The Long Run Page 20

  Everyone loves his accent and his odd little expressions. But it puts him in a tough spot, because he’s always being called upon to read the morning prayer or say the grace or answer questions in class. And some of the boys laugh at him a lot. It’s a tough spot to be in for a new guy, especially a skinny little guy.

  The rumor is that the new boy is an American. But later we find out that his name is Merrigan and someone confused the sound of his name with his being an American.

  It’s really sad to see a new guy, especially if he’s all alone. Lots of boys who come to the Mount come with a brother or cousin, which makes it a bit easier on them. But it’s really bad if a boy is all alone. He often has the spells for a long, long time. Poor old Whelan had the spells for about a year. We all felt really sorry for him. Every Thursday, he’d start. “My Auntie’s coming for me this weekend,” he’d say. And he’d pull out the old wine-colored cardboard suitcase and fill it full with his clothes. “I gotta be ready for when she comes.” His big round face would shine like the sun. “I can’t afford not to be ready the minute she gets here.” And he’d stare out the big dorm window for hours waiting for her car to pull into the long gravel driveway outside. I used to feel so sad for Whelan, but I never let on. I would even help him pack. It never did me any harm to play along. So I did it. And I think it helped him a lot. It gave him hope in a way. To have somebody else also believe that his aunt was coming to take him home to Stephenville.

  Every new guy goes through it, at least for a few weeks. His first bout of the spells. “I’m not in here for very long. Just for a little while. Then my uncle’s coming to get me. He promised he’d come and get me in two weeks . . . two months.” It’s always the same story. Different voices. But always the same story. The weeks give way to months, and the months give way to years, and suddenly Merrigan or Pittman or Walsh is sixteen, and Brother McMurtry arrives with a brand new suitcase and new clothes and a new wallet with twenty freshly minted dollar bills inside. And there is a Mass and a Benediction and a rosary, after which Brother McMurtry gives a little speech about the boy who is leaving, how the Mount has prepared him with the tools to survive in a hard world. Brother McMurtry’s speech is always the same, ending with that predictable conclusion: “And don’t forget to come back and visit us once in a while. You know where to find us. Even in the dark. Sure, you can see the Celtic cross at the top of Mount Kildare from anywhere in St. John’s. It’s always lit, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.”

  Unfortunately, when Randy Walters left that’s not what happened. Brother McMurtry was sick, and McCann filled in for him. McCann announced that all dorms from ours to the seniors’ were to go to the gymnasium. He singled out Walters and said, “I’ve only got two things to say to you, Walters: One, don’t ever show your face around here again. And two, if you’ve got any high hopes leaving here, forget ’em.” Then he gave Walters the customary letter of reference and saw him to the door. He didn’t even get us to line up and shake Walters’ hand, the way Brother McMurtry does when a boy leaves for good.

  Walters is a cocky kid with straight floppy hair and oversized glasses. He just shrugged and curled his lip. I guess he was just as happy to be getting rid of McCann. Blackie found out later where Walters was staying and called an emergency meeting of the Brotherhood and had a collection and sent Walters a note and some money. Father Cross made a card out of cardboard with a sketch of everyone in the Klub on it. It was a really good card. The sketches were really lifelike. We all signed our names and wrote a comment beneath our sketch. We got a really big kick outta what O’Grady wrote beneath his sketch: “Brother MucCan is a big count.” O’Grady can’t spell his own name. Blackie delivered the card one Saturday afternoon.

  “Walters was a good egg,” Blackie said. “McCann shouldn’t of treated him like that. It ain’t fair what happened.”

  12

  * * *

  Two weeks to Christmas. Choice cards at the post office. Two weeks to Christmas. Fill out your choice cards. Choice cards at the post office.

  WE JUST LOVE CHRISTMAS. As Rags says, it’s the best time of the year. All through December, everyone is always happy. We spend a lot of time making wreaths for all the doors in the Mount. And making the two cribs, one for the chapel and a huge one for outside by the front gate. The brothers pick up a lot of money during the Christmas season. People come from all around to see the beautiful big crib and to say a prayer at it. And they always throw a coin inside for a norphan.

