The Sign on My Father's House

by Tom Moore

  “Fought for what?”

  “The culture of friends, and stories by the fire, and pitching in to help your neighbour. Now it’s all about the new TV sets and the Trans-Canada Highway. We’ll soon all be alike. Little cut-out imitations of Toronto suburbs. Little puppets dancing to the North American dream. A dream of money and ego. Breathing smog and buying a bigger car, bigger house, bigger, bigger. Trying to impress one another. Then dying.”

  I put my finger delicately to my eye.

  “Come in the house and we’ll put a cold compress on your eye. Then I’ll teach you how to throw a left hook.”

  More serious trouble appeared, one July morning, in the person of Wallace Higgins, the police constable from Shipley.

  Father opened the door to the tall, uniformed Higgins. In Curlew, you always knew who was at your door before you opened it, because you had just watched them through the kitchen window as they drove up the road and came to your gate. Any arrival was an occasion, but the arrival of an officer of the law was quite the occasion, indeed. I watched from the kitchen.

  “Yes, Constable Higgins. What can I do for you?” Father asked.

  “Mr. Ryan, I have a few questions about your sign.” He paused for reaction. “May I come in?”

  “No, you may not. Tell me exactly what you want.” Father put his hand on the doorpost.

  “Walter, we’re getting heat from the premier’s office. Complaints have been going in from your neighbours. People want the sign down.”

  “Am I breaking any law?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked into it. I just came to explain the problem to you. It’s been up on your house over a month, now. Your point’s been made.”

  “That sign will stay up until I take it down.”

  “Aren’t you being a little . . .” He searched for a non-offensive word. “Stubborn?”

  “Yes, sir, I certainly am, as is my perfect right. I can be as stubborn as I wish about the signs I put on my house. My neighbours are free to do the same. They can put hosannas to Joe Smallwood on their houses if they like.”

  “Let’s say you can, and now you’ve done it. There’s no need to rub it in.”

  “I know your position in this, Wallace. You’re doing the dirty work for other people. Sorry, the answer is no.”

  “Good day, Walter.”

  “Good day, Constable.”

  No more to it than that. The dignified Higgins formally closed the gate and got back into his squad car. He turned around in the road without rising dust. I saw him take off his hat and place it on the seat beside him as he drove away. Shirley looked out the kitchen window as his cruiser disappeared down the road like a ship of hope departing the wharf. She went to the stove and put the kettle on. “You want some tea, Felix?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Me neither,” she said, and pushed the kettle to the back of the stove.

  I stood by the kitchen door when Father came into the room. Shirley rinsed the dishes and put them in the drying rack. He came over to the sink, took the towel, and began drying the dishes. Finally, she said, “It will soon get a lot worse.”

  Later that morning, I ran over to White’s shop, where I helped out to earn pocket money. It was the only shop in Curlew. We used to buy everything there before the supermarket opened in Shipley. The Whites liked me because I was quiet and did my work without comment. I walked under the big sign, White’s General Store, to find Clara behind the counter. She looked up and grunted. She must have been in a good mood.

  “Heard you had visitors, today,” she remarked as she wrapped a pound of sliced bologna in waxed paper.

  No question was posed, so I offered no answer.

  There had been no clock allowed in the shop since the time of her late husband. Old Wayne White had decided a clock would encourage employees to be clock-watchers.

  I always began sweeping the shop before the customers arrived. After that, I would restock the shelves and then sweep out the storeroom. When I came back and began sweeping the main shop, Clara said, “I guess it was about the sign your father nailed to the house.”

  I stopped sweeping.

  “Bound to cause concern,” she explained in the self-indulgent, muttering way old people can get away with.

  My broom was still. One bad word about Father and that broom was going across the floor and I was going home. She could do her own friggin’ sweeping.

  “Your father never . . .” Then our eyes met. Boom! She saw the fire.

  She laid down her bologna.

