The Americans Are Coming (3 page)

There was a bit of a clearing ahead of him, where the sun

had nourished the ferns to waist height. He thought he saw an unusual movement in their midst. He went to check it out.

Nothing.

“Must’ve been a bird,” he thought.

“The hell with yas!” he yelled, turned and headed back to where he thought the family would be.

He walked for half an hour, realized they couldn’t be that far away, turned and walked for an hour, came to a barren and realized he was very lost.

He zigzagged back and forth for several more hours, calling, “Mom! Palidin! Dryfly! Naggie!”

Occasionally he got an echo, but that was all.

He grew warm and panicky; his pace quickened; he scratched his arms and legs on dead limbs and brush. The flies found him.

At dusk, he found himself at the barren’s edge once again. He didn’t know if he was on the near or the homeward side of it.

When you step into a barren, your foot sinks ankle-deep into a wet, moss-like vegetation. When you wander into a barren, you’d better mark your point of entry, for once you get in a few hundred yards, everything starts to look the same – look down, look up and you’re lost.

Bonzie thought he saw something on the barren. Bonzie was already lost and had nothing to lose – he headed towards the something.

It took him a half hour to get to what he was looking at, and it turned out to be a huge boulder. Exhausted, he sat on the boulder to watch the stars as, one by one, they appeared. He cried for a long while, slept for a little while, then cried some more.

He heard something walking, splush, splush, splush, off to his right. He held his breath, for better hearing. He prayed a silent Hail Mary.

Splush . . . splush . . . splush – whatever it was, was passing him by.

At first he thought it might be a bear, or a moose, but he wasn’t sure.

“It could be a man. It could be a man looking for me. I got nothin’ to lose,” he thought.

“Whoop! Over here!”

A game warden found the fly-bitten, crow-pecked body of Bonzie a month later, back of the barren.

As a result of Bonzie getting lost, Dryfly feared getting lost more than anything else in the world. The thought of being alone in the woods to battle the flies horrified him. He even had nightmares about it. The flies – the more you battled, the more you attracted – would be the worst thing of all. And to die and have your body exposed to the woods . . .

Years later when Dryfly was asked the whereabouts of Bonzie by an elderly, absent-minded teacher, he replied, “He went for a shit and the crows got him.

*

Dryfly was giving way to slumber when Shirley passed through the curtain that served as the bedroom door to stand before him at the foot of the bed.

“I’ve made up your lunch, Dry,” said Shirley, “and wrote an excuse to the teacher fer ya. I’m gonna need you home tomorrow, Dry, so’s I want ya to go to school today. I got yer lunch all packed.”

The emotional cloud over Shirley was thick and black and it spread over Dryfly as if instructed by a magic wand. His heart quickened, his stomach fluttered and tears of defeat commenced to flow.

“But I can’t, Mom!” he sobbed.

“You might have to stay home tomorrow, Dry. We’ve run out of grub, so’s I want you to go today.”

“But I’m sick, Mom!” Tears, tears, tears.

“I’m gonna write yer father askin’ him to send me enough money for that cap gun you like in the catalogue. C’mon, Dry darlin’, be a good boy and go to school. I’m not gettin’ any younger, you know. One day I won’t be around to look after you and you’ll need lotsa schoolin’ so’s you kin git a job.”

“Ah, Mom!” Still more tears.

“You kin stay home tomorrow, Dry, cause I ain’t got the heart to send you to school on an empty stomach, but you have to go today. C’mon Dryfly darlin’, git dressed, ya still have time.”

“But I don,’t want to go!”

“Poor Ninnie didn’t take nothin’ to eat wit’ her. Said you could have it, Dry. Poor little thing was thinking of you and how you’d like a good sandwich. So, c’mon, Dry.”

Dryfly knew he was defeated, and to make sure that Shirley’s victory would be a difficult one, he cried all the time he was getting dressed. He cried in the kitchen and refused to eat his biscuit and molasses. He was still crying when he crossed the tracks.

When Hilda Porter opened Shirley Ramsey’s excuse note for Dryfly’s absence on the previous afternoon, it read:

Deer Mrs. Porter.

Dryfly stayed home in the afternoon yesterday, for he was sick from rabbit dung poisoning.

Yours truly,
Shirley

Hilda Porter already knew.

