On island, p.3
On Island, page 3
That evening, seated in his reclining chair, sipping his rum and Coke and finishing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, the Church Warden considered whether the removal of the church sign was a prank of some sort. Putting down his pencil, he told the tabby cat purring on his knee, “Looks like the work of the Devil to me.”
His bookish interests centred on conspiracy theories of various kinds, such as exploring the concept that the Apollo 11 moon photo was all a hoax, and he was considerably cheered when a national newspaper columnist reported that Canadian supernova author Margaret Atwood suggested the “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” scene may have been filmed in the moon-like mining landscape of the Canadian Shield.
The Church Warden had not actually read Atwood’s books—nor, for that matter, the works of any woman author (with the exception of Ayn Rand)—but he made a note to buy any book Atwood wrote that mentioned the possibility of a moon landing misstep.
But when it came to the church’s sign, he couldn’t think of what anyone would have to gain by removing it. He headed off to bed.
A few weeks later the Church Warden ruminated aloud on the fate of the sign while drinking his ritual strong blend of coffee at the common table in the island café attached to the island’s General Store. The island’s only grocery store was open in the summer and on winter weekends and Monday afternoons, but closed on Tuesdays except after holiday Mondays. The café was closed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, but was open for Friday night pizza and weekends. Off-season sales were slow.
Finally the store clerk, who doubled as the waitress, took pity on him. “I know who took the sign,” she said.
“You do?” asked the Warden, slurping his coffee, organically grown in some Third World country and guaranteed to be produced under certified Fair Trade conditions. “Who would do such a thing?”
“The Sunday School teacher,” blurted the store clerk. “She said it was demonic, the work of Satan. It contains pagan symbols. She discussed it here in the store with some of the Sunday School mothers and they agreed with her.”
“Holy crap!” sputtered the Warden, setting his coffee cup on the table with a rattle. “I mean, holy cow! It’s church property! How could she do such a thing?” But the store clerk had returned to more secular issues, restocking the liquor shelves.
The Warden pondered how best to proceed. The small congregation was a mixed lot of believers. Some did not belong to any particular religious denomination but considered themselves Christians. One told the Warden she was a Christian but did not believe in Jesus Christ.
The Sunday School teacher was a good soul who took the religious instruction of her young students, including her own children, very seriously. She was associated with a small section of the congregation who might be classified as evangelical Christians.
To accommodate them, the priest briefly experimented with projecting the Holy Communion service and the hymns on a small screen in front of the altar so that those of the congregation who were moved to do so could wave their arms above their heads when they sang. None were so moved, and the experiment ended.
The priest was inclined toward liturgical dance, swooping around the church bat-like in his black robes for the sombre Good Friday service, dressing in more colourful vestments—gold-trimmed green or white—for the more festive seasons on the church calendar, such as Easter and Christmas. He was a popular member of various theatrical groups on his home island until he had his head shaved for a cancer fundraiser, limiting his potential roles.
The little church had its share of controversy in its short history. Some of the evangelical members of the congregation had charged the previous Reverend Father, a rotund little retired army veteran, with practising heresy in his sermons. They went to the Bishop with their complaint.
The Bishop, a sloth-like man loath to leave his cathedral on the Big Island, called in the Reverend Father and asked him to explain himself.
“I am very upset,” said the Reverend Father.
“You should be, provoking your congregation with your preaching,” chided the Bishop.
“It’s not that,” said the Reverend Father. “The problem is that I don’t have a white robe to wear when I am burned at the stake.”
Nothing more was said about heretical preaching or flame-proof clerical vestments.
After some thought, the Church Warden put the word out that removing (stealing) the sign from the church (private property) was a crime and that he was considering bringing in the RCMP detachment stationed off island. However, if the sign was returned, no further questions would be asked.
Two weeks later, the missing sign was found under the church deck next to the Nativity figures, returned by unknown persons. An examination of the sign by the Warden revealed that the so-called pagan symbols, which had inspired its removal, were tiny carvings that resembled shamrocks.
This distressed the Church Warden’s wife, who was Irish. She was named for St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, who in the fifth century preached The Word to the pagan Irish in ultimis terrae, or living at the ends of the earth. The analogy was not lost on the wife, who at times suffered the isolation of island living.
Angry accusations flew back and forth among members of the congregation. The Bishop stirred himself to call a church meeting, dispatching a neutral priest from the Big Island since the parish priest was under suspicion of being party to the pagan plot of the orange shamrocks.
The congregation gathered in the small church, seating themselves in the wooden pews in opposing groups, one supporting the Sunday School teacher, while those who sided with the Church Warden settled themselves across the aisle.
The parachuted priest stood between them, reading from the Prayers of the People and pleading for a peaceful resolution. The effect of the orange shamrocks on the Sunday School children was warmly debated.
The Church Warden’s wife spoke passionately about St. Patrick and his reputed use of the three-leaf shamrock to signify the Holy Trinity to his pagan Irish parishioners, and then collapsed into her pew in tears, dabbing her eyes with a white linen hankie embossed with a Celtic cross.
