IF EVER A BOY WAS BORN to eat up the world it was Andrew. He had his mother’s good looks and his father’s strength. From the day he started school, he was the darling of the nuns, easily taught and eager to please. For years our parish priest was convinced Andrew had a vocation for the priesthood. Everybody loved him. Maybe that was why he grew up loving Alexandria, just like our dad.
Alexandria was paradise for a young boy. In summer there was a park for swimming and teasing the girls. In winter there were hills and ponds for sliding, skating, and just plain old showing off. And all around town was farmland and bush and rivers and creeks, perfect for all manner of games, trespassing, and general hellraising. Come June and the end of school, the kids were in heaven, wandering the streets all summer long, gangs on bikes, playing chase, riding out to the river to go skinny-dipping, hiding under the bridge to go smoking, glad to be alive and looking for fun or trouble or both.
Those long July days were the best, when tarred roads bubbled under the noonday sun, mosquitoes retreated to the shade, and daylight stretched late into evening. No one ever worried where their children were or whose company they were keeping. If they weren’t behind the station playing marbles, they were swimming at the park, or in someone’s cedar bush building a tree house, or on someone’s back porch trading comics. It was a small town, where everybody’s parents knew everybody’s kids and trusted them all.
And what happened with Andrew and me? It was really all about Alexandria and the kind of life you lived in a town like that, before we had television and shopping malls and something called a global village. If the human heart longs for a place to belong, the small town can be that place. But as much as you might wish for it, there has to be room in your heart to accept it. There must be room for a quiet walk up Elm Street, to Dominion, then over to Main, past places and people you can hold in your heart for the rest of your life. As there must be room in your heart for a few old geezers with three days of white beard waiting around for the hotel to open, tipping their hats to the ladies passing by and saying a big hello to the children with them. There must be room, too, for a few old maids, even one who throws her coal cinders on your slide where it runs past her house. Just like there has to be room for a few fat kids, weird kids, and pesty kids. Because you grew up with them and that’s just who they are, people you know.
And there must be room in your heart for an ugly water tower, a big puddle in the middle of the mill square every time it rains, and a tired old police officer who can’t move very fast anymore but it doesn’t matter because who would ever think of running from him in the first place. There also has to be room for three or four religions, some Jews and some Syrians, and even some Hungarian refugees who hardly speak English or French. All they have to do is love Alexandria as much as you do. And if you really work at it, there should even be room in your heart for two languages. In fact a lot of people might be proud of it.
Andrew seemed to understand all of that, right from the start. For me, it wasn’t so easy. Maybe some people need to get love before they can give it. Or maybe some people just take for granted they’re entitled to love, and some don’t. I’ve never figured that part out. I just know we were different. To understand what life in Alexandria was like for Andrew and me, you only have to go along with Lorna Landry to the annual St. Finnan’s Parish Social.
Just follow her around on a warm summer evening in 1950 as she spends a few hours working her way through the crowd that fills up the schoolyard beside the church. Watch her as she slowly makes her way past fiddlers and Highland dancers on a makeshift stage in the middle of the grounds, as she stops by booths selling homemade cakes and pies, knitted wool sweaters, and hats and mittens in matching sets. And watch her as she passes by games of chance, like crown and anchor, a bingo tent, and a blanket booth, where they’re offering tickets on five of those beautiful woollen plaid car blankets in matching carrying cases with convenient handles.
The first thing you’ll notice is how little progress she makes. And it’s not because little Andrew is pulling her toward the fish pond run by Mrs. McDougall the neighbour lady, at the same time as little Michel is dragging her the other way toward the maple fudge being sold by Mrs. Brodie who lives just around the corner on Dominion Street. The real reason it takes so long to get to any of the booths, or maybe buy a couple of tickets on that new electric stove the Knights of Columbus are raffling off, is that their mother can’t go two feet without bumping into a friend, a neighbour, or a relative. There’s the McKays from the Eigg, the MacKinnons from the Eighth, or the Gagniers from the Fourth, all of them with news to share and enquiries to make.
