The Long Run (29 page)

Sometimes, at the end of the school day and on weekends, myself and Blackie help Rags with his experiments in the science lab. Rags lives in the science lab. A few years ago he made a Santa Claus and reindeer that moved on a track around the roof of the main building. Everyone in St. John's came to see it. He's always experimenting with something or other, especially around Christmastime. We mock him that he's trying to find the formula for invisibility like the mad scientist in the movie
The Invisible Man
. He just laughs and says, “How'd you know that? How'd you know that?”

He's a really good science teacher. Lotsa fun. He's full of crazy ideas. Like the Mount Kildare Christmas Raffle board, which he created last year. It's a big circular piece of plywood with a map of Newfoundland painted on it. And tiny colored bulbs, each with a number, stuck in the middle of each outport. The bulbs are attached to a long cord that holds a switch. When you press the On button, all the bulbs blink madly off and on until all the raffle tickets are sold. When we work the raffle, we never tire of the blinking map of Newfoundland. The map of many colors, Oberstein calls it.

When the brother on the microphone presses the Stop button, one colored bulb remains lit, blinking slowly off and on while from behind the big circular board a member of the Mount Kildare Choir sings a solo or the whole choir sings a Newfoundland song. Or a few members of the band play Christmas carols. If the choir gets tired and takes a break, the brother in charge of the raffle, usually Rags or Brother Walsh, puts a forty-five record on the small phonograph he keeps nearby and switches the microphone on so that everyone, including the Christmas shoppers out on the sidewalk, can hear some accordion music. It's always a lot of fun, and if Littlejohn is around it's a laugh and a half because he dances a jig while selling tickets on the next spin. Usually, though, the choir sings the whole time.

Here's how it works. Number nineteen, for example, is a green bulb stuck on St. Mary's–The Capes, and when it lights up you will always hear Bas Belbin singing solo:

Take me back to my Western boat,

Let me fish off Cape St. Mary's.

Where the hagdowns sail and the fog-horns wail,

With my friends the Browns and the Clearys.

It is such fun because Oberstein has a contest with Bas Belbin to see who can drown the other guy out. Oberstein usually loses because Bas Belbin has the microphone. But Oberstein always gives him a good run for his money. Oberstein has the most powerful voice in the world. Rags calls him Caruso. Once, on a bus going to summer camp, he out-sung a whole busload of boys. They all quit from exhaustion. When we got back to the Mount, Oberstein was still singing.

The best time of all is when bulb number 108 lights up. Tickle Cove Pond. It's a beautiful mournful song about a mare named Kitty and her master taking a shortcut across an icy pond and falling through, and all the neighbors coming to help them out. It's got wonderful lines like

She turned 'round her head, and with tears in her eyes,

As if she were saying “You're risking our lives.”

The very next minute the pond gave a sigh,

And down to our necks went poor Kitty and I.

But it isn't the mournfulness of the music or the wonderful lines in the song that make us so look forward to the flashing blue bulb marked 108. There's another reason. It's Bug Bradbury. Bug turns his back to the brother at the microphone and using the crowd as a shield he grabs himself by the crotch and wiggles his bum while the choir is singing.

Everyone, except the brother at the microphone, howls. And we try to hide our laughter, which makes it all the more hilarious. We all love seeing Bug boogie, as Blackie calls it.

There are so many beautiful songs that working at the Christmas Raffle is never ever work. It's our favorite time of the year. The choir sings lines from “The Badger Drive” whenever a community in the central region of the province lights up. There are tons of Newfoundland songs, and they are all so beautiful: “Merasheen Farewell,” “The Star of Logy Bay,” “The Northern Lights of Labrador,” “Feller from Fortune,” “The Cliffs of Baccalieu,” “Petty Harbour Bait Skiff,” “Wedding in Renews.” And at the end of each raffle day, when the last bulb has lit up and the last winning ticket is sold, we all sing “The Ode to Newfoundland.” It gives me the goosebumps every time we sing it. I guess it's because we were a country once, and now we're a country no more. No matter who's at the raffle, young and old alike, they all join in and sing the Ode:

As loved our fathers, so we love,

Where once they stood we stand,

Their prayer we raise to heav'n above,

God guard thee, Newfoundland . . .

