The Life of Hope (22 page)

The women each had different functions. Cairine was the leader, and she’d decide where they should go, whether they should mount hills or descend into valleys, whether they should strike inland or head for the sea. She would also, many times during the course of their trek, halt and silence them with a tiny upright forefinger and an urgent “Ssh!”

If Cairine had stopped them because, for instance, she’d seen a rabbit, Abigal Skinner had seen it long before. Abigal was often amazed at how unobservant the other women were, even Cairine McDiarmid. Abigal knew that, if these expeditions were to amount to anything, if they were to contribute to the scientific knowledge of mankind, it would be better if she led. But Abigal didn’t want to make trouble, and she enjoyed the exercise, the company of the other women. So, rather than leading, her function on the naturalist expedition was to climb trees. As a young girl she’d learned to climb trees, could even shinny up old monsters whose lowermost branches were yards away from the ground. When a bird’s nest was spotted, Abigal Skinner would spit on her palms and go up after it. Then she’d bring it back to the earth, where Mary Carter De-la-Noy would render its likeness with pen and pencil.

Mary certainly had artistic talent, although she often wasn’t as faithful to reality as Cairine might have liked. Once, for example, Abigal Skinner had fetched down a sparrow’s nest in which there was a dead bird. The tiny thing was mostly reduced to bone, its skeleton covered with an evil-looking papery hide. Mary De-la-Noy had drawn it with fluff, cute as a chick, the eyes gently closed instead of popped open by death.

And Martha Quinton Hope was there to do whatever everyone else was unwilling or unable to do. If Cairine was interested in some specimen from the middle of a swamp, Martha would be dispatched into the bog. If a creek needed to be forded, Martha would roll up her trouserlegs and ferry the others across. Once, Cairine found some droppings and decided they warranted study. Martha Q. Hope was instructed to pick them up.

One day, on an expedition through a meadow, the women noticed that all around them animals were copulating. Coupled dragonflies buzzed everywhere. The women startled no end of rutting rabbits, skunks and groundhogs. And the air was full of mating cries, lonely and urgent howls, musical hoots, wild and woolly. Cairine McDiarmid shuddered, felt fingers up her backbone. She touched her left breast and then, realizing that she had, she took her hand away and pointed to the sky. Two birds flew, turning circles around each other, drawing near and then soaring apart, two swallows in swallow love.

Cairine McDiarmid said, “It was an aspecially adifying talk that Himself give us lost night.”

The other women nodded.

“My husband,” said Martha Q. Hope, “is a saint.”

Cairine McDiarmid decided that it was time to sit down. She fell on her little backside, taking a blade of grass and putting it into her mouth. Abigal Skinner hunkered down on her haunches whilst Mary Carter De-la-Noy reclined. Martha Quinton Hope remained standing.

“Now,” said Cairine, “isn’t that the very thing he was after sayin?”

“That he is a saint?” asked Abigal, confused.

“No,” explained Cairine. “That we should be aver watchful of possassiveness.”

“He is
my
husband,” explained Mrs. Hope.

“We air all wed t’gather,” said Cairine. “So says Himself.”

“Then,” giggled Mary De-la-Noy, “we should all sleep in one big bed.”

None of the other women thought the remark especially humorous, although Abigal Skinner pretended to laugh. Her own wedding bed was getting to be an exceedingly uncomfortable place; Abram would sometimes enter it sweating and snorting like some prize stud bull, and before she even knew what was taking place the act would be over. Then Abram would climb out of bed and cross to the window where he would stare at the moon. Abigal knew that his intentions were good, that Abram thought that only in this industrious and coldly efficient way could babies be made, but what Abigal longed for was some tenderness. Abigal often imagined that her nipple was being kissed, the whole of her body explored with childlike curiosity. Surprisingly, when Abigal Skinner opened her eyes (in her imagination) it was the gentle Adam De-la-Noy who was doing all this caressing.

Mary De-la-Noy didn’t know herself what to make of the quip she had authored. Although she giggled, she realized it wasn’t very funny, and she hadn’t really meant it to be. Mary Carter De-la-Noy was one of nine children, and she and her four sisters had all slept together until well into their teens. They’d tangled limbs and scratched each other’s backs, and sleep had
been swift and soft. Nowadays Mary slept alone more often than not, Adam always inventing excuses to sleep in their adjoining room. And when Adam left their bed, Mary would imagine other people in it, and sometimes she imagined having amorous congress with them, not that she lusted or was in heat, more that after amorous congress people felt obligated to scratch her back.

