Saying My Stupid Rosary

A Novel in progress

by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

Bobby Nollette narrates his adventures and observations as a 13 year old growing up in a small city in 1969.

Chapter 1

Saturday, April 5th, 1969

I was bouncing on and off of the wheel well at the front of the truck.  My dad’s friend Millar Suprenant, the Bread Man, was driving.  The truck was this big ol’ box thing.  It had the driver’s seat, this rat-chewed swivel chair that Millar sat on behind the big horizontally angled steering wheel.  It had racks for bread and cakes and pies in the big boxy area behind us.  It had this dashboard shelf, strewn with papers and donut wrappers and empty cigarette packs, all mixed together like one of those abstract paintings you saw in Sister Mary LaSalle’s Art Class.  On my side was no seat, except the hard metal, angular wheel well, which froze my rear end and left me with bruises every Saturday.

My old man thought this was a good idea.  You know, riding with the Bread Man on Saturday mornings.  Getting up with the birds.  Carrying loaves of bread up three flights of rickety back stairs.  Surprising old ladies in their flimsy nightgowns.  Beating it back downstairs, their shrieks chasing me all the way to the idling truck. Some fun, huh?

“Better get Mrs. Tremblay’s order,” said Millar. “Don’t drop ‘em this time, for crying out loud, huh?”

“I won’t, OK? Geez, I only dropped them once, alright?  You don’t have to keep telling me all the time!”

Millar just grunted like adults do when they don’t want to admit they’re wrong.

We stopped and I ran up the front stoop and rang the Tremblay’s bell.  She came to the door, frowned at me, sniffed her bread, paid me the eighty-three cents, grabbed away her rolls, and slammed the door.  Nice, huh?

So what I dropped one last week.  One loaf!  It’s not like it fell in a pile of doo, or anything.  Nobody would’ve even known.  These guys with their crappy jobs, and these jerk old ladies that never come out of their house, everything is such a big deal, and here they are, all losers in the end.

And, dammit, tomorrow I had to take over that godforsaken morning paper route from Pauly.  Every morning, all year long, seven days a week, get up with the damn birds and trudge around with that stupid sack full of papers, being sure to put them exactly where the stupid customers wanted them, like it was all so important anyways.  But, I needed the money.  My old man never had any extra to give me and if I wanted new Levi’s or even a stupid soda, I had to pay for it myself. And Pauly said that with tips, he was clearing close to $20 a week.  I had all I could do to get my parents to buy me underwear, for cripes sake! Dad said, you want money, you work.  That’s it.  Sheesh!

It all just wasn’t really fair, you know?

We pulled up to another house.  This one was down on lower Main Street and was three storey’s and was separated from the house next to it by one of those gangways.  You know, the real narrow alleys filled with garbage and other crap that separated houses and allowed you to get to the back stairs.  Walking through one of these places was like walking through a stupid canyon.  It was always dark as heck and seemed to smell like pee and even the walls were always wet.  So, you had to kind of hunch your shoulders together and skitter down the gangway, trying not to touch the sides.  I didn’t want no drunk’s wee-wee all over my clothes, you know?  I knew it was drunk’s because Desormeau’s Bar was close by, where the dancing girls were, and drunk guys always staggered out of the bar to pee in somebody’s gangway, instead of waiting for the bathroom in the bar like civilized guys did.

Millar gave me a rack of bread stuff to bring to the top two flats.  Of course it was always the top two, seemed like the people on the first floor somehow never needed bread, or something.  The Ballargeons on the second floor were getting two loaves of whipped white and some dinner rolls.  The Primeau’s on the third floor had tons of snivelly kids and were getting six loaves of white and 4 packages of hot dog rolls.  Of course the bigger order went higher up.  Figures!

So I had to hunch down the alley, trying not to get all drunk pee all over me.  The cement ground was wet, too, and it really reeked in there.  There was a drain spout about half way down and I had to tilt the bread rack real steep to get through and, wouldn’t you know it, half the bread stuff fell down onto the ground.  Crap!  I saved the rest and got to the back and was able to set the rack down on the wooden stoop and go back for what I dropped.

I walked back and picked up the bread. One of the paper wrappers had un-twisted and a slice or two was sticking out.  I just tucked them back in and twisted it shut.  Nobody would know the difference.  Darn it, though, one of the hot dog roll bags had fallen into a puddle that looked suspiciously yellow.  Couldn’t be pee, right?  I picked it up by the end that was sticking out and saw that the wet hadn’t got inside the pack.  Phew.  If the buns had got wet, people would complain.  I couldn’t go back to Millar and tell him because he’d just ream me out about being clumsy, and why did he have to keep losing money on replacements when I was just being a stupid, butterfingered kid.

I smelled the wrapper and thought it only smelled a little bit like pee, and decided nobody would know.  They’d think it was just smelly from the air in the gangway and wouldn’t think it was strange at all.  I also figured that the husband on the second floor always yelled all the time and so deserved pee-pee smelling rolls, anyways.

I got everything all together back on the rack and stepped back to get over to the first step and felt that smushy, splatty feel you get when you know you’ve just stepped in wet dog poo.  Crap!  I’m walking through poop and pee here, what’s going on, anyways?  Can’t these jerks clean up their walkway?