  “Come here,” she beckoned with a bony finger. I put my broom flat on the floor and joined her behind the counter. It was like centre stage in a theatre, and I was a backstage person at best.

  She took my arm in her mummified old claw and led me to the big front window. “See that new paved road, Felix? See that road? Joe Smallwood put that road there. Look at it!”

  I looked and saw the black tarmac line running through our community like a bright new scar. Her grip tightened on my arm.

  “See the new cars on it? Do you know where they’re going? They’re going to goddamn Shipley to buy groceries, that’s where they’re going.”

  Her lips snarled back over yellow teeth.

  “Do you have any idea what that road did to our business? Destroyed it! Killed poor Wayne! We used to have a business here, Felix.” She let go of me and raised both of her arms in the air, indicating the shop around her. I stepped back.

  “We were a general dealer, not a grocer. We sold people everything they needed to live, boy, from the bed they were born in to the board for the box they were buried in. They bought their Christmas gifts here; they clothed their children here; we even sold books. Books, Felix, books, not to speak of tons of coal, canvas for their floors, felt for their roofs. Some of them never paid us, never will.”

  She paused and sighed.

  “All that ended because of Joey’s road. It took them to the supermarket in Shipley. They took their money with them; only came here when they wanted to ‘charge it.’ Wayne would stand here and watch the cars headed for Shipley. He’d look over this counter at the empty shop, and he’d cry! I saw that big man cry, Felix.”

  Her frail body leaned back against the wall, her arms stretched out as if she were being crucified to the shelves of shaving lotion and hairspray.

  Then she came down from her cross and hunched closer to me. I could smell her lilac bath oil. Her thin grin suggested another terrible secret. She glanced out the window and around the empty shop, then put her mummified arm around my neck and whispered, “Do you know what Wayne’s last words were?”

  I surely didn’t, but continued to stare at her.

  “‘Goddamn Joey Smallwood’ were the last words that passed his lips. He said them to me many times before.” Her eyebrows rose, and she looked quickly around the shop again. “All our customers were Liberals, and Wayne knew they wouldn’t shop here at all if they heard him say such a thing. He never spoke up, but those were his last words on this earth.”

  A can of hairspray fell behind her with a tinny clang and rolled across the floor. She recovered herself and pronounced her next words very clearly. “I hope your father never takes it down!”

  Silence filled the shop. A car drove past on Joey’s pavement. Then, even that sound faded away, as Clara looked off into space.

  “Now finish your sweeping,” she said. I went around the counter and picked up my broom. She began to rearrange the shelves.

  The door opened with a ring of the tiny bell. “Good morning, Mrs. White,” said Doris Lyons.

  A customer! Showtime! “Good morning, Doris,” said the old matron. “What can I do for you this morning?”

  “Just a few things for the garden party salad. Have you any fresh lettuce?”

  “
A fresh box just in. Dick hasn’t even got it unpacked yet. Send one of your boys down later this afternoon.”

  “Then I’ll take a dozen eggs and some sliced bread, and a couple of packs of Freshie. They drink it like water,” said Doris with one of her easy laughs. Old Clara liked Doris because she had remained a loyal customer in spite of the Shipley supermarket.

  After I swept the floor, I went out to the old warehouse with an empty carton to restock the shelves. The doors were open, and I heard a grunting noise ahead of me. The lights were never on in the daytime, and the place had a cool, dim feel. It carried the accumulated smells of fifty years of commerce: a hint of dried peas from the mainland, the tang of molasses that had ruptured perhaps thirty years ago, the musk of potatoes that hadn’t made it to market. The semi-darkness suddenly reminded me of the Argentia team bus in the darkened parking lot.

  I saw Dick White, Clara and Wayne’s only son, opening a box of lettuce with a claw-bar. Dick was about forty-five with a youthfulness that sheltered, unmarried men often retain—an immaturity in both appearance and world view.

