Grand Change (8 page)

Wally peered sidewise at me when we got back to the stove. “We showed them owl hoots a thing or two,” he said.

For the rest of the time, we went through the rerun lines of skits and solos, in that halting try-again manner, with the teacher's patient prompting, spaced by the bumps and scrapes of the old sofa, table, chairs and back wall arrangements. Outside of our shepherd stints, Wally sat beside me at the stove in supreme smugness. I guess you could say we both sat that way.

The big day finally came. The trustees hauled in the tree, with its fresh, septic smell, and we dragged the big cardboard box of decorations down from the attic, decorated the tree and nailed up wreaths and bows.

Wally and I didn't bother to go home for supper; we came in the morning wearing our good clothes, with a few extra sandwiches in our lunch cans so we could rehearse with the place to ourselves.

The place looked magical and cozy now, with tiny, coloured
lights peeping among the wreaths frilling the cut-out
“Merry Christmas” at the jaw of the stage, and the decorations on the tree: the raining icicles, silver sprig lines, coloured balls and crepe ropes.

I can't remember the like ever happening, but if a thief had plied his trade in the district on concert night, he would have done well.

Only the sick, infirm and the odd person with some kind of grump didn't attend. They came singular and in groups, in overcoats and buckle overshoes, with that quiet, wondering expression reserved mostly for church and funerals. And they squatted to the chairs, glancing around and murmuring barely above a whisper, sometimes moving to a better viewing site.

Except for when we trooped on stage for the opening chorus to the piano plunks of “Marching to Georgia,” and our shepherd stint at the nativity scene, when my beard came unstuck and I had to hold it to with my hand, we sat and watched the others as they wobbled their way through, taking nervous glances at the audience sitting in semi-darkness, intent on catching every word, be it choked, flubbed or stammered.

Our time came after the intermission and the hard fudge sale, when the usual lump or two rattled off the walls and the odd bald head while Jim Mackie and Alban Gallant played a few reels and the Gallant children stepped her off.

We made our way to the two chairs set up for us at centre stage. Wally's movements were quick and deliberate, his eyes like burning coals. He cut in before the teacher finished her introduction. We were pretty well into the tune before they got the curtain up.

I guess you could say the inevitable happened then. Although I don't think it would have if they'd given us more time to rehearse. It was kind of like getting hit with a bucket of cold water when you're not expecting it. That dry, deserted feeling grabbed me and froze me up, knocking me off stride; it grabbed Wally at about the same time and everything flopped into squawks and offbeat guitar dings.

Wally kept at it though, kept working away with his bow arm locked. Then I saw his jaw start to work. Then his tongue lolled out and he bit down on it with it still a ways out and still trying to work. When I looked at the crowd, the few faces I could see had an awestruck look. Then it was like something simmering into blowing up until we were hit by a gale of laughter that came in a belch. I glanced to the off-stage corner and saw the teacher standing with her shoulders bucking, her face beet red and her lips pursed shut. But Wally limped away, with me getting a ding in now and then. I was worried he might bite off his tongue. The roar of laughter carried on for some time after they dropped the curtain on us, with Wally still working away like he was trying to catch up.

In the end he stomped backstage, stiff-necked and with his peculiar belligerence. “I ain't playing no more,” he said. “Laugh at a fellow like that.”

Over in a corner, behind one of the movable back walls, Linda Robbins and Janet Fuller were waiting for their skit. Janet was finding it hard to keep a straight face, but Linda came over with something akin to sympathy in her blue eyes and on her plump face, framed by blonde curls. “That's okay, Wally,” she said. “You gave it your best and you did a good job.”

That wasn't much help, since even he knew he didn't.

Wally went and hid in the basement right up until the closing chorus and he wasn't too fussy about coming out then, but the teacher coaxed him to it. Trouble was, when everyone saw him again, there was another belch of laughter. He stood singing with a shoulder hitched up and his head canted like a dog in the rain. Then he realized he was the centre of attraction, and his face lost its stiff twist. He squared off to the audience with his head back, and the roar got louder.

I guess if Santa hadn't come about then, they'd have laughed until they got home. But he came, ho, hoing his way in from the cold. He went through his usual greeting, then handed out the gifts—prearranged by the hat raffle—amidst that bluster and excitement brought on by presents, the giving and receiving.

They kind of lost it again when Santa dealt Wally his. “Ho, ho, ho, to fiddling Wally Mason from someone who cares. Now I wonder who that could be?”

