My duck’s guts were still warm.
It was ten in the morning on Sunday. Since no one in our family was a good churchgoer, everyone was at home, and it seemed like they all had something to do.
Upstairs, Pearl and Maisie were in Aunt Bud’s room playing with their dolls. Mom was in the bathroom, fixing herself up. Sunday was her day to wash her special things by hand—undies, nylons, blouses. She would also do her hair and nails. Gramp was still snoozing in bed. Nan said he wasn’t feeling well.
Downstairs, Nan was putting together a huge stew that would feed all of us for a couple of days at the beginning of the week. After she finished that, she would start preparing the birds for dinner. That is, of course, after she had also made a stack of sandwiches for lunch.
Aunt Bud was in the living room ironing her and everyone else’s clothes. Answer Me Lord Above, a new tune by Frankie Laine was trying to rise above her voice as she sang along. She had already memorized the words. There was no doubt that it was a pretty song, but her singing made it even more special. Before that she had sang along to You, You, You by the Ames Brothers and Rags To Riches by Tony Bennett, and had moaned through Crying In The Chapel. Aunt Bud always gave either the radio or the record player a good workout on Sunday mornings. It helped her to tune up her beautiful singing voice. The singing seemed to take away the pain that sometimes shot through her arm and the rest of her left side, which had been stricken by polio.
Aunt Bud wouldn't get to sing along with the radio in the afternoon, though. The fifth game of the World Series would be on, and I couldn’t wait to hear Mel Allen and Vin Scully give the play-by-play. Gramp and I had missed listening to game four on the day before because of our hunting trip. The saying, “You can’t win ‘em all” seemed to fit exactly how I felt about two of my favourite things, the World Series and hunting, fighting with each other for my time. At least I’d get to listen to the next the game alongside Gramp. I was eager to hear how my Dodgers faired after having evened up the series with a seven-to-three win over the Damn Yankees while we were out hunting.
As I thought of my Dodgers taking on the Yankees, I remembered the visit by Danielle from New York over the summer and our adventure with her nasty brother on the farm. She was probably getting ready to buy her first hot dog before taking her seat in Yankee Stadium. I thought about what a lucky—and cute—gal she was. Then I remembered the game was actually at Ebbets Field, so she’d be listening to the game at home like I would.
Down in the basement, I was stuck in between the coal bin and the furnace, perched on an upended apple box with two more boxes and a tub of cold water in front of me. One box was already full of feathers. The other had the heads, legs and insides of the four ducks I had already cleaned, which were the two teal Gramp had shot and two others from earlier in the day. Wanting to appreciate what a magnificent bird it was, I had left my Mallard to be cleaned last. Blood was being soaked up by newspaper that I had spread on the bottom of the box. In the tub of cold water were the birds’ carcasses, ready for Nan’s roaster. Del had taken the other birds. He and Gramp always split whatever was shot, no matter who shot what.
The bare light bulb above let me see how plump and white the Mallard duck was that I downed the night before. I had stripped every pinfeather and fluff of down from its body. After opening the bird’s insides from the hind-end with my new hunting knife, it was time to tug out its guts. This was the first time I had eviscerated birds. That’s what Gramp called it. I had plucked many birds before, but he had always cleaned them. I did watch him carefully, though, and knew exactly what to do. It was anything but fun.
I hadn’t remembered the smell being so bad. Nor had I expected the Mallard’s insides to still be warm in the morning. I guessed that was because it was so big and was the last bird to be shot. The ooze and the ugly stench made me gag, but I was determined not to vomit. Gramp wouldn’t be impressed if I did.
At dinner that evening, Nan presented the ducks with flair. They were perfectly roasted, sitting brown and crispy on the platter, and ready for Gramp to carve. With all of the trimmings she prepared to go with the birds, anyone might think it was Thanksgiving all over again.
Gramp did his best to make the meal special, but I could tell that he wasn’t his usual self. The day of hunting had worn him out. He looked exhausted as he sat at the table. I really hoped he would be all right to go to work. Nan said that he hadn’t missed many days due to sickness—ever—and he didn’t want to retire with a bunch of sick days on his record. The adults did their best to be upbeat, but even the girls knew something wasn’t quite right.
