The CTR Anthology

by Alan Filewod

  Jennie: But Father, Harry ’n me …

  Father: Harry and you, Harry and you!

  Jennie: (stubbornly) ’N nothing happenin’ yet!

  Father: (furious with her) Even our Lord lost his temper once! Even Jesus blasted the fig tree!

  Jennie: Father?

  Father: Harry knows! Harry knows and he’s destroyed me with my own people.

  Jennie: But I never told him. Father, never.

  Father: Ahhhh. You told him, Jennie.

  Jennie: No, I never! I never! ’N I kin prove it too!

  Father: It’s quite clear Harry knows.

  Jennie: No. Because if Harry knew …

  Father: (cuts her off) He knows, whatever you swear, and the oath of an imbecile is worth nothin’. I knew that, God help me, I knew that.

  Jennie: (simply) I kin prove Harry don’t know, Father. Because if Harry did know, he’d kill you.

  (Harry comes back to the porch. He puts the basin, soap, and dirty towelling down. He looks to the east, stretches, and yawns. Now he scrapes off his wellingtons, and comes in. He takes off his boots, windbreaker, etc., and hangs his windbreaker and cap on a wooden peg behind the door. He walks over to his place by the table. Jennie makes a gesture with the teapot as if to ask, “More tea?,” but he shakes his head. A small, awkward silence.)

  Harry: Well, Billy White’s in back a yer Dodge, Father. Took me longer’n I thought. He’d leaked a bit. (Harry looks from Jennie’s suffused face to the Father’s apoplectic one. He is sizing up what must have been going on.) Well, he’s clean as a baby now. Should be okay ’til ya get him back in the woodshed. Got quite a smile on his face now, if you want to take a look. ’Course that’s the stiffenin’. (pause) Still, we kin allus pretend, can’t we?

  (The Father pushes back his chair, gets up, and starts for the door. He turns back, gets his coat from the other chair, and struggles into it. Harry does not help him)

  Jennie: (finally) Let me help you, Father …

  Father: (cuts her off in mid-sentence) No!

  Harry: Anyways, Father, do me a favour. Don’t fergit ta close old Bailey’s gate top a the pasture. You forgot ta close the cattle gate th’other day, his cows was all down my side there, old Bailey was madder’n hell.

  Father: I did not forget to close Joe Bailey’s gate. I’m a farmer’s son. I never forget to close a cattle gate.

  Harry: Whatever you say, Father, ony you was last out, and the cows got out, all down my side, and ol’ Bailey, he was fit to be tied.

  Father: I’ll set the funeral for Wednesday.

  Harry: We’ll be there. If the weather holds.

  Father: (turns back from the door) I will bless this house. (Jennie and Harry suddenly become still.) I will bless this house, or are you an ignorant Black Irish Catholic, Harry McGrane, believing in hoodoos?

  Harry: (pause) Right, Father, right. You bless our house. Put yer back inta her.

  (Harry and Jennie kneel. The Father places a hand on each head.)

  Father: Denedicat vos omnipotens, Deus, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen. (makes the sign of the cross)

  Jennie: (frightened) Amen.

  Harry: Amen.

  Father: And I’ll see you both for Easter Confession. Friday.

  Harry: If the weather still holds.

  (Harry holds the door open for the Father. The Father goes out, crosses the porch, and exits.)

  Harry: (calling out after him) Listen! If old Billy sits up back a the seat while you’re drivin’ home, don’t worry! It’s only nature! (Harry laughs. He steps out onto the porch, breathing in the soft morning air.) “… The Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” (pause) There, that should take the curse off. There’s nothin’ like a good Chinook. Whole world smells good. (pause) We got us a whole half hour to kill. (Jennie laughs. Harry comes back in and shuts the door.) Well, there it is, Jen, here we got us a whole half hour ta do with and nothin’ ta do with ourselves. God’s given us a whole half hour holiday between work and sunup.

  Jennie: (mock innocent) I could get my bread in.

  (Harry chases her. Jennie pretends to run away. Finally he pulls her up and around his body and carries her into the hallway and up into the bedroom.)

