Poplar Lake

by Ron Thompson

  I thought for a moment and told her it was the capital of Aquitaine and the seat of Huguenot resistance.

  “Well, I guess you know, honey,” she said, laughing. “I guess you do.”

  I slipped into the house, blushing and humiliated, a fool in the eyes of a beautiful woman.

  CHAPTER 9

  Such dreams I had. So vivid and lifelike, such a perfect litany of my doubts and failures. Towards dawn, Genny appeared in them, making me wonder, when push came to shove, what would become of us? Would I fail her too?

  When she got up to run I feigned deep sleep, and she slipped out of the room without trying to rouse me, although I had promised I would come with her. I heard her talking with my parents downstairs before leaving the house. I lay alone in our bed wondering about her, my dreams, our future.

  The house was quiet when we came down for breakfast later. Dad had gone golfing, and it was Mom’s early bird bowling day. There was no sign of Simon. We ate alone.

  “You’re quiet this morning.”

  I shrugged. “Want to take another walk after breakfast?”

  She smiled. “In for a penny.”

  I sat thinking about my dreams while she read a day old copy of the Leader-Post.

  * * *

  There was no sign of life at the Sturgis place. The curtains were drawn. The new people seemed to be away. The flowerbeds looked well tended and—

  Genny touched my hand, and I flinched and jerked it away.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping dead to face me.

  “Nothing. Sorry. I was miles away. Just thinking about everything I need to do when I get back to London.”

  Her eyes stayed on my face, and I looked up at the sky as if checking for rain, composing my expression before returning her gaze.

  “I was just going to suggest,” she said when I did, “that you pick up the story from where you left off yesterday.”

  “Okay. Remind me where I was. Did I mention the Viking longboats?”

  She laughed. “No longboats. The chief picked the town site, there was a flood the next year, and bingo, there was Poplar Lake. We got as far as the lake. So what happened next? And I don’t think it involved Vikings.”

  “No. You’re a good listener. Well, let’s see . . .” We started walking, and I resisted the urge to glance back at Clinton’s house. “The railroad came, and the first settlers arrived, and this was aboomtown for a while. It was a wild place, even with the Mountie detachment. In 1901 half the town burned down in what they call the Saturday Night Riot, which started in a hotel down by the tracks. It wasn’t a hotel, exactly, more a boarding house for women. Why they’d riot, I don’t know. The accounts are all pretty vague.”

  She studied my face closely. “You really should write these stories down.”

  “They’re not stories. They’re history. I was just kidding about the Vikings.”

  She seemed about to speak but changed her mind. “Don’t let me distract you,” she said.

  I exhaled softly, relieved. At that moment I knew I could get through this. My strategy was working.

  “They rebuilt after the Riot, and the boom continued. It hit its all-time peak during the Great Ruby Rush of 1914.” Genny’s eyes narrowed and stayed on my face.

  * * *

  The rush began that spring when four ditch diggers working on a road outside of town uncovered a strange boulder. One of them had worked a hard rock mine in Montana and knew all about stones (or so he told his mates). He brushed the dirt off the top of the boulder, which sparkled brightly in the afternoon light. “Quartz,” he pronounced, then took a closer look. “By jeezuz,” he said in wonder, “take a look at this. Them’s rubies stuck in it!”

  They used a pick to chip off a chunk of ruby-encrusted rock. Then they decided to take a chunk each. Then two each. Then, as ditch digging was tedious work, and they now had rubies in their possession, they retired to town, specifically the beverage room of the Deeside Hotel, to inform the world of their good fortune.

  The Deeside stood where the town’s original hotel, destroyed in the fire of 1901, had stood. It was a prime location, across from the station where travellers arrived every day and, unlike the rest of downtown, it never flooded. After the fire, the lot was flipped by successive speculators until an eastern developer got his hands on it and announced plans for a grand hotel in the finest European tradition.

  The developer sold it before it was completed, and the end product was less than advertised, a three-storey yellow brick block, but it had gas lighting, hot air heating, all the modern conveniences. Indeed, it was too grand by far for the pinchpenny local market and went bankrupt within two years of opening. It was closed and shuttered until Jacob Bugelmann bought it for a song.

