The Americans Are Coming Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there’s a trick to it.”

  “A trick?”

  “Yeah, and I’m gonna tell ya the trick, but I don’t want you to tell anybody else. It’s a good trick and it could make us rich some day. Promise not to tell it?”

  “Sure.”

  Palidin proceeded to tell Dryfly the ins and outs of magnetizing salmon flies. When he was sure that Dryfly understood completely, he gave Dryfly the little lodestone he’d been using.

  “Works every time,” said Palidin. “Now, I gotta go. The train’ll be here any minute.”

  “Be good, Pal.”

  “Yeah. You too.”

  In the kitchen, Palidin stopped to kiss Shirley goodbye.

  “I love you, Mom,” he said

  “I love you too, Pal. You know you kin always come home, Pal. You know where your home is.”

  “I know, Mom. I’ll send ya money, Mom. Don’t you worry.”

  Palidin forced back the tears as he eyed the ugly, the laughed at, the forsaken woman. “My mother in Helen MacDonald’s hand-me-down dress . . . her hair is starting to turn grey . . . the most beautiful mother in the whole world,” he thought.

  “Don’t cry, Mom,” said Palidin, and quickly, so as not to change his mind, he picked up the box and left.

  On the way to the Brennen Siding sidinghouse, where he would meet the train, Palidin passed Shadrack Nash on the road. Shadrack was limping slightly and looked soaked to the skin.

  “See ya, Shad,” were the only words spoken, and Palidin made no attempt to hide the fact that he was capable of crying.

  At Shirley Ramsey’s house, Shadrack sensed that something dramatic had just occurred.

  “What’s wrong with Palidin?” Shadrack asked Dryfly.

  “Him and George Hanley eloped,” said Dry.

  thirteen

  On the twenty-ninth of October, Shirley opened the mail-bag and found but three letters in it: a bill for John Kaston from Lyman MacFee, a letter from R.M. Crenshaw, Boston, Massachusetts, for Frank Layton, the manager of the Cabbage Island Salmon Club, and a red envelope with Dryfly Ramsey, Brennen Siding, N.B. written neatly on it in blue ink.

  Ecstasy is not a strong enough word to describe how Dryfly felt when he saw the envelope. When Shirley passed it to him, he could not contain himself. He jumped for joy. It was one of the happiest moments of his entire life.

  His joy was so obviously imprinted upon his countenance that Shirley, too, was stirred by his emotions.

  “Thanks, Mom!” Dryfly hurried into his room and shut the door.

  As she put the other two letters in their rightful compartments in the post office, she wiped a tear from her cheek and whispered, “Poor little darlin’.”

  Dryfly threw himself on the bed and eyed the envelope.

  “Lillian Wallace,” he whispered, “I love you, I love you, I love you!”

  He sniffed the envelope and thought he could vaguely smell the scent of fly repellent. “Some kind of perfume, anyway,” he thought.

  He carefully tore the end off the envelope and removed the pink pages. There were four of them, all folded neatly. “What a girl!” he thought. “What a wonderful, wonderful girl!”

  He prolonged opening the letter, wanting to savour the feeling, the moment.

  “I just want to see one word,” he thought. “The one magic word from the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  Before he began to read, he sniffed the paper once more and kissed it.

  Dear Dryfly,

  I’m sorry I took so long to write. I’m the

  world’s greatest procrastinator!

  How are you and what have you been doing?

  Did you go to work guiding? How’s Shadrack?

  Lillian wrote about going back to school, the turning of the leaves and the harvest moon; she wrote about her plans to return to the Dungarvon River, her father’s plans for building a cottage, a recent trip to New York and a new friend, Rick, she’d met in school. She did not write “I love you” in her letter, but at the very end she wrote, “I miss you very much. I’ll always be very fond of you. Love, Lillian.” It was the “I miss you very much. I’ll always be very fond of you. Love, Lillian” that Dryfly read over and over and over.

  Dryfly showed the letter to Shadrack. Shadrack was noticeably envious and that made Dryfly happy, for that put him one up on Shadrack in the women department. Shadrack figured that he, too, had dated Lillian and therefore they were even.

