By Margie Carmichael
In 2006, Carmichael, an Atlantic Canadian author, singer and songwriter, published a collection of short stories, And My Name Is… Stories From the Quilt. For more information: www.acornpresscanada.com.
IT might have been the Maritime Electric man driving up George’s lane that blustery February day in 1972, a politician sniffing for votes, someone dropping by for a visit or a bill collector. But power to the house had been cut off a week earlier, no election loomed, everyone knew the family was leaving, and nothing remained to repossess.
The white half-ton truck stopped skidding and parked in the yard. Except for a bold, black “Department of Health” on the passenger door, it might have turned invisible in the blowing snow.
A man got out, a bulky lump under his coat. Leaving the truck idling, he walked briskly to the once-white farmhouse’s front door. Tall, proud linden trees creaked and moaned as if to say, “Nobody’s home, go away!” They shook their branches in agitation, dropping chunks of ice and snow onto the man.
From inside his coat, the man hefted a bucket of paint and a wide brush. It felt too cold for painting, but he had a job to do. He’d act quickly and depart. Shielding his face with a coatsleeve, he began his artistry.
Across the road, a neighbor watched from a kitchen window as the man applied fresh red paint to the front door. It might have been a benediction had the intruder painted a cross. Tears blurred the neighbor’s vision as a big, red “X” spread its arms and legs across the door. A judgment then. A sign for all to see.
For years, Phillip, the neighbor, had witnessed the demise over there, marked by slow deterioration of the farm, the house and its owner, a man who shared the same grandfather. Phillip had done what he could to help his cousin’s family, be it with buckets of milk, a season’s hay, small loans or rides to town.
On that day, cousin George and his wife Elizabeth had gone into town to sign over their land before returning to a condemned house prior to moving away the next day.
The younger children would see the “X” first as they stepped off the school bus. Phillip’s heart ached for them. The sting of shame on their cheeks would glow red, like the paint on the door.
Soon they’d ride a different bus to another school and, God willing, a better life. Phillip knew he’d miss them. They’d grown up with his own kids. For years, the combined gang rode bikes, picked strawberries or potatoes, went Halloweening, swam in the lake, attended catechism and school, scared the bejeepers out of each other with ghost stories in the barn loft, played ball in the pastures, and waged snowball fights with the road as a battlefield and the ditches as trenches.
Most of their real fights came from ball-games. They’d rise early and compete tooth-and-nail, breaking at noon to eat while shouting across the road at each other: “I’m never playing with youse again!” Yet they’d resume after supper until dark.
Fast forgotten, those battles left no scars, but poverty did, marking the children as surely as the red “X” did their front door. Poverty stains, like pentox, sink in deeply.
Phillip and his cousin shared a blood-bond as links in a four-generation chain of hard-working farmers. George had inherited weak lungs and a struggling older farm. With a dozen children, the burdens turned heavy. Phillip and his brood had better luck with their farm, but George never resented that.
In December 1971, doctors had diagnosed George with terminal cancer. Then the lending vultures circled the condemned man, called in his loans and took the farm.
“Put in a bid, Phillip,” George had urged that Christmas. “Don’t let it leave the family. You need more land.”
“Not this way,” Phillip said, but he’d relented. George and Elizabeth were grateful.
Tears welled again as Phillip recalled a young Elizabeth who’d nearly become a nun. As the entire parish prayed for her at the convent school, George had plotted to win her heart. After studying for a year, she chose to marry George, not God. Even now, when losing her home and soon her husband, she held faith in her family, turning her still-beautiful face toward the years still ahead.
Before leaving the next day, George asked Phillip for a final favor. “Once the weather’s fit, please do something with the house. We don’t want anybody traipsing through ‘er.
Barely two days later, someone sneaked into the house to nose around, probably a person who’d never before darkened the door and might tremble in excitement when telling others how disgusting the place looked. Such people might have attended public hangings, lugging smug-salad sandwiches and jamjars of guilt-free kool-aid. Perhaps they’d stand first-in-line at George’s wake.
Within a week, Phillip summoned the fire department to burn down the house. “Save the trees, boys!” he shouted against crackling flames. He hoped that someday one of George and Elizabeth’s children might build a home under those trees.
Obediently, the firemen hosed the trees and incinerated the house. The lindens wept for days.
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Lending vultures demand payment.
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