Brian Doyle - The Brian Doyle Essentials Bundle

Published in Canada and the USA in 2016 by Groundwood Books
groundwoodboks.com

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ISBN 978-1-77306-056-9 (epub) ISBN 978-1-77306-057-6 (mobi)

Cover photograph by Tim Fuller
Design by Kaitlyn Sykes

Other Books by Brian Doyle

MARY ANN ALICE
THE LOW LIFE
UNCLE RONALD
SPUD IN WINTER
SPUD SWEETGRASS
COVERED BRIDGE
ANGEL SQUARE
UP TO LOW
EASY AVENUE

YOU CAN PICK ME UP AT PEGGYS COVE
HEY, DAD!

Brian Doyle

Copyright 2003 by Brian Doyle
First published in the USA in 2004
New paperback edition 2005

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Groundwood Books
720 Bathurst Street, Suite 500, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2R4

Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Ontario Arts Council.

National Library of Canada Cataloging in Publication
Doyle, Brian
Boy OBoy / by Brian Doyle.
ISBN 0-88899-654-3
1. World War, 1939-1945-Canada-Juvenile Fiction.
2. Ontario-Social conditions1918-1945-Juvenile fiction.
3. Child sexual abuse-Juvenile fiction.
I. Title.
PS8557.087B69 2005 jC813.54 C2004-906715-X

Cover photograph by Tim Fuller
Design by Michael Solomon
Printed and bound in Canada

The writer of a tale always needs other peoples help to get it right. I would like to thank Marilyn Kennedy for processing the material and keeping it on track; Mike Paradis for his sharp-eyed editing and helpful feedback; Desmond Hassell of Parkdale United Church, Ottawa, for his pipe organ instruction; and my longtime partner in concocting musicals and other illegal products, Stanley Clark, who trained my ears to hear Crown Imperial.

I am also indebted to Jeanne Safers excellent study, The Normal One: Life With a Difficult or Damaged Sibling (The Free Press, New York, 2002).

This book is dedicated to my sister Fay, of Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia, and my brother Mike, of Clayton, Ontario. And to Sandy Farquharson, who wears a sleep mask. And to Debra Joynt, of Chelsea School, a great teacher.

MY GRANNY DIED last night. Death will come and take her tonight. Thats what they said. Death came and Granny died. But she was still there. Death didnt take her away. It was a big black car that came and took her away.

I was named after her. Her name was Martina. I am Martin. No a on the end. My last name is OBoy. Im Martin OBoy. Some people try to call me Boy OBoy. But I dont like it.

My father was sleeping downstairs on the couch with the spring sticking up. My mother was sleeping on the floor beside the bed upstairs where Granny was. This morning early before the sun came up the men came and got Granny and drove her away in a big black car.

Now, I guess, my mother and father can go back to their own bed.

Last night we were all standing beside the bed: Dr. OMalley, Father Fortier, my mother, my father, my twin brother, Phil, and Cheap, my cat.

My granny stopped breathing. I heard the last breath she let out. It was a long breath. Like a long sigh.

Oh

Dear

Me.

It sounded like she was very, very tired. So tired.

Father Fortier was saying the words.

Dr. OMalley was nodding his nods.

A few hours later I went back in to see her. To see my granny.

The doctor and the priest were gone. Phil, my twin, was asleep. My mother and father were down in the kitchen, arguing, but not very loud.

I go in to see Granny.

The light from the hallway cuts into the room. Her dark shape. There on the bed. Is she breathing? No. The bed, did it creak? No. Darker than night on the other side of the room.

Her legs feel hard like logs floating in the river. Arms like the marble of a statue. Cement feet. Hands like stone. Fingers like carrots in the dark cold storage. Her face of glass cold, thick glass.

My granny dead. Her hair like silk. Her head like the heads of the iron soldiers at the war monument

The men came and covered her and put her on a stretcher and they grunted and groaned with her all the way down our narrow stairs when they carried her.

I remember Granny specially in the winter when shed come over almost every day. She lived on Robinson Avenue over in Overbrook near the slaughterhouse. She used to walk all the way down to our house almost every day from there. Past the slaughterhouse, down the path through the thick, tall dark tunnel of bush along the Rideau River, through Strathcona Park, up to Baron Strathconas fountain, over to Rideau Street and down Cobourg Street, past Heney Park to the corner of Papineau Street and our place.

Granny was very beautiful, even though she was old. She had long, long curly hair and big blue eyes. My twin brother Phil would run to the door when she came in and so did I.

Wed feel her cold fur coat with some of the fur out of it and Id laugh at her fogged-up glasses. When she came into the hot hallway out of the cold her glasses would fog up right away and she wouldnt be able to see a thing.

Ah canna see a thing, shed say. Ah canna see but ah ken its ye wee uns!

She talked that way because she was from Scotland.

And wed feel her coat and Id reach in her pockets and look for candy she always had there and Id put her umbrella in the corner for her and help her take off her coat.

And my twin brother Phil would have a candy in his hand and start howling for somebody to take the paper off for him.

Granny always had her umbrella with her. Even in the winter. The black umbrella with the very sharp point on the end.

My mother once told me that a long time ago one summer around when I was born a man came out of the slaughterhouse and started following Granny down the path along the Rideau River and she started walking faster and so did he and she started running with her long hair flying and he was running too and she had her umbrella with her because it looked like rain and she stopped suddenly and turned around and stabbed him in the face with the black umbrella with the very sharp point on the end and he bent over with his hands covering his face and then she ran up to Baron Strathconas fountain and stopped there to get her breath and she turned around and looked back and he was gone and maybe she poked out one of his eyes