The Cumberland Tales

By Frank Wayne

THE SETTING

From alcohol and opium addictions, muscle cars and blue pool halls, shit ponds, giant tongues and other daydreams, the setting within this book drifts from philosophy to talking animals, and from reality to illusion. In the end, it is the town that speaks, for it is the town that inspired this book.

THE PLAYERS

Sam Yik, the philosopher opiate gardener befriends two young lads. At first, the young boys ridicule Sam Yik, but he quickly dispenses their questioning glances because he is interested in what these boys have to say. The door opens, and the stories unfold and intertwine from present to past to present again, and for Sam Yik, well, he travels many worlds.

THE VOICE

Cumberland is a town with a voice. Today, the voice is a diverse collection of young people stretching and vibrating the town with youthful zeal. In the past, the voice was filled with bellowing loggers, coal black miners, and Chinese, Japanese, and Black communities that wanted a piece of the coal wealth the town sat upon. This book is the voice of that old town. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mythmoulder
• Release date: Oct 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781393159759

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MYTHMOULDER PUBLISHING

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

PREFACE    The Cumberland Tales began as a list of images in my mind's eye. The years I lived there were years I cherish, and I will forever be indebted to that little town nestled in the valley of the Beaufort Mountains. There are many people whom I thank for providing the artistic inspiration to write this book. First and foremost are the people of Cumberland. The characters within these tales, while fiction, are nonetheless based on my remembered flashes of memory. While the tales are comprised mainly of Cumberland characters, there are more than a few which are based on different people I have met through the years who were not from that town. I thank them all. Secondly, I would like to thank all those whom I have studied and read, dreamt with and felt home with, all those past, present, and future writers. Thirdly, I would like to thank all those people who try to be non-judgmental, and keep an open heart and mind. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my wife, Linda, without whose inspiration, encouragement and freedom, I could not have written a word.

contents

SAM YIK

MARBLE LOVE AND JETHRO THE CROW

HITCHING, GIANT'S TONGUE, AND SHIT PONDS

UNFOLDING

DELIVERY TIME AND OTHER DAYDREAMS

THE OTHER SIDE OF ALBERT

WHICH WAY DOES SHE LEAN?

LAWNMOWER BOYS

STRANGE TRICKS AND THE BLUE POOL HALL

EL PRESIDENTE, JOHN CLIFFS, AND MR. APLEY

TWO IN ONE: GOD JUICED FISHING TALE

SEA TIME

BACK FROM BLUBBER BAY

THE LAST TALK

COLD FISH

I

Beaufort Mountains' Voiced Winds

Beaufort winds,

highs and lows

climbs green firs

follows falls.

Fictive winds,

seeks and finds

stories told

those declined.

Veering winds,

illumes all

tumbling down

never palls.

They spin and turn,

pivot, hook,

into crannies,

into nooks.

Glancing off,

from one to one,

adieu, they leave,

as they had come.

SAM YIK

SamYik was the last Chinese gardener.

He awoke clear headed and focused on straightening out his old legs as he stared at the brass nightingale perched on the spirit lamp.  It sparkled in the shaft of sunlight that seeped through the slit in the curtains. The rest of the room was dark. The sparks of light off the brass nightingale illuminated the set of opium tools: the pipe stand with five bowls, the pair of yen-hok needles needed to manipulate the opium over the flame, the scraper for cleaning the pipe bowl, the sponge for cleaning the tray, the scissors for trimming the wick, the set of scales for measuring out the opium, and the doll house dresser that held the paktong oil and gave the tray the feeling of a miniature room. It was a cozy spot to curl up in. Each small implement had its own resting place, but the nightingale lorded over all. It was the only room in the world where Sam Yik felt safe. 

The soft, musky smell of skunk cabbage filled the early morning pond-air. A trout jumped, breaking the glassy surface of the pond. He stood up on shaking legs, steadied himself, and stared at the green-blue tinge of light that rounded the back

edge of the pond against the reeds, until his legs settled

down. Then he shuffled out onto the front porch and breathed

in the morning mist. The morning-hushed pond was a stark contrast to Guangzhou, with its unending smells and sounds.

And the people! Chaos. It was not a good chaos because there

was no law, no order. War and floods and crime: Life there

was unbearable. How long ago was it? He had forgotten.

Here, in Canada, life was easy compared to China. The

soil was good, no floods, clean water, and fish. He was thankful for his new world despite his misgivings and personal strife.

