 |
 |
||||
 |
|||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
|
|
10 | (continued) Over these months I had cultivated a few friendships in the village, the most rewarding being with the vivacious young woman who ran—was—the tiny post office, situated in the enclosed front porch of her house. She was also married and not at all my type, but she was friendly and welcoming beyond all professional obligations. She had two daughters, five and eight at the time, who were a delight to be around when they were in the proper frame of mind, which seemed to be about half the time—not a bad average, I suppose. Being a typically streetwise mother, she watched me in their presence with hawklike attention for several days, lest I harbored any untoward desires for little girls. In time, she was satisfied that my intentions were honourable, and she relaxed her vigilance. In a world such as this, I can’t blame her. The conversations I had with her were trivial but sincere. She was the Official Village Gossip, a fact she laughingly denied, knew everything about everybody, and had a cordial dislike of Boss, which was reciprocated in full. The most attractive thing about her was the simple fact that she found nothing at all strange in my present style of life. I got some sense of just how tolerant she really was when a customer came in to pick up his mail, wearing a good-sized hunting knife, in plain view, strapped to the belt of his jeans. He was tall, slim and hard-looking, and had never abandoned the long ponytail he had probably worn since the 1960s. He had a ready smile and a greeting for her, which she returned as cheerily as ever. I said nothing until he had gone, when I turned to her and remarked, “That’s the only man I’ve ever seen who walks around with a knife on his belt.” She smiled knowingly and replied, without a hint of disapproval, “Oh he’s the ex-president of the ———— Motorcycle Club.” I spent many hours in that little office, out of sheer loneliness, and a craving for good company, of which she seemed to have a limitless supply. We talked about her job, which she feared would soon end, with the closure of the office; about her children; about the people of the village, especially the two elderly brothers on whose land I was squatting. She couldn’t see why either of them should be upset at my presence. In truth, I had no trouble understanding the farmers’ point of view. The imposition I was committing seemed minor to me, but it was easy to see why they felt otherwise. The whole situation would have appeared entirely different if the tent had been on Crown Land and completely secluded. Under conditions like those, especially farther north, I would have aroused little if any suspicion. In sparsely-populated country, where both Crown Land and camping are more common, even wintering-over could easily be passed off as an experiment, a training exercise, a test of equipment and technique, the fulfillment of a life-long dream, no questions asked. But as close to the city as I was, people simply don’t think that way. For them, a way of life has to be justified by some linkage to capital investment, or at least a paying job. Otherwise it appears perfectly senseless, and unknown individuals who take it upon themselves to lead senseless lives on other people’s property are not quite normal, and are not to be trusted. Hard to refute that judgement. So close to the city, anyway.
Another memorable soul, far more pleasant, whom I got to know fairly well, was Boss’s next-door neighbor to the east, Dan. I made a fundamental error in judgment when I met him, though he never took offence at it—in fact I think he rather liked the mystery it created. I assumed that what I heard as an Irish brogue was in fact a Newfoundland accent, and I regarded him henceforth as a Newfie. I should have noticed that his joviality was not a fifth of what one would expect from a genuine Newf. He never told me that my first guess was correct—I had to hear the Truth from the Crank: in one of the latter’s many tirades about whatever pissed him off, he blurted out that the best thing Dan could do was to go back to Ireland, where he came from. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
