Grande (like grandy). Table Grande consisted of a small flyblown store, some scattered shacks, and a name. It had no particular reason for existence. No one would choose to go to live there, and those who by misdirected choice had once gone there had not the energy to leave. It is probably derelict now.
On the outskirts of Table Grande (if Table Grande could be said to have outskirts) was a group of shacks that constituted the stump ranch of Mr. and Mrs. Mordy. Mr. Mordy was lazy and Mrs. Mordy was shrewish. The stumps that were still left unburned had stood uselessly in that cumbered stony soil for years; a stringy cow tried to find sustenance; some stringy fowls ran about; there was a poor vegetable patch and a root house in which the root vegetables were kept during the winter. Mrs. Mordy continually nagged at her husband to leave Table Grande and go to find work in Kamloops, or even in Cottonwood Flats or Barrière; but every time that Mr. Mordy found himself faced with moving his wife and twochildren from the known discomfort and penury of Table Grande to the unknown future in Cottonwood Flats or Barrière or Kamloops, he slumped back and said “Aw quit nagging … we got all the winter’s wood in haven’t we? Wait till spring.”
The two children in this family were named Cyril and Vera. There was no school in Table Grande because there were not enough children to warrant the Provincial Government building a schoolhouse and providing a teacher. There were only the two little boys at the store, and Bill Ford’s wife who was going to have a baby any day God help her, and Cyril and Vera Mordy. If Mrs. Mordy had been a different kind of woman she would have written to the Department of Education in Victoria and received lessons by mail. These lessons would have been so well and easily planned that she could have educated Cyril and Vera fairly well; but she did not do this. The result was that Vera educated herself a very little with the help of some old schoolbooks, and that Cyril did not educate himself at all. He was called Surl, and when he had to write his name he spelled it S-u-r-l, so that ultimately he became Surl – Surl Mordy.
Mrs. Mordy did not care for Vera who resembled herself, being slight, pale, dark and thin-faced. She worshiped Surl who resembled in form a Greek god who happened to inhabit western Canada. Surl grew up into undeserved beauty, heroic in form but in nothing else, and crowned with a thick and strong tawny mop of curling hair. There was one thing about his face that was peculiar. His eyelids were set a little low across his eyes, and when he looked at a person, he looked not at the eyes of that person but at that person’s lower lids, from under his own lids. This gave his look a slightly sensual yet bashful cast and, later, was a source of excitement to young girls, andolder ones too, who saw something personal in this curious regard which did not mean a thing and was simply a physical characteristic. Surl was no good.
This kind of life did not make Vera a happy girl. It is well known that young people need and love love, and Vera did not receive love, unless you could call the lazy tolerance of her father “love.” Her mother’s partiality for Surl caused Vera’s face often to have a bitchy look.
One day Mr. Mordy stood in his shack doorway holding a sack filled with various objects. The base of the sack rested on the floor.
He said to his wife, “I’m going in to Kamloops. I’ll send for you and the kids when I get fixed up with a job of work.” He then lifted the sack over his shoulder, turned, and lumbered off to an old jalopy which had stopped first at the store where Mr. Mordy had happened to be that morning. The driver who was a commercial traveler of sorts started up the engine, Mr. Mordy clambered in, and Mrs. Mordy – standing at the shack door – saw the car bump into the distance. She had begun by calling after the car and saying all sorts of things, but that
On the outskirts of Table Grande (if Table Grande could be said to have outskirts) was a group of shacks that constituted the stump ranch of Mr. and Mrs. Mordy. Mr. Mordy was lazy and Mrs. Mordy was shrewish. The stumps that were still left unburned had stood uselessly in that cumbered stony soil for years; a stringy cow tried to find sustenance; some stringy fowls ran about; there was a poor vegetable patch and a root house in which the root vegetables were kept during the winter. Mrs. Mordy continually nagged at her husband to leave Table Grande and go to find work in Kamloops, or even in Cottonwood Flats or Barrière; but every time that Mr. Mordy found himself faced with moving his wife and twochildren from the known discomfort and penury of Table Grande to the unknown future in Cottonwood Flats or Barrière or Kamloops, he slumped back and said “Aw quit nagging … we got all the winter’s wood in haven’t we? Wait till spring.”
The two children in this family were named Cyril and Vera. There was no school in Table Grande because there were not enough children to warrant the Provincial Government building a schoolhouse and providing a teacher. There were only the two little boys at the store, and Bill Ford’s wife who was going to have a baby any day God help her, and Cyril and Vera Mordy. If Mrs. Mordy had been a different kind of woman she would have written to the Department of Education in Victoria and received lessons by mail. These lessons would have been so well and easily planned that she could have educated Cyril and Vera fairly well; but she did not do this. The result was that Vera educated herself a very little with the help of some old schoolbooks, and that Cyril did not educate himself at all. He was called Surl, and when he had to write his name he spelled it S-u-r-l, so that ultimately he became Surl – Surl Mordy.
Mrs. Mordy did not care for Vera who resembled herself, being slight, pale, dark and thin-faced. She worshiped Surl who resembled in form a Greek god who happened to inhabit western Canada. Surl grew up into undeserved beauty, heroic in form but in nothing else, and crowned with a thick and strong tawny mop of curling hair. There was one thing about his face that was peculiar. His eyelids were set a little low across his eyes, and when he looked at a person, he looked not at the eyes of that person but at that person’s lower lids, from under his own lids. This gave his look a slightly sensual yet bashful cast and, later, was a source of excitement to young girls, andolder ones too, who saw something personal in this curious regard which did not mean a thing and was simply a physical characteristic. Surl was no good.
This kind of life did not make Vera a happy girl. It is well known that young people need and love love, and Vera did not receive love, unless you could call the lazy tolerance of her father “love.” Her mother’s partiality for Surl caused Vera’s face often to have a bitchy look.
One day Mr. Mordy stood in his shack doorway holding a sack filled with various objects. The base of the sack rested on the floor.
He said to his wife, “I’m going in to Kamloops. I’ll send for you and the kids when I get fixed up with a job of work.” He then lifted the sack over his shoulder, turned, and lumbered off to an old jalopy which had stopped first at the store where Mr. Mordy had happened to be that morning. The driver who was a commercial traveler of sorts started up the engine, Mr. Mordy clambered in, and Mrs. Mordy – standing at the shack door – saw the car bump into the distance. She had begun by calling after the car and saying all sorts of things, but that
Similar Books
