Joe of Glace Bay

Joe of Glace Bay

       Dulcimer Doug

eating we do regular

loving we do not

money’s in my memory

the rest i have forgot

Dulce is a food east coasters chew. Seaweed, it has in it salt, vitamins, minerals and telltale bits of fish and shelled creatures. The dietary supplements provided by this delicacy make it an all around nutritious addition to the individual’s healthy food intake. Manufacturers proceed by laying lines of it on docks in the sun and letting the wind dry it the way prairie farmers dry their windrows of cut grain. It is then packaged and shipped to market. A laborer first comes along each line and places boxes of ziplocks down at six foot intervals. Then packagers arrive who follow the line, filling the bags as full as they can stuff them. A picker-up comes with a wheel barrow and places all these filled plastic containers in a pickup at the end of the line. The pickup drives the load of market-ready dulce to the warehouse in town from which it is distributed to stores the length and breadth of the Maritimes.

       Joe was a picker-up. He wheeled the barrow that collected the packages. He chewed dulce as he plied his trade. At fifty-seven he felt glad to have work. Each morning he smiled as he dressed, thinking that this day he would provide. Unmarried, he still felt that he served well. Some feel a certain anxiety to produce children. This state in them causes much in their marriages, namely their concern over the mathematics of conception, their attentiveness to elders on all matters, especially the rearing of children, their opinions about work habits, their notions of personal hygiene, and their understanding of proper dress. Joe suffered from none of these delusions of permanence. Each day was its own event, skittering across the surface of its hours like ice on a hot stove.

       He was grand, was Joe, but he did not know it. He had been born to a Belgium prince and a Norwegian princess. Somewhere during his first five years, a madman had stolen him from his cradle and kept him till he reached the age of eleven. Something noble in him made him balk at the livelihood he was expected to make. One day, he decided never again to steal a purse or watch and instead hiked over the French countryside in search of adventure. And adventure he found. He had little trouble obtaining work aboard a vessel bound for foreign shores. Joe had no idea where it intended to travel, but little by little, as it plied the waves, he realized that its ultimate destination was the coast of North America. They stopped in Newfoundland and he jumped ship. He hid for weeks in haylofts and shelter belts until he deemed it safe to venture out. The first place he asked, he got work. This was the dulce factory. Here he had happily labored for twenty-seven years and now he barrowed his way up and down the lines of dry dulce with a manner grand and imperial to behold. He was Joe, the picker-up at Glace Bay. No one could deny him his joy.     

If It’s Sentimental, It’s Country, If It’s Crazy, It’s Bluegrass

If It’s Sentimental, It’s Country,

If It’s Crazy, It’s Bluegrass

       By I. O. U. Glasreimer

“I hate to tell you this,” Singh Assingh sighed and crossed himself, then sat down cross legged on the shag rug. “Shagging is a sin!” Assingh was talking to his daughter, the youngest of twelve children, and his junior by twenty-five years. Dharwhalla Assingh coughed and fanned her hand before her nose as if to say, “Too much information! Too much information!” She looked at herself in the mirror she held before returning her attention to her father.

       “Father,” she said, bowing a little to let him know that she had no intention of disrespecting him, now or ever, “I am not a child any more!” She stroked his arm hair and pulled at a few of them. She smoothed his bangs and rubbed his temples.

“I know a little of the world! I have had boyfriends before, including Pickhjle Sninjeesingh who walked with me from school three times in the past three months. I have traveled to my home village of Pningjamkaratje, and by myself I might remind you. I have looked in the mirror at whatever there is of myself to see. I have given grandmother assistance going to the bathroom twice, once in circumstances you would not care to hear about or have me spread abroad. Among other things, I have walked at night the length of our street when all the world but the nefarious slept and snored, and I have come to no harm. I am not either easily ashamed nor quickly embarrassed. I love the realms of opportunity available to myself at my tender age, knowing that I am nearly unassailable and quick to learn.” She bowed a second time by way of period to her speech and then waited for her father to reply, which he did with alacrity.