“Isn’t it a lovely evening? I’m so glad the rain held off,” the conversation might start with. Then, “And how’s your Aunt Gertie, dear? Oh, do tell. I must buy one of those rhubarb pies of hers. We had one last year and it was so good. And how has Bessie been keeping? And what about Angus? Have you heard from him lately? And, oh my gosh, is this your oldest? How fast they grow, and such a handsome lad. Looks so much like your brother Andy, doesn’t he? And who is this wee dark fellow hiding behind his mother? Oh yes, he’s Ed Landry’s boy, I can see that, now. Michel, is it?”
It seemed like my mother would have that same conversation with half the people in Glengarry, stopping each time for a wee chat that could last five minutes or stretch into twenty, depending on how long it had been since she’d last seen them. And she would be sure to offer extended hellos to the other half, with the two of us swinging all the while from each hand, alternately stopping to listen in on the gossip, or pulling her closer to our favourite booth. A small event by today’s standards, perhaps, but the church social was deep, deep in belonging, deep in friendship, and deep in Glengarry. Especially for Andrew.
I was the dark one, sliding behind my mother’s skirts. Like my uncle Angus, I had that Glengarry curse of shyness, the one that explains the surplus of old bachelors in our midst. Now Andrew, he was the friendly family diplomat, full of bright-faced answers, always eager to talk. Even at that age you could see him shine with the joy of belonging, sure of himself and where he fit. I know, because I wanted the same thing for myself. Yet somehow it never worked out. Andrew would leave the church social happy and exhausted from the interaction. I would leave lonely and feeling like I’d missed out on something.
Take the barbershop. Andrew loved going for a haircut. I always resented it, starting with the ritual scrubbing of my ears so the barber could see the Landrys weren’t raising little pigs. My father would bug me about my long hair, threatening to buy me a violin, to no avail. Finally he would give Andrew the fifty cents to pay for both of us and tell him to make sure we stopped at Mr. Dickey’s after school. The shop was on Main Street, just a block down from the mill square, beside Mrs. Laprade’s candy store. We had to pass that way coming home from school, so it was hard to get out of it. And if I insisted like always that he wasn’t the boss of me, Andrew had the extra dime Dad had slipped him to buy us a treat after our haircut.
In we’d go, looking for a seat along the wall. Often as not, one of us would have to stand until someone ahead of us took his turn on the chair. I would be the one standing, as close as I could get to Andrew without sitting on his lap, going rigid as he tried to shove me away. If I did get a seat, I would hope for one as far away as possible from that stinky spittoon. I would sit there quietly, mostly staring at the floor. It was bare wood, the floor, with deep depressions worn around the chair Mr. Dickey had been circling for decades. And hair, there was always hair, lots of hair, no matter how often he swept it up. That’s what I remember most: clumps of hair, curly, wavy, and straight, brown, black, and white. All kinds and colours, a piece of ourselves left behind in Mr. Dickey’s barbershop.
It was a long, narrow place, with two barber’s chairs and a shelf to hold hair tonics and such along the north wall. Funny-shaped bottles of blue, red, and green, fancy stuff like we never had at home. There was a mirror along most of that wall above the shelf, making the bottles look twice as many and the room look twice as big, with twice the number of people. There was a coat rack by the door, and beside it was one of those bright red machines selling cokes, cold cokes for ten cents apiece. I can still see Mr. Dickey, a short man, heavy with age, his own hair almost gone, busy cutting and clipping and gossiping with a customer at the same time as he would take a quarter from someone, punch open his cash drawer, bring out change for the coke machine, and hand it over without ever missing a beat in his conversation.
