The Americans Are Coming (11 page)

The boys sat and smoked until the last light was out and all fourteen houses and eight sport camps were in darkness.

“The time’s about right,” said Shad.

“Yep.”

“Okay, let’s give ’er hell.”

“Bark, bark, bark! Yip, yip, yip! Yelp, yelp, yelp!” went the two boys as loud as they could, so that their voices echoed off the hills.

Somebody’s dog started barking; then, somebody else’s; then another and another until every dog in Gordon – and there were a good many of them – started barking.

A light came on, then another and another. Windows were lifted, doors were opened, dogs were cussed and called.

When the inhabitants of Gordon had calmed their dogs into silence, they switched their lights off and went back to bed.

“We’ll give ’er a while,” said Shad.

“Here, have another smoke.”

“Thanks.”

“Know any jokes?”

“Who killed the Dead Sea?”

“I dunno. Who?”

“Same lad painted Red China.”

“Lillian tell ya that?”

“No, Dad.”

“I like it. Funny.”

“Know what I’m gonna be when I grow up?”

“What?”

“Salesman for potato bugs.”

Dryfly chuckled. He liked that joke too. “I’ll have to remember that one,” he thought.

“Ready?” asked Shad.

“Ready.”

“Bark, bark, bark! Yip, yip, yip! Yelp, yelp, yelp!”

Again their voices echoed off the hillsides and started the dogs barking. It took a little longer this time, but again lights came on, windows were lifted, doors were opened and dogs were cussed and called.

“Is that a star up there?” asked Shad, pointing to the Big Dipper.

“I don’t know, I’m a stranger around here.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! You just think o’ that?”

“Yep. Just sorta popped into me head. Good one, eh?”

“Yep. It’s a good one. Have to remember it.”

“They’ve all gone to bed again.”

“Yeah. Give it a few more minutes.”

“No hurry. Here, have another smoke.”

“Know what I heard, Dry?”

“No, what?”

“Heard yer brother Palidin’s a fruit.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Everybody’s sayin’ it.”

“He might be. He sure does act fruity. Reads all the time.”

“Acts like a woman, too.”

“He’ll get his head kicked in one o’ these days.”

“I’ll kick his head in, if he ever touches me!”

“He won’t touch ya. He’s my brother.”

“Bark, bark, bark! Yip, yip, yip! Yelp, yelp, yelp!”

Lift, lift, lift. Slam, slam, slam. “Git in here you, old sonuvawhore!”

“Here Skippy, Skippy, Skippy!”

“Here Pal, Pal, Pal!”

“Here Spot, Spot, Spot!”

Lights out. Back to bed.

Shad and Dry smoked and played this game for an hour or so, then headed back to Brennen Siding. They didn’t paddle but drifted on the current, watching the stars. When they drifted past Helen MacDonald’s farm, they did not know that Helen’s dog, Rex, was relieving himself for the third time on the kitchen floor. The blueberry pie with the Ex-Lax was taking its effect. Rex was shitting a blue streak.

Palidin Ramsey was different.

He was not just different from Dryfly, but was unlike anybody else in Brennen Siding. If you searched the whole Miramichi area, you would not find a single person like him. Being effeminate was not the only unusual trait that set him aside from the other boys. He was gentle, kind, imaginative and ambitious. Perhaps the greatest difference, though, was his curiosity. He was not superstitious, for he did not fear what he did not understand; he was too curious for that. For instance, he had checked out the Todder Brook Whooper long before Shadrack and Dryfly and had kept it as his very own secret. His trek had been alone at night. He had watched the lonely man trying to play his trumpet and had left him to live his life as he chose. He found the fear, the superstition of Brennen Siding, the stories of Shadrack and Dryfly amusing. The Todder Brook Whooper was a form of entertainment for them all and he chose not to take it away from them.

Palidin went as far in school as Hilda Porter could take him, which was grade eight. To go to high school, he would have had to move to Blackville, to live there and pay room and board, to dress better. Of course, such extravagances were beyond Shirley Ramsey’s pecuniary means. So Palidin borrowed what books he could – Hilda Porter was his greatest supplier – and read. John Kaston had felt certain that he had converted Palidin to the Baptist fold when he was approached for the Bible. Palidin read the Bible and returned it, but his face was never seen in the little church.

“Thank you, John. It was interesting,” said Palidin and left before John had a chance to preach.

