The Sign on My Father's House
Page 18
I put the key in the brass padlock and let myself into the old shop. I turned on the electric lights, but I did not look around. Instead, I went into the storeroom and sprinkled kerosene on the ancient wood and wallpaper. Then I gave the main store the same treatment, emptying my can on the counter and the brown linoleum. Then I went out into the night with all doors open.
It was about 3:00 a.m., and the house was blazing nicely as the flames romped through the ancient wood and up the back staircase to the second floor. I sat in the Adirondack chair and swung it around so I could see all three conflagrations. Atlanta burned.
It was a good hour before the volunteer fire department arrived with the pumper truck from Petley. They had no siren but ran with the throttle open through the new snow of the yard right up to my chair between the buildings. I turned in my chair, and the first one off the truck, before it even stopped, was Father.
“Felix, boy, are you all right?”
I was about to answer when I saw Fire Chief George Williams unrolling the hose from the pumper. “Let her burn, George,” I said, getting up from the chair.
“What, Felix?” he asked without stopping.
“I said let her burn. It’s my house, and I can burn it if I want.”
“You’re foolish, boy!” he said.
The other volunteers were looking at us, but George continued unrolling hose into the snow.
I went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “George, I set the fire myself, and I want it to burn down.”
“Jesus Christ, Felix!” He was spitting in confused excitement.
Then Father stood by my side. “George, he wants to burn it down. There are no houses or trees nearby, there’s no wind. I’d say he picked a good night for it.”
Father’s logic always defied logic.
George turned away from him and said to me, “Is there anybody in any of those buildings?”
“No,” I said.
“In the house?”
“Nobody. Just ghosts.”
“Damn it! This’ll cost me my job.” He threw the nozzle into the snow.
“What job? You’re a volunteer, George, like the rest of us,” someone said. Others laughed.
So, I sat in the chair, and the firemen sat on top of the pumper or in the cab and watched the show. Once, they had to move the truck when the roof caught and pieces of burning felt flew into the yard. I looked behind me and saw Father still standing by my chair.
The fire reached the second floor of the flour store. Flames licked out through the windows and soon from the window of Dick’s carpentry shop. The warm air stroked my face, and I may have dozed off in the chair. As the pink turned to orange, I looked to the window and thought I saw a face or a doll. I looked closely, but then the window burst with the heat, and glass blew out across the snow. I thought I saw Dick’s face through the smoke. Between baffles I saw it look toward me, and the strangest thing—his sad face had changed into a smile. Then all was covered by the thick smoke as the roof caught and the tar and felt began to boil and burn.
The sheds were soon burning, and the brightest part of the night was the hour or two when all the roofs burned together in one great alleluia of sound and light. Perhaps visible from outer space—my sign to the stars. I finally had a sign on my own house.
I dozed off for a while, and the winter dawn found us still there. The place was levelled to the sooty snow. The volunteers kicked and poked through the charred remains of what looked like three huge cremation sites. Then the men went home to breakfast.
Father was walking about. “Want some breakfast, Felix?” he asked. I got out of the chair, stiff and weary. We went down to his truck, and he started the engine.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“Yes, good idea! It’s often a good idea to start afresh! Something biblical about it. I must remember to look it up.” His mind was already travelling in a new orbit around the sun.
About the Author
Photo by Pamela Williams
Tom Moore was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1950. His first novel, Good-bye Momma, became a Canadian bestseller. It was chosen as a “Children’s Choice” by the Children’s Book Centre in Toronto and was translated into Danish by Munksgaard Publishers of Copenhagen in 1982. It was later translated into Romanian by Cite Libra Publishers. The CBC produced a radio play version broadcast nationally. The Canadian Book of Lists called it one of the ten best children’s books in Canada.
In 1994, Angels Crying became Moore’s second national bestseller. It is the true story of his student, a sexual assault victim. It has become a case study for a number of university schools of social work, including Memorial University, Dalhousie University, College of the North Atlantic, and the University of Maine at Presque Isle. It was translated into Chinese by New Sprouts Publishers of Taipei in 2002. (continued)
In 2000, The Plains of Madness, a work of historical fiction, won the inaugural Percy Janes Award for best novel manuscript in Newfoundland. His short story The Sign on My Father’s House was published as a winning entry in Canadian Storyteller, Toronto, in the summer of 2004.
Other books include The Black Heart, a collection of poetry, and Wilfred Grenfell, a children’s biography, published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside.
His poems have been used as operatic song settings nationally and internationally: poems Ancestors, Songs, and Caplin Scull were broadcast on CBC radio by Lyn Channing of the Music Department, University of Calgary; and his poem Songs was presented by Peter Mannion and the Galway University Choir in Ireland. Ancestors was read at the welcoming ceremony for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Newfoundland and Labrador.