  Jacob and his wife Ruth had fled the pogroms of the old Russian Empire for the prairies of the new Canadian dominion, where they took up farming. It was a difficult existence, hand to mouth in the early years, and Jacob had to supplement their meagre income by selling fish and firewood in the surroundingdistrict. He delivered what he sold with his own team and wagon, and soon branched into cartage, which eventually led him into the horse trade. He found horses lucrative, although the business frequently took him away from Ruth and their children, who worked the farm when he was away.

  He travelled from town to town, buying and selling, living the hard life of an itinerant trader. Horse sales were often sealed over a drink in a local bar, and this was why Jacob noticed the boarded-up Deeside while on a buying trip to Poplar Lake. He saw its potential immediately: so close to the tracks, so much the welcoming gateway to the town and district. It had plenty of rooms to rent, and a largish beverage room. Here was a golden opportunity to end his itinerancy, the long absences from his beloved family. He and Ruth and the children (there were now eight) could run the Deeside together and make a decent living in the process.

  He sold the farm and put the proceeds and all their meagre savings into the purchase and still had to borrow a bundle. There were few on the prairies who would lend to his kind, and so the terms of the loan he eventually secured were onerous. He was left overextended, but he was an optimist, and he had a plan. The Deeside was solid and well appointed, but he would focus on hospitality, not comfort. With hard work, fair dealing, and a focus on value, he would make a go of it.

  Jacob ran a decent establishment at reasonable prices, with clean sheets once a fortnight and no more than four to a bed. He kept the boiler stoked till dark in winter and offered filling meals cooked by Ruth and the girls. He stocked his beverage room with grain spirits bought in bulk and cut in the basement with the help of his sons, blending it with tobacco juice or iodine for colour and pepper for taste; he never overcharged, and his customers never complained. Indeed, the value he delivered earned him their respect.

  He was an innovator, constantly searching for ways to improve and expand his offerings. One small example: the law required that he close the beverage room on Sundays, and he complied; yet he made it available privately as a chapel for those who followed the rites of the Greek Dionysians. He even provided worshippers the sacraments at a very reasonable price. Word got around town. He was a man of Hebraic origins, but his openness to other faiths won him much goodwill, especially among the menfolk.

  Such initiatives helped carry his debts, and undoubtedly would have secured the family’s future, had he not choked on a matzah ball and expired during Passover in 1909. Ruth was desolated by his death and at wits end over what to do on her own. The loan Jacob had taken out was still a burden, the family still young, and the day to day demands of operating the Deeside by herself overwhelming. Ruth had no head for business.

  Fortunately, her oldest son Sol did.

  Sol was barely twenty, but he had learned the hotel trade alongside his father. He assumed the daily burden from Ruth and continued with his father’s ethos, working hard to prov
ide value for every dollar spent, knowing he needed to bend over backwards to satisfy his customers needs. Thus, when a group of the town’s businessmen inquired about a venue in which to play cards, one that was private and beyond the disapprobation of local scolds, he created a game salon on the top floor, in the room farthest from the stairs. A buzzer at the front desk connected to an electric circuit (imagine—electric!) prevented unannounced interruptions. The salon proved a great success and was popular with the mayor and several aldermen, and even the local Baptist minister; and the revenues it generated, based on a percentage of the buy in, helped service the family debt. Sol quickly realized that additional innovations could actually pay it down, and he experimented with a number—he opened a stable for his guests, offered shoe shine, boot repair, sewing and laundry services, even experimented with a sauna. The most successful and enduring of his innovations was the private debating society he founded to provide guests and townsmen alike the pleasure of moderated conversations with a succession of young hostesses brought to town especially for the purpose.

  Years later Sol bridled at the very suggestion that his establishment might have been construed, in a certain light, by those who were judgy, as a cheap brothel. “Nonsense!” he huffed, affronted. “The Deeside Hotel was the finest in western Canada.”

