“Bye Mom. I’m going to Kenny’s to play.”
“Joe?”
I froze.
Usually the response was, “Be home for dinner,” or, “get home before the streetlights come on,” or, more frequently, “make sure you do your (insert chore here) first.”
Something in her tone made me dread the next sentence to come out of her.
“Take your brother with you.”
My heart sank. Bill would have been fine to take with me; he could keep up with anything I did. But he was off riding on Kristin’s oversized bike and was already up to his own activities. Tony was around, but he could barely walk, and no way would mom want him out of the house all day. Lloyd was in the navy, we guessed. That meant....
“You know which one.”
Inwardly I groaned. Pat was a moaner. He walked slowly, he was methodical, he was always complaining about something, and he was always hungry. Balancing what I wanted to do and having Pat along. This was going to be tough. But I really had no choice.
First stop in my day’s was getting to Kenny T’s place early enough to read some comics and listen to his Beatle records. He had two: Twist and Shout featuring She Loves you, and Beatlemania. And he had a portable record player in his room, but his mom always wanted him to play the Beatle records on the hi-fi in the living room so she could sing along. She always drowned out John on “Anna” and sang some weird harmony on “PS I Love You”. That was okay, because she would quiet down for the rockers like “Little Child” and “It Won’t be Long” so Kenny and I could pretend we were the singers. I guess Pat would have to be Ringo today.
But wait – he doesn’t have a bike. It’s going to take forever to walk there.
Plus he was making it clear he didn’t want to go. Mom was making it clear he was going. We all knew how that was going to end, but he put up a good fight anyway, and finally, lower lip set firmly in its usual place, and in danger of sunburn, he followed me down North Morgan Crescent to my friend Kenny’s place.
By the time we got there the T’s were just getting out of bed. Their family was not much like our family. They were more “modern”, and both parents spoke a weird dialect. It to me like “Hay de Bree de Bray” and until I read a poem on their kitchen wall by Robbie Burns I had no idea they were Scottish and were actually speaking to me in English.
(Would this look like English to any nine year old you know?)
“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.”
Mom said Robbie Burns and I shared the same birthday so I figured me and the T’s had a connection.
But we were in luck –
“Aye byes, wou' ye be haeing a wee bit o' breaky?” We would. Yippee!
Mrs. T eyed my brother. “And who’s dis? Wassyer name laddie bucko?”
Pat stared.
“Pat,” I told her.
“Commin’ sit den. So Paddie boy, dy’a fancy pancakes?”
His eyebrows rose at the one word he understood. He nodded, face full of hope that he had understood the alien.
“We’d love some pancakes, thank you Mrs T.” I could smell sausages. This was going to be better than I had hoped.
Mrs T cooked an entire batch of pancakes for Kenny, Pat, me and Mrs T. We ate sausages and poured real syrup out of a bottle. Mrs T made sure Pat had syrup over his entire first plate of pancakes, an act that made him instantly trust her for life and would prove to be a costly mistake for her. He demolished the plate of pancakes, head down over the plate, working the edges into the syrup, forkful after forkful.
“An-aw-ther pancake den?”
Pat nodded.
“Yes, please,” I politely added on his behalf.
He polished the next one off before the plate of cooked ones could be evenly distributed to the rest of us at the table. Mrs T smiled and it was clear she “fancied” him; she dropped another on his plate. Pat got to work; it was gone in seconds. More cakes on the griddle, I could see them, pretty sure Pat could, too. Two cakes on his plate this time, he quickened his pace, soldiering on.
Kenny had left the table after his two pancakes and two links of sausage. Into the kitchen came Mr T, or “Da” as Kenny called him.
“Marnin’ Derlin’. Hey there Joey-bye,” he grinned at me. “ And hooze da little’un den?”
“That’s my brother, Pat,” I told him. Pat never looked up from his plate.
“Das a fine name dere Paddy bye. I was afraed we had a skimler in da house.”
“He’s et aboot eight cakes and still not funnerd!” smiled Mrs T.
“Aye – no supraise. The mintit he’s foond is yer cookin’, love.”