The next day when I got home from school, my worst fears came true. No one was home, but there was a note on the kitchen table.
2:30 Aft.
Buddy,
Your grandfather took a turn for the worse after lunch, so the doctor ordered him back to the hospital. Take care of the girls until I get home. I’ll be in time to fix dinner.
Nan
I couldn’t understand. How could he be back in the hospital? He had been up in the morning as usual, and had my breakfast ready when he woke me. I was sure he had headed to work when he went out the door before I left for school.
I didn’t know how he could be sick again. The doctor had let him come home from the hospital. He was okay to go hunting. And he rested all day Sunday. While he had joined us for supper, he hadn’t come downstairs to listen to the ball game with me. Not that it mattered, because the Yankees had won.
He couldn’t be sick again, especially not sick enough to make him go back into the hospital. I wanted to bolt out the door, race across the tracks, and run to see how he was. I wanted to tell him to get better.
I read Nan’s note again and figured out that leaving wasn’t a good idea. If I didn’t keep an eye on Pearl and Maisie, that would make Nan and Mom—and Gramp—mad at me. With everything going on, none of them needed me to be a problem. Instead, I waited for the girls to come home, and then sent them upstairs to play.
I had to keep busy so I wouldn’t get all worked up. Although I hated the thought of listening to another game without Gramp in the living room with me, I turned on the radio to hear game six of the World Series. The game was already in the seventh inning, and the score was three-to-one for the bad guys. With only one more win, the Yankees would have their fifth straight championship. But my Bums weren’t the kind to give up. I knew they had a few runs left in them.
Sure enough, we tied the game in the top of the ninth. Carl Furillo had hit a home run to even things up. But my happiness didn’t last, as the Bombers won it all in the bottom of the ninth. I didn’t even bother to listen to Mel and Vin’s wrap-up. My heart wasn’t in it. I turned off the radio and read a comic book instead.
As she promised, Nan was home before dinnertime.
“How is he?” I started quizzing her the moment she got in the door. “How come he had to go into the hospital again? Is he going to be okay?”
“Slow down, Buddy. Your grandfather is comfortable in his hospital bed. They’re giving him fluids and medicine by needle, and they want him to rest.” She tried not to sound worried, but I could tell by her voice that she was.
“What’s wrong now?” I asked.
“He’s had a relapse of the hepatitis. The whites of his eyes and his skin are turning yellow again. Dr. Rhomberg is going to keep him in this time until they get it completely cleared up. So, he could be there for a while.”
“But how could it come back?” I knew that Nan probably couldn’t answer my question. “I thought he was cured. Isn’t that why they let him out last time?”
“The doctor thought so,” she said. “But he went back to work too soon. And all that exerting himself, and the cold while out hunting, couldn’t have helped.”
I had to see him. “Can I go there after dinner?”
“No, Buddy, he needs to stay quiet for a few days. Maybe you can visit him this weekend.”
“This weekend? We’re supposed to go hunting again on Saturday.”
“Well, that won’t be happening,” she said. “Buddy, you had better get used to the idea that you might not be hunting again this season.”
Her words hit me like the blast from a shotgun. It couldn’t be true. It was supposed to be the year that I became Gramp’s best hunting partner ever. And we had just started.
I ran from the kitchen, charged up the stairs and flopped down on Mom’s bed, slamming the door as I went into her room. It was the only place I could go to get away.
I was miserable for the rest of the week. Each day I got home from school, Nan had no good news to tell me. And true to her word, she wouldn’t let me see Gramp.
Following the morning recess on Thursday, Miss Ruby assigned a geography exercise in Social Studies. She gave us a blank map of North America and told us to colour in each country with a different colour. Then we were supposed to label the capital cities and the oceans as well. I figured it was pretty much busy work, so we would stay quiet while she helped the fifth graders work on their projects.
I guessed I needed to get lost in some busy work, so I got out my stuff, put my head down and went at it. Because my desk was at the back inside corner of the classroom, I didn’t have anything to distract me. Paula Tremblay was in front of me, talking with Jenny Sutton who sat across from her. Myron Van Burke was next to me, and sometimes chimed in with comments of his own. I didn’t play with any of them, though, so I hardly spoke to them during class.