       “Child!” he said. “What terror in your young breast might cause you to address your paternal father in those terms! Have I not taken care of you all your twelve years? Have I not carried you in my arms since you were no bigger than a grasshopper? Have I not paid for your clothing--rich apparel, I might add--gotten you good neighbors, arranged fine entertainments for your diversion on dozens of occasions, played beggar to your princely needs, whispered in your ear to help you hear better, knitted my brows when earth seemed too heavy for your small frame and, your shoulders bowed, you were about to drift out of it into some unknown realm, waked nights to feed you, whacked at intruders who would try to sneak in to see you gently breathing, as the primary angel, under your sleepy quilts, and done such wonders to give life wealth for you that I am now a rather exhausted man?” He stopped. He rested, for his speech had been lengthy, he played with his food, and he looked at his watch. The tick of his eyebrow busied itself as he waited for a reply. His sweat and her natural perfume scented the side room and yet he waited. A spicy lemon tree grew nearly to the ceiling in one corner, its extra dark leaves large and heavy. She waited, too, thinking for a moment about what her father had said.

         Now the time had come for her to leave for school. So saying, she offered not one word more but proceeded to dress herself while her father exhorted.

“Squeegy, listen to me!” Nothing, except the preparation of her person.

       “Bullocks, come, don’t be angry!” He watched her intently for signs of irritation. She merely shrugged her small shoulders and went on with her ablutions. She put a drop of perfume in her bosoms; she touched lipstick to her upper and lower lips. She sniffed lightly at her arms to see if need existed there for any intercession.

       “Don’t go off leaving me upset, Riffles!” She smiled once at him, quickly, without sincerity, and he writhed in fear.

       “Sniglet, come here and hug your pa,” Assingh called out to her, unashamed of the break in his voice. She sighed, relented, walked over, and hugged him for a brief moment, and then strongly for half a minute. He felt much better, and sighed, too, and said, “Well, okay, if that’s what you want, then go ahead. You have my blessing.” With that he left the room and caught the bus to work.

       Assingh felt his thirty-seven years. His secretary with her grey eyebrows and bulky sweater did nothing to lift his spirits. He greeted her as he passed her desk, checked his mail slot, entered his office and locked the door. After he had cried, he ate two chocolates from the box in the drawer and worked till noon. He met a business buddy at the Sliminjihujh Palace for crepes and coffee. This time he ordered a little brandy as an aperitif

       “What will you have yourself?” he asked Shagjhwalla, who had such an appetite that Assingh could never believe it from one noon to the next. He loved to watch this man eat. Not once did Shag speak a word of relenting or regret for his hunger.

“A little brandy, too, would be in order, I think,” Shagjhwalla whistled through his teeth, and grinned. His tiny mouth had the oddest way of smiling straight. He could not lift the corners of his lips.

“And then, after the chicken, a glass of port I will have,” that fat person said and wiped his mouth.

“What is wrong with you today?” Shagjhwalla asked Assingh. He had just finished a snack of garlic chiggers and yam ‘n cloves, with a glass of limewater to wash the spices down. Assingh let a tear fall, wiped it away, and then confided in his friend.

 “Don’t stop her, man!" the fat one said. “Look at the world we grew up in! What’s the matter with you! We always wanted, don’t you recall? Jeez! Remember the busty black girl in the crane yards near the school? Recess, you recall, we’d go and look through her fence and see her there on a hot day? Sun bathing? Eh? Can’t you just remember how much we wanted her? And we were thirteen. Lord, if such a chance had befallen us we would have grabbed it by the henchbones and snacked till the bell at end of recess rang. Don’t tell her not to. Tell her, ‘Go’!” He looked right at Assingh with his cayenne eyes almost hidden in folds as he helped himself to the last of the peppery mango pickle in the potato chutney. Assingh felt nauseated by the smell of less than fresh condiment and rose to go.

“I’ll pay,” he said, and the fat friend nodded and continued finishing the food in the little dishes.

“Are you up for lunch tomorrow?” Assingh asked, and the other said nothing but gave out that he was. “Well, then, tomorrow.” He walked out into the sun. The grass along the boulevards reminded him of shag rug and thick bedding. They might cut that now and then, he whined to himself. When he got back to his office, his secretary was gone. She returned a half hour late and seemed pleased, somehow, a state unusual for her. She treated her boss with special kindness the rest of the day, but Assignh would not get his spirits to lift and went home sad when six o’clock came.  

I Would Help You, Too

I Would Help You, Too

       By Feel-good Reimer

Trust a blind man to tell you about light.

How can so light a foot wear out the everlasting flint.

A girl was on her way through the forest to grandmother’s house. Something made her uneasy. When she got there, having met no one on the walk, she breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door. The moment she did so, a hairy snout appeared and furry paws pounced on her, bearing her down. She struggled and she screamed but, encumbered by the basket she carried, heavy as it was with breads, cheese and jars of preserves and jams, she could not manage more than a bite on the animal’s leg and a jab at its behind with the breadknife.

