by Ron Thompson
I was inside long enough to register some impressions. The tables were of chipped Formica, the carpets smelled of beer and mould, the air was blue with smoke. The patrons wore thin polyester shirts with ties askew, or plaid lumber jackets with sweaty caps. Later, still underage, I came to know them as a democratic bunch, spotting each other to drinks or cigs, covering a tab if someone was short. Their tastes were simple; nothing was shaken or stirred but jiggled in its glass and downed quickly. A truly sophisticated man might start his evening with a Red Eye before chugging a succession of rye-and-sevens or dark-and-dirties. Later, he might dine on a Hot Rod, or a pickled egg fishedfrom a murky jar. Such a man, aware of his duty as a role model for youth, never barfed but in the bathroom or out in the street. Pot and hash and harder alternatives were all available in Poplar Lake, and many Poplarites considered booze a lesser vice, certainly a lesser risk to youth. In that light, underage drinking and sneaking into the bar was viewed as good clean fun, a rite of passage. There were consequences if you got caught, but I never was, although I had a very close call in Grade Eleven. It was a Friday night, and most of my high school football team was gathered at the Grizz, commiserating over a loss that afternoon to our nemesis, the team from Saint Vitalis High. Clinton Sturgis and I were sitting with Victor and some of his friends, all of whom were legal, when two Mounties strolled in through the front door. The place instantly fell silent. Most of those who were underage got up and headed for the rear exit. The corporal followed them out, nodding and waving to a few acquaintances on the way. Out back, there was another horseman waiting with a paddy wagon. Together, they collared the bulk of both huddles and loaded them up for the ride to the station. Meanwhile Clinton and a few others got up and headed for the toilet. But before I could follow, Victor laid a hand on my arm. Stay cool, Buttster, he said. Sit in your chair and look like you’re thirsty. He lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I picked up my draft and emptied it, and through its thick glass bottom watched as the other Mountie went straight for the men’s room. He came out a moment later with four of the guys and led them out the back door. And that was it. No fuss, no bother for any of the law-abiding rest of us. They did not card a single person, which was fortunate, really, as my high school ID would not have withstood close scrutiny.
A few minutes later, Clinton Sturgis came out of the ladies room and made his way back to our table. He got a round of applause and nodded to acknowledge it but did not crack a smile.
* * *
“Do you need anything while we’re out here?” my mother asked, wrenching me from my reverie. “There’s not much left downtown these days.”
We were at the entrance to the mall’s parking lot, and at its far end, two football fields away, stood the mall itself, a long wall of brick festooned with commercial signage, broken only by a central entrance. At either end stood its anchor stores, Woolco on one side, Canadian Tire on the other. Each was housed in a hulking windowless box a storey above the connecting mall.
“We’re lucky in this town,” Mom said. “We’ve got everything under one roof.”
“It’s . . . big,” Genny said.
“Oh! Big! It’s huge! And you should see it at Christmas. It’s lit up like the surface of the moon.”
Genny shook her head and shuddered slightly again. Yes, she was definitely chilly.
* * *
At Safeway, Mom glanced at her list. “Go get some granola, dear,” she told me. “I just know Genny doesn’t like the cereal we have, and she’s too polite to say.”
Genny protested to the contrary but Mom waved her off. We wandered the aisles in search of granola. Genny seemed preoccupied. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing.” I found the cereal section.
“Something.”
“No. Nothing.”
The granola shelf was bare, but there was something shoved right to the very back. I got down on my knees and reached far in, trying to grab it. “There’s something . . . something . . .” I pinched the edge of something with the tips of my fingers andpulled out a single package. “Okay. It’s your family.”
“Nuts?”
“What?”
I held up the pack. “You want granola with nuts?”
“Uhm. Yes. That’d be nice.”
“What about my family?” She laughed. “They’re nuts.” “Pardon?”
“Okay. Not nuts. But . . . I have to tell you. Edie’s really starting to bug me with this passive aggressive act of hers.”