  We decorate all the dorms with red-and-white streamers and Santa Clauses and candy canes. And all the statues are spruced up. We hang lights all over the place, inside and out. The older boys cut down a great big tree up in Major’s Path and drag it home and stand it up in the cafeteria. It takes days to get all the bulbs and lights and decorations on it. And it looks wonderful when it’s finished. At supper time we eat with only the Christmas tree lights on. And at night, in the dorms, the brothers light candles. Rags always tells special Chop-Chops stories during the twelve days of Christmas. We always look forward to what Chop-Chops will get for Christmas. It’s such a great time. And there’s no school for two whole weeks.

  The food is better all during Christmas week. It’s the only time we don’t have Diefenbaker meat. No Diefenbaker meat for a whole week. The businessmen on Water Street donate money and gifts. And the American soldiers bring us tons of food, and a group of women from town comes and cooks up a storm. We have midnight Mass and light candles, and afterward we sing carols all the way to the cafeteria, where we stuff ourselves while we open our gifts.

  At the beginning of December every year, members of the Dare Klub meet and draw names. Whatever name you pick, you have to give that boy a little gift. Blackie’s made one rule. It has to be something you own. Everyone gives something simple but nice. Once I gave my five little pebbles for playing jacks to Kavanagh. You can give a used comic book or a bag of marbles or some used stamps to start a collection. We meet at the cave on Christmas Eve and open the gifts in front of a raging fire. Sometimes the gifts are funny and we have a great laugh. Last year, Father Cross gave Murphy a pair of girl’s underwear. We got a big laugh outta that. He said they were Karla Doyle’s, but we all knew he made them.

  Christmas day we have turkey dinner with dressing and gravy and mashed potatoes and carrots and turnips and beets and pickles and even dessert, plum puddings and fruitcakes. There’s always tons of food. And an endless supply of treats, such as Purity syrup and peppermint knobs. We stuff our pockets and our lockers.

  Everything is usually great until the day after Christmas. Boxing Day. At the Mount that has a special meaning. There are usually a lot of fights because lotsa boys don’t get what they asked for and lotsa gifts are stolen. My first Christmas, I got a Lone Ranger set, toy guns and a mask and cowboy hat. Somebody stole the set on Christmas night. I cried for a week.

  Even Madman Malone puts his strap away at Christmas. If he wasn’t such a lunatic, Madman’s nickname would’ve been Baldy. He has a shiny bald head, and his eyes are slightly crossed and set deep into his red face. Really deep, like they’re abnormal. And they’re just narrow slits, so narrow that they sometimes look closed. Like a makeup artist did him up for a movie. And he has little puffy sacks under each eye and wrinkles all around them, like wild chicken tracks. Whenever he sits down, he props his feet upon his desk.

  Even during Christmas, he has a St. Patrick’s Day concert. He’s always making references to Ireland. The Old Sod, the Emerald Isle, the Land of Saints and Scholars. “Ah, sure, where would we be without St. Paddy?” he’s always saying. “Sure we’d be heathens, the lot of us.” On Christmas Eve he makes all the little ones in St. Dominic’s dorm dress up as leprechauns. And he parades them into chapel and seats them in the front pews. They look really cute. He’s an Irish fanatic. Irish football and Irish poetry. Irish sayings and Irish songs. Irish monks and Irish castles. County Cork and County Kilkenny. He’s from County Kilkenny. Sometimes, right out o
f the blue in the middle of class, he bursts into song: “Now in Kilkenny, it is reported, sure they’ve marble stones there as black as ink . . .” And he has a pretty good voice. For some reason, the gravelly sound disappears whenever he sings. He’s no match for Oberstein, but he isn’t bad. Only he sings the same song most of the time. He might be on supervision in the study hall or walking around the cafeteria during meal duty, and he’ll start singing, “Now in Kilkenny, it is reported . . .”

  “He sings in his sleep,” O’Connor says. He calls O’Connor the last of Ireland’s high kings. He brought a big picture book to class once on Irish castles. One of the pictures was the castle of the high kings of Connacht, whose family name is O’Connor.

  “Your family’s castle has been in ruins since Cromwell destroyed it, lad,” Madman said to O’Connor, throwing the open book on his desk. “Hold it up for all the class to see, now. Show off your castle, King O’Connor.”

