by Tom Moore
“In Gander?” John sat down again.
“There’s only one.” Bud smiled. John smiled back. Bud held out his hand, and John shook it.
“But take off that helmet when you’re in here.”
Bud thought for a minute and said, “I guess I owe you that much.” He took it off.
“Too bad you weren’t wearing it, John,” I said.
“Funny piece of equipment for a Peace Angel,” observed Malacat. “Should be wearing a toga or beads or something like that.”
“Yeah, Bud, something a bit more Gandhi,” I laughed.
Bud said, “I’ll bring it up at our next meeting.”
“So, Felix, I guess you’re on your way to law school. We heard you got accepted into Dal,” Malacat said.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m going home.”
14
Fall
So, I met an angel and had an epiphany on the road to Port aux Basques. That night, we all slept at the Malacat home on Lincoln Road, and next morning, I awoke to a misty dawn and a blinding headache. I sneaked out, waking no one, and drove back to Tara.
At Mel’s Mini Mart, I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses to help me face the raw morning sun which came through my windshield like an accusation. My conscience was a bit of a bother, but I was sure of my decision and ready to suffer the consequences.
Funny the way big decisions are made over a last french fry, or someone awakes in the night, turns over in the bed, and decides, That’s it! The die is cast!
On the main drag through Gander, signs announced the Albatross Hotel, the Hotel Gander, the fast food places, and, finally, the Peace Angels’ Club. But I had had enough peace for one trip, and pushed on to the Irving in Clarenville. The previous late night was catching up with me, and I felt very tired. I pulled into the parking lot in the shade of a tractor-trailer, turned off the ignition, locked the doors, and fell asleep. When I awoke, the tractor-trailer was gone and the sun was setting. I went to the Irving for supper. Then, a pot of tea restored my pristine health, and I was on the road again.
The shadows of trees lengthened as evening descended. I rolled down the window and felt the air beginning to cool and dampen. The birds were silent for another day. Moths and flying insects were about, occasionally splatting themselves onto my windshield. The tranquility of night eased my mind as the radio hummed a series of country songs, and I may even have been dozing when the moose walked out onto the road.
Two tons on the hoof and over six feet high at the shoulder, he was bigger and heavier than my truck. The mass of his belly was elevated above the bonnet to windshield height by long spindly legs. Right in line with my face!
But he stopped, big wet eyes blinded.
We came together in slow motion, and the huge head loomed across my windshield. For a fraction of a second, I thought I had missed him. I heard the thud, felt the truck shake, saw the windshield buckle in and my side mirror fly away behind me. The impact spun the truck around sideways down the road with the scream and stink of burning tires.
The engine cut out. Silence, except for a thumping sound I could not identify. It was not my breath, for I was not breathing. It was the beating of my heart! I sat in the truck listening to the thumping. The lights were still on. The front end was in a low ditch, and the back tires were still on the road. I started to breathe again, but the thumping continued. The headlights showed a myopic vision of tree branches and tall grass just over the bonnet. The windshield had one long crack running from the splintered passenger side. The convex bulge of shattered glass oozed dark blood, clotted with long brown strands of moose hair.
I gripped the wheel as a car whizzed by with glaring lights and the blare of a horn.
I got out, and my knees buckled when my feet touched the road. I hung off the door for a moment, and then stood up. I went down into the ditch to examine the damage. My side of the truck was fine. I pushed aside the branches and saw the front was fine, too, both grill and radiator intact. Wading through the tall grass, I reached the passenger side. Chunks of hide and gore were stuck in the cracked glass, and the quarter post was bent where it had struck the huge head. One long streak of blood and hair ran along the side of the truck.
My legs weakened. I got up onto the road and leaned against the tailgate. It was a clear, still night, and the stars were bright in the sky with no city lights to dull them. A hint of dampness and the tart smell of spruce were in the air.
I walked back to the moose. He was lying quietly on his side, his body and long legs down in the ditch and his head resting at road level. No breath came from the big nostrils. The sheer size of him was my first impression, his thick mass filling the ditch.
No bird, no sound, no cars. Just the moon and the stars and me by the side of the road with a dead moose. I reached down and touched the warm thick hide. My hand rested on the coarse hair, and my mind went back to winter nights skating on Joneys Gully, when Ben Costello and I lay in the snow and looked up at the stars, trying to trace their patterns, angelic and silent. Our lives lay before us, and our choices seemed as innumerable as the stars. But this ditch held a vulgar finality that shocked me.
Then I cried. Big, gut-wrenching wails shook me as I leaned against the moose and bawled. I stayed there for a long time in the dark. A few cars went by, but no one stopped.
It was getting on toward dawn when I finally drove into the Moorland Motel parking lot, about an hour from home. The young attendant was wearing a Montreal Canadiens stocking cap, in spite of the season. He looked at the windshield.
“Jeez, buddy, what happened to you? Hit a moose?”
