Brian Doyle - The Brian Doyle Up to Low Bundle

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

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ISBN 978-1-77306-058-3 (epub) ISBN 978-1-77306-059-0 (mobi)

Cover photograph by Tim Fuller
Design by Kaitlyn Sykes

Other Books by Brian Doyle

B OY OB OY

M ARY A NN A LICE

T HE L OW L IFE

S PUD IN W INTER

S PUD S WEETGRASS

C OVERED B RIDGE

A NGEL S QUARE

E ASY A VENUE

U NCLE R ONALD

Y OU C AN P ICK M E U P AT P EGGY S C OVE

H EY , D AD !

Up to Low

Brian Doyle

Copyright 1982 by Brian Doyle
New paperback edition 2004

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 / Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
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.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Doyle, Brian
Up to Low / Brian Doyle.
First published: Toronto: Groundwood Books, 1982.
ISBN 0-88899-622-5
I. Title.
PS8557.O87U6 2004 jC813.54 C2004-904812-0

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

Thanks to my wife Jackie, the classiest of ladies, who teaches that to leave something of you behind is your reason on earth.

W E HADNT BEEN up to Low to our cabin since my sister Pamela died. Dad and I were going to go up ahead to clean the cabin and then Aunt Dottie was going to come up later. You see, Aunt Dottie was very clean and Dad knew that she would be unhappy if there was dirt around or any germs or crud in the cabin.

Aunt Dottie always covered her face when she coughed and when anyone else coughed too. And she always wiped her feet three times each on the mat, and not on the same place on the mat either. And she never used anyone elses spoon or took a bite of anyone elses apple and she didnt like me to do these things either. And always put toilet paper on the seat if youre at somebody elses house. And never touch the toothpaste tube on your toothbrush when youre putting on toothpaste. And always rub the cucumber ends against the cucumber to get the poison out. And dont eat candy unless its wrapped. And always wipe yourself three times.

And all that.

We were packing and Aunt Dottie was helping us. Dad was talking about Mean Hughie, one of his old rivals.

They tell me Mean Hughies going to die, he was saying as he rolled up a pair of pants and shoved them into his suitcase.

And dont drink the water unless you boil it first, Aunt Dottie was saying as she took out the rolled up pants, folded them, wrapped them in sheets of tissue paper and put them carefully back in the suitcase.

Yes, Dad was saying, Mean Hughies got the cancer, they tell me. Ill believe it when I see it. I think hes too mean to die. He was firing socks into a knapsack.

And after you kill flies, Aunt Dottie was saying, be sure you wrap them each in little tissues and burn them. She was taking the socks from the knapsack and spraying each of them with Lysol and placing them in little individual bags. And the same if you blow your nose, she said. Blow it in a little tissue and burn it right away.

Mean Hughie is the meanest man in the Gatineau, Dad was saying, while Aunt Dottie was in the kitchen scrubbing the bottoms of our shoes with steel wool and Dutch Cleanser.

And dont step in anything around that farm, she called over the sound of the taps running.

Yesser, Dad was saying, if Mean Hughie dies, hell have to go somewhere, but I cant for the life of me guess where it is theyd send him. Heavens out of the question and Hells too nice a spot for him.

And be sure when you pick berries to wash them in this Lysol before you eat them, Aunt Dottie said as she placed a large jar of Lysol in the big knapsack.

It was finally time to go.

We said goodbye to Aunt Dottie, and when I went to kiss her she turned her face away and I got her on the ear.

Germs, I guess.

She promised shed see us in a couple of weeks.

Itll take her a month to get ready, Dad was saying as we went down the stairs. Itll be a month before shes clean enough to even leave the house!

We had two army backpacks that Dad had brought back from the war and two old suitcases. We walked down to St. Patrick Street to wait for the streetcar.

There are two kinds of streetcars: tall and short. My favorite are the tall ones. They seem to me to be more intelligent looking. They have a serious look on their faces. And they rock side to side in an easy kind of way. A way that makes everybody lean together. The person you sit beside can lean on you a bit and you can hold a bit stiff until it is time to lean the other way and then he can do the same. This way you are always touching, back and forward, as though you are one person. It is very friendly. The short streetcars are different. They snap and whip and make people sitting together bump each other and crash around in the seat so that you cant think straight.

The streetcar we got on was a tall one and Dad and I put our backpacks and suitcases on one seat and sat in another. We were rocking from side to side down St. Patrick Street, nice and even and easy, and I was thinking about Mean Hughie.

Mean Hughie and his big, poor family and the farmhouse they lived in with the daylight coming through between the logs and the crooked floor and the broken furniture. I had only been there once, when I was a kid. My mother sent me over to buy some raisin bread from Mean Hughies wife, Poor Bridget. That was her name. Poor Bridget. Everybody called her that because of what she had to put up with. Poor Bridget was standing at her kitchen table, up to her elbows in flour, punching a big lump of bread dough and sprinkling raisins on it while about a million flies buzzed around competing with the raisins. And everywhere youd look there was a kid peeking, very shy, from behind something or from under something. Kids under Poor Bridgets dress, behind chairs, under the table, behind the stove, peeking out the cellar door, behind the butter churn, and from under an old bed in the corner where their grandfather was lying like a corpse with his mouth open.