My name is Charley Callaghan, but this story is not about me. It’s about a boy named Benny Mason.
But it starts off with me.
We came from Dublin, Ireland, about five months ago to live here in North Vancouver. There were four of us — Da, Ma, me and Annie — but now there’s only three because Ma died last month, in August. The reason we came here instead of some other place in Canada is because Aunt Maeve and Crazy Uncle Rufus live only a block away. Aunt Maeve is my mother’s sister.
Leaving your friends and coming to a new country is a desperate experience, so it is. First there’s the problem of starting a new school. Then there’s the problem of trying to twig on to the Canadian dollars, the loonies and toonies, the nickels and dimes and quarters, and learning how to use the bus service and the SeaBus and the SkyTrain without everyone thinking you’re a totally gormless eejit.
Then there’s getting used to biking on the wrong side of the road, and...the list goes on and on.
It’s deadly.
At the very beginning of May, soon after we got here, I was wedged into the seventh grade at the elementary school for the final two months of the school year. The woman at the school district office said it would help me settle in with my age group before going on to junior high in September.
Right away I made friends with a boy named Sid Quinlan, but then, in July, Sid and his family moved thousands of miles away, to Ontario. They’re gone for good. Probably never see Sid again.
Before he left he said for me to e-mail him, knowing I’ve got no computer or internet connection but hoping, I suppose, that I’d get one once my da got working steady.
Well, now he’s working steady, thank God, but there’s still no way we can afford one.
I’m way behind everyone here in technology. Most of the kids have cell phones, too, with instant text-messaging — not that I want all that stuff anyway. I’d rather be out riding my bike.
I’m trying to get rid of my Irish accent so I’ll fit in better and be the same as everyone else and make friends easier. The Canadian twang is coming, I think. It’s dreadful slow, but I’m working on it. Our Annie is doing way better than me. She’s eight, and her Irish accent morphs into almost perfect Canadian whenever she wants it to.
Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I don’t really want to lose it. I do and I don’t, if you know what I mean.
Ma was terrible sick with the cancer for more than a year at home in Dublin, but that was a long time ago, when I was about the same age Annie is now, and she fought and got over it. She was free of it for the longest time, and everything was grand. Regular check-ups, diet and exercise — we thought she had it beat. Then soon after we came here to Canada it came back and destroyed her.
It all happened so quick. Now she’s gone.
I miss her something fierce.
I miss my friends, too. I left them all in Dublin — Sean and Fergus and Seamus and all the rest. Making friends was easier in Dublin. We all spoke the same language for a start.
And there was a girl, Fiona Devlin. I wrote her a letter, but so far...well, I guess she doesn’t miss me the same as I miss her, because it’s been ages since I wrote — the same week we got here, as a matter of fact. She sat in the desk behind me in Religious Instruction. Lovely girl, sweet lips, brown eyes. She’d pass me notes that had nothing to do with the subject we were supposed to be studying. I even kept one of them:
Dear Charley, I get more out of staring at the back of yer lovely red head than I get out of a hundred books of common prayer or the catechism. Wouldn’t ye think in this day and age we’d be studying something useful like how to behave on a date or how to get a job and look after yer money? Write back what ye think. F.
Maybe people don’t answer letters any more, only e-mails or text messages.
It’s now sunny September and I’m in another new school, junior high this time, eighth grade.
I don’t want to go but my da says I’ve got no choice. It’s not because I don’t like school, but not having Ma around makes everything so...well, not worthwhile, somehow.
Annie’s the same as me. She used to be full of bright chatter, full of vim and vigor, with enough energy to light up the whole street. But these days she gets home from school and mopes about in front of the telly, not really watching, only half alive, it seems to me. Or she goes straight to her room and stays there until she’s called out for dinner.
The other night Aunt Maeve plopped a scoop of ice cream on top of Annie’s blueberry pie, and Annie threw down her spoon and burst into tears.
Go figure, as we Canadians say.
