Grand Change Page 9

  I mentioned to him that I had a message for George from The Boss concerning a meeting for the school trustees. “You better go down to the cellar and tell him yourself in case I forget,” Alf said. “Him and Charlie are grading. Just leave the horse here until you get back.”

  In the cellar, George stood big, bulky and hunched over the grader. He had a glint of disdain in his pig-like eyes, and his big mouth and round, fleshy face were contorted into a cringe.

  “How’s she going, Jake?” Charlie said from behind the grader.

  “You’re driving ’er,” I said.

  “Were driving ’er,” Charlie said. “Cooking with gas.”

  In stature, Charlie was somewhere between Alf and George. His face, except for George’s eyes, pretty much belonged to his mother, Hilda: slightly lean with a heavy brow and a mischievous hawkishness.

  “Yes, and if he don’t stop stinking, he’ll be working by himself,” George growled. “Stinking mortal.”

  Charlie halted and rested the half-empty fork against the potatoes piled on the grader, his eyes going into a piggish stare.

  George went rigid, his eyes peering sharply at me, the disdain on his face growing into a red flush. “Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you?” he said. “Stinking mortal. No manners. He’ll go in a church, at a funeral, in a restaurant, at the table; he don’t care. He just cocks that big rump of his and lets ’er go. And stink! He’d gas a horse! Ah, that’s enough. Grade the dog-gone potatoes yourself.” George stomped up the stone cellar steps and out, dropping the cellar hatch with a whump.

  Charlie’s tongue flopped out in a giddy laugh.

  “You’re an awful man, Charlie,” I said when I got over my laugh seizure.

  “I’m an awful man,” Charlie said.

  “You must have been eating beans.”

  “I don’t need beans.”

  When we finally sobered up, I asked about the hockey playoffs, and the big game Saturday night.

  “We’re going to win ’er,” Charlie said. “Be there. They’ll be hanging from the rafters. They’re laying on a truck from the village.”

  “I’m just getting over the flu,” I said.

  “Never mind that. You don’t want to miss it, flu or no flu. We’re going to bring home the bacon.”

  “I got a message for George, so I better get a move on.”

  “Tell him he can come back down to work, but he’ll have to stop stinking,” Charlie said with a wry smirk.

  George had King hitched to the sleigh and was waiting, holding him by the bridle. He glanced around the horse at me as I gave him the message.

  “Safe to go down now?” he said when I finished. “Fog cleared away?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Stinking mortal.”

  It was calm that Saturday evening as I walked into the village, with just a light winter freshness. It was late in March and there were patches of bare ground showing and the snow was beginning to honeycomb. As I came into the village, with the gloom of darkness setting in, I could hear Fred James’s three-ton truck chugging in idle. Stubby, round-faced Willy Walters, the driver, took my quarter by the tail end. Hands reached down from the block of darkness —framed by the truck’s racks and overlaid tarp roof—and I was hauled over by the arms. I worked my way among jammed-in bodies for a place to stand.

  “Are we all here? Are all the chickens in?” Willy hollered above the truck’s rumble.

  A voice came out of the darkness, sounding dry and strange: “Yeah, we’re all here. Put ’er in the big cog and drive ’er.”

  Presently, the truck jerked forward and rocked its way along, bumping, jostling and crowd-jamming us at the turns, its motor song rising to the gear changes, purring at high, breaking abruptly at the upgrade, mingling with the conversations, murmurs and yelps. Now and then a cut rhyme or a song parody was belted out, followed by laughter. There was a gale of howls as our feet left the floor to return with a teeth-jolting thump when the truck bumped off the pavement and headed down a muddy shortcut. Suddenly, the truck’s momentum began to grow heavy and the pauses and jerks of gear changes worked toward bull low.

  A laboured thrust of the truck dragged to a halt; a backward jolt went nowhere; the motor sounded like an angry, captive bee, buzzing slightly above the whirr of wheels spinning in mud.

