Somewhere I Belong (7 page)

Larry looked a little peevish. “That's not what I mean, P.J.” Even my brother had his limits. He thought for a moment, then smiled. “Anyhow, we'll likely have to watch out for Mr. Dunphy.”

I got the feeling Larry was right. As unpredictable as Mr. Dunphy was, I knew I was already in his bad books. And I was soon to find out that, no matter how hard I tried, I was there to stay.

“I just wish Dad were here,” I said. “He'd show Old Dunphy.”

No amount of consolation from Larry or Ma over Mr. Dunphy seemed to help. I went to bed that night thinking the only person I wanted to talk to was my dad. I was sure I had seen him once before our move. But I know that if I told Larry how it had happened, he would say it had just been a dream.

I started offering prayers up to the Blessed Virgin for Dad every
evening after he died. I thought the harder I prayed, the closer he would get to heaven. At least, that's what Father Flynn had told us soon after the accident. About a week after the funeral, I was kneeling by my bed, shivering in the cold room. My head was bowed and my hands were tightly clasped. Alfred lay snug in the bed, wrapped in a heap of blankets and Ma's handmade quilt. I thought it would be okay if I climbed in and finished my Hail Marys under the warm covers. Then a question popped into my head. It was about what had happened between Ma and Uncle George that day. Something about her telling him she was packing us up and moving us to Prince Edward Island. Uncle George pleaded with her, trying to get her to change her mind. But Ma had already decided, and no amount of arguing could make her stay.

I'm not entirely clear on it now, but I do remember shaking a little, feeling a bit afraid. It was not so much from the cold as it was from wondering if Ma was really going to make us move away. We had only just finished cleaning up the mess from the explosion. We had only just buried Dad.

I got up from the floor and climbed under the covers. I put my head on the pillow and snugged up against Alfred. Normally I hated sharing
the same bed with my little brother. But this time I was genuinely
glad he was there because I didn't want to be alone. Then the light in the hallway dimmed and the whole room grew dark and still. Alfred closed his mouth and steadied his breathing like he was trying to be quiet. The temperature dropped. Then a bright, misty glow appeared in the far corner of the room.

First it hovered there like a single star lighting up the night sky. Then
it got larger, and a white, translucent orb appeared inside it. When
the orb stretched into a large oblong shape, I got scared and tried to nudge Alfred awake. The mist cleared and the shape got longer and narrower and drifted across the room. I closed my eyes and ducked
under the covers, hoping it was a dream. When I edged the covers
down, I saw Dad floating beside the bed as if he were standing on an invisible cloud. I stared in disbelief.

Dad smiled down at me and asked a question that made me think
about both sides of the issue. It was the same kind of question he
would ask me during our talks, after supper, when he was still alive.

He would be sitting with Larry, Helen, and me at the kitchen table. He liked to read the newspaper, there, while we did our homework. A question would pop into my head and I'd blurt it out. Usually it was about an incident at school that day or something I might have heard that I didn't quite understand, something completely unrelated to the
homework. Dad would sit back in his chair and ask questions that
made me think about both sides of the matter.

One time it was about an incident in the schoolyard where this big knucklehead opened my lunch tin and stole my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dad asked me what his name was and I told him.

“Why do you think Eugene would do a thing like that, Pius James?” he asked.

Naturally, I came out with an answer that supported my side.
“Because he's bigger than I am and a bully.”

Dad went silent for a moment, then asked, “Do you think it's really that simple?”

I looked at him, confused.

“What if I told you Eugene's dad just got laid off his job?”

“That would be different,” I said.

“Okay, so let's say it's true. How would you look at it now?”

“I'd say Eugene maybe took my sandwich because he was hungry.”

“So how would you deal with it?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Your mother packs you a good lunch, right? So you had some left?”

I nodded.

“And Eugene got a little bite to eat too.”

Now I was beginning to understand.

“So what would have happened if he hadn't taken your lunch?”

“He'd be hungry.”

“So did he take you sandwich because he was a bully?”

“No.”

“So how do you think you should deal with this, Pius James?”

“I could give Eugene my sandwich,” I said.

“Sure you could. Better still, you could ask your mother to make
him one.”

“Ma would do that?”

“Sure she would; it's just two slices of bread and some peanut butter and jelly. For Ma, it wouldn't be such a big deal. For Eugene, it would mean he wouldn't go hungry.
And
he'd know somebody cared.”