I set the rack down again and looked around for something to scrape off my sneaker. There was some kid’s cloth hat left out so I grabbed it and did my best to clean off the gunk from my sneakers.  Crap, but it stunk.  There was so much of it that I figured it came out of a huge German Shepherd or something like that. Certainly wasn’t from any poodle-dog!  Then I thought, what if it’s poop done by some drunk guy?  The mental image made me all shivery and I had to scrunch my shoulders and bend way around with my back to make it go away. Sheesh!

Anyways, I rubbed this kid’s hat on the bottom of my sneaker and got some of the poo off it.  Then I dragged my sneak across the edge of a few of the steps to scrape the rest off.  Of course, I knew all along that some of the poop would be crammed up in those slots on the bottom of the tread and would never come out until the tread wore down.

Suddenly I realized that I had left dog poo all over the hat and the steps and, Sheesh, people would be mad.  Then again, it was them that didn’t clean up after the stupid dog, so they would get what they deserved.  Serve ‘em right!  I tossed the hat back into the yard where I got it from and said the heck with it.

I grabbed the rack of bread and rolls and stared chugging up the stairs.  They were wooden and old and creaky and seemed like they might split away from the building if I didn’t stay on the inside.  The pee smell was less and less the higher I went.  I got to the second floor landing and knocked on the Ballargeon’s door.  The inner door was open and I looked in through the screen.

The Ballargeons didn’t have any kids except the big strange one that hardly anybody ever saw and who was always mostly kept inside.  He looked about twenty-five years old, the few times I had seen him, anyways, although everybody said he was really a teenager.  They say he was supposed to be a junior in high school, but couldn’t go because he didn’t know, really, how to talk English, or any other language that anybody could understand, anyways, or write or anything, not to even mention knowing about geography and stuff.  So the Ballargeons just kept him locked up in his room and made out like he wasn’t there, or something.

Anyways, when I looked in the screen, there was Mrs. Ballargeon at the stove in an almost see through nightgown.  Sheesh, this was embarrassing.  Not like when you saw Peachy in her nightgown, who was still only in her twenties and looked as good as any girl you could ever see.  Mrs. Ballargeon was old, like way old, like maybe even in her forties like my folks, and she didn’t look like no schoolboy’s dream in her nightgown, I’ll tell you. She was all wattle-y and roly-poly, and her rear end was wide and nasty looking.  I almost wanted to puke, but then again, seeing any lady without clothes wasn’t all bad, if you know what I mean.  Then I figured she’d spot me and scream or something so I backed away and cleared my throat and yelled, “Bread Man!” and waited.

“Is that you, Bobby?” she said.

“Yes m’am.”

“Wait right there, I’ll be right out”.

In about two hours, it seemed, she showed up at the screen door in a robe, her hair all scraggly and knotty, holding her purse open and said, “How much this week?”

“$1.32, m’am.”

“OK, honey, I have it right here.”

She handed it through the slightly open screen door in exact change, just like she always did, along with an extra dime for me, for a tip.  Even though she looked pretty unappetizing in her nightgown a minute ago, she sure was nice to give me a tip.  It could have been a quarter, though.  And, I wasn’t so sure about her calling me ‘honey’.  It’s not like she was my aunt or anything, sheesh!

Her robe was all crummy, like her nightgown was.  There was all kinds of old food stains all over it and the belly of it was all wet, like maybe she had leaned into some water or something.  She smelled kind of like old cheese, or something, and a bit like dog pee herself.  The top of it was all hanging open and I could see down between her gazumbas, which were all big and wobbly and pasty white.  Like I say, a naked lady is a naked lady, even if it’s old Mrs. Ballargeon.

I passed in the bread stuff and thanked her.  I thought she looked a bit confused at the pee smell, but she didn’t say anything, so I was OK.  Just as she was closing the door, there was her son, kind of standing in the hall between the kitchen and the front room, arms at his side, scowling at me, like he knew I had seen his momma in her nightgown and wanted to cream me because of it. He had his finger up his nose and drool dripping from his chin. I thought I might be dead in about two seconds. But everybody said he couldn’t think, and wasn’t dangerous, so I was probably OK.  I know that Mrs. Ballargeon didn’t seem to think anything special.

I knew I was starting to take a long time, and old Millar would have finished the next door house he was doing, so I figured I would have to double-time it up to the Primeau’s upstairs.  They usually didn’t have the money to pay and Millar said that last week was the last week he was gonna carry them; that they had to pay this week or I couldn’t leave the bread.  He probably wouldn’t care if the kids starved, even.

So, I grabbed the bread rack with the Primeau’s stuff on it and clomped up the rickety stairs to their landing.  As usual, everything was all closed up and locked and there didn’t seem to be anybody around.  There was a note scotch taped to their door window that said, ‘Away for the day, please leave bread, will pay you next week.’

Crap!  Figures!   No mention of leaving any money for me, right?  I looked around, even under the mat at the door, and, nothing! What to do?  I leave the bread, and old Millar rags me out.  I don’t leave the bread, and these little kids starve to death.  Crap, why do I get stuck with this stupid stuff?

