Hold Fast (7 page)

I told the teacher what he wanted to know about where the last of the Beothuks died, and when and how. I probably should a stopped there. But before I knew it I was asking him questions. One thing got around to
another, and in a few minutes I was telling him about all the stuff we found. Flints that we was sure must a been used by the Beothuks and how we almost went so far as to dig up what we thought was a grave. Only someone from the university in St. John's came out and stopped us.

The teacher was really interested in what I was saying and so were most of the others in the class. But I could see two or three of the jerks laughing to each other. The hell with them.

The bell rang and Mr. Harris said we would carry on the discussion the next day and how interesting it was and all that. I got up to leave when the fellow who was talking to me before came over and started chatting away again and asking me questions. Like where I was from and that. I told him and we talked back and forth all the way to the next class. Gerard was his name. Gerard was to become the best friend I would ever make in that school.

The class after history was English. In a different room, but with all the same students. The two of us sat down and kept on talking, waiting for the teacher to come in. I wasn't paying much heed to the others, but just before the English teacher came through the door, I heard this voice from the back of the room.

“Back home in Marten, we was always right good at suckin up to teachers.”

I whipped my head around to see who said it. One of those friggin dummies was mocking what I'd said to Mr. Harris in the other class. There was no way of telling who it was — I seen three or four of them who laughed at me in the corridor all snickering away. Cripes, I was vicious! But by then the teacher was stood up there in front of the
class ready to start and I couldn't say a god-blessed thing. And what pissed me off even more was the fact that I had turned red in the face. Like they had embarrassed me. It wasn't that atall. I was just too bloody mad to be any other color.

It's hard to say what I would a done if the teacher hadn't come in when he did. I daresay I would a pitched right into the whole damn lot of them. Give them a friggin good piece of my fist they didn't plan on.

All the way through English class I couldn't keep my mind atall on what I was sposed to be doing. It was an interest questionnaire or some stupid thing.

Making fun like that gets me savage — making fun of people because of the way they talks and because I asked Harris a few lousy questions. Everyone around home talks like I do. What bloody odds do it make anyway, so long as people understands what you got to say?

And him, whoever he was, saying that I was sucking up to the teacher. The stupid jerk. I wished to god I had it by the scruff of the neck. He wouldn't a said it more than once. No, by frig, he wouldn't've. Gerard slipped a note across to me. I unfolded the bit of paper and read it. The note said, “It was either George Simmons, Gene Morris, or Lewis Kentson. They're the biggest ____ in school. Take it from me — forget them. It'll only get you in worse trouble.”

He didn't fill in the blank in case the teacher ever got hold of the note. But I had no trouble filling it in in my mind. I sent back the very same slip of paper with two more words scrawled across the bottom of it — “Like hell.” Boy, was I ever mad.

By the time the bell rang for the end of the class, I had cooled down a bit from what I was first. The English teacher was still collecting up his papers when I went out the door and set up watch for them in the corridor. Gerard came up by me, trying to talk me outa saying anything to them. He was wasting his breath.

The three dummies came out together, laughing and carrying on like a bunch of goons. When they came near where I was standing I stepped out straight in front of them.

“Which one of you jerks made fun of me in there?” I said.

For a second they didn't realize what was going on. They didn't figure me for one who would come back at them.

“What's your problem?” one said.

“You heard me. Which one of you was it or haven't you got the guts to say?”

“This baywop's got a problem with his words,” one said to the other, laughing like it was all a big joke. “He's going to have to learn to speak better if he's going to suck up to the English teacher.”

“Yeah, or he might as well stay ‘back home in Marten' where he belongs.”

“You blood-of-a-bitch!” I fired down my books and grabbed into the last fellow who spoke. He wasn't expecting it. I grabbed his shirt with my two hands and hauled it tight around his lousy throat. He must a been two inches taller than me.

It turned out that the guy was Kentson. I gave him a darn good shove and sent him flying back against one of
the lockers. His books went everywhere. I would a had the shit knocked outa him too if the other two goons hadn't dragged me clear. I was spittin fire. I was just about free of them and ready to plow right into the other jerk again, when the English teacher came out and saw us.

“What's going on here?” he yelled.

“Nothing, sir,” Gerard said, trying to smooth it over. “Just a little disagreement.”

“Disagreement! Yes, it sure looks like a little disagreement. You fellows want to get sent to the principal's office? You know this is only the second day of school? Get to your classes right now, all of you. If I see that again, I'll have you put on detention for a month.”

Gerard helped me collect up my books. The others took off down the corridor while the teacher stood up watching me.

That was the way it ended. What a rip off! I would a had him pounded good if I'd a had half a chance. Instead it was all over and nothing much done. Although there was one thing for sure. They wouldn't be so darn slick the next time to open their mouths. I knew that for a fact.

By the next day it was all over the school about a new fellow getting into a scrape with Kentson and about just how it started. I kept getting stares from one corridor to the other. People I never even seen before started coming up to me and talking and saying that Kentson needed something like that a long time ago, because “he's always shooting off his big mouth.”

I came to find out that a good many of them was Gerard's friends. The ones everybody else called “the bus
crowd” — those that didn't live right in St. Albert, but came in every day on bus from a place called Simon's Bay, eight miles outside. The bus crowd hung around a lot together in the one group. In fact, the whole school was made up of groups that stuck to theirselves. The ones who figured they was the big shots was Kentson and that bunch — the stuck-up jerks I tried to talk to before I had either clue as to what I was doing. If you went by them, the bus crowd was sposed to be the bottom of the barrel.

It was almost like I got to be adopted as a hero for the way I stood up to Kentson so quick. I didn't know what to make of it. But it's no good saying that I didn't enjoy it, cause I did.

