Boy O'Boy by Brian Doyle Page B

the shoes come from? Are they someone else’s shoes?”
    “No, they’re not someone else’s shoes, they’re my shoes.”
    “But they’re not new shoes…”
    “Yes, they are. New shoes. My new shoes.” I’m giving her my honest face as hard as I can. The face that people will always want to believe.
    “Did you see that enamel basin down the street there? In front of number nine? My father kicked that basin all the way down there. Our basin.”
    “Oh, my…”
    “And the riddle?” says the turkey lady. “Is it a trick question?”
    “No trick,” I say. “Just look up.”
    They both look up.
    While they’re both looking up, my door opens and my mother comes out. Then the three go in the house to talk about me. And maybe the enamel basin…
    I feel invisible.
    Along comes Billy. He starts telling me about Mr. George. How Mr. George told him he is going to play a special piece on the organ at a church service one Sunday morning. Not a choir piece. But a special piece — just Mr. George. I don’t tell Billy about what happened last night. I don’t tell Billy how I hate Mr. George.
    The mailman goes by.
    Nothing for us. He looks at my shoes.
    “Quite the shoes,” he says.
    He puts a letter through Mrs. Sawyer’s door.
    He moves on.
    A streetcar goes by with nobody on it but the driver. How many dead people you could put in there and take away…the streetcar’s red though…you’d have to paint it black…
    Mrs. Sawyer’s door opens. She’s got a letter in her hand. She’s waving it. She looks up and down Papineau Street. Nobody but us. She comes rushing over. She’s crying.
    “Buz,” she says. “My son! He’s coming home…any day now!”

19
“Happy Birthday!”
    T ODAY'S MY birthday. Billy’s coming with me for ice. It’s hot again. We’re talking about what was in the letter Mrs. Sawyer got from Buz. Buz’s real name is Sydney Sawyer. In the air force he’s Flight Lieutenant Sydney Sawyer. In the letter he said he was wounded. His plane hit another plane on the aircraft carrier. But not too hard. He broke a bone in his wrist. He’s coming home on the ship the Andrea Doria.
    “There are 696 muscles and 206 bones in Buz’s body. And he only broke one of those bones,” I say.
    “I’ll be glad when he comes home. I hope it’s soon,” says Billy. Then he’s quiet. Billy’s always quiet now. Looking far away. He’s not the same as he was. After that night when his father escaped from the loony bin. I feel like asking Billy when’s your father coming back from the war but I won’t. Too mean.
    I tell him instead about my horrorscope. About the bounty. Billy tells me about a dream he always has of finding money — pennies and nickels on the ground and then seeing more and more quarters and fifty-cent pieces and bigger silver dollars and he’s picking as many of them up as he can but he can’t hold any more and they’re spilling all over the place and people are coming to take it all away.
    At the ice house it’s the same man who gave me the small block the last time.
    “Hi, there, pretty boy! Didn’t grow into those shoes yet, eh? And who’s your little friend? What’s your name, little friend?”
    “His name’s Billy,” I say.
    “I’m not askin’ you. Am I askin’ you? I’m askin’ him. What’s your other name, Billy?”
    “Batson. Billy Batson.”
    “Oh! Like in the comics. Captain Marvel. SHAZAM! Let’s see you say SHAZAM! See what happens.”
    “He doesn’t want to,” I say.
    “Who’s askin’ you? Shut up, pretty boy. Go ahead. Say it. SHAZAM! Let’s see what happens. I’ll give pretty boy a nice big block of ice today if you do.”
    Billy waits a bit and then says a little shazam that you can hardly hear.
    “I don’t hear no big BOOM! Do you? Wait a minute. Aren’t you Art Batson’s boy? Guy who lost his mind? Went nuts. Started attacking people? Sure you are. You were just a little kid then. Before the war. They put him away. I worked at