••••
Junior high is very different from elementary. It’s bigger, for one thing, with different teachers and courses. You move about between classes, so the hallways are always full of kids going somewhere, talking loudly or messaging on their cell phones to only God knows who, and there’s gray metal student lockers lining both sides of the hallways. Lots of them have graffiti, cleaned off during the summer but still showing faint ghosts of the original marker-pen ink, so it isn’t hard to make out the tags, swear words, pairs of boobs, johnny wobblers and all the other rude stuff.
So I go to school even though my heart isn’t in it this year. Also it’s still like the middle of summer — bright and hot, with a lovely gold light early in the mornings and the smell of the sea coming up from the inlet. It’s grand, right enough.
I’ve got to admit this is a lovely place. North Vancouver is built on a steep slope facing the sun and the sea and the tall city towers of Vancouver. The mountains are tight up behind us.
And the forest. I love the trees here. Sid Quinlan told me that the snow usually comes to the ski hills in late November or early December, which is one of the reasons he didn’t want to leave.
But Sid’s gone, as I said, so I’m starting eighth grade with no friends.
Annie spent two months in second grade and is now in third, with a teacher named Mrs. Frederickson, but that’s about all I know. Annie doesn’t talk about school, and as far as I can see she hasn’t made any friends either.
Wednesday of the second week, two kids come up to me in the schoolyard grinning like sharks.
The big one, head the shape of a coconut, goes, “Hey, Red!”
I stare at him.
He yells, “Yeah, you with the hair!”
I know them. They’re in my English class.
I remember to try and flatten my tongue the shape of a maple leaf and speak in Canadian.
I go, “You talkin’ to me?”
The big one goes, “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Red. Who else round here got a head like a three-alarm fire, eh?” He gives a loud, phony laugh.
“The name’s Charley,” I tell him.
The second kid — long nose, pointed face — steps forward with a sly grin.
He goes, “I’m Rebar?” making it sound like a question.
I don’t trust this pair of amadáns. That’s Irish for eejits, or idiots. They look like trouble.
I’m not much good at fighting, but I will fight if I’m really forced to it, if my back is up against the wall, so to speak, and there’s no other way out of it.
I usually manage to avoid it, though, by bluffing and acting tough.
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not very brave. Even though I love riding my bike, I’m not much good when it comes to zooming fast down steep hills. I couldn’t in a million years ride like my hero Lance Armstrong, whizzing round the bends of the Col du Galibier, because I’d be in mortal fear of crashing and breaking my head.
That’s the way I am. Not brave.
Anyway, I’m a bit suspicious and fearful of these two desperate-looking classmates.
“Me and Sammy, eh?” Rebar nods toward his friend. “We really like your accent, Red.”
I give them the hard stare. “My name’s Charley.”
I don’t like being called names like Red and Rusty. I like my proper name. These guys are not sincere. They’re making fun of me. I already told them my name, twice.
Sammy goes, “Yeah. We figure you’re Irish or English or something like that, eh?” He turns to his friend. “Right, Rebar?” Then he turns back to me. “Or maybe you’re from Scotland. Which is it, Red?”
“I’m Irish.”
As I already said, these guys are both in my English class. They sit in the row near the wall, opposite side from the windows, last two seats at the back of the room. I sit in the next row, beside Sammy, second seat from the back. The seat behind me is empty.
Rebar is also in my social studies class. His real name is Rod Steel, face sharp and mean like a ferret, tiny, mud-colored eyes close together, razor blade of a nose.
His big friend, Sammy Cisco, has a sneering gob with a lipless slit of a mouth, light brown hair sprouting up from his coconut top, and shoulders like he’s got a coat hanger under his shirt.
This morning Mr. Korda, our English teacher, glanced at his seating plan because he doesn’t know all our names yet and assigned character parts to be read aloud in the book we’re doing, The Tempest. We’re not doing the whole play, just a special condensed version for eighth graders as an introduction to Shakespeare. It looks to me like Mr. Korda starts the year using it to check for reading problems.