  Dryfly read his letter to Nutbeam and after the “Love, Lillian” said, “What do you think o’ that, Nutbeam?”

  “That’s a good letter! A real good letter! I think she likes you a lot, Dryfly. But who’s this Rick lad?”

  “I don’t know. Some lad in school, I s’pose.”

  Nutbeam sensed that Rick was mentioned for a reason. He didn’t want Dryfly to be overly optimistic. “She mentioned him twice. Could be a boyfriend,” he said.

  “Could be.” Dryfly had given the same thought consideration, but he didn’t want to think about it.

  Nutbeam was more impressed with the letter than Dryfly realized. Nutbeam was not just impressed with what Lillian wrote, but he was fascinated with the whole concept of letter writing. Nutbeam had encountered an additional problem in the Shirley Ramsey venture – not being able to write. If one can’t write, one does not have letters to mail. In Brennen Siding, if one does not have letters to mail, one might never enter the realm of Shirley Ramsey’s love nest.

  “You gonna answer the letter?” asked Nutbeam.

  “Yeah, prob’ly.”

  “Wished I could write,” said Nutbeam. “Anyone can write. Didn’ you ever go to school?”

  “I didn’t start to school until I was ten years old. I think me father and mother was ashamed of me, thought I was retarded. When I was ten they figured I maybe knew something and sent me off to school where everyone my age had the jump on me by four years. They not only laughed at me being ugly, but they thought I was stupid, too. They use to gang up and play tricks on me, and sometimes even beat me up. I raised a fuss and me parents let me stay home.”

  Nutbeam seemed very sad. “I couldn’ go nowhere, Dryfly,” he said.

  “If you could write, who would you write to, Nutbeam?”

  “Aunt Johannah, prob’ly. She’s the only one that was nice to me. I’d like to find out who’s dead and how they’re all doin’.”

  “Me or Shad could write letters for ya,” said Dryfly. “I ain’t a real good writer, but I could scratch something out for ya.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe.”

  “You got any paper and a pencil?”

  “No. Ain’t got anything like that.”

  “There’s paper and pencils in Bernie Hanley’s store. I could pick some up for ya.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe.”

  “You’ll need envelopes, too.”

  “Yeah. Might work. How’s your mother doin’?”

  “She’s all right. Awful lonesome for Palidin, though.”

  “A woman like that shouldn’t be lonesome,” thought Nutbeam. “She ever hear from him?” he asked.

  “Not yet. I guess she’s worried about him. She’s worried about the post office closin’, too.”

  “When’s the post office closin’?” asked Nutbeam.

  “First o’ the year.”

  “Don’t leave much time,” thought Nutbeam, “two months and some.”

  “What’s she gonna do for a livin’ when the post office closes?”

  “Dunno. Somethin’ll turn up.”

  “Maybe,” said Nutbeam. “Maybe.”

  *

  Lindon Tucker left his room on Pine Street and walked toward the Carleton Street bridge. This was the second time that day that he had walked “over town.” The first time “over town,” he’d gone to the bank and withdrawn two hundred dollars. This time he walked toward the hotel. Lindon Tucker always walked – he did not like spending seventy-five cents on a taxi. He didn’t like
spending seven dollars a week for his room with kitchen privileges, either, and he did not like having to buy things like meat and potatoes. In Brennen Siding, he did not have to pay rent. In Brennen Siding, Lindon grew his own potatoes, and every fall he would shoot a deer or a moose and salt half a barrel of salmon. Lindon Tucker did not like spending money on anything. Lindon Tucker did not like Fredericton very much at all.

  Brennen Siding and the people he knew there were his whole life. He thought of them day and night with an aching heart. He longed to be walking on the footbridge, or through the forest; he missed his Sussex Ginger Ale with the boys at Bernie Hanley’s store and he missed listening to the radio in his own kitchen and going behind a shed to see a man about a horse. He found the people in Fredericton cold. They rarely spoke to him on the street. On the few times he did manage to strike up a conversation he was as agreeable as he could be – to no avail. They invariably walked away to leave him, once again, alone.

  “How kin ya be so alone with so many people around?” he asked himself many, many times. “I’d go home, if I thought that devil would leave me alone, so I would. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Home, yeah. Yep.”

