Buyers and Sellers in Temples

Monday, 4 March 2013
Buyers and Sellers in Temples
Buyers and Sellers in Temples
       by Lucy Goldie
              buyers and sellers
              wonderful fellers
              once you get used to their style
              will they not rob you
              but only hobnob you
              shake you down once in a while
              if you make your fortune
              be sure that you commune
              with those of us lacking in guile
              we'll happ'ly support you
              won't slyly report you
              and praise you with authentic smile
Jordan almost capsizes the table as he swings by with his sari floating around him. Gardaj looks up, hating the retreating back, snarling. He is one of his own lions. A single lion lies on its side. He inspects it for damage, quickly lifting it, catching it almost before it lands on the felt. In his nervousness or anger other animals jostle and rattle. He calms himself enough to lift each one in turn and look with more care now for chips and damage. No one is in the temple. Too early. The tourists begin to arrive when the prayers have long been said and their food has been had. He rubs each of his little ones with a corner of sheep's wool that he keeps in a leather wallet along with bits of rag and his Sony Walkman. He got the Walkman for Christmas last year but has used it only once or twice. He doesn't go jogging so he has no real need of it. He got an unexpected royalty check and his wife didn't know about it and so he spent part of it on this radio and the rest on a pair of orthopedic shoes that he keeps in his locker at the temple where his wife won't see them. She is too happy when he buys things. She complains that he should spend some of his earnings on himself and not just save for mortgage payments. Who cares if the house is paid off earlier is her view of financial management.
       Adam plies around the bend by Fiora's and stops. She greets him at the door with a smile and a quick look around. Once the door is shut he strikes his forehead and goes out again, keeping in the shadows of the Neumony's. His boat is already floating away in the quick current. But the eddy will likely bring it back, though he wonders how far around the bend the eddy goes before it turns. If it is more than one point it will sail past the Deacon's and then there will be hell to pay because that man would surely take whatever he wanted. So, in he goes. When he gets to the boat he is careful not to upset it. It would be all too easy. The cargo is piled a bit high still. After a few more stops it would be less of a problem. He does not attempt to climb in but simply swims it slowly against stream to her dock and this time ties it. He knows she is smiling at his impatience to see her. She hangs his wet clothes up about the cabin, the green water dripping on the blue mosaic, and speaks of giving him one of her dresses to wear. She takes hers off, in fact, coloured parrot and more so. Smiling, she holds it out to him. He shakes his head but likes the idea and reaches for it immediately. He motions for her underwear, too, and she obliges him with the bra. Once he is inside the two articles he traipses about the living room, lifting up the skirt so she can see his pelvis dancing, forgetting that Brazotivinah could be home by now if he hurried from work. Would you like to buy this one of a kind? Would you care to purchase a yard of that? Would a trial period of this precious item please you? He asks these questions as he prances in the light of the window. When he thinks of The Braz he rapidly removes her dainties, handing them back to her, this laughing girl, and gets into his wet pants. He carries the shirt, shorts, socks and shoes. In a second the laden river boat plunges through the eddy and is gone, paddle flashing, golden in the early evening mist. He does not wave but knows that Fiora watches him, turning the little figurine about in her hand, maybe even holding it to her bosom inside her dress. He laughs to himself then, a wild, cascading laugh that sends the chibii careening through the trees and even reaches the pirana below him. His laughter has been heard on this river before.
       Angie fears only two things, age and ice. At Norway House on the Nelson River a few years ago she almost went through. If she could swim it would be different. Juanita got her ass kicked when she lost her load near Island Lake. It wasn't even spring. She was just crossing in mid February when some shift in the current had made a hole and she went in. Gardewine was also concerned for her, true, but she should not have been driving alone is the policy. The ice shifts unexpectedly. Where one day you have smooth sailing, the next you've got a strange formation. A ridge, maybe, as if someone dug a trench and filled it with snow. Sometimes a crevace across the road that goes as far as you can see under the snow. These are four or six inches wide. Ten, now and then. Then there are the puddles. These she fears. She speeds up for them and she shouldn't. The ice actually accordians when you go too fast with something this size. She feels the truck sink a bit as it goes into the water. At times she has felt it drop a foot or more as if she's on rubber ice. She knows this because the dashboard suddenly shows more of the landscape before her and then less as the tractor gets through. Fifty tons on rubber ice!
