Hold Fast (2 page)

I thought that if things worked out right then just maybe we'd end up with Aunt Flo. She was a bit of a mother hen, but I could easy enough put up with that if I set my mind to it.

It was Aunt Flo who finally trotted up over the stairs. I knew there had to be someone come up after a while. She came right by the door, but she didn't try to open it.

“Michael, can I come in?”

“No!” I told her. I wasn't ready for that yet.

“I wants to see you.”

“What for?”

“Open the door. I wants to see how you are.”

“No.” I snapped again.

“You must be hungry.”

“No, I'm not.”

“I bet you are. I'll go get you something to eat.” And before I knew it she was gone back down over the stairs. Food — that was always her way of getting to people. Well, she'd need more than food to get me to talk. Even though I never had a bite to eat since that morning.

I was dead set against opening that door, dead set
against it. But when she came back up over the stairs and I knew she was waiting outside to be let in, I just didn't have enough rottenness in me to keep her out. I turned the knob. She had a tray in her hands with a sandwich on it and a glass of milk and some buns. I was glad that it was that way — her hands full. I didn't want no scene where she could wrap her arms around me and have me cry.

“Are you feeling all right, Michael?”

“Why shouldn't I be?”

“Michael…” She put the tray down on the desk. She looked hard at me, and then I had to look back at her. I could a kicked myself for opening the door. It all started to come out. About how she knew it was hard. How she knew it was very tough on me. She used those words because she figured it was something I'd use. I couldn't get mad at her for that. And she did lose a brother.

She said losing a mother and father is worse. Shit, she didn't have to tell me that. I knew that. And the lousy way I felt, I knew that too. I knew that better than she did.

All right. So I bawled again. But I didn't bawl on her shoulder. And she didn't say anything, which was all right too. I bawled and shook and covered my head, the whole stupid show. And I wasn't ashamed of it. I was not. Not one bit.

After a while, when she went away and left me alone, I managed to cut it out again. But hungry as I was and even with the food all there in front of me, I still couldn't put much of it in my gut. I just couldn't get it down into me.

There was something else too. If Brent was in his room, then I knew he must a heard what went on. His
room was just down the hall. He's only seven, so for a while I figured that maybe he'd been taken somewhere else to sleep. I opened my door and walked down towards his. The light from the hall shone in on his bed. He was there.

I stood up in the doorway and pushed the door open further. He wasn't asleep. He was lying there on his back, rolling an empty glass over and over on his stomach. He looked over towards the light. I went in and took a chair from the corner of the room and put it by the bed. Backwards, so's I had somewhere for my arms. I put my chin down on my arms and looked at him. For a long time, neither of us spoke to each other.

“I got some plans for tomorrow,” I said suddenly. I tried to make it sound like I was excited.

“Why don't we go to sleep?” he said, very quiet.

“Listen. How about we go up in the woods early in the morning? Just the two of us.”

He was looking at me, but he didn't say anything.

“You're always after me to take you in the woods. We'll build a camp.” I waited for him to answer.

Then he said, “I don't want one anymore.”

“Yes, you do,” I told him. “I knows a real good place. No one ever built one there before. Come up and we'll see what you thinks of it.”

“I don't want a camp.”

“It'll just be the two of us. We'll build it between us and we won't tell anybody a thing about it. Okay?”

“You said before you wouldn't do it.”

“That was different. I changed my mind. I wants to now.”

“Why?”

“It'll be something for us to do — build a camp like you've been asking for all along. We'll make it better than ar other one around. Better than the one Joe Norman and them got build, way better than that. You wouldn't be afraid to sleep in it, would you, Brent?”

“No, I wouldn't be afraid. I'm not afraid of bears.”

“Moose?”

“No. Moose wouldn't touch you inside a camp.”

“Rats.”

“Rats?”

“I was just kiddin. There wouldn't be no rats.”

“Wouldn't you be afraid, Mike?”

“Me? Frig no.”

“There'd be the two of us, right?”

“Right.”