Feeding kids won out, so I piled the bread on the crummy table next to their door and turned with the empty rack to head back down the stairs.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dirty face peeking out of the scummy window at the end of the porch, which whipped behind the curtain as soon as I saw it.

There were people home.  Well, now I was mad!

I knocked loudly on the door and yelled, “I know you’re in there, open up!”  Just like I saw on the cop shows on TV.

There was scurrying sounds and loud whispers from inside and something got knocked over in there, falling with a clang.  Nobody’s home, huh? Right!

I knocked loud again, and this time I heard nothing.  I went over and tried to peek in where I had seen the face.  There was a crack between the edge of the window and the curtain and I could see part of a scummy kitchen with half eaten food on a table and a sink full of dirty dishes.  I could even see a cockroach crawling on the counter next to the sink.

I yelled, “I can’t leave your bread unless I get my money!”

Then I heard a kid start crying.  Then another voice shushing them.  I knocked again.  Some whispering that I could barely hear. A voice said, “Mommy said not to answer the door!”

“What in God’s name is taking so long? Augh!  Goddammit, goddam dog shit on my shoe!”  That was Millar, come to find me.

I looked down over the railing.  I yelled to him, “The Primeau’s left a note on the door to leave the stuff and they’d pay next week, but there’s people home, I can hear ‘em.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” yelled Millar.  “Wait there.”

He came up the stairs, slowly, grunting and mumbling about goddam deadbeats and dog shit goddam everywhere, and stuff.  I was snorting through my nose to try to keep from laughing out loud. He sure could get carried away with his problems.

In about six hours or so, he made it to the top of the stairs and knocked on the door.

“This is Mr. Suprenant, the Bread Man.  We need the bill paid or we can’t leave the bread today.”

Again, a kid started crying and another one shushed.  Millar knocked again, and I was glad it was him, now, and not me.

We spent what seemed like six or seven hours there…Bam, Bam on the door…a kid wailing inside…shushes, like we couldn’t hear them or something…Bam, Bam again…and on and on, ‘till Millar finally gave up.

“Goddam deadbeats, the hell with them,” he growled, “Bobby, grab that tray and let’s get going.  I’ll be damned if I’m giving them any more on credit.”

I was feeling kind of mixed, you know?

“Mr. Suprenant, what if those kids are starving and the parents left them and they don’t have anything to eat?  What then?”

“That’s Joe Primeau’s lookout, not mine,” he said. “Not my responsibility to feed the world.  Man’s gotta make a living, for God’s sake, and giving away all your bread to deadbeats is no living!”

So, we both clumped down the creaky staircase, Millar crabbing about how it would be just his luck to break his goddam leg on these stairs for no-good deadbeats.

We got to the bottom, and sure enough, Millar stepped right onto the rest of the dog poop.  He was walking so fast that when his foot slimed onto the poop, he slipped and sat right down, flattening out the rest of the poop under his rear end.  As he tried to catch himself, the bread rack flew up in the air and the bread and hot dog rolls flew all over the place, wrappers opening, slices and buns spilling out all over the stoop and part of the yard.  One of the packages landed right on the poo covered hat I had tossed right over there, bread spread brown, like peanut butter.

Millar outdid himself with his swearing, saying, even, a few words I had only heard about in the alley behind school.  I never knew that adults would even know those words, and, in fact, thought Killer Mike was making it all up.  But here I was, hearing them from an adult who sounded like he had known about these words for years.

Millar finally got himself up, screaming about being all dog shit, and picked up the rack and threw it against the side of the building, mangling it all to heck, which set off a new round of swearing every bit as entertaining as the last.

He was a mess, for sure.  I was laughing my rear off, just about dying.  He had dog doo caked on his shoe and smeared all over his hind end and he was whirling around and swinging at thin air, like there were ghosts only he could see that deserved a good punching out.

He turned and looked at me like he was ready to kill me.  I backed away just in case and stopped laughing, and right away said I was sorry, so sorry, didn’t mean to laugh, sorry.  He stopped swinging and just stood there huffing and puffing, like he was all out of breath, like he had gotten the wind knocked out of him, like Pauly had when I hit that pitch right into his belly that time.

Right then, I heard this way weird sound, “Awaroo, Awaroo.”  At first I thought it was Millar but I was looking right smack dab at him and his mouth wasn’t moving except to catch his breath.  Then I realized that the sound was coming from above and looked up and there was Mrs. Ballargeon’s monster kid, standing on the second floor porch, a big grin on his face, saying “Awaroo, Awaroo,” over and over again.  He started to climb onto the railing and I thought he was gonna jump down to us. 

Then Mrs. Ballargeon came running out of her kitchen with her robe back off, all worried looking and grabbed onto her monster son to pull him back onto the porch.

She said, “Emil, Emil, honey, what are you doing?  Come back in, for goodness sakes, you know you’re not supposed to be out here.”

He said, “Awaramama Mama,” and followed her back inside with his head down. 

I was still staring up at where the Ballargeons just were with my mind all empty when Millar pulled at my shoulder and said to come on, let’s go.  He seemed all of a sudden lost in thought, and walked out the gangway with his head down, mumbling, carrying the twisted bread rack.