  ACT ONE, SCENE TWO

  Harvest time. Now there is a screen door on the kitchen doorway leading to the porch. It is about nine o’clock in the morning. Edna Delevault is scouring pots and pans at the sink, although they do not need scouring. She is a brisk, round woman. She wears a starched house dress that crackles and snaps, and, on top of this, a brightly patterned, highly starched bib apron that ties at the back. Her braided hair is in a net. She wears lisle stockings and proper black lace-up shoes. Edna is in a mood of surface frustration as she bangs the pots about, but underneath she is afraid. It is threshing time, and the kitchen should have the appearance of lavish preparation of food: pies, muffins, vegetables, roasting pans. The range is red hot. Jennie comes in from the hallway, dressed to go to town. Her hair is braided in two braids and is coiled at the back of her head, but those tendrils escape and frame her face. Jennie too is wearing highly polished oxford lace-ups, but also silk stockings and a two-piece suit, very neat, but somehow sensual as well. She carries a hat box, a pair of gloves, and a black patent leather purse. She is wearing pearls. She sets the box down and puts on some clip-on pearl earrings.

  Edna: You’re ready then.

  Jennie: Almost.

  Edna: Takin’ time from Harry’s work.

  Jennie: It ony takes Harry n’hour to drive me to the train. With the new truck.

  Edna: Threshing time.

  (Edna is banging away at the pots, pans, and muffin tins.)

  Jennie: There’s never a good time, Ma. ’N this way I won’t get snowed in. Best time to go is winter but the train could get snowed in and I’d be away for weeks, months, like it happened last year.

  Edna: (stops her pot-banging; grumpily) How long it’ll take then.

  Jennie: Well, I figure only two days. Then I’ll be back. (Edna comes over, starts to fix Jennie’s hair, to push back the fly-away strands.) Day to go, day to see the doctor, day to visit with Mrs Finlay, and do a bit of shopping – Harry’s got me a list – and a day to come back.

  Edna: That’s four days. I make that four days.

  Jennie: Well, I meant ony two days there, Ma.

  Edna: Puttin’ Mrs Finlay out.

  Jennie: Mrs Finlay don’t mind.

  Edna: How you had the gall, write to Mrs Finlay and her United Church.

  Jennie: I did fer her first. Ma, and you was pleased enough about it at the time, United ’r not.

  Edna: (slightly mollifed) I trained you right, it’s true. Mrs. Finlay said she never had a cleaner girl do for her. (pause) It’s not in yer nature to do this, Jennie. Not in yer nature. In threshin time. You was also so … biddable. But now you get this bit in yer teeth and it’s all self self self. I don’t know you any more.

  Jennie: The doctor said, “Come now,” so I’m comin’ now.

  Edna: Don’t think I’m touchin’ that electricity. Never mind, maybe you got some sort a shock, that’s what I think, playin’ with nature like that. Yes, that’s what I think, you got some sorta shock from all the electricity Harry’s puttin’ in. Machines ta milk cows, what next, they’ll all go up in smoke, you’ll see. (begins to scour another pot)

  Jennie: (mildly) You needn’t do that, Ma. Harry’s bringin’ the Dorval girl.

  Edna: Never mind about no Dorval girl. The Dorvals were never clean.

  Jennie: Oh Ma! (laughs) Lucy Dorval, she come to the rectory once, run her finger on plate ledge to see if I’d dusted. Wearing white gloves, mind. It’s her girl Harry’s bringin’.

  Edna: (pause) I hope you’d dusted it.

  Jennie: Only fifteen, but a willin’ worker, Harry says. Oh yeah, it was clean. White gloves. Was she disappointed. (laughs)

  Edna: Well, I never asked for no Dorval girl. I cooked for thre
shers before.

  Jennie: Unh uh, now Ma, you went on enough about it when I asked you in the first place. So Harry says, we’ll get in the Dorval girl, so that’s an end to that.

  Edna: (suddenly putting her face in her apron and almost beginning to cry) Oh Jennie.

  Jennie: (frightened) Ma? Ma, what is it? (does not move toward Edna, as if contact would change her mind) I got to go, Ma, don’t make me cry, Ma. The doctor’s going ta fix ever’thin’.

  Edna: (controls herself, blows her nose) I don’t hold with no doctors pokin’.

  Jennie: He saved my life that time.

  Edna: You never had no appendix.

  Jennie: Oh Ma! … Ever’body’s got appendix.

  Edna: Not you. I never held with that. Tearin’ off to that place, tearin’ off for appendix.

  (Jennie takes her hat out of the hat box. It is a straw with a ribbon, very chic for the time. She puts it on, with a hat pin, and looks over Edna’s shoulder into the mirror above the sink.)

  Jennie: The doctor’s ony goingta look, Ma, and he’s the same doctor was there then, is why I wrote to him first place.

  Edna: Well, do what you want. You will anyhow. But it’s not like you, Jennie, that’s all I will say. It’s all self self self with you now.

