that he didn’t know if that was true.
This was the idea of certain people who came to his apartment, which gave rise to the idea, with the town police, that his apartment was a commune, and the place was raided twice in a month.
That the police could and did pick Ralphie up allowed his mother’s neighbours to sympathize with her, and to feel a little gleeful that such a smart aleck – which is what they considered Ralphie to be once this happened – was getting his comeuppance.
Once, the band that played at the rink dropped in after their performance and brought in some booze, and word got around that there was a party at Ralphie’s. He himself didn’t hear about it until he was walking home from his mother’s.
Ralphie soon found, at a hundred and twenty-sevenpounds, and wearing a great big cowboy belt, that he was not able to take care of the apartment the way he should, and whenever he visited his mother, she would always ask him to come home before he got into trouble.
The drapes and the furniture in Thelma’s house were white. The coffee table was made of heavy glass, with round glass coasters on it. There was a smell of faint cigarette smoke in the air, but it never seemed to be in the room you were in.
Thelma would talk to Ralphie, about having to do something with his life, and having to think of his father, who had wanted him to go into law. “All as he wanted you to do, was to do something with your life,” she would say to him. Her biggest disappointment was her daughter Vera, and she did not want Ralphie to be a Vera!
“You know, Ralphie, that it isn’t any kind of life to hang around downtown – that can only lead to trouble. We have one girl now who does that. We have one girl who didn’t even come to his funeral. We have one girl already, Ralphie, who travels about with hippie people and has lived in a commune and was married and divorced. We have one girl now, Ralphie, like that –”
Then she would look at him, breathe deeply, and return her gaze to the far side of the den.
Sometimes he would go and visit his mother and bring Adele along with him. Her house was beyond the tracks, above Myhrra’s trailer, and it would loom up sorrowfully in the night air. There was a stream that ran through some dying bushes behind it, and an old swing sat in the trampled grass. The fence boards were loose and rattled inthe wind, the brick made the windows look blank, and though the front yard had been landscaped, there was an unfinished quality to it. The garage was huge and smelled of chipped paint. Adele and he would sit out on the swing, which was hidden from the wind, and sometimes you could see her unbuttoned coat flapping. There was a smell of iron in the autumn evening, the pervading scent of apples in the darkening lanes.
Beyond the swing, on the other side of the shed, which was brand new and had nothing in it but a lawn hose, beyond the trampled garden, too, there was a small enclosure where they used to go after school to get away from everyone. Adele would sit on Ralphie’s knee and eat carrots – which she constantly did for her eyes because she was afraid of going blind. Ralphie would put his hands up under her coat, and down the top of her elastic pants to keep them warm, and Adele, tapping her feet and chewing carrots, would worry about her teeth going bad and her eyes getting strained from looking at the blackboard. There would be wind along her legs, and the smell of frost in the upturned earth, earth that had amongst the stones the hardness of turnips.
Joe Walsh started working when he was fourteen. He joined the navy just after his seventeenth birthday, and was a diver on the HMCS Yukon . One time, because of a remark made by the Chief Petty Officer about someone Joe knew, Joe threw him down the teak-wood stairs leading to the galley. He was sent off to jail because of this. The Chief Petty Officer said it was an unprovoked attack, and Joe, stubborn – and with a trait that
This was the idea of certain people who came to his apartment, which gave rise to the idea, with the town police, that his apartment was a commune, and the place was raided twice in a month.
That the police could and did pick Ralphie up allowed his mother’s neighbours to sympathize with her, and to feel a little gleeful that such a smart aleck – which is what they considered Ralphie to be once this happened – was getting his comeuppance.
Once, the band that played at the rink dropped in after their performance and brought in some booze, and word got around that there was a party at Ralphie’s. He himself didn’t hear about it until he was walking home from his mother’s.
Ralphie soon found, at a hundred and twenty-sevenpounds, and wearing a great big cowboy belt, that he was not able to take care of the apartment the way he should, and whenever he visited his mother, she would always ask him to come home before he got into trouble.
The drapes and the furniture in Thelma’s house were white. The coffee table was made of heavy glass, with round glass coasters on it. There was a smell of faint cigarette smoke in the air, but it never seemed to be in the room you were in.
Thelma would talk to Ralphie, about having to do something with his life, and having to think of his father, who had wanted him to go into law. “All as he wanted you to do, was to do something with your life,” she would say to him. Her biggest disappointment was her daughter Vera, and she did not want Ralphie to be a Vera!
“You know, Ralphie, that it isn’t any kind of life to hang around downtown – that can only lead to trouble. We have one girl now who does that. We have one girl who didn’t even come to his funeral. We have one girl already, Ralphie, who travels about with hippie people and has lived in a commune and was married and divorced. We have one girl now, Ralphie, like that –”
Then she would look at him, breathe deeply, and return her gaze to the far side of the den.
Sometimes he would go and visit his mother and bring Adele along with him. Her house was beyond the tracks, above Myhrra’s trailer, and it would loom up sorrowfully in the night air. There was a stream that ran through some dying bushes behind it, and an old swing sat in the trampled grass. The fence boards were loose and rattled inthe wind, the brick made the windows look blank, and though the front yard had been landscaped, there was an unfinished quality to it. The garage was huge and smelled of chipped paint. Adele and he would sit out on the swing, which was hidden from the wind, and sometimes you could see her unbuttoned coat flapping. There was a smell of iron in the autumn evening, the pervading scent of apples in the darkening lanes.
Beyond the swing, on the other side of the shed, which was brand new and had nothing in it but a lawn hose, beyond the trampled garden, too, there was a small enclosure where they used to go after school to get away from everyone. Adele would sit on Ralphie’s knee and eat carrots – which she constantly did for her eyes because she was afraid of going blind. Ralphie would put his hands up under her coat, and down the top of her elastic pants to keep them warm, and Adele, tapping her feet and chewing carrots, would worry about her teeth going bad and her eyes getting strained from looking at the blackboard. There would be wind along her legs, and the smell of frost in the upturned earth, earth that had amongst the stones the hardness of turnips.
Joe Walsh started working when he was fourteen. He joined the navy just after his seventeenth birthday, and was a diver on the HMCS Yukon . One time, because of a remark made by the Chief Petty Officer about someone Joe knew, Joe threw him down the teak-wood stairs leading to the galley. He was sent off to jail because of this. The Chief Petty Officer said it was an unprovoked attack, and Joe, stubborn – and with a trait that
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