And those conversations, snapping and crackling like wood on a fire, as they argued everything from politics to sports to what kind of weather we had, needed, or just missed. The conversations were always friendly, too, as if there was some rule. Mr. Dickey always joked that he had to hang the calendars of the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs on opposite walls, to keep them from fighting. I don’t remember seeing any pictures of politicians. Which reminds me, the shop had its own special smell, a smell that defied identification, a mingling of dried manure on rubber boots, working men’s bodies, talcum powder, and aftershave, all wafting about the room on waves of cigarette and pipe smoke.
For some reason I remember how the men used to come in the door, especially in winter when the sense of sanctuary seemed stronger. They’d slip in quickly, closing the door against the weather, stomping the snow from their feet as they hung up their coats, then turn and rub their hands together for warmth as they smiled and said their g’day’s, all the while circling the room with their eyes, calculating how long they’d have to wait. Sometimes they’d even open the door a crack and yell out to their wives who were waiting, telling them how long they would be and to meet them at the Hub.
That second barber’s chair was used mostly as a waiting spot for the next in line. There was only one barber in the shop, except around Christmas or Easter, when everybody and their uncle came into town for a haircut, and Mr. Dickey would get his brother-in-law, Tom Kelly, to help out. Boy, there’d be hair on the floor on those days. No matter how busy he was, though, Mr. Dickey would acknowledge us every time we came in. His head would turn quickly at the sound of the door and he would say, “Take a seat there, boys,” and let us know how many were ahead. In all the years we went there, I don’t ever remember getting skipped over, or missing my turn, even when Andrew wasn’t with me.
It was good he told us like that. Otherwise you’d never know how long you’d have to wait, seeing as how there were usually two or three men in there just to pass the time of day. There were the regulars like old Mr. McFadden, the retired postmaster. Or there was Mr. Brunet with one leg, who had a pension from the war. Or there was Mr. Lacombe the blacksmith, with the big thick arms, who wasn’t so busy anymore and liked to come in for a coke and a bit of gossip. Andrew, he loved that stuff. You could tell from his face, sitting there with his eyes wide open and his ears tuned in, his head swinging back and forth, following the conversation.
“Did you hear Dougal Dan went in the ditch last week?” one of them would ask.
“Where?”
“On the Second of Kenyon, down behind the old grist mill.”
“With his truck?”
“Yeah, and he had a load on, eh?”
“Drinking, was he? Did the cops catch him this time?”
“Naw, he was stone sober, if you catch my drift.”
“What happened? Did he get out?”
“Yeah, the cop went and got Donald Joseph from down at the corner, there, to come and pull him out with the tractor. Never even looked in the truck.” They would all laugh out loud then, but us kids could only manage a silly grin, not knowing Dougal Dan was the local bootlegger.
“And the poor cop never caught on?” someone would ask. “I’ll bet it was that new lad from Cornwall, young Poulin?”
“Yep. Donald Joseph said Poulin never even asked what all that rattlin’ was in the back, when they pulled him out.”
“It’s like I always say, hire local if you got a choice.”
“Sure, but it’s hard to find someone local who will last as a cop in this town, giving out fines to his neighbours. That’s why Brian MacKinnon quit. Had too many of his own family getting drunk every Saturday night, racin’ through town and gettin’ in fights. Goddamn shame.”
“Watch the language there, boys,” Mr. Dickey would always say, clicking his scissors at them. “Young ears in the shop, eh? Wouldn’t want their mother giving me heck on the church steps.” That would be their cue to take note of our presence, usually by starting up a conversation with my big brother, who was always glad to talk to them. Andrew could talk the warts off a frog, my father used to say. And you could always count on those questions to get him started. “You’re Ed Landry’s boy, aren’t ya, lad?”
“Yessir,” he would answer, “Andrew Landry. My father has a grocery store on Main Street.”
“Yuh don’t say? And who’s that little guy with you? Where’d you find him, under a haystack?”
Andrew would laugh while I squirmed in my seat. “That’s my little brother, sir, Michel. He’s younger than me.”