“Mr. Suprenant, should I go back and pick up all the spilled bread and stuff?”

“Augh!” he said. “I’m so tired of all this. Arghh!  No, Bobby, leave it there.  The goddam rats will eat it all up in no time anyways, or maybe them starving kids you’re all worried about.”

So we left it all there and, sure enough, as we got back to the street, I looked back down the gangway and there were little kids gathering up loose slices of bread like it was a treasure hunt.  So, I felt better about it all.  They’d be able to eat, now.

We got into the truck and I was wondering if old Millar was gonna call it quits for the day, if he was in a bad mood and all, but he just started up the truck, looked at his list, and drove off to the next house on our route.  I wasn’t about to say anything, either.  Millar looked like he might up and bite my head off if I said anything.  I knew enough from my old man’s bad moods when to just shut my mouth.

The next six houses were over on Jefferson Street, one street away from the tracks from Lower Main.  They were all in the same block, so he took the three on one side and I did the three on the other.  This was a better street, so the people tended to have their money ready when you came.  On the best streets, like my neighborhood, we left the bread and the people left out their money, no problem.  On the middle good streets like this one, people paid but you always had to ring their bells. 

One of the houses in this group I was doing had a girl about my age, though she went to the public middle school, rather than a Catholic Elementary school like me, so I never saw her except on the Bread Route on Saturday mornings.  She was about as pretty as anything I ever saw.  Her name was Loretta and she had long, straight near black hair and big brown eyes that always looked like she might start crying any minute on you. You wanted to just protect her from whatever was bothering her.  And, holy cow, she had a body!  Her waist dipped in from her hips and then widened up to where her, uh, her, uh, uh, her breasts pushed out against her shirt, like.  Phew!

She was probably the biggest reason why I didn’t just tell old Millar to stuff his bread route.  I got to see her about every third Saturday, on average, and it was worth it.  I kept hoping that one day she would say hi to me.  That would be the day.  So far, she only looked at me like I was a stupid Catholic School boy, though two weeks ago, last time I saw her, she smiled at me, real quick, like.  Actually, it might be good that I hadn’t talked to her yet, because my mind always went completely blank whenever I got too close to her anyways.

She lived on the second floor of a two storey house, about six houses down from Robinson’s store.  I quick did my other two houses first, and like usual, the ladies were ready with their money and next week’s order, so it didn’t take long at all.  I quick ran to Loretta’s house and ran down their gangway to the back, like I was supposed to.  This gangway wasn’t real clean, but it didn’t smell like drunk pee either, which was a relief.  For some reason, the idea of Loretta living next to a pee-smelling gangway was just to bad to think about.  No dog doo, either.  I checked before I stepped!  Hey!  That rhymes!

Anyways, I ran up their stairs real fast and managed not to drop their rhubarb pie, bread and hamburg rolls in anything that would embarrass me when I handed it to her.  I mean them.  I got to their back door and it was open, just like Mrs. Ballargeon’s was, except Loretta’s Mom wasn’t all too bad to look at if she was in a nightgown.  I know!

But Loretta’s mom wasn’t who I saw in the kitchen.  My forehead got all sweaty and my knees got kind of shaky on me.  Know why?  I’ll be darned if Loretta wasn’t right there at the sink, washing dishes or something, right there, not eight feet away from me.  I didn’t want to be caught standing there staring at her or nothing, but when I tried to speak ‘Bread Man’, nothing come out except a croak just like what the big ol’ bullfrogs up at the frog pond made.  And, it came out way too loud and she would hear it for sure. 

She turned around and stared at me like I was a actually a giant, ugly, stupid frog standing on her back porch, holding an armful of bread and stuff.  I could feel my sweaty face turning beet red, as my mom would say, and I thought Loretta would be able to feel the heat coming off it from way over there by her sink.

She said, “Are you bringing our bread?”

“Garf,” I said.

“Are you OK?”

“Garf,” I said. 

Maybe she’d think I was a foreigner, or something, and couldn’t speak English.  Maybe then she wouldn’t think I was only a stupid dork.

She smiled, then and went into the other room.  I stood there and suddenly I had to pee so bad I thought it would gush right out of me, and at the same time I was getting all uncomfortable down between my legs.  This had been happening lately whenever I was thinking about certain things.  You know.  Like Loretta and Peachy and stuff like that.  I thought for a while that something was wrong with me, like maybe I had some cancer that only grew at certain times, or something.  But then I remembered Big Ricky and Killer Mike talking about boners and stuff and how men and women would do stuff, and stuff.  So, I guess it happened to other guys, too, but the idea of Loretta or any girls ever thinking that I might be having one now was just too much for me.

So, anyways, I had to pee and was all stiffened up and Loretta came back into the kitchen and caught me kind of dancing in pain, I had to go so bad.  She laughed then and I got hotter, even, than before, and had to dance harder because I was really about to wet my pants if I didn’t do something soon.

“You need to use the bathroom, or something?” she asked.

Oh my God, use her bathroom?  I’d die of embarrassment.

“Garf,” I said, and she pointed me to a door in the hall between the kitchen and dining room.

