The Americans Are Coming Read online

Page 24


  “You’re nothin’ but a rotten bastard!” said Kelly.

  “I ain’t scared o’ no Kelly that ever walked!” said Benny.

  “By Jesus, I came here to dance, not fight, but I’ll beat the shit outta the likes o’ you!” said Kelly.

  “C’mon and fight then! I’d just love wipin’ the street up with you! C’mon! C’MON AND FIGHT!”

  Kelly and Benny threw off their coats and squared off in the street in front of the hall. Someone ran into the hall and yelled, “Fight!” The hall emptied – the fight needed an audience.

  Until the crowd gathered, Kelly and Benny were having a verbal fight with the intention that whoever had the biggest vocabulary of swear words would win. Sticks and stones were discussed, but as long as they were only being discussed, nobody would get hurt. But now, they had an audience and the pressure was on.

  “Hit him, Kelly! Hit the bastard!” somebody yelled.

  “Don’t take that off ’im, Benny! Plant the rotten jeezer!”

  Kelly made a swing for Benny and missed. Benny made a kick for Kelly and also missed. They stood then, eyeing each other, breathing heavily, obviously very nervous about the showdown, wishing it was over.

  Kelly thought that a bluff might discourage his foe, and flew into a spiel of swear words and threats that would make a dead priest turn over in his grave. He touched on the apes and how they were related to the whole of the Crawford family; he spoke of the peculiar smell the Crawfords had picked up doing the only thing that Crawfords were good for – shovelling shit; he recalled that there was never an exceptional mind in the entire history of the Crawford family; he left nothing out that he considered worth a swear word or ten or twelve. At a climactic point of his spiel, for effect, he hit Benny on the shoulder and whooped, saying, “Take that, ya sonuvawhore! Ya think I’m scared o’ you?”

  Benny Crawford hit back, catching Kelly on the arm.

  The two backed off again and yelled a few more obscenities. Kelly made a kick at Benny. Benny took a swing at Kelly. They still remained unscarred.

  The crowd were choosing sides a bit, and Dryfly sensed a potential brawl. He didn’t like what he was seeing and hearing, and he didn’t want to get involved. He looked around for Shad. The crowd was completely encircling the reluctant fighters and Dry saw that Shad was on the other side of the circle, standing, acting cool, with his friends and some fat girl.

  “There never was a Kelly any good!” yelled Benny Crawford.

  “Look who’s talkin’, ya yellow bastard!” yelled Kelly.

  “Hit ’im Kelly!” yelled somebody from the crowd.

  “You stay out of this!” yelled someone else.

  The audience was growing. People were coming from their houses to watch the fun, and the canteens emptied. The circle in front of the hall expanded and the whole street was blocked off to traffic. There was a lineup of thirty cars waiting to get through.

  Benny Crawford’s two sisters showed up and were crying loudly and calling, “Benny, don’t fight! C’mon home, Benny!”

  “Here,” said a man who was standing beside Dryfly, “Hold this! Look after this for me.”

  The man passed Dryfly a bottle of sherry and stepped into the circle. “You lads want to fight?” he asked. “You lads wanna take on a good man?”

  Everyone in the crowd hushed. The fighters shifted their eyes nervously, unable to hold the steady gaze of this new man on the scene.

  “We don’t want no trouble with you,” said Kelly.

  “Well, if you’re gonna ruin this dance fightin’, you’re gonna have to do it over me!”

  “We got nothin’ against you,” said Benny Crawford.

  “I don’t wanna fight with you,” said Kelly. “Me and you was always good friends.”

  “We don’t want no trouble with you, Herman,” said Benny. Herman Burns had now taken over the show. Herman Burns was six-foot-four and muscular. He weighed nearly twice as much as either Kelly or Benny Crawford. He towered over them and everyone else. He was like a snake eyeing two unfortunate mice while a horde of other mice watched on. Everyone knew that Herman Burns was a dangerous man.

  “We don’t want to fight no more,” said Kelly.

  “But I thought you wanted to fight,” urged Herman. “Looked to me that you fellers were lookin’ for a fight! Well, if ya want to fight, C’MON!”

