Pure Spring Read online

When I got there the moving guys had most of his stuff back in the truck and Grampa Rip was having an argument with the Mud Pout about a lamp that was missing. Two of Grampa Rip’s huge brass floor lamps were stored in her basement because there was no room in the garage for them, but only one lamp came out of the basement.

  “Where’s the second lamp?” Grampa was saying. “There were two lamps down there.”

  “No,” she was saying,”You’re losing your marbles, Rip. There was only one lamp stored down there...”

  The moving guys, Frankie and Johnny, were standing there listening, their arms folded across their chests, their muscles bulging, smiling a little bit to themselves, wondering what was going to happen with Grampa Rip’s lamp.

  After Grampa and the Mud Pout argued back and forward for a while, Grampa suddenly says this: “All right then. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll be pullin’ out now. I’m moving into a decent place, and in the meantime you can take that brass floor lamp that you’re after just stealing from me in front of these witnesses here in broad daylight and you can shove it as far as it will go right up you know where!”

  Frankie and Johnny were holding their sides laughing.

  Then Grampa and I got on a streetcar and met the Bye Bye Moving truck over at his new place.

  On the streetcar Grampa said, “That’s the way my grampa, Grampa Hack Sawyer, used to talk. Crude but effective.”

  The new place had two rooms and a sink and toilet at the back of an old house on Preston Street not too far from where I was this morning at the Pure Spring Bottling Company on Aberdeen Street.

  By the time Frankie and Johnny got most of Grampa’s stuff into the rooms there was a little crowd of neighbors watching. By the time they wheeled Grampa’s secretariat down the laneway on a dolly the crowd was oohing and ahing. They were very excited about the size of Grampa Rip’s furniture.

  When we carried the holy pictures past there was some clapping.

  It took the four of us to lift the strongbox.

  “What’ve ya got in here, Mr. Sawyer?” says Johnny.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, eh?” says Grampa Rip and gives me a wink.

  But when we set down the box, the floor suddenly started to creak and we just got out the door in time, when the whole room caved in.

  Grampa Rip had to go and stay at the YMCA for a while until he found another place. And he did find one.

  And I was helping once again. Getting to know him.

  “How much would you say one of these pictures weighs?” says Frankie as he and Johnny carried Jesus and his thorns up to the third floor of an apartment on King Edward Avenue near the synagogue.

  “I hope you can stay here in this one,” I said to Grampa Rip. I said that because of the two long rows of beautiful elm trees that could be so pretty in the winter and so cool making shade in the summer. What a beautiful street King Edward Avenue is! What a boulevard!

  Because the staircase was so narrow the secretariat got stuck and Frankie and Johnny had to take the banister off to get the big desk down again.

  They were shaking their heads.

  Maybe the Bye Bye Moving company would like to say bye bye to Grampa Rip.

  They got the secretariat back outside.

  They rigged a pulley on the balcony of the third floor and tried to pull her up with ropes but the pulley gave way and the whole thing crashed back down on the lawn. The secretariat now had a big crack in it.

  “You’ll have to put this monster in storage, Mr. Sawyer,” says Frankie, or was it Johnny.

  “I’m not living without my secretariat,” says Grampa Rip.

  And so on to the next place a week or so later.

  “We’re sure gettin’ to know your stuff real well, Mr. Sawyer,” says Frankie while we’re bolting together the brass bed in Grampa’s new place on York Street near York Street School.

  “I wonder,” says Johnny, “how the lady over at Clemow Avenue is doing tryin’ to put that brass lamp up where Mr. Sawyer told her to put it!”

  But when the landlord looked at Grampa’s stuff coming out of the Bye Bye Moving truck (Let someone who cares handle your valuables), especially the three holy pictures, he didn’t like it and changed his mind about Grampa.

  “What’s the trouble, Mr. Applebaum?” says Grampa.

  “We don’t go for that voodoo around here,” says Mr. Applebaum, “and anyway I forgot to tell you, the place is taken. I got some relatives from Poland coming.”

  At last Grampa came here, Somerset Street, right across from where I’m sitting eating my roast pork and hot mustard sandwiches.

  And now I’m living here with him.

  He’s really good to me. And I’m good to him.

  I think, maybe, we love each other.

