GROWING UP WITH JACKY
Chapter 3
I was walking up Sydney Street one Friday evening on my way to meet up with my friends at Peake’s Quay when I heard someone ask me for a smoke. It was dark behind Saint Dunstan’s Basilica and I couldn’t see who it was, but I knew the voice was Jacky’s. He was sitting with his back against the church foundation in the shadow of the street light with a beer bottle in his hand. “Nice warm evenin’, eh!” said Jacky. “I thought I’d sit here for awhile and watch the traffic go by, and maybe bum a cigarette or two. You may as well sit down and we can pick up where we left off the last time. I was thinkin’ about girls the other day, and how I got laid the first time in the Harbour,” he chuckled. “But before I tell you that one, do you remember the time my older sister, Annette, came from Summerside with her boyfriend in that fancy convertible? You were there that day at the old swimmin’ hole, weren’t ya’?”
Although real swimming for us meant the cold salt water of the Gulf, in June, before it warmed up, we swam in the creek at a place we called the swimming hole. It wasn’t far from Joe and Eveline’s, up off the dirt road, and we always had a contest to see who’d be the first one in. I usually won. Although I was a clumsy athlete, I was a fish in the water and I wasn’t scared of the cold. If I’m ever reincarnated, I’ll come back as an air-tight stove! Annette had run away from the orphanage so many times the nuns finally gave up on her. She was sixteen by then and staying with her boyfriend. The two of them decided to drive to the Harbour one hot summer day, and they picked up Jacky before driving down the lane to the swimming hole. Annette had her bathing suit in the car but she didn’t have it on.
I told my version of the story to Jacky. “The three of you walked up to the bank while we were splashing around and Annette went behind a bush to put on her bathing suit. Well, that was all the provocation I needed, and curiosity got the better of me. I knew how to get to where I could see her without being noticed, so I crawled through the bushes and saw her put on the two-piece suit. I got an eyeful alright. My God, I figured I was a man then; I’d seen the Promised Land!”
“Yeah”, said Jacky. “Annette never was too shy. That guy she was with was no good, but she liked his car. They didn’t stay together after that summer, and she left for Toronto not long after. I saw her there after I ran away from the Harbour, but I’ll tell you that story some other time”.
Jacky was a handsome guy, and most of the girls in the Harbour had a crush on him. He had his new false front teeth, lots of muscles, he was good at sports, and he was a charmer. As my cousin used to say: “He had IT!”
“As soon as I figured out school wasn’t for me I had to learn how to make some money”, said Jacky. “You and your buddies picked bottles and sold smelts and rabbits but that wasn’t for me. Eveline hated smelts and rabbits, and walkin’ through the ditches lookin’ for bottles was too much work. Although I know the welfare paid Eveline good money to keep me, she never gave me a friggin’ cent. I started hangin’ around the canteen to see if I could pick up a few quarters washin’ dishes and cleanin’ up after they closed on the weekend. Then, one day, I was hangin’ around the Legion parking lot and up drives Big Gertie in her old half-ton truck. She had a couple of part-time jobs, and one of them was janitor at the Legion. She’d go there on Sunday mornins’ after the dance, and clean the tables and scrub the floor. She saw me there and asked me if I wanted to help her. I said I would if she paid me”, continued Jacky. “The first few times I spent a couple of hours there pickin’ things up for her, and she paid me 50 cents. That wasn’t bad. A hell of a lot easier than pickin’ 50 bottles, eh!”
“Anyways, the third time I went she gave me a drink a beer”, said Jacky. “I’d seen Gertie sneak a beer or two from the Legion fridge, so I said ‘Sure!’ Gertie seemed to think this was pretty cute, a fourteen-year-old orphan drinkin’ beer. She told me not to tell anybody about it or she’d kick my arse. I was scared of her, so I kept my mouth shut, I tell ya’”.
Big Gertie was something of a legend in the Harbour. She’d grown up on a farm as an only child, with no brothers, and came by her name honestly. She was big alright, big all over, and strong as an ox! The French guys had given her a few choice nicknames, and although they teased her, none of them was brave enough to give her a try. Gertie had somehow fallen in love with a man from down east who was ten years older than her. They’d met at a church picnic. He’d been in the Korean War, and her family had put the pressure on her to ‘land him’ because they were afraid she’d end up an old maid. But her new husband, George, turned out to be a major disappointment. Like Joe Plank, he had a drinking problem but, worst of all, he lost all interest in her after their daughter was born. Deciding she couldn’t do without, Big Gertie turned her attention to the young guys in the Harbour, and because Jacky was good looking and available, she decided he’d be the next one!
“It was the fourth Sunday, I think, and Gertie had told me to clean out the closet. She came in with a beer and locked the door behind her”, Jacky said with that grin. “I thought, ‘Jesus, what did I do wrong now?’ Next friggin’ thing, she’s pressin’ up against me and has her hand on my crutch”, says Jacky. “I was scared shitless when I saw the look in her eyes. I thought she was gonna cut if off! But then she steers me into a corner where there was an old chair, and sits me down and starts to take her pants off. And then she takes her shirt off. Holy Jesus, I’d never seen anythin’ like it! She didn’t smell too good but she knew how to get me goin’, if ya’ know what I mean”, he said. “We went at it pretty hard. When she was done, she got up, got dressed and never said another word to me all mornin’. She must have liked it because we did it every Sunday after that for a long time.”
“Speakin’ of Big Gertie”, he drawled. “Do you remember the time she tackled the teacher at the English school on the steps of the Co-op.”
