Hold Fast (19 page)

I blinked water away from my eyes.

I sat down into the chair that was near his bed. It scraped across the floor. He stirred and his eyes opened. For a long time that was all he done — stare straight ahead at me. It took that much time for him to know who I was.

A smile spread across his face, to me as slow as the moon rising up out of the water. I wiped the tears out of my eyes and tried to smile back at him. He had to cough again, and it was gone, all his effort. He brought the crumpled-up handkerchief he had in his hand to his lips and wiped them.

“Grandfather,” I said. My voice was too low, I knew. “Grandfather.” Louder. It was hard being loud in a room so quiet. “Grandfather, I'm back.”

I guess if he was sick Aunt Flo never told him about me missing. To him, it was St. Albert I was back from.

He moved his head slowly along the pillow as if saying yes he knew. I lifted up the chair and moved it closer to the bed so that I wouldn't have to speak so loud. “I'm sorry to come back and find you sick like this.”

It wasn't easy to be doing all the talking, not to have words coming back at you. Grandfather was trying. He wanted to be telling me something about how it was with him. The words that came out was only mumbles, bits of sound that I tried as hard as I could to make into sense. They didn't but I couldn't have him repeating them all again.

“Yes,” I said, like I was agreeing.

It was hard on him. And it hurt me too, harder than I ever let him know.

“Michael,” I could remember him saying, “I can mind the first time I was aboard a fishin schooner…” He'd talk then about the times they came home loaded down with fish. And the bad times, when luck wasn't so good, he'd talk about them too.

He'd never be at it again. Maybe never even see a boat no more. And for that, when I thought about it, I could a cried a lot more.

He looked at me as if he knew what it was like for me seeing him that way. He took his hand, dragged it up to his head and grabbed onto a bunch of his long hair, and made what he could of a laugh. He was trying to make a joke out of it so I would laugh. He was trying to make it easier for me. I had to smile.

“You needs a haircut,” I said to him, like Aunt Flo used to be saying. “Going around like that. You should have better sense.”

He smiled. I took hold of the hand that was resting by his stomach and held onto it tight. Then my head sank down on the edge of the bedclothes. He rubbed his other hand through my hair.

I rose up my head after a time to show him that the tears was all over and done with. Then when I squeezed his hand again that was the last time I touched him. The last time, ever.

Grandfather died three days later. He died finally when there was no way his body could take any more. It gave up on him. He had to pass away.

He was laid out in an open casket in church and buried the next day after that. I went to the service and sat up in the front seat of the church. In the cemetery I watched the casket go into the ground, and never once did I move from the spot where I stood.

Only Brent and Aunt Flo and me was left then. Without a real lot of useless words between us, she understood that I was staying.

First when I came she wanted me to tell her all about the running away part. I knew she had a lot of right to hear reasons for it — she had worried and suffered her way through those three days and nights while we was just having a good time. But I was in no mood to be saying anything much about it. It was over, we was safe enough, I wanted to leave it at that.

But when Curtis's parents showed up that night after we got home I was forced into giving in a bit. They was looking for reasons too for what we'd done. Even so, what with Grandfather the way he was, I wasn't about to go out of my way with much of an explanation for Curtis's old man. And I didn't give a darn whether he liked that or not. It wasn't his own house he was coming into now. No good for him to yell and think I was going to jump.

The strange thing was though, when their car hauled up in the driveway and the two of them came through
Aunt Flo's back door, they didn't look to me much like what they was before, not the picture I had in my mind since the morning we took off. I'll always remember it — the look they gave Curtis when they first came into the house. You'd think almost he was some kind of vision, the way they sized him up. Curtis across the kitchen sitting down at the table, both of them in the doorway not making a move, until finally Aunt Ellen ran across and hugged him. Curtis hardly budged. He was stiff as a poker.

The old man. That was the one that was hard to figure out. He didn't open his mouth, not for the first five minutes after he came into that kitchen. That's true. He was lost for words. But really I should a known that even if the quiet wasn't a front then, it was bound to wear off.

It did. And later that night when we got down to the whys and hows and what thens, he was well on his way back to his old self. First he wasn't the big loudmouth like before, he was toned down a good bit. But when we started saying stuff he didn't like, then you could see his stupid old ways pushing right back through.

Old Curtis was a match for him though. He never gave him what he was looking for. Nothing close to it. I was some proud of that Curt.

We was all sitting down in the living room. Curtis was in the armchair by himself and his parents was across the room on the chesterfield. The first thing they brought up was why we had to take off like we done. I told them that it was my idea to go. And the reason — that I couldn't put up with living in their house anymore. I didn't mention anything at all about the school. And Curtis, he came out with it too.

“Mike didn't talk me into it, I decided my own self to go.”

“But why, Curtis?” his mother said.

“Because…because I wanted some freedom for a change. I wanted to see if I could make it on my own.”

They didn't know what to say to that. Until, in a few seconds, the old man came back with all this bull about how it was against the law. And then he says how he can't understand it, and what about everything they had? He didn't want to understand it, that was it. Not that he couldn't understand it atall.

