Spud Sweetgrass Read online

  Also by Brian Doyle

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  Mary Ann Alice

  The Low Life

  Uncle Ronald

  Spud in Winter

  Covered Bridge

  Easy Avenue

  Angel Square

  Up to Low

  You Can Pick Me Up at Peggy’s Cove

  Hey, Dad!

  Spud Sweetgrass

  Spud Sweetgrass

  BRIAN DOYLE

  Copyright © 1992 by Brian Doyle

  New paperback edition 2006

  10 09 08 07 06 1 2 3 4 5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication 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 license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801, Toronto, Ontario M5V 2K4

  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 Cataloging in Publication

  Doyle, Brian

  Spud Sweetgrass / by Brian Doyle

  First published: Toronto: Groundwood Books, 1992.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-756-2

  ISBN-10: 0-88899-756-6

  I. Title.

  PS8557.O87S6 2006 jC813’.54 C2006-902346-8

  Printed in Canada

  Special thanks to: Wilf Pelletier, who knows how to make it rain by dancing; Jim Dillon, who knows how propane tanks blow; Marlene Stanton, for helping research Bank Street; Mike Paradis, for the invaluable critique; Jacques Dussault, for the use of Westboro Beach; Sue Wong, for the help with the names; the Kocoris and Langis boys at the Easy Street Café, for explaining cooking oil; and the humble potato.

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission from Clark Parry Doyle Productions to reproduce the song “Fry-Day” from the musical, “Chipwagon!” © 1982

  This book is dedicated to my grandson

  Matthew Patrick Doyle

  Prologue

  I walked with my mother and father into the bush. My father was carrying his trombone in its case.

  In about an hour we came to the shore of a small lake.

  It was my birthday. I was nine.

  Beside the lake, my father took out of his trombone case three things: a knife; a fishing line with a hook; one wooden match.

  “You will stay here by yourself until after breakfast tomorrow morning,” he said. My mother stood beside him and took his arm.

  “You will cut balsam boughs to make a shelter for yourself. You will build a fire and be sure that it doesn’t go out during the night. You will catch a fish for your supper and another one for your breakfast. There are berries and butternuts and wild garlic around to eat, too.

  “We will be ten minutes from here. But you will not know which way. You will not be able to find us.”

  I was watching my mother. She had a nice look on her face. Her brown eyes were proud of me. They were holding me. There were green flecks flashing.

  “But you can call to us if you are in trouble. You call by blowing a strong note on my trombone. But only take it out of the case if there’s an emergency,” my father said.

  My mother had a small smile on her beautiful face. Her head was tilted to one side. There was love all around the shore of that small lake.

  “You will be alone,” said my father, “this afternoon, this evening, and all night, which will be the hardest part.”

  My mother’s smile got bigger.

  “We will be back to get you after breakfast,” she said. Then they both put their arms around me.

  And then they kissed me.

  And then they walked into the bush and disappeared.

  I

  I don’t like Dumper Stubbs.

  I don’t know if it’s the way he looks or the way he acts or the clothes he wears, or what, I just don’t like him.

  My mother always used to say that you should get to know people before you figure out if you like them or you don’t like them. Then she and my father would start talking about exceptions. “But every rule has some exceptions,” my father would start. Then they’d have this funny conversation.

  “Of course,” my father would say, “people with very large chins are basically very cruel people. And people with their eyes very close together are very stupid...” And then my mother would say, “...and people with very large heads can’t control themselves and people with big, low ears are gossips.” And then my father might say, while he started to laugh, “and people whose nostrils flare out are perverts and people who walk with their toes pointing outwards never wash themselves properly.” And then they’d both be laughing and saying stuff like people who walked with their hands in their pockets were thieves and people who slouched were cowards, and people with loud voices were bullies and people with bad breath were liars and women who smoked were two-faced and men who wore their pants high were abusers and they’d keep on like that until they couldn’t think of any more and then they’d say, both together, “but you can’t judge a book by its cover!”

  And they would laugh all over again and then go across the street to the Village Inn to see their friends.

  My mother and father don’t do that stuff together anymore.

  My father died last September of a brain tumor.

  And my mother, I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She seems different now.

  So, here comes Dumper Stubbs to pick up the garbage and change the grease.

  And I don’t like him.

  Dumper has a large chin, close-together eyes, a big head, low ears, flared nostrils, pointed-out toes, his hands in his pockets, a slouch, a loud voice, bad breath and high pants.

  And I miss my father, who was big and handsome and brave.

  Oh, if only now I could blow a long note on his trombone and he’d be only ten minutes away!

  Maybe that’s why I hate Dumper.

  Because he’s alive. He’s alive and my father is dead. It just isn’t fair.

  And also, I hate him because he called my father a name.

  “Is your father that stupid Abo that used to play that funny-looking horn over at that stupid club?” he said once.

  Dumper Stubbs is going to pay for that.

  II

  Call me Spud.

  My real name is John. John Sweetgrass. But everybody calls me Spud. They started calling me that when I got hired to work in the chipwagon. I’m part Irish and part Abo and part of a whole lot of other things. Abo is short for Aboriginal. My girlfriend (she’s not really my girlfriend, I just call her that) is half Vietnamese and half Chinese. Her name is Connie Pan.