The only day we don't have raffle is Sunday. And we would all work on Sunday too, if the brothers asked us, even though it's a mortal sin to work on Sunday.

Another thing that happens around Christmastime is bowling. “We're all going bowling. We're all going bowling.” The halls come alive with more Mount criers than you can count, just before Rags makes the announcement over the PA. In that New Yawk accent, Oberstein always mimics. “All raffle workers proceed to the bus and board for St. Pete's Bowling Alleys . . .
click
.”

After the announcement, there's intense scurrying and a mad frenzied rush to get a good seat on the bus. Bowling at St. Pete's Alleys is a real treat. The brothers at St. Pete's own the alleys, and they donate a full day to the raffle boys for working so hard to raise money for Mount Kildare. It's a goofy-looking place, an old gymnasium converted into bowling alleys. It has four lanes of five-pin with the old-fashioned stand-up pins that you have to fix upright each time you finish a frame. One of us has to go down to the end of the alley and perch on a ledge above the pins, wait till the frame is finished, jump into the pit and reset the pins. The boy who winds up doing this is called the pinhead because each bowler tries his best to smash the pins as hard as he can in the hope that one will fly up and hit him in the head. On the bus we pick teams and put names in the hat to draw for the pinhead. Whoever wins the draw gets the day named in his honor.

The last time we went bowling, it was Bug Bradbury Day. Bug hates being pinhead, but he's really good at it. Probably because he's so tiny and he's as quick as a hare. He's really hard to pick off. Bowling's good fun because there's always two games going on at the same time, five-pin and the competition to pick off whoever's the pinhead. If a boy gets a strike and picks off the pinhead during the same roll, which is rarely done, each boy on either team must surrender fifty cents from his canteen card. The unwritten rules are clear and carefully followed. The bowler is allowed to stand, bowling ball in hand, while the pinhead arranges the pins and the timer counts out ten seconds from my Mickey. Once the ten seconds are up, the bowler may fire the ball regardless of the number of pins standing. Or, once the last pin has been reset, the bowler may rifle the ball down the alley, attempting to hit the pins as well as the pinhead before he makes it back to his perch. If picked off by a flying pin, not only does the pinhead have to suffer the hit as well as the taunting of all the bowlers, but he also has to give twenty-five cents from his canteen card to the boy who lands the lucky blow. If the hit is from the bowling ball, the pinhead forfeits his entire canteen card.

Bug Bradbury is rarely hit. Because he's so short, he's permitted to bring a wooden Pepsi crate with him into the pit because otherwise he would not be able to reach the alley to reset the pins. He's the only boy allowed to use a crate. From his wooden crate, Bug appears like a jack-in-the-box, popping up and down while resetting the pins. Every now and again, when he can't get up in time, he remains in the pit. Actually, it's the pinhead's only choice if he fails to rearrange the pins before the ten-second count ends. It's much safer to lay low in a corner of the pit if you see that black ball coming than to try to get back up on the perch. Bug always knows when to lay low and when to fly high. He's very clever and is almost never hit. For this reason, and the fact that he taunts the bowlers with his shrill squeaky voice—“Another gutter ball, crosseyes . . . You're worse than an old woman”—he's the favorite target of every bowler.

His survival method is to rearrange all the pins but one very quickly, in five or six seconds. With a few seconds to spare, the last one is placed at lightning speed. You can see Bug's hand shoot out with the pin. Then, flash, his whole body rockets through the air. Kelly always yells, “Blast-off! Here comes Bug, the human bowling pin.” Blackie calls him the kingpin. It's a sight to behold. We're always amazed to see it. And it's always the same, every time: Bug flying through the air like an oversized, fully clothed bowling pin, the red-and-white pins flying everywhere the instant he rockets out of sight, everyone in the alleys holding his breath to see if Bug will make it back to his perch.

