The Second Son (13 page)

I was the dark one, sliding behind my mother’s skirts. Like my uncle Angus, I had that Glengarry curse of shyness, the one that explains the surplus of old bachelors in our midst. Now Andrew, he was the friendly family diplomat, full of bright-faced answers, always eager to talk. Even at that age you could see him shine with the joy of belonging, sure of himself and where he fit. I know, because I wanted the same thing for myself. Yet somehow it never worked out. Andrew would leave the church social happy and exhausted from the interaction. I would leave lonely and feeling like I’d missed out on something.

Take the barbershop. Andrew loved going for a haircut. I always resented it, starting with the ritual scrubbing of my ears so the barber could see the Landrys weren’t raising little pigs. My father would bug me about my long hair, threatening to buy me a violin, to no avail. Finally he would give Andrew the fifty cents to pay for both of us and tell him to make sure we stopped at Mr. Dickey’s after school. The shop was on Main Street, just a block down from the mill square, beside Mrs. Laprade’s candy store. We had to pass that way coming home from school, so it was hard to get out of it. And if I insisted like always that he wasn’t the boss of me, Andrew had the extra dime Dad had slipped him to buy us a treat after our haircut.

In we’d go, looking for a seat along the wall. Often as not, one of us would have to stand until someone ahead of us took his turn on the chair. I would be the one standing, as close as I could get to Andrew without sitting on his lap, going rigid as he tried to shove me away. If I did get a seat, I would hope for one as far away as possible from that stinky spittoon. I would sit there quietly, mostly staring at the floor. It was bare wood, the floor, with deep depressions worn around the chair Mr. Dickey had been circling for decades. And hair, there was always hair, lots of hair, no matter how often he swept it up. That’s what I remember most: clumps of hair, curly, wavy, and straight, brown, black, and white. All kinds and colours, a piece of ourselves left behind in Mr. Dickey’s barbershop.

It was a long, narrow place, with two barber’s chairs and a shelf to hold hair tonics and such along the north wall. Funny-shaped bottles of blue, red, and green, fancy stuff like we never had at home. There was a mirror along most of that wall above the shelf, making the bottles look twice as many and the room look twice as big, with twice the number of people. There was a coat rack by the door, and beside it was one of those bright red machines selling cokes, cold cokes for ten cents apiece. I can still see Mr. Dickey, a short man, heavy with age, his own hair almost gone, busy cutting and clipping and gossiping with a customer at the same time as he would take a quarter from someone, punch open his cash drawer, bring out change for the coke machine, and hand it over without ever missing a beat in his conversation.

And those conversations, snapping and crackling like wood on a fire, as they argued everything from politics to sports to what kind of weather we had, needed, or just missed. The conversations were always friendly, too, as if there was some rule. Mr. Dickey always joked that he had to hang the calendars of the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs on opposite walls, to keep them from fighting. I don’t remember seeing any pictures of politicians. Which reminds me, the shop had its own special smell, a smell that defied identification, a mingling of dried manure on rubber boots, working men’s bodies, talcum powder, and aftershave, all wafting about the room on waves of cigarette and pipe smoke.

For some reason I remember how the men used to come in the door, especially in winter when the sense of sanctuary seemed stronger. They’d slip in quickly, closing the door against the weather, stomping the snow from their feet as they hung up their coats, then turn and rub their hands together for warmth as they smiled and said their g’day’s, all the while circling the room with their eyes, calculating how long they’d have to wait. Sometimes they’d even open the door a crack and yell out to their wives who were waiting, telling them how long they would be and to meet them at the Hub.

That second barber’s chair was used mostly as a waiting spot for the next in line. There was only one barber in the shop, except around Christmas or Easter, when everybody and their uncle came into town for a haircut, and Mr. Dickey would get his brother-in-law, Tom Kelly, to help out. Boy, there’d be hair on the floor on those days. No matter how busy he was, though, Mr. Dickey would acknowledge us every time we came in. His head would turn quickly at the sound of the door and he would say, “Take a seat there, boys,” and let us know how many were ahead. In all the years we went there, I don’t ever remember getting skipped over, or missing my turn, even when Andrew wasn’t with me.