       Miriam went through near Easterville. Then there was no road going North at Cross Lake to Moose Lake. Lucky she wasn't alone. When the truck hit bottom and the swirling stopped there had been enough air at the ceiling for her to get a couple of deep breaths and open the window. She got on top of the roof and she was right there. Her head stuck up out of the hole in the ice. Her partner had jumped when she felt the ice start to go and lain down on the ice till Miriam kicked her way over to her and pulled her up. They made a fire and warmed themselves. They built a shelter of spruce boughs and grass for a bed and slept with the fire right under the boughs. It was so cold the flames wouldn't ignite the needles above. It gave off a pine incense. Actually, after they were dry, Miriam said, it got quite comfortable there. Eskimos would sleep naked, under the fur and hides, piled in line like nippers, can you imagine? Grandma at the edge where it's coldest next to the snow, then grandpa, twelve year-old-Zukuk on his right, ten-year-old Zednak (she being the youngest not an infant) on his left, then Inkud and Lucinda and Kumsnacha Tuktuk in a tight bunch, and finally Ma and Pa Tuktuk with little Kuz between them. They found they could zipper together their two parkas and that's how they slept till morning. Miriam says that Luciana's believes now that the only way to keep warm when it's thirty plus below is not by yourself but you got to get in a huddle with someone. It's the swell when you speed up your truck that fractures the ice and then you go down. A groundswell with ice on top and mud below. Once she gets to Pikitone she's going for a beer for sure, Angie says to herself.
       Benjamin decides he might get a little more for the waste he's found this day if he lays still and contemplates it all a bit before getting rid of it all at Dilbey's and then spending the couple of dollars right away at the bar there next door. This time he's hit upon a jackpot of sorts, he's pretty sure. Probably not as much as he hopes one day to make but enough to keep him in Old Stock and pickled eggs for a few months if he can hold out. When it beeped he knew there was some sort of find there because this was not a place the others would have looked. Probably no one ever thought to look here. They look more in the coves around English Bay, in the grottos below the Lion's Gate and at any of the beaches where coins can be turned into beer and ice-cream and rings sold to tourists on the spot.
       Benjamin backs up the Mazda to the curb at the back of The Horseshoe Flea Market a few hundred yards down from the chincy Lecias Brothers' where he sometimes makes a sale, picks up spade and bucket and slides down the path through alders and spruce. Diapers, toilet paper, a syringe, a hubcap and even a car axle lie along the path like this was White Pass in Klondike days. The beach is clear. He walks as far as the Ford mooring and then right angles down in the dark to his marker a couple of hundred yards out in the tidal flats. At the stake he's put in the night before he digs. The sand is soft. He gets down a few feet in sand and then another few in brown muck. He strikes something and his interest heightens, if that is possible. He digs around what soon he understands to be a metal box. A brass tag, dirty and crusted, comes into the light of his lamp. He clears more sand and dirt and then attempts with both hands to lift it out. But, measuring about three feet by two, and another two feet deep, it cannot be budged. He labors and trenches down to a goodly depth and tries to lift once more. Impatient, he places the haft of the spade under the box and levers sharply with all his force. Nothing occurs. No shift of the box indicates that he may be able tonight to hurry this find to his conveyance.
       A lock on front of the chest, still intact and securing a strong and quality ornamented hinge, next presents itself to his view, on it writ with fine penmanship, etched in the brass, the words, "Sir Captain Cook Esq., of her Majesty's Ship, the Victoria, 1784." The lock appears massive and durable, despite its age, sign of a wiser time when craftsmen made much of their skill. William applies the edge of the spade to this with a great thrust and to his delight the device splits and the hinge flies free. Rust has weakened it over the years. He drops his implement, falls to his knees, and stretches hands forward. He postpones for a moment the grappling with the appurtenance, however. Uncertain, filled with strange excitement, he waits, and then with impulse and vigor, states as natural to him as diamonds to kings and queens, he hoves to the lid. And there before him, O Lord of all good things, lies glistening the very wealth of kings! Three thousand golden doubloons if there is one, half a pound in weight apiece, of curious imprint, and such magnificent heft, wink at him and beckon. He accepts the invitation forthwith. Diving in with both hands he lifts the gold, leaning in to smell the dank wealth, dizzily calculating its enormous worth. On his knees in the muck of the draining sea, William knows that he will require his trade no more. No trade necessary. Eggs and bacon on the house, everyone! This will be his poverty's last tide.