“Could we set out rabbit slips then, in the fall?”

“Yeah, we'll do that.”

When I said about the rabbits, it stopped everything. Like it was a sign that something was really screwed up. I spose it came to him right away that I never said yes that easy before, about him and me going after rabbits.

He stopped looking at me. His face got even more serious than it was first when I came in through the door. His lips went together tight.

“Mike.”

“Yeah.”

“Is you afraid?”

I knew it was that. “A bit afraid,” I said.

“A lot?”

“Yeah … when I thinks about it.”

I could see his eyes starting to fill up.

“I mean, they won't send us away, will they? Like to an orphanage?”

“No, they wouldn't do that.”

“Cause if they do, I won't go. Aunt Flo won't send us where we don't want to go, will she?”

“You knows Aunt Flo wouldn't do that.”

“She might. She might. Nobody wants us. We got no mudder or no fa…”

“Shut up!”

Then the water really started to come.

“I'm sorry. Stop it now. Com'on, stop it. Nobody is goin to take you anywhere.”

“You don't know.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don't.”

“Stop your cryin. You're not that big of a baby anymore. Look at ya. Like some two-year-old.”

“You're someone to talk. You was bawlin too. I heard ya.”

“Shut up. Everybody'll be upstairs if you keeps that up.”

“I don't care.”

“Shut up!”

He wouldn't stop.

“Cry baby. Cry baby. You big sook!”

“Shut up,” he said.

“Cry baby! Sook!”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“I'll hit ya.”

“You might try, sook.”

“I said shut up or I'll hit ya good and hard.”

“Hit me. Com'on and hit me.”

“I really will. Hard.”

“Cry baby!”

“Shut up!”

He wrung up his fist.

“Sook!”

And I let him hit me really hard. As hard as he darn well liked.

The next morning the sunlight came pouring in through the bedroom window. The heat spread all over us across the bed. I was already hot and sticky with sweat, stuck and twisted in my clothes. Not so much as a draft all during the night because I never had the mind to get up and open a window. Brent was next to me, sweaty the same way. The poor kid. He cried till I gave up trying to make him stop.

All that night I had tried like crazy to sleep. I had turned in the bed a thousand times. It came back to me, back and back and back to me all night. I got stomach sick. But if I had throwed up my guts it wouldn't a made me any better.

I looked at Brent. “You think it's going to be easy,” I said, waking him up. “The hell with you buddy, it's not. Get outa bed. Go get some clean clothes on. Go on.”

When Aunt Flo came and looked in the doorway to see if we was awake, she got an awful surprise. I never gave her so much as a chance to say anything. I just told her we'd soon be down to breakfast. Then I hauled on a clean
pair of jeans and a red and white T-shirt. One with leaves on it. It was the best one I had. And I made sure that Brent had himself washed good and dressed like I told him to.

See, I'm pig-headed. Dad always said I was pig-headed. No more than he was. Well, I was trying to take all that had happened square in the face. I was trying. They both would a told me to do it that way. They would a said see what you can make of yourself.

It wasn't going to be that easy. Downstairs, me and Brent walked in on a kitchenful of miserable silence. Aunt Flo, Uncle Ted and Aunt Ellen, even Grandfather, neither one of them was saying a word.

“Whas we havin for breakfast?” I asked right away. Loud, like a dish smashing across the middle of the floor.

They sat there dumb. Probably they expected me to bawl for them.

“Any eggs fried?” Loud again.

“Michael, I didn't think you'd want eggs this morning,” Aunt Flo said, almost stuttering it out. “I made you some pancakes, just like you likes them. But you wait a minute. If you wants eggs, I'll fry you some. You'll have some too, won't you, Brent?”

“Sure he will,” I told her, and looked at Brent as much as to say that he better not say no, if he knew what was good for him.

Aunt Ellen and Uncle Ted on the daybed — they both started to come alive as if I had yanked on their strings. Like me talking was signal for them to have something to say.

