Somewhere I Belong (18 page)

Larry won the face-off. He had the turd puck on his stick and was preparing to take a shot. He glanced up briefly, gauged where Connor Murphy guarded the Daley's imaginary net, and pulled back his stick. Johnnie Condon slid in behind him and kicked the turd with his boot.

“That's cheatin',” Pat Jr. said.

“No it ain't,” Johnnie Condon said.

“Is too,” Larry said. “You can't kick the puck, you can only stop it.”

“Says who?” Johnnie Condon said.

“Where's Percy,” Pat Jr. said.

I checked across the pond and couldn't find him. Then I saw him climbing over the snowbank behind our net, heading for the outhouse some twenty feet away. “Where's William,” I asked. “Isn't he supposed to be here?”

As Larry and Johnnie Condon stood arguing, the rest of us watched Percy tramp through the snow toward the outhouse and then checked the Giddingeses' back door, looking for William. We needed a ref.

The sun sat low, casting shadows across the pond. The temperature dropped and we could see our breath in the chill air. The Giddingses' back door opened and I expected to see William just in time to miss Patrick's penalty. Instead, Jaynie Giddings appeared, on the stoop, in her apron.

“Game over yet?”

Pat Jr. glanced up at the setting sun, then over at his mother. “Twenty minutes, likely.”

The smell of Mrs. Giddingses' freshly baked molasses cookies was too much for Alfred. He unbuckled his skates, slipped off the snowbank, and disappeared into the house.

Patrick slid back onto the ice.

“Penalty's not over yet, Daley,” Larry said.

“Is too!” Patrick huffed.

“You don't know anything about hockey, Daley,” Larry said. “When the puck's not in play, the penalty clock stops running.”

That didn't sit well with Patrick, especially coming from a Yankee. “Right, Kavanaugh. Like you know,” he said as he left the ice and perched back on the snowbank. From the look on his face, I knew Larry was in for it.

Larry heaved out a breath. “Who's doing the face-off?”

“I will,” Matthias Creed said.

Larry looked at Matthias, sceptical. “How about Helen?”

“Eeeugh!” Helen said.

“Either you do the face-off, Helen, or you go home,” Larry said.

Helen pouted and moved to centre ice.

Larry and Matthias prepared for the face-off.

Patrick Daley edged off the snowbank.

Helen barely had the turd in her hand before it hit the ice.

Larry and Matthias swiped at it. Larry won the face-off and practically danced up the ice away from Matthias. But he didn't see Patrick Daley, standing next to Michael on his defensive wing, stick out, at the ready. Even though he was wearing his glasses, Larry's peripheral vision was poor—without them, he was nearly blind. He took a wide turn, his back to the two Daley boys, and sent the puck skipping toward the Daley net. Flecks of turd flew off the mottled ice. And just as Connor prepared for the save, I saw Patrick take three easy strides toward my brother.

The three-on-one Patrick Daley and his buddies had tried to pull on my brother that afternoon sat fresh on my mind. But at least they had given Larry half a chance by doing it head-on. Now, Patrick was raising up his stick, his eyes fixed on the back of Larry's head. I had to do something.

I dug in a blade and pushed off the ice. My heart pounded and my
throat burned from the chill air as I chased after Patrick. I thought
back to earlier in the afternoon, when Pat Jr. had pulled me away from Patrick Daley and his two hooligan sidekicks. And the other boys in the schoolyard had stood at a distance and watched as the three grade-nine boys ganged up on Larry. If it hadn't been for Old Dunphy, Larry surely would have been maimed.

I circled around Johnnie Condon and breezed past Matthias Creed.

“Get 'im!” Matthias Creed hollered.

“You little bugger!” Johnnie Condon hissed.

I skated furiously past them. They picked up their pace and breathed down on me. I braced for a slash, silently cursing Percy Giddings for taking so long in the outhouse. Then I saw Patrick, dead ahead of me. But it was too late.