  The motor was cut and we stood in a silence made eerie by the sudden absence of truck sounds. Those of us at the front began prying up an overlap in the tarp for a look. In the weak bask of the truck’s lights, I could see a patch of deep mud scarred by snaking wheel ruts where vehicles had fought their way through. Willy Walters, having left the cab, was wading out into the slop, slowly looking around, his shadow poking here and there as if trying to find a way out.

  “You want us to get off and try pushing?” Al Avery called through the tarp opening.

  “I guess we could try that,” Willy said. We piled off over the back and gave it a shot, but we didn’t gain much, if any. With the truck’s sides anywhere from chest level to over the head, depending on the individual, and our feet lodging in mud, the best most of us could do was get mud-splattered from the spin of the wheels. More than a few were plastered before Willy gave up and went for a tractor.

  We stood waiting by the road in total darkness. Our ardour had turned to a glum silence. Then fat Bob Swain sung out, his voice sounding strange in the night. “Cheer up folks, better days ahead. If we don’t get a tractor we’ll hijack the next mule train.”

  Suddenly a chorus of “Irene, Goodnight” broke out. Then we heard the rumble of a distant tractor and twin lights swept onto the road and headed our way, jigging and weaving and growing ever broader.

  In time, the lights swept the front of the truck, and the tractor slew into a U-turn and came to a halt. A chain began to rattle and clank and the tractor’s tail light began to play peekaboo with Willy’s body as he got the draw bar chained up with the truck’s bumper. It took a bit of slewing around and chain-jerking in different directions—with the tractor churning, roaring and fish-tailing, and the truck pretty much the same—but they got her out and we got on board again.

  “I guess we won’t need the mule train,” Fat Bob said.

  “Is everybody happy?” Willy roared.

  “Yeah, we’re all happy! Put ’er in the big cog and drive her,” came the voice in the dark.

  It took a while to find our feet when we piled off the truck, after jostling in the dark for balance. Some of us were still wobbly as we made our way past the few other cars and trucks parked with their snouts poking from the shade of the rink. The rink was old, with ragged steel siding curling at the seams. Over the battered board entrance door, a naked bulb threw a shallow glow from its curved pipe fixture. Inside the entranceway, a cold draft seeped through the cracks in the heaving board floor. A cold blast hit me at the ticket window when I handed in my quarter and got my halved ticket. As I passed into the tunnel-like walkway at the front of the ice surface, I glanced through the chicken wire and saw rink attendants slide-stepping on the ice, pushing locked scrapers, herding a wave of water into the snow hole in a square corner of the boards.

  All the players were on the ice. Our team was on the near blue line waiting for the attendants to finish so they could take their shots at the goalie. Only their sweaters were the same; their pants and socks varied in colour and they had a lot of holes exposing equipment parts. There were usually gaps between the socks and pants, exposing bare flesh or grimy underwear. Some players looked like they were moulting.

  I paused to watch, somewhat in awe, as my heroes began to glide in on the crouching goalie to take their shots. On scuffed skates, with lengths of felt under the laces for tightness and flopping over the toes for protection, they swooped in like hunched vultures. I noted every swerve, sweep and twitch—things I would try to copy on a frozen pond.

  Eventua
lly I made my way to the men’s dressing room door, which was battered and scarred by carelessly slung skates and swung with a creak against its worm-like return spring. As I sidled my way inside, jostled by bodies, I could feel beneath my feet the tin patches nailed over the rough board floor where skate blades had worn through. The smells of stale cigarette smoke, burning coal, frost, disinfectant and urine hit me in a rush and when I took my turn at the tin bowl nailed against the back wall, I got a whiff of black rum and caught a glimpse of a quick swig and a bottle being shoved inside an overcoat.

  When I finally got all the buttons fastened on the two pairs of pants, with the binding of my overcoat and the hindrance of its skirts, I paused to catch some heat at the pot-bellied stove. But not for long; there was a sudden roar from the crowd and I knew I was missing something.

  Outside the dressing room, the crowd was everywhere: packed standing along the boards, on the boards holding on to chicken wire or rafter supports. The only vacant space I could see was the square top of a goal judge box. I had to squeeze and shove my way through bodies and claw up chicken wire to get there.

