The Winter Helen Dropped By

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 player at sports days, picnics, tournaments, and Fourth of July celebrations in the Six Towns Area.

The fireworks were shot off from the outfield at Doreen Beach, before the Bjornsen Bros. Swinging Cowboy Musicmakers set up in the community hall to play for the dance, which would be interrupted by a box social.

Of course it wasn’t really dark enough to shoot off fireworks, but what with the baseball games being over (the Doreen Beach White Sox won the tournament with an extra-inning 12–11 win over the all-Indian team from the reserve at Lac Ste. Anne), and with the three-legged, the sack, and the wheelbarrow races, having been run, and two tubs of vanilla ice cream Curly McClintock had trucked out from Edmonton that very morning all scooped onto cones and eaten up, there was nothing left but to watch the fireworks and get to the dancing, so with children bawling and whining and squalling, and being tired and dirty-faced, fretful and downright testy, it was no wonder the mothers convinced Bandy Wicker to begin setting off the fireworks while it was barely dusk.

While both Daddy and Bandy Wicker described the rockets of their youth as shooting upward with a whiz and whirr through the blue-black nighttime sky, sending up spumes of red, green, blue, or silver stars that hung in the sky, burning out slowly and leaving behind their images in smoke wavering like moon shadows, the rockets at Doreen Beach on the night of the Fourth of July would fire off with a certain whiz and whirr, but when they got up in the sky there would be a loud bang and a few sickly-looking stars would dribble toward the earth, none of them lasting much longer than your run-of-the-mill firefly. The crowd was prepared to ooooh and aaaah at the spectacular bursts of color in the night-time sky, but the sound that emanated as the few sickly-looking stars dribbled toward the ground was more like a groan.

Bandy Wicker, who, in spite of his propensity to self-injury, had been formally entrusted to light the rockets in the outfield of the Doreen Beach baseball grounds, blamed the poor performance on the fact that the fireworks had been manufactured in China, rather than Juarez, Mexico. He said that if Mexican fireworks were inferior it was possible to take revenge on the Ortega Bros. Fireworks Company of Juarez, Mexico, but he didn’t see no way we could take revenge on a company in China whose name wasn’t even printed in English on the rockets.

Bandy Wicker also wanted to know if we had got a guarantee from Mr. Prosserstein of the Acme Novelty and Carnival Supplies store that our money would be refunded if the rockets didn’t fire off properly.

My daddy, who was pushing the little wire legs of the rockets into the ground so they would be properly pointed at the sky and not at the crowd congregated on the bleachers behind home plate, hmmmed a little, stalling for time, hoping some of the rockets would fire off beautiful bursts of colored stars and forestall further criticism. After a few more rockets had succeeded only in making a large bang and dribbling a few sickly-looking stars toward the ground, Daddy hawed a little, as well as hmmming.

‘Guess next time we’ll have to send a real man to do the job,’ said Bandy Wicker, lighting a couple more rockets, one of which set off with a whiz and whirr, and one of which didn’t.

What folks didn’t notice was that the few sickly-looking stars that dribbled toward the ground carried a certain amount of firepower, and that most of the sickly-looking stars dribbling to earth behind the bleachers tended to set the grass a-smouldering. So little rain had fallen that Brother Bickerstaff of the Holy, Holy, Holy, Foursquare Church of Edson, Alberta, had held a holy roller religious service that very morning in the Doreen Beach Community Hall to extract rain from the high, dry, blue Alberta sky by means of prayer.

Folks did not notice the smoldering grass, or the little fringe of burning grass that crept toward the bleachers, and toward the Doreen Beach Community Hall, and toward the Doreen Beach General Store, and toward the one and only house in Doreen Beach, the residence of Torval Osbaldson and his wife, Tillie, retired farmers who had moved to Doreen Beach to enjoy the hustle and bustle of town life in their declining years. And folks did not notice the fire creeping toward Slow Andy McMahon, all three hundred and some pounds of him, where he sat with his back against a large cottonwood tree, dozing fitfully and eating from several boxes of prepackaged McGavin’s Bakery donuts, and a four-pound tin of Shirriff’s orange marmalade, ‘No Pectin Added,’ which I’m sure eased the minds of anyone in the Six Towns Area who knew what pectin was.

‘I suspect pectin comes from the East,’ Daddy said. ‘Most everything suspicious emanates from there.’

It wasn’t until the final rocket had been placed in the ground by Daddy and lighted by Bandy Wicker that anyone noticed fire was attacking the community of Doreen Beach from a number of angles.

Everyone began to run around, most getting away from the fire, but some, like Bandy Wicker and my daddy, getting closer and attempting to form some strategy for firefighting. Someone said they sure wished that Doreen Beach was located on a lake like it should be, but Doreen Beach was about four miles from Purgatory Lake and not even located on a creek, the only water coming from a communal well shared by Torval Osbaldson and the current owners of the Doreen Beach General Store, a sallow Chinese with sunken eyes and stooped shoulders and his wispy wife who seldom came out of the attached lean-to they lived in, though they talked back and forth from the lean-to to the store, and listening to them talking was like listening to the morose gobble of turkeys.

Earl J. Rasmussen was already hauling water up from the communal well, and the sallow Chinese had donated his stock of three new galvanized water buckets, so a bucket brigade of sorts was formed, the purpose of which was to save the house of Torval and Tillie Osbaldson.

Bandy Wicker had been a volunteer firefighter in Odessa, Texas, and had brought with him to Alberta his genuine firefighter’s hat, scoop-shaped, red and shiny, which he kept on the top shelf of the closet in his and Mrs. Bandy Wicker’s bedroom. He let his son, my rabbit-snaring buddy, Floyd Wicker, try on that hat of a Christmas morning and on Floyd’s birthday.