Shadrack Nash was not laughing as he watched Dryfly Ramsey enter the school, deposit his excuse on the teacher’s desk and make his way to his seat; the memory of Hilda’s twoinch-wide, foot-long piece of woodcutter strap on his stinging hands took care of that little pleasure.

Nothing was ever kept secret in Brennen Siding.

Shirley watched Dryfly until she was sure he would not run off into the woods.

“Poor little lad, he’s different from Palidin. Pal’s only a year older, but he’s a lot wiser. Palidin’s smart, wants to be a somebody. Kinda fruity, I’ll admit, but he wants to be somebody. Kin read and write and do ’rithmetic better ’n me. It’s more important to keep Pal in school than Dryfly.”

Shirley figured that Palidin would eventually get a job as a timekeeper or a store clerk in Newcastle or Chatham. To Shirley, being a timekeeper or a store clerk was having the ultimate good job. Anything more intellectual than these two occupations was beyond comprehension.

That’s the way it was all over Brennen Siding.

When Jack Allen went off to Hartford with Dr. MacDowell and eventually became a dentist himself, everybody in the settlement disowned him – disowned him not so much because they didn’t like him, but because Jack had become a different creature – looked different, spoke different, walked different and even smelled different.

When he came to Brennen Siding and put the word out that he needed a guide to go fishing, none of the local men would guide him. When Stan Tuney took the job out of financial desperation, he found Jack as alien as any other American Sportsman. Jack Allen could have been Nelson Rockefeller sitting in the front of the canoe as far as Stan Tuney was concerned.

The people of Brennen Siding couldn’t understand foreign places, wealth and formal education, and thought it pretentious to even try.

When the Connecticut lawyer asked Dan Brennen if the
boys fishing across the river were natives, he replied, “No, sir, jist some of us lads.”

To Dan, a native was a black man from Africa.

When the locals got together with the American sportsmen they were guiding, the common denominator was humour. Bert Todder did not know that all the food a salmon eats originates in photosynthesis. Bert Todder did not have a hunch that the life and death of algae depended on chlorophyll and its reactions to various colours of the spectrum.

When the American sport asked Bert why the salmon would not bite while there were bubbles on the river, Bert did not think of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Had he known the existence of such words, he might have had a better answer to the American’s question . . . but probably not.

“Why don’t the salmon bite while those bubbles are on the river?” asked the American.

“They’re on the toilet,” said Bert. “Them bubbles are fish farts.” Stan Tuney had grown up with Jack Allen and had recognized the difference in him immediately. Stan couldn’t understand how money could change a man so much.

“How’s she goin’, Jack?” asked Stan.

“Great. What’s happening with you, Stan?”

“Not too much. What are you doin’ these days?”

Stan knew that Jack was a dentist. He didn’t know that Jack was earning a hundred thousand dollars a year, but he could tell that Jack seemed rich. Like all the people of Brennen Siding, Stan was pessimistic and egotistical. When asked, “How’s she goin’?” it was a rare occasion that one answered “Great.” “Not too good,” was the expected answer. Stan Tuney, like all the Brennen Siding dwellers, lived in isolation from the rest of the world. In Brennen Siding, life was difficult; being a timekeeper or a scaler was the ultimate success. Jack Allen was a Brennen Siding boy, but he had become a dentist. Stan couldn’t understand how anyone could “become” a dentist. To Stan, dentists were born in foreign places like Fredericton, Saint John and the United States. Dentists did not come from Brennen Siding. “Great” was not the way a man from Brennen Siding should be.

“I’m still pulling teeth,” said Jack.

“Doin’ pretty good, are ya?”

Jack Allen had worked hard and was on a badly needed and well-deserved vacation. He did not see a difference in Stan Tuney. Stan would never change. Jack wanted to fish, drink scotch and relax. He had worked hard to become a dentist and was proud of his accomplishment. Confronted with Stan Tuney, Jack couldn’t understand why he was reluctant to admit he was a dentist. For some reason, he felt he might offend Stan by such an admission.

“Oh, not too good,” Jack Allen, the dentist from Hartford, lied. “Just makin’ ends meet.” The lie eased the tension between them, but Jack could never call Brennen Siding home again.

*

Shirley hoped that Palidin would not become a lumberjack. She also hoped he would not become a dentist or a lawyer. A timekeeper at the mill in Blackville would be just right.

Although Shirley was somewhat puzzled about the future of Palidin, she had no doubts about Dryfly.