Patrick had raised his stick up in both hands. Then I caught the surprised look on his face as he hit a bump, swerved, slipped, and
crashed to the ice. His stick sliced through the air and landed on my brother. I heard the sound of bone on ice as Larry's head landed with a crack next to where Patrick lay splayed out. Larry's glasses flew off
in the process. They landed in a snowbank, their fragile frame half
buried, their lenses catching the sun's last rays.

Johnnie Condon plucked Larry's glasses out of the snow, dropped
them to the ice, and crushed them under a boot. He bent the wire
frame and shattered a lens. The second lens somehow held secure.

I rushed up beside Larry. “That's a penalty, Patrick!”

Patrick propped himself up on his elbows. “Since when are you ref?”

I dropped down beside Larry. “You okay?” Then I glared at Patrick. “What did you do that for, Daley?”

Patrick was now heaving himself off the ice. “You'd better watch it, Yankee. When I'm finished with Four Eyes here, you're next.”

The gang circled around Larry. He must have felt as if his head had been split wide open.

Pat Jr. was the first to speak. “You're off the ice, Daley. That's slashing.”

“That was a good, clean check.” Patrick was on his feet, now, brushing off snow.

“Right, Patrick.” Even Helen got in on the argument. “You went
straight after him—I saw you.”

“I never touched him,” Patrick said.

Technically, this was true. But the fact his stick was attached to his hand said it was intentional.

The Giddingses' back door opened again. “Must be over by now,” Jaynie Giddings said. “Who wants hot cocoa?”

“Nobody,” Pat Jr. said. “The Daleys are goin' home.”

“We ain't goin' nowhere,” Patrick Daley said.

Pat Jr. and I each took an arm and helped Larry up from the ice.

“Beat it, Daley,” Pat Jr. hollered over a shoulder. “Tournament's over.”

Patrick Daley threw his stick down in a huff. He pursed his lips; his eyes bugged out like he was fixing for a fight.

The sun inched toward the horizon, sending shadows across the ice. Further up the field, the outhouse door opened and Percy reappeared. He glanced over and saw Larry suspended between me and Pat Jr., and Patrick Daley closing in. He raced across the yard.

“What's goin' on here?” Percy hollered.

“Tournament's over,” Pat Jr. said. “The Daleys are goin' home.”

Later that evening, when we were supposed to be asleep, Larry crept into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. “Thanks for trying to help me out back there, buddy,” he whispered.

Alfred shifted in the bed and rolled on his side. I turned and faced Larry and propped my head up on a hand. “I wish I coulda….” Then I found the words. “Patrick Daley's a real jackass, isn't he.”
Jackass
was
what my dad used say when someone got him steamed. Even at a
whisper it sounded good dropping off the end of my tongue.

“You know what Dad always said?” Larry asked. “He said those types always end up getting theirs.”

“I wish Dad was here,” I said.

“So do I,” Larry replied.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if he didn't die?”

“All the time.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It wouldn't be so bad if Ma hadn't brought us here.”

“Don't go blaming Ma,” Larry replied. “None of this is her fault.”

“I didn't mean it that way. I was just wondering what it would be like if Dad was still alive. Or even if we had stayed in Everett instead of coming here.”

“I think about that too,” Larry said.

“You do?” I said, loud enough to wake Alfred. Larry seemed to take it all on so effortlessly. Now I was finding out he felt the same as me.

“I do,” Larry replied. “But I don't think Ma had much say in the matter.”

“Uncle George wanted us to stay,” I said. “Remember when he and
Ma had that big row in the parlour? She was telling him we were
moving and he was trying to get her to change her mind. He even said he would help out if she needed it. And Ma got real mad.”

“He was offering Ma charity, P.J.,” Larry said. “She's too proud—you know that. She only did what she had to do. Anyhow, I don't want to make a big deal over Patrick Daley. It would only make her feel bad. That business with Mr. Dunphy is hard enough on her.”

“Don't you just hate Patrick Daley?” I said.

Larry shifted on the bed. I could feel him looking down at me in the dark. “You know what Dad always said about hate?” he asked.

“No.”

“He said, ‘If you hate someone, they've got you beat.'”

