The Sign on My Father's House Read online

  Praise for Tom Moore

  Angels Crying

  “This is a truly compelling book . . . carefully researched, well documented and sensitively written . . . highlights the failure of protective services, police and child welfare to protect children. The writer’s skill is such that this book reads like a novel. . . . It should be required reading for foster parents, social workers, police and for students in the helping professions.”

  International Journal of Family Care

  “The book gathers steam like a locomotive, reaching a fevered, page-turning pitch. Angels Crying is a good read.”

  The Sunday Express

  “It’s a well written, well researched and well developed story. It will make you think. Angels Crying is a gripping, heart-rending story you’ll have a tough time putting down.”

  The Newfoundland Herald

  “I hope Angels Crying will be widely read . . . solidly readable, heartbreaking book . . . an excellent job . . .”

  The Telegram

  Good-bye Momma

  “Good-bye Momma by Tom Moore is a genuinely touching novel about a little boy . . . who must cope with the pain of his mother’s early death and his father’s remarriage.”

  Chatelaine Magazine

  “This writer puts more in 70 pages than most authors can put in 300. The story is so full of incident, of character, of feeling . . .”

  In Review

  “Most of all he is a strongly believable juvenile character with a background that will be exotic for children his age and older . . .”

  The Toronto Star

  “Tom Moore has written a story of childhood in Newfoundland outports, a tale vividly told in a style as fresh as a coastal breeze, and presenting the fears, passions and glories of young children in a very sympathetic way.”

  Percy Janes

  “Great art is always the emergence of the universal from the particular . . . Tom Moore’s novel, Good-bye Momma, is an excellent example of writers throughout the country who wear the badge of the particular proudly.”

  Emergency Librarian

  “The believable detail, the avoidance of sentimentality, the clear and unsyrupy report on the world of childhood is most satisfying and refreshing.”

  Ray Guy

  “. . . read it, and remember and be touched.”

  The Western Star

  “One of the top two books chosen by the Children’s Book Centre of Toronto, Good-bye Momma is recommended reading for children over 12.”

  The Hartland Observer

  “Twelve-year-olds will discover a new friend and a new land in this novel written by a Newfoundlander whose empathy makes it believable.”

  Saturday Night

  “One of the ten best

  children’s books ever written in Canada.”

  The Canadian Book of Lists

  “. . . he is simply a very fine writer. The descriptions in the novel are beautifully created, in simple but effective language.”

  The Humber Log

  Flanker Press Limited

  St. John’s

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The sign on my father’s house : a novel / Tom Moore.

  Names: Moore, Tom, 1950- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190064668 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190064706 | ISBN 9781771177412 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771177429 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781771177436 (Kindle)

  | ISBN 9781771177443 (PDF)

  Classification: LCC PS8576.O616 S54 2019 | DDC C813/.54—dc23

  —————————————————————————————————— ————————————————

  © 2019 by Tom Moore

  All Rights Reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

  Printed in Canada

  Cover design by Graham Blair

  Flanker Press Ltd.

  PO Box 2522, Station C

  St. John’s, NL

  Canada

  Telephone: (709) 739-4477 Fax: (709) 739-4420 Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420

  www.flankerpress.com

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  We acknowledge the [financial] support of the Government of Canada. Nous reconnaissons l’appui [financier] du gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Spring

  2 Summer

  3 Marriage

  4 Betrayal

  5 Out into the World

  6 Memorial

  7 Country Mouse in Residence

  8 Tunnels

  9 The Return of Ellen

  10 Love

  11 Getting Hitched

  12 The Merchant Prince

  13 Help from an Angel

  14 Fall

  15 Winter

  For Gerald Squires (1937–2016)

  Introduction

  This is the story of a young man finding his way through life. It is set in Newfoundland at the end of the Smallwood era, when we looked about for our identity as a people. We were now Canadians. What did that mean? It is a story about a father and a son and their constant love through conflicts and troubled times.

  1

  Spring

  Ah, love! On a bright May morning in 1966, I fell in love with Ellen Monteau. I was thirteen, and she was a senior student at Smallwood High. I had been invited to the senior classroom to report on a book I had read, Gone with the Wind. Sitting in the front row was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen.

  Other students slouched in their desks, ignored me, or did homework. Someone hissed, “Shut up, Rhett Butler!” But when I finished my book report, distinct applause came from her desk. The bell rang, and twenty students barrelled past me out the door.

  “The title tells it all, Gone with the Wind,” she said breezily. She wafted toward me, and the warm sunlight followed her, trapped in her blonde hair. To me she looked about eight feet tall. She wore a pleated plaid skirt and a white cotton blouse with frills across the breast.