  Jennie: Oh Ma. (pauses, turning) Well? What about the hat then?

  Edna: It’s all right.

  Jennie: All right!

  Edna: What did that set Harry back?

  Jennie: (proud, knowing the shock this will cause) Four dollars …

  Edna: Four … dollars …

  Jennie: … an’ fifty cents! (looks at herself again in the mirror)

  Edna: You oughta be ashamed of yourself. Four dollars and … four dollars and fifty cents. It’s ony a bit of straw and a bit of veil, I could’a made it for nothin’.

  Jennie: Harry says you pay for the style.

  Edna: Harry spoils you. He spoils you rotten, (pause) Four dollars and fifty cents. And payin’ that Dorval girl what?

  Jennie: Dollar a day.

  Edna: Dollar a day and all found? Dollar a day and all found?! (pause) Did ya get it at Mademoiselle Rose’s?

  Jennie: Ummmm Hmm.

  Edna: (awed) I never bin in Mademoiselle Rose’s.

  Jennie: ’N after harvest, Harry’s takin’ me back, get a new winter coat with a fox fur collar. And a muff!

  Edna: At Mademoiselle Rose’s?

  Jennie: MMM mmm.

  Edna: I’d be scared to go inside Mademoiselle Rose’s.

  Jennie: Harry says they don’t care who comes in, they got money to pay. Come in in your apron.

  Edna: (laughs) It does look nice though, I have to admit it. (pause) Oh, Jennie, it’s just, I lost five children before they was a year, and then my Ben. Now there’s ony you.

  Jennie: (moves to her, takes her hand) The doctor’s not goingta kill me, Ma. He’s ony goingta look.

  Edna: It’s God’s will, Jennie.

  Jennie: (becoming exasperated, pauses) There’s Harry at the bridge now.

  Edna: If she don’t use lye with her scrub water, she’s outa this place.

  (Jennie’s gift for hearing things is so common, Edna doesn’t even bother to comment on the fact that the bridge is some distance away)

  Jennie: I got good soap, Ma. Lye’s hard on the skin. It burns yer hands.

  Edna: I knew I couldn’t find it. I looked ever’where!

  Jennie: I gave up lye in the spring.

  Edna: (shocked) You don’t have lye in this place?

  Jennie: Not since the spring. I give it up. Makes place smell like hospital.

  Edna: Lye burns away the filth – Harry’ll hafta go into Gifford’s he’s in town, I’ll never feel safe else.

  Jennie: You won’t find no dirt, Ma.

  Edna: I’ll find it. (pause) Does she dry iron? I won’t have a girl doesn’t dry iron.

  Jennie: Ma, I don’t dry iron no more. It’s easier sprinkle.

  Edna: You don’t get to glory on easy. A good housewife uses lye in her scrub water to burn away the filth.

  Jennie: Oh Ma.

  Edna: It’s God’s will, yer goin’ against God’s will!

  Jennie: (finally blazes at her) God’s will? How can it be God’s will I don’t have a baby?

  Edna: Oh!

  (Edna is near tears. Jennie has never spoken to her like this before.)

  Jennie: Here’s Harry now. I’m sorry, Ma, but you go on. (Jennie goes to the screen door and waves. Then she goes out to the porch. She calls back, softly) And the Dorval girl, Ma. My, she’s a pretty one.

  Harry: (off) We’re here.

  Jennie: (coming down to the front of the porch) Hello, hello! Hello, Molly!

  (Harry and Molly come up on the porch. Harry carries Molly’s cardboard valise for her.)

  Harry: Here’s Miss Molly Dorval come to save the homestead!

  (Molly giggles. Harry has been making her laugh all the ten miles from the Dorval place. They come into the kitchen, Jennie following.)

  Edna: You use lye in yer scrub water?

  (Molly bursts into laughter.)

  Harry: (taking valise into the hallway) I said you’d say that. Mother, right off, first thing didn’t I, Molly!

  Edna: Well, I don’t hold with a lick’n a polish.

  Harry: (coming back into kitchen) Give the girl a chance, Mother, she just got in.

  Edna: Do you dry iron?

  (Molly is holding herself in. Harry has been predicting all these interrogations.)

  Molly: My mother makes me dry iron, Mrs Delevault. (a quick conspiratorial glance at Harry; a smothered laugh)

  (Jennie, at the door, notes this, and is slightly disturbed.)