Palidin had taken great pains and much time in the reading
of both the New and the Old Testaments. It had been difficult for him, but the crux of his drive had been simple – “At least it’s reading matter.” He’d found the Gospel According to St. Matthew the most interesting of all and read it twice. This accounted for another difference in Palidin: he was, unlike the others, aware of the prince of devils and the lord of flies, Beelzebub.

“You don’t have to be Beelzebub, or wicked either, to control flies,” he told himself.

Palidin saw nothing wrong or unusual in running naked through the forest, sitting naked in swamps eyeing birds and insects. He had a calmness about him, so that when he sat in the fly-infested swamps of Dungarvon, the blackflies and mosquitoes, as well as the other animals, seemed to accept him with a casual indifference. He could walk through fields of goldenrod where thousands of busy bees cluttered the blossoms, theorizing, “Take your clothes off and stay calm and nothing animal will bother you.” He liked the bees and the bees seemed to like him. He never once got stung. “If you fear them and feel hostile toward them,” he thought, “they’ll feel it and not like you. It’s goodness, not evil, that helps you through the field.”

Palidin’s favourite toy was a dime-sized magnet. “It’s like holding a little planet,” he reasoned. He played with it for hours, picking up needles and nails; spinning it, pondering it, toying with theories of energy, circles and echoes. He had a theory that if you shouted at a star, your voice would take thousands of years to return, but would, eventually, do so.

West of everybody’s property line, deep in the forest, was a valley that everyone in Brennen Siding referred to as “The Big Hollow.” Because the property was government-owned, Shirley Ramsey often took her family there on picnics. “Nobody’ll bother us back there,” she always said. Of course, when Bonzie got lost just back of the barren beyond The Big Hollow, the picnics stopped. Nobody in the Ramsey family had the heart to go back there again. Nobody, except for Palidin.

Palidin liked the barren and went there frequently. The barren was like a lake you could walk on. It was swampy, so that
the moss and water would take you to the ankles with every step, but visually it was like a prairie that stretched for several miles, its wild rice and reeds blowing in the wind. There was a huge boulder in the center of the barren where he often sat to think. On that rock, alone, naked, he would tan his body and wait for echoes to return. He fantasized that perhaps a wise old prophet had shouted something from the rock when the barren was still a lake, and that one day the prophet’s echo would return. Palidin did not want to miss the prophecy.

It took him a great deal of time and effort, but with a stone and chisel, he hammered out the inscription:

Probe the atom,

Ponder the echoes of the wise.

There lie the secrets of the universe.

Palidin Ramsey had but one friend to play with – George Hanley. George was also growing up to be different. When he was a little boy, his hands, feet and ears had seemed too big for his body, but as he grew, everything seemed to take on the proper dimensions. He was developing into a very tall and handsome man and that, in itself, was one difference. Brennen Siding men were rarely good-looking. George’s teeth were even and white, and that, too, made him different. He was also a good friend of Palidin Ramsey and was more than just a little infatuated with him. They travelled together constantly; their friendship was faithful and true. None of the other boys in Brennen Siding wanted to be seen with Palidin Ramsey.

When he was younger, George spent much of his time playing with girls. He felt girls were more honest and interesting. Girls didn’t ask him to be a thief for the sake of buying friend-ship. He palled around with Max Kaston for a few years, but Max was becoming more and more introverted. Max was scared of everything, would not leave the house at night – had been that way ever since he quit school, and John, fearing Max would never become a preacher, tried to break his spirit by working him long and hard in the woods.

But then George became drawn by the magnetism, by the
eyes of Palidin Ramsey. Palidin triggered his curiosity, was easy to talk to, told him things about earth, man and the universe – interesting things that whirled his mind to greater heights.

He told himself, “I’ll be a friend to Palidin, no matter what anyone thinks!”

*

Lindon Tucker sat by the kitchen table. The kerosene lamp was turned up a little higher than usual. Lindon Tucker was figuring on a used envelope with an inch-long pencil. “No sense wastin’ good paper,” thought Lindon. “No, no,” thought Lindon, “and I kin light the fire, as the feller says, yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, I kin light the fire with it in the mornin’ and nobody’ll ever know what the figures are about. No, no, no, nobody, not a soul, no one will ever know.” Lindon was working on the extremely confidential state of his economy.