I've only seen him get hit once. Blackie caught him in the shoulder with a pin. “That didn't hit me,” Bug squeaked. “That didn't touch.” Two days later, in the shower, Blackie claimed his twenty-five cents when he spotted an ugly purple streak along Bug's shoulder blade.

It wouldn't be so bad for Bug, he'd get a break every now and then, if he wasn't such a pest. But safe on his perch, he taunts the bowlers to no end with shrill, saucy barks. When a boy is finished rolling, he waits patiently for the crashing noise to subside. Then he breaks the silence by accusing the bowler of having arthritis or squeaks at him to go get his eyes checked or yells that he is slower than his crippled grandmother. He is incredibly saucy, which makes everyone want to pick him off even more. But we rarely do, thanks to his size, his speed, and his Pepsi crate.

Bug is always a big hit at the bowling alleys, but he isn't allowed to be a member of the Christmas tumbling team. He wasn't even allowed to try out. Because of the hole in his heart. We were all pretty upset about it. We wanted him on the team with us, because we get to travel during the holidays and we get gifts and treats, even special meals. But it was pretty obvious at our first tumbling practice that Bug wouldn't be a Mount Kildare tumbler. He'd get so out of breath after the first roll that Blackie would have to help him. He was allowed to stay in the gym and watch. Once he fainted just watching us.

During the Christmas holidays, and on special occasions like the opening of a new school, the Mount Kildare Band and the Mount Kildare Choir often put on a concert. Sometimes Brother Walsh and Brother Malone will do an Irish play or a few skits like “Aunt Martha's Sheep” or recitations like “The Smoke Room on the Kyle.” They're usually big events, and if you get to take part, you usually get some kind of special treat, like a really good meal of cold cuts and salads and all the soda pop you can drink. If the choir or band goes to a place like St. Patrick's Mercy Home, a seniors' home, or the Mental, the Mount Kildare Tumblers usually go along too.

If you're in St. Martin's dorm, you are automatically a member of the Mount Kildare Tumblers. Every Christmas, the twenty-seven boys in our dorm go to the barbershop for crewcuts and then get their tumbling uniforms: green boxer shorts and white singlets.

At the concert, we unroll the tumbling mats, which we pack on a big yellow bus, and tumble away to our heart's delight while the Mount Kildare Choir sings a song, usually “Teddy Bears' Picnic,” and the Mount Kildare Band plays along. The tumblers are usually first on the program. We roll out the mats in front of the audience, either on the floor or on a stage, and line up single file in front of the first mat and wait for Brother O'Reilly, the tumbling coach, to give the nod to Brother Walsh, the band conductor, to strike up “Teddy Bears' Picnic,” which the choir sings over and over until Brother O'Reilly can't see a smiling face in the audience. That usually takes a long time because, for some strange reason, at every concert the tumblers are adored. People love us to death just because we tumble. They clap their hands and stamp their feet as the band plays and the choir sings over and over:

At six o'clock their Mummies and Daddies

Will take them home to bed

Because they're tired little Teddy Bears.

“Another retarded audience,” Oberstein says at each performance. It never fails. We're always the favorite. We can't believe it or understand it, but it's true. It really pisses off the band, because they practice morning, noon, and night. We never think we're doing anything special. Certainly nothing like playing in the band or singing in the choir. Those boys practice for hours every day. We don't even practice. All we do is get crewcuts, dress in green boxing shorts and white singlets, line up in a straight line and tumble until we run out of mats. Then we bounce up and race to the end of the line and repeat the exercise until the band and the choir stop playing. It's the oddest thing you've ever seen. Twenty-seven boys with crewcuts in boxers and singlets tumbling endlessly. Brother O'Reilly stands at the head of the tumblers, his stern face never once cracking a smile, giving each boy a little poke in the back, the cue to begin, as if we are skydivers jumping from a plane.