  * * *

  “What about the Ruby Rush of 1914?” Genny interrupted, a bit abruptly. “Did you forget about that?”

  “I’m getting to it. This is essential background.”

  “Where is this Deeside Hotel?”

  “I’ll show you. We’re headed that way.”

  Five years after Jacob’s death, and despite Sol’s many innovations, the bulk of the loan on the Deeside was still outstanding. It whittled away at him as he whittled away at it. And now, in the spring of 1914, the long pioneer boom was ending; drought had struck the prairies, and the government was tightening up on immigration. With fewer arrivals and the economy slow, the hotel business was in the dumps. Sol’s vacancies were up, his bar volumes down, and he was sitting by himself at a table in the Deeside’s beverage room, musing over his accounts, when the four happy ditch diggers walked in and announced their lucky strike. Sol watched the reaction in the room, the backslapping, the enthusiasm and hip-hip-hurrahs, and was struck by an idea. He grabbed a telegraph form and wrote, “Diamonds, rubies, gold discovered Poplar Lake.” He sat thinking for a moment, then signalled over the boy who ran his errands, gave him some coins, and told him to cable that message to the Tribune and Free Press in Winnipeg, and the Globe in Toronto. But watching the ditch diggers celebrate, he had second thoughts before the boy reached the door. He called him back, and on the reverse of the form wrote “by ordinary Joes.” He gave the kid another coin and told him to send the original message, plus those three additional words, to the Toronto Star.

  Within days, Poplar Lake was swamped with new arrivals. Within a week, there were more than two thousand fortune seekers in town. The influx strained the town’s capacity, but the civic-minded Sol gamely refused to declare No Vacancy. He offered shared beds at the Deeside, space on the floor in every room and in the hallway, the basement, and in the straw at the livery stable he operated a few doors away, even on the tables at the nearby Stag Billiard Hall, a venue he had won recently in a third-floor poker game. As in former days, his bar at the Deesidewas packed from opening till last call—and beyond, when the coast was clear.

  It was soon apparent to the geologically astute that the solitary rock unearthed by the ditch diggers was a glacial erratic, a chunk of quartz containing nothing remotely semi-precious, let alone valuable; but a speculative boom had been set in motion. Rumours circulated daily about new finds in the surroundingarea. New seekers continued to pour into town for weeks, unaware that the reports of mineral wealth had been, well, exaggerated.

  The boom was a bust for the prospectors but gold for Sol and those with the sense to seize a market opportunity. Sol did so well he was able to buy (once again with borrowed money) a couple of bankrupt or derelict hotels in nearby towns for his brothers to operate. Even the Cree out on the reserve got in on the action, selling the most gullible of the fortune seekers the diamond-tipped arrowheads used by their ancestors to hunt woolly mammoth. The tips proved to be artfully crafted from broken glass, and those who were gulled came in for a lot of derision. Stories about how they’d been jewed by the jigs had everybody in stitches at the Deeside bar, but Sol was not seen to join in the laughter. It turned out he had a surprising soft spot for the local Cree. A tribe in the wilderness, he once said, survives as it can.

  * * *

  “Okay, listen. Stop it! You can’t use ‘jew’ as a verb.”

  “But . . . it’s what people said. I’m not insulting any Jews. It’s just a—”

  “They’re Jewish, not Jews. And you can’t use that other word. It’s horrible! I know what you’re going to say. ‘It’s just a word.’ Well words matter, mister. You can’t just drop these words into a story.”

  “I didn’t just drop those words in. People spoke like that back then. You can’t ban what people said. That’s like trying to ban, I don’t know, the N-word. If I said—”

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you say it! It’s hateful. It should be banned. It should be against the law!” Genny’s eyes were suddenly moist at the injustice, the evil indignity of that word, and I saw the strength of her feeling, the power of her conviction. Now her eyes were brimming, and she let out a sob, and I drew her close and patted her back and murmured reassurance, remembering my own experience, how names and words could hurt, how they made a person feel defective, like nothing, and nobody, and worse. I stood there wondering at the depths of her empathy while I, it seemed, had none. Moved, I hugged her closer. And one thing led to another.