I nodded. “Got a water hose?”
“Out back.”
“Fill her up and turn on your water pump,” I said, before going into the Moorland restaurant.
I sat on a stool at the counter, and the lady said, “You could use a coffee, young fella.”
Before I could ask for tea, she poured hot black coffee into my cup.
Later, behind the garage, I hosed the hair and blood off the truck. It ran red and brown down the side of the Dodge and into a sewer grate. I felt the urge to cry again but held off. The sun was up, and the truck looked almost normal. The side mirror was gone, and the windshield was shot, but it would get me home.
Soon, I was driving down Curlew’s stretch of Joey’s asphalt. Who would I see first? Father? Ellen? I came to the White premises and stopped. It was almost nine, so Ellen would be opening up the shop. I looked in through the front window and saw her setting up the cash register.
She looked angelic, and my heart swelled to see her. Her soft, blonde hair was upswept, with a wisp or two falling to her nape. She looked calm and self-contained as she counted the float. She wore a tidy apron over her dress and looked like a lady grocer from years past. A young Clara White, but more comely.
I pushed open the door and walked in, much like the robber who killed Dick. “Hello, Ellen.”
She looked at me for the longest time without a hint of expression on her face. “Felix, I thought you were in Nova Scotia.”
“I changed my mind, Ellen. I’m going to take the fellowship at Memorial.”
She shut the cash drawer with a single tinny ring, then looked at me like I was a new disease. “Oh,” she said. “Well, this changes everything.” She looked back to the cash register, and her eyes glazed over, with nothing more to say to me. I went to the counter and put my two hands flat down on the wood. I faced her like Dick faced the robber. “Ellen, I don’t want to be a lawyer. I want to study literature. It’s what I have to do.”
My words hung in the silent room for a long time before she looked up from the cash register. “Then you must do it,” she said. The wooden counter stood between us. She didn’t speak again, or look at me, but with one deft finger she opened the register and continued counting the money in her float.
/> “I’d better take back Father’s truck,” I eventually said.
No answer.
Father came out from the stable when he heard me pull up.
“Hello, Felix,” he said, as if nothing had happened.
“I brought back your truck.”
“How was Nova Scotia?”
“I didn’t go. I changed my mind.”
“Reconsidered, eh? Usually that’s a good thing,” he said, and went back into the stable. He did not even notice the mirror or the windshield.
“Felix, you’re back,” said Shirley, coming out into the yard. She threw her arms around my neck. “I’m so glad.”
“I hit a moose outside Clarenville,” I said. “Look at the windshield.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. Your father will get that replaced.”
“I guess.”
“Anything wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Come in for a cup of tea?”
“No, I’d better go home.” I turned and walked to the gate.
“Wait, I’ll drive you.”
And she did, but it did not feel like I was going home.
I was anxious about my first night back with my wife. In spite of all my attempts to explain my decision, she remained silent and introspective. I laid in bed that night, watching her in the mirror as she let down her hair. Then she got in and turned to me, waiting. She did not have to wait long, for I had missed her full body and the sweetness of kissing her. We made love with zeal. We finally broke away from each other in a sweat with half the sheets on the floor.
We lay in the dark for a time until she said, “Felix.”
“Yes.”
“If you had a choice between being a man or a woman, which would you choose?”
“A man, I guess. I’ve kind of gotten used to it.”
“No, I mean sexually. Which one is better?”
“Gee, I don’t know.”
She rolled on her side, looked at me, and said, “Being a woman is better.”
“Why?”
“Because men are always looking for it, and a woman can get it any time she wants.”
Then she rolled back, and soon I heard her deep, even breathing.
I should have been sleepy and exhausted on my first night home, but I laid awake looking at the ceiling. I kept thinking back to a grave, or perhaps a ditch, where something lay dead.
Life went on much as before. That fall, I registered at MUN and started work on my first five courses in the English M.A. program. I enjoyed the novels, poems, and more Shakespeare. I drove to town in Father’s truck for my classes, and I was home most evenings for supper. If I had a night class or a major project, I stayed late to work at the library.
Ellen continued to run the shop. One night in November, I got home and she wasn’t around. The house was in darkness, and the shop was locked up. I let myself in and phoned Shirley, who could not enlighten me and sounded a bit worried. Ellen had few friends she could be visiting, so where could she be?
About eleven, she came in with a sweater draped over her shoulders. “Hi, Felix, how was your day?”
“Good. My project is due Friday.”
“Wow! It’s cool out there.” She moved closer to the stove.
“You should wear your sweater, not just lay it across your shoulders.” I snuggled it around her neck. She smiled.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“Oh, just out for a walk.”
“You’ll soon need to wear your jacket,” I said. “I’m going out for more wood.”
Fall is breathtaking in Curlew. Stars wink from the sky, but when you face them, they just stare, blank and serene. Sometimes, the moon floods the ground with liquid silver. Sheds and barns glow under that silver lens. I stepped from this lunacy into the darkened woodshed and soon returned to the house with an armful of junk-length wood, my past Saturday’s labour.