  Another depressing thing in Lindon Tucker’s life was his landlord, Arthur McGarrity. To Lindon Tucker, Arthur

  McGarrity and his wife Monique were something lower than worms. Arthur and Monique McGarrity took great pleasure in beating the living daylights out of their five-year-old son, Bobby. If Bobby whimpered in the night, Arthur or Monique would stomp into his room and SLAM, BANG, THRASH! Bobby would be afflicted with a new set of welts and bruises. Lindon did not know what to do about the beatings. He figured it was not his place to interfere with the goings on of someone else’s family. Lindon gritted his teeth and remained silent – silent and alone.

  This night, Lindon decided that he didn’t want to hear the child being beaten anymore. Last night’s beating had been more severe than usual. That day, he had gone to the bank and withdrawn two hundred dollars with the thought in mind to go on a drunk. He decided that the hotel would be a good place to start. “Maybe at the hotel, someone will talk to me.”

  When Lindon Tucker entered through the glass doors of the hotel, he was met by a good-looking young gentleman in a red jacket with brass buttons.

  “Checking in, sir?” asked the bellman.

  “You work here?” asked Lindon.

  “Yes, sir,” said the bellman and thought, “No, no, I’m dressed in this outfit because I’m a monkey grinder.”

  “Kin ya git drunk here?” asked Lindon.

  “There’s a bar right in there, sir.”

  Lindon headed across the lobby toward the lounge. Inside, he sat at the bar and waited for service. The lounge was nearly full and the bartender was very busy.

  “What would you like?” yelled the bartender.

  “Gimme a glass o’ roy whiskey and a bottle o’ Moosehead,” yelled Lindon and scanned the other people at the bar to see if his order was making an impression. He smiled and winked at a couple of people, but no one seemed to take notice.

  “A single or a double?” asked the bartender.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Lindon.

  The bartender poured Lindon nearly a double. He recognized Lindon as a country hick and would shortpour him all evening long.

  Lindon tossed the rye down and chased it with a quaff of ale. “Gimme another roy,” he said.

  *

  Shirley Ramsey took a line-by-line, grey-hair-by-grey-hair inspection of her body. Palidin was gone, and she, for the first time in many years, had the privacy to undress completely without the possibility of being interrupted. Dryfly never came home until at least midnight.

  Shirley Ramsey scanned her leg – “varicose veins, but not too bad.” She scanned her belly – “bigger than Bert Todder’s,” she thought.

  Bert Todder was a bachelor who did his own cooking. His diet consisted primarily of potatoes. Sometimes he’d cook a piece of salmon or venison to accompany the potatoes, and he ate many, many oranges and drank much ginger ale at Bernie Hanley’s store, but primarily, he ate potatoes. For supper, he’d boil as many as ten and would not hesitate to eat the whole lot. If he left any, he’d have them fried for breakfast. He had the biggest belly in Brennen Siding.

  When Bert Todder was asked why he let his belly get so big, he replied, “When ya got a good set o’ tools, ya should build a shed over them. Tee, hee, ha, ha, sob, sob.”

  Shirley eyed her breasts. They depressed her. They tapered from chest to nipple like skin hankerchiefs with a marble dropped in each one.

  She noticed how brown her skin was. “That’s the Indian in me,” she said aloud to the kitchen.

  Her eyes also indicated Micmac ancestry. Her great-great-grandmother had been a Micmac Indian from the Northwest. Her grandfather had been an immigrant from Ireland. She had the dark eyes, skin, hair, and high cheekbones of the Micmac. Her nose, mouth and chin were Irish. Her great-grandmother had been English; her grandmother Dutch and her mother Scottish. Her children had blue eyes and did not look Indian at all. Shirley bathed, donned her best dress (the Helen MacDonald hand-me-down), and went to the table to smoke, think and take inventory.

  “There’s one thing I kin say,” she thought, “I raised a family.”

  Shirley was the youngest of nine children. Her mother had given birth to her under the very capable hands of a midwife. The midwife had delivered all nine children successfully. It was not the midwife’s fault that Shirley’s mother had taken one look at the baby Shirley, said, “It’s a girl,” and passed away. It was as though she was giving up her space, air and baby-making ability to Shirley.