  Dundonald Park is the name of the park I’m sitting in. The air is a bit chilly but the sun is warm on me. There are still patches of snow on the ground but there’s grass showing. The trees have no buds yet but if you look at a whole tree, not just the branches and twigs, it looks like any minute now it’s going to start to explode in slow motion with buds.

  There’s a robin. Is it a boy robin or a girl robin? Boys. Girls. Soon he’ll, she’ll pull a big fat worm out of the grass but not yet. He makes, she makes a beautiful sound like fat water dripping. Velvet.

  There’s Billy Finbarr, our paper boy, home from school for lunch. He gives me a wave. This afternoon he’ll pick up his papers and fold each one into a tight roll, a “biscuit,” so he can go around his route and throw the papers at the houses from his bicycle.

  At our apartment, though, he can’t do that. He has to bring the paper upstairs and then throw it as hard as he can at our door. When we hear the thump, we know what it is. It’s our paper.

  There’s part of the Ottawa Evening Journal newspaper on the bench beside me. It’s open. There’s an ad.

  Toni Home Permanent

  Which girl has the natural curl

  And which girl has the TONI?

  There’s a picture of two girls. Which one?

  A beautiful girl walks past on Somerset Street. I feel like shouting to her, “Are you the girl with the NATURAL CURL or are you the one with the TONI!”

  But I wouldn’t dare.

  The Gray Man looks at her, too.

  I see, across the street in our round bathroom window, Cheap, my cat. The four bathroom windows in our apartment building are all round like the portholes of a ship. I’ll go over soon as I’m done this pork and hot mustard sandwich and get Cheap and take him for a ride on my bike. He likes to get in the basket. Sticks his face right into the wind. Thinks he’s a dog. He’ll get a snootful of spring air!

  Underneath the Toni Home Permanent ad in the paper there’s a beautiful picture of the movie star Esther Williams. She’s in a new movie about bathing suits. She has very long legs. She’s standing on her toes.

  There’s a lady with her kid walking up Somerset Street. She is giving the kid a candy. The candy falls in the dirt. The lady picks it up, licks off the dirt, gives it back to the kid’s mouth. The kid, like a baby bird in a nest, opens up and in pops the candy, Chirp! Chirp! The Gray Man watches, too. Then he picks up his paper and reads. He looks up often over the paper.

  Can Cheap see the Gray Man from his porthole window where he loves to sit?

  I’m thinking about this morning. Mr. Mirsky’s honest eyes. The lie I dumped in. And then Anita. All the lipstick and the perfume. And what she said. Randy, she said. Truck 15. Seven A.M. in the morning. Right choo are!

  And then, “God help ya!”

  God help ya? What did she mean by that?

  Anyway. We’ll soon find out.

  Here I come, Cheap. Look out! I’m very happy!

  I’ve got a job!

  3

  Rising to Gerty

  “SEVEN A.M. in the morning,” Grampa Rip is saying. “It’s redundant to say in the morning if you say A.M. A.M. means morning! It’s Latin. Ante meridiem. Ante, before. Meri, middle. Diem, day. S
ame as P.M. Latin! P for post meaning after. Meridiem, midday, noon. After noon! See? Easy, eh? A.M. P.M. Before noon. After noon. Twelve hours before noon. Half a day. Twelve hours after noon. Another half a day. Twenty-four hours in a day. And I’ll tell you this! If the sun came up at noon and went down at midnight then those geniuses over at Pure Spring wouldn’t be nearly so confused, now would they! Now, you better get a move on. You don’t want to be late — get there at five minutes after 7:00 A.M. in the morning, now would you? And don’t forget yer lunch!”

  Grampa Rip’s smart. But sometimes he tells you too much. He loves words. He loves language. He loves books. He loves life.

  I take the Somerset streetcar and transfer at Preston Street. It’s raining misty rain. Where I get off the streetcar at the corner of Aberdeen and Preston there’s an old Italian lady all dressed in black leaning way over on her little lawn squinting at a purple crocus flower peeking up out of the grass between some patches of snow.

