by Tom Moore
“Ah am here regarding your sign,” he began. “People in my flock are concerned about the wording you have chosen to nail to your house and thus put on public display.” The tanned face of a thousand American suns dimmed slightly, and a frown touched his pink lips and blue eyes.
“Your whole flock is Liberal?” Father asked (as usual in the wrong church and the wrong pew).
Shirley sat in her chair and looked at the man with the angelic voice. He ignored her and spoke to Father, occasionally looking at me.
“No, no, Mr. Ryan. It has nothing to do with political affiliations. We leave that to the kingdom of man.”
“What, then?”
“The word—” he looked at Shirley. “Excuse me, ma’am. The word ‘damn’ appears in your sign,” he said to father.
“So what?”
“Only God can damn to eternal hellfires, Mr. Ryan. You know that.”
“Then, what’s the problem?”
“It is an affront to God’s will that man should use such a profane word. To suggest eternal damnation for anyone is an abomination to the will of God.”
Suddenly, Father understood in a flash of revelation what the reverend was talking about. “Are you telling me I should take down my sign because it’s God’s will?” he asked, still calm.
The reverend chuckled. “Let us just say the word of your sign is an insult to God and to His people.”
“You object to the sign on religious grounds?”
“That is correct.”
Father’s fists clenched, and I noticed a white patch spread around his knuckles and up his hand, almost to the wrist. “The sign stays up,” he croaked.
The reverend stood up. He was a tall man. “We begin with a modest request, one Christian to another. But I want you to know we will commence legal proceedings against you on the grounds of obscenity.”
“Obscenity?”
“You will be hearing from our lawyers, Metcalf and McCann.”
Taking his hat from my chair, Reverend Stone held it like a theatre prop, turning it lightly in his slender, pink hands. White teeth gleamed, and he smiled at us. “Mrs. Ryan, young man, Mr. Ryan, I wish you all a good day.” Then he turned and went back through the front door as if beaming up to another planet. But something about him frightened me. He looked and sounded so charming, but his message was chilling.
Father went to the front door and locked it. We all returned to our cold suppers. The old tin clock ticked away, leading us through time and deeper into gloom.
3
Marriage
Dick was putting his new convertible to good use. He and Ellen were often seen driving up and down the road through the community.
That fall, Dick and Ellen attended the parish Halloween dance, the Christmas concert and dance, the Easter concert (no dance), and the July garden party and dance. Then, in late July, we all got invitations to the August 15 wedding.
I still thought she should marry a shah, a count, a Montreal Canadiens hockey player, or, as I said before, me, but certainly not Dick White. It seemed to me that when God created this world, He did not intend Ellen to marry Dick White.
Once again, Clara and I agreed, but for opposite reasons.
One day, I was sitting on the grass in the shade of the flour store, eating my lunch: a bottle of Orange Crush and an apple flip. The flour store was the largest of the storage sheds, holding one-hundred-pound bags of Robin Hood flour, burlap bags of oats, and rolls of floor canvas.
I heard Clara and Dick arguing down at the house: “You’re going to marry her?” Clara screamed across the yard. The light wind muffled and carried words to me disjointedly, but “out of my will” and “leave you both nothing” rang out. I stopped chewing on my flip to hear Dick’s reply. No wind interposed as he said, “I love the girl, and I will marry her. Do what you like with the business and the land.”
I liked Dick after that. I ate my apple flip, feeling better about the whole deal. Somehow, he now seemed more worthy of Ellen Monteau. Clara never relented. Every morning when I came to work, Dick would be tending the shop alone. His mother would not turn up till well after eleven.
It was a big wedding by our standards. I was invited. Shirley and Father were invited. It was a grand church affair with most of the community in attendance. Ellen looked stunning, of course. She glowed under the translucent wedding veil with the softness of the Madonna.
