by Tom Moore
“It’s pronounced Haley’s, after the man who discovered it.
“Halley’s,” I repeated.
“A meteor has no regular orbit. It just flies wild till it crashes into something like a planet or a star.”
“It dies?”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather be a comet.”
She sucked hard on her cigarette, which glowed like a star against the dark. Other stars loomed behind her in the velvet sky.
The 1960s were dominated by Joey Smallwood, who was still immensely popular. For example, there was a lady in Curlew named Bessy Leonard, who had been resettled from Merasheen Island with her family. There was no hospital or even a doctor on the island. She had lost her first three children in childbirth on Merasheen. The last four were born healthy in the Placentia hospital, and she was always praising Joey Smallwood. She died in Curlew in 1965 and had his picture buried in the casket with her. This was not uncommon in Newfoundland, and it is a good indication of support for any politician.
Joey was always on the television being interviewed by Don Jamieson on News Cavalcade, or some such program. He positively bounced with energy as he spun his answers. The agreeable Jamieson lobbed easy ones that Joey hit out of the park. He looked good to everyone except Father, who’d sit glaring at the TV muttering under his breath, “the little bastard.” When the ebullient Smallwood came on the screen, Father became transfixed. A weaker man would have fled the room in the face of such discomfort, but Father stared at the premier like a stoic.
I could never understand his bitterness toward Mr. Smallwood. Perhaps Joey reminded him of some of the things he had left behind on the mainland. Joey was on TV every second day in 1965, as the Trans-Canada Highway was being built across the island. Paving machines worked full tilt as bogs were drained, hills blasted, and spruce trees bulldozed into eternity. Joey would burble to Jamieson, “We’ll finish the drive in ’65.”
“Little bastard!”
Of course, they did not finish the drive in ’65. The following year the paving machines were still bogged down near Come By Chance. Joey came on TV, not to explain or apologize to his thousands of admirers. No. Instead, he had a newer, bigger plan for the Happy Province. It was Come Home Year 1966.
Thousands of Newfoundlanders, or former Newfoundlanders, had gone to live on the mainland of Canada, especially in Ontario, and in the USA around New York and Boston. The plan of Come Home Year was to invite them all home for a great big party.
Ads were taken in all media in the targeted areas. The response was overwhelming. Third- and fourth-generation Canadians and Americans came looking for their Newfoundland roots. It started a decade of root-seekers. Poets and painters came home to live in coves and bays to discover the sources of their inspiration. A mini cultural renaissance occurred in Newfoundland.
Change. Change. Change. One day, Father came home and took down his sign. A week later, he got a call to go to work in Labrador City as a construction worker, and Shirley soon began substitute teaching. We came out of the wilderness. We reached the Promised Land.
I was valedictorian at our graduation ceremonies. “Teacher’s pet!” Tammy Fagan snarled.
One early evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table watching Shirley smoke cigarettes. She liked to wear a sleeveless blouse and pedal-pushers right up to the cool days of fall.
The phone rang. “It’s for you,” she said.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Felix. This is Victoria Spaulding.”
“Yes, Victoria.”
“Have you decided about your university?”
“Sure, I’m going to Memorial,” I said.
She was now in her second year in education at Memorial University in St. John’s. “Registration is Friday, and I was wondering how you were getting in to town.”
“Take the bus, I guess.”
“Great. Let’s go in together,” she said.
“Fine.”
“See you Friday morning.”
“Who was that?” Shirley asked.
“Victoria Spaulding. We’re going in on the bus Friday to register.”
“Have you decided what you’ll study?”
“I don’t know. Pre-law, or education, I guess.”
She looked out through the kitchen window over the sink. “I got a letter from your father yesterday. He sent this for you.” She reached up over the cupboard and took down a small, unopened envelope. I opened it quickly and found a handwritten note and a hundred-dollar bill. In those days, one hundred dollars was like one thousand dollars today. I laid it on the kitchen table, and Shirley’s eyes opened in amazement.
The note was from Father. It read:
You are now bound for university. This is a great step for you in the pursuit of both knowledge and of yourself. I will pay all reasonable expenses through Shirley. This one hundred dollars is for your own use. You can waste it on beer and cigarettes, or you can use it for clothes more appropriate to a university student. Or you can use it on some other, wiser expense which neither of us can yet know. I will not inquire how you spend it.
Your father
When I looked up from my note, Shirley was washing the dishes. I went out and stood in the yard. The dying days of summer were in the air as August sang its last airy tunes. Overhead, a flock of sparrows winged off the stable roof in a southerly direction. The air was still warm and full of the smells of drying hay.
I went to the large gate and looked down the paved road toward St. John’s and my future. The day’s heat was making little waves on Joey’s asphalt.
A group of kids were returning late from swimming. One was telling a story, and the others were laughing in the soft evening air. They walked, and I listened till their laughter was reduced to murmuring. I knew them all but didn’t speak. The sun had set, and birdsong completed the incantation of another day.
George Williams came out of his stable and started toward his house. He saw me and changed direction in a slow arc. For the first time in years, he came through the gate between our yards. He glanced up at our house to reassure himself that Father’s sign was still gone.