Then they started smooching in the kitchen. I suddenly felt transported to a foreign country and really wanted Pat to finish up. I didn’t want to stay in the kitchen, and I didn’t want to leave Pat alone. Pat kept on eating, and eating. Mrs T made a second batch of batter to feed her husband, more sausages
(hmmm - maybe I will stay a few more minutes) and Pat continued to eat. Mr T was funnerd (filled up), Pat continued on. Mrs T smiled and cooked, Paddy-bye ate and ate until the end of the second batch.
Mrs T told us to get out so she could clean the kitchen. It was time to move on. Our work was done here. No Beatles, but the day was getting shorter.
Kenny and I guessed there would be kids at Colin’s place around the corner. He had a great yard; big lawn, fruit trees lining the edges, and fences to keep the ball from rolling out onto the road. There was a wooden picnic table under the trees on the east side of the yard that gave shade, and a garden hose with a nozzle that within seconds of a twist would pour out cold water. Great locale for the many games of soccer, scrub baseball and touch football that went on there.
Today the game was soccer. Lots of the older kids were there so the quality of the game would be a higher level. Oh how I wanted to play. But what about Pat?
“Pat’s on my team,” I declared as we entered the yard. I figured I could put him on defense, tell him to kick the ball anywhere and I could cover for him. The guys were pretty decent and wouldn’t knock him down or anything. I figured I could get in a good game and keep him interested, or at least placated for a good while.
I figured wrong.
Within minutes Pat began to moan that he wanted to go home now. Home was a long walk away, and even if i hurried the game might be over by the time I was able to get back, even if I rode a bike on the return. Besides, there was every chance that Mom hadn’t had enough of a holiday from him yet and might just send him back out with me. No game and more Pat was a real possibility. It was too great a risk.
“Come on, Pat,” I pleaded in my most reassuring tones,” just try playing for a while.”
Head down, eyes widening, bottom lip pushing further and further out; I’d seen it a million times. “Here it comes,” I thought.
His wail stopped the game cold. Every player turned to see who had been shot.
Colin summed up the situation in a flash. He brought Pat over to the picnic table where he showed him a box of toys to play with while we went on with the game. Brilliant. And it worked. For a little while.
But before long he was wandering back onto the pitch to again plead with me to take him home. Before he could get to where I was an errant ball landed squarely on his face. The ball bounced away and once again the game stopped – this time to wait for the wail we all knew was coming. And it came. Righteous three year old anger boiled up from little boy hell and exploded out of his mouth. I was completely distraught. Here was my little brother in my charge and I had completely failed him.
Again Colin came to the rescue, this time with a huge box of prune plums he had picked earlier. He had Pat’s attention. What he didn’t have was a grasp of what Pat saw in that massive box of plums.
“Here, have some plums little guy,” translated into, “Here, annihilate at least half a box of these delicious fruits,” which he promptly set about to do, stifling the occasional sob along the way.
When the game ended (usually when one of the older kids hollered “next goal wins”) I headed over to the picnic table to collect my charge. I estimated he had eaten over a third of the crate of plums. I offered to help Colin pick more to compensate, but I am sure he did the same mental math that I had done: (Help picking plums vs having Pat continue to eat and the likelihood of Pat remaining calm much longer); he demurred.
It seemed to take less time to walk home, my little brother’s steps lighter as we headed up Compton Avenue past Jack’s Store. He was holding his own as we turned onto North Morgan, and might have been a step ahead of me as we crossed Bishop.
When we arrived I skimmed over the details of our day with Mom, duly reported with great detail the three goals I had scored, including one where I head faked Marino B out of position and side footed the ball in easily. I’m not sure she heard all the details.
I told her about Pat’s ball in the face incident, carefully explaining how it wasn’t my fault. She checked him over looking past the caked syrup on the corners of his cheeks and the plum stains on his chin.
“Are you hungry?” She asked.
“Uh-huh,” said my brother and took his place at the table.
funnerd - filled up
skimler - leech, bum, hobo. Mr T told us to never go the path o' the skimler
mintit - something good!
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