Barry Squires, Full Tilt Read online

  PENGUIN TEEN

  an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company

  Published in hardcover by Penguin Teen, 2020

  Text copyright © 2020 by Heather Smith

  Book design: Emma Dolan

  Cover design and illustration by Emma Dolan

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Barry Squires, full tilt / Heather Smith.

  Names: Smith, Heather, 1968- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2019018857X | Canadiana (ebook) 20190188588 | ISBN 9780735267466 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735267473 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8637.M5623 B37 2020 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019950471

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  a_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Acknowledgments

  To the real Big Gord, who taught me to just get on with it.

  And, always, to Rob.

  PROLOGUE

  If this were my memoir, it’d probably begin with It all started at the bingo hall. There’d be a picture of me on the cover, my heels clicked together in midair, and on the back there’d be a blurb from Pope John Paul II saying, “The best damn book I’ve read since the Bible.” The title would be All Tapped Out and underneath, instead of by Barry Squires, it’d say Written with passion by Finbar T. Squires, in honor of Nanny Squires, because she was dramatic like that.

  But this isn’t a memoir. Memoirs are for people who’ve lived long, amazing lives and have inspirational stories to tell. All I did was follow my dream of becoming a Full Tilt Dancer. And that went tits up pretty quick.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I’d seen the Full Tilt Dancers perform a thousand times, but it wasn’t until the opening of Frankie McCall’s Bingo Hall that I wanted to be one of them. Maybe it was how their tartan uniforms glowed under the neon sign. Maybe it was how their shoes clacked on the large piece of plywood Frankie had put down on the pavement. More likely, though, it was because I’d spent the last year getting kicked out of every club and extracurricular activity I’d joined, and Nanny Squires said that if I didn’t find an outlet for that temper of mine, I’d have a heart attack by the time I was twenty.

  The parking lot in front of the hall had been cordoned off for the performance. Mom stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders while Dad, the good son that he was, brought Nan to the front to find a chair. I wished my baby brother, Gord, was there because he’d have loved the traditional Newfoundland music, but he was home with our older sister, Shelagh, who’d stayed behind to clear up after our big Sunday lunch. My other brother, Pius, wasn’t impressed. “Stop being a saint, will ya?” he’d said. “You’re making the rest of us look bad.” Pius, or Sweet Sixteen, as Mom had been calling him since his birthday, had a big mouth and a comment for everything. When he’d heard that we were going to see the Full Tilt Dancers, he’d said, “Irish step dancing’s for tools.” As I stood in the crowded parking lot, mesmerized by the frenetic movements of the troupe, I felt like our Black and Decker 400-watt variable-­speed jigsaw. Because if step dancing was for tools, I was the biggest one in the shed.

  Frankie McCall stood under his bright neon sign tapping his foot and clapping his hands.

  “Look at him,” said Mom. “He’s like the cat that ate the canary.”

  The Full Tilt Dancers had been scheduled to perform at the One Step Closer to God Nursing Home, but McCall had lured them away with the promise of five free bingo games per person. Father O’Flaherty’s Full Tilt Dancers were the most sought-after act in the city—with the popular bagpiper Alfie Bragg and His Agony Bag being a close second.

  The bingo fanatics of St. John’s had been thrilled to learn that Frankie McCall was building a new bingo hall. The parish hall, where the game was normally played, had a rat problem. Nan blamed the infestation on the Hawkins Cheezies that were sold at the snack bar. “Finding one of those on the ground is like striking gold for a rat,” she’d said. I agreed. I’d been known to eat a few off the floor myself.

  Bingo attendance at the parish hall had diminished and when the town blabbermouth, Bernadette Ryan, called in to the VOCM Open Line radio show to say that her ninety-nine-year-old bingo-loving grandmother was showing signs of the plague—runny nose, fatigue, weakness—people refused to go altogether. Our old parish priest, Father Molloy, tried to reason with his parishioners, saying that the place had been fumigated, not once but twice, but Bernadette would not be silenced. She said that fumigation wasn’t enough, that during the Great Plague of London contaminated bedding and clothes were burned to avoid contagion; therefore, the rat-infested parish hall should be burned to the ground. That’s when Frankie McCall stepped in with the news that he’d be building a new bingo hall on behalf of the church. On the day of the announcement, Father Molloy called McCall a “great philanthropist.” Mom said, “Philanderer, more like.” When I asked what that meant, she told me to go ask my Aunt Tilly. As far as I knew, I didn’t have one.

  After the dancers’ opening performance, Frankie gestured to the double doors, which were blocked off by a piece of yellow police tape.

  “That’s what you get,” said Frankie, “when you leave the village idiot in charge of the ribbon cutting.”

  The “village idiot” was ninety-four and Frankie’s mother. I sidled up to her. “That son of yours is a hard ticket.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’ll get his comeuppance.”

