Hold Fast (3 page)

And now my whole life was going to be changed. I just kept thinking to myself that St. Albert better not be as bad as the picture of it I had in my mind.

I got carried away a lot that summer, all the time thinking about things that was gone past and what I would be leaving behind. I should a been planning ahead for when I got to St. Albert instead of moping around in a daydream half the time. I did spend some time out and around with the fellows. Not very much though. Nothing like other summers. In fact, except for some of the times me and Brent spent together, it was the rottenest summer I ever had. Even all the extra baking and stuff Aunt Flo did for us didn't seem to make it any better.

Over the years Aunt Flo and me always got along fairly good, I spose, all things considered. Although for as long as I could remember, she was always the kind of person who fussed over you too much. For one thing, any time I ever went over there, say after school to see Grandfather
and maybe have something to eat, she always had to see that I was stuffed right to the gills. No such a thing as one piece of cake. It had to be two or three or she'd figure you didn't like it. And I wouldn't get outside the door but I had my pockets stogged full with oranges or bananas or something.

And sometimes the questions she'd put me through would get right clean on my nerves. I spose it only showed she was worrying about me. I spose that was it. Like if it was either bit cold atall, the first question she'd be sure to put to me was did I have on long underwear. Now, is that any kind of question to get asked you by your aunt? I always said yes, whether I did or not. Lots of times I'd have plenty of things on the tip of my tongue to say to her to cure her of that little habit. But if I ever did and what I said got back to Mom, then I'd a been hung.

After, though, when I moved over and started to live in her house, all that stuff about her I didn't notice so much. She was different. She left me alone a lot. And when I got it in my mind to, I done my part to help her out around the house.

For the two months before I left, I spent most of the time to myself or with Brent. For me, getting along with Brent as good as I done was even stranger than Aunt Flo and me finally seeing eye to eye. Before that the two of us could hardly look at each other sideways but a fight started. It mightn't a been as bad as that, but we sure got into some vicious arguments. Like a lot of younger brothers, he could be a real pain in the neck when he wanted to be. What use to bug me more than anything was when he'd come home to Mom with these stun stories about me.

Wherever he got them I don't know. He'd try to make her believe that he seen me smoking or he'd say he heard me curse so bad he couldn't repeat it. Or if he seen me with some girl. That was another thing. Cripes, I warned him about that so many times my tongue had blisters. What he needed most was a good smack on the arse. He came darn close to getting it too, a good many times. He'd only say that stuff about me if we was all around the dinner table or something and he knew I couldn't belt him one.

But that came around to being changed too. It's odd when I thinks about it. How us two could a changed into being pretty good buddies. I spose it all started when I began to feel that I should be looking out for him more. When I knew that something just had to be done about the way he was acting.

I seen that it was even worse for him than it was for me. Being only seven he took it awful hard. Some people got the idea that a kid his age could get over something like what happened in no time. They don't know much if that's what they thinks. I couldn't let him stay like that, so dopey and not interested in doing a thing. Crying every hour almost. I wasn't any rock myself, I'll admit to that. But I was nothing like what Brent was. I was afraid he was going to stay like that all his life.

So I got him talking to me as much as I could. About everything I could think of that I knew he had either bit of interest in. Sometimes it was hard to drag so much as a word outa him. He would just sit there like a dummy and listen to me. Then gradually he started to come around.

“Take that horse Jack Coles got there. He's some animal,” I'd say to him. “You like to have a horse like that?”

“Yeah,” he might say.

“Now what would you do with en if you had en?”

He'd have to come up with more than just a word or two.

It worked too, enough that I could see a big difference in him. I done all I could to get Brent back to the way he should a been. I'd rather a seen him yelling and screaming at me than for him to be the way he was first.

By the end of a few weeks he looked and acted a whole lot better. Some nights we'd have a real cuffer. If Mom and Dad could a seen it they probably would a had to laugh to theirselves. There we was, carrying on what you could call a sensible conversation. Neither one of us stretching our lungs the least bit.

What we was talking about this one night was squids. It wasn't quite the right time of the year for them then, but we was on to talking about them anyway. A good evening of squid jigging in September or October is one of the best bits of fun you can have out on the salt water. I've been at it a good many times and I knows a fair bit about it. But Brent, he only ever been out once. Lucky for him though they was jigging good that evening and he had the real time of it.

Most everybody knows I guess what a squid looks like. It's like a pouch with suckers on their arms coming out at one end. Arms like an octopus, only smaller. If anything grabs hold of them, they shoots out this black inky stuff — squid shit.

Now all the fun is in being out jigging them. Around dark in the evening or early in the morning is the best
time. A small red squid jigger with a bit of line is all you needs. You don't have to go out very far, only just off the cove. All the boats generally anchors around about in the same spot.

Talk about your fun, old man, when the jiggin's good. We've been out, me and Dad and Grandfather, some evenings when we could a filled the boat. Squid shit going everywhere then, cause as soon as they comes up outa the water, they lets fly. That's half the fun of it — getting squirt, or better still seeing someone else getting their face full.

That's what we was talking about mostly — squids. When Grandfather came in on the two of us cuffering away there in the bedroom, it must a been ten o'clock or later. All the time I was sorta half expecting to see him. It seemed Grandfather was the right one to be in with us all along.

It might seem odd about me and Grandfather, the way we always got along so good. I guess he was a lot of the reason that it would a been at Aunt Flo's that I'd a been staying for good, if I had my own way.

Some fellows I knows haven't got no time for their grandparents. Like they figures it's not very smart to be saying much that's good about them. Or about any old people, for that matter. Like what they thinks or says is too old-fashioned for them. Or maybe it's because the grandparents they got are too contrary. I don't know. But me and Grandfather wasn't one bit like that. We got along great, better than I done with some my own age.

