As the old folks would say Page 9

  I picked up my briefcase and walked as slowly as I could down the steps and along the street without appearing to attract attention, keeping my head a little to the side, to catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, but still her form did not materialize. I did not hear the lectures in class that day, and paid no attention to the debates in the social room.

  I was too distracted.

  * * * *

  That evening I anxiously turned the corner toward my boarding house, as I had done prior to our meeting the day before, full of expectancy for a second wonderful meeting, full of thoughts and plans for another, different conversation, another sharing of a moment, but she was not there.

  I kept watching for her day after day, but in vain.

  The warm, sunny days of September and early October became bleak and dull as the cold, biting rain of November flooded the streets and howling fall winds stripped the trees of their leaves—and still she did not appear.

  The street became progressively more depressing and dismal.

  One morning the wicker chair was gone, and I became aware that afternoon that I had not seen the boxer dog in some time. I would still stand on the veranda every morning, even in the cold and the wet and the rain, just for a moment, waiting, hoping for one more chance encounter, but it never happened.

  I still walked the length of the street to the bus stop, but I walked more slowly, aware each day that I was walking farther and farther from that beautiful moment of yesterday. On the way back in the evenings I would always look toward the veranda, but my hope of seeing her diminished with each passing day.

  * * * *

  Snow came early in December, and I went home for Christmas, but it was quiet and uneventful. There were parties and dances everywhere, and lots of pretty Conception Bay girls in flare-tailed dresses and high-heeled shoes, and we played a lot of hockey on Blackduck Pond, but, as the old people say, my heart just wasn’t in it.

  I kept seeing auburn hair swirling in the autumn breeze, and hearing laughter from a September veranda steps.

  I went back to university after Christmas, but things had changed next door. A new Chevrolet was parked by the curb, a lazy Irish setter slept in a makeshift house on the veranda, and two young teenage girls would bolt down the veranda steps every morning on the way to school, always in excited conversation with one another.

  * * * *

  I had never mentioned any of it to my old cousin, but I was desperate for some information, any information, and I had to approach her with it now. I broached the girl’s leaving as disinterestedly as I could to the old woman, for fear of revealing too much of my own emotional involvement, but I need not have worried. Her response was vague, as she shook her head sadly.

  “’Twas terrible what was going on there, you know. Such a lovely young girl. Terrible, terrible. He wasn’t the real father, you know. Her real father died years ago. Nobody knows where she went . . .”

  Then she lapsed into silence. It was the way the people of the older generation had when they simply didn’t want to talk about something, when they felt you had to be protected from the harshness of what they had to tell you, when they knew that you were not strong enough to bear what needed to be told. She never told me anything else, and I didn’t press her. I finished my meal and went to my room, where I could look through my window at that spot on the veranda.

  I cursed myself for being so stupid . . . and so young.

  * * * *

  A lot of years have passed since then, and some very nice women have been in and out of my life. One has stayed with me and we have lovely children.

  I had occasion to drive through that part of town one day last year, and I found myself stopping by my old boarding house and looking at the veranda of the house next door, which really hasn’t changed in spite of repairs and new paint and new siding and everything that goes with making an old house modern.

  The old couple I stayed with have long since gone to their heavenly reward. Perhaps the girl with the auburn hair who laughed just once is with them.

  MRS. MAGINITY’S SLAPPER

  Mrs. Maginity’s slapper had disappeared. Right out of the classroom, the classroom she had ruled with an iron hand for twenty years.

  On a bright, sunny morning in May it disappeared. And not simply disappeared, but stolen. In those days things only “disappeared” when they were taken by the fairies, those little imps of mischief, who were everywhere in the outport Newfoundland world, and who would take things one minute and bring them back the next, just for the fun of it. Like the time Uncle Jim Toomey laid down his splitting knife on the bait bucket and went to reach for it and it was gone. And after he’d cursed and swore and danced a bit right there on the stagehead, he looked and there it was, right where he had left it.

  It wasn’t like that with the slapper.

  The slapper was never seen in Tickles from that day to this, so it must have been stolen. The slapper was on the desk at 11:25 on the thirteenth day of May and was absent at 11:32 on the same day, when Mrs. Maginity went to reach for it to punish big, stund Eddie McClaren for stealing Carrie Ransom’s figgy bun, which she still hadn’t eaten for recess.

  Nobody had actually seen Eddie anywhere near the figgy bun, but since Eddie was the only one who had an established reputation for stealing bread and molasses and raisin buns and anything that sent out a tempting, mouth-watering Newfoundland aroma, he was the most logical suspect. Then where he didn’t wash as often as Carrie Ransom liked—being poor and all . . .

  However, Mrs. Maginity never got a chance to administer the standard ten on each hand. When she reached for the slapper, it simply wasn’t there. Both the bun and the strapper had disappeared, and were never seen since.

  And it wasn’t the fairies. The fairies always brought things back. And Mrs. Maginity’s strapper never came back.

