The Western Light (19 page)

32

CHRISTMAS DAY WAS COLD AND OVERCAST. AFTER OPENING OUR presents, we sat in the breakfast room eating steak and kidney pie while bottles of sparkling Burgundy cooled in the snowbanks outside. Nobody drinks the wine now, but in Big Louie's day it was a big deal.

“Is Morley coming today?” I asked.

“Maybe he's trying to come.” My aunt left the table and dialled our number on the alcove phone. She waited a while before she hung up. “I can't get anyone on the line,” she said, coming back. “Something must be holding your father up, Mouse.”

“Something always holds Morley up,” Big Louie said as she soaked her second helping of kidney pie with Willa's gravy. “That man's going to drop dead of a heart attack.”

I felt myself flinch, but I didn't take up Big Louie's remark about Morley, the way I normally would. I guess I didn't think Morley would show in the first place.

WHEN EVERYONE WENT OFF FOR afternoon naps, I dialled our number. On the other end, the phone rang and rang until Sadie, the town operator, patched me through. “Doc Bradford's residence,” a nasal voice said. “Sal, it's me, Mouse. Is my father home?”

“He's at the hospital operating. Guess you heard about the Wongs on Highway 29? Well, their truck slipped on some ice. Mr. Wong bled to death on a snowbank.”

“Ugh. That's horrible.”

“The blood's still smeared all over the snow. Sib and I saw it yesterday. The Mackie girl had a head-on collision at Angel's Corners. Both cars are write-offs.”

“Is the Mackie girl going to live?”

“If she's lucky. She's got a fractured skull, a dislocated shoulder, plus two broken legs. Your father was up 'til 5:30 this morning putting Lorraine back together. Did you get some loot for Christmas?”

I told Sal about the adventure book,
The Lennon Sisters and the Secret of Holiday Island
by Doris Schroeder, in my Christmas stocking. The Lennon Sisters were singing stars from the Lawrence Welk tv show. I didn't tell Sal that Morley took out one sister's gallbladder and that made the Lennon Sisters embarrassing as far as I was concerned. I didn't talk about getting new skates. Sal would say I was spoiled and maybe I was. It was hard to feel happy about my presents when Lorraine Mackie was broken into pieces and Mr. Wong had bled to death on the snow. Should I get Christmas presents while others suffer? I didn't know the answer and maybe Morley didn't either. Maybe that was why he worked so hard helping others.

CHRISTMAS DAY UNFOLDED WITHOUT MORLEY showing up. Before dinner on Boxing Day, Big Louie gave me a letter written by my great-grandfather and an heirloom brooch made of seed pearls and filigreed gold. She saved the brooch for last, because she didn't want the box getting lost in the Christmas wrapping. The brooch belonged to Big Louie's mother. Afterwards, I waited for my father to call me back. Finally, I gave up waiting and decided to write John and tell him how much I liked his letter.

Dear Mr. Pilkie:

 

I want to thank you for taking the time to read my composition. And I hope you had a good Christmas dinner at the Bug House. Christmas here was tons of fun and the snow isn't up to the windowsills the way it is at home.

On Christmas afternoon, we played the Fox and the Hare. First, my aunt helped Uncle Willie stomp down a large circle in the snow. Then Uncle Willie told me to be the hare, but my aunt said she would be the hare. She knows I could never catch anybody.

My aunt ran after Uncle Willie who pranced like a show horse along the tramped down paths. As soon as my aunt got close, Uncle Willie lay down in the snow and started moving his arms up and down. He told my aunt she had to make snow angels too so she lay down in the snow beside him, laughing and panting, and pretty soon all of us were lying on our backs moving our arms up and down in the snow.

For Christmas dinner, we ate two fifteen-pound hen turkeys because male turkeys are tough. Uncle Willie cut us slices while Big Louie shouted: “Start carvin', Marvin! I'm starvin'!” You would have been crazy about Willa's mashed potatoes, and her homemade bread sauce, not to mention her perfectly browned turnips. Willa put red carnations in our finger bowls and homemade bread inside our linen napkins. We dipped our fingers in the bowls and ate the bread with our turkey.