  I was just in time to see a big, lumbering player with a skullcap bearing in on the one known as the Shorthorn Bull. Skullcap swerved to go by. Suddenly, there was a flash of quick-stepping skates and a solid rear-end shot out and Skullcap went feet up and nose down as Shorthorn nailed him.

  Voices rose above the crowd’s roar: “Boo! Boo! You’ll never get by him that way, you dumb ape.” “Dirty Shorthorn Bull, go back to your stall.” “Cigarettes, cigarettes, butts, butts, butts. Referee, referee, nuts, nuts, nuts.”

  And it was up and down the ice in a flurry of pumping legs and chopping skates: circling, weaving, twisting, turning, dipsy-doodling; desperately coming close and getting flattened at the last instant; making the crowd “ooh” and “ahh”; ragging the puck and winging it; elbowing, kneeing, whatever got the job done; arguing with the ref; in exasperation, belting the penalty box door in angry entrance. They played the game as if for the Stanley Cup.

  Suddenly the referee was racing to a corner where Skullcap and the Shorthorn had locked horns. There was a tense moment of gripping strength with lip-curled snarls before they hit the ice in a sprawling flop. Skullcap wound up on top, but on the way down Shorthorn got the neck hold on him. With arms that could muscle a hundred-pound bag of potatoes like a steel vice at his neck, Skullcap soon resigned, wagging his head and working his neck, as he made his way to the sin bin. The roar of the crowd was deafening. Insults were hurled. At the sideboards, the crowd swayed and broke and fists flashed.

  Play resumed, but soon a cowbell clunk-a-lunked and the sweating, puffing players filed toward their dressing rooms to chew at oranges, mutter at the missed shot, the dirty knee and the worthless ref.

  I had a nickel and I was tempted to go for a bag of chips at the canteen. I could see the top of its door above the bobbing heads of the lined-up crowd, jamming for their turn to buy. Suddenly the struggle to the confined room, halved by a counter, smelling heavily of steamed hot dogs, where attendants worked furiously in gloomy light, seemed like a lot for a nickel bag of chips. A fellow could get stomped on. Besides, I could lose my place.

  Instead, I sat and watched the ice cleaners skate and push slush with canted scrapers in rhythm with “Sweet Rosie O’Grady” coming scratchily from I’m not sure where. The lighting was shallow now, for half the shaded lights, dangling by their cords in their rows from the rafters, had been cut. Faded shadows followed the workers as they went frankly about their work, their skates and lower shins for the most part hidden in a woolly mist rising from the ice. One enterprising individual was skating around them, catching money in a stocking cap to cater from the concession stand.

  Before long, the cowbell clunk-a-lunked again and the game went on with the gliding, pumping and grinding. The second period passed, the third carried on. Soon, all too soon, the round-faced clock hanging on the back wall in the penalty box said five minutes left. At the end of the rink, the slotted numbers said 4–4. My heroes were working the puck at the other end and I was with them. My shoulder hitched at the deke; my arms went up as the red light above the goal judge glowed through the mill of players and fog.

  There was pause in the action, both sides checking strategies with anxious head nods as they got set for the faceoff. The puck was dropped. There was the quick chop of a stick in a pass and once more Skullcap was bearing down on Shorthorn with the puck. Shorthorn was backing, confident; he made his skate-chopping veer. At the last moment, Skullcap shifted and Shorthorn was faked out. Skullcap bore in alone on the goalie, almost in a gallop, with fire in his eyes. The goalie poised in his crouch, his eyes concentrated. The roar of the crowd was like a wall. Suddenly the puck winged and ticked off the inside corner of the square net. The goalie took a fearful backward glance, then swept out the puck with downcast eyes. A call rose above the uproar: “Boo! Boo! Shorthorn Bull, you didn’t do so hot that time. Go home and fork manure.” It didn’t seem reasonable to get scored on at time like this.

  That’s when Charlie broke loose, seizing the puck after the draw, and with long, smooth strides, his stick shifting like a magic wand, he darted, swaggered and quick-turned like a frolicking colt. They’d managed to smother him all night, but now he was in control. They’d swipe at the puck, but he’d sweep it away like it was glued to his stick. They’d lunge at him with checks, but he’d be gone, leaving them to thump the boards or take a falling slide through the slush and water.