All kinds of brilliant stuff. “It's a great day on the
water, Michael. I daresay there's a few fish on the go this morning.”

“That's what we should have for dinner, boys — a good meal of fish.” Right full of being normal.

“No odds to us what we haves,” I said. “What we wants to know is if we gotta get outa this house and where you got in mind for us to go if we do.”

That loused up their fish talk pretty quick. I could a struck the kitchen with a bulldozer and they wouldn't a got any more of a shock. I wasn't about to try to be extra nice about it. No sense himmin and awin all morning when we all knew it had to come down to that sometime.

You could just about see their nerves twitching. Aunt Flo almost dropped the frying pan. The two on the daybed could barely keep hold of the cigarettes they had nipped between their fingers. Ashes flying all over the place. It even got Grandfather upset. The rocking chair he was in went off stride.

“We'll talk about that after breakfast, Michael,” Aunt Flo said, trying to smooth it all over.

“No sir. We wants to know right now.” As simple as that. I wasn't being brazen about it if that's the way it looked. I just wanted to get it straight right then and there.

“It's better you boys had your breakfast first.” That was Uncle Ted. Coming on strong like he was the voice of experience or some big deal.

“What, is it so bad that you can't tell us?”

“Michael,” Aunt Flo said, “it's only been one day.”

“You mean you haven't talked about it yet?”

“No, I didn't say that.”

“Then tell us. I was awake all last night thinking about it. Brent too.”

Then Brent, who hadn't opened his mouth the whole time, said to Aunt Flo, “Is we goin to an orphanage?”

When she heard that she just about broke down crying right there. She came over to the table, stood up by him and squeezed him into her dress. She could hardly keep it in.

“Brentie my love, you knows better than that.” Then, in a few seconds, after she got a hold on herself, she said, “Brentie, how would you like to come and live with me and your grandfather?” She looked at him and pushed his hair back from his forehead.

“Okay,” he said right away. A big relief.

And what about me? The other one. The one who is not going to ask. Where does he fit into all this? I was waiting. Feeling stupid, because I didn't want to look like I was waiting.

“Mike too?” Brent said then.

Nobody answered. Until Aunt Ellen spoke up, all full of life but not laying her eyes on me atall. “Michael is going to come to live with us in St. Albert.”

So that was it. That was what they had in their minds. St. Albert. The least she could a done was look at me when she said it.

“You're going to like it in St. Albert, Michael,” Uncle Ted said. Again like he was positive that what he said had to be right.

“Maybe I will.”

“I know you will.”

“I said maybe I will.”

And then a long silence, everybody waiting. Until I said, “I'll give it a try.” I said it like I meant it.

Ihad a whole two months before I would be packing up and getting myself shipped off to St. Albert to start school there. Aunt Flo said I could stay with her until then. Maybe she thought that by the end of August I'd have no problem to face on a move.

But I was definitely going. That was understood and there wasn't much more said about it. I knew both of us, me and Brent, living with her was a lot to expect from Aunt Flo. And she had Grandfather, too, to take care of. It would be hard enough on her to cook and wash and spend money on them, let alone me too. So I wasn't about to ask her to change her mind.

It was just that Marten was the best darn place I knew to live. God, what was I talking about, it was the only place I ever did live. Of course, you can almost count the number of people on one hand. Not really, but going by some places in Newfoundland, Marten is pretty small. Probably no more than seven hundred people altogether. But that didn't matter. In fact, I liked it that way cause it gave us all kinds of room to be roaming around. I could put on the boots and leave the back of the house and in
no more than two minutes I'd be up in the country, out of sight of any house in the place. Go on all day then, if I wanted, and not see a single soul.

You might think a person would get bored silly with nothing to do in a place that small, but no sir, not me. I can hardly think of a morning when I woke up and there wouldn't be something on my mind that I'd have to look forward to. If it wasn't going in the woods to check my snares after school, it might be riding around on skidoo. Or setting lobster traps. There was times when I bloody near went nuts trying to get some sleep, I'd be planning that much for the next day.