When everything was all over and we were getting on our overcoats and overshoes in the buzz and muddle, big Stewart Lucas, with his paunch bulging from his open overcoat, his open overshoes flapping, his piano key teeth going from ear to ear in his big, round face, came and said, “Wally, I never thought you had it in you. To put on a show like that must have taken some doing. And Jake, that get up you had on your guitar made it all the funnier.”

The Old Man and Nanny went home just after we played. One of the milk cows had bloated that afternoon and John Cobly had to come over and tap her. They wanted to get home and keep an eye on her. I went home with the Masons.

It was a cold, dark night. There was a slight wind, but you could still hear the squeak and crunch of sleigh runners amidst the bumps at the pitches, coming in ragged cadence along the string of rigs, with the surprised yelps and laughter. Wally and I weren't laughing, though. We rode in glum silence.

The Boss was sitting by the radio listening to Inspector Faraday wedge out a grudging “Merry Christmas” to Boston Blackie.

He eyed me sideways with a smirk on his face before breaking into a full smile. I put my guitar away, then sat with my feet on the oven door and drank a cup of the hot chocolate Nanny had left simmering on the back of the stove when she went to bed. When the program finished, The Old Man told me to take a look at the sick cow before I went to bed and turned in himself.

I usually stayed up late on Christmas Eve, but I felt like going to bed early. My musical dreams had taken a licking, to say the least. Buying my new guitar didn't seem like such a good idea now. I put my clothes on and got the flashlight. When I got to the heavily iced doorstep, I paused and looked up. A few stars had broken through. There was a quiet stillness disturbed mildly by the raucous bark of a fox and a crump from cracking ice in a distant field. I could see the glow of lights from the city off to the north and, as if by some cue, the northern lights began to flare and dance from beyond.

In the stable, the sick cow's eyes showed blank, white circles in the light when she turned them to me from where she lay. I could hear the snuffs of her breathing mingling with the cud chews of the other cows and their chain rattles. The tap affair protruding from her side showed no signs of escaping
gas and her belly was not barrelling. She snuffed again
curiously, then turned her head away peacefully and chewed her cud.

I had left the radio on, and when I got back to the bask of light strewing from the kitchen window across the pitted foot path in the snow, I could hear one of the big bands with that mellow horn gnash playing “Silent Night.” I paused, noticing the peaceful stillness, and watched the northern lights over the city lights again.

Inside, the usual whine of the kettle, the odd crack from the stove's firebox, the lamp's glow and the shadows on the wall all seemed to augment the music of Christmas coming from the radio. I sat in the armchair by the radio with another cup of hot chocolate. A mixed choir began singing a carol medley, giving background music while a lady narrated the Christmas story. When they finished, I worked my way—winging and wooing—through the stations, fielding carols. The stations were beginning to blank out by the time the heat from the stove had begun to die away and I was pleasantly tired. I took the lamp and went into the living room and looked at the small tree, modestly dressed with the winds of red and green crepe rope with their squished spaces, the paint-peeled coloured bells and balls, the pigs' hair icicles, the crockery angel on the top sprig with her wand and the jagged hole in her dress. I hung my sock on the mantel, reaching over the line of Christmas cards waggling wing-like in the heat waves from the Queen Heater burning below. Of course I didn't believe in Santa Claus anymore; it was just a part of Christmas I still enjoyed with Nanny. I paused for a few moments, feeling the mirth-like coziness brought together by the spruce and burnt maple smells, and as I went to bed I knew that tomorrow would be Christmas, and it would have that specialness it always had, musical dreams or no musical dreams.

I woke early, like always, and got the sock from the mantel; like always, it had an orange, that hard, smooth candy in animal shapes, a couple of striped canes and a handful of grapes. And like always, it was special.

The day broke fine and clear. There was a cold, bright freshness in the morning when the animals traipsed to the ice-bearded watering trough, with its axe-chipped hole. The steers rammed their heads into the snow like playful children blanking their faces white, their breath puffs seemingly coming from the snow. There was still a cold, bright freshness when Aunt Laura and Uncle Jim and their twin boys rode in from town in their pung sleigh with bells jingling.

It was nice sitting around the kitchen amidst the Christmas dinner smells, going through the usual greetings, exchanging gifts and showing them off, finally eating goose, mashed potatoes and jimmies, topped off with plum pudding to the point of a groan. Then we sat and listened to Uncle Jim tell about town goings-on, and him discussing politics with The Boss while The Boss whittled a plunger for a cut goose quill so the children could shoot potato plugs. But I had other things on my mind.