“Seven dollars a day for guidin’,” he figured. “I’ll be on the job for seven days . . . seven days, yeah. Seven days on the job, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Me pay cheque should be . . . 7+7=14, 14+7=21, 21+7=28, 28+7=35, 35+7=42, 42+7=49. Forty-nine dollars, yeah, yeah, forty-nine dollars, yeah. If I git a five dollar tip . . . 49+5=54. I’ll have fifty-four big ones, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Lindon opened his chequebook and thought of his mother. She had passed away the previous spring and Lindon had been very upset. “It cost me nearly” – he looked at the chequebook – “Damn! Twelve hundred dollars to bury her! Twelve hundred dollars for puttin’ somebody in the ground!”

The chequebook read $3962.17. “Add the $49.00 for guidin’ and I’ll have” – he figured – “$4011.17.”

“Damn!” he swore. “When Mom was alive, we had over five thousand dollars!” Clara’s senior citizen’s cheque once a month and Lindon’s penny pinching over a period of fifteen years were the reasons for the five thousand dollars, but Clara’s death . . . “Damn! Twelve hundred dollars for puttin’ somebody in the ground is robbery, robbery, yeah, robbery!”

To Lindon, five thousand dollars was the magical figure.

Lindon Tucker thought about his riverfront property. “I could sell him all the way to the bottom of the hill. That’s about five hundred feet. Me lot’s about ninety rods long. Ninety rods by five hundred feet. Wonder what it’s worth?”

“If it had good hay on it, it’d be worth a lot more,” he thought. “If it had lumber on it, it’d be worth more agin, but thar ain’t nothin’ on it. No ain’t nothin’ on it, no, no, no, nothin’ on it, no.”

“Damn!” he swore at the table, the envelope and his pencil. “I should’ve had it plowed and seeded! Land ain’t worth nothin’ if there’s no hay on it!”

“Bill Wallace is Amurican . . . he might have a figure in mind,” thought Lindon. Lindon eyed his chequebook and wondered if Bill Wallace would give him enough for that old shore to bring the figure $4011.17 back up to five thousand dollars.

“I’ll ask him for twelve hundred and let him think he’s beatin’ me down to a thousand,” decided Lindon.

*

Across the river and upstream, another gentleman, Bill Wallace, sat pondering figures.

“That much river frontage on the Connecticut, or the Housatonic would go for half a million. Up here in the sticks, it’s not worth a penny more than fifty thousand. I’ll have somebody build me a nice cabin on it . . . another fifty thousand.”

Bill Wallace wondered if Lindon Tucker was capable of negotiating.

Bill Wallace sipped his scotch and envisioned the Lindon Tucker Salmon Pool. “The Bill Wallace Salmon Pool,” he said to himself. “Ninety rods of private rivah frontage. The pool’s got hundreds of boulders in it, a strong current, deep water, a gravel beach for landing salmon on . . . it’s perfect! One of the best pools on this damn rivah . . . maybe the world. Fifty thousand dollars would be a steal . . . a tax write-off.”

*

Dryfly Ramsey had fine brown hair and a natural part in the middle of his scalp. In Brennen Siding, it was not cool to part your hair in the middle. If Dryfly Ramsey combed his hair over from a part on the left side, it would hide the natural part in the middle. When Dryfly greased and combed his hair back like Elvis, his hair went
flip-flop
and there was the part, like a zipper, streaking back the middle of his head. More grease would hold everything in place, but only until he moved. Although Dryfly didn’t know it, he was confronting a problem that would always keep him “homely” and “without confidence” for a great deal of his adolescence. Dryfly knew by the shape of his head, the big nose and the peaked chin, that he could never look like Elvis Presley, but he felt the hair, at least, would help. As Dryfly laboured in front of the piece of mirror that hung on the wall above the water bucket, he was very discouraged. If Dryfly had had a closet, he would have hidden in it.

“Maybe I can train it to lay back,” he thought, “and I’ll hold my head very still.”

He turned very slowly away from the mirror.

“How’s it look, Mom?”

“Looks good, dear. Don’t use up all me lard.”

“Well, what am I gonna use, Mom? Ya won’t buy me any Brylcreem!”

“How’s about the tobacco? Who buys you the tobacco?”

“No argument there,” thought Dryfly. “See ya later,” he said and left. As he stepped off the porch, his hair went
flip-flop
.

Palidin sat quietly in his bedroom with a book in front of him. He was reading. Palidin was looking in the men’s underwear section of the T. Eaton catalogue. He heard Dryfly leave.