  “Thank you,” I croaked.

  “It is truly divine . . .” Five minutes of bliss followed as the voice, which had acquired a slight southern accent, discussed the book. Atlanta burned, a civilization died before me, but I heard only her sweet voice, perhaps from Tara.

  Behind me, several light years away, I heard another voice: “That was a fine job, Felix. You must have enjoyed the book very much,” said the teacher. When I turned back, my vision from Dixie had disappeared into the Atlanta smoke. Sigh!

  Out in the bumpy, tussling corridor of student bodies, Tammy
Fagan was the first familiar face. “Who’s the movie star in 11-A?” I asked.

  Tammy shifted her books to her skinny hip and her gum to the other side of her mouth. “That would be Ellen Monteau. Aroused, are we, Felix? Ha ha! You’ll be studying wet dreams in Family Living next year.” She snorted, clutched her books to her skinny chest, and went on her way.

  Who is Ellen Monteau? I needed to speak to Monk.

  Outside the library door, Victoria Spaulding was standing on a chair, stapling a sign to the wall. She was on tiptoes, reaching high over her head, and hammering a staple gun with her fist.

  I pretended not to notice her pleated skirt riding high over the backs of her legs.

  “Just a minute, Felix.”

  I slunk by.

  “Felix! Come here.” She was the student president and head cheerleader of Smallwood High.

  She looked down at me. “What grade are you in?”

  “Nine,” I said.

  “Your class is allowed to attend the basketball game Friday night.”

  “But that goes on till late.”

  “I know. Mr. Banion will be contacting parents to let them know you’re allowed. Isn’t that wonderful? It was the student council’s idea.” She turned back to her sign.

  I found Monk in the library. “The council needs the money,” he said. “Two bucks a head, times sixty grade nines, makes a hundred and twenty bucks. Letting in your class puts them back in the black.”

  Monk’s real name was Jerome Banion. We called him Monk because he spent every free minute alone in the library, like an old monk transcribing Greek into Latin. He was grossly overweight and sat atop his library chair like a frog on a mushroom. Monk remembered everything he read or heard. He’d moved to Curlew from some private school in Ontario, and I often wondered why his father had taken his family to Newfoundland. Where was Mrs. Banion? And I bet a divorce court was involved. Kids didn’t like Monk, and no one spoke to him unless they had to. But I felt some small kinship because my father was a mainlander, too, from Alberta.

  Monk knew everything. He could recite verbatim telephone conversations between his father and the school superintendent.

  “I need to talk to you about something else,” I said. His watery eyes moved up from the book in front of him. His chins jiggled as he shifted to a more comfortable position on his mushroom.

  “Who is Ellen Monteau?”

  “Well-developed blonde, room 11-A. Straight-A student. Lives with her mother in Petley. My kind of girl!” he concluded with a smile. His big head was already lowering back to his book.

  “Sure is pretty,” I said.

  “Somewhat of a checkered past, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Information was Monk’s currency. With it he bought what little interaction he had with other human beings. “Something about her mother.”

  “What?”

  Monk looked at me, then around the room. He pulled his chair closer to mine. “Okay, I’ll tell you. The mother went to St. John’s as a secretary years ago and came home pregnant. That was Ellen. They lived with the grandmother until the old lady died a few years ago. She must have left them the trailer. The mother drinks a lot, and there are men.”

  “Men?”

  “Yeah, men. You’ll do it next year in Family Living.”

  “I know, along with wet dreams.”

  “You’re a bit young to be talking like that, aren’t you?”

  I walked home that evening with my next-door neighbour, Jeffery Williams. Jeff was a foot taller than me, and was the school basketball star. His hair was dark, fine, but already thinning. His body reminded me of a deer. He walked with his books bound with a leather belt and balanced on his head. Suddenly, he whirled around and lobbed five pounds of books up into an imaginary basket and caught them, shouting, “Two points! Going to the big game next Friday, Felix?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Argentia Killers and us. Who do you think’ll win?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit, Felix! No one knows. Who do you think will win?”

  “You, I guess.”

  “You bet! By eight points! Wait and see! I’ll score thirty!”

  I turned to go into my yard. “See you, Jeff.” He just waved.

  I entered the backyard. In the afternoon sun, two spring robins chirped in our apple tree. I went in the back door, threw my books on the woodbox, and hung up my coat in the porch.

  Shirley, my stepmom, was at the kitchen table, and I could see she’d been crying. Her big dark eyes were ringed with red. She took a long sip of her tea and looked at me over the cup.

  “Oh, Felix.” More tears threatened, but she swallowed them with her tea. “He’s at it again. He’s out in the stable now. Go out and try to stop him.” She looked out the window.