Then it came to the part about us taking the car. It was something that I didn't really want to tell them, but Curtis sorta mentioned it by accident, so it all had to come out.

“That was stealing,” the old man said. All along he was looking for something he could lash his teeth onto. He really had it then. “And you know what stealing makes you? It makes you thieves, boys. Nothing better than common criminals. You might as well pack your bags and get ready for reform school.”

See, the bugger hadn't changed! Reform school! Shit, he was missing the whole stupid point! Sure it was stealing, I knew that, and maybe it was the wrong thing to do. But he stuck to talking about these couple of illegal things we done so's he wouldn't have to own up to the fact that he was the bloody reason we took off in the first place.

And the rabbits, that too. He made a bloody big case outa the three lousy rabbits we caught in a place where you wasn't sposed to put out snares. He almost gave us life sentences for three lousy rabbits. That's what friggin well got me mad.

But it was Aunt Ellen, not me, that cut him off. She said that was it. Now it was all over and now Curtis would be back home soon and they'd forget everything and start all over again.

But Curtis wasn't about to leave it at that. He had something that he wanted to get across to them, and he wasn't going to stop until it was done. He looked straight at his father.

“Not unless things change I won't be home long. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this …”

“What the hell do you mean ‘unless things change!'” his old man butted in.

Aunt Ellen started to cry. I could see her eyes all watery. She didn't make any noise though, even when the tears started down her face. She wiped them away with her hand. The old man had to see what was happening, but that didn't stop him.

“Well, what do you mean!” he said again.

Curtis was still looking straight at him. “Dad, I never in my whole life said no to you. You had it so I was too darn scared. You had it so that I was afraid to even go near you half the time. But that's not the right way for it to be. Most of the time, I used to hate it as soon as I heard you walk into the house. I hated you. I still do now. Right now, this minute, I can look at you and see how much I hate you.”

Curtis was staring at him. I never ever seen a look like that between two people.

“That's a rotten thing to be saying about your own father,” Curtis said. “But you should know. I would like for it to change, but I'm not sure if it ever can.”

The tension, you could chop it up with an ax if you had one, it was that strong. Nobody said anything. Curtis — he was waiting for something back from the other side. The old man — he was waiting too, not sure maybe what he should say. He wasn't about to let anyone in on the darn good shaking up his insides must a got.

He covered it up by turning the attention to Aunt Ellen. Now you could hear her cry. I almost expected him to say something dumb like, “Now, see what you've done,” but there was none of that. All he done was try to calm her down. I spose that showed something.

“We'll talk about this when we get home,” he said. “Ellen, stop crying now. We'll get everything straightened out when we get back home.”

It was hard to say what he meant by “straightened out.” Maybe what Curtis had said sunk in. Maybe he knew his bulldozer ways wouldn't have a hope in hell of working anymore. Only more time would tell.

It all ended there pretty well. From then to the time they left to drive home the day after the funeral, there wasn't much more said about it by either one of them. Curtis was off by himself or with me most of the time. And with Grandfather so sick nobody felt like talking much anyway, no matter how important it might a seemed.

It wasn't much of a good-bye what I said to Curtis when he left. It didn't seem like a time for one. When he got aboard the car to go, I figured it was enough that we just smiled at each other. We each knew anyway what the other fellow was thinking.

It's been two weeks now since the funeral. There hasn't been anything that I'd call normal in so long that I can't say that things are settling back to normal. They're calmed down a lot, though. The three of us, Aunt Flo and Brent and me, in the house is as good as ever it will be. I'm glad it's that way. We all miss Grandfather awfully bad.

I got a letter from Curtis. I don't know what's going to happen to him. From what he told me, it looks like nothing much is settled at his place yet. I thinks about his sister being in on it too. He said in the letter that his father hasn't done any yelling yet, but that mightn't mean much. Maybe the worst is still to come. At least he didn't say anything about running away again, so perhaps some good has come out of all the racket.

He mentioned about Brenda. She was asking him about me. I'm going to write her as soon as I get a chance. My mind hasn't had much room for her lately, but I know she'll be wanting to hear from me.

Right now I'm busy at Dad's skidoo out in the shed. Mine and Brent's I guess it is now. I'm trying to get her fixed up a bit before the winter comes.

Not that I'm over everything that has happened. But things like this skidoo here is helping me to forget how bad it was. The skidoo and Brent standing up there, me making it look like he's a big help. And Ronnie then and some of the other boys from up the road, that all sorta goes together to make a reason right now for doing things. For a while I can manage to put everything else out of my mind.

It's a real break to be able to do that, to get rid of all that emotional stuff for a while. To just have my mind on putting some grease on this machine, adjusting the carburetor, making sure the drive belt is okay.

I caught myself half on the bawl last night after I was in bed. There's still that time after every day when, no matter how much I've done, everything gets quiet and I'm alone with all that's happened and I feels like bawling. But I drove it out of my system last night and that might be the end of it. It was a hard bloody thing to do, but I thinks that maybe I got it done.