The Americans Are Coming (10 page)

For another ten minutes, Shad debated whether or not he should move closer to her; then he moved an inch.

He waited ten more minutes for her to make the next move. Finally, she crossed her legs, and maybe (he wasn’t sure) moved slightly toward him. He couldn’t say whether it was an intentional aggression or not.

She offered him a beer.

“No thanks,” he said, “I’m trying to quit.”

“You got a girlfriend?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he lied, “two or three.”

Lillian moved back to her chair.

Ten minutes later, Lillian moved back to the sofa. They both knew they were running out of time. There was a couple of moments when you could hear a pin drop. Shadrack’s heart
quickened and he made the giant plunge; an unpremeditated, graceful, three-inch glide toward her.

“There’s no turning back now,” he thought.

Lillian had just had a ten-minute debate with herself, too. The move back to the sofa, for her, had taken a great deal of strenuous reasoning. She had forced herself to favour optimism. At least I can say I was “with” a boy in Canada was the crux of her drive.

She turned slightly toward him.

“What occupation will you eventually pursue?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Shadrack. “A half dozen maybe.”

“I’m considering anthropology, myself. Are you familiar with the Leakeys?”

“No, but I had the measles and the mumps.”

“What’s your friend Dryfly like?” she asked. “I like Dry. Didn’t use to. Dry’s cleaned up a lot.”

“You mean he had an addiction?”

“Oh no. Dry’s healthy enough. Poor, that’s all. Dryfly’s pretty near as smart as me and he ain’t scared o’ nothin’.”

“Is he still in school?”

“No, quit a long time ago . . . two years, grade five.”

“So, what’s he planning on doing?”

“Nothin’. Play guiddar.”

Lillian was going to make another move to get nearer to Shadrack, but she changed her mind. She heard Bill Wallace’s footsteps on the veranda steps.

“There’s Dad,” she said. “You’d better go.”

“Oh . . . okay.”

“But . . . come back tomorrow night.”

“Sure,” said Shad, rising from the sofa.

“And . . . why don’t you bring your friend Dryfly along?”

“Maybe,” said Shad.

Shirley had become a byword, but Brennen Siding had many bywords, some of which were meaningless adages that would leave an outsider totally confused as to what the insider was talking about. Some of the bywords had been passed down from previous generations, so that even the present-day residents of Brennen Siding didn’t know why they were using them. For instance, someone might say, “He grabbed the bag o’ flour and never ‘cried crack’ till he hit the top o’ the hill.” A beautiful woman was described as a “Martha Lebbons.” Martha Lebbons had been dead for a hundred years, but obviously she had been very beautiful. Something expensive and new was referred to as a “cream o’ tartar.”

“I hear ya got a new canoe?”

“Yep.”

“Is it a good one?”

“She’s a cream o’ tartar!”

A conversation outside Bernie Hanley’s store might go:

“Would ya like a drink o’ rum, Dan?”

“Sure would, Stan. I’m dryer than a corn meal fart.”

“How ya like it?”

“(cough) Trip a ghost.”

“How ya like that Ford ya bought?”

“She’s a cream o’ tartar!”

“Fast?”

“Blue streak!” It didn’t matter if the car was red or yellow, if it was fast, it was a blue streak.

If anything moved slowly, one might say, “Slower than cold molasses.”

After Shadrack fired the .303, the two boys held their breaths
and listened to a silent forest. Then they ran a blue streak all the way to the river.

Nutbeam, on the other hand, went into his camp, removed his 30-30 from the wall and went creeping about the forest. He crept as silent as an undertaker’s belch, as slow as cold molasses. Nutbeam had heard the two boys running and was very afraid. “That trumpet must’ve been louder than I thought. The whole country’s been listening to me play.” Nutbeam was not only afraid, he was also embarrassed. He vowed he’d never play the trumpet again. Like Dryfly, Nutbeam was shy about playing in front of anyone.

Living in the forest was changing Nutbeam. It was making him very timid. He may have been taking on the way of the animal, for, like an animal, the sound of the rifle shot had spooked him into an even deeper hiding, made him even more cunning, and, in a word, wild. He stopped practising his trumpet playing. He stopped boarding the train at Brennen Siding. Instead, he went to Gordon, two miles upstream. He continued to stand in the shadows listening to the radio, but he stopped listening to Lindon Tucker’s. Instead, he crossed the footbridge, always on the darkest nights, to stand outside of Shirley Ramsey’s house. The Ramseys always played the radio at a much greater volume than Lindon Tucker, and with Nutbeam’s acute hearing, he could hear Freddy McKenna sing from thirty yards away.