“Swimming will soon be over for the year,” he said as the kids passed.
“Yes, sir.”
“You going to university on Friday?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I know everything. Wisdom of the years.”
“I’m taking the bus in with Victoria Spaulding,” I volunteered.
“Jerome Banion going, too?”
“No. Monk was accepted at University of Toronto.”
“Memorial’s not good enough for him?”
I said nothing.
“You’ll find it different, living in St. John’s.”
“How different?”
“Noisy town, full, crammed full of noisy, rude people. Cars whizzing by you from all directions. Everything paved.”
He looked up at another flock of sparrows as they pitched on the stable. I knew he was thinking of his son, Jeffrey. Jeff had gone to university in St. John’s the year before. At first, he had done fine, making the varsity basketball team. Then things started to go sour for him. He was dropped from the team and soon flunked out of university. The last I had heard, he was in Toronto driving a cab.
“Good luck, Felix,” he said. I could tell he meant it.
“Thanks, Mr. Williams.”
The next morning was Friday, and the bus arrived at 8:00 a.m. I walked out the paved road of Curlew to the main highway. It was a crisp morning, full of birdsong. The sun was tentative as a late summer’s day unfurled its tent.
I saw Victoria in the distance, standing, not leaning, by the bus shelter, as though she were posing for a picture. She was pretty, and the fresh morning fitted well about her.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh, Felix!” She pretended surprise at seeing me there, like I had just dropped down from Mars. “The bus’ll be along soon.” As if I didn’t know.
The old Fleetline bus appeared, and we were soon rumbling our way along the Conception Bay Highway to our provincial capital, St. John’s.
“We were wise to sit in the front of the bus,” Victoria said. “It’s much bumpier in the back.”
I had just followed her. She was wearing a soft white pullover and a pair of black, creased slacks. As she turned back from the window, her right leg touched mine, ever so lightly. That touch became my point of reference for the whole trip. I imagined the muscles of her firm, volleyball legs rippling around under those creases.
The bus stopped in Holyrood, where we rushed in and bought a Coke and a bag of chips. Soon, the shore of Conception Bay rolled by us and Bell Island hovered on the horizon. The cold water of the North Atlantic rolled on the beaches.
We came to the outskirts of St. John’s and passed more houses than I had ever seen. The streets were all asphalt and filled with cars. A feeling of strangeness came over me, an emptiness, a fear. At the bus terminal on George Street, a damp morning fog shrouded the inner city. The pleasant excitement of Victoria’s company was replaced by the excitement of St. John’s. People rushed about, pushing their lives ahead of them in invisible shopping carts. So many people. Rows of tall buildings on every side of us. Buses rushing past, cars idling, the smell of gasoline fumes everywhere. Mr. Williams was right.
We took a cab to our boarding houses. Victoria dropped me at mine, and I soon found myself alone, staring at a two-storey house on the top of Aldershot Street. By now it was almost noon, and a warm sun melted through the fog enshrouding the harbour. From the hill on which my boarding house stood, I could look down at the university. I saw the trees on the western horizon. Curlew is over those hills, I thought.
I picked up my suitcase. It was my father’s and had Walter Ryan, Curlew, Newfoundland tagged to the handle. The soft, tan leather handle felt comforting as I took it firmly and made my way to the back door of my first boarding house and knocked. I heard the front door open around the other side of the house and a voice shout, “Hello? Where are you? Hello!”
I knocked again and heard the stumbling steps making their way to the back door. It was pulled open with a kick and a curse to reveal the red face of a large man who looked about seventy.
“What are you doing at the back door?”
“My name is Felix Ryan, sir, and I think this is my boarding house.”
“I know that. I know that. Come in, Felix, come in.”
He was wearing a white T-shirt that clung to his large belly and covered most of his belt. His jeans were faded and hung low on his hips, and he kept pulling them up as he spoke. A large comb protruded from his back pocket, and on his feet were a pair of thick woollen socks.
I had heard that in St. John’s people removed their shoes when they entered a house, much like in Japan, so I removed my good pair of black leather lace-ups and left them in the back porch. The large man led me up a couple of steps to the kitchen, and then turned to face me.
“My name is Billy Crotty, and this is my house. I spoke to your mother on the phone. She seems like a fine lady.”
His nose was riddled with bright red veins that continued across his cheeks. His skin was almost transparent, and his eyes were bleary and red around the lids.
He appeared to be a little unsteady on his feet and had a haste, a weariness, and an energy at the same time. He smiled a thin get-acquainted smile and turned quickly around again. “Your room is this way.”
“Do I have my own room?” I ventured.
He stopped, half-turned unsteadily, and said, “Well, you have your own bed.”
The house was old. It had an antebellum air of former beauty—the bellum being World War II. I passed a dining room with an old brass chandelier hanging from a plaster ceiling. The mouldings at the top of the walls were six inches high. The stairs were hardwood, with a worn brown carpet runner up the middle. It was anchored at the inside of every step with brass rods, and smelled of people and stains from decades ago. An elegant, curving redwood banister guided my steps to the second floor of Billy Crotty’s abode.