  The first time I ever talked to Connie Pan was at Ottawa Tech the day I chased the guys away from the Muslim on his rug. There was a student who was a Muslim praying on his little rug in the corner of the hallway and there was a bunch of smart asses bugging him. I chased them away. Connie Pan came up and talked to me right after that.

  If I married Connie Pan and we had babies, the babies would be part Chinese, part Vietnamese, part Irish, part Abo and part of a whole lot of other things. What a mix-up! I wonder what they’d look like. Probably they’d be very beautiful and handsome and sized average. The reason I think that is that Connie Pan is very beautiful and quite tiny and I’m quite handsome and very large.

  But that
will probably never happen because Connie Pan’s mother doesn’t want her to hang around with me. Specially since I got kicked out of school. She didn’t like me before I got kicked out of school and now she doesn’t like me even worse. Her mother calls me “Bignose.” Connie Pan says she calls all Canadians Bignose.

  Like I said, I work in a chipwagon.

  The inside of a chipwagon is hot. Inside of a chipwagon, on the hottest day of July in Ottawa, is very hot. The inside of a chipwagon, in July, on the hottest day of the year in Ottawa, on Somerset Street, in Chinatown, at 1:00 in the afternoon is...

  My friend Dink the Thinker who looks like a fox and who is always thinking, says it’s hotter than Death Valley, California, which is the second hottest place on earth. Dink looked it up. Dink looks everything up. The hottest place on earth is El Azizia, in Libya.

  “Could even be hotter than El Azizia,” says Dink the Thinker, “which is in the country of Libya. Libya is part of the continent of Africa which is...”

  “I know where Libya is, Dink,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me where Libya is. I’m not deep fried yet, you know. Maybe my brain is approaching the boiling point of vegetable oil I admit. So would yours be if you were standing in here up to your neck in sizzling grease, but I’m not fried yet. I still know stuff. I know where Libya is. It’s in Africa.”

  “That’s what I said,” says Dink.

  “And I know where I am,” I say. “I’m in a chipwagon on Somerset Street in Chinatown in Ottawa in July. And it’s HOT!”

  A customer steps up. A guy from my school. (What used to be my school.)

  Dink the Thinker moves out of the way.

  “What sizes have you got?” says the customer. I recognize him. He was here yesterday. And the day before. He asked the same thing yesterday. And the day before. The sample containers are pinned on the board right in front of his face. On each cardboard container I have printed the size and the price in magic marker.

  They are so obvious that it’s embarrassing. I think maybe he’s kidding. I look closer at his face, into his eyes. No, he’s not kidding. His eyes tell me that he’s serious. I decide I’m going to put flashing Christmas tree lights on these empty boxes and hook up a little ambulance siren that I can press when this customer comes along again. Breep! Breep! Breep!

  With one finger pointing at the display, with my eyes right in his, I tell him: “Small, medium, large, jumbo and family.”

  He looks up at the display.

  I wait.

  Suddenly, I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to ask how much they are! The prices are written right on the boxes in big block letters in red magic marker. He’s looking right at the display. He reads each box.

  Then his eyes come slowly back to mine. Then he says it.

  “How much are they?”

  “Depends on what size you want,” I say, looking over at Dink.

  “El Azizia is in Libya,” Dink says.

  “How big is the small one?” my customer says.

  “Smaller than the medium one,” I say, catching with my tongue a silver bead of salty sweat that’s been dangling from my nose.

  “Got any hot dogs?” my customer asks.

  That’s it. Death Valley. El Azizia. Somerset Street. What’s the difference? It’s hot. Do I care if I make this sale? No! Would my boss care if he were here? Who cares?

  “Look on the truck here,” I say. “It says Beethoven’s Classical Chips. Right? Then, on the front of the truck, look at it, it will say, French Fries, then on the back of the truck — Beethoven’s Chips; then on the other side of the truck — Beethoven’s Chips; then in smaller print it says Fries, cold drinks. Then there’s a sign that says ‘Come in, We’re open.’ Now, do you see ‘hot dogs’ written anywhere on this truck? Take a look around. Do you even see a picture of a hot dog anywhere around here? Look on this counter. Do you see any mustard here? Relish? Ketchup? No. What do you see? You see vinegar, you see salt, you see toothpicks, you see serviettes. Now, start figuring it out...”

  “I’ll have a small fries,” says my customer, now that he’s got it all straightened out in his head.

  “Sold!” I cry, and I lower the basket cage into the boiling oil. There is a crash of bubbling and popping and in a cloud of greasy steam I disappear for a minute.

  I can hear Dink talking to my customer. “Do you know that it’s hotter here today on Somerset Street than it is in Libya, which is in Africa?”

  “What do you mean?” says my customer.

  Then I hear Dink saying, louder than normal, so I’ll hear him, “Good afternoon Mr. Fryday! Lovely day!”

