Hold Fast (9 page)

When supper was cleared away that night and I knew that he was by himself in the living room, I went in to put the question to him. He was lying back on the chesterfield
reading the newspaper. There was no sense beating around the bush. I came right out with it — the same thing I said to Aunt Ellen.

He looked at me, never stopped to think about it for one second, and said, “No.”

Not another word. Just no. And went back to reading the newspaper then. Like he was a judge in the supreme court or something. Sure b'y, I thought, play the big boss. But if you thinks you're going to get away with it that easy, then you got another think coming.

“Why not?”

He looked up again. “Because I don't want you to,” he said, as if those few words settled it all.

“That's no reason,” I answered him back.

He put the paper down altogether and then sat up straight. He kept the same smart-aleck sound in his voice though. That didn't change. “Okay, you want a good enough reason. Well, for one thing, it's too far. For another, I don't know who this Gerard fellow you're talking about is. He might live in a tar-paper shack for all anyone knows. And for another, I don't see any need of it. That's three reasons. Good enough?”

I felt like ripping out a bloody big curse.

“They're all foolishness.”

“Michael!”

“Well it is! Gerard is a good friend of mine. And he don't live in no tar-paper shack like you said!”

“Now, look, I don't want to have to get mad with you.”

As if he wasn't already.

“But you won't even listen to me.”

“Michael!” His voice was turning hard and sharp. He
was trying to cover up some of his temper. “Now, I've said all I'm going to say about it. You might as well get it out of your mind. Even though you're not my son, you know, I'm still responsible for you. That's something you haven't taken time to realize. Now, I know all that's happened over the past few months hasn't been easy. But you're living with us now and you're going to have to learn to accept what I say as being the best thing for you. You might not like it, but it's the best thing.

“Now I don't want to hear you raise your voice to me again like you just did. The answer is no, you're not allowed to go. That's final. Now, go to your room and think about what I said.”

I had to stand there like a fool and take that. I had a mind to tell him right off, call him right down to the dirt. He probably would a tried to clobber me if nothing else worked. I wouldn't doubt it one bit. That oversize pig! Cripes! He was bloody well right I wasn't his son. And that wasn't half of it.

I took off for the room. It was no blessed good arguing. More sense in a lousy bag of nails. I wouldn't a minded if he had said no and had some good reasons to back it up. But there wasn't one grain of sense in anything that he said. He only done it to make me spitey. I knew before I ever started just what his answer was going to be. He just wanted to show how bloody fast he could squash me into the ground with his thumb.

The best thing for me, my arse. The best thing for him was more like it. And he expected me to have some respect for him then. Not to raise my voice to him. Cripes, what made him so special! What about him raising his voice to
me? What about that? And I didn't owe him nothing, not one lousy red cent.

Curtis heard it. The bedroom door was open. He didn't say anything when I came steaming into the room. I wanted to slam the door so hard that the bloody hinges would drop off.

“What a friggin old man you got!” I had to force myself to hold everything else in. Otherwise I might a said something I would a been sorry for.

I must a been lying on the bed for an hour before I moved. I went over and over in my mind just how much I hated that godforsaken hole I had to live in. I wished to hell I could get out of it.

The first thing I done when I got up was to take a piece of paper and sit down and try to write a letter to Aunt Flo. I had it all down that I wanted to come back. That nothing was working out right. That I would promise not to be any trouble. Then I took the letter, balled it up and fired it into the garbage can. It didn't sound right. Frig, none of it was right. It was like I was begging for a chance to live with them.

Then I took another sheet of paper and started a letter to Brent. I didn't get very far with that one either, before it ended up in the garbage can. Not a darn thing was going down on the paper the way I wanted it to.

I started another one. This time it was to Grandfather that I tried to write. He was the easiest one for me to say stuff to. But it was just as well if I wrote the man in the moon. What I ended up writing him was a stupid few words asking what the weather was like, what was he
doing, and all that crap. Not a word about the way I was feeling. It was a bloody waste of a stamp. But I got one and stuck it on and walked down to the drugstore and fired the letter in the mailbox.

The next day, Friday, I told Gerard and Brenda that I couldn't go. I wasn't allowed. That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I could a skinned out to Simon's Bay on Saturday if I wanted to bad enough. Hitchhiked there and not one person could a stopped me. But I'd still have to come back and live with the grouch.

Brenda didn't give up that easy, though. She had it in her mind that she wanted some way of seeing me on the weekend. Of course, she didn't come right out and say so. But she throwed enough hints and looks around. I wasn't that stun. Maybe, she said, she'd be coming into St. Albert shopping with her mother on Saturday and she'd probably be staying overnight with her aunt who lived on O'Leary Street. And maybe she'd see me sometime Saturday. There's a movie we can see Saturday night, I said.

So that Saturday night me and Brenda went to the movie together. I never told anybody in the house where I was going, not even Curtis. It was none of anybody's business except mine. The movie we went to see was
The Planet of the Apes, Part III.

We watched it all. It was dumb enough for a laugh, I can say that much for it. There's only so much of this ape stuff you can take and not get bored. We wasn't up in the back row loving it up like you might think. I hardly knew the girl. I knows that don't stop some fellows. But me, I figures I should at least know the girl. We did get around to holding hands. Big deal.

Some guys figure looks counts for everything. I don't, although it's hard to think any other way when you sees a nice piece of stuff in a bathing suit stretched out on the beach. For me, personality counts for a good bit too. And what got me latched onto Brenda was that she had both of it. In the looks department she was right up there. Down a few notches from Sandra Colbourne maybe, but still pretty nice. And she had to have a great personality if the way she acted with me was anything to go by.