The poor unfortunate had come to the Harbour from Nova Scotia, fresh out of Teacher’s College, and it was his first time in a classroom. Boy was he in for a surprise! The English school had fallen on hard times, mostly because of a lack of students, and it would close soon after. Without understanding the consequences of his action, young Mr. Scott had disciplined Gertie’s daughter for some minor infraction and had sent her home with a note.
Jacky picked up the story. “Gertie was wild! There was no friggin’ way her daughter was in the wrong! She knew Scott always called in at the Co-op for a few groceries on his way home, and she was layin’ for him. You were there too with a bunch of us. I’d heard about the note from Johnny, who always knew where there was goin’ to be trouble. Anyways, the poor little bugger came out of the store with his books in one hand and his groceries in the other, and Gertie tackled him right there on the steps. She went up one side of him and down the other, and he didn’t know what to say. She finally stopped yellin’ at him, and then she decked him. Right there on the steps of the Co-op! With half the Harbour watchin’!”
I’d remembered the ruckus. Nobody had moved an inch to protect the teacher, or to try to stop Big Gertie. They knew better! Poor Mr. Scott had picked himself up, gotten a few stitches over at Dr. Delaney’s, and staggered back to his rooming house. And that’s the last we ever saw of him. He left the Harbour the next morning. “Yeah”, said Jacky, “She was somethin’ else that Gertie. She taught me a few things all right!”
After I’d stopped laughing, I got up and asked Jacky if he’d like a bite to eat. “I’d rather have a beer, if it’s all the same to you”, he answered. So I walked over to Queen Street, ducked into a snack bar and ordered a sandwich, and then went over to the liquor store and picked up a six-pack. I figured Jacky deserved the six-pack for entertaining me, and I knew by the look of him that he needed to get some solid food into his stomach. One thing for sure, his stories were a hell of a lot more entertaining than anything I’d hear from a bunch of overfed civil servants in a bar down on the waterfront!
As I sat down, Jacky munched on the sandwich and took us down memory lane yet again. “That summer after the first time I took Grade 7 was a good one, boy’, he said. “I grew up a lot, but I guess that’s when I started headin’ down the wrong path too. I didn’t just learn about women, I learned about drinkin’ too, and I had my first taste of dope. There was always a bad crowd hangin’ around the Harbour during the summer. Guys comin’ home from Toronto, guys who had quit school, the tourists, that sort of thing. Eveline and Joe tried to keep me under control but, by that time, they had enough to worry about with their own kids. Besides, they’d brought in a couple more foster children to replace Joey and Betty. Eveline knew I had no place to go and that the welfare had to pay her until I was eighteen, as long as I stayed there. So we made a deal. She left me alone, and I didn’t bother her”.
“I went back to school in the fall but I really didn’t give a shit anymore. The teacher kicked me out of class so many times that I gave up before Christmas. Eveline said I’d have to find somethin’ to keep me out of the house so I started doin’ odd jobs for the farmers and the fishermen”, Jacky continued. “I was fifteen. Some days when I had money, I thought I had the world by the tail. When I had no money, I was down in the dumps. I figured I needed a plan. So, I found out from one of the guys who was home for Christmas how I could get to Toronto Toronto
“Annie was livin’ in this run-down place with this useless guy, and I ended up helpin’ with the rent and the groceries most of the time. I soon figured I was no better off there than I was in the Harbour, so I headed back east in the spring to find work on a lobster boat. It was the best job I ever had, and it sobered me up. The captain was good to me, and he taught me how to work. Once the lobster season was over, I got in with the bad summer crowd agin', and then I really hit bottom”, he said. “All of you guys I used to hang around with were in high school and I didn’t even have Grade 7, for Christ’s sake!”
I remember Jacky’s last year in school. By that time, I was in high school and he’d started to hang out with a bad crowd. On a good day, he’d hang around with us, and on a bad day, when he was with the other guys, he’d side with them and treat us like ‘little shits’. It was their name for us. We still saw the good in Jacky but something had changed in him, so we just left him alone. If he wanted to grow up quicker, there wasn’t much we could do about it. That was his business. If that’s what he wanted, then we didn’t feel sorry for him in the least.
“I hung around the Harbour ‘til I was eighteen and, just as I figured, Joe and Eveline kicked me out as soon as the welfare money stopped comin’. I don’t hold a grudge against them because they never made on I was one of theirs. We welfare kids knew our place, and that we were always second best. It was the same with the others I knew from the orphanage. At least I had a roof over my head and a couple of meals a day”, Jacky said with a sigh. “Then I wandered into Charlottetown, and I been here ever since. I had a few odd jobs along the way and I even worked for the federal government one time. I bet you didn’t know that!”
“Yes sir, I was on the pogey one time, and the lady from UI said I’d qualified for job retrainin’. Because I was bilingual, she told me I’d get to the front of the line in this new program. Imagine, me, Jacky Barriault at the head of the line!” he said proudly. “My job was to go to these job fairs and talk about my experience, and try to sell the job retrainin’ program to other people on UI. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! But, it didn’t last. The program ended, nobody hired me, and I was back on the street”, he said. “And that’s where I been most of the past twenty five years, since you and I used to run the roads in the Harbour”.
I still had my Friday night date with my drinking buddies so I drained my beer and turned to Jacky: “How’d you like to come out to the Harbour with me sometime, take a drive around and see if we can hook up with some of the old gang?” “I’d like that”, he said, “Take her easy, eh!”
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