girlfriend, don't you,” I said.

“Ma said you're to never mind, P.J.,” Larry said.

“You should listen to your mother.” Uncle Jim tossed me a sideways look.

You should have let me sleep in,
I thought, knowing that if I came right out and said it, he'd get riled up for sure.

He ignored us and returned to his list. “I'll tell you one thing—you boys do a good job 'round here, and there'll be a little reward when I get back. First we gotta finish up chores. Then we gotta put some spit 'n' shine to the jaunting wagon and get Lu spiffed up. I can't go travellin' to Boughton Island with her lookin' like a mangy old mule.”

The mention of a reward immediately got my interest. Back home, even when we did easy chores, like mowing and raking the lawn, we got paid. I figured all that scraping, painting, and fence mending had
to be worth something. I hoped that if I dug in extra hard, maybe I
could even earn my train passage home. And get to that baseball game. And maybe even get my favourite ballplayer to sign another baseball.

When we finished chores, I led Lu in from the pasture and tethered her to the fence by the shed. I groomed every inch of her, brushing her dusty, brown coat to a bright, shiny walnut. Fussing over her mane and tail.

Larry filled Lu's feed bag and several water jugs and placed them in the storage box behind the back seat. Uncle Jim inspected our work. “You fellas got 'er cleaned up good. This old black buggy looks as fine as any one of them fancy new motorcars.”

Larry moved beside him and stood head-to-head with our uncle.
His pants rose halfway up his black rubber boots and his belt was
cinched at the waist. I don't know if it was the physical labour or the farm food, but Larry sure had grown.

After lunch, Uncle Jim grabbed his new suit and went upstairs to
wash and change. He reappeared reeking of Old Spice cologne and
the Brylcreem he had used to slick back his hair. His navy blue jacket drooped at the shoulders; his grey flannel trousers bagged at the knees. The button-on collar of his new white shirt made his neck stick out like a turkey's. He stopped and posed at the kitchen doorway.

“Well, don't you look handsome,” Granny said.

The rest of us just stared. We had never seen our uncle so scrubbed. He looked like he had stepped straight out of the men's section of the Eaton's catalogue. Except someone had sent the wrong size.

Before he left, he handed Larry his list. “Start with the fencin'. That shouldn't take more'n a day or two if you boys tackle it together. Then I'd get at them buildings. Scrape the trim on the shed and the chicken coop and give it a good white washin'. If you have time, you can start on the barn.”

Uncle Jim told us the whitewashing protected the buildings from the weather and kept the wood from rotting. But he was so particular about us not splashing it over the faded red shingles of the buildings that I wondered if he wasn't more concerned about their appearance than their preservation. At least he didn't expect us to get it all done.

“I'll be back Friday—suppertime at the latest.” He threw his bag
onto the back seat and checked the traces. Then he looked straight at me and climbed aboard. “You finish up as much as you can. And like I said, I'll make it worth your while.”

Just as he gathered up the reins, Helen appeared from behind the
house, carrying a pail and heading toward the old well. Uncle Jim
slowed up the horse.

“Where d'ya think you're goin', missy?”

“I got to water my garden.”

“Oh no you don't. There's been plenty o' rain. You start waterin' that
garden, the roots'll get shallow and you'll have to keep on waterin'.
You're just makin' more work for yourself. And how many times have I told you to stay away from that well—needs fixin'—I'll get to it when I get back.”

Uncle Jim had been going on about that old well for months. He
grumbled about the condition it was in. He went on and on about how he was going to fix it. But he never did. I didn't see what the big deal
was. Fetching water from it seemed a simple enough process: You
lifted off the old wooden cover; you tied a rope to the handle of the pail; you dropped the pail down the well and waited for a splash; you checked the tension on the rope; then you pulled slow and easy and tried to keep the pail level so you didn't spill the water. And you didn't lean over the wall. If a stone came loose, you jumped back so it didn't land on your foot. Before you put the cover back on, you picked up the stone and put it back in place. Everybody used that old well, even though Uncle Jim told us not to. When Uncle Jim got busy, Larry and I fetched water for the livestock. When the ice in the icehouse melted, we stored our milk down there in a wire mesh basket. When the well in the basement went dry, Aunt Gert used it and so did Granny. And Helen had been fetching water for her garden for a good month without Uncle Jim saying a word. Now all of a sudden she wasn't allowed.

Helen watched Lu lope down the drive and pull out onto North
bridge Road. When the wagon disappeared, she continued on to the well and lifted the cover.

Larry and I started on the list, beginning with the fencing by the back pasture. For the next three days, we replaced weak posts and tightened up the barbed wire. We worked morning to night, stopping only for meals. I dug in hard, wondering about the reward and whether Larry was thinking the same thing too. Helen weeded and hoed and fussed over her garden. By late Wednesday, we started scraping the trim on the buildings, hoping to get it all done before Uncle Jim returned.

Granny, Ma, and Aunt Gert applied the same kind of energy to preparing for the church picnic. They baked for three solid days. The flour they flung into bowls and over the kitchen counter made it look like a dust storm in there. They made bread, cakes, pies, and squares. The smell of baked apple and cinnamon collided with the rich aroma of
molasses and yeast. By Wednesday afternoon, every counter in the kitchen lay piled with the first real expression of excess I had seen
since we left home.

On Thursday morning, they got out the handiwork they had picked
away at over the winter. Granny opened her sewing cabinet in the
parlour, settled into the wingback chair, and stitched binding onto a patchwork quilt that draped all around her. Ma and Aunt Gert perched on the settee, stitching burlap backing onto hand-hooked rugs. The
Amos 'n' Andy
show crackled over the Atwater Kent radio. And Helen pulled on the canvas of a cross-stitch sampler Ma had helped her design. And whined. “It's all bunched up—it's ugly.”