“Huh?”
Larry made everything seem so complicated
.

“Hate makes you feel angry all the time. Headachy, like.”

“Like you do right now, I guess.”

Larry laughed.

“So what do you do about Patrick Daley if you're not supposed to hate him?” I was hoping for a simple answer this time.

“You try to figure out what makes him that way,” Larry replied. “You maybe feel sorry for him.”

“Patrick Daley practically cracks your skull wide open and your
feel sorry for him?!” I couldn't believe my brother. “He almost killed you, and Johnnie Condon busted your glasses. You're gonna be blind without them!” I was sitting up straight now, staring through the dark at Larry. “A simple pounding would do for him, if you ask me. In my books, he gets away with this, next time you're really in for it.”

“That's not what Dad would want us to do,” Larry said. “He'd say we should just try to get along; that it would make it easier for Ma. Now, I'm going to sleep; I've got a pounding headache.” He turned in the doorway. “Forget about Patrick Daley.”

Larry left me wondering how forgetting about Patrick Daley would make it easier for Ma. She didn't have to deal with him—we did.

The full moon cast a bright light through the window, catching Larry's
silhouette in the doorway. Before he closed the door, I said, “I miss
home, Larry. I'd give anything to go back.”

“So would I, P.J.”

After Easter, the snow lay thick and hard for another week. Then Larry, Uncle Jim, and Uncle Ed hauled the huge, wooden, levered shovel out of Uncle Jim's shed and loaded it onto the box sleigh. They were hitching up Big Ned and heading out to Pleasant Bay to collect mussel mud to fertilize the fields. They would whoa up the horse at the edge of the riverbank and coax him to pull the sleigh out onto the ice. Then they would take an axe and cut a huge hole in the ice, push the levered arm into the shallow, frigid water, dredge up the muddy river bottom, and load the brackish ooze onto the sleigh. On Northbridge Road, this was the first sure sign of spring.

Larry had talked all week about going out onto that ice. But when he returned, he told me it had been back-breaking work. I think he was implying that I had got off easy because I got to stay home. He never thought to mention the fact that I had to do all of my own chores
and his too
. After I finished feeding and watering Big Ned, Lu, and the herd, and turning them out, I had to muck out their stalls and lay down fresh bedding. Then I had to tackle the afternoon chores and spend the evening helping Larry and Uncle Jim shovel the dregs of Pleasant Bay into a wheelbarrow, haul it behind the barn, and offload it onto the manure pile. So much for Uncle Jim going easy on me.

By mid-April, the snow finally melted. The pungent smell of red earth mingled with the stench of thawing manure, and everything around us had turned to mud. It covered the yard, the drive, and the road. It sat in mounds in fields of dead yellow grass and stubs of wheat stocks that were left over from last year's harvest. Our boots sank into that mud and it stuck to them in clumps.

The longer days of spring meant Larry and I had to get up earlier each morning for barn chores and bring the herd in later every afternoon. We hauled stooks of hay out to the fields to feed the herd because the grass hadn't yet turned green. We lugged water to the outdoor troughs. We aired out the barn and scrubbed and disinfected the stalls. Then we helped Uncle Jim mend the barbed-wire fences around the pasture.

As soon as Uncle Jim could crumble a clump of soil in his hand, he hauled his plough, his tooth harrower, and his disc harrower out of the shed. He showed Larry and me how to mend and soap the harnesses, while he sharpened the blades. Then we started preparing the fields for spring planting.

Uncle Jim ploughed early each morning, while Larry and I did the barn chores. After school, my brother and I hitched Lu up to the stone boat, led her onto the field, and picked up the rocks that the frost had heaved to the surface. Then we hauled them over to the tumble-down stone wall at the edge of the field. Uncle Jim and Big Ned followed us with the plough and turned over the earth, exposing more rocks. Larry and I finished clearing these too. Then we shovelled manure and mussel mud onto the stone boat, carted it back to the field, and broadcast it. This time Uncle Jim followed us with the disc harrower and disked it in. All of this field work was added to the afternoon chores, and it meant that we had to sit up later to finish our homework. I don't know about Larry, but when the day was finally over, I fell into bed dead tired and woke up the next morning feeling as if I had hardly slept.