I hope your own turkey was juicy and the hospital cook didn't leave your roast potatoes in the oven until they turned hard as hockey pucks. After dinner, Uncle Willie produced a joke book. A dozen pardons for all the dirty words that follow. It started with Uncle Willie reciting a verse:

“This is the story of the bee whose sex is very hard to see. You cannot tell a he from a she but she can tell and so can he.”

My grandmother finished it: “The bee is a very busy soul and has no time for birth control so that is why, in times like these, you see so many sons of bees.”

Everybody laughed their heads off.

“Let's see if you can remember this one, mother,” Uncle Willie said. “The farmer asks the young man, are your intentions toward my daughter honourable or dishonourable?”

“And the young man says, I've got a choice?” Big Louie answered. Everybody laughed twice as hard and Uncle Willie swore that my grandmother was the only woman who could tell the punch line of a dirty joke properly.

Maybe Uncle Willie's jokes will make you mad so please ignore the places where I have scratched the jokes out. Tomorrow we're going on a sleigh ride along Bear Creek and then we will visit my great-grandfather's grave. In case you forgot, he's the pioneer oilman. My grandmother toasts my great-grandfather's grave every Christmas with a bottle of champagne because my great-grandfather was a temperance man. And every year, my grandmother pours a glass of bubbly on his tombstone, and shouts: “Down with temperance, Dad!”

Well, I have to go now and read a letter my greatgrandfather wrote. Big Louie says I will be very surprised by it, and she wants to talk to me after I finish. I hope you get to watch the Leafs game in the Bug House. By the way, it's not fair that you can't get a review of your case, and cross my heart I will do all I can to help you.

 

Your special friend,
Mary Bradford

 

P.S. I can't help wondering what you mean by special friend? That's how you signed your last letter. Not that I'm taking it the wrong way. I'm just asking.

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ON DECEMBER 30, AFTER WILLA PUT ME TO BED, I SNUCK DOWNSTAIRS and watched the Leafs play the Canadiens on the huge colour tv that Big Louie had bought in Detroit. We couldn't get colour tv in Madoc's Landing. Our reception was always black and white, and as snowy as Christmas on the
Perry Como Show
. I imagined Morley swearing a blue streak when the Pocket Rocket fired a pair of goals to make the score 3–1. The Leafs lost 3–2 so I went upstairs to read my great-grandfather's letter. I read it over and over, unable to believe my eyes.

Vergennes, Vermont
February , 1862

 

Dear Mr. Vidal:

 

Me and mine do not appreciate you contacting us regarding the news of our son Cameron nor have our feelings changed since I wrote your aunt some twenty years before. We have no evidence other than the word of your dead mother that you are Cameron's issue. My son drowned when he was a settler at Maxwell, a utopian commune on the shores of Lake Huron. He was nineteen when he died. In his memory I ask you to refrain from all further communication. Neither myself, nor my wife Isabella wish to hear from you in future.

 

With every good wish,
Bradley Davenport

When I found her, my grandmother was in her bedroom pinning brooches on her bedroom curtain; she liked to keep her brooches on the inside panel so they would be safe from thieves who were bound to be interested in her one-hundred-year-old porcelain cameos of women wearing leafy garlands and scarves.

When she saw my face she said: “So now you know about Dad.”

“Why didn't you tell me Old Mac's parents weren't married?”

“Dearie, I had to wait until you were old enough to hear it. But it makes sense looking back. Old Mac was always proper and sometimes proper people are the ones with the most to hide.”

“I guess nobody can say that about you.”

“Now, now. I'm not criticizing Dad. It's just a shame he thought he had to keep this from us.”

“You mean that he was a capital B-A-S-T-A-R-D?”

“Don't be naughty, Mouse. Children pop out everywhere. Who cares where they come from? It only matters that we love them.” Giving me one of her perfumed hugs, she added, “Life is full of shocks, Dearie. We have to roll with the punches.” Big Louie's words made my spirits sink. What was the point of working hard to get rich if you didn't have a father to love you?