Clara would not stand in the reception line, claiming the prerogative of old age. I had often seen her stand behind the counter for eight hours, but she was fighting this marriage right down to, and past, the wire.
The meal was as fine as the Ladies Auxiliary had ever prepared, and the speeches were as boring as the gentlemen had ever presented. Soon after, the bar opened and the band started. Some business friends of old Wayne had turned up from St. John’s. They were rich, tanned, and dressed in flashy clothes. Their wives were apparitions of wrinkled skin and ostentatious jewels of the tacky rich. They laughed and danced among themselves and pretty much ignored the rest of us. They left early.
Clara sat awkwardly at the head table, smiling ever so thinly when necessity dictated. Dick asked her to dance once, but she refused. He and Ellen danced. I was amazed Dick knew how. Ellen’s white heels clicked and floated over the floor. Each lovely curve of her was enveloped by the white wedding dress. Sigh.
Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Gerald, sat at one table—a little island of drama. There were no other guests from her side of the family. Maud Monteau had once been gorgeous, and she still carried a weary charm. Her eyes were tired but icy green. She wore makeup and looked pretty good, though not dressed with any great style or expense. She was drinking a lot, and so was her boyfriend. They danced occasionally in the early evening. But for the most part they offered little attention to each other, concentrating instead on the drinks in front of them and the dancing couples on the floor.
Dick came over and asked Maud for a dance. She smiled and grandly offered him her hand. They danced once.
Equally isolated were Father and Shirley, who sat alone at a large table. I went over to join them soon after the band started.
Father did not drink or smoke or dance. He sat and looked at the band, in which he had about as much interest as in going to the moon. Shirley was sipping a Bacardi and Coke. In the centre of their table glowed a newly lit cigarette in a square glass ashtray.
I sat beside them, and Father turned to me. “Felix, how are you?” he asked, somewhat formally. Not much else to say.
We had very few friends in Curlew since Father’s sign had gone up. We sat abandoned in a sea of conviviality that grew and swirled around us.
Liberal opposition to Father’s rudeness, if not his vulgarity, was growing steadily. Some were polite about it, but others were not. As the night and the drinking continued, Father could well expect a beer bottle in the head or a well-chosen insult.
So we sat silently. Father looked straight ahead. Shirley sipped her drink, a spurned cigarette billowing plumes of grey smoke straight up, marking us as the blighted table. I knew she didn’t want to smoke it in front of me. She was always trying to be my real mother and set a good example. Suddenly, it touched me that she would let her cigarette, which she obviously enjoyed, burn away in the middle of our table. I wanted to tell her it was okay for her to smoke it, but then she would have to admit it was hers. So, we all said nothing as the cigarette burned down to the filter and died.
I looked over toward the bar and saw Monk. “I’ll be back later,” I said to Father, like a soldier in Custer’s 7th Cavalry sneaking away from the Little Bighorn.
Monk had a glass in his hand. He was smiling broadly, but did not speak.
“What are you doing, Monk?”
“Having a little drink of rum, Felix, my lad,” he said grandly.
> “But the bartender wouldn’t sell rum to you.”
“Quite right. I didn’t buy it, I stole it.”
“What?”
“They never notice after a few drinks. You only steal from the drunks. Want to try one?”
“I never drank liquor in my life.”
“Then tonight’s your big night, my friend. What would you like? I’m a Scotch drinker, myself, but this is all I could find.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Monk slipped nimbly around the bar. He was soon back with two glasses of dark liquid. The smell suggested they were not Coke.
“Rum was all I could get. You Newfies are not very sophisticated drinkers. Ever hear of Scotch?” He held one of the glasses out to me.
I took the offered glass and held it to my nose. It smelled like molasses mixed with kerosene.
“You take it through the mouth, Felix, not the nose. Ha! You’re confusing it with snuff.”
He took a gulp of his own. Then I took a gulp of mine.
