Hold Fast (6 page)

“This is not enough to get me through the week.” That was the first words I heard. My ears perked up. The fight was over money. It wasn't the last one I was to hear about that.

“Well, that's all you're getting,” Uncle Ted said. Sounded to me like he wasn't about to change his mind.

“It's not enough,” Marie said. I could barely hear her voice.

“Just tell me what you need more than that for. You're not running the British Navy for god's sake.” No trouble to hear him, though.

“For everything.”

“Everything! That's some answer I know. Okay, you buy everything you can till the money runs out. Then all you got to do is stop.” He started to laugh.

“Dad, I need to buy some new clothes for school. School just opened and I haven't bought one thing.”

“Your mother gave you some money for clothes last week.”

“It wasn't enough.”

“Christ, Marie, I'm not made of money!” he yelled. It was the first time I heard him swear.

“Well, we're not exactly poverty-stricken.”

“Listen, my lady, you've got all you're going to get and that's that. Take it and don't ask for any more. I don't want to hear another word about it. Every week it's the same goddamn thing. I'll be jesus glad when you can earn some
money of your own! Then you might see it's not so easy to come by.”

The swear words, when he spitted them out of him, was almost enough to curl up my guts. Not the words, that was nothing. I was used to that. But the way he said them. People swears in different ways. Dad use to swear and he hardly had a clue he was saying it. But the way the same words came out of Uncle Ted, it was like a set of teeth tearing into her.

Marie took off running down the hall, probably crying. I couldn't tell. It was then I got stunned even worse than before. I heard someone in the living room say to him, “Ted, try not to be so hard on her.” It was Aunt Ellen. All that time she was in the room with them and she'd never said a word.

“Ellen,” he told her, in just about the same voice he used on Marie, “don't poke your nose into this! I handle the money. You stay out of it.”

Stunned again. I never heard a man speak like that before to his wife and mean it, the way Uncle Ted sounded like he did. Maybe I was just dumb when it came to the way other parents talked to each other. I laid down the empty tumbler fast on the table and snuck out into the hall and tried not to make a sound the whole way down to the room. I got inside and closed the door quietly behind me.

That night, lying there on the bed, I had a lot to think about. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I mean, perhaps Marie did waste loads of money. I didn't know. Even if she did, that wasn't much of a way to talk to her. It wasn't even a sensible argument. All it was was someone laying
down the law. And what he said to Aunt Ellen. Sure you wouldn't talk to your dog like that. I knows Mom wouldn't a hauled off and clobbered anybody who said that to her. No, it's a laugh she wouldn't've. I'd be half scared to blink my eyes, afraid I'd miss it.

As the next few weeks went by, Uncle Ted started to paint a pretty clear picture of the way he really was. And it was a picture that I wasn't very fussy about, that's for sure. If I'd a known about it before I left to come, they wouldn't a dragged me from Marten, no not with a dozen teams of wild horses. It must a been some strain on him to be half decent the way he was first when I came, that's all I can say. Going by what he was after, I would a give him a cartload of trophies for the show he put on.

Once he got himself into the right gear, it all boiled down to this. The way he wanted things in the house was the way they had to be done. That was it. No questions asked unless you wanted a bloody big fight on your hands. It was up to him when we had supper, who done the dishes. He decided what channel was on the color TV, what time everyone was expected to be in bed, what time everyone was awake in the morning. Cripes, it got so after a while I didn't know whether or not I should try going to the bathroom to take a leak without first getting his okay.

He never said much straight out to me about what I was expected to do. Good thing for him that he didn't. It was just taken for granted that I would follow along like everyone else. I did too, for awhile, because when you're asked into someone else's house you don't go picking fights right away with the one who owns the place. It's
only when things gets too much outa hand. Then you got to draw the line.

See, it wasn't just the arguments and the big-boss bit I didn't like. It was his whole way of looking at things that got on my nerves after a spell. After the first few days, I hardly ever seen him crack a smile, not what you could call a honest-to-goodness smile. When he did laugh, it was usually at someone else, the way they done things. He might a made out he was in a good mood sometimes, but just let anyone do one little thing he didn't like and see how long he'd stay that way. Worst of all was how he always snapped back at people when they said anything against him. Worse than a husky dog that hadn't been fed.

I kept quiet about it all, kept what I thought to myself. I was in a different position than what Marie and Curtis was. I hadn't gone through all my life living with him like they'd done. And he never talked to me the way he did to them. So I wasn't about to start a racket. Not that I didn't have a good mind to sometimes. I had that much hopping around on my tongue I had to force my mouth shut to keep it all in.

It would a been different altogether if I had been Curtis. I just didn't understand that fellow. He took it all like he was a dummy. If he didn't think his old man was right about something, say when he'd get a big goin-over for stupid little things like breaking a glass, he might say that he didn't try to do it and leave it at that. Or say it was a week night and not even nine-thirty and too early to go to bed, he might tell his father that he didn't really want to and then there would be no more said about it. After
another five minutes he'd go to the room and start getting undressed. I mean, he wasn't a kid anymore. He was the same age I was. It wasn't like he was five years old and should a been stuck in bed whether he liked it or not.

Sure I got madder than he did himself about the way he got told what to do all the time. He had his books and it almost looked to me like that was all he wanted. Sometimes he never even got to enjoy them. Every school night about ten-thirty there'd be a march past the door by the old man to make sure there was no lights still on in the room. Then he'd double back, open the door fast and stick his head in. Like we was prisoners in a jail cell or some bloody thing.

Could you understand something like that? I couldn't. To me it was all a pile of bull. The man wasn't a father if he was forever a pain in the arse. It's one thing to keep order around the house, but it's something else again when a fellow can't have a minute's peace because someone is always on his back.

