The Winter Helen Dropped By. W. Kinsella P.

field I suggested I pick a bouquet of the rape to present to Loretta Cake when she appeared at the New Oslo Sports Day and Picnic.

      Across the buggy seat, Mama and Daddy exchanged some of the strangest looks I ever saw them exchange in their entire life together, before Daddy explained to me that the word rape had more than one meaning. By the time he finished I wasn’t sure exactly what the other meaning was, except that I had no call to know of it until I was at least twenty-one and living on my own.

      My wanting to take a bouquet of rape to Loretta Cake found its way into letters to Mama and Daddy’s relatives in Montana, South Carolina, and South Dakota, and the ears of the widow, Mrs. Beatrice Ann Stevenson, which was the same as broadcasting the story on CJCA in Edmonton, the radio station most available in the Six Towns Area to those of us who owned radios.

      The story passed through the crowd at the New Oslo Sports Day and Picnic even quicker than pinkeye, and I got my hair rumpled and my cheek tweaked for most of the afternoon and evening, though no one ever mentioned to Loretta Cake, who was there, big as life and twice as ugly, Daddy said, why everyone was rumpling Jamie O’Day’s hair and tweaking Jamie O’Day’s cheek, for a secret is a secret, and Loretta Cake’s secret rape fantasies were safe with everyone in the Six Towns Area.

      Even though the proposition by the Doreen Beach White Sox did not match her secret fantasy, Loretta Cake agreed to accompany the Doreen Beach baseball club and to sit behind the saddle of the handsomest ballplayer, who, she said, bore a startling resemblance to the outlaw Wade Dalton. Just as she was mounting the horse it stepped on the tail of one of her cats, and the screech the cat set off made the handsomest ballplayer’s horse rear and throw Loretta Cake onto her posterior and the handsomest ballplayer onto his neck, both on the ground.

      The handsomest ballplayer, who bore a striking resemblance to the outlaw Wade Dalton, was a Kortgaard, one of Lousy Louise Kortgaard’s big brothers, and he lay unconscious for some time before being carried to the ball field draped over the back of his horse, while Loretta Cake, cuddling one of her cats, sat in the saddle. His teammates propped the unconscious Kortgaard up on a stack of blankets at third base and began the first game of the tournament against an all-Indian team from the reserve at Lac Ste. Anne.

      However, after there was only one out and two runs in, the umpire visited third base, waved his mask and then his cap and then his bare hand in front of the unconscious Kortgaard’s face and, getting no reaction, declared the unconscious Kortgaard ineligible and suggested that someone should send a message to Curly McClintock over at New Oslo to head for Doreen Beach and cart the unconscious Kortgaard to the hospital, forty miles away in Stony Plain. Even with Loretta Cake and her cat in right field, the Doreen Beach White Sox had only eight players and were required to forfeit the game, thus cutting short Loretta Cake’s career as a right fielder.

      On the Saturday before the Sunday when the Fourth of July celebrations were to be held at Doreen Beach, Daddy and I accompanied Curly and Truckbox Al McClintock to Edmonton in Curly’s inherited dump truck in order to pick up the fireworks from Mr. Prosserstein at the Acme Novelty and Carnival Supplies store. The cab of the dump truck smelled of grease and exhaust fumes, and the four of us sat ankle-deep in mufflers, crankshaft parts, and expired plugs, points, and condensers. Curly McClintock, who was slow moving and slow thinking, and who, Daddy said, was built so close to the ground his knuckles dragged, had created a son in his own image, except that Truckbox Al’s facial features resembled his mama, the youngest and most bulldog-faced Gordonjensen girl. My own daddy in his bib-overalls, black mackinaw sweater my mama had knitted him, and tweed cap, certainly appeared large to me, though my daddy preferred burly to describe his physical build.

      The Acme Novelty and Carnival Supplies store was exactly as I had imagined heaven, full to the eyeballs, as Daddy put it, of every geegaw known to man and a few that weren’t. There were fake false teeth that wound up with a key and chattered when set on a table; a whole section with nothing but stuffed toys, another with nothing but box games, and a jewelry section with genuine diamond rings for as little as five dollars each.