The taste was predictably horrible, but a gently tingling numbness pervaded my mouth and throat. There was also the satisfaction of accomplishing the feat without throwing up. As well, there was a warm feeling of secret conspiracy, even if it was with Monk.
I took another sip and smiled. It was almost tolerable. I put my elbow up on the bar as I had seen some of the men do. It was difficult, for the bar was level with my ear.
“Not bad, eh?” I heard a voice say. It was Monk. He was now standing at the far end of a distant bar, about two miles away. Then he fluttered back into focus.
“No,” I heard myself say. “Not bad at all.” He handed me another.
“They’re not full because you have to let them have a few sips before you steal them.”
He headed off to the other end of the bar, where the bartender and four men were huddled together in animated conversation.
“Hello, Felix.” I recognized the voice even before I turned around. Ellen stood over me, a vision in white. Her veil was up and surrounded her face. She smiled. “Are you having a nice time?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to dance?” she asked.
“I don’t know how,” I mumbled.
“I’ll show you. It’s called an old-fashioned waltz, so you just count one, two, three, and move your foot with each count.”
She dragged me about the floor for five minutes.
“You are a goddess,” I said as the dance ended. “And you should have servants tending to your every whim.” I had her attention.
She put her hand on my arm. “Felix, you are a dreamer. I used to be, too, but there’s no payoff in it.” She kissed me gently on the forehead. I think I closed my eyes.
She floated away.
Soon, Monk was back complaining about the rum. He handed me another glass. “By the way,” he said, “Cyril Durning is going to kill your father tonight.”
“What?” My hand stopped in mid-reach.
He indicated the men with the bartender. “They really got it in for your father.” He grinned widely behind his glass and fat fingers. “Something about a sign on your house, Felix. Ha.”
“Why’s Cyril so mad about Father’s sign?”
“He’s not. He’s just trying to suck in with the Liberals. He was the Conservative campaign manager last election, and now he wants to get back into the fold.”
“He wants to kill my father?”
“Doesn’t have to actually kill him; a severe beating would suffice.”
I looked down the bar and saw Cyril Durning’s prematurely bald head and stout neck turning to better view Father. My eyes blurred and then cleared.
“Father knows how to fight really well,” I thought aloud.
“They are four plus the bartender,” Monk reminded me casually.
Panic seized me. I turned quickly and walked over to Father’s table. Shirley and he both smiled as I put my glass on the table and sat between them. Suddenly, they realized I was drinking rum.
Shirley reached for the cigarette, which had been relegated to the ashtray. Father ignored her glare as he turned to me. There was a new look on his face. It was not blame, but appraisal, as if deciding how to handle a new situation.
I was too upset about Cyril Durning to even try to explain my drinking. “Cyril Durning is going to beat you up,” I said, and watched the look on his face change again as he tuned in to this second reality. Father loved a crisis. It somehow brought out the best in him. All his foolish ideas evaporated into a fine focus of clarity.
He looked over toward the bar. “When?” he asked softly.
“Tonight. Here.”
“Good.” He glowed. He pushed his chair back from the table. Shirley kept on smoking. “Shirley, there’s going to be some trouble here tonight.”
“I know.”
“You can leave now.”
She took the cigarette away from her lips. “No, I want to stay. At least they won’t kill you here.”
He sat in silence for a long moment. I loved to watch my father thinking, for that was the only time he was really relaxed. His eyes were distant and his face radiated a new calm, as if he had been waiting for this moment. Then he unbuttoned the top of his shirt and laid his tie on the table. He reached over and put his hand on my arm.
“Thank you for your help, Felix,” he said. It was one of the few times I ever remembered him touching me.
He got up and walked toward the bar. Shirley saw the tears in my eyes. She put an arm around my neck and pulled my head onto her shoulder. She took another puff of her cigarette.
“It’s the smoke in my eyes,” I explained.
“Yes, mine too,” she said.