  In the big yard at the Pure Spring Company, 22 Aberdeen Street, there are about twenty trucks waiting with their engines running. There are men in maroon jackets and pants moving around the trucks, standing talking to each other, adjusting the cases of drinks on their huge trucks. Their caps are maroon, too. Their shirts are khaki colored. The black tie looks nice with the shirt.

  The trucks are white and strong looking. The backs are open. I count the cases. Four rows ten cases long, five cases high. I’m good at math. The trucks hold two hundred cases each.

  A black-and-white stripe along the side of the truck under the load says Honee Orange. On the door is the Pure Spring shield. The shield is black and gold. There’s a gold crown on the top. Under the crown are four panels. In one is a drawing of a fountain. Then three goofy-looking lions. In the third, three fleurs de lys. In the fourth, a beautiful brown woman carrying a box on her shoulder.

  She has no clothes on. Her breasts are in full bloom.

  Under that, a crest, black and red. Pure Spring Ginger Ale. And under that it reads

  Think Pure

  I look back up at the shield, at the breasts. Look closer. Nipples.

  “Think pure!” a voice behind me says. “Think pure!” Then laughs.

  “You’re O’Boy, right? My new helper? Truck 15’s over here. We’re almost ready to go. Here, put this on. I’m Randy.”

  Randy hands me a khaki shirt. It is just like his. It’s got the Pure Spring shield on the pocket.

  “That’s the Pure Spring shield. See? There’s fleurs de lys — we sell drinks to Frenchies. Lions — that’s for the English. The fountain — well, that’s the pure water of the spring. And the brown-skinned girl — she’s carrying ginger in that box, ginger for the ginger ale, get it? But you weren’t looking at the ginger box, were ya? That’s only a picture, ya know. The real thing’s lots better...”

  I’m embarrassed. I get in the truck and put on the shirt.

  It’s time to go. There’s a big roar, all the trucks’ engines getting revved up. Out of the yard we go. Our truck, truck 15, leaves the gate. I see, at the gate, Mr. Mirsky standing, his arms folded, watching us all leave. He’s proud of his fleet. His chin is up. His bald head almost glistens in the spring soft morning light. His face looks good on him. Proud. Like my shirt with the Pure Spring shield on the breast pocket. Looks good on me, I know it does.

  “What we do — what’s your first name, oh yeah, Martin, well, we’ll have to do something about that — what we do is put our valuables in the glove box and lock it. Your wallet and stuff. There’s lots of dishonest people out there, Martin — oh, we’ll have to do something about that name — there’s thieves and cheats and pickpockets and you’ll be concentrating on your work in cellars and cramped places and you never know...”

  I obey and take out my wallet and put it into the glove box and he locks it. I notice he doesn’t put his own wallet in there. Maybe it’s already there.

  But doing it doesn’t feel right.

  Grampa Rip got me the birth certificate not too long after I went to live with him. Also the wallet to keep it in. He told me to swear to him I’d never lose it. He got very excited the way he gets sometimes. He said it’s the most valuable document I’ll ever own. Don’t let it out of your sight. Don’t let anybody ever touch it. It proves you’re a Canadian, you were born here, best country in the world, everybody in the universe wishes they were a Canadian, you’ll always be a somebody when you have that plasticized proof right in your wallet...always remember that...the envy of the world...a wallet-sized plasticized birth certificate...

  Our first stop is McDowell’s Grocery and Lunch on Sweetland Avenue in Sandy Hill.

  Randy squeezes big number 15 into the little laneway.

  “As soon as we go in, you’ll go down the cellar and open the cellar window and throw out six cases of Pure Spring — six full cases of whatever he’s got that’s full down there. Then come right up.”

  I go down the steep, steep rickety wooden steps almost like a ladder into the dark, damp, musty, low-ceiling cellar. At first I can hardly see anything. Soon I see the light of the cellar window. I feel my way over and unlatch the window.

  There are cases and crates and bottles full and empty and supplies piled up everywhere. I find four cases of ginger ale and two Honee Orange, full, and lift them out the little cellar window.

  It feels good. I’m working! Getting paid!

  I go back up. Climb back up.

  Randy is talking to Mr. McDowell. He’s a little old man leaning on a cane. He’s thin. His cheekbones stick out. He’s got brown spots on his hands. He’s talking business with Randy. The price of this and that.