  O’Connor held up the open book and showed it around. It was a beautiful Victorian-Italian mansion. It was made of cement and stone and looked an awful lot like Mount Kildare.

  “And why wouldn’t it, Dumbos?” Bug snarled after class. “The guys who built this place were the Christian Brothers of Ireland, not Singapore.”

  With Christmas coming, it’s hard to concentrate, and Madman has given our class a tough assignment. He wants us all to know more about our roots. We have to find out everything we can about where we came from and write an essay about the place. But before he gives us the final details, he lectures us on sliding down Tracey’s Hill. We love sliding there every winter. Going down lasts forever, and it has a thousand bumps. We ski down on barrel staves or slide on homemade toboggans or hubcaps or by the seat of our pants. It’s so exciting when it’s icy. Mr. Tracey, the owner, always chases us off the hill, but we always return. He has come to see Brother McMurtry, who has laid down the law. Madman is playing policeman, forbidding us to use the hill ever again. The sun streams through the windows as he speaks.

  “It’s a very dangerous thing, to be sliding on that hill, very, very dangerous, indeed. Do ye hear me, now?” His Irish brogue is hard and serious and seems more Irish than ever. He is trying to frighten us. “A very, very dangerous thing for a young lad. Several years ago, a lad—not a Mount Kildare lad, a lad from town—a young lad your age was severely injured when he hit a bump, flew through the air and landed on a broken stick that was lodged in the snow. The lad landed . . . well . . . on his backside . . .” (“Arse,” Ryan mouths to the boys in the opposite row.) “. . .and the stick . . . the stick came right out his front. It was a terrible, terrible thing, a very dreadful injury, very dreadful. Do ye hear, now? He was rushed to the General Hospital in an ambulance. Do ye hear me, now?”

  “Do you mean his stomach, Bruh?” Kavanagh asks.

  “No, I do not mean his stomach,” Madman says. “And the word is Brother, not Bruh, Mr. Kavanagh.”

  “His leg, Brother?” Littlejohn asks.

  “No, not his leg, you fool.” Outside the classroom window, the orange-red sun lingers for a moment in the sagging icy branches.

  “Then where?” Bug Bradbury squeaks.

  “There are other organs, boys, other parts of the anatomy.” Madman looks slyly at his fly.

  We all look at each other. Bug’s jaw drops to his knees. Murphy looks at his crotch and cringes.

  “Did he die, Bruh?” Kavanagh asks.

  “No, he did not die, Mr. Kavanagh. But his sliding days were over, I can tell ye that. There were no more sliding days for that young lad, I can tell ye that, now. That young lad’s sliding days were over—for good.”

  “So were his baby-making days,” Ryan whispers.

  Bug slips me a note: Helluva way to snap the lizard.

  “Now for the new geography assignment,” Madman says. “Remember boys, we live on a rock, seven hundred miles out in the cold Atlantic. Where do we live, now, Mr. Kavanagh?

  “On a rock, Brother, seven hundred miles out in the cold Atlantic.”

  Madman says the new assignment will teach us a lot about Newfoundland geography and history. Poetry memorization is bad, but nothing’s as dreadful as Madman Malone’s geography tests. We sit in a circle around the room and he calls a random place name and a random boy’s name. “Mr. Murphy, the Avalon. We are sailing north, due north from Harbour Main.” Poor Murphy has to name every nook and cranny along the Baccalieu Trail until he’s told to stop because of a mistake or because Madman wants another boy to continue.

  Murphy answers, “Harbour Main, Bacon Cove, Collier’s Point, South Point, Brigus, Cupid’s, Bareneed, Port-de-Grave, Ship Cove, Hibb’s Hole, Mercer’s Cove, Bishop’s Cove, Spoon Cove, Upper Island Cove, Southside, Bryant’s Cove, Harbour Grace—”

  Madman interrupts, shouting, “Hands up, Mr. Murphy. You missed Feather Point. Feather Point, sir, is after Bryant’s Cove, before Harbour Grace. Hands up, Mr. Murphy.”