  Mr. Fryday! My boss. Owner of a chain, a string, a fleet of famous chipwagons around Ottawa and Hull. Beethoven’s Classical Chips. Mozart’s Chips. Tchaikovsky’s Chips. Handel’s Chips. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Chips. Holtz’s Chips...get it? I hit my player button and Beethoven, somewhere in the middle of the first movement of Symphony No. 7, comes charging out of the speakers.

  I stick my head out of the fog with my customer’s cardboard container half filled.

  “Salt and vinegar in the middle, sir?” I say, hosing politeness all over my customer, my owner, my friend Dink and up and down the sidewalk and into the Mekong Grocery.

  “What do you mean?” says the customer, who must have had his brain removed when he was young. I decide that when Dink goes back to school he can find out this guy’s name and look up the files, maybe he died at birth.

  “Well sir,” I say, the politeness and understanding coming out of me is making me feel a little sick, “you see sir, some of our customers like to apply a dash or two of salt in the middle of their order, and sometimes even a shot or two of vinegar so that when we fill up the rest of the order, and then add salt and vinegar to the top, the chips are uniformly salted and vinegared throughout.”

  Dink, who’s always correcting people, says, “Vinegared? No such word.”

  My boss is getting rich with this great idea of naming his chipwagons after famous composers and having the famous composers’ music playing while the chips are selling like hot cakes. I say “selling like hot cakes,” because that’s what he always says. About his other wagons. Not about the one I run for him. “Tchaikovsky’s are selling like hot cakes,” he’ll say to me one day, “what’s wrong with Beethoven’s?” Another day he’ll say, “Rimsky-Korsakov’s Chips are selling like hot cakes, what’s wrong with Beethoven’s?”

  Sometimes I feel like saying, “I have a suggestion, Mr. Fryday. Why don’t we switch to selling hot cakes then if they’re such a fast moving item?” but I don’t say that because I need this job. And anyway, I have to watch my mouth. I’m too mouthy sometimes.

  Dink thinks that Mr. Fryday probably tells each of the other chipwagon guys the same line. He probably says to the guy running Mozart’s, “Beethoven’s Chips are selling like hot cakes. What’s wrong with Mozart’s?”

  I’m going to send Dink around to the other wagons one of these days to find out.

  Today Mr. Fryday does his usual taste test, picking one fry out of the tray that I hand out to him, picking one fry up daintily with his chubby thumb and forefinger, the other three fingers sparkling with rings, and delicately tasting his famous fry.

  “Could be left in just a few seconds longer,” he says, smacking his lips together to help him taste. Darts of sunlight shoot out of his mouth from his gold tooth.

  He usually says either that or sometimes he’ll say, “You left it in just a couple of seconds too long.”

  Then he comes out with his usual skill-testing question: “I’m thinking about expanding, selling hot dogs from the wagons. What do you think of that idea from a business point of view, Spud Sweetgrass?”

  I give him the usual answer. The one he wants to hear.

  “Well sir, it seems to me that adding another product would complicate the production end and also take away from your strong image as the best chipman in Eastern Ontario, or perhaps, Ontario. I don’t think it’s a good id
ea.”

  “Excellent! You’ll go places as an entrepreneur my boy! Carry on!”

  He leaves, swinging his silver-handled walking stick, just as the last part of the First Movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony blasts out across the sidewalk and into the door of the Mekong Grocery Store, shaking the noodles on the shelves.

  I don’t have to tell you how Mr. Fryday walks. Just listen to the last minute or so of the First Movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

  Then you’ll know.

  I give Dink the Thinker a loonie to feed the meter. Dink feeds the meter; then takes a picture of Mr. Fryday walking up Somerset Street. Dink takes the picture with an invisible camera. Dink is saving up his money to buy what he’s always wanted. A Polaroid camera. For now, since he hasn’t quite got enough money saved yet, Dink practices without the camera.

  III

  I figure Mr. Fryday must have heard me mouthing off at that customer but I wonder why he didn’t say anything to me. Why didn’t he say, “That mouth of yours, that mouth of yours is going to be your downfall one of these days,” like he said to me the last time he heard me getting sarcastic the way I do sometimes. When they don’t say anything to you but they give you that look, that’s when you should start to worry.

  I know that look.

  It’s the look the teacher gives when he’s decided to stop giving you any more breaks and starts on the campaign to turn you in to the man downstairs. That’s what we all called the vice principal of Ottawa Tech: the man downstairs. Actually there were three vice principals down there!

  I say there were three of them down there because I’m not going back.

  I got tossed out right at the end of this year. I guess I should say there are three vice principals over there. But since I’m not going to be there this fall, let’s say there were three vice principals over there. Because if I’m not there, they don’t exist, right? I’ll have to ask Dink about that. That’s a deep thought, the kind of deep thought Dink loves. Dink wants to think deep and hard about everything. Dink the Thinker. Dink’s ambition when he grows up is to be a contestant on “Jeopardy!” That’s why, over at Tech, whenever Dink comes down the hall or comes in the room everybody starts whistling or singing the Jeopardy! song. All of a sudden everybody will stop whatever they’re doing and start going “Dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee,” etc., singing the words to the Jeopardy! song. Of course, everybody in North America knows the words to the Jeopardy! song. The words are “dee dee dee dee,” etc.