      I was allowed to carry one of the two boxes of fireworks to the truck, and while the box was large and had the name ‘Acme Novelty and Carnival Supplies’ stenciled on its side, it didn’t weigh but ten pounds at maximum. I had somehow always thought of fireworks as being heavy.

      At the baseball tournament at Doreen Beach, there were four teams: New Oslo Blue Devils with Truckbox Al McClintock playing right field and wielding a big bat, the all-Indian team from the reserve at Lac Ste. Anne – the Indians from Lac Ste. Anne were always able to raise a team, Daddy said, because they had about two thousand people on the reserve, whereas the communities in the Six Towns Area often had difficulty coming up with nine live, or semi-live, players – the Sangudo Mustangs, and Doreen Beach, who, since they were the host team, had made a monumental effort to come up with a full contingent, which they did, without even having to call on Loretta Cake. The unconscious Kortgaard, having eventually recovered from landing on his neck in Loretta Cake’s front yard, had gotten himself married to the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl, who was built like a brick backhouse and who, when viewed from the side, had a startling resemblance to a pig, a statement made in all kindness, my mama said, because, swear on a stack of Bibles, it was true. Now, the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl was taller than the unconscious Kortgaard whether standing up or lying prone, and probably also stronger, for she had once punched out one of the Dwerynchuk twins, either Wasyl or Bohdan, no one was sure which, after a dance and box social at New Oslo, where raisin wine, dandelion wine, homemade beer, and good old bring-on-blindness, logging-boot-to-the-side-of-the-head home brew had been consumed, a good deal of it by the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl, who, it was said with some admiration, could drink like a man.

      Outside the New Oslo Community Hall, next door to the Christ on the Cross Scandinavian Lutheran Church, the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl had worked through the stages of name calling, shoving, fist-fighting, and genuine altercation, finally kayoing one of the Dwerynchuk twins, either Wasyl or Bohdan, with a punch, Daddy said, like Joe Louis used to knock out Max Schmelling.

      Well, the long and the short of it was that the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl, wife of the unconscious Kortgaard, became permanent right fielder for the Doreen Beach White Sox, and, over a period of two years, they entered seven consecutive sports-day baseball tournaments until one October their pitcher lost his pitching arm in a threshing machine and set the Doreen Beach White Sox to rebuilding.

      My daddy admitted there was a certain reluctance to accept a team permanently composed of men and women, though the precedent had long ago been set, and no one ever complained. Mrs. Bear Lundquist, who was sixty-two years old and though she wasn’t arthritic moved like she was, had played first base for the Sangudo Mustangs for more years than most of the players had been alive, plus Mrs. Bear Lundquist was inclined to bring homemade apple pie to each tournament she played in, enough for both the Sangudo Mustangs and their opponents, and while she was a passable hitter, a lifetime .240 average my daddy said, she was also known to keep her fancy work in the big old trapper glove she wore at first base and was known to knit and purl a few stitches while a pitching change was being made. One time with a runner on first, after fielding a one-hopper, Mrs. Bear Lundquist threw her ball of crocheting yarn to the second baseman instead of the baseball.

      ‘What the heck’s that?’ the second baseman bawled.

      ‘Pink variegated,’ Mrs. Bear Lundquist replied. ‘Ain’t it just the prettiest shade you ever seen?’

      However, the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl was a different matter. ‘Except,’ Daddy said, when him and several friends were gathered out by the corral, ‘that she lacks the one piece of equipment that makes Flop Skaalrud famous, she is a man through and through.’

      ‘A batting average of .302,’ said Earl J. Rasmussen, ‘and she fields third base like a twelve-foot chicken-wire fence.’

      ‘I reckon she can pee against the hen house wall with the best of us,’ said Bandy Wicker, that being the highest praise anyone was ever apt to receive from Bandy Wicker. The others present said they had to agree, and with that acknowledgement the second-oldest Venusberg Yaremko girl was accepted as a regular