“What do you mean? I haven’t noticed—”
“Baby. She’s been putting me down since I got here. Right from that ‘Genny can have Andrew’s room’ nonsense. It’s classic passive aggressive. She sees me as a threat and she’s masking her hostility with ‘oh yes, dear,’ ‘oh we don’t buy saskatoons,’ ‘oh you call those date squares!’ And now, ‘oh, are those hot pants?’ . . . Hot pants, for God sake!”
“Passive aggressive?”
“She’s totally passive aggressive.”
I waited, but she was waiting for me. “Well, I suppose you could say that, but if you’d sacrificed your own career for—”
“You’re doing it yourself!”
I was not exactly sure what being passive aggressive entailed, so I tried to change the subject. “We should find her, don’t youthink? She must be looking for us.”
“I’ve really tried to ignore it until now, but I’m going to have to talk with her—”
“No, no! No talk. No. That can’t possibly—”
“Your dad’s lovely, and Simon’s so nice. I’ve really hit it off with him. I don’t think you realize that he . . .” She fell silent, considering. “But Edie. Look how she egged Victor on when he came for dinner. He was mean to you. Those stories he told. And he kept interrupting. Every time you started to talk, he had something better to say, something more important. He’s all about himself. And your mother lets him get away with it.”
“No! That’s just Victor. He kids around. He does that all the time. He’s just, ah, high spirited. He always looked out for me. He likes you, you know. I can tell—”
I had the sense to stop before uttering the words that were on the tip of my tongue: Why, just yesterday he said you have a nice rack.
In my mind I saw the scene I thus avoided. WHAT? she shouted, her arms instantly folded across her nice rack. No, it was worse. She had a brother, they used to fight, and she had oncejoked to me about thwacking him in the boys to get the upper hand. (Ha hah, what innocent times, according to her.) Well, she had never tried that on me, but . . .
I started walking away, towards safety at the end of the aisle. “Hey, where are you going?” she called. She caught up quickly but I kept walking, angling my body away from her as I went, shifting so my hip would block a swing. “Why are you walking sideways?”
“Am I?”
“Yes! Wait.”
I stopped and turned warily to face her. Her expression showed concern, her eyes glowed softly. A tentative smile formed at the edges of her mouth.
“I know how hard it must be to come back here. To come home, with me . . .” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’ll give it another go. I promise. I’ll try again. I just wanted to . . .” She slipped her arms around me. “Come here.”
The fact was, I was already there, I could get no closer. As her lips met mine I dropped the granola on the ground and hugged her back.
“Well there you are!”
Of course it was my mother, standing in the gap at the end of the aisle, eyebrows high on her forehead.
“Hello, Edie,” Genny said.
“Oh, here it is,” I said, stooping to pick up the granola.
CHAPTER 11
That afternoon we drove downtown to the library with my father, and when we got there he offered to give Genny “the grand tour.”
“I’d like that, Stan,” she s
aid, although she was accustomed to far grander libraries and far larger collections than that of the Poplar Lake Regional Library. They headed away together, and I wandered into the fiction section, remembering how I used to scour it for books unavailable at school. I would hide them among volumes of miscellany (a Hardy Boys, a Robert Ludlum thriller, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the NHL Yearbook); or I would feign a thematic interest and line up with How to Grow Tropical Plants, Farming in the Tropics, Tropic of Cancer, and Tropical Rainforests: An Introduction. At the checkout desk, Miss Wilkey, the town’s much-feared librarian, would appraise me silently through tortoise shell eyeglasses. Later, when she knew me as a regular, she would nod conspiratorially and flip a book over to conceal its cover. I wondered now how many young lives she had touched with her quiet campaign against censorship.
I rounded a corner and went down another aisle, idly scanning the shelves, spotted The World According to Garp, and flipped it open to read its card. There was my signature, from October, 1980—almost ten years before. I chuckled and tucked the book under my arm.