“Oh, that’s right. He doesn’t say much, does he? Does he speak English?”
It was a stupid question. You hardly ever heard any French in Mr. Dickey’s shop. I don’t think he even understood it. Anyway, most of the French people went to the barber down the street, Mr. Lalonde, by the post office. With a first name like Michel, I was used to that dumb joke about speaking English, and always refused to bite. It was Andrew who answered for me, “Oh yes, sir, he speaks English pretty good. Not as good as me, but he speaks it all the time at home. He’s just shy, is all. My mom says he takes after the MacRaes. She says all the MacRaes are shy.”
While I’d be fuming at him for talking about me like that, he’d just sit there with that big grin on his face, talking to these old geezers in the overalls with the hair in their ears and the lump of tobacco in their cheeks, spitting it right past you into the spittoon. Some of my dad’s friends would come in there, too, and they’d tease Andrew with stuff like, “Is your father still driving that rusty old Ford, lad? When’s he going to get himself a real truck?”
“My dad says Ford makes a mighty good truck, sir.”
Then some farmer would chime in with, “Tell your father I got a real truck I’ll sell him. It’s a Chevy, eh? Tell him I’ll give him a good price, too.”
Then some smartass would feed him a straight line, like, “Does that truck of yours burn oil, Charlie?”
“No, sir. Burns gas. Low test, too.”
I remember that one because I had to ask Andrew afterwards what they were all laughing at. Same as that story about the time my father and Jimmy McKay played that trick on Jimmy’s wife. The first time I can remember hearing it was in the barber shop, when old Mr. McFadden asked Andrew, “Well now, son, did you hear what your father and Jimmy McKay did, just last week?”
Of course Andrew shook his head no and Mr. McFadden took that as a chance to tell the whole barbershop. “Well, sir, Ed and Jimmy were in here getting a haircut, eh? And they started talking about all those quiz shows they’re after havin’ on the radio station in Cornwall these days. So Jimmy tells Ed that the missus listens to those shows all the time. Next thing you know, Ed calls Peggy up on the phone, there, and — ”
“Shouldn’t have let them use the phone,” Mr. Dickey interrupted.
“Hah,” Mr. McFadden continued, “you were laughing just as much as the rest of us. So anyways, Ed tells Peggy in this real deep voice like he’s some kind of radio announcer, that he’s calling from CKCW in Cornwall and wants to know if she’s got her set tuned to their station. Of course she tells him yes. So then he tells her that this is her lucky day, on account of her telephone number has been picked from the hat to take part in this here contest. But first she has to turn her radio off, so there’s no feedback. You know what that is, don’t ya?”
Of course Andrew nodded that he knew, even if he didn’t. Only it didn’t matter, because someone threw in, “And she fell for that?”
“Sure she did,” Mr. McFadden went on. “She thought she was gonna be on the radio, eh? So she turns her radio off and Ed tells her she can win first prize in their big Quaker Oats contest. All she has to do is answer correctly the name of Roy Rogers’ horse.”
“Aw, that’s too easy,” someone piped up. “She — ”
“Just you wait, now,” Mr. McFadden pressed on, “because she fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I guess Ed could hear her getting all excited and yelling at her girls to tell her the answer. Well now, didn’t one of them think it was Trigger and the other one thought it was Champion.”
“Hah,” someone chortled, “girls, eh?”
“So anyways, she hummed and hawed there for a minute or so, while Ed kept telling her she had to hurry up on account of there was a time limit. So she finally yells out, ‘Champion!’ By this time Ed and Jimmy are splitting themselves trying not to laugh, and Ed manages to say to her, ‘Are you sure that’s your answer?’
“So she hums and haws some more, and finally makes up her mind to stick with Champion. Then crazy Ed tells her in this fake voice, ‘Congratulations, Mrs. Peggy McKay of Alexandria, you are the grand winner of today’s Quaker Oats contest. You have just won first prize.’