This was his choice. His life in the  Beaufort Mountains in a small town nestled within the valley: Cumberland. There were no lowland floods here.

After he went down the few steps, he carefully brought out his vegetable cart. His hands had molded the handles over many years of acquaintance, like an old friend. He faintly heard the clang of the merry-go-round and the distant voices of children playing marbles in the schoolyard. Their voices drifted on air. He thought he could hear the subtle crack of marble on marble, but that was impossible. The school ground was too far away.

The sun had begun to break over the swamp. He watched the vague yellows, blues, and hard green background that was shaded in dark, as it gave way to the light of the oncoming day. He waited for the colours to burst forth like a staunch rainbow. His sign.

Out in the garden, between green rows, he gathered the best he had: a head of green lettuce big as a football, carrots orange as a sunset, turnips tinged like the swamp, onions white as cod flesh, and beets red as blood. Vapour rose from the swamp, rose from wet black loam between green rows. He shuffled and pushed his vegetable cart round the side of his shack behind the once glorious poppy palace, the Sun Chong Club. Poppy palace, that’s what Brokenback, his old friend who passed on last year, used to call it. It was once the grandest poppy palace in all of Chinatown, but now the greyed cedar siding is twisted and cracked, the glass sign above the entrance reads S ong ub, and the great hall that rang with endless shouts of gamblers as they played Fan Tan, Pak Kop Piu, and Ma-Jong is polluted with floating dust motes whose presence is unending even on those long rainy days. The narrow stairway on the wall that led to the abandoned opium dens upstairs is lined with decayed wallpaper that caged in dead laughter: Brokenback’s other-world laughter: yik-yik-yik-yik he laughed. Sam Yik couldn’t tell if Brokenback was imitating his last name or not. He thought he always laughed that way, but he was unsure.

The Sun Chong Club dwarfed the Sunon Wo South China Seas Trading Company. He knew why Brokenback had such a big fancy name for his piddley-ass grocery store. The big name made  up for his lack of stature. Brokenback hadn’t stood up in years. He used to walk hunched over with his hands behind his back as he wore his tattered black wool English cap and scruffy wool thread worn sports jacket, baggy wool pants held up by a rope, but no cane. He said he didn't need a cane. He said his bent back was crooked from eating too much skunk cabbage root, but now he was dancing a jig in the pure land of closed lotus-flowers. He  enjoyed the pleasures of the infinite spring garden. 

What’s going on?

What do you mean?

You're dancing a jig.

We all are.

He opened the Sunon Wo South China Seas Trading Company to make life easier for himself, but it never worked

out that way. Like the time he stacked jars of pickles in a pyramid on the front porch. Sam Yik figured he enjoyed it because he was so close to the ground to begin with, easy stacking. Then a white Cadillac came barreling down the narrow gravel street and tried to pop a U-turn. The big car didn’t clear the jars of pickles. It took off with broken glass in the bumper and pickles and juice and glass all over Brokenback’s front porch, but he knew that car and where it came from.  He walked all the way to the new houses and pounded on the door of the house with the white Cadillac. He didn’t whine, pout, coax, or flatter.  He used bluster and demanded payment. From his stooped position, his hands still behind his back, he looked up at the white man standing in the door of his home.

Your boy broke all my pickle jars . . . you pay now.   How do you reckon it was Dougie?

He drive fast to my store, turn corner too fast, I see all.

The man stood in the doorway and sighed, pulled out his wallet, and gave Brokenback every cent and more of what he was owed for the pickles, and jars. No argument. It became known

as Brokenback’s triumph, but really it was just one working man who recognized the justice of another working man’s cause.

Those were vibrant days, but they are gone. The only thing that remains is Sam Yik’s beautiful set of opium tools, pilfered from the Sun Chong Club, and his cruel addiction.

The townsfolk gave them the swamp, and they turned it into gardens, ponds, and a township.

Them crazy Chinese don’t know nothing, said the townsfolk.

The Chinese community worked together and drained

the land using the ancient Dujiangyan irrigation system and filled the swamp where they wanted, left it flooded in other places. The

swamp fed the people. The land that was reclaimed was black, loamy swamp dirt. Mother nature filled it with aquatic life, and

it teemed with trout they transplanted from the creek behind the town. Old plants and dinosaurs that died eons ago had become black loam, and now the vegetables that came from that dirt fed all those fancy white people living in the new houses. They were eating dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants.

