Born Naked by Farley Mowat

could become an Old Testament kind of parent. Left alone in the apartment one rainy Saturday afternoon, I entertained myself by making pellets out of tightly rolled wads of cotton wool which I shot at flies through my tin pea-shooter. Being nearly weightless, the pellets proved ineffective until I hit on the idea of soaking them with my mother’s perfume.
    Why perfume? I cannot say. Water would have done as well but perhaps I thought the stricken flies would die happier this way. In any event, when my parents returned home I was accused of fooling about with Helen’s toiletry. I denied the charge, which was idiotic because the scent of Attar of Roses hung around me like a cloud.
    Helen cried a little at the wastage of her treasured perfume and I had a little cry myself after getting seven whacks with my father’s razor strap on the palm of each hand. It didn’t really hurt that much, but since this was the first time I had been strapped, the shock was considerable.
    After the ordeal was over, Angus and I solemnly (if somewhat gingerly on my part) shook hands while he assured me the incident would now be forgotten. I understood that I had not been punished for taking the perfume so much as for having lied about taking it. Lying by others was a cardinal sin as far as Angus was concerned, although he was a skilled practitioner at the art himself, especially when he was engaged in concealing his affairs with other women from my mother.
    During the Belleville interlude I also dabbled in theft. Angus had a habit of leaving small change on top of his bureau. Since I had no fixed allowance I took to pocketing the odd penny. When I had amassed five cents, I would buy a special kind of candy bar sold at a little shop on the route to school. It wasn’t the candy I was after but the wrapping. This consisted of stiff, perforated cardboard designed to be converted into a little glider that would actually fly quite well. I acquired several of these bars but guilt tormented me and I was afraid either to eat the candy or to assemble the planes. I kept my hoard in a hole in the limestone retaining wall behind the library. Eventually the squirrels found them and that was that.
    My parents’ bedroom and possessions exercised an irresistible fascination for me. I pawed through all their belongings at one time or another and can vividly recall the cold chill when I found Angus’s .45 Colt service revolver under a pile of his underwear. I showed it to Geordie Sobie. Neither of us had the guts to touch this sinister-looking object but I nerved myself to steal one of the bullets. Possession of this shiny, brass cylinder with its ugly, snub nose of grey lead gave me considerable prestige at school for a few days—until an older boy took it from me.
    Although it may seem odd, that incident is one of the few distinct memories I retain of my years in public school. Could it have been that my teachers were such singularly colourless souls as to fail to make a mark? Or did I simply dislike the servitude of school so fervently that I was able to eliminate its echoes from my mind? Whatever, my early school days remain as insubstantial in memory as a miasma.
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    STOUT FELLA CONTINUED to play a prominent part in my life. Because Belleville harbour was a filthy place, full of sewage and industrial refuse, Angus found a summer mooring for the little vessel at the mouth of Jones Creek, a few miles west of town. This became our summer home. When we were not off cruising, Angus commuted to work each day, leaving Helen to lie reading on deck in the sun, or belowdecks if it came on to rain, and me to wander about with the sons of a farm family who lived nearby.
    These people were not really farmers. They had a cow and some chickens and lived in an old farmhouse, which was so dilapidated they dared not make use of its upstairs rooms. The several sons, all under fourteen, never seemed to wash, dressed like characters from Huckleberry