I looked up at dad and smiled.

“So, you know what this whole thing is about?” he asked.

I waited.

“It's about figuring out whether a person is doing something because they're nasty and or because they need to.”

When he came to me several nights after he died, he asked me the same kinds of questions—ones that made me wonder if he had read my mind.

“You're worried about the move, aren't you, Pius James?” he said. “You're wondering why your mother's decided to go. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

I stared up at him, too afraid to speak.

“Your grandmother has a fine home; Prince Edward Island is a wonderful place to live,” he continued. “You've had some great times there, but you probably don't remember because you were too young.”

“But, I don't want to go,” I said.

“Give me one good reason,” he replied.

I thought for a moment and didn't know where to start. First, there
were all my friends. Then, there was Glendale Park and the winter
hockey games and baseball in spring and summer. There was ice cream next door at MacCormack's Grocer. And Aunt Mayme and Uncle George lived three blocks away.

I looked up at him and shrugged my shoulders.

“How do you think your mother feels, Pius James?”

I didn't answer.

“Scared, maybe? What do you think?”

“Ma?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? She's got you four kids and no breadwinner. It's not like she could go out and get a job. And who would look after you fellas, anyhow?”

I kept looking at him. He kept talking.

“What do you think her choices are, Pius James?” He waited, then said, “She could stick you kids in an orphanage or divide you up among
the relatives. In which case, some of you would be going to Prince
Edward Island anyhow. Or, she could go home to her family and keep you fellas together.

“She needs help, Pius James. Don't you think she'd doing what she needs to do?”

I stared up at him, tears streaming down my face. Then I watched him and the shining orb disappear and the room go black.

I thought if he appeared to me once, he would do it again. So I tried
to conjure him up several times before we moved. Some nights, I'd
go to bed thinking hard about a problem I had had that day. I would ask a question I needed an answer for, hoping he would come. I tried again on the overnight train to Prince Edward Island and during our first few nights at Granny's. I'd drift off to sleep, disappointed each time. But when I thought about it, it made sense that he had come to me that one time because he had just died and was not so far away.

After that first day at Northbridge Road School, I tried to conjure him up again. If there was a time I really needed to talk to Dad, it was then. And when he didn't appear, I wondered if we had moved too far away. Or whether he had, somehow, appeared to Larry. But this wasn't a question I could put to my older brother—he would tell me it had just been a dream.

The next morning, Uncle Jim opened my bedroom door and popped
his head in. “Time to get up, Pius James.”

It wasn't. I was still tired and the room was freezing. Back home, we never got up before Dad had stoked the furnace. Even after he came singing up the stairway to wake us, we waited to hear the cracking sound of hot water coursing through the cold radiators. And for the sun to peek through the window.

At Granny's, I could see my breath in the light that streamed through the doorway. Night still lurked outside. I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head. The next thing I knew, Larry was pulling them off me and shaking my shoulder.

“Wake up, P.J.” He spoke softly so as to not wake Alfred.

I yanked on the covers and snuggled down in the bed.

Larry ripped them off again, exposing me to the frigid air. Then he
turned and left. “You do what you want, P.J.—I'm going out to help
Uncle Jim.”

If there was one thing Larry was good at, it was making me feel
guilty for lying around in bed. I rolled over on the lumpy mattress and pulled back the covers. I found a pair of coveralls slung over a chair by the window and pulled them on over the same long johns and woollen socks I had worn all night. Then I followed Larry downstairs.

He and Uncle Jim met me in the kitchen. Uncle Jim had lit two tin lanterns, placing one on the kitchen table and hanging the other one up in the mudroom. He pulled on his gumboots and jacket and pointed to two more pairs of boots and two plaid woollen jackets that hung above them in the mudroom.

“Put these on, fellas. It's cold out there.”

He grabbed the lantern, and Larry and I followed him out the back
door. The sun cracked through the horizon and swallowed the last lingering star as we crossed the snow-packed yard. It was freezing
cold, and I wished I were still in bed. Except for a rooster that crowed in the distance, everything around us was quiet. Uncle Jim opened the barn door, and the putrid smell of manure washed over me. I covered my nose to stave off the stench.