“Well sir, we could hear her and the two girls screaming on the phone halfway across the room. So finally she calms down a bit and asks Ed, ‘How will I be getting my prize? Do I have to pick it up?’
“ ‘Oh no, madam,’ Ed says, cool as a cucumber, ‘it will be delivered right to your door by Glengarry Transport.’
“ ‘Oh my God,’ she screams, ‘it’s coming by truck. What is it? Is it a fridge? Is it a stove?’
“ ‘Oh no, madam,’ Ed answers, ‘it’s even better. I am happy to tell you that your grand prize for correctly guessing the name of Roy Rogers’ horse is a one-hundred-pound barrel of genuine Western horseshit.’
“Well, sir,” Mr. McFadden continued after the laughter died down, “there were a few sputters on the other end of the phone, I guess, and then she must have heard us all laughing at this end. Because after a few seconds of dead silence she says, ‘And I suppose you think you’re funny, Ed Landry, you and your stupid friend, Jimmy McKay, with nothing better to do on a workday than interrupt my housework. Well, you can tell Mr. Jimmy McKay that his supper is in the oven, only he needn’t hurry home. Because right after I hang up this phone I’m going to take his supper out of the oven and feed it to the dog. And when he does get home I’m going to heat him up a nice big plate of horseshit, genuine Western horseshit. Ask him if he thinks that’s funny, why don’t you?’
“I guess she banged the phone down so hard she near busted Ed’s eardrum,” Mr. McFadden concluded, while everybody laughed some more. Except me.
I was busy nudging Andrew with an elbow and muttering how these old men had it all wrong, that Roy Rogers’ horse was Trigger, not Champion. So how could Mrs. McKay have won the prize? I remember Andrew kept shushing me, afraid, I suppose, that I would embarrass him in front of these men. He had an instinct for those things, like the importance of listening to their stories, laughing at the right moments, and never challenging them for accuracy or logic, never doing anything that would break the spell of the storytelling. He really loved those characters we would meet in the barbershop.
And they had such names — Johnny Picket Nose, Alec and a Half, Boozer McPherson. And that’s what they would call themselves, when they’d tell us to say hello to our mother for them. There was always someone who went to school with her, used to live across the road from her, or sold her father a “team of black horses, back in the spring of ’36, or was it ’37? Well, anyways, it was a few years back, there. She’ll know the ones I mean, a matched team.” Andrew would faithfully relay the message and spend fifteen minutes getting the guy’s life story out of my mother, including the origin of his nickname.
Andrew took care with people, and with things. If we had money for candy after school, or found some bottles we could trade, we’d stop in at Mrs. Laprade’s — all she sold was cigarettes, candy, and soft drinks in this ten-by-twenty shop built like a lean-to on the side of Mr. Dickey’s barbershop. Andrew would take forever picking out the most variety he could get for his three or four pennies, like three blackballs, one jawbreaker, and two pieces of licorice, one red and one black. He’d lay his pennies on the counter and this tiny, hunched-over old lady, her reddish-grey hair in a fine black net, with those bent old fingers looking like they could break at any moment, would patiently pick out each item from behind the glass and drop it into a little brown bag on the counter, then wait silently for his next decision. When he was finally finished choosing, she would fold the top of the bag over twice, creasing it slowly and carefully each time, and hand it down to him like it was some great treasure.
Maybe she did it up special for Andrew, knowing he was the kind of kid who would treat it like it was a treasure, savouring it over two or three days. Me, I’d just take three cents’ worth of my favourite that week, like black licorice twists, and eat them all on the way home — before my mother could make me put them away until after I’d had my supper. Needless to say, Andrew was never moved to share his hoard with me. If I even bothered to ask for one measly blackball he’d start that stupid talk about ants and grasshoppers. Like I said, Andrew knew how to treasure things, just like he knew how to love Alexandria. I only learned to appreciate it later, when I had lots of time to think about it.