He swung the door open somewhat grandly, and we both looked into a large room with two double beds, two dressers, and one large wardrobe, all circa Battle of the Atlantic.
“Home sweet home,” Billy summed it all up with a cackle. I walked in, put my unopened suitcase on one of the beds, and followed him back to the stairs. He turned, surprised to see me following him. His neck didn’t turn, but rather his whole upper body seemed to pivot from the waist. He shrugged and continued down the stairs to the kitchen. He went to the counter by the sink and took a bottle of beer, which he had evidently been drinking when I first appeared.
After a long draft from the bottle labelled Dominion Ale, he looked at me again.
“So, you hungry or what?”
“No, thank you.”
“Want a beer?”
“No, thanks.”
“I have the odd beer,” he said, and went to the fridge for another. “You like my house?”
“It’s a very nice house, big and roomy.”
“I take in two students every September for the school year.”
He paused for a brief recollection and took another draft from his bottle.
“Did you always live here?” I asked.
He looked hard at me, apparently unsure of how to answer, then looked away. A thick hand brushed his large red nose. It would be fair to say he smelled funny, but it was a pleasant musty smell of beer, cigarettes, and bleach. Billy used the latter extensively in what little cleaning he did.
“I came here with Alice when we were first married. Her father died and left it to her.”
He came over to the old wooden kitchen table. A calmness came over him as he slumped in his chair. He took a swig from his bottle and looked rather blankly at the far wall.
“It’s nice to have a bit of company,” he said at last, appearing to remember I was in the room.
“Isn’t Alice here with you?”
He looked at me again, long but not hard, and his eyes went back to the wall. “No. She’s gone, gone.”
I did not pursue the matter.
Suddenly, he started up again. “Alice . . . Alice. . . . It’s so long since I heard her name. It’s years now. Nobody comes by anymore. Just the students, and they never knew her.”
“When did she die?”
“Die? She’s not dead. She lives on Fleming Street.”
From his baggy pocket he dug out a package of Rothmans. The large fingers extracted a cigarette, which he lit with a Zippo lighter. Slumping back in his chair, he pulled an overflowing ashtray nearer to him and proceeded to fill the room with cigarette smoke.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Billy hid the Dominion behind a large teapot and stumbled across the floor. I heard the front door open, and the words, “Hi! I’m Gib Martin from Corner Brook!” echoed in from the street.
“Come in, come in. Glib, is it?”
“No, it’s Gib. Gilbert.”
“Well, come in just the same. The other fellow’s already here.”
The door closed, and Gib Martin stood before me. He was bigger than me, tanned and well turned out in a sports jacket and dark slacks. The front door banged again, and a pretty girl’s head appeared. “Gib, honey, you forgot this.” She held a little pouch or satchel, possibly toiletry articles.
Gib glided to the hall and kissed her as he retrieved the satchel. “Thanks, Marie.” Then the door closed, and Gib glided back in his sharp black slacks.
“Gib Martin.” A tanned hand was extended to me, the tendons and knuckles showing delicately
through fine skin.
I shook it. “Felix, Felix Ryan, from Curlew.”
“Where’s that?”
“In Conception Bay.” I thought everyone knew that.
“So, where do we sleep?”
“Felix, will you show Gib his room?” asked Billy Crotty.
“Sure. This way.”
“Old house,” Gib observed when we were out of earshot. “Look at this banister, and the stairs. We got a split-level back home.”
“Corner Brook?”
“Mmm hmm,” he agreed, looking around. He liked the room and his bed. Gib assumed the one closet and soon was filling it with his clothes and humming to himself. Sports jackets, couple of suits, dress pants, casual pants, and sweaters were all hung or stashed away. I didn’t have anything to hang in a closet anyway, so I opened Father’s suitcase and started putting my clothes in my dresser. Underwear and socks, shirts, and slacks were sorted by drawer, top to bottom, with pyjamas, belts, and everything else in the bottom. When I finished, Gib was lying on his bed with his hands behind his head. “So, when do we eat around here?”
“Billy just asked if I was hungry, but I said no.”
“Three meals a day, Jack, that’s what I signed up for. I’ll forgive him for breakfast, but I got here ten to twelve, just in time for lunch.”
“We call it dinner back home,” I said.
“Dinner? At noon? So, what do you call dinner at six or seven p.m.?”
“That’s supper, and we eat it at five thirty.”
“Different!” he said, and swung his legs onto the floor. “I’m going to rustle up some chow.” And he was gone, closing the door behind him with a deft flick.
I lay on my bed and intertwined my fingers behind my head. It was all strange and exciting, like finding a bird’s nest in the woods, or a horse on the path by Weavers Pond. For the first time in my life, I was independent of Father, Shirley, and Curlew, and sharing a room with a new fellow who didn’t know what supper was.
“Hamburgers!” Gib stood in the opened door. “Come on. The old guy’s got hamburgers and Coke for lunch, and it doesn’t look half bad.” He was gone again.