One morning in particular stands out. It was mid-week, and Larry, Helen, and I were leaving for school. We passed Uncle Jim and Big Ned slogging through the soggy turf in the front pasture. Our uncle had got up before dawn to feed the horses their hay. Then he had hitched Big Ned up to the plough and worked straight through breakfast. With potatoes prices down, he wanted to break open sod and plant more wheat.

“Makes more sense than lettin' potatoes rot in them fields,” he said. “At least youse can feed it to the livestock.”

By the time the sun had risen past the weather vane on the barn roof, Uncle Jim and Big Ned were on their second assault up the field. It was a long, slow process, and they had barely turned over two furrows by the front fence. Big Ned's head bobbed up and down, his huge, muscular chest rippled under his harness, and his hooves sank into the sodden ground. Uncle Jim wrestled with the long, wooden handles of the plough, directing it into a straight line, edging along the previous furrow, turning over sod and cold, damp mud. And watching for rocks. If the blade hit one, it would jolt the plough and send one of the wooden handles smashing into his shoulder. That had to hurt.

Thomas waited for us out on the road alone. As we passed by the Giddingses', we saw Pat Jr. in the back field with Percy, Ginger hitched up to the plough. Percy held her halter and steadied her. The blade of the plough sat sunken in the mud, while Pat Jr. bent down near it, dirt up to his knees, and tugged on a rock with his bare hands.

Larry glanced over at them, then turned and watched Uncle Jim
wrestle with his own plough. “We should be helping out.”

“We already did our chores,” I said. “And we're helping out after
school.”

Larry pursed his lips. “Yeah, but….”

William Giddings stood at his front door, in his white, sleeveless
linder, his bare arms folded across his chest. “Here now, where you fellas off to?” The suspenders of his heavy, cotton trousers hung over his hips. A grubby hand held a steaming mug up to his face. He gulped his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.

“School,” Larry said in a hesitant tone.

Thomas edged up to my brother and spoke in a low voice. “Better keep goin'.”

Larry gave Thomas a quizzical look, then hitched up his satchel
and quickened his pace. Thomas, Helen, and I took running steps to catch up with him.

Thomas looked back at William, making sure he was out of range. “That's one fella you don't want to mess with.”

William stepped out onto the stoop. “Avoidin' work, that's what
youse're doin'. I'm gonna talk to that mother of yours, you Kavanaughs. We don't want no lazy good-for-nothin' Yankees 'round here.”

Jaynie Giddings appeared at the doorway. “Get in here, you.” The way she stood with her arms crossed and glared at him said she was used to William's truculent behaviour.

“What's the matter with him?” I asked. “We haven't done anything wrong.”

“That's William,” Thomas replied. “Mom says you can always tell
when he's been into the sauce.”

“Into the what?” I asked.

“Moonshine,” Thomas replied. “The Higgenbothams make it back to the woods by Dirty River.”

“That's got to be against the law,” Helen said.

“Some people don't care about that, Helen,” Larry said.

“The Higgenbothams sure don't,” Thomas said.

As we passed the Lanigans', we saw Uncle Ed working in his front field, across the road from the Giddingses'. Further along, Michael Daley was wedging a pry bar under a boulder in a yellow pasture behind the Daleys' old farmhouse. Patrick steadied a team of tired-looking standardbreds hitched up to a rusty old plough. In the homestead next to the Daleys', Curtis and Connor Murphy were filling a stone boat with rocks. Their father was directing a horse and plough close behind them.

The schoolroom was half empty when we entered. Heat radiated from the pot-bellied stove, taking the nip off the late-spring air. Mr. Dunphy stood up on the platform and surveyed the room. He grabbed his pointer and directed us toward the empty desks behind the third row. It seemed that every boy in fifth to ninth grades was absent except for Larry and me. But just as we finished singing the anthem, Pat Jr. bolted through the back door and tossed his lunch tin onto the shelf above the coat hooks. His hair was stuck to his brow. His hands were stained with red Island mud.