On top of being easy, getting the work done was actually lots of fun. Using my pencil crayons, I rimmed the entire North American continent, including every island in the Arctic, with a jagged, thick blue which was the colour of the water I had seen in movies about the South Pacific. Then I used the same jagged, thick border for each country, but with a different brilliant colour for each. Bright pink, the colour of one of Maisie’s doll’s dresses, outlined Canada. For the United States, I picked a special green, the kind you see on a Granny Smith apple. And for Mexico, I chose an orange, like the outside peel of a Christmas mandarin. I printed the labels Miss Ruby had assigned to be put on the map neatly in peacock blue ink, and then filled each country in by lightly shading them with the same colour as their outlines.
By noon I had finished the assignment, meaning I wouldn’t have any homework in Social Studies. I was proud of the final result, and handed it in before being dismissed for lunch. I went home as quickly as possible for lunch, as I had started to do every day to see if Nan had any word on how Gramp was doing. At home, she had soup and a sandwich waiting for me, but still no good news.
By recess the next morning, Miss Ruby had marked all the maps, and she handed them back after we filed in from outside. She gave me mine last, and added a cold stare when she tossed it on my desk.
I supposed if anybody had been watching me when I looked at my work, they would have seen my mouth drop open. In the upper right hand corner of the paper was a mark and a comment:
C+
Nicely coloured, Master Williams, and accurate, but perhaps next time you should be more original. Doyour own work!
I didn’t understand. I couldn’t figure out what she meant. I knew I had done the whole thing by myself, and I also knew it was good enough to deserve an A.
I was just about ready to throw a tantrum, when I glanced across the aisle. On top of Myron’s desk, in living Technicolour, was an exact copy of my map in front of him. The little twerp had copied mine!
At first I thought I’d complain to the Red Witch, but when I looked to the front, she was already facing the blackboard, writing out sentences for our grammar class. She barked out orders quickly without turning to face us.
“Put the map assignments away, take out your grammar exercise books, and copy these sentences down. Then get busy showing the subjects, the predicates and all the parts of speech. If you don’t finish working on them before the noon bell, you’ll have them for homework.”
I did as she asked, deciding instead to solve my problem in a different way.
As soon as we were let out for lunch, I hustled out of the classroom and ran for the far corner of the playing field. I didn’t wait for Riel or Mokey to join me, but I did wait there for Myron.
A few minutes later, a bunch of kids were walking toward me, with Myron in the middle of the pack. He didn’t notice me until I called out his name.
“Myron!” I said, in my most serious voice possible.
“Buddy?” He didn’t seem able to say anything else.
“You copied my map,” I said. “You know she hates me and that it would get me in trouble, but you copied it anyway. And, you stole my A!”
He could see that I was mad. “I didn’t plan to, Buddy. Yours just looked so great. I wanted mine to be as good.”
I had only been in one real fight before, the one with Randy and Lyle. Other than that, there had just been a few tussles that were more wrestling matches than fights. Myron wasn’t really someone who could do a good job of sticking up for himself. He was kind of a mousy kid, smaller than me and scrawny. I knew it wasn’t right to pick on someone weaker than myself, but that didn’t stop me.
I didn’t know exactly what caused me to do it. I wasn’t showing off or anything. But, for whatever reason, a rage boiled up inside of me. I gritted my teeth, sucked in a deep breath, and felt every nerve of every muscle in my body bunch together.
And then I slugged him.
He must have seen or felt it was coming, because as my clenched fist swung towards his left jaw, he winced and ducked just a bit. My punch grazed his cheek below the eye and tweaked his nose. He spun away from me, grasping at his face and letting out a howl of pain.
When he turned back to look at me, there were tears in his eyes and blood was leaking from a bloody left nostril between his fingers. The look behind the tears was that of a puppy that had just been spanked without understanding why.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Buddy,” he whined. “You didn’t have to do that. It was just a stupid map.”
He was right. I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have hit him.
I looked around at all the kids watching. There was meanness in their eyes. At that moment, I believed everyone in the world hated me. I was ashamed, and I felt like crying, too. I pushed through the group and started across the playing field, aiming for home. My shoulders hunched up, and I dropped my head to look at my shoes as I stuck my hands in my pockets.