  Herman Burns kicked Benny Crawford as hard as he could, breaking a rib and leaving him bent and moaning on the ground.

  Kelly started crying and begging Herman not to do likewise to him. Herman hit Kelly on the brow, knocking him out cold. The fight was over. Everyone was admiring Herman for his great victory. Herman walked around like a rooster sucking up the sweetness of popularity.

  “No, s’pose he can’t fight none!” someone behind Dryfly said.

  “He beat the both of them, just like that!” said someone else.

  With arms and shoulders back and chest thrust out, Herman Burns walked up to Dryfly. Dryfly handed Herman his wine.

  “Thanks, lad,” said Herman.

  Herman unscrewed the cap and took a drink. He then handed the bottle to Dryfly. “Have a drink,” he said.

  Dry drank from the bottle of sweet sherry.

  “What’s your name?” asked Herman.

  “Dryfly Ramsey.”

  Other boys were gathering around Herman and Dryfly. Herman looked Dryfly up and down, saw the poverty and the fear.

  “You’re a friend,” said Herman, and offering his hand for Dryfly to shake, said, “Put ’er there.”

  Dryfly shook the huge calloused hand. It looked to the other boys that Dryfly and Herman were the best of friends.

  “Better not tangle with Dryfly Ramsey,” thought Peter Bower.

  “Goin’ inside?” asked Herman.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “C’mon, Dryfly. There’s a bunch o’ young women in there, and they’re lookin’ for you.”

  When Dryfly walked past the ticket booth with Herman Burns, no one asked him for a ticket. When he stepped into the hall with Herman’s arm resting on his shoulder, the in crowd did not laugh at him.

  *

  Shirley Ramsey made a fire and put the kettle on. An inch of snow had fallen in the night and half-melted in the morning sun; it dappled the drab November landscape. Dryfly had walked all the way from Blackville during the night and was still sleeping.

  Shirley made a pot of tea, poured some into a mug and a little onto a plate. Into the tea on her plate, she sprinkled some brown sugar, dipped her bread into it and ate. Shirley Ramsey either had bread dipped into pork fat and molasses, or bread dipped into tea and brown sugar, every morning for breakfast. While she ate, she listened to Jack Fenety on the radio. “CFNB – where New Brunswick hears the news,” said Jack, then went on to talk about the political dreams and schemes of Hugh John Flemming and John Diefenbaker. After the news, Jack played “Up on the Housetop,” a Christmas song by Gene Autry.

  “Christmas,” thought Shirley. “’Twould be nice to have some money for Christmas. I wonder if Palidin will come home. I hope the poor little lad is doing well.”

  After smoking a couple of cigarettes, Shirley put on her coat and boots, tied a red scarf over her hair and went for a walk around the gravel pit.

  The gravel pit was getting a little bigger each year. Shirley’s land was nearly all dug up. What land was left around the pit’s periphery was covered with hawthorn and blueberry bushes, and the occasional fir tree. The Ramsey boys had harvested the land completely and the fir trees had sprouted and grown within the last ten years.

  “They’re jist right fer Christmas trees,” thought Shirley. “Dry could cut them and sell them to Rudy Baxter.”

  Rudy Baxter, from Blackville, owned a truck. Every November, Rudy Baxter bought a thousand Christmas trees from the locals and trucked them to Boston.

  “We’d have a little money for Christmas,” thought Shirley.

  “Not much, but a little. Dry could snare a f
ew rabbits, too, and sell them to the Frenchmen downriver.”

  With the post office closing at the end of December, and with the selling of Christmas trees and rabbits, Shirley saw the ends meeting until the end of January, no further. After that, times would be tough.

  Shirley thought of the tough times in the past. She was thinking of the past a lot lately. She recalled that her father, Bub, had raised his family almost entirely on moose, salmon and potatoes. With no wife and nine children ranging from ages one to twelve, Bub had no time for a regular job, so there was no money for clothes. The children were brought up on hand-me-downs. Shirley had never worn a new dress in her life.

  Shirley remembered how Bub would play both mother and father, cook and work the potato field by day, and poach salmon, moose and deer at night.