I stuffed my pockets with lumps of fudge and the hard candy from my sock, grabbed my new fleece-lined leather mitts from under the tree and headed for the porch. I threaded my hockey stick through the spaces in my skates and swung them over my shoulder. There was a steady drip from the icicles on the eaves of the porch; a few drops fell down my neck as I stepped out into the cold, bright freshness again.

Across the sparkling fields of snow, I could see the banks of the cleared ice patch below Joe Mason's house rising above the white glare. Wally, hidden below the knee, was skating limp-legged and laboured. He was pushing a board nailed to a two-by-four, with support sticks, for a scraper.

Jenny and Shirley Mackie were on the ice, too, skating straight-backed, straight-armed and tottery, sweeping in a forward slant, taking a stride and daring to take another,
coasting for the rump-waggling, sidewise stop, with…
whoops!…there goes Jenny!

As I trudged with my feet plunging through soft-crusted snow, I saw others come wading, their breaths puffing and swirling around their faces and cap lugs.

We came to sit on our sticks, with their rags of tape at the blade. We blew on our chilled fingers between the tightening of waxed laces and the usual hockey banter. Finally we rose like wounded birds scattering from a roost with the ever-present stick for support. Then it was pick sides, drop the puck and drive 'er, with spaced boots for nets, no refs and no offsides. And there were the rip and swish of rust-pitted blades cutting and swerving, the whacks of clashing sticks, the cheers of the score. And somewhere outside the white banks, the cares and defeats of life skulked like defeated dogs, and until early winter shadows grew long before distant trees, the world was on hold.

The banter was somewhat subdued as we sat on our sticks again. Steam wisps rose from our hands as we pried the laces loose from their castings of sprayed ice and hauled off the skates and stuffed our feet into stiff boots where they would grow hot. Feeling the ice strange to our feet without the fight for balance, we said our “see yas” and saw the first flickers of lamps in distant windows punctuating the peace of Christmas night.

Prelude to
Winter on Hook Road

From the first big storm, except for the hockey, skating
and
coasting circuses, the scenes along Hook Road pretty much included a horse and sleigh. In milder days—after limp-foot lugging seventy-five– or one hundred-pound bags of Green Mountains or Sebagos up the stone steps of gloomy cellars—the farmers rocked and swayed with the pitches, perched on the buffalo-covered wood sleigh loads, sometimes in a string.

At mid-afternoon, on sleighs returning from the potato buyers, the scholars of the old schoolhouse rode, perched on sleigh sides like multi-coloured birds chirping on telephone lines. And there were songs in chorus and jokes, which sooner or later evolved into push-offs and laughing and foot-skipping races to catch up, with slung school bags swinging in flurries of flying snow until the driver's rein slapped the horses into a jog, resulting in pushing, foot-slipping, laughing races to catch up. And sometimes a speed comment from a passing sleigh would bring on a foot race, and the cheers and jeers of a racetrack, until they hit a heavy run of pitches.

At other times, the fanners rode their wood sleighs on the trails to woodlots in skeleton, with the sides and bottoms removed, stakes stemming from the bunk holes, the drivers standing spread-foot sideways on two bunks.

There the axes of winter rang in lonely echo. And the crosscut saws see-sawed in their sidewise bite, with two men kneeling, their arms pumping like the drivers of a locomotive, the saw teeth barely missing their upright shins, the spurting sawdust speckling their gumboots and the snow at their toes.

Then, on moonlit evenings, the blood mares drew the pung and jaunting sleighs, their tails and manes a wisping blur, their swift hooves flipping fragments of snow over the dashboards and peppering the buffalos and ticking of the leather mitts, their shadows bobbing, weaving and poking at the white-capped fence posts sailing past.

The January thaw gave an interesting twist to the scene. The snow sank, and with it torrents of rain and rivers and lakes appeared in low-lying areas, horses plunged and sleighs floated. With the freeze, the snow turned to the texture of bread dough, the rivers and lakes to glass-hard sheets of ice that would “pick” from the sharp corks of horseshoes, and the sleighs would slew and side-haul at the horses.

And there were scenes of harshness, too: of horses fighting their way through cold, blasting ground drifts while the drivers, their heads ducked into their collars, one-handed the reins and school children huddled under buffalos fighting off a numbing chill.