Myron’s voice called out behind me. “Bullies hit people for no reason, Buddy! You’re a bully, and a jerk!”
I didn’t know that Myron could throw, and it wasn’t until later that I even found out it was him that tossed the rock. But, not only did he throw it, he chucked it like an outfielder fired a baseball to put out a runner stealing home, and it hit its target.
Bigger than the largest, most cherished cat’s eye in my marble bag, the rock beaned me right at the back of my scalp where the part in my hair started, almost exactly where my cow-lick stuck up. Within two beats of a marching band’s drum, I found out what it meant to see stars.
The rock bouncing off my noggin knocked me to my knees so fast that I barely had time to get my hands out of my pockets to break my fall. I bellowed an “Ow!” and then looked back over my shoulder to see everyone, including Myron, scatter in all directions.
I reached up to my head to see if there was a lump, and there was. It was as if someone had instantly glued an egg the size of a robin’s to the corner of my head. But this egg had been cracked. I could feel something warm and wet on my fingers, and when I brought them down they were dripping red with blood. For some stupid reason, I thought of Humpty Dumpty.
By the time I made it home, there was what felt like a river of blood oozing down my head and neck onto the shoulder of my white T-shirt. There was blood all over my left hand, too, which I had somehow managed to smear across the front of my shirt. I decided I wouldn’t call out when I walked in the door. I knew Nan’s reaction was going to be bad enough, so I didn’t really want to wake up her emotions any quicker than I needed to.
Pearl and Maisie were at the kitchen table facing the wall, with a glass of milk and a partly eaten grilled cheese sandwich in front of each of them. Nan had her back to me, flipping more sandwiches in her big iron skillet on the stove. They smelled good. The stove made it a lot warmer inside than it was outside on that chilly autumn day.
Nan heard the door open and shut, and knew it must be me. “Buddy, you’re late. Hurry up and wash. These sandwiches are ready.”
First Maisie and then Pearl turned to look at me. Neither said anything. They just stared, their eyes getting bigger by the second. Nan had moved the sandwiches from the skillet to stack them on a plate that waited on the ledge above the stovetop. She turned, ready to place the stack on the table, and took in the sight of her bloody grandson. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, just like the girls. I thought she might drop the plate.
It was only then that I started to feel fuzzy. My knees kind of wobbled and I thought for a second I might be the thing to drop to the floor.
“Buddy! My God, what’s happened?” Nan gasped.
In what seemed to be a single, swooping motion, she slid the plate of sandwiches onto the table in front of the girls and moved to scoop me up in her arms. “Are you alright? Tell me where you’re hurt. And tell me how this happened.”
“Myron Van Burke clobbered me in the head with a rock,” I blabbed.
“Myron Van Burke? He’s just a little tyke. Why would he hit you with a rock?” As she spoke, she half-led, half-carried me into the wash pantry, and then stripped my shirt from me and leaned me over the huge enamel sink.
I started to cry.
She soaked a washcloth that was lying beside the sink under the cold water tap, and pressed it to the knot on my head. The cold cloth sent a pulse through my skull.
“Why did Myron smack you with a rock?” she asked again.
I knew that if I didn’t tell her, someone else would. So, as she gently probed the egg on my noggin and rinsed the blood from my upper body, I spilled the beans.
It took her several minutes to stop the bleeding by pressing the cold cloth hard to my head. After cleaning me up and declaring that I would live and didn’t need stitches, she made me put on a clean shirt. Then she plopped a cold, grilled cheese sandwich in my hand, and marched me, along with the girls, back to the school. The troupe of us arrived before the start of afternoon classes.
Through the door, as I sat on a chair outside the principal’s office, I heard every word that Army and Nan spoke.
“Pearl, I have no doubt that Buddy’s upset about Bill being in the hospital again,” he said. “But that does not give him cause to beat up a classmate on the playground. I can’t turn a blind eye to that kind of behaviour.”
I thought it was kind of funny that he would use those words, since his googly eye was always turned away. But, I knew there was nothing funny about the pickle I was in.
“C’mon, Army,” Nan said. “You know what brought that on. Myron cheated from Buddy—not the other way around. He admitted it in front of the other kids. And Miss Ruby-Lips has it in for Buddy so badly, she wouldn’t think of getting to the bottom of the problem before finding him guilty.” Nan was getting feisty, and I wondered how far she believed she could push Army.