The trouble with a good many old people is that they thinks they was never young. But Grandfather was not
that way. He had stories, my son, that'd put some of what you reads in magazines and books to shame. And I knows for a fact they're true. Now and then he might tell one to pull someone's leg, just for fun, but if you had all what happened to him put together, you'd have enough to fill ten books. No joke about it. Sure he went fishing in a sailing schooner on the Labrador every summer for twenty-two years from the time he was thirteen years old. And that was no easy job, that's for darn sure.

You had to know how to go about speaking to Grandfather, too. It was no use to say something to him and be looking out the window or fiddling with whatever was on the table or have your mind half on something else. You had to look right straight at him and talk loud. If you learned that you wouldn't have to go repeating what you was saying to him more than once.

Grandfather's hair's been white ever since I can remember. He use to keep it cut right tight to his head, but late years he took to letting it grow out, that and his sideburns. I told him once he should buy an electric guitar and practice up a bit. He'd make a few bucks. Of course, Aunt Flo was always after him to get it cut. Just like she used to be after me. He'd always say to her, “Let en bide, let en bide if he wants it like that.” He'd always stick up for me. And so then things got switched around and it was his own mop she was pestering him about.

When he strolled into the bedroom where me and Brent was that night, he looked first like he wasn't in a very good mood.

“Grandfather,” I said to him, “I was just telling Brent about the times me and you and Dad was out squiddin.”
I was hoping that would do something to change the serious look he had on his face.

“Told him about the time you almost put your father overboard?”

I didn't want to be getting into that. “Com'on, you knows that's not right. I didn't almost put en overboard.”

“Sure I was there,” he said, still not smiling.

“I knows you was. He just lost his balance and fell down in the bottom o' the boat, that was all. I wasn't really use to the motor then. I cut the boat too much when I turned to go back in the cove. Sure I was only nine.”

Before I got finished his face broke into a grin. I should a known that. He was only trying to tease me.

“I remembers how your father fell down, flozzo, right on top o' the squid we caught, ass first,” he laughed.

He didn't need to remind me. And how the old man got so dirty with me for being careless. Although he let me steer the boat back into the wharf just the same.

“Forget about that time,” I said. “We'd always jig a nice many, wouldn't we, Grandfather?”

“Yeah, I guess we would. We'd sell some of it,” he said, “and dry a bit. Some of it we'd use for bait. And we'd always bring home so many for your mother to stuff and bake.”

“You should remember that good enough, Brent. Sure we'd get home and you'd still be half on the bawl cause you didn't get to go.”

“I would not.”

“You would so,” I said. “And then as soon as ever we'd get inside the porch door, Dad'd shout out to see what was on the go for supper. It'd be after dark probably by the time we got home, and we right gone for some food.”

“And it was sure to be something good. God, your mother was able to put on some pot o' soup, I can tell you that.”

“Mom'd have people in off the road with their tongues hangin out, wouldn't she?”

“Right down to their bootlaces,” Brent added.

“Probably your father would march straight into the kitchen then, rubber boots and all on, and plank whatever squid he had into the kitchen sink,” Grandfather said.

“And sometimes, just to tease her, he'd bend down and grab Mom around the legs and hoist her up to the ceiling. That man had some strength in hes arms.”

“Him trottin around the kitchen with her then. Just for devilment, that's all he done it for. Your mother'd have to laugh in spite of herself. All of us laughin then when she'd start, getting a real kick out of it,” Grandfather said.

We all laughed. Him, and Brent and me. Just the three of us. Grandfather was the only one now who could remember it all, the times that went on before. We was able to share things that nobody else could anymore. And I could see it in his face that he knew it too.

“Grandfather,” I said after a while, “squiddin is a lot o' fun, idn't it?”

“Yes b'y, it is so.”

“We'll have to go at it again.”

“Yes, I spose.”

“And me too this time,” Brent said.

“You and me and Poppy.”

“All right,” Grandfather said. “All right.”

That was all that was said about it. We knew, though, that there was no such thing as all right. There couldn't be
with me gone in a few weeks to St. Albert, nowheres close to squidding, or to Grandfather or Brent. Nowheres close to anything connected to either one of them.

Like I said, in lots of ways it was the rottenest summer I ever had. Most summers are over before you knows it and you're back at school with hardly enough time to stop and think. But that summer dragged on and on.

And then Sunday, the second day of September, there I was at the Irving station on the highway waiting for the bus to come. The three of them came to see me off. The waiting was the part that I couldn't stand. If we could a got there just as the bus pulled in, and me got aboard and went on, it would a been okay. But, of course, Aunt Flo had to make sure we was there in plenty of time. So we ended up waiting for twenty minutes.

Perhaps it wouldn't a been so bad except for Brent. All along he hadn't been saying much. Then with about five minutes before the bus was due to come, there he was off to one side by himself, staring at the road and blinking water out of his eyes. He tried to keep from having to look at me.

I went over to him. I might a known that was going to
happen. “Look,” I told him, “you're not goin to mind it once I gets gone.”

He still wouldn't look at me.

I tried to make a joke of it. “There'll be nobody around to bother ya. You'll be able to do just what you likes.”

That was even worse. He never budged, and then when I tried to force him to look at me, he broke away and turned back on.

“Listen, what's there to worry about,” I half-yelled. “I'll see ya again before long. You can write and I'll promise to write ya back every time.”

“I can't write very good.”

Dummy. “Then print, for frig's sake.”

“Quit swearin at me!” he yelled. He started in bawling.

“Okay, okay. If you're goin to cry then it's no use even tryin to talk to ya. Com'on, stop it.”