We spent half the time after the movie talking about skidoos, for god's sake. Most girls, all they wants to talk about is school or TV programs or things like that, but there was me and Brenda gabbing on and on about skidoos and ice fishing. Maybe she was only doing it to play up to me. I dunno. I couldn't care less, anyway. Cripes, you knows it wouldn't a been the fun having her along, the way we used to swish around on the skidoos in back of Marten last winter.

Brenda was a real nice girl all right. It's not every day you runs across girls like her. Sometimes when I starts talking to someone I likes, I can't get stopped. That was the way it was with Brenda. I went to work and told her everything. I really did. I went on and on like I'd never shut up. I told her about the accident and she almost
bawled right there on the spot. She was the first person I ever felt like I could tell it to.

And I never stopped there. I yakked on about moving to St. Albert and how I hated being at Curtis's place because of his old man. I told her then just how it happened that he wouldn't let me go out to Simon's Bay that weekend. If anyone had yakked on and on to me that much I would a told them to shut up. But all she done was listen and hold my hand real tight in hers.

Well, we must a been there in the trees out back of the ball field for I guess almost two hours. The most we done was talk. We got around to hugging up to each other because it was a bit chilly, and we went pretty long on the mouth to mouth sessions a few times, but really the most we done was talk.

When she finally did look at her watch and found out that it was after midnight, she just about had a copper kitten. She made me get up right away and start walking back home with her. Her aunt would be fierce if she came home too late. Maybe she'd never get to stay there another weekend.

All the way up the sidewalk along Alexander Street we was laughing like crazy, running sometimes, she dragging me by the hand, me wasting time by trying to tell her I had twisted my ankle. Cripes, if anyone heard us they must a thought we was cracked. Too bad.

We turned into O'Leary Street and got to about two houses away from her aunt's place. We could see the lights on — her aunt probably still waiting up for her. She told me to go back the other way, not for me to pass in front of the house. That would make it all the harder to explain why she was so late.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I called out to her as she took off walking fast towards the house and left me standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What is it?” She turned her head back to answer me, still moving.

“Wait. Wait.”

“Hurry up, what is it? I'll be killed.”

“This,” I said, running up to her. I stopped, took her head real nice in my two hands and laid a long and easy one on her lips.

Then I turned around and walked away. Slow, like it was something I could a been doing every day of the week.

“Hey,” she said. It was the only thing she could think of. I guess the old romantic cat had been too much for her.

“Yeah,” I looked around, smiling.

“See ya,” she said.

“Take it easy,” I said, and put up my hand to her. She waved back to me.

She went on walking then up to her aunt's place. I took off and ran back down the street like my arse was on fire. For no other reason than I felt like running. Never stopped, either, till I'd run all the way down two streets. And yelling. Because I felt like that too. I let out the bloody big yell as if I'd just won a hundred thousand dollars in the lottery.

St. Albert, you stinks! You stinks! Up yours with ten million telephone poles. Old man, you stinks the worst of the lot. Suffer, old man, suffer.

I was making him suffer all right. It was twelve-thirty
then. Already they'd been doing a lot of wondering about where I was. They didn't have a clue, not a clue. And that was the way it was going to stay until I was ready to go home.

I must a walked five miles or more. To places I'd never even been to in a car. I must a looked in every god-blessed store window in the place. I seen every cop car, that was for sure. Some of them giving me only just enough time to skin out and around a building.

When I marched into the house finally, it was after two o'clock, the latest I ever stayed out. Aunt Ellen was just about off her head. She had herself worried sick. I really was sorry she had to go through all that. The old man was still out driving around, looking for me. The cops had been called in on it too.

I told her I lost my way. That was a stupid lie. She knew it. So I told her I was out for a walk, which was true, in a way. I said to her that I was sorry, that I didn't mean for her to have to get so upset like that.

I never said any more. I went into the bedroom and closed the door. When the old man came roaring home, saying that he still hadn't seen me, I was already in bed. He came storming into the room just as soon as Aunt Ellen had it out about what happened.

He banged open the door and switched on the light.

“You weren't out for no walk at three o'clock in the goddamn morning, now where were you!” He was savage with me all right, no two ways about it.

I sat up in bed. “I was so out for a walk. Anyway, it's not three o'clock yet. It's only two-thirty.”

“You little bugger! Don't you dare answer me back like
that. Where were you? I've got half the lousy cops in this place out looking for you. Aunt Ellen was just about gone crazy wondering where you were.”

“I told her I was sorry.”

“Sorry! Lord god, what the hell is the sense of you! Are you gone nuts or what! If Curtis had done anything like that I goddamn well wouldn't be wasting my breath. I'd have his ass red enough by now. And I got a damn good mind to try it on you.”

“Don't dare …”

“You little bugger. Jeeesus!” While he was dragging out that last word he held up his fist and left it shaking in the air. Aunt Ellen was there holding him back. It really looked like he was itching to hit me.

I threw back the covers and hopped outa bed. All I had on was a pair of shorts. I didn't give a shit about that.

“Com'on, com'on, hit me!” My fists was wrung up tight as hammers hanging down by my sides. “Com'on, com'on, see how fast you can pound me out. Someone who's not even half your size.”

If you ever seen anyone bursting with spite, it was him. He was blood red. One smack from that fist of his was all it would a took to flatten me out. I knew that. I wasn't worried. He couldn't be that much of a lunatic to get himself hauled into court. I'd have him there pretty fast if he ever tried it. What he had in his mind when he came through the door was to scare me. Well, I didn't scare that easy. He wasn't dealing with Curtis this time. And he knew it too.

Aunt Ellen tried to get in between us. “We'll talk about it in the morning,” she said. “That's enough fuss for one
night, Ted. Ted, please! You better go out and call the police and tell them that it's okay.”

He was looking to find some way for him to back down and not let everyone think he was giving in to her. He ripped off another curse and bolted out the room just as quick as he came in.