I was able to kind of limp into the bathroom and close the door.  I could hear her walking around out there and figured for sure that she could hear me going pee in here.  Sheesh!  I didn’t want her to hear me!  I didn’t even like my Mom or sister Sally to hear me go, and always made them wait in the front room whenever I had to go.  The last thing I wanted was for somebody to hear this rainstorm I made when I had to pee.  Just the thought of Loretta standing outside the bathroom door laughing at my piddling sounds mortified me to death.

Their toilet had one of those fluffy pink toilet seat covers, you know, the kind that when you lift the seat up to pee, it couldn’t stay upright because of the fluffy cover and so always flopped back down on you.  This was always something that ladies did because they liked everything to be all pink and fluffy all the time.  My dad and Big Ricky both said that ladies didn’t stand to pee like we men did and so they didn’t even know that it was a problem, the seat flapping down on you all the time.

Anyways, sure enough, this seat couldn’t stand straight up against the back of the toilet.  I tried, and it stayed for a few seconds, and then flapped down with a loud noise that would wake the dead.  I lifted it again and figured I would try to hold it there and see if I could somehow pee with one hand while holding the seat up with the other hand.  But of course I hadn’t unzipped yet and so had to let go of the seat to get myself all ready, you know?  As soon as I let go, the seat flapped down, again with a loud ‘fwap’ noise.  I unzipped my fly and pulled my dingus out and reached down, all hanging out, to lift the seat again. 

It was right then that Loretta called from right outside the door, “Hey, you alright in there?  You drown or something?”  She was right outside the door!

I croaked to answer; best I could do and just about died thinking that she could probably imagine me there with my johnson in my hand, trying to hold up her stupid fluffy toilet seat.

Anyways, by squatting and kind of scrunching over, I was able to hold the seat and pee at the same time.  Only problem was that I had held it so long that I wasn’t quite aimed perfectly when it started to stream out of me, and some got on the edge of the toilet rim, and some went on the floor, wetting up their stupid fluffy pink toilet rug, one of those that had two little arms that come around the sides of the toilet itself.  Sheesh!

I managed to get most of the rest of it into the toilet.  I couldn’t aim the way I wanted, though.  I had wanted to aim so that the pee hit the inner side of the bowl without spattering in the water, which was what made all the noise.  No, I had to, unfortunately, pee the best I could and most hit the water, and was flowing so hard that the piddley sound was a lot louder than it usually was. Lucky I had got soft again or maybe I wouldn’t have been able to aim it at all. I thought I heard a bit of a giggle outside the door, but I wasn’t sure.  Talk about the end of the world.

Suddenly my leg all cramped up right when I was done peeing and as I straightened up, I accidently let the seat go and it flopped down again right between my last few drops, a couple of which, of course, landed on the seat.  Ugh!  Gross.  It was all yellow drops spattered on the seat.  My sister Sally had yelled at me about leaving drops on the seat when I went, which was why we men lifted the seat in the first place.  Sally said she was sick and tired of wiping up my stupid drops so she could sit on the seat.  But, yuck, I couldn’t wipe it up!  Gross!

Loretta called in, again, right from outside the door, “You OK in there?  Everything all right?”

“Garf,” I said, and then was able to manage, “Be out in a minute!”

So I grabbed some toilet paper from their roll, there, and wiped up my pee so nobody would even know.  I’m sure those streaks will dry just fine.  I stuffed myself in my pants and zipped up and was all fine and ready to go.  Flushed the toilet and saw right away that I had had to go so bad that some had leaked through my underwear and dungarees and there was a wet spot about the size of a half dollar in the front of my crotch. Almost 14 and still peeing my pants! Sheesh!

I wanted to kill myself!  Loretta would see this right away and then she would laugh at me and tell everybody and look at me like she knew I peed my pants and I could never face anybody again in my life and I wanted to die and crawl into my grave and pull the casket shut and dig the dirt down on me and be left alone forever and ever rather than walk outside this bathroom now. You would, too!

Then I had an idea.  I usually didn’t bother to wash my hands after peeing, unless my mom or stupid sister Sally caught me and made me.  But, this time, I figured I would, and then could ‘accidentally’ splash water all over myself and it would blend in with the pee on my pants and Loretta would never know!  Sometimes I’m so smart I scare myself!

So, I did all this, pretty successfully, I might add, and unlocked the door and there was Loretta waiting for me.  She looked at me and said, “What happened to you? Did it rain in there, or something?”

I was pretty sure that she didn’t really think it was raining in her bathroom, and was teasing me, but then again, you never knew with girls.

Anyways, I was all embarrassed again and could only kind of say, “No’m”, while looking away from her.  Sheesh!  She was looking where my zipper was, like she could tell that the water there was a different kind of water than the rest of it that was splashed on me.

She asked, “Did you have an accident?”

“Garf?” I asked.

“Accident! You’re all wet, on your pants there.  What happened?”

Suddenly I could speak again.  “Well, when I was washing my hands, I got them too close to the faucet and the water kind of splashed all over.  I’m sorry if I got some on your rug and stuff in there.”

“Oh.  Then what was all the noise before?”

“The toilet seat wouldn’t stay up.”

Geez, did she know that men had to put the seat up, even?

“What do you mean?” she said.