Genny and Dad were at the front desk, sifting through a pile of books on a table marked “For Sale.”
“Look,” I said, pointing at my name on the Garp card.
“Well now,” Dad said.
“I recognize your writing,” Genny said, “but it had more flourishes then. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Nineteen-eighty . . . I was fourteen, with braces and Princess Leia hair. You were reading grown-up books and wouldn’t have even noticed me. I’ll bet you wouldn’t have even said hello.”
“Probably not.” I had seen pictures of Genny at fourteen: talk about grown up. I would definitely have noticed her.
Dad was already back poking through the book pile. “Well, look at this,” he said, holding up a book. “A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean.” He turned it over in his hands and handed it to me.
It was heavy, and its shiny jacket crackled as I flipped it open. Its pages were unfrayed and unbent, unworn in any way. It was like new. Its full title was long and unwieldy, and I had never heard of its author, a man named William Broughton, or its publisher, The Samuel Purchas Society of Thaxted, Essex. It appeared to be a first person account of a nautical voyage made in the 1790s, reissued in 1953.
“Never heard of him,” I said.
“Me neither. Take a look at the card.” I flipped it open and pulled a yellowed sign-out card from its pocket. It was blank. Since its acquisition, the book had not left the library. Judging from the creak of its spine, it had rarely even been opened.
There was a sticker with an inscription on the inside cover:
This book is a gift to this library by
the Bugelmann Foundation, Montreal, Canada.
The Bugelmann Foundation is dedicated to historical preservation. In history lies truth. In our history lie the seeds to our future.
Lest We Forget
“They’re clearing out books that aren’t circulating, and they only want a dollar for this one,” Dad said. “That’s a real steal. I’m going to buy it.” He took it back from me and flipped throughit again. “It looks like a hard slog, reading wise. But this is the kind of thing someone could write a novel about. I always say that’s the way to bring history to life. Take some licence with it, make a few things up, and tell it as a story.” I glanced at Genny and found her eyes on me. “What?” I asked.
* * *
Genny and I decided to walk home. We waved Dad goodbye in his pickup and strolled, me pointing out various businesses. There, the bait and tackle shop where I had worked summers and after school. There, Victor’s office, and next to it, the old King Edward Hotel, home of the late Grizzly Bar. A few doors down, Bing’s Hong Kong House, also defunct.
“Is that where you went with your friends?” Genny asked. “After a movie? Or when you were out on a date, with your girrrrl friend?”
“Yeah, it was the place to be. It had a jukebox at every table and fantastic ice cream floats. Let’s cross here. I want to show you something.” I led her across the street to look inside the liquor store. It was the busiest place on the block. “I was telling you this morning about the Ruby Rush. This is the perfect place to pick up the story.”
* * *
The Great Ruby Rush lasted two months, and the debauchery to which it gave rise scandalized the town. The Poplar Lake Progress flew into high dudgeon, shocked and appalled over whatit called the “lewd and dissolute behaviour” of the prospectors and the role of local drink merchants in abetting it. There was already a strong temperance movement on the prairies. The previous year, an effort had been made to close down all bars in Saskatchewan, but the legislation was withdrawn, very suddenly it was felt. Rumour had it that liquor interests had paid off the politicos. Angry at this, and aghast at the excesses of the Rush, the abolitionists gained momentum, and they found common cause with the reformers and progressives who were founding co-ops and credit unions and pushing for rural doctors and hospitals. Locally, one of their leaders was Violet Abernethy.
“Violet Abernethy? As in the school you went to? The junior high?”
“It was named for her.”