  The goalie at the other end, watching the helplessness before him, had a tense, fearful expression on his face. He made his move at Charlie’s deke, but he, too, took a slide through the slush and water. As the puck sailed into the net it was game over, even before the cowbell clunked its last.

  The jubilation rode on us like a crown and our steps were light as we made our way back to the truck and climbed aboard.

  “Are all the chickens in?” Willy Walters roared.

  “Anybody not here speak up,” came the voice from the dark. “Yeah, we’re all here. Put ’er in the big cog and drive her.”

  “Who won the game?” Willy roared.

  A mixed chorus roared back: “The Royals!”

  Prelude to

  Spring on Hook Road

  When the snow began to honeycomb, sink under the hot sun and chill to an ice crust in the night; when the poles in the loft bed began to appear amidst patches of grey, dry hay that came up with the fork tines in flakes; when the times of birth came in the cow stalls and a farmer would spend hours with his feet braced against a group edge, straining on a rope looped around yellow hooves pointing from a swollen vulva, holding with the mother’s heaves until the limp body, wet with slime, slithered into the world to eventually wobble on stick legs, then butt and sphirp in a bucket of curdled milk; when the woodpile was low to the ground, then those along Hook Road knew that soon, what snow the sun didn’t dissolve, heavy rains would, and in their patches of dirty-brown and grey, the fields would begin to appear once more, with only traces of the packed winter road remaining, now dirty-grey and with yellow stains where the horse buns lay. Soon Hook Road itself would reappear and the muck-slopping would begin.

  They junked up what was left of their winter meat then, before it thawed too much, and what meat didn’t go to cold storage was bone-stripped, stuffed into cans, salted, lid-sealed and placed in steaming double boilers until the lids popped.

  The bones, streaking white through meat remnants, were boiled, too, until they were stripped bare and the meat in the pots had congealed into that waxy crust over a conglomeration of stringy meat and jelly called potted meat.

  The sluggishness came on then, and it was good to laze after a quiet suppertime with the door open and a sun-warmed breeze wafting in the choke of drying mud and listen to the countrified music of the suppertime radio show. The sulphur and molasses, cherry-bark steep and whatever came on then,
as a remedy for the laze, or the want of a bad taste.

  The last of the potatoes in the cellars, bearded now with sprouts, were moved out then, the clay buildup shovelled out. Seed potatoes were piled in bags against walls of barn floors and sheds for the set cutters. And they would huddle in mixed gender around washtubs of potatoes, sitting on backless chairs, crates and milking stools, in patched overalls, tattered coats with nails for buttons, peaked caps and wedging bandanas. And their banter would mingle with the schlick, schlick of keen knives, slicing potatoes between black-crusted thumbs and forefingers, and the plops of sets falling into baskets. In dusty granaries, hump-backed fanners were cranked and grain and hayseed were run through and bagged for seeding.

  In the meantime, the spring calves, seeing outside for the first time, found their legs and ran bucking, kicking and crashing fences in the pastures.

  Then the fields of furrows, flattened by winter snows and spring rains, bleached and dried chalky by the sun and wind, were grudgingly torn by the mats of spring-tooth harrows; with the drivers choking in dust, hauled by the reins in their grasp, their steps falling halting and rigid from the pace.

  In keeping with the scenes of spring, bags of fertilizer, lime and sets would appear in their piles on headlands.

  The high-wheeled seeders ran in their cross-field weave then, the spouts along their lengthwise boxes shooting down oats and hayseed, the short links of their cover chains jangling.

  Then the potato planters would appear, hunched and sneak-stepping like aged cronies, struggling for balance in fertilized grooves, dropping sets at their toes for spacing, their potato sack set pouches hanging heavy on their shoulders. While in their midst, the scant horse hillers with their twin toed-in discs scuffled up rows of hills.

  As a final sweeping-away of a dreary winter, the farmers of Hook Road approached their ragged rows of manure with their snow and ice troves, fork-loaded the rotting dung onto wagons and fork-flung it to the sod.