Patrick's Bed THREE I When I was twenty-two or twenty-three, my Uncle Jim, Dad's younger brother, took me to a Legion Hall that he frequented for a couple of beers and a game of pool. I liked Jim. He drove my father crazy. In his youth, Jim had gotten into trouble with the law and with his parents and with my father and mother. There were streams of stories. We'd heard how, in the thirties, he and a group of teens from Northern Vocational stole a car to drive to a dance at Lake Wilcox north of Toronto, how they drank, argued about who would drive home, how the keys got thrown into the bush. The details of his arrest are blurry, but he ended up in the Don Jail. The end of the story has Nanny, his mother, making him turkey sandwiches, and Da, her father, his grandfather, getting sent home with the sandwiches after trying to deliver them. "He's in jail. What're you, crazy?" The man at the front desk hadn't blinked. When he was caught skipping school, Nanny threw him out and Da threw him back in.
What do You think about St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3)?