  Edna: (grumpily, not satisfied) Does she. Good fer yer mother. What about lye in yer scrub water? Harry? You get me lye to Gifford’s you take Jennie in, they’ll be open still, you get me a big can a lye to Gifford’s … (Jennie casts her eyes heavenwards.) … charge it to my bill.

  Molly: My ma puts lye in the outhouse.

  Edna: We put it in scrub water.

  Molly: I got soft skin, Mrs Delevault, it blisters real easy.

  (Edna and Molly give each other a look now. Molly is not going to be a meek slave. Edna grudgingly likes her for it.)

  Jennie: (bursts out) Makes house smell like hospital!

  (An awkward silence, awkward for everyone.)

  Harry: I’ll just get my good jacket then, (goes out the door to the hallway)

  Edna: I trained my Jennie to do for people and I never had no complaints. My Jennie, she did for the United Church even, Mrs Finlay up to Lumbreck. Mrs Finlay said she never had such a clean girl do for her. Here, you want to be useful, you can do these spuds.

  (Edna hands Molly a basin, a bucket of potatoes, and a paring knife. Molly sits down at the table and starts in. Harry comes back in his other, better, windbreaker, carrying Jennie’s two-piece leather luggage set.)

  Harry: Got you to work already, has she? Yer a slavedriver, Mother. (Molly giggles) But her bite’s much worse’n her bark, so stay away from her teeth. (Molly laughs outright.)

  Jennie: We got to go, Harry.

  Edna: And them’s new too.

  Harry: This’n’s called “overnight” bag, and this here’s fer cosmetics.

  Edna: Jennie don’t need no “cosmetics.”

  Harry: Mmm, it’s on her list, it’s on her list.

  Jennie: Harry.

  Molly: That’s a real nice hat, you get that in Lethbridge? Mr McGrane says yer goingta Calgary. I never even bin to Lethbridge. I never bin farrer’n Lumbreck, ’n Porcupine Hills. They don’t count though.

  Edna: Yer not being paid for conversation, Miss. Mind how yer goin’ – that slice was this thick.

  Jennie: Why don’t it count, Porcupine Hills, why don’t Porcupine Hills count, it’s farrer’n Lethbridge?

  Molly: Oh that’s my uncle’s place, Charle Fabrizeau’s? It don’t count you go to yer relatives, does it? I mean, it’s not romantic nor
nothin’, just goingta yer relatives.

  Edna: Romantic!

  Jennie: That’s right. Yer cousins to the Fabrizeaus.

  Molly: Yeah, we’re all related on my ma’s side, my ma’s a Fabrizeau.

  Jennie: Yer cousin to our priest.

  Molly: Second cousin, once removed. We used to be in his parish too, but my ma won’t go to him now, she says she’ll never go to Father Fabrizeau, because he’s cursed. This okay? (holds potato up to Edna for inspection)

  Jennie: Why is he cursed?

  Edna: We don’t hold with gossip this house.

  (Molly senses she may have overstepped. She looks from Edna’s face to Jennie’s, then to Harry’s. Harry has turned away from her, and stands stiffly at the door.)

  Molly: I don’t know.

  Jennie: No, yer ma says Father Fabrizeau is cursed, why is he cursed?

  Molly: (a bit frightened at Jennie’s intensity) I really don’t know, Miz McGrane.

  Harry: We got to go, make that train.

  Jennie: Then why does yer ma say that?

  Molly: I don’t really know, Miz McGrane, all I know is …

  Edna: You better go, you want to catch yer train.

  Jennie: Be quiet, Ma.

  Molly: (lays down paring knife) I shouldn’ha been listenin’. I was supposed to be in bed, but you can hear through floor. (pause) Well. My ma says it’s because he didn’t go to confession one winter. It was one winter he was snowed in. But he heard confession and he gave the mass. An’ he was in mortal sin. (pause) That’s what she said, Miz McGrane. But my da says it’s just spite … he never married her, my da says Father Fabrizeau was real nice lookin’ when he was young, and he says it’s just spite, he married the Church instead of her. (starts to laugh, then stops) He’s a tease, my da. Like Mister McGrane.

  Edna: I’ll finish up them spuds. You kin go out’n take in the wash. (Molly gets up obediently. Edna hands her the wicker basket from the pantry.) Mind pegs go in peg bag. (The peg bag would be on the line outside. Molly goes out. She is on the porch for a brief moment as she looks about her at the neat clean prosperous farm, and is pleased to be here. She exits. Pause) I don’t want you to go, Jennie. Five babies I had, and all dead in the first year. And then Ben in the mine. You’re all I have left.