I would lie there after the lights went out and let my mind take me back to those days, before they sent me away. At first, Andrew was still with me. In my mind’s eye we’d leave from our house on Elm Street, passing Mrs. McDougall’s big yellow house, the first on the right. If she was sitting out on the porch, Andrew would wave to her and Rusty, her yappy cocker spaniel, who would always run up the front walk to be petted. Andrew would stop and make a fuss over him, before rising to continue down Elm. There must have been five or six houses on that stretch of Elm, white clapboard with coloured trim, plain yellow or blue, and brick, dark, blackened brick before anyone started coming to town with those sandblasting machines. Most had porches, everything from wraparound porches that made the house look twice as big to makeshift storm porches stuck on the front with a different-angled roof.
It was the same thing on Dominion. If there was anyone out and around, you could be sure Andrew would wave to them, maybe stop and talk for a minute, answering questions about our folks and those visitors we’d had on the weekend. My brother could describe all the houses on those streets, including who lived in them, all the way over to Main Street. He knew them all. That was one of the reasons I started going my own way on Halloween — to avoid getting dragged into those twenty-minute conversations he’d have with the old ladies trying to guess who we were. Now that I think of it, they probably knew all along. Pretty soon I started leaving Andrew out of my imaginary walks as well. Stretched out on my bunk in the dark, I would reach back for that same knowledge, trying to recall each house we had passed, imagining what it looked like and conjuring up the faces of those who lived there — the Brodies and the Austins, the Laportes and the McDougalls, the Sampsons and the Deprattos. Along Elm and Dominion, and down Main Street I’d go in my mind, passing the storefronts that filled both sides of the street, five blocks down, all the way to the entrance to the park and the Pond, where I had special memories to find.
I would call to mind the ice cream parlour where people lined up on a summer evening, the clothing store that kept changing owners, the lawyer’s office that always stayed the same, the two banks that marked the corner where my dad would turn west to take Highway 43 to Maxville and the Highland Games, the hardware store where I would stop to look at the camping knife with all those tools and add up all the allowances it would take to buy one, the little jewellery store where you would see fat Mr. Boulet working on his watches with that thing in his eye all the time, the butcher shop with skinny Mr. Lavoie in the bloody apron, where my mother would send me for meat.
Taking that walk in my mind would bring the town alive, and oftentimes I’d find myself lined up outside the Garry Theatre on Main Street, waiting with every kid in town for the Saturday matinee — a Randolph Scott Western, the Three Stooges, and a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. If I tried really hard, I could bring back those hyper kids with happy faces shining bright in the darkened theatre. And I could dream of Eatmore Bars and Cracker Jacks, Orange Crush and Royal Crown. Or kids darting from row to row, jockeying for the best seat, looking for friends, pandemonium everywhere until the newsreel starts, then wild cheering for everything from the woodpecker’s crazy cry, hah-ha-ha-ha-ha, to the bad guys getting shot and the hero riding off. And finally, rushing up the aisle while the credits ran, emerging into the blinding summer sunlight back out onto Main Street.
And then I would blink a few times and realize the summer sun was really the harsh bulb in the hallway, left on so the guard could spot anyone trying to leave the dorm. I wouldn’t give up my dreaming, though, even as I wiped my tears and swallowed the lump back down. I’d just close my eyes and conjure it up all over again. I would go over it all in my head, again and again, until it became as real for me as it had been for Andrew. And I came to see why he loved it, and then began to love it myself, to love what was lost. I could tell you now what each house looked like, wood or brick, porches and sidewalks, who lived in it, if they had kids, all that stuff. I worked it out over the years, digging deep through my memories. It was all buried in there, right where you’d expect to find it. Of course it’s not real, not anymore. Nothing stays the same, I know that. The question is, was it ever real? Or was there another layer of reality in that small town of ours, buried even deeper?