Gerard turned out to be the best of the lot. The others was nice enough, but Gerard and me got along like we'd been buddies all our lives. When we met together before school and between classes we spent the time talking about fishing and all the other things I knew most about. Where he came from was a lot like Marten. A little bit bigger maybe, but the fellows done all the same kinds of things.

When it came to the house, there I was fitting in like two left hands in a right-handed mitt. The only one I had much time for anymore was Curtis.

Me and Curtis got off on the wrong foot, but after the first few days we was managing it pretty good. When I went home that Wednesday after getting into it with Kentson, he didn't say anything about what happened. In fact, it was almost two weeks later, after we'd started to get along better with each other, that he brought it up. Up till then, it was mostly me who got underway any of the talks we had. He had just that minute crawled into bed when he propped himself up on one elbow and looked across the room at me. Dead serious.

“Too bad you didn't beat the piss outa that Kentson while you were at it,” he said.

I almost thought I should run off to the bathroom, get a box of Q-tips and clean out my ears. That? Coming from Curtis?

“Why, what's he done now?” I said.

“Nothing new. Just that he's forever got his tongue going. He thinks there's no one like himself.”

“How'd you get to know en?”

“He used to be in my class last year,” Curtis said. “But his marks were so bad that this year they dropped him down to all B classes. Someone told me that his father was in to see the principal about it and kicked up the biggest kind of stink trying to get him put back in A. He never got moved back, though.”

“Yeah, I guess we're stuck with him.”

“I'm just glad he's not in my class anymore.”

“Did he ever do anything to ya?”

“No.”

It wasn't a very convincing “no.” It was a “no” that came across more like a “yes.”

“Had hes mouth goin about something I bet. What was it?”

“Ah, his mouth was always goin about something. He used to stick names on me. That was most of it.”

“Did you have a crack at en or what?”

“I thought about it a lot,” he said, trying to sound brave. The way he said it, I could just picture what took place.

“That's your problem,” I told him. “You don't stand up for your rights.”

He never said anything.

“What, you afraid you'll get your face beat in? Sure he's not much bigger than you.”

Of course there was more muscle on a turnip top. But that shouldn't a stopped him from trying, from standing up to somebody when he had good reason to. I mean, fighting never done anybody much good when you sizes it up, but there comes a point where you got to stick up
for who you are, whether it means a racket or not. But I guess if I had as much chance as Curtis did of coming out on the winning end of a fight, then I'd be scared stiff too.

I tried to make him see that the type Kentson was, he only picked on someone he figured wouldn't fight back anyway. I was telling him this when all of a sudden we heard the army sergeant outside. That was the new name I had stuck on him. Just as I stretched my arm up to switch off the lamp, the door opened and in he walked.

“Curtis,” he said, “it's time you were asleep. Cut out your talking now and get some shut-eye. Off with the light. Morning comes early, you know.” Then, with the room dark, he goes out and closes the door.

Morning comes early! Wow, the man was brilliant!

After the troop inspection was over, I just had to say something to Curtis about it. I couldn't hold it in anymore.

“Curtis, don't that get on your nerves?”

“What?”

“The dumb march past the door every night. Cripes, you wouldn't know but we was in the army or something.”

Curtis never said anything right away. Then, after about a minute of me wondering whether or not I should a said what I did, he half-whispered, “Sometimes I feel like telling him off. He bugs me.”

I didn't know how far I should go with that. After all, it was his father we was talking about now, not some fellow at school. But there wasn't any easy way around it if I was going to tell him what I really thought.

“Sure he treats you like some two-year-old.”

“I know.”

“Well, why don't you say something to him about it?”

When he didn't answer, I said, “Well, why not?”

“Because he'd only get mad and fly off the handle, that's why.”

“Sure, what odds? You wouldn't be any worse off than you are now.”

“That's what you think. You don't know what he's like.”

“I've heard the arguments.”

“That's nothing.”

“Whata ya mean, nothing?”

He hesitated for a while. Finally, after a little more coaxing, I got it outa him.

“One time last year he got so mad he fired dinner right across the kitchen while we were at the table. Mom got hit with a piece of glass that cut her face open.”

“Frig off.”

“No, that's the truth. And he's done a lot worse than that too.”

“Like what?”

“Like beat me with a leather belt when I was small till it left black and blue marks.”

“Bullshit.”

“Wanta make a bet.”

Ah, I couldn't really believe that a father would do something like that to his own son. I never ever knew anybody before who told me a story like that and expected me to believe it.

Maybe he was telling the truth. If he was, then there was no trouble to see why he would be afraid of his old man.

“Would he try anything like that now?”

“I wouldn't put it past him. It was a long time ago he did anything as bad as that. But I wouldn't cross him up.”

“But you can't go on livin like you're scared to death of him.”

“Well, just what would you do?”

That stopped me pretty fast, I'll admit. It was a good question. Just what would I do? I wouldn't be in his family to start off with. That much I knew. Then I guess if I was born there like he was…well, I did know that I'd stand up to him more than Curtis was doing. Whatever happened to me.

The talk we had that night done a lot to get the air cleared up. It put a lot of things out in the open and we could discuss them knowing pretty well how the other guy would take it. I wouldn't go so far as to say I liked having to live in St. Albert any better, but at least after that, there was one person in the house who I knew I could bang around the truth with. After a while it got so that I could even crack a few jokes and get a good laugh from him. Some of the jokes mightn't a been the cleanest. I don't know where I picked them up. To be honest, I doubt if half the time he knew what I was talking about. But he was willing to laugh and that was the main thing.