On some nights, Nutbeam got a very much appreciated bonus. Those were the nights when Dryfly stepped onto the porch with his guitar. Dryfly still had a lot to learn on the guitar, but to Nutbeam, Dryfly was, “The very best! Great! A-1! Couldn’t be better! Pretty near as good as Doc Williams! He’ll be famous someday!”

*

Doc Williams did not come from Brennen Siding. Kid Baker did not live twelve miles up the Gordon Road. Hank Snow did not include Brennen Siding in his song “I’ve Been Everywhere.” Elvis Presley did not stand on the Brennen Siding footbridge
on moonlit nights, singing “Love Me Tender” to Neeny or Naggy Ramsey.

Nobody from Brennen Siding could claim fame or fortune. A store clerk, scaler or a timekeeper was the ultimate goal. Old men and women never talked about what they’d achieved, but instead talked about what they “could have” achieved.

“I could’ve been a doctor,” Stan Tuney said at the store one night, then added, “if I had’ve gone to school.”

John Kaston was “this far” from becoming a preacher. “But Dad needed me to work in the woods with him.”

“This far” was a very, very long way.

“I could’ve been a great musician,” said Bob Nash. “All I needed was the proper training, practice and something to work with.”

It was that way all over the Miramichi area, tributaries included.

David Thornton from Millerton would have been rich if the “nine” (the last number on his sweepstake ticket), had’ve been a “four.”

“That lad from Doaktown . . . what’s his name?”

“John Betts?”

“No, not John. That other lad there. You know the lad . . . he would have been the Premier had he won the election?”

“Oh yeah, that lad.”

And, of course, Yvon Durelle. Yvon Durelle was never thought of in Brennen Siding as the boxer who was the light heavyweight champion of the British Empire, covering Britain, Canada, Australia, a smidgen of real estate in South America, and a third, or more, of Africa. Yvon Durelle was that lad from Baie Ste. Anne who would’ve been the champion of the world, had he beaten Archie Moore.

At the post office one morning, Bert Todder said, “Dryfly, me boy, you could be a singin’ star some day, if ya had half a chance.”

Dryfly wondered which half of which chance Bert referred to, and if Bert knew. “The Miramichi would’ve been a great center, only for the Miramichi Fire of 1825.”

*

When Shad left the Wallaces’ cabin, he met with the warmth of a July evening. He took the path that led from the Cabbage Island Salmon Club to Judge Martin’s camp. Judge Martin rarely came to his cabin, and because it was a private and peaceful place, endowed with a terrific view of the river, Shad often went there to think and relax.

Shadrack Nash sat on Judge Martin’s veranda to watch the night settle in on what he thought was the prettiest place in the whole world.

Shad couldn’t decide whether he felt happy or sad. That he felt different was all he knew.

“God, she’s a pretty thing!” he thought. “Got lotsa money, too. Marry that one and a man would never have to cut pulp for a livin’, that’s for sure.”

Shad had a vision of a big white house in the city, a new car in the yard and maybe a pickup truck for him to drive whenever Lillian needed the car to go to work. Shad never thought of himself as ever going to work. “But Lillian’ll work,” he thought. “She’ll be a clerk or a teacher and I’ll just look after things. Lillian’ll come home from work, all pretty and dressed to kill, and I’ll be settin’ right back in me big chair, with me feet up, smokin’ me pipe, waitin’ to tell ’er that I made a hundred dollars sellin’ somethin’. I’ll be a salesman and not have to work. I’ll live in a big city like New York or Bangor . . . or even Wheelin’, West Virginia, and play the banjo with Bill Monroe.”

“All I have to do is git Lillian to fall in love with me. To do that, I’ll have to git her to” – he didn’t know – “kiss me? One kiss . . . sure would be a good start. A woman would have to love ya, if ya kissed her . . . wouldn’ she?”

It wasn’t long before Venus showed itself in the sky, said, “Okay gang, the sky’s clear! You can come out now.” Pop-pop pop, pop, pop, pop-pop, the stars commenced to shine.

Thump, came a noise from downstream. Shad recognized it as a pole making contact with the side of a canoe.

“Moooooo!” went Shad.

“Moooooo!” answered Dryfly, from down in front of Sam Little’s lodge.

Shad knew that Dryfly was in the process of borrowing Sam Little’s canoe for the night. “Borrowin’ without askin’,” thought Shad. “What’s the difference between that and stealin’?” He could hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of the pole as Dryfly pushed his way through the Dungarvon current until he hauled up in front with a scraping sound against the rocks.

