An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [46]
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
newfoundland style
THE BEACH IN THE COVE is a noisy place, especially when the tide is high. It wouldn’t be nearly as noisy if it were sandy. I could get used to the quick splashing sound of waves hitting the shore. It’s the rocks smacking off each other like firecrackers when the water recedes that I can’t ignore. Sometimes, I’d like to be able to flick a switch, turn off the noise and enjoy the calm of the cove. The stream is noisy but I don’t mind the predictable sound of its flow. It barely whispers when it gushes over, under and around the rocks into the ocean.
There’s no shortage of comfortable rocks to sit on while I read, watch the whales chasing the capelin, the gulls hovering over the whales, or the dogs chasing after the gulls. To the left is Europe. To the right is the community of Blackhead with its fourteen houses, church no bigger than a house, and corner store where I go to buy milk when we run out. They also sell souvenirs including pink poodles made of nylon and homemade soaps and salts with names like Partridgeberry Punch, Iceberg Explosion or Spruce Sizzle.
I visit the store for the first time one Saturday afternoon in August. Norah is baking a cake. She runs out of baking powder so I offer to fetch some. She gives me directions and I find it without any trouble. I pull up in front of the one-storey building with its yellow clapboard and red door. It’s no bigger than a garage. The hand-painted sign says Oliver’s. Two girls are sitting on the store’s steps sucking on orange popsicles. They follow me inside. The bell tinkles when I open the door. The girls seem to like that so they open and close it until the woman behind the counter shouts for them to give it up. “Sorry, Mrs. Oliver,” they respond in unison with their matching orange lips and moustaches.
The inside is nothing more than an oversized closet stacked to the ceiling with supplies. I ask if they have baking powder. Mrs. Oliver seems surprised, almost affronted at the question as if I’d made inquiries too personal. “My darling,” she says, “we got that and everything else besides.” She rhymes off a line of products from baking soda and baking salts to baking flour. I say the powder’s fine for my purposes and she says what purposes would those be and I say someone’s baking a cake and she says now who might that be and the conversation goes in the direction it always does. “How long are you here for?”
I know exactly what she means, unfortunately. Long enough to buy the powder, I reply. Is that so, darling, she says and I ask how much and she wants to know if I’ll be paying in Canadian dollars and I tell her of course and she says special price for strangers and I say not necessary and she says don’t be talkin’. She places the tin of powder in a paper bag. “Anything else for you now? Some homemade bread, homemade fudge, spruce beer? Salt beef’s on special this week.”
“Another time, maybe.”
“Special’s over tomorrow.”
The bell rings again when I walk out the door carrying two five-gallon buckets of salt beef. The girls with orange popsicle lips follow me outside. I turn the car’s ignition over and over. A loud squeak from the engine startles the girls. They shriek then laugh. Mrs. Oliver comes outside. A man calls something to me and I roll down the window.
“I said you won’t be doin’ much drag racin’ with the likes of that jalopy.”
The audience swells to a couple of teenage boys wearing baseball hats and jeans so low