“At least you're here, Mr. Giddings.” Old Dunphy pointed to an empty seat beside Larry. Then he moved to the middle of the platform and peered over the rims of his glasses.

“The school inspector will be paying us a visit in three weeks.” He slapped his pointer onto an open palm, then clasped it. “We all know who the inspector is, don't we? And we all want to be good and ready when he comes.”

I didn't know the school inspector, but by the tone of Old Dunphy's voice, he was someone to be feared.

Our teacher grabbed a pile of assignments off his desk, descended the platform, and moved to the centre aisle. “We don't want those city kids showing us up, do we?” He clutched the papers in an arm and handed them out as he moved down the aisle. “We've worked good and hard all year and we want him to see that we're just as smart as they are, don't we?”

“No, Mr. Dunphy.” The little kids shook their heads from side to side to the first question. “Yes, Mr. Dunphy.” They nodded them up and down to the second one. The rest of us grunted in agreement.

Old Dunphy told us that preparing for the school inspector was no
mean feat. There would be homework and drills and tests. He cau
tioned us that anyone who didn't have their assignments polished to perfection by the end of May would have marks deducted from their
final grades. He broadcast a final warning toward the empty desks
along the back row.

“Those of you who decide to do nothing will find yourselves in the very same seat, repeating the very same grade, in September.” This threat had become a recurring theme.

When he reached my desk, he stopped and placed five simple sums written on a single sheet of paper in front of me. “You're to work on your arithmetic, Pius James.” He ran a finger down the page. “You're to take these home and practice them up.” His tone had eased a little—its sharp edge had softened.

I slumped in my seat and stared in disbelief. I thought it must have been a mistake—
Thomas could even do them
. Then I looked over at Maggie—her list of equations had numbers and letters and brackets.
And she was the one who had trouble with math. A sinking feeling
set in, and I put my arm over the paper to hide it. After all the perfect scores I had got in math since I arrived, I wondered why Old Dunphy was treating me like a dummy. Then I thought perhaps he had gotten Maggie's assignment mixed up with mine and raised my hand.

“Yes, Mr. Kavanaugh?”

“I think I got the wrong assignment, sir,” I said.

“And why would that be, Mr. Kavanaugh?”

“It's too easy, sir. I mean….” I glanced at my paper and then at Maggie's. “Shouldn't I….”

“There's been no mistake, Mr. Kavanaugh,” Mr. Dunphy said. “Now put your hand down and be quiet.”

At recess, Pat Jr. and I followed Larry across the schoolyard and onto Northbridge Road. My brother stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes taking in the length of the road.

“We should be helping Uncle Jim, P.J.,” he said. “None of the other fellas are at school today.”

“Your uncle's always done the tilling alone,” Pat Jr. said. “I don't see how's it should be any different now.”

“Everyone's helping to get their fields ready—the Daleys, the
Murphys…,” Larry said. “You were out with Percy this morning, too.”

I don't know why my brother felt so guilty. Without Larry and me, Uncle Jim would have had to do all of the barn work himself before going out to the field. If it weren't for us, he wouldn't have time to open up that new tract of land for the wheat crop he wanted to plant. The way I saw it, we were letting him off a load of work. “Like I already said, Larry—we promised Uncle Jim we'd help out after school.”

The next morning, Larry rose earlier than usual, tiptoed into my
room, and shook me awake, being sure not to disturb Alfred.

The light was still faint; the birds had only begun to chirp. I pulled the covers over my head. “It's too early.”

Larry shoved me harder “Come on, P.J.—let's just go out for a bit.” Then he stood there and waited until I rolled out of bed.

I pulled on my barn clothes and followed him downstairs and out to the back door. The horizon was a streak of yellow under a purple sky. Mist drifted across the grassy back field. Uncle Jim was already in the yard hitching up Big Ned.

“What're you two doin' out here at this hour?” he asked.

“We're helping out with the ploughing,” Larry said.