Handy Andy
So. When my mom told my Grandpa Earl she was knocked up with me, a boy, he went straight out and bought her a mink coat and a new sports car. He told her my name. “Andy. It’s going to be Andy—Handy Andy the Train Wrecker.” It turned out that way, too. Except, well, my real first name’s Robert, but nobody ever calls me that, and my middle name’s Andy. My dad’s name, my Old Man, is Robert John Livingston, but people don’t call him John, they just call him “Big Bad Bob.”
Grandpa Earl Livingston’s first name is also Robert, and he’s a “Scotch-Irish Bastard,” as my Old Man likes to say. The first-born men in my family are all named Robert, and it goes all the way back in time to the first guy in Scotland, I guess, who must have been a big bad deal way back when.
Grandpa Earl and I used to have fun together. I’m way too old for it now, of course, but he used to put me up on one of his bony old knees, sitting in a chair, and he’d be laughing the whole time. “Har, har, har... It’s Handy Andy... It’s Handy Andy the Train Wrecker!” A couple times, I almost fell off the old fucker’s leg.
The Old Man told me once that Grandpa Earl and his buddies built Vancouver from the ground up, when all you could see around was just a bunch of rocks and trees and mountains. One time, when Dad was sitting like usual, in his old chair in front of the TV, he leaned over to me like he was telling me some big secret. “Ya know what? That old bastard was a World War I Flying Ace.” I figured that was probably true. Who the hell would lie about a thing like that? One thing’s for sure, that would take some balls. Flying up in the sky, all by yourself in a Bristol Sprout or Avro DH2, and dogfighting Germans with a machine gun isn’t exactly everybody’s kind of work, if you know what I mean. Some Saturday nights, if Mom and Dad planned a party, I’d get dropped off at Grandpa Earl’s apartment in Kerrisdale.
I was sitting across from him and Gran eating supper, and for no good reason, I got the jimmy legs under the table.
“What’s the matter with you, boy?” Grandpa Earl asked me, then asked my Gran, “Marion, what’s the matter with the boy?” He looked back at me with a raised eyebrow. "You look fine to me. Just fine.” He laughed again. “Har, har, har! Well, um, Andy, now... What kinds of things interest you? What gets your ass up in the morning?”
“Well, sir, I like to drive in the big white truck with Dad,” I lied, like an idiot. I also didn’t tell him that sometimes, when the Old Man put the brakes on too hard, a Vodka bottle rolled out from under the driver’s seat.
“Driving in the truck?! Har, har, har! Did you hear that, Marion? Well, I think that’s just Skookum, Andy, Skookum!”
I smiled at him. I picked up my knife and fork and put them down again. I moved my dinner napkin back and forth across my legs. I imagined lots of guys probably wouldn’t mind punching that big old nose of his, given half a chance. Gran smiled at me with her tree bark face and handed me a dish of sticky cheese casserole. I grabbed a big spoon and dropped a large clump onto my plate. We finished eating in silence, which didn’t seem to bother anybody too much. Nobody in my family goes in much for palavering.
In the silence, my winker peeps got stuck on this brown cabinet on the wall. My Gran had arranged all these glass figures she collected from the old-timey days on the shelves: a boy walking a dog, a violet lady in a fancy dress, a guy with a wheelbarrow filled with flowers, a dressed-up guy with curly hair playing a funny-looking guitar for his girlfriend. I liked looking at them. They made you start thinking to yourself, “What kind of song could that guy play on that thing?” or “Where the hell is that guy pushing a wheelbarrow?”
Grandpa Earl stood up from the table and went over to sit in a chair by the window, next to a side table with an old radio on it. He turned the radio on, adjusting the dial until we heard Dick Irvin announcing the game on Hockey Night in Canada. The Flyers were playing the Montreal Canadiens at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. It damn well sounded like the Canadiens were going to win another Stanley Cup. Well, with the “blond demon” Lafleur and that “thieving giraffe” Dryden in goal, how could they screw up? Grandpa Earl sat in his chair and I laid myself out on the floor in front of him. Every time Montreal scored, he closed his eyes, grimaced, and let out a whistle. He was so mad at the end of the game, he stormed off into his bedroom, shut the door, and wouldn’t come out again.
Later that night, as I lay in bed in the spare room that smelled funny—like a hospital room or a dentist’s office—I was still goddamn hungry. I didn’t want to get up and go into the kitchen because they’d hear me and come on out and make a big deal out of it. I stared up at the ceiling and imagined all the stuff I could eat, like a giant bowl of Count Chocula, or some Hostess Ding Dongs, or maybe some Peanut Butter Ho Ho’s just sitting there in the dark, all alone, behind the closed doors of the kitchen cabinets.
I closed my eyes and imagined what it would feel like if beavers and wolves and bears were running over my skin and fish were swimming in my veins. After that, I fell asleep in the dark.