       When she came to, she lay in darkness so dank and foul she thought a rainy night had come. “Hello,” she called, to no avail. And again, “Hello. Is anyone there?” But no one answered. She moved a little, since she felt the tightness of her circumstances. Her legs seemed stuck in a hole, her arms and hands sloped upward toward a narrowing of some tube, and her torso sagged upon some wet, rubbery netting.

       “Gosh! Where on earth am I?” she whispered to no one. She punched and screamed of a sudden with what force she could muster. All muffled. All mute. Nothing achieved. Little force effected! Oh! What misery, to be cast upon and covered and then left for dead inside a watery bag! The girl began to cry. She allowed tears seldom, but on this occasion the thought of her unfair treatment more even than her bodily discomfort brought them to her eyes and heaving to her chest.

       “I am only twelve,” she thought, and much too young to die! I wish to travel, to see India and Sansiban. I wish to be kissed for the first time by a lover (and here she wept as if her heart would break). And I need so much once in my life to live in my own room, unshared by sister or brother!” Having articulated to herself these great sadnesses, the small one let go of her self control altogether and wailed till the heavens themselves began to shush her, though she heard the angels not.  

       Nearby, in the deep and heavy woods, a brave, strong axman wielded his blade at his lonely labors. He whistled and sang, for he loved his life, as solitary, quiet, productive and slaking as it was. He came with sharpened ax each morning and honed it back to a bright edge at night when wood had made it pay its daily price. About to cut into a large birch, this young man heard the tree call out for help. He stopped his blade in the nick of time and stood entranced. He listened. He asked the tree if it was sensate, but it answered him not. He waited, sure that he had heard something, and then, to his astonishment, he heard the muffled call again.

       “Help, help, help, help,” came to him, quietly, as if from far away. Surely, somewhere nearby (he gathered this from the timbre and pitch of the notes) some unfortunate soul must be languishing and in pain! He set down his ax and cupped his hands, calling in return.

“Where are you? Are you hurt? Do you need my assistance?” He paused. The calling had stopped. Then it arose again with renewed urgency.

       “I am here! Inside something!” a small, thin voice answered, as if from the ground itself. He shivered. What if a wraith? What if ghosts? He bit back his fears.

       The voice resumed. “I am hurt, yes. My abdomen seems to have taken some injury and bleeds. My shoulder on the left hand side lies useless and I have a feeling that my face is frightfully lacerated! Other locations of my wounds--and they, too, are fearsome--I decline to enumerate or locate!”

       The woodcutter stood, enchanted. The voice soothed him, if it made him pity its proprietor. The white birch by his side seemed as bent on hearing each syllable as he, and it leaned in the direction of the gentle notes.

       “Do you need my help?” he called in his loudest tones. He knew the answer and leapt into action even before the other could respond. He beat the bushes about him and soon discovered, lying there in the gorse behind some shrubbery, smiling, smug with sleep, at peace with himself now that his stomach no longer growled, a monstrous wolf of huge, grey proportions. With every breath it growled in its sleep, with what a sort of awful snore-growling.

       “I hear your approach!” the distant voice spoke. “Your footsteps resound here. You must be near to hand!”

       Then the woodcutter knew, and in a flash he had cut the head from the body of the beast. He reached down its gullet, blood and gore rinsing his fumbling fingers. He felt a foot! Success! He knew he had found the girl, for girl he had come to think she must be. He squeezed in his arm until he found some purchase and then, with his huge, strong hand firmly grasping whatever it was that let him hold on, he slowly extracted the girl till she lay before him gasping for air and overcome by sensations of light and air.

       “Thank-you, sir!” she whispered, when she could breathe again, exhausted by her ordeal and transport through narrow passages. “Thank-you, thank-you! It was a wolf I was inside, then? It was, was it not!” The woodsman gave no answer, struck dumb as he was by her beauty and sweetness of person. She seemed to him out of place here in these wildnesses, in this forest so far from human concourse and habitation. “If ever you were eaten by such a villian,” she added, having paused to give him room to speak, and without stopping to think what she said, “I would do the same for you. I would not hesitate to slay him, and cut him, and free you from his disgusting digestion!” She declared her feelings with vehemence of such a strength and conviction that the axman could do naught but marvel and nod.

       Having spoken all she could think to say, and having each time waited for her rescuer’s response, which never came, the dainty one picked up her skirts, waved to the happy fellow and tripped on lightsome foot home to her supper.