I immediately got my answer. “Watch your words now, Pearl. Name-calling isn’t going to do anything to solve this.”
“Well, it’s true,” she insisted. “Buddy’s been one of your star pupils every year until this one. Now it’s even hard to get him off to school each morning. And I still don’t think it’s right that a teacher won’t call a kid by the name he uses with every other person in his life.” Nan was really getting worked up.
“I offered Buddy another compromise to help out with that situation, but he refused it, so let’s not pick at old wounds,” said Army.
“I agree,” Nan half-shouted. “There are too many new ones to patch up, like the one on Buddy’s head!” I found myself smiling at the way Nan could make a point, being serious and humorous at the same time.
“Let’s not forget the one on Myron’s nose,” Army came back. He could keep up with most anyone in an argument.
Even in the hall outside the door, I could hear Nan take a deep breath. “Yes, I feel badly about that. I’ll phone Mrs. Van Burke and apologize. And I’ll see that Buddy writes her and Myron a note to say he’s sorry.”
“Thanks for volunteering to do that, Pearl. That should help to calm the storm.” Army sounded like he was winding things up. “I’ll also see that Buddy is graded fairly on his assignment by having his and Myron’s marks switched. Needless to say, that will also result in my having yet another chat with Miss Ruby about her rush to judgement,” he added.
If Nan wasn’t cringing at the sound of the Red Witch’s name, I sure was. Nan, my biggest supporter, went on. “You ought to have more than a chat with her, Army. You ought to kick her rear-end out of the classroom. She doesn’t belong teaching kids.”
I never figured that Nan really understood how much I disliked Miss Ruby, but from the things she was saying, I realized that she had been putting a lot of thought into what I was going through at school.
“I’m not sure I agree with you there, Shorty.” I noticed that Army had switched to calling Nan by her nickname. I wondered if it was accidental, or if he was trying to be Nan’s friend instead of the principal. “She has come highly recommended from all five schools she previously taught at. Maybe we just need to give her some time,” he added.
“Don’t I remember you saying earlier on that she’s a veteran teacher of five years?” asked Nan.
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Then doesn’t it say something if she’s been moved from five different schools in five years? Maybe her previous principals gave her good recommendations to get her to leave.” Nan wasn’t a detective, but she seemed able to put two and two together.
I didn’t hear either of them speak for a bit.
Army broke the silence. “You could be right, Pearl,” he said finally. “But I don’t want to hear a rumour like that spreading around our side of the tracks.” His voice took on a tone that sounded more like a warning, and he had gone back to calling my grandmother by her real name. I heard a chair squeak as if someone had strained it, and then Army let out a big sigh.
“Look, you’ve offered to do all the right things. And I’ll take care of my part in this,” he said. “But there’s one more ingredient to this recipe.”
“What’s that?” I heard Nan ask.
“I’m giving both boys the rest of the afternoon off, as well as all day tomorrow. Hopefully, they’ll come back on Monday with cooler tempers and a new outlook on things.”
“Isn’t that a tad harsh? No one got badly hurt,” Nan said.
That was easy for her to say. My head was still throbbing.
“It’s not negotiable, Pearl. I will not have kids fighting as a matter-of-fact, or for any reason in or around my school.” Army’s voice wasn’t mean, but I could tell he meant what he said. I would definitely have to clean up my act.
“I suppose that’s fair,” Nan said. “Okay, I’ll give him some extra chores at home to get him thinking straight.” I could only imagine what things Nan had up her sleeve to teach me a lesson.
“You’d better scoot now and take Buddy with you. I’m expecting Myron and his mom any minute, and I don’t need two mad hens mixing it up in the same chicken coop.” I heard chairs scrape on the floor. The meeting was over.
“Always good talking with you, Shorty,” Army finished, calling my grandmother by her nickname yet again.
“Not always, I’ll bet,” said Nan.
She came out of the office and grabbed a hold of my shirt at the shoulder.
“C’mon, Buddy. There’s a mountain of coal that needs shovelin’ into the bin.”
I hung my head and let her lead me out of the school.