He pointed to two shovels and a wheelbarrow in a dim corner. “Start with the stalls. Muck 'em out and lay down clean straw. Then give Lu and Big Ned their hay and youse can head in for breakfast. I'll fetch the water and do the milkin'. Your mother'll crown me if you're late for school.” He grabbed a crowbar and a pail and headed back out to the yard to beat ice off the cover of the old stone well. He turned and
looked at me on his way out. “The faster you move, P.J., the sooner
you're done.”

Hot water steamed in the washbasin in my bedroom when I finished chores. But despite how hard I scrubbed, the smell of sweat and manure still stuck to me when I walked down the drive with Larry and Helen to meet Thomas and Pat Jr. on the road.

At school, I followed Pat Jr.'s advice to keep my head down and
look busy while Larry fended off Patrick Daley. To my relief, the day went well. After school, we grabbed a snack, then pulled on the same manure-encrusted coveralls we had worn that morning and met Uncle Jim in the barn.

This became our daily routine. My arms and shoulders ached. My woollen mitts stuck to hands that blistered from shovelling and taking turns with Larry carting manure out the barn door and over to the pile beside the fence. After supper, I sat under the dim light of the kerosene lantern in the kitchen and stared at my homework. I wondered what the point was in doing all that stupid stuff Mr. Dunphy insisted on if I was going home soon anyhow. Besides, it was way more than the other kids had to do. At the end of the day, I fell into bed and lay splayed flat out, too sore to move. This forced Alfred to the far edge of the mattress, where he huddled up against the cool plaster wall.

It got harder to roll out of bed each morning. The barn chores seemed to take longer to finish. And no matter how much Uncle Jim tried to make it fun, by the end of that first week I was too tired to swing on the rope or ride Lu anyhow. I just wanted to finish up and head straight back to the house.

On Friday morning, we met Thomas and Pat Jr. as usual. Even though it was early, it felt like I had already put in a full day. My satchel seemed to weigh more than it had all week. And it was tough trudging over the sleigh ruts and the icy clumps of snow that had packed down over the road. My only thought was on sleeping in over the weekend, I was so plug tired.

In the distance, Nora Daley wandered out onto the road and continued on alone. She never even glanced our way. We didn't see Patrick or Michael. As we approached the MacIntyres', Helen picked up her pace. Since Tuesday, she had made a habit of running up their drive and meeting Maggie halfway. Smoke streamed lazily from the chimney and disappeared into the pale-blue morning sky. Curtains were drawn over the windows of the house—upstairs and down. A single path led from the side door down the drive. Snowdrifts piled against the barn and lay in waves across the yard. Every other yard we had seen was a mess of boot prints, sleigh ruts, and the trampling of hoofs. But there were few signs of anyone having been around Maggie's.

Maggie hurried through the side door and slammed it shut as Helen moved up the narrow path toward her. Maggie looked swallowed up in a thick woollen coat that looked to be the same style as Ma's, only shabbier. Her navy blue tam ballooned around her pale, thin face. She hugged her books to her chest, her lunch tin dangling awkwardly from
a hand. She picked her way along the path with hand-knit woollen
socks over her shoes instead of boots, like the Daleys wore.

Helen met her halfway up the path and talked a streak as they headed toward the road. “Ma says you can come over after school. Uncle Jim can take you home.” My sister sure tried hard to make a friend.

When Maggie said, “I don't know—I have to ask Mom,” Helen's face sank.

Maggie's books shifted in her arms as she moved down the icy path. The whole mess looked ready to tumble out of her arms and onto the road. Carrying them seemed like the decent thing to do. The problem was figuring out how to approach her when I'd hardly spoken to her all week.

Back home, some of the older guys would walk straight up to a girl,
say something smart, and slide those books right out of her arms.
Simple—nothing to it. So I decided I'd do just that. I'd wait until Maggie got close to the road, then I'd look her straight in the eye and say, “I'll take those for you.” Then I'd slip them from her arms and carry them to school like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. But I'd make sure to keep a good distance so no one got any ideas about me getting fresh with her. Because I wasn't. Maggie MacIntyre was just a skinny, pale-faced girl who walked to school in what looked to be her mother's coat and couldn't afford a satchel.

As she approached the road, I ran the one simple sentence through my head. I took a deep breath and stepped toward her. “Could I…um…I mean…”

But Larry sauntered right up to her. “Those books look heavy,
Maggie,”
he said. And before she could protest, he slipped them from her hands and tucked them under an arm.

I stood there and watched as he resumed his long, confident stride down the road.

Helen took Maggie's arm and marched the two of them straight past me. “P.J.'s sweet on you,” she whispered, loud enough for everybody to hear.