Back in my room, I took out my letter to John and added a second postscript:

Maybe you don't remember but I told you my greatgrandfather found his father and struck oil. I was wrong. Mac Vidal didn't find his father. By the time my great-grandfather came up here, his own father was dead and buried. As if this isn't bad enough, Mac Vidal was a capital B-A-S-T-A-R-D and his father's family disowned him. It's pretty humiliating. Anyway, I'm giving up on my composition. There is no point wasting time on something so babyish.

34

AS SOON AS OUR TRAIN LEFT THE STATION, IT STARTED TO SNOW. It snowed all evening. When I told my aunt about my greatgrandfather's letter, she said it was about time Big Louie told me that Old Mac was illegitimate. Men go around making babies all over the place without getting married, so it was no surprise to her. Then she said she was sorry she spoke sharply and I knew that she was thinking of Max, whose baby was expected anytime now. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, she was sitting by the foot of my train berth, reading “Can This Marriage be Saved?” in
Ladies Home Journal
, her expression as concentrated as a nun at her prayers. I recognized the magazine feature. Some nights after Sal finished with the magazine, I read it under the covers with a flashlight and I was always amazed at the solutions the magazine counsellor came up with for hopeless cases.

A moment later, Little Louie tossed the magazine aside and stared sadly out the train window. I guessed her mind was still on Max. Maybe she felt blue about returning to Madoc's Landing with me. I shut my eyes again and tried not to think about my aunt and her problems.

BY THE TIME WE STEPPED out onto the platform at Madoc's Landing, it had stopped snowing. There was no sign of Morley, and it was cold, icebox cold, just as Sal had prophesied. Tubby Dault, Sal's father, picked us up. He whinnied like a horse when he laughed and said that my father and the hockey team were snowed in good up in Owen Sound. But John Pilkie and the Rats had won their game. My aunt gave Tubby a long-suffering smile.

Tubby was a short, barrel-chested man who ran a bootleg taxi. When you saw him coming, you knew somebody in town was either out for a Sunday drive, or having themselves a party. So when he drove in our driveway, the neighbours peered out their front window. I pointed at our suitcases and our neighbours nodded and shut their curtains. On the kitchen table, my aunt found Morley's note:
I'm in Owen Sound with the boys and Sal is at the farm. The young Coverdale fellow has made a rink in our backyard. Morley.

John's promise rushed back to me and I hurried over to the kitchen window. A broad rectangle of ice shone under the porch light. So he was a man of his word, after all.
John is your special friend
, I told myself as I walked up and down the living room, slapping my sides to keep warm. I had to do something. The house was frigid. “Something's wrong with the furnace,” my aunt called as she fiddled with the thermostat. When she turned on the taps, no water came out. The pipes were frozen and it was too late to call the repairman. So she plugged in Morley's electric blanket in his bedroom and made me get under it while she built a fire in the hearth.

“The pipes froze because Sal wouldn't let Sib spread horse manure on them. That keeps them from bursting.”

“It sounds like the cure is worse than the disease,” Little Louie replied.

“Well, maybe, but everything's going to be fine,” I said.

Little Louie laughed tonelessly as she crawled in beside me. “I'm the one who should be telling you that,” she replied, putting her arm around me, holding me close.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE night, I woke and found my aunt gone. I put on slippers and a dressing gown and went to look for her. The house was so cold I could see my breath. Her voice floated upstairs. I could tell by her tone that she was arguing with my grandmother. I wrapped the sleeve of my housecoat around the receiver of the hall phone and put it to my ear.

“Steel yourself, Louisa. I have news for you.”

“It's happened.”

“Max's wife had a baby boy. And he's happy about it. I warned you, Dearie. Men change when they have a son. Especially if the boy looks like his daddy.”

“Well, that's your opinion.”

“It's a godsend, Louisa. Max isn't husband material.”

“I can't believe you're saying this. What about father? Was he husband material?”

“You know the answer, Louisa. I don't want you to suffer like I did.”

“Somebody's on the party line,” my aunt said coldly. “I'd better go.”

“All right, I'm here if you need me. Goodbye, Dearie.”

My aunt slammed down the phone.

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