“The fluffy seat cover keeps it from standing up by itself.”

Then it was her turn to get red in the face.  She said, “Oh!” and then turned away back into the kitchen.  I guess girls could get embarrassed, too.  I never thought about that before.

I followed her into the kitchen and she had a bunch of coins on the counter and a piece of paper.  She was still red and could hardly look at me.

“Here’s our order for Monday and here’s the $2.19 for what you brought today, OK?”

I held out my hand and she put the list and the money on my hand.  Her hand felt as damp as mine was and I wondered if she had been washing dishes and hadn’t dried them all the way, or something.
I said, “Thanks Loretta,” and she looked at me like she was surprised, or something.

I turned and walked out her kitchen door.

“Wait,” she said.  “You be here next Saturday?”

I stopped and looked back.  She was looking down at the floor and scuffing her bare feet.

“Yup!” I said. “Thanks for letting me use the bathroom.  Sorry I took so long.”

She smiled at me then. “It’s OK, Bobby, see you next week, then.”

As I ran downstairs, I suddenly realized that she had called me by my name.  I was sure she had no idea who I was, besides being Millar’s stupid helper, and all.  But, here, she knew my name.  I felt tingly all over, like I had just walked under the high tension wires where Yoder had got himself killed that time.  I had to run as fast as I could back to the truck.  I couldn’t just walk, I don’t know why, but I just felt I had to get all my energy out all of a sudden.  I guess I was almost dancing, or something, when I got back to the truck. At least I wasn’t having that stiff problem in my pants anymore.  In fact it went away pretty much when I started peeing in Loretta’s toilet, which was weird.  I could never figure it.

Millar said, “What’d you do, Piss your pants?”

Crap!  I forgot

“Nope, used a customer’s bathroom and their faucet sprayed me.”

“The customer with the cutie-pie girl that you like?”

Sheesh, How could he know that. “Loretta’s house, yeah.”

“You didn’t pee on the toilet seat, or nothing, did you?”

“Course not!  Sheesh!”

“Get a boner looking at her?”

“No! Sheesh!”

“OK, if you say so.  Only, I remember being your age!”

“Huh?”

“You know what I mean!  Now, we gotta stop at my house so I can change to my other uniform.  Mrs. Belanger said I smelled like dog potty and if that old biddy can smell me, everybody can.  Potty, she said. Can you believe anybody would say that?”

Actually, my sister said that all the time, and Aunt Bea, too. Like when they’re talking to kids, and stuff.  They didn’t like to say poop and pee, for some reason.

I hopped in the truck and Millar pulled a u-y  in the street and headed back down past Lower Main, across the tracks, over the old canal bed and down across the bridge and onto the Island where his house was.  All the time, I was thinking about how Loretta knew my name, and even seemed a bit embarrassed in front of me.  Maybe she liked me a little bit?  Or, at least didn’t think I was a total dork?  Maybe didn’t think how stupid or ugly or slimy or creepy I was or anything?

Millar sure did smell!  And, I was worried about his driver’s seat.  I mean he has sat in that dog doo and now it was probably all transferred onto the seat.  So, it just stood to reason that as soon as he changed into his other uniform, that the poo would transfer up onto the seat of his fresh pants. This could go on forever until he bit the bullet and replaced his truck and his pants at the same time.  Which was probably too expensive for a bread man to do. 

I think Millar didn’t make any more money than my dad did.  Maybe less, even.  I never did see him when he wasn’t working on his bread route and this would be the first time I ever saw his house. But, somehow it seemed to me he was a sad guy who didn’t have much and had to work this job where poor people were always trying not to pay for their bread and screw-ups like me were always dropping his wares in dog pee and doo all the time. It must be hard to make out this way.  He was a bit like the Fuller Brush and Jewel Tea guys that came to our house to try to sell stuff to my Mom.  They looked like they were acting happy, but it always seemed to me like they were almost on the verge of tears if one more person told them, “Nothing today, thanks.”

I tried to think of a way to ask Millar about if he was sad, or poor, or something, but how do you do that?  It’s not like me and him were best friends or brothers or uncles or something, like somebody whose business it was to know each others business.  I don’t even really know how good friends he was with my dad.  I don’t think they went to Borelli’s tavern for beers and darts together or anything.  Wait!  My dad was his insurance man, that’s how they knew each other.  Maybe Millar had trouble paying my dad the premiums, just like some poor people couldn’t pay for their bread, so maybe my working for Millar was some kind of deal they made, or something.  Not that my dad or Millar would ever tell me anything like that.  Like I said, it wasn’t us who were best friends.

We pulled up to what I figured was his house. It was off at the end of a cobblestone street, right next to the river.  Yup!  Pretty poor looking.  Even rickety-er looking than the stairs going up to Ballargeon’s and Primeau’s.  Even worse than Gilly’s house, with the same type of outdoor staircase that ol’ Frecks had fallen through that time.