  In the stable, I found my father hammering away in grim determination. “Felix, how are you, boy? Back from school. Good. You can help me with this thing.” He wore a little paper painter’s cap with a black shiny bib. Even in warm weather he wore a plaid shirt. He never wore jeans, but old pants for working and his new ones for church. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was wide across the shoulders and thick through the chest. His receding hair was dark and curly and peeped out from under the paper cap. He was forty-three years old.

  Father had before him a huge sign onto which he was hammering a frame. Upside down, it read something like DOG MAD WOOD SMALL, which made no sense to me.

  I immediately began to help him.

  The sign was impressive. He had painted the eight-foot-by-four-foot plywood sheet with white oil paint. Onto this went his large red letters. He finished hammering the fine blue frame and righted it for me to see, looking very pleased with his creation.

  Now the words made some sense: GOD DAM SMALLWOOD! It was a reference to the most popular man in Newfoundland: premier, governor, king, Joseph R. Smallwood. I preferred my first reading about the mad dog in the small wood.

  “Isn’t it a beauty, Felix? This will stir them up.” He smiled, and a drop of spittle glistened on his chin. He wiped his hand across the slick sign to make sure the paint was dry. “All we need to do now is nail it to the house.”

  “Front or back?” I feared the worst.

  “Felix! Felix! If we nail it to the back, no one will see it, boy. We need people to see it and read it for our ideas to strike home.”

  Here was a logic that could not be denied, so we nailed the sign to the front of our house.

  My father wobbled on the top of the old wooden ladder. I held the rungs to keep it steady. They felt dry and flaky under my hands. “Careful, Felix, hold her steady,” he shouted down to me.

  “That boy can’t hold up a big fellow like you, Walter. Move over, Felix.” George Williams, our neighbour, ambled into our yard smelling of pipe tobacco. I fervently wished George would amble on back before he read our sign, but Father was delighted.

  “Oh, hello, George. Thanks.”

  “What you nailing up there, Walter?” George wore carpenter’s pants every day except Sunday. He pressed his ample belly against the ladder. “I’m used to holding ladders, Felix. She won’t budge now.” George was the volunteer fire chief.

  “It’s a sign, George, a sign,” Father shouted down.

  George leaned back from the ladder and looked up. “God dam Smallwood.” His thick lips formed the words slowly. Then, his hand flew away from the ladder as if it were hot. I grabbed it tighter in case he’d try to kick it out from under Father.

  George turned his lined face up toward Father. He spoke slowly, as if he were dictating to a moron: “Joseph R. Smallwood is the greatest man who ever lived in Newfoundland, except for Jesus Christ.”

  “Jesus Christ never lived in Newfoundland,” said Father, missing t
he point as usual.

  Recovering from shock and anger, George tried again. “Walter, I should haul you down off that ladder and beat the living blazes out of you.”

  Father stopped hammering.

  George went on, “Why are you so down on Mr. Smallwood?”

  “Just that he’s trying to kill a way of life, that’s all, George.”

  “Joseph R. Smallwood brought us, on this godforsaken rock, into Canada. I don’t have to tell you that, Walter. You’re from the mainland! He took us from starvation and the dole to the baby bonus and old-age pensions.”

  Father did not flinch on the top of his rickety ladder. “That doesn’t change a thing. Did you ever hear of resettlement? Resettlement, George? That’s what Joe Smallwood and his government are doing to hundreds of our small communities.”

  “Small communities? What’s that got to do with you, Walter? Curlew is not being resettled. Sure, you’re not even a Newfoundlander.”

  Father climbed down, his hammer in his hand. I’d seen him knock down a man once, and he was always punching the heavy bag that he hung in the stable. But he just stood at the foot of the ladder.

  “You’re welcome to your opinion, George. There’s mine.” He pointed the hammer up to the sign, looking as righteous as Moses who had just chiselled his own commandments.

  George looked at him for a long moment, and then he lowered his eyes to the ground. “There’s nothing else to be said.” He turned and walked the few steps back to his own yard, quietly closing the wooden gate behind him.

  We watched him go, and we stood for a while at the foot of the ladder. A cool spring wind blew in from the ocean that lay less than a mile away. I shivered in my light shirt.

  Father looked at me. “What do you think of my sign, Felix?”

  I knew a lot depended on my answer. Finally I said, “You spelled ‘damn’ wrong.”

  We both looked up at the sign. “Well, too late to change it now. I hope that’s the worst they’ll say against it.”

  It wasn’t.

  In the house, Shirley was still upset. She was a pretty woman with dark hair that came in loose curls to her shoulders. She had heard the nails going into the house and must have felt the pain of each one.