I looked over the far fence toward Joneys Gully, where the frogs were beginning their winter sleep and the rabbits were changing from dirty brown to purest white. An owl hooted on the hunt. A dog barked from a yard. Our kitchen window emitted a warm, yellow light that invited me in from the cold.
As I opened the back door, I thought I heard Ellen talking on the phone. I dumped the junks into the big woodbox in the porch and brought in an armful to the small box behind the stove.
“It’s a splendid fall evening,” I told her.
She was sitting in the rocking chair with her sweater on. “Yes,” she said. “There’ll be lots more of them now once Halloween is past. The next thing will be the first fall of snow.”
I took the warm lifter, opened two dampers, and put a big junk into the Maid of Avalon. The wood sizzled and popped. “Let’s have some tea,” I said.
“That would be lovely,” she said as I filled the kettle.
About two weeks after that, I worked late, and again she was not home. I was in bed when she arrived. She crawled in beside me and whispered, “Asleep?”
“No.”
She put her arm under my neck, and we laid there for a time. “Want to make love?” she asked.
We did make love, and with more physical enthusiasm than ever before. I felt a nameless desperation that doubled my passion for her. The next morning, I awoke before her and laid watching her back and shoulder move with each breath. There was a faint new smell about her—a mixture of oil paint and cigarette smoke.
“I’ve got a job, that’s all,” she answered me over breakfast.
“A job doing what?”
“I model part-time for Phil Wallen in Petley.”
“The artist? The one who designed our publicity photos?”
“That’s right.”
“How do you get home in the nights?”
“Phil drops me off.” She said it casually.
“But you already have a job running the shop.”
“Well, your law career is down the tubes, and we need the extra money.”
“This isn’t right,” I said.
“What are you saying, Felix? That I can’t work outside the home?”
“I’m just saying that this isn’t right.”
“You’re doing what you want, and so can I.”
That night, I dreamt about my mother. When I awoke, I couldn’t remember the details of the dream except that I had wanted to phone her. I had picked up the phone, but I hadn’t known the number. So, I held the phone in my hand, stupidly, unwilling to return it to the cradle.
The next day was Saturday, our busiest day in the shop. Ellen was pleasant and worked hard filling orders, packaging groceries, and serving at the counter. Drusilla was a dark, sombre foil to Ellen’s good cheer.
That evening, Father and I delivered groceries in the truck.
“So, did you read my letter?” he asked.
“What?”
“My letter to the Synod of Bishops.”
“What letter?”
“I gave it to Ellen on Thursday. She didn’t give it to you?”
“She never mentioned it.”
“Anyway, I laid it on the line about the way they’ve twisted the Bible and the teachings of Christ. He really had some good points, you know. You should read . . .” Father went on, but if you asked me what he said, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I was doing well to remember when to stop for deliveries, and he had to remind me of a few.
The next day was Sunday. Ellen came downstairs dressed for outdoors. Below her coat I could see the long blue dress that clung to her body and had a fine white lace frill around the throat. “Church?” I asked.
“No, I’m working today.”
“Sunday?”
“It’s the only day the shop is closed
, and artists work on Sunday.” She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “Can I borrow the truck so Phil won’t have to pick me up?”
“Sure.”
I sat at the kitchen table and watched her drive away. The old-style sash had four panes of glass separated by a cross of wood that held them. The cross looked like a balance scale. In my chest, a balance scale was sinking as more weight was put on the side opposite my heart.
A sudden wisp of white dashed in front of the pane, then another. I stood up and looked in the direction of the departing truck to see the first snow of that year begin to fall in fat wet flakes.
15
Winter
We were studying Othello, and I found great comfort in reading the lines of that poor, deceived man. Poetry was another joy, and there I discovered treasures that I wrote about to the great approval of my professors. When marks came out at the Christmas break, I was a contender for the gold medal in English, with the highest marks in the graduate program.
In mid-December, I got a call from Gib Martin. He wanted to see me, so we met in the Spanish Café.
“Man! This brings back memories,” I said.
“Memories of mammaries,” Gib said as he sized up the girls.
“What did you want?”
“You’ve been a stranger since you got married. We haven’t seen you.”
“You know why,” I said.
“You hurt Tammy. That’s true, but she’s got a steady guy now, and even Victoria is coming around.”
“What are you studying?” I asked.
“M.A. in economics. I go to Queens for the MBA next September.”
“Malacat?”
“MBA program at Queens.”
“I saw him in Grand Falls this past August.”
Gib put down his Coke. “Now I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “Billy Crotty’s in the mental hospital, and he wants to see you.”
“The one on Waterford Bridge Road?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad is he?”
“Pretty bad, I guess. I talked to his doctors, and they said he is completely lost in his own world with someone named Alice.”