  He checks with the class recorder, Adams, to see if Murphy has any credits. Credits are points you get from Madman for doing a cleanup in the classroom, or for doing well on a test, or for anything, really, that Madman decides. Once, he gave Pittman two whacks, thinking he’d misspelled the name Ferryland, but Oberstein pointed out that Ferryland didn’t have a hyphen, so Madman gave Pittman a credit. Needless to say, Adams is a very popular guy. Everyone sucks up to Adams because he can get away with adding a point to your name every once in a while. Madman gives Murphy a whack for each word missed. Had he missed Upper Island Cove, he would’ve gotten three whacks.

  After the strapping, Murphy squeezes his big hands underneath his armpits and continues: “Bristol’s Hope, Carbonear, Freshwater, Flatrock, Blow-Me-Down, Salmon Cove . . .” until he reaches the tip of the trail, Grates Cove, and Madman calls on another boy. Another time, Murphy might be told to continue down the trail on the Trinity Bay side, listing another twenty or so names. Or Madman might stop Murphy in his tracks and call another boy’s name and say, “Let’s do the Cape Shore or the Burin Peninsula.”

  We all hate geography class. Only Oberstein seems able to avoid the Rocket, Madman’s two-foot strap, which he keeps rolled up in his pocket under his soutane when it’s not in use.

  At the library, I’ve been studying my grandfather’s home, Swains Islands, a bunch of islands in Bonavista Bay, near Wesleyville. Most of the islands were settled years ago, but eventually everyone left to go to Wesleyville. Tiller’s Island, where my Dad’s father, Jonathan Carmichael, was from, was the first place settled. It was one of the best spots to get to the fishing grounds. Clare told me Dad’s father’s father sailed a schooner. He used to catch seals. Anstey and Lionel were pretty happy to find out there’s a sea captain in my family. But the truth is, if you go back far enough, there’s one in every Newfoundland family. That’s our history—fishing and sealing.

  Studying your heritage is all pretty interesting, I guess. I’m really enjoying finding out about the early settlers, especially the skippers who braved the cold Atlantic in the stormiest seas. We’re supposed to find out all we can about the place we’re from, if there is a fish plant there or nearby, if there’s a church, if there are roads, if you can only get there by boat. All the information we can find in books or from maps or from writing our relatives. After we’ve gathered enough information, we’re to organize it under headings: Place Name Origin, Geography, History, Biographies. Stories about people from there, maybe your aunts or uncles or cousins.

  Oberstein is sullen.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I can’t find any information about my father. Or his father.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. I need to know my ancestry. I don’t think I’m a typical Jew.”

  “You seem pretty Jewish to me,” I say. “Jeez, you even know how to talk Talmud.”

  “But I don’t look Jewish. Most Semites are dark. I look albino compared to most Jews. Look at my hair. I must of gotten my mother’s genes. Her great-g
randfather was Scandinavian. Either I got her genes, or my father’s father was a convert.”

  I tell him it doesn’t matter. All that matters is if you feel Jewish in your heart. “If you feel Jewish, you are Jewish,” I tell him. That seems to cheer him up.

  “The heart is half a prophet,” he says. “Thanks, Carmichael. You’d make a good Jew.”

  Hynes is from Queen of Maids Cove on the Port au Port Peninsula. It’s on the west coast of the island. He’s beside himself because he can’t find a shred of information on the place. It’s not even on the map. There isn’t a thing in the library on Queen of Maids Cove. And Hynes is a real norphan. He has nobody in the whole world to ask about his roots. Oberstein told him Queen of Maids Cove is like a lot of Newfoundland communities: the names change as people resettle. Brookes is helping Hynes make up stuff about the place in exchange for half his next month’s canteen card. Under the heading Place Name Origin, Brookes told him to say the name came about as a result of two fishermen who got into a big fight during a game of cards, and one claimed the wind blew his Queen of Maids overboard and he could see it floating toward the cove. “If Madman asks you for your source,” Brookes says, “tell him your dead Uncle Ned told you about it when you were little. He’ll believe you. He has no choice. He doesn’t know if you had an Uncle Ned or an Aunt Bessie.”

  Brookes is a lot braver since his shunning ended. By the time Hynes passes in his assignment, he’ll believe everything he’s written. Brookes looked up a bunch of names in the telephone directory and some information on the neighboring towns and is helping Hynes write a pretty convincing essay. “You’ll have the best paper in the class,” Brookes says. “You’ll be so proud of your mark, you’ll swallow your Adam’s apple. Just like Rags.”