It was finally agreed that the sign had been carved by a reformed drunk and non-believer, now deceased, and donated to the church as a gesture of defiance. After coffee and cookies in the church basement, everyone felt better, except the visiting priest, who longed for his own pagan-free parish. At the end of the meeting, members of the congregation went about their business in the spirit of righteousness.
The Warden ordered two new signs for the church grounds. The first, down by the road, had the traditional Anglican Church of Canada symbol. The second, closer to the church, carved in subdued shades of tan and brown and decorated with tiny churches, said, All Are Welcome. No shamrocks graced either sign.
The Sunday School teacher’s children outgrew Sunday School, and she left the island to pursue a successful career in local government. The priest was promoted to a red-robed position on the Big Island when the Bishop retired. The new priest became the unit commander of the Coast Guard Auxiliary and spent her spare time, praise the Lord, fishing boaters out of the sea.
The Church Warden read the island children Bible stories after school and turned over the mouse detail to the island chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous to deal with during its weekly meetings.
Each year, when the Santa Claus boat came to the government dock to dispense Christmas presents, the children trooped up the hill to the little church to eat pizza and decorate the Advent Tree in anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day.
The work of the Lord, sighed the Warden’s wife, with a little help from St. Patrick.
GARDEN PARTY
THE WILD TURKEYS CAME TO the village centre for Thanksgiving weekend. They appeared out of the bushes and walked briskly through the main intersection past the Fire Hall and the General Store, where islanders were picking up their dead domestic turkeys for the holiday dinner. Two wild turkeys hiked along the main road on their long legs, walking on the shoulder, facing traffic, gobbling away to each other like a long-married couple out for an afternoon walk in the late autumn sun.
“Their timing is awkward,” observed the Professor’s wife, resting on her rake in the community garden as the turkeys strolled by. “Although, in fact, they don’t look very appetizing.”
“Pretty scrawny,” agreed another garlic planter, sipping on some red wine in a plastic cup. Planting garlic and harvesting it the following spring required copious amounts of red wine, juice, salmon dip, and assorted goodies deposited on a weathered, wooden table that teetered unsteadily in the grass near the garden fence, under the supervision of Buster the Garden Dog. He guarded the goodies with his perennial hopeful look on his whiskered face, and harassed the feline inhabitants of the Cat House adjacent to the community garden.
The autumn rains had started, turning the soil squishy and the paths soggy. When the sun came out and the weather turned colder, the Master Gardener summoned the gardeners, who carried shovels, ski poles, hoes, bottles of wine, and bags of goodies to share, to the community garden to plant their garlic.
The garlic planters were a convivial group, bonded by a commitment to their belief that they grew the best garlic on island. They included the editor of the island weekly, the fire chief, the retired Professor and his wife, the schoolteacher and his family, including their newest baby, the café chef, and the Church Warden and his wife, who had told the newcomers about the community garden during bridge sessions in the Community Hall.
Now the gardeners argued amiably over the genesis of the wild turkeys. “Maybe they are escapees from the baker’s farm,” suggested the fire chief, who knew every property on island.
“No, they were left behind when the couple who were raising llamas loaded their animals onto their truck and left the island on the night ferry, leaving their bills and the poultry behind,” said the editor, who knew everything about everybody on island.
“No, they are at least fourth-generation birds that went wild when the original settler died,” said the Church Warden, who had lived on island longer than any other member of the garden party.
The turkeys paid no attention to any of them and strutted on down the road toward the beach.
The garlic group all stood like soldiers at their respective raised beds. The Church Warden’s wife, shivering in the unseasonal cold, nervously clutched her Nordic pole that she planned to use as her planting instrument. They all listened as the Master Gardener gave his instructions.
First, they should dig up the soil in their boxes and mark grid lines in the earth, about six inches across both ways. The ski poles were perfect for this task.
Second, at the intersections of the lines, they should bore a hole in the soil “exactly” three inches deep. The Church Warden’s wife wondered how she should measure this, stabbing the hole with the tip of her Nordic pole after removing its little rubber bootie.
Third, they should select the best, biggest garlic clove (they had been purchased from a Big Island organic grower) and drop it in the hole, pointy tip at the top, and smooth the soil over the sown garlic, and leave it to winter over.
The Master Gardener admonished them not to water during the first two weeks of May. “That is why you can’t plant other crops between the garlic rows,” he explained, sticking his hoe deep into the soil of his box, like sheathing his sword. “At least not until you harvest your garlic in late spring.”
The garlic group sighed as they gathered at the trestle table to open the wine and drink mugs of hot coffee and munch the cinnamon buns from the island bakery. Spring seemed a long way off, given the gloom of the winter to come, before they could sample the delicious, hot, spicy garlic cloves, the fruit of their labour.
No wonder garlic was the one crop islanders rarely shared with their neighbours. Zucchini, tomatoes, squash, kale, even cabbages were generously divvied up among friends. But not the precious garlic cloves.