  Shirley spent the first twelve years of her life developing a body. At twelve she had been quite beautiful, with brown hair, dark eyes and an attractive smile. She had developed a sleek young body that yearned to be fondled, caressed and loved, but it wasn’t until she reached the age of fourteen that she was able to put her body to the test. After just one night with Buck Ramsey, she learned that her body was as good for making babies as her mother’s.

  At the ages of sixteen and fourteen respectively, Buck and Shirley married. Junior was born three months later. At first, luck seemed to be with them; Buck’s father died and left Buck the crumbling old house and gravel pit. They moved in and waited for someone to buy the gravel, but no construction was applied to the road that year. Buck didn’t have a job and couldn’t get one. He was forced to seek employment in Fredericton, and then in Saint John, where he found part-time labor loading ships. In Saint John, Buck also found a thirty-five year old widow to live with. As the relationship with the widow grew, Buck returned to Brennen Siding less and less.

  Buck had never loved Shirley and Shirley had never loved Buck. They got married because they “had to” – Shirley was pregnant. He didn’t love the widow either, but life was a hell of a lot easier in Saint John. As Shirley began to deteriorate under the stress and wear of baby-making, poverty and aging, Buck started to find her too unattractive for his tastes, and eventually even found her repulsive – repulsive, that is, until he got drunk. When Buck Ramsey got drunk, he stayed that way for three or four days. On about the third day, he’d start feeling sorry for himself and Shirley, head for Brennen Siding, stay drunk all the time he was there, make a baby and head back to Saint John, hung over and broke.

  After making Dryfly, Buck returned to Saint John to find his thirty-five-year-old widow in bed with another man. With no money and no place to live, he took to bumming on the streets. On this meagre income, he did not eat much. His main source of nourishment became wine.

  After several months, he moved to Fredericton, and for a matter of a year or so, it seemed he might pull himself together. He got a job as a janitor, bought himself a guitar and a new radio. He moved into a room on Charlotte Street and even managed to save a few hundred dollars. Then, he started drinking again. On the third day of overindulgence, he thought of Shirley. He would have gone to Brennen Siding, but for one thing
– even Buck Ramsey didn’t have the gall to face Shirley after eleven years of not being around to help her raise the family. He took some of his money and went to Saint John to see his widow instead.

  The Saint John widow saw him coming and locked the door. Buck bought more wine and went in search of his cronies down by the wharf.

  Most of the degenerates he knew had either died, or moved away in the year he’d been away and he found himself alone, drunk, cold and without shelter in the middle of February. He lay down by a crate, cuddled himself to keep warm, drank some more wine and passed out. In the middle of the night, a foghorn woke him up briefly. He looked about him to see a ship and an unloaded cargo, a few lights and drifting snow.

  “G’day,” he said to himself, “I suppose I ain’t havin’ too hard a time!”

  He then went back to sleep, never to awaken.

  “At least I raised a family,” spoke Shirley once more to the kitchen.

  But now, with Palidin in Toronto, or wherever he was, and Dryfly running the roads night and day, Shirley was alone. The loneliness closed in on her like a coffin lid. With her family she had been poor, but never lonely. There had been rough moments when she hadn’t known where the next meal was coming from, but there had always been someone to hold onto.

  “I’m gettin’ old,” she thought. “My family’s gone and I’m all alone. Nobody loves me, nobody cares. Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”

  *

  Shadrack Nash was very unhappy. His mother and father nagged him constantly.

  “Go to work,” they’d yell. “If ya don’t go to work, go to school! Ya can’t lay around the house and play the banjo for the rest of your life!”

  Shadrack was getting so annoyed with the constant nagging that he started playing the banjo just to drown out their voices. The banjo playing did not help the situation. The constant plucking of the sonorous strings was eating at the ends of Bob and Elva’s nerves. There was never a moment’s peace in the house.

  Bob Nash had just read the same paragraph of the Family Herald three times. Elva had just added three stitches too many to a sock she was knitting. Shadrack had just played “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” for the twentieth time.