  Frankie made a cutting motion with his fingers. “Where are the scissors?”

  The village idiot passed him a pair of pink plastic safety scissors. I laughed my arse off and said, “Nice one, missus.”

  Frankie broke a sweat as he hacked through the tape. On the final snip, the Full Tilt Dancers did a celebratory step dance. The dancing was good but “I’se da B’y” was too obvious. If it were up to me, we’d have sung “Bingo.” There was a Frankie had a hall, and BINGO was the game-o. B-I-N-G-O. Clearly this troupe needed my out-of-the box ideas. When the applause faded I told my parents that my new life goal was to become a Full Tilt step dancer.

  “Not a chance,” said Dad. “We’ll be drove nuts with the racket.”

  “But I have a feeling,” I said. “It’s stirring deep in my loins.”

  “For goodness sake, Barry,” whispered Mom. “You should never talk about your loins in the shadow of the basilica.”

  “You just made that up,�
�� I said. “They talk about loins in the Bible all the time.”

  Dad ushered us toward the hall. “Come on. Bingo’s starting.”

  “Bingo shmingo,” I said. “We’re talking about my dreams here.”

  “The answer is no,” said Mom. “You’ll only quit after a few weeks anyway.”

  “And the last thing we need is you clicking around the house like a moron,” said Dad.

  I picked up a rock and lobbed it at the neon sign. “Well, screw ye all!”

  The rock landed two feet short of its target.

  “You’re lucky you missed,” said Frankie McCall. “A move like that could get your whole family banned from the hall for life.”

  “So help me God,” said Mom, “if you screw this up for me, I’ll disown you.”

  She loved a good game of bingo.

  As we filed into the hall, Dad pulled me back by the elbow. “What the hell is wrong with you, Barry? The first time your mother leaves the house since Gord’s been born and you have to turn into the Antichrist.”

  I yanked my arm away. “If you must know,” I said, “I’m Jesus’s number one fan and that, sir, makes me pro-Christ. Very pro-Christ indeed.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me, Barry,” said Dad. “I’m your father, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Taking the Lord’s name in vain,” I said. “Now who’s the Antichrist?”

  I caught up to Nanny Squires, who was waiting for me at the snack bar. Every week she bought me a treat—my reward for helping her keep track of the twenty cards she played at once. “Get whatever you want,” she said. As I browsed, my stomach rumbling, she added, “Except Hawkins Cheezies. They started the plague, you know.”

  Frankie Hall had done an outstanding job stocking the new snack bar. I was spoiled for choice! “Look, Nan,” I said, “they even have May Wests.” But Nan didn’t respond. She was too busy marveling at the shininess of the new counter. “I hope they use Comet on this,” she said. “It’ll help keep the sparkle.”

  I picked a bag of salt and vinegar chips and we joined my parents at a crowded table.

  “What’s up with these cards?” I said. They were different than the ones we usually played. They didn’t even have the word bingo written across the top.

  “Frankie wants to try ninety-ball bingo,” said Nan.

  “He played it when he was on holiday in the UK,” said Mom.

  “Concentrate now, Finbar,” said Nan. “There’ll be no letters called, just numbers.”

  “This is madness,” said Dad. “Pure madness.”

  The four of us sat with our bingo dabbers hovering over the cards, waiting for the caller to shout the numbers. The sound system crackled to life.

  “Tickety-boo, sixty-two.”

  “What the hell?” said Dad.

  Frankie McCall was standing nearby. “It’s how the British do it,” he said. “Doesn’t it add another level of fun?”

  “Cup of tea, number three.”

  I recognized that voice. It was Uneven Steven, the color­ful Englishman who was a fixture in the downtown core.

  “Dirty Gertie, number thirty.”

  “What a load of old foohlishness,” said Mom.

  “Dancing queen, seventeen.”

  Dad elbowed me in the ribs. “There you go, Barry. A new lucky number for ya.”

  The laughter at the table caused a growling deep in my belly.

  “Control yourself, Fin-bear,” said Mom.

  My fist closed in on the bingo dabber till Nan’s cards were swimming in ink.

  “Look what you’re after doing!” said Nan. “I was one away from four corners.”

  “These artistic types,” said Dad. “They’re so high-strung.”

  I punched my bag of chips.

  “Chips on the floor, forty-four.”

  I ran outside and lobbed another rock at the sign.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  Billy Walsh, from ninth grade, was sitting on a concrete wall eating a feed of fish and chips. We’d hung around a bit last year, before he’d moved up to high school.

  “You almost hit me,” he said.

  He was a year older but twice my size. I was about to say sorry when I was blinded by a light. It was warm and powerful and made me tingle all over. I squinted toward the source. It was the sun reflecting gloriously off the silver taps of his dancing shoes.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?”