  Well, you can imagine the effect this had on Mrs. Maginity. What was she to do now that the very foundation of learning in her school was missing, the keystone upon which the whole edifice of her profession was built? How would the children ever learn to spell words like “ichthyology” and “chthonic”? What reason would they have to memorize those great long answers in their catechism, like “How do you know there is such as state or place as Purgatory,” a veritable half-page of daunting perplexity? How would she ever get them to do those great unnecessary columns of arithmetic sums in the back of the book if the slapper wasn’t in plain view on the desk, ready to be used as motivation at a moment’s notice?

  And this was no ordinary slapper.

  Certainly not in the same class as those cheap wooden slappers that any Tom, Dick, or Harry—or Jane—of a teacher could procure by lopping off a branch of birch in the nearest grove. This was a strap of the finest leather—a razor strap, in fact—one that had been in the Maginity family for generations, a true family heirloom, having been stolen from a barber in Waterford and brought to Tickles by the first Maginity to come to Newfoundland, where it was used to hone the straight razors of Maginity men preparatory to their daily shaving ordeal.

  Of course, the appearance of safety razors on the merchant’s shelves in Tickles, and the introduction of the first safety razors into the Maginity household, changed all that, and the old-fashioned razors were put out of business. The razor strap should have been put out of business, too, and consigned to its own honorary nail in the cellar, except that Mildred O’Mullins married Jack Maginity, and became Mildred Maginity, wife of Jack Maginity and co-owner of the razor strap, at a time in her teaching career when her loss of youthful energy and vigour in the classroom were in desperate need of some daily support to prop up her weakening sense of control.

  In this way the strap made its transition from home to school, ceasing to become a honer of razors and becoming a slapper of palms, its benefits to the children becoming more and more apparent with
each passing day. Even a name change was effected, the instrument in question being referred to now as a “slapper” instead of a “razor strap” in recognition of its more advanced educational role.

  In the strong grip of Mrs. Maginity, the slapper became the prime motivator of learning for the thirty-nine students in her charge. This was deplorably necessary, of course, given the fact that many students in those days—including Mrs. Maginity’s—had to walk long distances to get to school and would frequently arrive cold and wet—and sometimes hungry—and would need some form of encouragement to learn other than the sole, lonely globe on the table in the corner of the room. Then the intricacies of thirteen times tables had to be mastered, all those names of countries and capitals and the rivers that ran through them had to be learned off . . .

  So there it was, prominently displayed on the corner of the desk, as slappers were displayed on school desks throughout the Dominion in those days, easily accessible to be readily brandished, just like the old days of High Noon in the Old West, when to be quick on the draw . . . well, you get the point.

  And Mrs. Maginity’s slapper was prominently displayed.

  Well, it was, until 11:25 on the thirteenth day of May, 1947, and now Mrs. Maginity, you may say, was disarmed, weaponless in the face of thirty-nine students who came to school and sat down and worked and trembled every time she sneezed or coughed. Twenty years of doling out ten or fifteen—sometimes twenty or thirty—on each hand eliminated in one seven-minute period; twenty years of teaching glory consigned to oblivion in the wink of an eye; twenty years of undisputed success in the classroom—there was never a failure in grades nine, ten, or eleven for all that period of time—ended.

  Because the slapper was gone.

  If education was continue in Tickles it had to be found, and the thief uncovered. If the thief was to be punished for stealing the figgy bun, a heinous enough crime in itself, it had to be found. So Mrs. Maginity set out immediately to find it—at 11:33, to be precise—drawing upon all the tactics she had mastered over the years in the outwitting of students to achieve her objective.

  She roved from desk to desk, towering over the smaller students, glaring directly into their panic-stricken faces, loudly demanding what part they played in the slapper’s disappearance, but there were no fluttering of eyelids or nervous swallowing or trembling of knees or any such indications of guilt to betray the student criminal.

  She assumed a frightening air of the hereafter, appealing to the stern morality of the day, intoning her way sorrowfully through the students like a banker in full sail before an autumn swell.

  “. . . Even if it’s your older brother or sister, you have to tell, because this is a sin against the seventh commandment, meriting eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, . . . even if it’s your older brother or sister . . .” she thundered.

  But family ties were stronger even than the threatened torments of the eternal underworld, and she achieved nothing. Nobody came forward to claim their reward.

  She gave out little slips of paper and ordered the students to write “yes” or “no”—to indicate their respective innocence or guilt—but when the slips of paper were collected, shrewdly matched to the order of the seating plan in the classroom, there was not one “yes” to draw down the fury of her anger or ease her anxious mind.

  She would have deprived the entire class of recess and forbidden them to eat their molasses bread and cocomalt, except that the last time she exercised her authority in this extreme manner the entire coterie of mothers from Tickles descended upon the school like a horde of cannibalistic aliens, and she was only saved from a modern-day shredding by the timely intervention of Fr. O’Brien, the congenial parish priest.

  Undaunted, she assigned work and sent for the outport constable, who happened to be in Tickles that very morning investigating a similar case of theft, the disappearance of some lobsters from Harry Grogan’s lobster pots. The outport constable hurried to the school as fast as he could, fully aware that tardiness on his part in not finding the strap could mean the imminent collapse of the educational system as he knew it. Then with CHE exams just around the corner . . .