Dryfly hated school, hated books and teachers. Thoughts of the future went no further than this afternoon or tomorrow.

“I hope,” thought Shirley, “he will not be afraid of hard work.”

When Dryfly disappeared from her view, Shirley sighed and went to the cupboard. She knew there was nothing in it to eat, but she wanted to take inventory anyway. She pulled back the curtains and scanned the shelves.

No bread and no flour to make any.

No molasses.

No potatoes.

No brown sugar.

No milk.

No beans.

No tobacco.

Shirley Ramsey sighed as she picked up the empty yellow and red Vogue tobacco package. She shook the package over
the palm of her hand and a few dried, almost sand-like grains of tobacco fell from it. She tore the package apart and in the folds of the foil liner, she came up with a few more grains. She spied a butt lying on the rim of a dish. The butt was only a half-inch long, but there was tobacco in it. Shirley tore the butt apart and added the contents to the grains she’d collected from the package. She closed her fist around the tobacco and blew gently into it to moisten it. She then rolled a cigarette the size of a wooden match into a Vogue cigarette paper. She sighed again as she went to the stove for a light. She lifted the cover and added a stick of alder to the fire. “Alder burns too quick,” she thought. “Should have maple, or beech.” She broke off a splinter from a second piece of alder and set it afire. With this she lit her tiny cigarette.

She pulled up a rickety, backless chair and sat by the table to smoke and to think.

“No money, no food, no credit left at Hanley’s store . . .” She could charge a few things to her father’s bill, but that was doubtful. The fact of the matter was, her father hadn’t any money either.

“If it was a month later, the ice in the river’d be out and the boys could ketch a salmon, or maybe some trout . . . even chubs would be better than nothin’.”

She contemplated setting a snare for a rabbit, but quickly brushed the thought aside.

“That could take days.”

“I’ll go to the store and lie,” she thought. “I’ll tell Bernie Hanley that me cheque’s comin’ tomorrow and that I’ll be right up to pay ’im as soon’s it comes. Surely the Blessed Virgin wouldn’ mind such a little lie.”

She arose and went to the bedroom and grabbed her coat from Dry’s bed. The coat was green and old and smelled; it had a frayed collar and cuffs, the pockets were torn and it had but one button. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had for protection against the cold March wind. She put it on and went back to the kitchen to size herself up in the piece of mirror that hung on the wall above the water bucket. She removed what was left of the tiny cigarette from her mouth and dropped it in the slop
pail and smiled into the mirror. Most of her teeth were missing, the remaining few decayed and dirty. “They won’t matter. I’ve got no reason to smile anyway.” She washed her face in the same dirty, soapy water the children had used earlier, ran a piece of comb through her greasy, straight brown hair and sized up the finished product. “I’m a hard lookin’ ticket,” she muttered.

*

Ten minutes later, Shirley Ramsey was at the store pleading her case.

“I git me cheque tomorrow, Bernie, and me allowance cheque should be here in a week or two, so’s I kin pay ya more. I thought maybe you . . .”

“Shirley, I know as good as you do, your cheque don’t come till the end of the month! This is only the eighteenth. You owe me over a hundred dollars already and you didn’ pay me nothin’ last month. Everybody in the settlement owes me! Who ya think I am, Santa Claus? I can’t afford to pay me own bills anymore! I’m gonna have to close down, if somebody don’t soon pay up.”

Bernie was a big, good-looking Baptist with good teeth and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore leather-topped gumshoes, heavy woollen pants, a plaid shirt and a hat. Bernie was never without his hat.

Shirley hadn’t wanted to say it and she had no intention of saying it, but she found herself confused and lost for words. “Then, how’s about chargin’ a package o’ tobacco and a book of papers to Daddy?” she blurted.

“Tobacco and papers? Tobacco and papers!”

“And a box o’ asberns! Dryfly’s sick!” she quickly added. She was frightened and humiliated. She recognized her mistake. She should never have given tobacco priority to a Baptist. Tobacco had been the last thing on her list.

Bernie, too, was lost for words. He was amazed at the request. “Her kids are prob’ly starvin’ to death, she hasn’t got a stitch o’ clothes worth puttin’ on, and she asks for tobacco!” he
thought. He grabbed a package of Players tobacco (not even her brand) and practically threw it at her. The papers and aspirins followed in much the same way.