Again, he felt the pull of his addiction. A sweat broke

on his brow, but he browsed and mused and self-medicated until he felt the noose ease, slackening the tightness. He waited, then covered the bottom of his cart with canvas and gently placed the vegetables, covering them with a damp linen cloth. Then he trundled out between his shack and the decrepit sign that read:

S ong ub into the burning sun.

Perhaps, one day, the sign will fall just as he is passing

beneath.  He saw himself pasted dead face first in his cart of vegetables, his skeleton draped into the dirt long after the wood cart had become dust. He would be dug up years later, a relic, a messenger from the past, and all the people would wonder who this person was. Who these bones belonged to, and why was he in such an odd position?  I would be a happy riddle, he thought. He chuckled with new-found vigour.

The shade from his beaten straw hat eased the heat as he trudged up the dirt road, up from the swamp, and around the long rising curve to the shabby sidewalk.

He never sold much in camp-town. They had their own vegetable gardens, but the creak of his cart was a welcome sound on a hot sunny day. He felt good keeping the dragon at bay, winning. He would give way and indulge at the half-way point, using the scrapings from his opium pipe in a foil wrap, a match, and a straw.

As he pushed his cart up the incline towards the school grounds the sound of the clang-clang of Royal Bumps on the merry-go-round got louder and louder. His pace quickened.  He wondered about the merry-go-round because he found its spinning dead weight mysterious. It danced with the children. He felt it had a long story, a story much longer than the one he knew.

It was built by coal miners and loggers, and consisted of a solid steel center post that tapered towards the top. The pyramid shaped merry-go-round sat atop the post and spun, suspended above the ground by the center post. Two by twelve inch boards, cut in an octagon, formed the base of the suspended pyramid and served as seats. From the seats, steel angle iron braces tapered up to the apex. The children sat and faced the center post all around the merry-go-round, holding onto steel handles as their legs dangled. Daring children drove the merry-go-round from inside pushing other angle iron braces that radiated out from the center post. They stopped the spinning by dragging their feet in the dirt.

Then they exited the interior of the merry-go-round and began to push and sway it back and forth again and again from the outside perimeter like a huge swing until the circular steel inner braces smashed against the center post which made the whole thing shudder and rattle and thunder like it was the end of the world—Royal Bumps. He liked to watch the children as they ran inside the merry-go-round and drove it faster and faster, but he especially liked the Royal Bumps because of the chaos. 

Other children played hoop, war, straight up tag, and marbles. He knew all the games because he sat there most mornings and watched. His bench on the other side of the fence had a good view of all the goings on in the school grounds. He liked to watch the girls in their fish-net stockings skip rope or play hopscotch, and the variety of marble games fascinated him. Some played marbles within a circle drawn in the dirt; others stood tossing marbles at marbles from a distance, and still others stood simply dropping marbles down upon other marbles.

Whoa, Nelly, cried a child on the merry-go-round.

The child held tight and hung her head back behind her shoulders as her blonde locks blew in the wind, while the centrifugal force tried to tear her from her seat.

Whoa, Nelly, she cried again.

He wondered who Nelly was.

Two youngsters, an equine-faced towhead called Ducky and a pudgy dark-haired fellow named Jay, noticed Sam Yik before he noticed them. They snuck up behind him.

Mucka highya fung gooey, Ducky said.

The old man quickly swung his cane behind him without looking. It barely clipped Ducky’s sharp ear.

Ouch!

Respect elder.

Yeah, respect your elder, said Jay.

Ducky glared at Jay.

Come round, face enemy.

The boys stood in front of Sam Yik as he sat on the bench. Their eyes were downturned.

Look me in eyes.

Both boys looked at Sam Yik’s brown face and eyes shaded by his broad tattered straw hat.

Goldie locks and the brown-haired bear, he labelled them.

The golden locks framed Ducky's long face. He regarded Sam Yik curiously peering through golden locks, estimating the old man seated before him, but Sam Yik and Jay recognized each other, his brown locks cradled his pudgy face, yet they remained silent. To Jay, Sam Yik was the mysterious Chinaman who ate snakes. To Sam Yik, Jay was the talkative, precocious, and sensitive boy who was now unusually quiet. They both kept their secret stories.  

***

Two years before, Sam Yik, butterfly net in hand, chased the enormous, furry and hefty Spinx White Hawk Moth that

hovered, hummingbird-like, over his tomato plants, coveting, bright in the sunshine it flitted. He scooped the glutinous insect near the cosmos flowers: it caught. He held the excess net and beat the two and a half inch insect that had a huge exoskeleton alien-like face by flinging it against the fence post.