“Shad?”

“Yeah, up here.”

Dryfly could not see Shad in the shadow of the veranda. He tossed the anchor onto the shore and headed toward the camp.

“How’d ya make out with Lillian?”

“The very best. Kissed her twice. Once in front of the fireplace and once on the veranda.”

“On the lips?”

“Course!”

Dryfly sat beside Shad, his breath labouring from his climb up the embankment to the camp.

“Lillian showed me a picture of Elvis Presley,” said Shad. “We’ll have to let our hair grow more and he’s got a little curl to his lip . . . like this.”

“Like what?”

“Light a match.”

A match was struck. “Like this.”

“Huh! How’s this?”

“A little more . . . well . . .” Shad realized that Dryfly could never look like Elvis. Dry had a long head, a big nose, a peaked chin and a very thin upper lip. Dryfly’s hair was brown and fine and combed over from a part on the left side. “He’s homelier than Shirley Ramsey,” thought Shad and chuckled to himself. “The lip looks great,” lied Shad, “but you’ll have to start combin’ your hair back and let your sideburns grow.”

“You really kiss Lillian?”

“I was alone with her for four hours! What do you think?”

“You in love with her?”

“I think so.”

Dryfly was very disappointed. He, too, was in love with Lillian, although he hadn’t spoken to her.

“What do you want to do?” asked Shad.

“I dunno. Go home and go to bed, maybe.”

“What d’ya want to go to bed for? It’s summer.”

“I dunno. Tired, maybe.”

“I thought we might pole up to Gordon.”

“What for?”

“Somethin’ to do. Ya don’t git many warm nights like this around here,” said Shad.

“You gonna see her tomorrow night?”

“Pretty likely. Me and Lilly would kinda like to git married.”

“Kinda young, ain’t ya?”

“Not right away. Couldn’t now, if we wanted to.”

“Why?”

“Lillian’s a Cath’lic and I’m a Baptist.”

“You could turn with her.”

“Lillian said she’d turn with me if I went to church on Sunday,” Shad sighed. “But old Bill’s gonna be hard to deal with. Would’ve been easy, if it hadda been you, Dry. I’m the man she loves and we’re gonna have to do the best we kin.”

Shad hadn’t spoken a single word of truth, but what he was saying added a nice wing to his fantasy. Marrying Lillian and moving off to live the life of the rich was the “best” thing that could happen, but simply knowing and being in love with this rich girl was an important attention-getter in itself. Even if they never married, or saw each other again, the intimate contact with her would be good for his reputation.

“Poor Shadrack,” people would say, “his poor heart’s been broken. He loved that American girl! Never seen him with another woman after. His heart will always be in the States.”

“Yes, I know, and him so brave too. Shadrack Nash, the one that shot the Todder Brook Whooper! He would’ve been a rich man today, if her mean old father, the Fish Hog, had’ve thought of the poor girl’s happiness!”

“Got any more of the dry tobacco left, Dry?”

“Got a new pack. Made fifty cents today pickin’ blueberries.”

Dryfly handed Shad the tobacco.

“The blueberries ripe yet, Dry?”

“Not quite. They’re still red because they’re green.”

Dryfly really didn’t want to spend this warm summer’s night at home in bed. He wasn’t really tired. Dryfly was envious, jealous and hurt. “I didn’t even get a crack at her,” he thought.

“Lillian wants you and me to go visit her tomorrow night. Wants you to take yer guiddar. I told ’er you was a good singer.”

“I’ll take the guiddar, but I ain’t singin’.”

“Let’s go to Gordon. I’ll pole.”

“Okay. Why not?”

It took Shad forty-five minutes to pole the canoe to Gordon. He didn’t mind the work. Being on the most beautiful river in the world was all the reward he needed.

Shadrack pushed the canoe ashore; they both jumped out and pulled it up on the rocky beach.

“So, what’re we gonna do now?” asked Dryfly.

“Let’s have a smoke,” said Shadrack.

Dry started walking back and forth and in circles.

“What’re ya lookin’ for?” asked Shad.

“A soft rock to set on,” said Dry.

“Ya fool!” laughed Shad.

The boys sat on a rock and rolled cigarettes, lit up and eyed their surroundings. There was the starlit sky overhead, the barns and houses of Gordon on the hills on both sides of the river and, here and there, a sport camp. Randall Brook murmured as it entered the river across from where they sat. They watched the lights in the houses going out and knew it was bedtime in Gordon. Everything, other than the murmuring brook, was very quiet.