Pure Spring by Brian Doyle

from Smitty’s Smoke Shop and he said that if Randy ever found out that the papers were valuable he’d never give them back.
    He said he’d take the cloth bag full of documents back home with him and that he trusted us not to tell. He was going home to think things over. He left a post office box number and a fake name in case we wanted to write him a letter. We laughed when he told us his fake name — Mr. John Smith.
    My mind is very busy thinking about Gerty and what she said to me. Where she kissed me. I’m also very tired.
    Discouraged, disappointed. Igor was...off into the night he went. Sleepy...not much sleep...Igor...
    Suddenly Randy’s back!
    â€œHey, wake up Mr. Sleepy Brain! Couldn’t figure a way to get by the guy with the white hat. Maybe next time. Picked up this, though. Sitting right on the kitchen counter. Pretty snazzy, eh?”
    He shows me a silver table cigarette lighter shaped like a beaver with CANADA engraved on the beaver’s tail.
    â€œThis is going to look real snazzy on my mantelpiece, right, Boy?”
    I’m wondering if maybe everything in Randy’s apartment is stolen.
    I’m so tired I can hardly stand up.
    Back home after work now and it takes a minute or two for it to dawn on me that Grampa Rip’s not here.
    Lost again.
    I go down to the corner of Somerset and Bank.
    In front of Fenton’s Bakery there’s a small crowd. It’s Sandy, Grampa Rip’s friend who brought him home, putting on a show.
    Sandy marches everywhere he goes. He learned to march in the war. His army uniform is khaki colored and there’s a stripe on his shoulder. He marches all over the city every day. People sometimes give him money. But it’s mostly food people give him. The breadman might give him a loaf of yesterday’s bread or sometimes the milkman decides to give him a pint of milk if the bottle has a little chip out of the top of it or the vegetable man will give him a turnip or a couple of carrots or a big onion and once I saw a grocery man give him a whole dozen of eggs because one of the eggs in the box was cracked. Sometimes the butcher might give him a hunk of unsliced bologna or a few wieners and then maybe the fishman, when he was in a good mood, might give him a catfish or a slice of pickerel or a part of a grass pike.
    Every time anybody gives Sandy anything, even if it’s just a nickel or a small apple or a handful of gooseberries from the fruit stand, Sandy clicks the heels of his army boots together, stands as straight and tall as he can and gives you the best army salute you ever saw. The salute is so tight that when his fingers reach just above his eyebrow, his whole arm bounces three times just like it’s on a spring or something.
    Everybody in Ottawa knows about Sandy’s salute. And everybody enjoys it when he gives one. And when there’s a little crowd like this one in front of the bakery — six or seven people — Sandy makes sure everybody sees the snappy salute and the little crowd laughs and gives Sandy a little bit of happy clapping.
    Sandy eats the rest of the piece of chocolate cake the lady in Fenton’s Bakery gave him, turns facing the store window, clicks the heels and
Snap
goes the salute!
    The show is over.
    I go up to him and look down into his squeezed-up face. Even in his big boots, Sandy is short. He must have been the shortest soldier in the war.
    â€œHave you seen Grampa Rip tonight?” I say.
    He tells me yes with his face. Sandy doesn’t talk.
    â€œWhere?”
    Sandy turns to go up Somerset Street and then stops and looks back. I follow him up past Borden’s Dairy Bar and into the stable.
    Half dark in here. Squint to see. We go deeper into the stable and up a ramp. You can hear the horses chewing andsneezing. Sometimes thumping, tails switching against wooden stall walls. The huge stable smells warm and friendly. Brown smell of horse and harness, hay and oats.