I had it in my mind a good many times to say that to Curtis. In the nighttime, before I'd be asleep, I'd try to come up with something to say to him a little less mean, that maybe wouldn't hurt his feelings. I tried hard, but I could never figure out anything that was nice enough and still told the truth.

After a time, it was that too that brought me and Curtis together, into being better friends. I found out that neither one of us had much use for that old man of his.

I knows what some of you are thinking. That just because my own father was dead, I'd never find anything to like in
any father that wasn't the way he was. Well, that's not true atall. You're probably thinking too that up to then I always got my own way about everything and now I was mad because that wasn't the way it was anymore. Well, you're wrong. I wasn't brought up a spoiled brat. I got told off a good many times and made do things I didn't much like. But Mom and Dad always tried to be fair about everything, that's the difference. So if that's the way you're thinking, then you can just get it outa your head right now.

Another reason I was bugged was because the way the old man went about things rubbed off on everybody else in the house. They all walked around looking like they was so bloody miserable most of the time. If they smiled at all their faces probably would a cracked in two pieces. They might a had ten times more stuff in their house than we ever had, but they was no better off for it. You'd think they never had a cent to their name, the way they went around forever being crabby to each other. Maybe the old man's business was doing rotten or something, I didn't know. He sold cars. I was down to his showroom once or twice, but he never said anything about it for me to hear.

I thought too, first when I came, that maybe Aunt Ellen would a been different than she was. I mean, she was good enough to me with regards to food and money and things like that. I had no reason to complain there. And I made sure that every now and then I'd tell her how much I liked what she cooked. She got right off on the compliments, because I don't figure she ever had very many of them.

But still for all she looked to be pretty much in the
dumps most of the time. She never said anything about it. She never said all that much, period. I guess he would a put a stop to that. I'd like to've known how in the world she ever got mixed up with someone like him in the first place.

One of the only things I ever seen her get a real kick out of was the story that comes on TV in the afternoon. About four-thirty every day, there she'd be, mind stuck to the set, tea in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Her right caught up in every word that was being said. She'd hardly notice me when I'd come into the room. She wouldn't miss not a second of it. Anything she had to do in the kitchen, she'd rush in and do it during the commercials. I didn't understand what she seen in it, myself. How anyone could spend so much time watching the same people in some kind of misery with each other every single day was beyond me. But I spose she got something out of it, whatever it was.

The way everything was being done in the house, it all took some getting use to. As much as I could, I kept to myself when I was there. I spent most of my time in the bedroom or downstairs in the rec room.

And I didn't come to like school near as good as I liked it in Marten, even though the school in St. Albert was bigger and had a lot more. I guess it was because in Marten I knew everybody.

Usually I don't find it hard to make friends. I turns after Dad when it comes to that, because he'd go up to anyone atall, whether he knew them or not, and have the biggest kinda chat. I'm usually something the same way. And I was stupid enough to think that it would work in that school too. That it was just a matter of starting up a conversation and everybody would be friendly. Well, I was dead wrong there.

On the second morning, there I was hanging around this bunch of fellows in the corridor during recess, saying a few things to them. All of a sudden they started in looking at me like I was a real fool, like I was some kinda nut to be talking to them when they didn't know me. The
friggers, they kept on laughing at me even after I moved away.

I had to spend the rest of recess then walking around the corridors, trying not to look like I never had anyone to talk to. I had one eye out for Curtis, but I didn't come across him anywhere. Then, just as the bell went, I met up with this fellow who seemed to be a bit more civilized.

“Don't mind those other guys,” he said to me. “They're a real bunch of jerks.” He must a seen what happened. He was on his way to the same class I was, but we didn't get much of a chance to speak to each other because as soon as we went in the classroom the teacher came in and started talking. Not even a chance to find out buddy's name.

It was history class. The teacher got into it right away about the Micmacs and the Beothuks. He switched on full force. After a while though, what he was saying all got to be pretty interesting. I thought a lot about the Beothuks before, ever since we studied a poem about them once. I mean, it was a rotten thing what happened to them. Here they was, this group of Indians in Newfoundland before any white fellow ever set foot on the place, and they all died or got killed off, and for no reason except that the settlers figured it was no great loss to anyone if they was dead. I heard Grandfather say he heard tell that when the Beothuks lived around home, someone came once and slaughtered fourteen of them the one time. It's hard to believe, that is. But I knows for a fact myself that they lived near home, because some of us found flints and there've been cooking places found down near Birchy Cove.

I had a good mind to tell the teacher all that. If I was back in my old school I would've. Not hesitated a bit. But instead I got my mind back to just listening to him. He started reading from these old books where different travelers had mentioned the Beothuks and how they lived. I was figuring that I'd have no worries about my history mark if that was the kind of stuff we would be doing.

Then Mr. Harris, that was his name, started in asking questions. You can always tell who's going to get asked first. It's the same way with any teacher — the person that shows either sign of not paying attention. One of the fellows over by the window was his first victim. The fellow didn't have a clue what he was talking about. He didn't even have the sense to fake an answer. All the teacher asked him was how he thought the Beothuks would be treated if there was some still alive today. I mean, any dummy could give an opinion. The fellow just shook his head.

That's the way it always happens. The teacher asks a couple that he thinks won't have an answer, bawls them out and gives a little lecture about not paying attention, then goes on to someone who looks like they might know something.

After about five minutes he got around to me. First I wasn't sure if I should say much because I was in this class where I didn't know anyone. And some of them jerks who'd been in the corridor was in the class too. What the hell, I thought, I don't give a darn about them.