The Winter Helen Dropped By. W. Kinsella P.

which old timers still argue about, some insisting it took place the summer of ’45, others willing to bet their life savings that it was the summer of ’46. Events I want to tell you about occurred during what became known outside my family as the summer Jamie O’Day damn near drowned, and inside my family as the summer Jamie damn near drowned, though the summer I damn near drowned was actually a spring, so much so that there were little pieces of ice in the water I damn near drowned in, and it was without question the tail end of a spring thaw that all but did me in.

      In our family, the summer Jamie damn near drowned was preceded by the winter Helen dropped by, which was preceded by the summer of the reconstituted wedding, preceded by Rosemary’s winter.

      It will also be helpful to know about Abigail Uppington, the pig who lived in our kitchen; and about Matilda Torgeson being named in honor of a deceased pig (not Abigail Uppington); and about the infamous Flop Skaalrud’s blatant male aura; as well as Earl J. Rasmussen’s courting of the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, the result of that courtship being the reconstituted wedding, the naming of Lousy Louise Kortgaard, and probably twenty or a dozen other events.

      I’m just gonna keep my eyes open, watch, and see if all these stories are, like Daddy says, about sex or death, or maybe both at the same time.

      It was actually the summer after the winter Helen dropped by that I truly began to measure the events of my life by seasons, in spite of regularly reading the three-week-old editions of the Toronto Star Weekly that were supposed to keep me in touch with reality.

      For me, that summer became the summer White Chaps murdered his wife, just as another winter, not the winter Helen dropped by, was remembered for the time when Rosemary, my almost sister, touched my hand.

      None of us had ever seen Helen before the winter when she dropped by. ‘None of us’ being the O’Days: me, my father John Martin Duffy O’Day, and my mother Olivia. We lived in a big old house at the end of a trail that was sometimes just a path but was grandly known as Nine Pin Road, a name that didn’t have the least bit to do with bowling. It got named long before Mama and Daddy moved there to hide from the Great Depression, named by a man who, Daddy said, had left the e off of Pine when he wrote to his sister in Norway, so that Nine Pine Road ever after was officially known as Nine Pin Road, even though from our south window you could see a row of nine pines loping across the pasture.

      My parents both hailed from South Carolina, though they met in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore, which my daddy says has an array of presidents’ faces carved on it. It is in South Dakota, a considerable distance from South Carolina. Daddy was living in South Dakota, a gandy dancer on the railway, Daddy said he was, though he played baseball on the weekends, and when Mama’s train slipped off the track, coming to rest in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore, Daddy was on the repair crew sent to put the train back on the track. And, as Daddy says, the rest is more or less history.

      Daddy got trapped twice, was how come a boy from South Carolina came to be living in Alberta, Canada; three times if you count marriage as a trap, which my daddy didn’t, but which his friends, Earl J. Rasmussen, who lived alone in the hills with about six hundred sheep, and Flop Skaalrud, and Bandy Wicker, the father of my rabbit-snaring buddy Floyd Wicker, and Wasyl Lakusta, who had a good-hearted wife and was one of the Lakustas by the lake, though the lake had been dried up for many a year, did. Earl J. Rasmussen, who was single, had spent the better part of his life courting the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, trying to get trapped, and letting her know that he was hers for the trapping.

      The widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, was the poet-in-residence of the Six Towns Area, and could snap off a few lines of Lord Byron or Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman just in your run-of-the-mill conversation, without being asked to emote or anything of that nature, though Daddy often remarked that it was a shame about Walt Whitman, but that he guessed a few crimes against nature didn’t detract from the fact Walt Whitman was a poet who could touch the heart.

      The infamous Flop Skaalrud, as Daddy often remarked, would court anything that twitched. Daddy worded his remarks that way when there were ladies present, but out in the corral he spoke somewhat more directly, as did the women when they were alone in the kitchen of our big old house at the end of Nine Pin Road and didn’t know I was scrunched up in my favorite listening position, squeezed between the cook stove and the wood box.

      What the women referred to most often when they thought they were alone was the infamous Flop Skaalrud’s blatant male aura, that term being the invention of the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, the poet-in-residence, though in reality Mrs. Bear Lundquist, who was sixty-two years old and, though she wasn’t arthritic moved like she was, was the only published poet in the Six Towns, having had a sixteen-line sonnet published in the Winnipeg Free Press and Prairie Farmer. When someone had the indelicacy to mention it, Mrs. Bear Lundquist said she knew full well that a sonnet should have only fourteen lines, but she just couldn’t bring herself to cut out that extra rhyming couplet that had occurred to her at the last moment.

      The women seemed to be divided into two camps, those who had caught a glimpse (or in one or two cases somewhat more than a glimpse) of the infamous Flop Skaalrud’s blatant male aura, and those to whom the blatant male aura was simply the rumor. It wasn’t seemly for any of the married ladies to admit to more than the rumor, so they had to rely on the memory and experience of the single ladies, who were few and far between, or the memory and experience of some married ladies who when single had twitched sufficiently to attract the attention of the infamous Flop Skaalrud, which my daddy said required a twitch that would hardly be noticeable to the outside world.

      The first time Daddy got trapped, assuming you don’t count marriage as a trap, and since Daddy didn’t, I won’t, was when the barnstorming baseball team he was playing for went more or less bankrupt in Edmonton, Alberta. Daddy, who always was a restless sort, had hooked up with the team when they passed through Butte, Montana, which was where Mama had been heading when her train drifted off the track in the very shadow of Mt. Rushmore, when Daddy had been on the repair crew sent to put the train back on the track.

      Daddy had accompanied Mama on the rest of her train trip to Butte, Montana, where her daddy, who was a mining engineer who had worked in South Africa, was settling in to what was supposed to be a permanent job at a copper mine. Daddy settled down in Butte, Montana, and apprenticed himself to learn how to build fine houses, which he did, for a time, until a traveling baseball team passed through in desperate need of a quality third baseman. This was too much for daddy’s restless heart, so he joined them and, Mama says, sent money home regular as clockwork until the team, due to a misunderstanding, was scheduled to play a girls’ softball team in Edmonton instead of the general high-quality semi-professional baseball teams they usually encountered.

      Rather than honor his contract, even if it was a misunderstanding, the owner of the barnstorming baseball team departed for parts unknown, leaving his players to fend for themselves. Daddy was better than average at fending for himself so rather than return to Butte, Montana, which Daddy described kindly as a boil on the posterior of North America, he hired himself out to build fine houses in Edmonton and shortly was able to send for Mama to join him.

      Mama and Daddy, to use their own word, thrived in Edmonton, Alberta, and Mama went to work for the Ramsay Department Store in their jewelry department and wore a black dress with a white collar, and Daddy built fine houses, and pretty soon they were able to buy a little house of their own, and they discussed having a family, and I became a glint not only in my daddy’s eye but in Mama’s as well.

      There is no reason to believe that Mama and Daddy wouldn’t have continued to thrive, except that Daddy got trapped in Edmonton a second time – by the Great Depression.

      All of a sudden there were no fine houses to build, and one of the first things folks stopped buying when they discovered that, like everyone else in North America, they were more or less insolvent, was jewelry. Daddy got laid off at his job, and Mama got laid off at her job, and the only things they owned were most of a house and some furniture. Daddy felt it would be immoral to accept Relief, which later came to be known as Welfare, and later still as Social Assistance. Daddy said in his later years that if Relief had been called Social Assistance in the 1930s he might have accepted