Anyway, when it came my turn, Mr. Korda, seated atop a student desk at the front of the room, book in hands, elbows on knees, size fifteen brown Hush Puppies up on the seat, gave me the nod and asked me to read.
“Charley Callaghan? You’re next.” His bushy black eyebrows disappeared under his bushy black fringe.
I knew the other kids might take the mickey when they heard my accent, which could be a bit embarrassing, so I spoke real quiet, making it sound as Canadian as I could.
His eyebrows now in full view again, Mr. Korda said, “Could you jack the volume up a notch, Charley?”
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, so I cleared my throat with a cough and started reading, loud and bold, like I didn’t give a monkey’s what anyone thought.
It was a long speech by a character named Prospero.
I heard a bunch of kids sniggering.
Finally, I got to the end:
“We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”
Mr. Korda said, “Thanks, Charley. Well done.” Then he looked around the room. “What do you think Prospero, or Shakespeare, is saying about our lives?”
There was silence in the room. After a while, when nobody volunteered an answer, Mr. Korda said, “Anyone?”
Danny Whelan sits on my left, in the middle of his row. Usually a quiet kid who keeps to himself, he cleared his throat. Everyone looked at him.
“Danny?” said Mr. Korda.
Danny blushed. “He’s saying life seems like a dream. Like, I try to remember what I did yesterday and it’s...gone. Like a dream? Especially school stuff. I don’t remember anything we did yesterday in class.”
Everyone laughed, including Mr. Korda.
He looked around to see if anyone wanted to chip in. Some of the others spoke up after that and it got real interesting listening to what they said.
So now in the schoolyard, Sammy and Rebar, having heard me read aloud, are in my face.
Sammy starts. “Hey, Red! That was a great job you did today on — what was it we did, Rebar?”
Rebar grins a ferrety grin. “English dead guy, Shakespeare.”
“That’s it,” says Sammy. “Shakespeare with an Irish accent.”
“Well, you’ve got it wrong,” I tell them. “Shakespeare wasn’t English. He was born in County Mayo. He was Irish. Everyone knows that. Shakespeare wrote all his plays in an Irish accent.”
I wait a few beats but they don’t know what to say. I give them the hard stare again, doing my best to look tough, sneering and curling my lip like Humphrey Bogart in a gangster movie.
“Get lost, creeps!” I turn my back on them and slouch away, real slow so they don’t think I’m running.
They laugh. Sammy yells after me, “See you later, Irish!”
The next day is Thursday and there’s a storm and it rains frogs, toads and alligators. Everyone’s happy to see the rain because it hasn’t rained in ages, not since the end of June.
It’s too wet to eat outside on the grass in the lunch hour, so I traipse down to the school cafeteria. Sammy and Rebar come over while I’m chewing on one of Aunt Maeve’s soggy cheese and tomato sandwiches, which I like.
“Hi, Red,” says Rebar.
I say nothing, my gob being full of food.
“Red, my man!” Sammy yells, deliberately slapping me hard on the back with one plate-sized hand. I almost choke to death. They stand one on each side of me and toss their lunch bags onto the table, meaning I’m about to have their company for lunch.
“So what brings you to Canada, Red?” asks Rebar. “You running away from all them murders over there or what?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I stand and move closer to Rebar till we’re practically nose to nose, staring him down. Then I turn and glare at Sammy with my meanest expression, the one I’ve practiced in the mirror at home.
I can tell from their faces that they don’t know what to make of me for sure. Then I slowly rewrap what’s left of my lunch.
“I didn’t mean nothin’,” says Rebar when he sees I’m about to leave, his tiny eyes mocking.
“Yeah, Rebar didn’t mean nothin’, Red,” says Sammy, grinning at me. “We’re only wondering if all the kids in Ireland talk funny like you...”
I can still hear them laughing as I leave the cafeteria.
I don’t think I scared them very much.