  His hair was short, curly, and still black. It had never been thick, and he coiffed it straight by combing it close to his head. The tight little curls refused to be stretched into straight lines, without the aid of gels and greases, but Dick persisted. Brylcreem was his ally in this unending struggle. Dick’s smell was the sweet, oily smell of Brylcreem.

  The rest of his body was as youthful as his hair. He was slight and slim without the rigours of regular exercise, and he had a small upturned nose.

  “F-F-Felix?” he said in his slight stutter. “Are you stocking the sh-sh-shelves? Good boy!” He continued to tug at the box, grunting and sweating until finally popping the wire bracket on the wooden crate.

  In the days that followed, I realized something was wrong between Clara and Dick. They never let me hear anything, of course, but I occasionally noticed a grumble, a cold look, or a silence that Monk would call “pregnant.”

  Then, one Monday morning when I strolled in for work, I saw a shiny new white convertible at the end of their long driveway.

  “See my new car?” asked Dick. “She’s a b-b-beauty. When Mom comes out, I’ll take you for a r-r-ride.”

  And so he did. Clara took her time coming from the house to the shop these mornings. Like she was protesting something. Work to rule. Dick pretended not to notice.

  The car was breathtaking. The interior was all leather in a dusty rose colour, almost feminine. Dick sat behind the wheel and set the big eight-cylinder engine varooming. He checked in the rear-view and slicked back his Brylcreemed hair. Then he backed the car onto the road.

  It was a hot morning in July 1966, just like the morning when Dick was killed, but on that day he was far from dying. He was showing off his new convertible, not just to the boy who worked for them, but to the whole community.

  We rocketed down Joey’s road as Dick got the feel of the powerful four-barrel carburetor. It was like a four-wheel generating station that Mr. Chrysler had cleverly made to look like a car. Its raw horsepower threatened to zoom us to unheard-of speeds, perhaps into orbit with Alan Shepard and Uri Gagarin. All things were possible, that July morning, as I sped around Curlew in Dick White’s new car.

  Few people were on the road at that hour, but we waved to them all. Dick inspired an air of youthful joy. He was far from a James Dean or a Marlon Brando by contemporary standards, but, at forty-five, Dick was the closest thing to a youthful rebel I had ever seen.

  Ahead loomed my father’s ominous sign. We passed it silently. I thought I saw Shirley in the yard, but could not be sure because I was not used to travelling at speeds in excess of thirty miles per hour. We hurtled recklessly through the warm summer air. On either side of us, black spruce wafted their scented hosannas as we shot past to the end of the town a mile from the Kissing Rock.

  A heady Dick returned us to the store. I thanked him and went back to work bringing stock downstairs from the storage room above the warehouse. Upstairs were stored boxes of pickles, jams, beets, mustard, and ketchup, twelve or twenty-four jars in each cardboard box. Other boxes contained apple juice, tinned fruit, baby food, and molasses. Years ago, the second floor had been a clothing department. Some old baby clothes and women’s dresses, unpopular even in the 1950s, remained. Once, I came upon an old pair of lace-up ladies’ shoes. In spite of all the leather and lace holes, they were small and delicate.

  I was in the process of bringing down a box of twenty-four glass jars of olives when I heard strained voices below. Old Clara hissed angrily, “You can do better than one of the local girls. She’s barely out of school. They live in a trailer on a back road. She was born out of wedlock.” My steps slowed at the top of the stair. “She came from nothing, and she will always be nothing!” I could almost see her spit flying through those yellow horse teeth.

  “Mother, I t-t-told you I’m only interested in one girl, and that g-g-girl is Ellen Monteau.”

  At those last two words I lost my footing and toppled against the railing. I caught myself, but the olives were not so lucky. At first, the box arched gracefully over the railing into thin air. Downwards they fell for what seemed like five minutes toward the concrete floor and the two agitated people standing on it. I had opened the carton to stock the shelves. Some bottles hit the floor before the main cargo. Vacuum-packed, they smashed with loud and dangerous explosion of olives, vinegar, and glass.