I scooped snow off the ground and biffed it at her, spraying it down her back. “Am not!”

“I'm telling Ma,” Helen hollered.

“Go ahead, blabbermouth—see if I care.”

It seems like Friday is always test day at school. Northbridge Road
was no different.

“Ol' Dunphy always gives a math test Friday mornin',” Pat Jr. said. “Then he writes the answers on the board and gets us to switch papers and mark 'em. That way he don't gotta do it himself.”

“He doesn't tell you before?” I said. “You don't get a review sheet or nothin'?”

“Ol' Dunphy likes his surprises,” Pat Jr. said. “Only, every Friday's the same, so you always know.

“In the afternoon there's composition,” he continued. “That's when
you got to write for a whole hour on stuff you're supposed to have
read in the
Guardian
for homework. Sometimes Ol' Dunphy picks the
topic. Sometimes you get to pick your own. Depends on his mood.
One thing's for sure—you got to read the newspaper and remember at least one thing or you're in for it.”

“Looks like we're in for it.” Larry laughed.

As we entered the schoolroom, Curtis Murphy, a boy in ninth grade, was making his way down the aisle with the empty water pail. It was his turn to fill it. Mr. Dunphy had divided the blackboard into three sections and was scribbling math problems in each one. A long piece of foolscap sat on every desk. We hung our jackets along the back wall. Helen, Larry, and I opened our lunch tins and retrieved the tin cups Ma had packed for us that morning. Then we emptied our satchels, took our seats, and everybody waited for Curtis to return with the water. We said the Lord's Prayer, pledged allegiance to the king, and sat down again. Mr. Dunphy opened his ledger and marked attendance, shaking his head as he glanced along the back row. Besides Larry, Curtis and Connor Murphy were the only boys present in ninth grade. He slammed
his ledger shut, grabbed his pointer, and slapped it across the first
section of the blackboard.

“Grades one to three, try the first five sums. Anything more and it's a bonus. The rest of you, solve everything in your section.” He glanced
up at the clock. “You have thirty minutes—now get to it. And don't
forget to check your work.”

A muffled cough sounded from the back row, followed by a loud
moan.

“That will be enough, Mr. Murphy,” Mr. Dunphy said.

“I'm thirsty, sir.” It was Connor Murphy, Curtis's twin brother. “Can I get a drink?”

“May I,” Mr. Dunphy replied.

“May I, sir?”

“Go ahead. And be quick about it—you're writing a test.”

Mr. Dunphy sat at his desk, then opened his thermos and poured himself a cup of tea. He put his feet up, heaving the lame leg over the good one. Then he watched as Connor Murphy slouched up the aisle, mounted the platform, grabbed a tin cup from the only clean corner of Mr. Dunphy's desk, dunked it into the bucket, and took a long, leisurely drink. He dropped the cup back onto the desk and returned down the aisle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

The math test was easy as I had already covered everything back
home. I quickly finished it and checked it over. Beside me, Maggie MacIntyre chewed on a thumbnail and stared at the frost-covered
window. Except for the problems Mr. Dunphy had told us to copy from the board, her foolscap was blank. I glanced toward the platform and
found Old Dunphy absently staring across the room. Thinking the
coast was clear, I slid my test across my desk and nudged Maggie. She glanced at me, her grey eyes wide with fear. Then she turned away and concentrated on her blank test.

When the half-hour ended, Old Dunphy sat up and said, “Pencils
down, switch tests.” Then he scribbled the answers on the board.

Maggie's test was a mess of smudged graphite. Her attempted calculations filled the margins. It felt bad marking an X next to each of her answers while she wrote check marks next to mine. I thought about changing some of them, but Old Dunphy was quick. He scribbled down the last solution, turned, and scanned the room. He grabbed his pointer and hobbled down the centre aisle, never once taking his eyes off us.

In the afternoon, we came in to find him standing at the centre of the platform, pointer in hand. A single sentence had been written across the blackboard. It said “Living in rural Prince Edward Island during hard times.” Before we were even seated, he slapped his pointer onto an open palm.

“There's been plenty in the newspaper on this topic,” he said. “Of course, we all know about this first-hand, so this one should be easy. The upper grades are to quote from the
Guardian
to support their discussion. You don't have to get it dead-on; something close would suffice. But I want to see that you've been reading the newspaper this week.”