  Mr. McDowell spits a gob of phlegm out of his throat into a pail in the corner. You can hear the green yellow gob clicking in his chest as he breathes and coughs.

  “Did you get those empties out of there, Martin?” says Randy. “Good. Wait for me at the truck. How many empties, Martin? Six. Good. Okay. I’ll go down and see what Mr. McDowell needs...”

  I go outside. My head is spinning. Empties? Did I make a mistake? Didn’t he say full ones?

  Outside, Randy’s throwing out from the cellar eight cases of empties and telling me to put them on the truck. Now I’m confused. But I do as I’m told.

  When I’m finished, Randy comes to the door and says really loud, “Mr. McDowell needs eight full. Four Honee Orange and four ginger ale!”

  Then he rushes past me and grabs two cases of Honee Orange off the truck and puts them with the six cases that are already there. The ones I put out.

  We’ve just sold Mr. McDowell six cases of his own full ones!

  Then Randy bangs around for a while and tells me to go down the cellar again, tidy up the cases a bit, make some noise and then come up. I do that, what I’m told. Now it’s time to go back up into the store.

  Before I put my foot on the first steep step I look up. From the darkness I’m in into the light up there I see a swinging blue skirt, black small shoes with flashing silver buckles, curving graceful legs in silk stockings with wide blue garter tops, pale-blue panties with rose-pink-colored ribbon trim — a flashing sight, now gone.

  I come slowly up the ladder.

  My body is half into the store now.

  I always dreamt, especially in the spring, that the girl of those dreams would appear up from down below — rise up, the floor or the earth opening up in my dream and she’d come up to where I was standing.

  But now it’s the opposite.

  It’s me rising.

  I hear a happy little laugh. She’s chatting with a customer. She’s behind me at the counter. I shut the trap door to the cellar. Quiet.

  I turn and look. She looks down at her shoes. Shy. She glances up. Then she pouts pretty lips. Her face is soft ivory, her hands are fine with delicate veins, her eyes are Irish blue, her brows are dark, her hair is dark brown, wavy, she blushes faint roses. She has on a little straw hat with blue ribbon the color of a robin’s egg, a bow like a butterfly at the s
ide...

  I go outside and see Mr. McDowell and Randy counting the eight cases — four Honee Orange and four ginger ale that Mr. McDowell has just bought.

  Mr. McDowell gives Randy the money.

  Nine dollars and sixty cents.

  “Okay,” says Randy. “Go back down the cellar there, Martin — we gotta do somethin’ about that name, right, Mr. McDowell? — and catch these cases while Mr. McDowell and I make sure he gets what he’s paid for!”

  Then Randy, behind Mr. McDowell’s back, winks at me when our eyes meet, and the wink gives me a chill.

  Mr. McDowell just paid for six cases of his own drinks from his own cellar. We’re thieves. I’m a thief!

  When I’m finished in the cellar and close the trap door I go over to where she is standing near some shelves and whisper to her, “What’s your name?”

  “Gerty,” she says and looks down at the silver buckles on her shoes. “Gerty McDowell.”

  Her electric blue blouse has a V-opening down to where her division is. She has a hankie in the pocket, fluffed up. There’s perfume all around.

  I swallow so hard that I think my Adam’s apple is going to come up into my mouth. I see my eyes in hers. Is that possible?

  Can a person say a million things in the blink of an eye and not say one word? Is it magic to talk just with your eyes? Can everybody do that? Can everybody understand eye talk?

  Like I can?

  I go out and get in the truck.

  Randy’s got my wallet. He’s zipping it back up.

  “I’ve decided to give you a nickname, Martin. And it’s a good one. You’re going to like it. It’s perfect for you. Boy. Boy O’Boy! Get it? Boy, oh boy! Isn’t that great? Isn’t that funny? Get it?”

  I can’t say anything.

  Randy again.

  “And, oh yeah, I see by yer birth certificate yer not sixteen years of age. You lied to Mr. Mirsky. He’ll fire you if he finds out, you know.

  “Boy, it doesn’t matter how big the lie is or how small the lie is. You are a liar. Simple as that. A liar is a liar. And your lovely, kind Jew Mirsky wouldn’t be too happy with you, would he, if he found out you were a liar, now, would he?