  “There was always something to eat,” she thought. “We weren’t poor then like I am now, or at least, not as poor as I will be by the time February rolls around.”

  The bleak gravel pit sprawled before her, a cavity forever threatening her land.

  “Another year and that’ll be gone, too,” she thought. “Never thought ya could run out of gravel.”

  Shirley heard the distant whistle of the mail train and went to the house for the mailbag. Then, she walked to the siding house for the exchange. When she returned home, Dryfly was awake and sitting at the kitchen table.

  “I walked all the way home from Blackville last night,” announced Dryfly. “I’m pretty near dead!”

  “What took ya to Blackville?”

  “Ended up at the dance. Saw a fight, too!”

  “Who?”

  “Some Kelly fella and another lad. Herman Burns broke it up.”

  “Herman Burns? He’s related to Lester Burns. Use to hang around Brennen Siding a lot when he was a young lad. Nice boy, too. Him and Junior was good friends. Herman could’ve been a boxer, if he had’ve got the right trainin’.”

  “He’s some kinda big and rugged.”

  “He got that from the Pringles. His mother was a Pringle. All the Pringles were big.”

  “I wouldn’ want to cross ’im!”

  “There’s some Christmas trees around the pit, Dry.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Big enough to cut. You could earn us some money for Christmas.”

  “Is there lotsa them?”

  “Couple o’ hundred, maybe.”

  “That’s a good idea, I’ll go at it first thing Monday.”

  “I’ll get ya some rabbit wire, too. Soon’s the snow gets on to stay, you could snare some rabbits.”

  “Sure. I might even do some trappin’ this year.”

  “No luck in trappin’.”

  “What’s the difference between snarin’ and trappin’?”

  “I don’t know, but everyone always said that trappers never had any luck. I guess God don’t mind if ya snare rabbits, there’s so many of them.”

  “Know what ya kin git me fer Christmas, Mom?”

  “What?”

  “A new set o’ guiddar strings. Them ones on the guiddar are hardly fit to play on. They’re startin’ to unravel.”

  “Maybe. The fire’s gettin’ low, Dry. Would you get me some wood?”

  Dryfly groaned as he stood. Both his feet and legs were sore from the long walk from Blackville the previous night. It had snowed a little bit while they walked, which did nothing to make the trek any easier. Dryfly recalled thinking that he wasn’t going to make it; that he would never do it again, supposing he did hear the best music he had ever heard. At the dance, Dryfly had enjoyed Lyman MacFee and the Cornpoppers very much. Dryfly put on his coat and limped his way to the woodshed.

  “MOM!” he yelled from the shed. “MOM! COME ’ERE QUICK!”

  Shirley heard the excitment in Dry’s voice and ran to see what was the matter.

  When she got to the shed, she found Dryfly standing looking up at the hanging carcass of a deer – gutted, skinned and cleaned.

  “Where’d ya git the deer, Dry?” she asked, eyeing the most meat she’d seen in years.

  “I didn’ get it! It was just here! Don’t know where it came from!”

  “He was poachin’ last night,” thought Shirley.

  “Nutbeam did it,” thought Dryfly.

  sixteen

  Shadrack and Dryfly were making frequent visits to one of the cabins owned by the members of the Cabbage Island Salmon Club. A dozen forty-ounce bottles of liquor had been left in the cabin in September, and by Christmas, due to Shadrack and Dryfly’s little parties, only three were left. The hearth of the stone fireplace was piled up with Parody and cigarette butts and ashes; the sofa cushions were strewn about; the hardwood floors were tracked up with sand and leaves and pine-tree needles, courtesy of rubber boots and gumshoes.

  “They got lotsa money,” said Shadrack, “they’ll never miss the stuff.”

  “Maybe we should move to the other camp,” said Dryfly. “God knows what’s in the other ones!”

  “I checked them all out,” said Shad. “All locked.”

  “Shit’s gonna hit the fan when them lads come back and find all their liquor and cigars gone.”

  “They won’t even remember how much they left.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  It was the twenty-fourth of December, and Shad and Dry were having a few drinks to help them get into the spirit of Christmas. Outside the frosty windows that looked down over the frozen Dungarvon River, the temperature was about five below zero; inside, it could have been colder, they weren’t sure. They didn’t plan to stay long, anyway. “Jist enough to get feelin’ good,” was their plan.

