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him.
    Aunt Ellen and Uncle Ted on the daybed — they both started to come alive as if I had yanked on their strings. Like me talking was signal for them to have something to say.
    All kinds of brilliant stuff. “It’s a great day on thewater, Michael. I daresay there’s a few fish on the go this morning.”
    â€œThat’s what we should have for dinner, boys — a good meal of fish.” Right full of being normal.
    â€œNo odds to us what we haves,” I said. “What we wants to know is if we gotta get outa this house and where you got in mind for us to go if we do.”
    That loused up their fish talk pretty quick. I could a struck the kitchen with a bulldozer and they wouldn’t a got any more of a shock. I wasn’t about to try to be extra nice about it. No sense himmin and awin all morning when we all knew it had to come down to that sometime.
    You could just about see their nerves twitching. Aunt Flo almost dropped the frying pan. The two on the daybed could barely keep hold of the cigarettes they had nipped between their fingers. Ashes flying all over the place. It even got Grandfather upset. The rocking chair he was in went off stride.
    â€œWe’ll talk about that after breakfast, Michael,” Aunt Flo said, trying to smooth it all over.
    â€œNo sir. We wants to know right now.” As simple as that. I wasn’t being brazen about it if that’s the way it looked. I just wanted to get it straight right then and there.
    â€œIt’s better you boys had your breakfast first.” That was Uncle Ted. Coming on strong like he was the voice of experience or some big deal.
    â€œWhat, is it so bad that you can’t tell us?”
    â€œMichael,” Aunt Flo said, “it’s only been one day.”
    â€œYou mean you haven’t talked about it yet?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t say that.”
    â€œThen tell us. I was awake all last night thinking about it. Brent too.”
    Then Brent, who hadn’t opened his mouth the whole time, said to Aunt Flo, “Is we goin to an orphanage?”
    When she heard that she just about broke down crying right there. She came over to the table, stood up by him and squeezed him into her dress. She could hardly keep it in.
    â€œBrentie my love, you knows better than that.” Then, in a few seconds, after she got a hold on herself, she said, “Brentie, how would you like to come and live with me and your grandfather?” She looked at him and pushed his hair back from his forehead.
    â€œOkay,” he said right away. A big relief.
    And what about me? The other one. The one who is not going to ask. Where does he fit into all this? I was waiting. Feeling stupid, because I didn’t want to look like I was waiting.
    â€œMike too?” Brent said then.
    Nobody answered. Until Aunt Ellen spoke up, all full of life but not laying her eyes on me atall. “Michael is going to come to live with us in St. Albert.”
    So that was it. That was what they had in their minds. St. Albert. The least she could a done was look at me when she said it.
    â€œYou’re going to like it in St. Albert, Michael,” Uncle Ted said. Again like he was positive that what he said had to be right.
    â€œMaybe I will.”
    â€œI know you will.”
    â€œI said maybe I will.”
    And then a long silence, everybody waiting. Until I said, “I’ll give it a try.” I said it like I meant it.

3
    Ihad a whole two months before I would be packing up and getting myself shipped off to St. Albert to start school there. Aunt Flo said I could stay with her until then. Maybe she thought that by the end of August I’d have no problem to face on a move.
    But I was definitely going. That was understood and there wasn’t much more said about it. I knew both of us, me and Brent, living with her was a lot to expect from Aunt Flo. And she had Grandfather, too, to take care of. It would be hard enough