It was good he told us like that. Otherwise you’d never know how long you’d have to wait, seeing as how there were usually two or three men in there just to pass the time of day. There were the regulars like old Mr. McFadden, the retired postmaster. Or there was Mr. Brunet with one leg, who had a pension from the war. Or there was Mr. Lacombe the blacksmith, with the big thick arms, who wasn’t so busy anymore and liked to come in for a coke and a bit of gossip. Andrew, he loved that stuff. You could tell from his face, sitting there with his eyes wide open and his ears tuned in, his head swinging back and forth, following the conversation.

“Did you hear Dougal Dan went in the ditch last week?” one of them would ask.

“Where?”

“On the Second of Kenyon, down behind the old grist mill.”

“With his truck?”

“Yeah, and he had a load on, eh?”

“Drinking, was he? Did the cops catch him this time?”

“Naw, he was stone sober, if you catch my drift.”

“What happened? Did he get out?”

“Yeah, the cop went and got Donald Joseph from down at the corner, there, to come and pull him out with the tractor. Never even looked in the truck.” They would all laugh out loud then, but us kids could only manage a silly grin, not knowing Dougal Dan was the local bootlegger.

“And the poor cop never caught on?” someone would ask. “I’ll bet it was that new lad from Cornwall, young Poulin?”

“Yep. Donald Joseph said Poulin never even asked what all that rattlin’ was in the back, when they pulled him out.”

“It’s like I always say, hire local if you got a choice.”

“Sure, but it’s hard to find someone local who will last as a cop in this town, giving out fines to his neighbours. That’s why Brian MacKinnon quit. Had too many of his own family getting drunk every Saturday night, racin’ through town and gettin’ in fights. Goddamn shame.”

“Watch the language there, boys,” Mr. Dickey would always say, clicking his scissors at them. “Young ears in the shop, eh? Wouldn’t want their mother giving me heck on the church steps.” That would be their cue to take note of our presence, usually by starting up a conversation with my big brother, who was always glad to talk to them. Andrew could talk the warts off a frog, my father used to say. And you could always count on those questions to get him started. “You’re Ed Landry’s boy, aren’t ya, lad?”

“Yessir,” he would answer, “Andrew Landry. My father has a grocery store on Main Street.”

“Yuh don’t say? And who’s that little guy with you? Where’d you find him, under a haystack?”

Andrew would laugh while I squirmed in my seat. “That’s my little brother, sir, Michel. He’s younger than me.”

“Oh, that’s right. He doesn’t say much, does he? Does he speak English?”

It was a stupid question. You hardly ever heard any French in Mr. Dickey’s shop. I don’t think he even understood it. Anyway, most of the French people went to the barber down the street, Mr. Lalonde, by the post office. With a first name like Michel, I was used to that dumb joke about speaking English, and always refused to bite. It was Andrew who answered for me, “Oh yes, sir, he speaks English pretty good. Not as good as me, but he speaks it all the time at home. He’s just shy, is all. My mom says he takes after the MacRaes. She says all the MacRaes are shy.”

While I’d be fuming at him for talking about me like that, he’d just sit there with that big grin on his face, talking to these old geezers in the overalls with the hair in their ears and the lump of tobacco in their cheeks, spitting it right past you into the spittoon. Some of my dad’s friends would come in there, too, and they’d tease Andrew with stuff like, “Is your father still driving that rusty old Ford, lad? When’s he going to get himself a real truck?”

“My dad says Ford makes a mighty good truck, sir.”

Then some farmer would chime in with, “Tell your father I got a real truck I’ll sell him. It’s a Chevy, eh? Tell him I’ll give him a good price, too.”

Then some smartass would feed him a straight line, like, “Does that truck of yours burn oil, Charlie?”

“No, sir. Burns gas. Low test, too.”

I remember that one because I had to ask Andrew afterwards what they were all laughing at. Same as that story about the time my father and Jimmy McKay played that trick on Jimmy’s wife. The first time I can remember hearing it was in the barber shop, when old Mr. McFadden asked Andrew, “Well now, son, did you hear what your father and Jimmy McKay did, just last week?”

Of course Andrew shook his head no and Mr. McFadden took that as a chance to tell the whole barbershop. “Well, sir, Ed and Jimmy were in here getting a haircut, eh? And they started talking about all those quiz shows they’re after havin’ on the radio station in Cornwall these days. So Jimmy tells Ed that the missus listens to those shows all the time. Next thing you know, Ed calls Peggy up on the phone, there, and — ”

“Shouldn’t have let them use the phone,” Mr. Dickey interrupted.