One of the joys of island living was the access to locally grown food. Although not abundant, since the island’s hummocky geography restricted prime farmland mainly to the valley and the bench of land that supported the sheep farm, islanders grew an amazing amount of veggies and salad greens in their cold frames and small greenhouses and backyard plots in season.
The sheep farm provided grass-fed lamb and beef slaughtered on the property in a government-approved facility, to the envy of residents of other islands not so endowed. Eggs could be purchased from the young biker who lived in an aluminum trailer and nurtured his chicks with loving care normally reserved for young children, cosseting them with garden greens and table scraps contributed by grateful customers.
Some islanders grew their own veggies and sold the surplus in high summer, when their gardens were lush with produce, at the open-air Saturday market held in the gravel parking lot of the General Store. Also on offer were gleaming jars of jelly and jam, dill pickles and pickled beets, apple chutney and antipasto, all produced on island.
Inspired by her neighbours, that first summer the Professor’s wife planted lettuce and arugula seeds in pots on her patio off the living room. The patio had glass panels attached to metal rails to protect people and plants from the cool, salty sea breezes and the hungry deer.
She coddled her tomatoes, admiring their voluptuous names like Amana Orange, Black Brandywine, Big Rainbow, deep watering them as the Master Gardener advised, turning their pots toward the sunshine that sifted through the cedar branches of the encircling forest. She picked the lettuce, kale and herbs from her containers for fresh salads, feeling smugly superior to those who bought their produce from the supermarkets in town.
One enterprising young couple took orders by email and left their produce in a cart by the Recycling Centre, where customers picked up their goods on the honour system and left their money in the Free Mail rack, where islanders left messages for one another, in the General Store. The Professor and his wife were intrigued by how many young people had settled on the island, some of them living on weathered sailboats moored in the harbour.
Another young entrepreneur regularly took the morning ferry to the Big Island where he filled orders for butchered organic chickens from the local farms. He loaded them into his pickup and sold them out of the back of his truck to eager customers who met him down by the dock when he returned on the afternoon ferry.
The local crab fisherman sometimes sold live crab in traps lowered into the water beside his dock. The Professor quickly learned how to pry the hard shells off the crab with the blade of an axe. During the commercial fishing season, a sign on the Wharf Store announced the anticipated arrival of a commercial fishboat from the west coast or northern fishing grounds, loaded with salmon and halibut and prawns for bulk sale to islanders who brought cash and their own containers.
Some islanders set their own crab traps and bought sport fishing licences to fish for salmon and cod, and shared their catch with their neighbours. For those who knew where to look, oysters could still be found on some island beaches.
Posters on the notice board of the General Store warned that Aboriginal hunters with historic rights to the island hunted the local deer in higher forests during the hunting season. They were joined by some old-time islanders, who unlocked their rifles housed in government-licensed cases, and went up the mountain in search of “government game.”
But many islanders were squeamish about killing, let alone consuming the tiny white-tailed deer that bounded through their gardens, eating their petunias and young veggies, so tame that they were known to come onto patios in search of potted plants and peer insolently through the windows.
In the early days, Greek hunters from the Mainland arrived on the ferry in their battered trucks, usually before Easter feast days, in search of the young kids of the feral goats that survived on the high meadows of the mountain. The hunters drank their ouzo around their campfire on the fringes of the sheep farm and hunted with the farmer’s permission.
Islanders had conflicted views about the goats. Residents who detested the damage the feral goats did to their gardens and pastures advocated for community culls. One frustrated young farmer shocked a community meeting by announcing a mass murder of the scrawny, bearded creatures. “I’ve killed 150 of the pests,” he told his startled audience, “and I am going to kill a lot more.”
But when Park biologists supported the community cull of feral goats on the grounds they were not native to the island, the crowd stared them down. “Neither are you guys from Ottawa,” someone called out.
The next spring, as soon as the frost left the ground, the Master Gardener taught the Professor’s wife how to plant potatoes next to the garlic in her raised box. He dug trenches in the soil, lining them with grass cut from the schoolyard and preparing them for the Yukon Gold seed potatoes she had bought from the garden shop in town. Kneeling down on the soft turf, she carefully placed the potatoes in the trenches.
When she was finished covering them up, she sat back on her heels, breathing in the smell of fresh, fragrant earth, and felt enormously pleased with herself. She pushed herself up onto her feet, turned to her tutor, and asked: “When will they be ready to eat?”
He was proud of his pupil too. “Late August, depending on the summer weather,” he told her. “Definitely by Labour Day.” He showed her how to plant beans and squash, and how to tuck tiny green peppers and eggplants between the rows.
In late spring, the Master Gardener sent out an email announcing the garlic pull would take place the following Wednesday. It had been delayed by weeks of rain. The Professor’s wife parked on the side of the road by the baseball diamond, her containers for her garlic harvest in the trunk of her hatchback. Everyone else was already there, some already imbibing the wine and appies that were part of the harvest ritual.