  He railed as he walked, threatening Salmonier Line and Her Majesty’s Penitentiary with a gusto that belied his years, but to no avail. He even produced a pair of rusty handcuffs, which he dangled menacingly in front of little Jimmy Carey’s horror-stricken face.

  Jimmy Carey, a nervous boy by nature and convulsed into terror at the thought of spending the rest of his life in the old abandoned jail room under the parish hall, even though he was the last person you’d suspect of stealing anything, howled hysterically in response. The boys in the back couldn’t suppress their titters, Mrs. Maginity had to intervene to restore respect for that bastion of Newfoundland outport law, and Const. McMurtle was forced to make a rather humbling exit, muttering something about bringing back the gallows to the head of the harbour and hanging everyone in the class over ten years old.

  Since the outport constable did not effect the immediate solution of the crime, Mrs. Maginity then sent for Fr. O’Brien, who, when informed by an excited Carrie Ransom that Mrs. Maginity wanted him “right away,” immediately tautened. He was not a man for physical confrontation, and the thought of breaking up yet another fight between the boys from the Cove and the boys from the Point unnerved him to no end. He relaxed, however, upon being informed of the true nature of the request, secretly delighted that the source of so many complaints against the school was so unexpectedly and providentially removed. He was becoming roundly tired of the constant trade of mothers to his back door complaining about the reddened hands of their children.

  Still, congenial though he was, Fr. O’Brien was still aware that the authority of his position demanded that he enter the classroom with as much aura of the Almighty surrounding him as possible, especially where it was Mrs. Maginity’s classroom. His presence was certain to frighten the truth out of the criminal or criminals responsible and resolve the disappearance in a speedy and efficient manner.

  The best he could muster, however, was a sombre expression, totally out of character, which he attempted to maintain while he made a passionate appeal to the student body for the slapper’s return. He made frequent reference to the seventh commandment, feeling somewhat hypocritical that he was using this laudable Christian injunction to condemn an action for which he had been secretly praying since his arrival in Tickles.

  Fr. O’Brien delivered as good a performance as the authority and holiness of his position—and the presence of Mrs. Maginity—would allow. However, except for Charlie Druken becoming totally overcome by guilt and confessing to having eaten all of the nun’s homemade fudge that previous fall when he was in Tarry Harbour—it was left out on the convent step to cool before the school concert—nothing of a significant nature was achieved.

  This time the boys in the back burst out laughing, and Mrs. Maginity, chagrined at this display of misbehaviour in front of the priest, launched into her own tirade on obedience to the seventh commandment, ending with a very loud quotation from the old catechism, that those who steal have to return the stolen goods “as soon as possible and as far as they are able, otherwise the sin will not be forgiven them.”

  Fr. O’Brien, being the newer breed of priest, took advantage of this diversion to glance hurriedly at his watch while murmuring something about an immediate “sick call” in Rancid Bight, wanting at that point to exit the classroom as quickly as possible and escape the wrath of Mrs. Maginity’s aging theology.

  However, Mrs. Maginity, in an absolute state of shock that summoning the authority of the Church had not been as effective as she had hoped in the recovery of her slapper, had placed her towering frame firmly between Fr. O’Brien and the door, in effect blocking the priest’s escape.

  “Father, we have to find the slapper. How will the children study? What reason will they have to do thei
r homework?”

  Not wanting to be trapped and coerced into another, perhaps more passionate appeal to the students, Fr. O’Brien chose to be consoling, though the attempt at consolation, at least to some of the older students, seemed a trifle shallow.

  “You’ll find your strap, Mrs. Maginity. I know you will. Say a prayer to good St. Anthony and he’ll find it for you.”

  With this age-old advice, Fr. O’Brien took steps to bring his role in the investigation to a close, taking advantage of his priestly authority to ease around Mrs. Maginity and escape to the safety of his car. Once inside, he glanced toward the back seat to make sure he had his new mail-order fishing rod, then headed in the direction of the Gullies, inwardly thankful that his vow of celibacy protected him from falling into the hands of the Mrs. Maginitys of this world, and hoping that his new fishing rod would be more successful this time against the evasive tactics of the trout of Powery’s Pond.

  Mrs. Maginity sat behind her desk, eying the students, more exasperated than ever, in a state of total dejection that not even the intervention of the parish priest had brought her one inch closer to the recovery of her beloved slapper. Then, if it were not found, how was she to replace it? Such a valuable heirloom, such an indispensable addition to the classroom.

  She thought of paying a visit to the blacksmith in the hill—there were always nice broad bits of discarded horse’s harness lying about Dick Cronin’s forge—but the memory of Tommy Cronin wringing his hands in pain immediately put that thought out of her mind.

  Tommy winced for a week from the thirty on each hand that she had ladled out for his accidentally spilling his ink bottle over his exercise book, and Dick Cronin, respectful and supportive though he was of schools and education in the parish generally, had let it be known to all and sundry that he would brand her with a red-hot horseshoe if she came anywhere near his presence, in retaliation for what he considered an undeserved and unnecessary drubbing. I mean, two or three slaps on each hand for anything was fine . . .