Violet arrived in 1909 to live with her brother on his farm out near the reserve. She was a striking woman, what they called statuesque in those days, with a serious demeanour, a trademark straw boater and intense, piercing blue eyes. People always remarked on her eyes—they were her most remarkable features. Some said that Sol Bugelmann came a-courting, as did every single man in the district. There was still a shortage of women in Poplar Lake, and there were certainly no Jewish women for him to woo; but if it was true he came a-wooing, and she rebuffed him, religious bias played no role. Violet was not that way in the least. After all, she was a Methodist, and she married a Presbyterian, of all things: Jack Abernethy, son of Theodore Abernethy, the Temperance man who had struck the original land deal with Pîwiwisakedjak. Young Jack was a quiet, dependable sort, perhaps not as earnest as Theodore but, like him, honest as the day is long. He was a handsome fellow, in a reedy way and, some said, a whiz with numbers. That may have been what won Violet over, such skills being known to attract women.
Genny’s own piercing blue eyes were fixed on my face once again, scrutinizing my expression, searching. She opened her mouth to speak but I continued before she could interrupt.
Violet had the firebrand temperament the abolitionists needed, and she had an impeccable pedigree: she was active on many progressive causes, her brother was active in the movement too, and her husband Jack was the son of a solid temperance family—although Jack himself was known to imbibe occasionally. His trips into town for supplies often included a few hours diversion in the beverage room of the Deeside Hotel. Jack was not a problem drinker, exactly, but once in a while he came home pie-eyed; this, after Violet had spent the day in the company of chickens, pigs, and a squalling child. Well, Violet was just petty and vindictive enough to begrudge the man a few simple pleasures in his—
“Move on,” Genny said, with an ungentle dig to my ribs. The abolitionists gained impetus with the outbreak of the Great War that autumn. The war effort, they maintained, required dedication, and liquor and drunkenness distracted from it. Sacrifice was required—and speaking of sacrifice: who sacrificed more than the nation’s women, who couldn’t even vote! This fact offended all progressives, and Violet Abernethy began to agitate also for women’s suffrage. The mothers and wives of our brave soldiers, she proclaimed in speech after speech, demand a voice!
A pacifist herself, Violet might not have employed such rhetoric had Jack not enlisted unexpectedly in the spring of 1915. That day began like any other: chores in the pre-dawn, breakfast after first light, pitching hay in the barn. Later, as it wasa Monday, Jack hitched the horses and drove the wagon into town for supplies. When he arrived he saw immediately that something was afoot. There were peopl
e milling around on the street, agitated. The train had just arrived with the Winnipeg papers, and a man was reading a front page article to those gathered round. Jack crowded in to hear. The Germans, it seemed, had unleashed a vile new weapon. Poison gas. In Belgium, a place called Yeepers. Or Wipers. Foreign, anyway. There were casualties, heavy casualties. And then the heroic story: those around them had buckled, but Our Brave Boys had stood their ground. They had saved the day for the Allies, the line had held, but at a horrible cost.
There were no cheers—the atmosphere on the street was subdued. But in the Deeside, where the men repaired to digest the news, whiskey and anger at the Hun fuelled a patriotic fervour. Eyeing the soon-raucous crowd, recognizing many familiar faces in it, Sol was swept up in it himself. A drink, he shouted. For everyone here! He raised his glass to Jack and nodded an acknowledgement. And another, he continued, for every man-Jack of you who signs up this day to fight!
Sol capped his own fervour at the cost of those rounds, but within an hour Jack and twenty other locals were members of the Canadian Mounted Rifles. Don’t worry, he told a wailing Violet that evening, I’m in the cavalry. But when the battalion got to France, its horses were requisitioned for the artillery, and Jack Abernethy and the rest of the Rifles mounted the duckboards in the trenches as Poor Bloody Infantry. Four years later, six of those twenty-one men came home whole.
With Jack absent, Violet was left alone on the farm. She seeded a crop that spring and took it off that fall. She gave birth to their second child in December. And she poured her surplus energy into her causes. She and her committees gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition demanding the vote for women. And she pressed harder than ever for prohibition. Sobriety, she said in countless speeches, was needed to defeat the Hun (and, just maybe, to punish Sol Bugelmann).