  I smiled. The chorus of angels singing hallelujah was for my ears only. I, Barry Squires, was meant to tap for Jesus.

  I hopped up onto the wall next to him. “Tell me. What do you have to do to become a Full Tilt Dancer?”

  He popped a chip in his mouth. “Sell your soul to the devil.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Anything else?”

  He shrugged. “Sign yourself up for the auditions.”

  “When are the auditions?” I asked.

  “September.”

  “That’s six months away,” I said. “I can’t wait that long.”

  “Patience is a virtue, kid.”

  “What about the uniform?” I said. “How do I get one of those?”

  “O’Flaherty sells them. A hundred and twenty-five bucks.”

  The uniforms were Newfoundland tartan, which was mostly green with red, yellow, and white stripes. Nan said they looked patriotic. Pius said they looked like snots.

  “A hundred and twenty-five bucks?” I said. “What a rip-off.”

  Billy stroked his vest. “This here’s quality merchandise,” he said. “One hundred percent polyester.”

  “One hundred percent, you say?” I was impressed. My school uniform was only sixty. The rest was cotton.

  Billy dipped his cod in a blob of ketchup.

  “Just be warned,” he said. “The life of a dancer is not all sunshine and roses and luxurious textiles. There’s a lot of prejudice in this biz. Especially for us male dancers. We’re totally misunderstood.”

  I reached over and took a chip. “Never let the bastards get you down, Walsh.”

  It was what Nan said to me when I was kicked out of Scouts. (Except she didn’t call me Walsh.)

  I hopped off the wall.

  “Hey,” he said as I walked away. “Were you the one who punched a hole through the confessional screen?”

  “Father Molloy was way out of line. Ten Hail Marys for one little sin?”

  “What was the sin?”

  “Punching a hole through the classroom door.”

  I went down Church Hill making a clicking noise with my mouth every time my sneakers hit the pavement. When I walked in the house, Shelagh passed me the baby. “Your turn. Pius is at hockey and I’m going to MUN to study.”

  Ever since Shelagh got her acceptance letter to Memorial University, she’d been hanging out there as if she were a current student.

  “You’d better watch out,” I said. “They’ll be so sick of your ugly mug, they might kick you out before you even start.”

  “I’ll be graduating with honors in June,” she said. “Trust me, this ugly mug is one they’ll be happy to have.”

  I was due to graduate in June too. I wondered if the high school would be happy to have my ugly mug.

  Gord grabbed a clump of my hair with his chubby little hand. I’d missed him at the opening of the bingo hall.

  “Guess what, Gord?” I whispered. “I’m going to be a Full Tilt Dancer.”

  Sometimes, in Newfoundland, you can have four seasons in one day, so even though it was the end of March (and spring should have been on its way), I stuffed Gord in his snowsuit to keep him warm on our post-bingo afternoon jaunt. As usual, I started by naming the homeowners and house colors. “Merchant, red. Coady, white. Walling, black.” It was a tradition I’d started to keep thin
gs interesting back when I wasn’t allowed to take Gord off York Street. Now that we were allowed to go farther I kept it up because Gord screamed if I didn’t. Sometimes I wished Gord was as flexible with his routines as he was with his body. I saw him kiss his own arse once.

  “Hanrahan, green. O’Brien, blue.”

  “Ahhh-baaa, ahhh-daaaa, ahhh-paaa.”

  Only six months old and speaking in whole sentences. It was no wonder I took every opportunity to show him off. He was practically a child genius.

  Part of our routine was going to Caines. If Boo wasn’t busy selling smokes or dishing up his famous Jiggs Dinner, he’d sit us down and tell us a ghost story. He’d seen a headless dude on Signal Hill once. He’d come upon him on a dark and stormy night and they’d locked eyes. Locked eyes! I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes Gord nodded off during Boo’s stories, but as soon as we’d leave the store he’d perk right up. It was the air that did it—it was fresh and salty and went right up our noses. He’d perk up even more when I’d take him to the harbor. I’d tip his stroller over the dock and say, “Hope you can swim, Gord!” He loved that. An old woman yelled at me once. She said I was foolhardy. I said, “Take a chill pill, missus. He’s got a seatbelt on.”

  Today, instead of going to Caines, we went back to the bingo hall. The plywood was still outside.

  “Watch this, Gord!”

  I copied the dance moves the Full Tilt Dancers had done earlier. The almighty racket was glorious. There was no music, so I sang.

  The night that Paddy Murphy died

  is a night I’ll never forget.

  Some of the boys got loaded drunk

  and they ain’t been sober yet.

  I da-da-da-ed the bits I didn’t know and when the words came back I belted them out.

  Mrs. Murphy sat in the corner

  pourin’ out her grief,

  when Kelly and his gang

  came tearing down the street.