  “I hope I get them jetboots for Christmas,” said Shadrack. “I’d like to have a trucker’s wallet, too.”

  “Did you pass in school?”

  “Jist failed French and not by much.”

  “You’ll get the boots.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ya like goin’ to school, Shad?”

  “Not too bad, once ya get used to it. Lotsa girls.”

  “Yeah. No good for me though. I don’t feel like running ’round on Lillian.”

  “You’re crazy, Dry. I bet she hardly remembers who you are. You’ll be lucky to ever see her agin.”

  Dryfly shrugged at the possibility. “Those Blackville women wouldn’ go out with me anyway,” he thought. He didn’t realize it, but he was beginning to sound like Nutbeam.

  “You ever think about going back to school, Dry?”

  “I’m gettin’ too old. I’m pretty near sixteen.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’d be in the same grade with all them little kids. I wouldn’ look none too stupid, would I! Me, a big lad o’ sixteen, settin’ in school with a bunch o’ little kids!”

  “Maybe you could learn at home and ketch up.”

  “How would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Find out.”

  “Ya think Nutbeam’s home yet?”

  “He might be. The train should’ve come by now.”

  “Let’s go back and check him out.”

  *

  Nutbeam sold six hundred dollars worth of fox, bobcat, mink, weasel and beaver pelts to his Jewish buyer in Newcastle and went shopping. He bought himself a complete set of clothing which included Stanfield’s underwear, pants, shirt, woollen socks, another parka and two pairs of boots. He also bought a trucker’s wallet, a pipe and tobacco, a half gallon of Lamb’s rum, a turkey and six yards of linen, black with red roses on it. Needless to say, when he left the train to make his way to Todder Brook, he was more than just a little burdened. The foot of snow on the ground didn’t make the walking any easier, and although it was zero degrees out, Nutbeam was sweating and panting by the time he reached his camp.

  He placed everything on the table and proceeded to build a fire in the stove. He made a pot of tea, poured himself a mug full, spiked it with an ounce or so of rum, then sat to contemplate his situation.

  “If the boys show up soon, the
better the plan will work,” he thought. “If they don’t show up, I’ll have to play Santa Claus.”

  From his pocket, Nutbeam removed the three hundred and fifty dollars left over from his shopping spree. He went to his cot, reached underneath and removed a shoe box. He removed the top and added the three hundred and fifty dollars, adding considerably to the bills already in the box.

  “One day I’ll get Dryfly to count it for me,” he thought. “Another day, me and Dry will go to Fredericton and visit that Graig Allen fella; see how much he’s askin’ for the old farm. Old Doctor MacDowell only bought the shore. There must be a couple o’ hundred acres of woodland and pasture left, maybe more. I’ll build a house on the old foundation and live normal. No more hiding like a . . . a bear.”

  He put the shoe box back in its hiding place, added a bit more courage – rum – to his tea and sat once again.

  “Let me see,” he thought, “ . . . deer, a bunch of partridge, a can o’ tobacco, and this.” He slapped the turkey.

  He rubbed his fingers across the linen with the roses on it. “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas, little lady!” he said. Then, he heard the crunching of approaching footsteps in the snow outside.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  Nutbeam went to the door, unlatched it and welcomed the boys.

  “Come in! Come in!” he said.

  “G’day, Nutbeam.”

  “G’day, g’day.”

  “How’s she goin’, boys?”

  “We were here earlier,” said Shad. “You weren’t home.”

  “Went to Newcastle. Sold me furs.”

  “Get a good price?”

  “Real good.”

  “See ya got a turkey,” said Dry.

  “You boys want a drink?” asked Nutbeam.

  “Sure.”

  “Might have a small one.”

  Nutbeam poured each of the boys a drink and touched up his own. It was evident by the grin on his face that he was in a jolly mood.

  “That turkey ain’t all I bought today,” said Nutbeam, raising his tin mug as if to toast the turkey.

  The boys waited.

  “Wanna know what else I bought, boys?”

  “Yeah.”