Brian ODea - High: confessions of a pot smuggler

For Brian Daniels and Ricardo Vasquez,
who continue paying the all-too-great price

COME, COME, whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving; it doesnt matter, ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times. Come, come yet again, come.

Rumi

THERES NOTHING SPECIAL about us kids except that were John ODeas kids, and he owns the Newfoundland Brewery. We live up on Lawlers farm on Cherry Hill Road, and you know the sort of place it is. Its that big sort of farmhouse with two storeys and a basement and a really big kitchen, a huge kitchen with this table made of wood thats as long as anything youve ever seen, as long as maybe a Chevrolet, maybe not quite.

This house is right on top of Cherry Hill, and when I was a really little kid it was all fields there, but later, when I was eleven, for instance, when this story happens, there were plenty of other houses being built around. Theres a long, long driveway up from Cherry Hill Road to our house, and boy, you dont want your father to tell you and your brother Johnny to shovel snow out of that driveway. Not Saturday morning, you dont. And Chris, whos about a year younger than me, he never got told until he was about twelve. I dont know why. Lucky.

Theres two barns, too, on the farm, a big one and a little one, and there used to be a garage, but a kid burnt it down by accident two years ago. A kid used to steal cigarettes from his mom, and there was a sort of double wall inside the garage, and the kid would drop the cigarette package down there and fish it out with a garden rake. One time, the kid couldnt get the pack out, and he lit a piece of paper with a match and dropped it down the wall so he could see the pack. Boy, that burned, and the kid ran and got a watering can, but no use and the kid ran way down the lane to Cherry Hill Road and pulled the fire alarm and hid. After the fire trucks came, the kid came up the lane like he wanted to see what was going on.

When I was eleven, Dad had a blue 53 Chevy and Mom had an olive and yellow 57 Chevy. They had my two sisters too, Eileen and Judy, who was Johnnys twin, but all this isnt about them.

I went to Winterton School until I was eleven. It was a nice school for little kids. The main problem was red blazers and red and green striped ties and grey short pants, which were the worst part, and grey knee socks. And the teachers were women, which was embarrassing for you when you got older. I can tell you, I couldnt wait to get to St. Bons, where Johnny and the older boys went.

Where we live, in St. Johns, Newfoundland, everybodys pretty religious. Whatever church you go to on Sunday morning, thats the kind of school you go to for the rest of the week and the hockey team you play on in the winter and the baseball team you play on in the summer and the scout troop. Its a big thing, a big deal, your religion. I dont know why. We kids and Mom and Dad are Catholics.

Every day at about seven in the morning, Dad would start pushing and rocking us and calling at us kids to get up. There were five big bedrooms, and everybody had their own bedroom except Mom and Dad and also Chris and me. Dad would say, All right now, all right. Theres nothing more to be had from sleeping when youve slept enough and stuff like that. Wed all get up and pee and wash, and it was cold in winter upstairs, Ill tell you. Wed all brush our teeth and get dressed and go downstairs. Mom made breakfast, not Dad, and sometimes it was bacon and eggs, which I liked, and sometimes it was brewis, which youve probably heard about. You know theres lots of salt fish in St. Johns, lots of cod, and Mom would soak this hard salt fish overnight in water and then rinse it off real careful in the morning. Shed heat up the frying pan and crisp up little pieces of fatback pork and put in the fish, and shed soak these little pieces of hard old bread too, and when they were just right, in theyd go and shed mix it all around. That was how Mom made brewis, anyway, and wed have porridge sometimes and homemade bread and jam. If us kids were real lucky, wed sometimes get toutons, which Mom made by frying up bread dough in grease and covering it over in syrup or molasses. All this time, the CBC radio would be yacking away on the shelf. Then we always had to give India her food. She was a big Newfoundland dog. You could see her picture on the label of Dads beer. She was a good old water dog, India, except, like a fool, she kept thinking she was pregnant when she wasnt usually. Shed dig these funny holes in the ground and lie there in them. I dont know what her problem was. Lonely.

When I was eleven, it was a fairly good summer. It wasnt as bad as most. There wasnt as much rain, drizzle and fogRDF everybody called it, but it wasnt that bad that summer. Weekends Dad and Mom and us would drive out to the Greens summer house way out on Olivers Pond, maybe eight miles or so. The Greens were friends of Dad and Moms. There were blueberries, plenty of them, up on the barrens. You could just go out and pick, and wed also have a picnic sometimes by the water, the sea that is. They had a platform that floated in the water near the shore, and wed dive off seems like all day. On the way home, wed say the rosary, all of us, because we were good Catholics, and then wed pull into Cherry Hill Road, which was still dirt, and right there at the bottom of our driveway, right there every time, would be this old Plymouth and thered be these two old ladies in it looking out at the sunset. Somebody might say they were ghosts. I dont know. Maybe they were saying their rosary. It gave me a spooky feeling, but a good spooky feeling, like they were old guardians waiting for us to come home, keeping it safe for us.

Wed all run upstairs, us kids, and get washed and changed for bed. Sometimes I was last, and halfway up, the stairs turned and went the other way and you could see under this radiator and past the radiator was the upstairs hallway. I just had to look under that radiator every time, just to make sure there were no ghosts there, but I think there were anyway. I dont know for sure.

There was a niche in the wall in the upstairs hallway and there we had an altar and thats where the blessed Virgin Mary was. Wed all of us, even Mom and even Dad, get on our knees there every evening and say the rosary. I was afraid of God, like all of us. And the demons in hell, where wed burn. I was very afraid. But the Blessed Virgin understood about that. The Blessed Virgin would always be there to listen, no matter. Thats what was good about her.

Of course, I was eleven that summer. That fall, all the little kids got to stay at Winterton School and I got to go to St. Bonaventures College for Boys and Chris got to go there too. Mom took us out to Ayres two weeks before, got us our blue blazers and our long grey pants and the blue and gold striped ties. I put mine on twice on the Saturday before school started and just looked in the mirror and saw how I was no little kid now.

I was excited that first morning, Ill tell you. Chris and me and Johnny got in Dads Chev, and Dad said things were getting easier now he could take all his boys to one school.

Along Cherry Hill Road we passed the spot where we played street hockey, and it was getting to be the time again. School and leaves falling and then the street hockey gets going good. Bull Cook and Andy Wells and Harry Warford and Dave Pope and Derek Blandford and Herbie Compton and Danny Breen. Hockeys a big thing for kids.