“Hah,” Mr. McFadden continued, “you were laughing just as much as the rest of us. So anyways, Ed tells Peggy in this real deep voice like he’s some kind of radio announcer, that he’s calling from CKCW in Cornwall and wants to know if she’s got her set tuned to their station. Of course she tells him yes. So then he tells her that this is her lucky day, on account of her telephone number has been picked from the hat to take part in this here contest. But first she has to turn her radio off, so there’s no feedback. You know what that is, don’t ya?”

Of course Andrew nodded that he knew, even if he didn’t. Only it didn’t matter, because someone threw in, “And she fell for that?”

“Sure she did,” Mr. McFadden went on. “She thought she was gonna be on the radio, eh? So she turns her radio off and Ed tells her she can win first prize in their big Quaker Oats contest. All she has to do is answer correctly the name of Roy Rogers’ horse.”

“Aw, that’s too easy,” someone piped up. “She — ”

“Just you wait, now,” Mr. McFadden pressed on, “because she fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I guess Ed could hear her getting all excited and yelling at her girls to tell her the answer. Well now, didn’t one of them think it was Trigger and the other one thought it was Champion.”

“Hah,” someone chortled, “girls, eh?”

“So anyways, she hummed and hawed there for a minute or so, while Ed kept telling her she had to hurry up on account of there was a time limit. So she finally yells out, ‘Champion!’ By this time Ed and Jimmy are splitting themselves trying not to laugh, and Ed manages to say to her, ‘Are you sure that’s your answer?’

“So she hums and haws some more, and finally makes up her mind to stick with Champion. Then crazy Ed tells her in this fake voice, ‘Congratulations, Mrs. Peggy McKay of Alexandria, you are the grand winner of today’s Quaker Oats contest. You have just won first prize.’

“Well sir, we could hear her and the two girls screaming on the phone halfway across the room. So finally she calms down a bit and asks Ed, ‘How will I be getting my prize? Do I have to pick it up?’

“ ‘Oh no, madam,’ Ed says, cool as a cucumber, ‘it will be delivered right to your door by Glengarry Transport.’

“ ‘Oh my God,’ she screams, ‘it’s coming by truck. What is it? Is it a fridge? Is it a stove?’

“ ‘Oh no, madam,’ Ed answers, ‘it’s even better. I am happy to tell you that your grand prize for correctly guessing the name of Roy Rogers’ horse is a one-hundred-pound barrel of genuine Western horseshit.’

“Well, sir,” Mr. McFadden continued after the laughter died down, “there were a few sputters on the other end of the phone, I guess, and then she must have heard us all laughing at this end. Because after a few seconds of dead silence she says, ‘And I suppose you think you’re funny, Ed Landry, you and your stupid friend, Jimmy McKay, with nothing better to do on a workday than interrupt my housework. Well, you can tell Mr. Jimmy McKay that his supper is in the oven, only he needn’t hurry home. Because right after I hang up this phone I’m going to take his supper out of the oven and feed it to the dog. And when he does get home I’m going to heat him up a nice big plate of horseshit, genuine Western horseshit. Ask him if he thinks
that’s
funny, why don’t you?’

“I guess she banged the phone down so hard she near busted Ed’s eardrum,” Mr. McFadden concluded, while everybody laughed some more. Except me.

I was busy nudging Andrew with an elbow and muttering how these old men had it all wrong, that Roy Rogers’ horse was Trigger, not Champion. So how could Mrs. McKay have won the prize? I remember Andrew kept shushing me, afraid, I suppose, that I would embarrass him in front of these men. He had an instinct for those things, like the importance of listening to their stories, laughing at the right moments, and never challenging them for accuracy or logic, never doing anything that would break the spell of the storytelling. He really loved those characters we would meet in the barbershop.

And they had such names — Johnny Picket Nose, Alec and a Half, Boozer McPherson. And that’s what they would call themselves, when they’d tell us to say hello to our mother for them. There was always someone who went to school with her, used to live across the road from her, or sold her father a “team of black horses, back in the spring of ’36, or was it ’37? Well, anyways, it was a few years back, there. She’ll know the ones I mean, a matched team.” Andrew would faithfully relay the message and spend fifteen minutes getting the guy’s life story out of my mother, including the origin of his nickname.