Geez, now I was thinking about Frecks.  After Yoder was killed that time, Frecks came to live with us a while.  But then his stupid ol’ Gramma got the county to take him away from us.  She took him back home and never let him come up the Second Street Park any more.  Somebody told me they saw him walking with his Uncle Pete near their house once, and that Uncle Pete had his arm around Frecks in a way that maybe an Uncle shouldn’t. I knew what Uncle Pete was like because of what Frecks had told my mom and me that night.  It was pretty certain that Uncle Pete was still after Frecks.  It was a year later that the police had gone to their house and found Uncle Pete dead from a gun when Gramma was at church, and everybody said that Frecks did it.  His Gramma disowned him and he was taken away and nobody ever heard from him again.

Anyways, the point is, Millar’s house looked as beat up as Gilly’s did.  I wondered if Millar was a drunk like Gilly’s dad was in real life.  I mean, when he wasn’t being a bread man that my father knew. That would explain why everything was so beat looking.  Drunks spent their money on beer and stuff and didn’t have any left for food or house fixing.  But Millar worked at a job, a crummy job, I think, but a real job, and that was something Gilly’s dad would never have done, no matter what.  I didn’t know what to think, now.

Millar turned the truck off and said, “Wait here.”  He got out and walked kind of slow and tired, like, over to the house and climbed up the side stairs to the second floor.  Once he was inside, I got out of the truck and stretched my legs.  I smelled a bit like pee, either from the gangway at Ballargeons or Loretta’s bathroom, I didn’t know which.  I walked over to the river bank and looked down at the water rushing by.  It was about a twenty foot bank from the end of the street where I stood, down to the edge of the water, and it looked like a guy could real easy slip down the bank and fall into the river and get carried away and drowned.  The bank and river edge was all shaly, too, and all sharp edges that would slit you right open and spill your blood all over the place. 

I backed away because I was starting to get that itchy feeling like I wanted to jump or fall and get all hurt.  I never knew why I ever felt like this.  I didn’t want to die, and even more I didn’t want to hurt.  The idea of hurt was something that I didn’t even want to think about.  I hated the dentist and getting shots at the doctor and hardly ever rode my bike because what if I fell and hit my head or scraped my knee or something?  But when I was on cliffs or in trees or anything, I always got this feeling, like my brain was telling my body: go ahead, try some hurt, it’ll be cool, and my body was saying: no way, Jose, but one of these days, I was afraid that my brain would win and then I’d be a goner. Brains are weird, you know?

I had turned and was looking up at Millar’s house, wondering if anybody lived on the first floor, and maybe were they the landlord and why didn’t they fix the place up.  I thought maybe I’d ask Millar when he came out.  Seemed like a question I could ask without seeming to be butting into his business too much.  A simple question, you know?  Like one anybody would ask, just out of friendliness.  Why would anybody yell at anybody and say mind your business over that, huh?

Millar came out all dressed up in his other uniform which looked exactly like the other one.  It even said ‘Suprenant’ over his heart like the other one did, too.  In fact I decided he probably hadn’t even changed and as he came to the bottom of the stairs, I kind of drifted in behind him to see if the dog poo was still there.  But it wasn’t, so he had changed after all.

“Come on, Bobby, get back in the truck. We’re behind now and have to get caught up.  I don’t want to lose my job.”

Geez!  I never thought about him being able to lose his job because we were late!  That didn’t seem fair at all.  Would that really happen?  Would my dad lose his insurance job if he made a mistake or came in late or something?  The idea sent all shivers all over me.  What would we do?  My mom couldn’t work; she was too busy staying home to take care of all of us.  Besides, I didn’t know of too many ladies that worked, anyways, except for nuns and other teachers, and the secretary at Collins Wallpaper store, and Doctor Amyot’s nurse.  I didn’t think that my mom could be a nurse, because I was pretty sure you needed to go to school for that, and I don’t think my mom ever did.  And, besides, she couldn’t even drive, so how would she get to work, anyways?  There weren’t any hospitals near where we lived for her to walk to, and no doctors offices, either. And I think if you were a secretary, you had to take orders from the boss, and I was sure as heck that my mom could never do that, at least my dad always said that she couldn’t take orders worth a damn.

“Come on, Bobby, get your head outa the clouds and get in the truck, huh?”

I was thinking so hard that I forgot to get in the truck!  Stupid!  I did now, and Millar started up and headed away.

“Mr. Suprenant?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Could you really lose your job?”

“If I don’t get this route done and turn in the collections, you bet your ass!”

“Sorry,” I said.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. For making us late.”

“Not your fault, don’t worry about it.”

He drove on and neither of us said anything for a few minutes.

“Mr. Suprenant?”

“What?”

“Who lives downstairs from you?  Anybody?”

“My mother.”

I never expected that!  “Your mother?  You have a mother?”

“What’d you think, I was the Immaculate Conception?” He laughed.

I never really understood what the immaculate conception was, anyways, but I was pretty sure Millar wasn’t it.  What would he be doing with the Virgin Mary, anyways?  This was what I got for blowing off Catechism!  Sr. Mary Anthony told me I would regret it someday!

“No. I mean, I knew you had a mother once, everybody does, just not still.”  I could feel that I wasn’t saying the right things here but was about pretty confused.

“Well, she’s pretty old, but still kicking. Gonna be eighty next month, God willing.”

“Wow!  My old Pip died three years ago at seventy-one.  He only had one leg.  Does your mom still have hers?”

