Read Online Reading by Lightning by Joan Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

rose from just talking about sending Willie to Canada. And then Boris’s friend Joseph Pye, a farm boy, committed to go and mailed away his fare and homestead fee. When my grandparents walked out onto Kersal Moor on Sundays they could see the Pye property on the other side of a drainage ditch: a square house of whitewashed stone. The Pye barn and the important cluster of outbuildings around it had the force of an argument.
    How can you ever separate all the strands that make up a motive? “‘Goodbye, Dolly, I must leave you,’” Nan sang as she knelt cleaning the flagstones with a donkey stone from the rag and bone man, and then she lifted her flushed face and said to my father, “You must take Duke. You’ll want a dog on a farm.”
    â€œNay, I’ll leave her with the kids,” my father said. I imagine a queer feeling going through him: he would know they had just crossed the line between dreaming about it and planning it.
    By the end of February his name was on Isaac Barr’s list and his fare was booked on a ship sailing from Liverpool. Those without a stake — like my dad — could work for a year in a nearby city called Winnipeg, where jobs were going begging, and for a fee Isaac Barr would undertake to register their claim. They discussed farming, a mysterious process to all of them. The thin face of Joseph Pye, newly graced god of agriculture, hovered over all their conversations. “Do they make machines for seeding wheat, do you suppose?” my father asked. He had seen grain being cut down in the fall but never seeded. “I believe they do, but Joe Pye will be able to say for sure,” my granddad answered. Then added, “I wonder if you’d be best off going to cattle or sheep. Best ask Joe Pye.” When it came time to strap up his trunk they found that one of the buckles was bent. “Happen Joe Pye can fix it,” said his little sister Lucy.

    It was April 1 when the Barr Colonists set sail from Liverpool, which might have told them something. My father and his parents rose very early that foggy morning to catch the train. He and his father put on celluloid collars, and Granddad put on his bowler hat (what they called a billy pot) and his white muffler. My father had said goodbye to his friends and the children the night before, a scene that he bore calmly because there were still several hours between himself and his leaving. I think that only Lucy got up in the morning and stood in front of the house, the curls on the back of her head matted and the corners of her mouth turned down.
    My father and his parents walked to the station carrying the tin trunk that by then bore a label reading MASTER WILLIAM PIPER, SALFORD, COUNTY LANCASHIRE and a red and blue sticker from the Beaver Line. In the trunk were all the things the mother of a prospective colonist would think to pack for a life in the All-British Colony where (as Isaac Barr assured them) the weather was favourable and the Red Indians were almost civilized. My granddad used his hook (this was the sort of job it was good for) to lift one end of the trunk by its leather strap. They walked by Willie’s friend Robert’s house, where Robert was asleep in an upstairs room, and by the house of Basil Milgate, who owed him two shillings and had not come down the night before to say goodbye. When they reached the rise at the end of the street my father did not look back. I’ll see it again soon enough, he said to himself.
    Boris was already on the platform, along with Joe Pye and his border collie, Chum.
    â€œWill she sail for free?” my granddad asked.
    â€œI’ll pay what it takes,” said Joe Pye, cupping one hand affectionately over her muzzle. “She’s that good with sheep.”
    â€œMe and Willie are getting us-selves wolves,” said Boris. “That’s what they use where we’re going.”
    The fog melted and sun flickered through the trees