  Clara shrieked and ran back into the shop. A shard of glass cut Dick’s shin.

  I was cleaning up for the rest of the day. We found olives everywhere. Several had attached themselves to the ceiling, and others to the windows. We found olives upstairs beyond where I had been standing. We even found them in the shop, and they would’ve had to bounce off four walls to get there.

  That evening I walked home with a sick feeling in my stomach, but it had nothing to do with broken glass. “Ellen Monteau” had been the last two words I heard before the Attack of the Olives.

  I was repulsed by the thought of Ellen in the arms of a mere mortal like Dick White. She, it seemed to me, deserved a king, a shah, a raja, or, failing these, me. But not Dick White.

  At home, things were as crazy as ever. Shirley greeted me in a distracted way in a sleeveless white cotton blouse with little red roses all over it. Soon after I arrived, Father came back in from the stable, where he had been salting hay, and she held out a letter to him. “This came for me in today’s mail,” she said. In her pretty top and jeans, she looked much younger than Father.

  He smelled of hay dust as he wiped the coarse salt from his hands and took the letter without a word. He sat at the kitchen table to read it. Then he looked out the window. “I’m sorry, Shirley.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Father began to read. “Dear Mrs. Ryan.”

  “Walter! Not in front of Felix.”

  “He’s not a boy now, Shirley. He should know what’s going on here.”

  He continued to read.

  “We have reviewed your application for the position of grade two classroom teacher at Curlew Elementary. Unfortunately, we find your qualifications unacceptable for the position. Yours truly, John Sutton, District Superintendent, Denominational School System.”

  He paused for a moment, then observed, “Weren’t they the same qualifications you had last year?”

  “Yes, but I’m just a term contract. They have to rehire me each year.”

  “They’ve done that for the past seven years. There should be a law against this.”

  “That hardly matters now, does it?”

  Supper was a sombre affair. The old tin clock ticked on the warming oven of the cast-iron stove. Father fidgeted with his baked beans, a thick piece of homemade bread lying forgotten by his plate. Shirley sat stiff-backed and ate.

  “I should go out to the u
nion office this week,” Father said. “There may be some construction going up before the winter.”

  Shirley looked over at him with some sympathy. “It’ll be a hard winter for all of us.”

  Our gloom was interrupted by a clear double knock on the front door. We looked at each other in surprise. No one used the front door, even in summer. The last person to use it was young Wally Foster to surprise everyone in a game of hide-and-seek. We were all hiding behind the house, and seeing him come through the squeaking front door was like seeing him walk through a wall. He caught us all and won the game.

  Father recovered first and went down the hall. I rose and followed. He creaked and squeaked open the thick old door with both hands, and we peered out. Standing on our front step was a smiling, tanned gentleman in a light blue suit. He looked like a movie star with his black, slicked-back hair. He spoke with an American accent, yet somehow formally: “How do you do?”

  “Fine, thank you,” my father answered.

  “Ah am the Reverend John Stone from Church of the Saints in Shipley.”

  We looked at him blankly.

  “May ah come in?”

  “Of course, Reverend. Come in,” said Father. “Shirley, it’s Reverend Stone, from Shipley.”

  Shirley did not rise from the table.

  The reverend swept into the kitchen like a man on a mission. His hat was in his hand, held by long pink fingers. It was light brown felt with a soft look to it. The hatband was blue to match his suit. There was a pink cleanliness about him that filled the room. He looked as if he had travelled here by bathtub, stopping only to slip into his powder-blue suit.

  He placed the hat on my chair. “May ah sit?” Without waiting for an answer, he sat in Father’s chair. So, Father and I stood, and Shirley sat as we listened to Reverend Stone.

  He was an eloquent speaker with a resonant voice couched in his pleasing drawl. He spoke like a man used to speaking. He sat on the chair as if he were posing for a picture, feet flat on the floor, chair turned to face us.