Lately, the folks in Port Thomas haven’t felt the need to comment about Margaret in overalls, dungarees, blue denim work pants, flannel plaid shirts, or the large straw hat she wore no matter the season. The fact that she didn’t wear a wool toque in the windy, frigid winters – now that was something people talked about.
“Lookit ‘er,” people used to say, nudging their companions. “Have you ever seen such a spectacle? No hat! Ears exposed to the wind. Does she think she’s livin’, somewhere in South America?” South America being, of course, a deliciously foreign and exotic place in the minds of those sitting right now in the diner, scraping away at the frost on the large windowpane with a fingernail, shivering at the sight of snow being blown on a horizontal angle straight down the main street. South America was south and for a citizenry bound by direction, south always conjured visions of warm places. South America, where there’s that enormous river in the Amazon jungle, and the snakes are as big as the trunk of an ancient oak tree and more poisonous than a bored farmer’s gossip.
So, after everyone had a think and a shudder picturing the snakes, talk would turn to how awful it would be to live in the jungle, the hot humid air thick with malaria-laden mosquitoes. And then, those in the know would lower their voices to whispers and slide into all sorts of nescient notions of what it would be like to live down there. Borders and countries would blend together, and the level of benightedness would become something to behold. One day at the diner, Barney the barber told Evelyn the hairdresser that he’d read in the National Geographic, you could look it up, that there’s people down there that’s never seen the sunlight on account of the trees being so thick and lush they block the sun’s rays so it’s always nighttime for them. The diner patrons would exhaust themselves with speculation about jungles and women who wore straw hats in the dead of winter until something new and fantastical came along.
Marvin, a man never at a loss for words, regaled them with how just the other day he was rendered speechless when he stopped at Ernie’s Imperial Esso. The thought of Marvin speechless gave everyone cause to pause and ponder and this became a side discussion for a good portion of the week for those doing the retelling of the day when Marvin pulled into Ernie’s Imperial Esso station in his Ford sedan to get a dollar’s worth of gas and have the oil checked. According to Marvin, he was struck dumb, couldn’t say a word, when Margaret appeared to pump his car with gasoline. He really should have asked about the whereabouts of Ernie, but the idea of a woman doing a man’s job was incredible in the extreme and hence, his inability to speak. Finding his tongue at long last, he asked for a dollar’s worth of gas, but only nodded when Margaret asked, “Check the oil?” But then, no word of a lie, she unlatched the heavy hood of his Ford sedan like she’d been born to do it, and knew exactly, yes exactly, where to find the dipstick to check the oil, wiping it handily on a greasy rag she pulled out of her back pocket, dipping it a second time to check the level, lowering the hood of that sedan gently like she was covering a baby with a blanket, and then leaning in the window and telling Marvin he didn’t need oil, and that’d be a dollar for the gasoline. He realized later, where were his manners, that he’d forgot to say thank you. Marvin’s breathless retelling noted the fact that Margaret was, yes, wearing the straw hat even though the Farmer’s Almanac was predicting that this week would be the first snow of the season.
The weather was always the first thing on the minds of the people of Port Thomas and the first thing mentioned whenever they met up or talked on the telephone. They’d go on about the weather with complete strangers, like the telephone operator, Linda, over in Mariposa who everyone liked but nobody had ever met. “Hey Linda. You getting the high winds over there? No? Well, the winds usually travel west to east, so it’s on the way to you. Can you connect me with the newspaper office?”
The people of Port Thomas talked about anything but themselves. Not one of them thought so highly of themselves that they felt the need to entertain others with their good luck, or plentiful crops, or the new grandchild who thank goodness looked like its mother. Or the letter they got just last week informing them that the aunt they hadn’t spoken to in a decade on account of her being rude to their sister at that church picnic, had passed on and they were to inherit her house and the pittance she had in her Bank of Toronto savings account. And to think they didn’t even know she’d died!
The citizenry liked to focus on other people’s misfortunes, happy in the knowledge that this week they’d been spared. Like George McElheney, who couldn’t hold a job, or Murray who’s running the post office these days with only two fingers on one hand. Not that running the post office took many fingers, or brains, because Murray seemed to be doing just fine, even though everyone wondered if his mother had dropped him on his head on account of how he lost those fingers in the first place.
Or that new girl who moved to town just last month, someone said her name was Myrna, whose husband they read about in The Toronto Star who was run over by a streetcar. Someone heard she just wants to live in a simple place, where there’s no streetcars and she can have some peace. She rented a room at Margaret’s place, next door to Ernie’s Imperial Esso, and told Margaret, who told Marvin, that she was heartbroken. Sure, the people of Port Thomas had sympathy and feelings for Myrna. They couldn’t stop talking about the tragic story of her husband, but in the same breath they were speculating and wondering out loud what kind of person just up and moves to a strange town, takes a room in the house of a stranger and doesn’t seem to be looking too hard to get a job.
Not that there’s too many jobs to be had in this town. George McElheney hasn’t worked now for months and where he’s getting his money is anyone’s guess, but he doesn’t seem to be suffering much. Barney the barber did say he’d offered him work a while back, but George didn’t seem too interested. Murray at the post office told Bob at the diner that George gets a lot of mail so that must mean he owes money. Bob said, mark his words, owing money to anyone will be their downfall, forgetting that he still hasn’t paid the dairy outside town for the ten pounds of butter and twenty quarts of cream he ordered just last month.
Today Margaret came in to eat at Bob’s diner and that new girl Myrna was with her. Bob couldn’t help but notice the dirt under Margaret’s fingernails as he took their order, nodding at the new girl Myrna, who nodded back but didn’t speak. Back in the kitchen, Bob watched the two of them through the porthole in the swinging door, curious to know why two women would be holding hands under the table. He turned away, shaking his head in disbelief, a tad disgusted that Margaret’s straw hat sat on the table next to her, when the radio had just reported that it was minus ten degrees outside. You’d think she lived south.