Soon, noise and confusion broke out at the bar. The band, of course, did what all bands do when a disturbance breaks out; they stopped playing, and everyone’s attention focused on the racket.
I sniffed back my tears and stood up on my chair. Father was now surrounded. The bartender loomed behind him, and Cyril Durning faced him. Cyril was about forty-five and stocky. His thick neck led up to a bald head. What hair remained grew longish around his ears.
I saw Monk going around to the vacant tables looking for Scotch.
Most of the men were, by this time of evening, in their shirt sleeves. The women were still in their frilly dresses. “Walter Ryan is about to get the beating he deserves,” I heard one of them say.
I jumped down and pushed in through the crowd toward the centre of the confusion. Elbows smacked against my ears, but I rudely pushed on through a forest of hips and dangling arms. I could hear Cyril shouting something about Father being from the mainland and shoving his politics on the rest of us.
I emerged immediately behind Cyril Durning. His feet were set well apart, and the strangest parts of his pose were his hands. His fingers were splayed apart in tension as he spoke. The tendons and veins on his hands and arms bulged. His fists were not clenched, and each finger seemed set to attack Father on its own. I could see my father in front of him, not three feet away, and quietly waiting. His feet were a little apart, and his fists were already clenched.
He was looking steadily at Cyril when one of the other men suddenly took a swing at him. The punch missed his jaw and struck him on the collarbone. He toppled back against the padded bar with a grunt and a sudden thud.
At the same instant, Cyril launched himself at Father with a muttered obscenity. The splayed-out fingers of his right hand swung back into my face. I saw his pinky ring glint, and like a cat, my own right hand reached up and grabbed him by that one finger.
He tried to flick me off, and I lost my footing, but as I felt my bum drag the floor, I heard the crack of his finger breaking. He screamed and fell to his knees clutching his hand.
The ro
om went silent except for Cyril kneeling on the floor and groaning over his broken finger.
I looked to Father and saw him punch a fellow in the mouth. The man’s head snapped back, his legs gave way, and he slid to the floor. The bartender reached over the bar and wrapped his arms around my father’s chest. The fellow who’d struck him earlier moved in with a raised fist that faltered as a loud voice boomed through the room. “Okay! Stop! That’s enough!”
The bulky form of Constable Wallace Higgins strolled amidst the brawling men. He looked to the kneeling Cyril, now rocking on his haunches, holding his broken finger and moaning. He looked to the other assailants, and they looked away. He then turned to Father, who was wild-eyed and looking around for someone to take a swing at. Higgins laid a hand on his right arm, and fearing Father’s left hook, I closed my eyes. But when I opened them, Higgins was leading him back to our table.
“Something belonging to you, I think, Shirley,” he said as he pushed Father into a chair. He looked at me and smiled. Jeez, that Constable Higgins was a nice man.
Father was flushed and beaming. His shirt was open almost to his waist, and he looked ten years younger. “Damn that Higgins,” he whispered. “I could have taken ’em all.” He looked to me, his eyes dancing with excitement. “How did you take down Cyril Durning?”
“I grabbed hold of his little finger and hung on till it broke.”
A smile, then a grin, struck across Father’s face. His shoulders shook with quiet laughter and perhaps relief.
I looked past him to see Phil Janes setting Cyril’s finger in a temporary splint, then leading him out the door.
Father repeated my words, “I hung on till it broke,” then convulsed again with laughter. He reached over and patted me on the shoulder.
“Good for you, Felix. I think I’ll have another drink. Care to join me in a Coke? Another Bacardi, Shirley?”
I took the last sip of my rum and watched a sad tear glisten on Shirley’s cheek as she looked at Father.
It amazes me that my memories of those days are summer memories. We had our troubles: Shirley and Father had little or no work, and we were exiles in our own land. But. But. But. Those memories are filled with sunshine and shouting and splashing in a pond. At night, stars reigned in a clear sky, and the big sign stood on my father’s house, in defiance of God and man.