“Yeah, they don’t work all that good, but they’re still attached.”

“Is she your landlord?”  I could understand how she couldn’t fix the house if she was eighty!

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’ll get the whole house when she dies, if the damned thing doesn’t fall down first.  It’ll be a race to see who dies first, her or the front porch, and I’m betting on the porch.”

“Wow,” I said.  My dad’s always trying to get me to fix stuff at our house.  Does your mom nag you, too?”

“No,” he said. “She don’t nag.  She don’t even know me anymore.  Her mind is gone.  Sometimes she thinks I’m my father, sometimes she thinks I’m my grandfather, and the rest of the time she has no idea who I could be.  But she’s always mean as a snake.”

“She’s crazy?”

“You’d think so, if you ever saw her, but it’s just her memory’s gone and she’s forgot everything and everybody, except stuff from way long ago.  The goddam doctors and medicines use up all the money, and for what?  But I can’t afford to put her in a home, that’d cost even more money that I ain’t got.  So, I’m just stuck.”

“Are you married?”

“Why am I telling you this stuff?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Cause I want to know?”

“I guess,” he said. “Anyways, I was married for a long time.  Had a daughter, too.  She’d be about twenty now.  Catherine, her name was.  Pretty little thing.  Loved her daddy.”

“Where’s she now?”

“Oh, she died ten years ago.  Fell into the river right over there and drowned.  Wife blamed me.  I was supposed to be watching her, but my mother was sick and I was helping her and I never noticed Catherine wander away.  She was always sneaking away on adventures.  The wife was always nervous about it.  Never wanted Catherine out of our sight.  She stuck around for Catherine’s funeral, told me she never wanted to see me again and took off.  Ain’t heard from her since.  She took the $5000 we had saved and high-tailed it out of here.  Last thing she told me was that I had let Catherine die because I was always more interested in my mother than her and Catherine. Worse time of my life was seeing my little girl dragged out of the river all blue and dead looking.”

“That‘s terrible!”

“Yeah, well, that’s life, sometimes.  I don’t think about it too much anymore.  Just keep plugging along, God knows why. Hey!  Don’t tell your dad this stuff, huh? I shouldn’t have told you.  Nobody’s business.”

“I won’t say nothing.  You ever think what if she came back someday? Your wife, I mean?”

He seemed quiet for a minute or two.  His face was real sad, now, even sadder than when he was talking about his daughter.  There might even have been the start of a tear on his face.  You didn’t see grown me cry too often, I’ll tell you! Then he grunted and said, “No.  She ain’t never coming back.  Been so long without a word.  Don’t even know if she’s still alive, even.  She was never all that healthy.  Always one thing or another wrong with her, you know?  Always sick.”

“She have any family?”

“Nah.  Her parents were already dead when we got married.  Died in a car accident on their big trip to Niagara Falls one summer.  No brothers or sisters. Edna, that was my wife’s name, Edna, she had been staying with cousins in Troy.  I guess there wasn’t enough money to take her on the trip.  As soon as she had buried her parents, she wanted to get married right away, so we did.  Didn’t have a pot to piss in, you know?  Moved her in with my mother and me and trouble started near right away.  My mother never took to Edna, at all, and boy did she let her know it.  If we could have afforded our own place, maybe things would have been different later on.  But my mother said that would be stupid and she wouldn’t help, what with this house here that would be mine someday.  Only an uncaring, ungrateful son would move out, she said.”

I couldn’t believe that this grown man was talking like this about his mother. His mother was still running his life when he was grown and married?  I thought they backed off and retired when you got to be eighteen, or twenty-one, or something like that.  If my mother is still trying to get me to wear a hat and eat my vegetables when I’m twenty-one, I’ll… well, I’ll tell her where to go, for sure!

So, I said, “Geez, I’d be pretty mad at your mom, Mr. Suprenant.”

“Well, Bobby,” he said, “The bible tells us to honor our father and mother, you know?  And when your mother holds the purse strings, she makes sure you honor her, or else! Here’s our next stop.  Let’s drop this subject, huh?  I shouldn’t be saying any of this to you at all.  Promise me you won’t blab to your dad?”

“I won’t, I promise.”

I decided right then and there that if my mother ever tried to hold my purse strings, I’d rip the darn things right the heck out of her hands.

I also decided that I should show more respect to Millar.  He seemed to be a pretty good guy who had had some bad times.  I tried to wonder what it was like to lose a daughter and a wife.  What would I feel like if I lost my sister Sally?  I pictured her in my mind, being carried out of the river, or maybe the frog pond, all blue in the face with pale lips and wet, white skin, her hair all pasted back and falling off.

Even though I didn’t always like Sally, I was still able to get almost a little teary thinking about it.  I could definitely see my parents all broken up, though.  They would cry and carry on and blame each other like Millar’s wife did and their marriage would end and we’d never see my dad again and…

“What the hell’s wrong with you, now, Bobby?  What are you squeaking about?”

Sheesh!  Was I doing this out loud? I gotta watch that!

“Nothing,” I said.  “Not thinking nothing.”

But I decided that Sally should drown in the frog pond, for sure, because the water was all green-brown and murky, and that would gross her out.