  CHAPTER 10

  We were locked in a passionate kiss on the corner of Third and Temperance when a car honked and pulled over in front of us. Its driver leaned across to open the passenger door. “I think you got it, Genny,” I said, tugging at my eyelid and blinking rapidly. “Yeah. It’s gone. It was just a bug or speck of leaf.”

  My mother gazed up at us, her eyes narrowed—the sun was very bright. “I’m going out to the mall for groceries. Do you want to come? You haven’t been there since you’ve been home.”

  I glanced at Genny, who tilted her head. I took the back seat to give her the front. We buckled in and sat waiting as Mom watched for cars in her side mirror. “Well, Genny,” she said cheerily, her face averted, “you’re really getting around town, aren’t you. Taking in the sights. Trying to do it all while you’re here.”

  Genny was silent for a moment. “There’s a lot to see, Edie.” Mom pulled away from the curb, glanced towards the side mirror on Genny’s side and did a double take. “Oh! Oh, Genny! Are you warm enough? You’re just wearing hot pants.” Genny nose snapped over in her direction. “It’s a skirt.”

  Mom’s eyes were back on the road. “But aren’t you cold? It’s not that warm yet this morning. Do you want to pull something over yourself? Over them? It? Is it really a skirt?”

  “Yes. No. I’m fine, really. I find it quite comfortable here. Quite.”

  Well, there they were, getting along, talking clothes. I had wondered if they were clicking, but sometimes I worried about nothing. Genny was wearing a short lycra skirt she had bought in Camden Market. “Genny got that skirt in England,” I said. “They wear them short over there even in winter. English women get blotches and chilblains all over their legs but Genny never does. She’s got fantastic circulation.”

  While my mother took a closer look at Genny’s legs, Genny glanced over her shoulder at me.

  We turned onto Main and drove towards the far side of town. “Do you notice the difference since you left for England?” Mom asked me in the mirror. “All these chains are here now.” We drove past Boston Pizza, Swiss Chalet, a Burger King, a Domino’s, Tony Firenze’s Rib Ho
use, a Tijuana Taco, and an IHOP still under construction. “They’ve all got nice big parking lots. Some of them even have drive-throughs.”

  As I peered over Genny’s shoulder she shuddered. She must have been chilly after all.

  “What’s it done to the old places we used to go to? The local ones?”

  “Oh, they’re not doing too well. Bing’s Hong Kong House closed up last winter, Reba’s Pastries just this spring. They can’t compete. It’s a shame, but people love the prices at these new places. And they’re all so colourful. You drive along this strip now, you’d think you’re in Vegas.”

  “People could support the local places,” Genny said.

  “I suppose so, but people these days want things like lasagne and tortillas. Stan and I don’t like it much. It’s all a bit spicy, though we do like the meatballs with lingonberries at the Swedish Villa.” She pointed to an Idaho Jack’s and glanced at me in the mirror. “That’s where all the young people go now, dear.”

  “What happened to the Grizz?”

  “It closed down last fall. The King Eddie went bust.” We had passed the King Edward Hotel just a few minutes before. It had looked dilapidated and rundown, just as it always had. I had not even noticed it was closed.

  When I was fourteen, Victor gave me a quarter and dared me to go inside the Eddie’s Grizzly Bar, plug the jukebox, and pick the sappiest song I could find, then leave through the backdoor. But when I got inside I froze: there was no Barry Manilow on the machine. So what was sappier, “When I Need You,” by Leo Sayer, or one of those falsetto numbers by the Bee Gees? I had to decide. I felt everyone’s eyes on me. And just as I was about to drop Victor’s coin in the slot, I realized he had given me an American quarter—it was sure to jam the juke. I dug in my pocket and found my own quarter, a Canadian one, and dropped it into the slot, punched a button, and slipped out as “You Should be Dancing” began to play. “Hey! Whadzat fuggin’ crap?” someone shouted behind my back.