For some reason she often imagined that Mr. Opdycke was in her bed. Opdycke was an unsightly man, his face lined with life, all of his features crooked and strange from misadventure. But Mary De-la-Noy knew that on Thursdays Mr. Opdycke hid behind the door in the kitchen and watched the women bathe. She hadn’t told the others, probably never would. When Mary stepped out of her robe on Thursdays she could feel Mr. Opdycke’s eyes upon her body, feeding on its perfect loveliness. Mr. Opdycke, Mary felt, after having been granted admission to her golden patch, would scratch at her back until Doomsday.

Mary Carter De-la-Noy rolled over on to her stomach, unmindful of the dirt; she enjoyed the sensation as her breasts flattened against the earth. Mary was in no way indifferent to the joys of amorous congress, but, if the truth be told, Adam De-la-Noy was. Mary knew why, had known ever since she first met the beautiful young man, although she had sincerely believed that her pink-nippled body would effect a change. She wasn’t angry that it hadn’t, and she loved Adam very much, but often her body ached for physical communion. And if, as the Reverend Hope said, exclusivity had no place in the Perfectionist scheme of things, why couldn’t she have amorous congress with the poetical Abram Skinner, or even with Joseph Benton Hope himself? The simplicity of this logic delighted Mary Carter De-la-Noy.

Caririne McDiarmid was, as ever, pragmatic. The whole issue of amorous congress (getting hulled between wind and water, getting a shove in your blind eye, whatever; Cairine found the term amorous congress distasteful) was blown out of proportion. Simply, Cairine had a natural desire for it; she had bodily mechanisms that functioned monthly, and quite often she felt a need to do the naughty. “And J. B. Hope,” she often told herself, “he’s the lad far me.” Cairine would even acknowledge being
in love with Hope, if by love one meant an enormous respect and fraternal concern.

Martha Q. Hope eyed her companions suspiciously. All three were lost in thought. “My husband,” she repeated, “is a saint.”

The Hope Public Library was situated on Skinner Road, Skinner being a fairly major street, perpendicular to Joseph Avenue and containing not only the library but the municipal buildings and the Hope Art Gallery and Boutique. The Library was housed in a tiny white bungalow with a goldfish pond on the lawn. I arrived first thing in the morning, armed with four pencils and a spanking new notebook.

I like libraries. When your heart is twisted there’s nothing like going into a library and hunkering down studiously, pretending to be a rabbinical student. In Toronto, Elspeth and I lived practically next door to a library, and in the weeks before my departure the staff had seen a great deal of me. In their eyes, I was a very serious young man, probably verging on holiness. I liked to give the impression of having lived most of my life in a Tibetan monastery.

That was going to be hard in this library. For one thing, there were no desks or carrels. Instead, there was an assortment of sofas, rocking chairs and settees like you’d find in someone’s living room. That was because, having walked through the front door, you were in someone’s living room. Granted, the walls were lined with books, but that was the only library-like touch. The Head Librarian (at least, the only human being in sight) sat on a chesterfield watching television.

It was a game show. The quizmaster demanded, “Who described television as ‘chewing gum for the eyes?’ ”

The Head Librarian screwed up her face. She emitted a series of small spitting noises and then screamed, “Frank Lloyd Wright!!” at the top of her voice.

This was correct.

The living room/library, I noticed, was full of cats. I didn’t see them at first, because they were uniformly huge, fat and furry, about as active as furniture. The cats all deigned to open a single eye in order to stare at me. There were anywhere from fifteen to twenty of the beasts. They all closed the one eye, all of them thinking,
Asshole
.

Meanwhile, the Head Librarian was batting a thousand. “Who founded the Moravian Church?” “Everybody knows that!” bellowed the Head Librarian. “Jan Hus!”

The game show went to a commercial break, and the Head Librarian lit up a cigarette.

She looked about a hundred years old. I realize that I’ve used that phrase before, in my flip way, but I have to re-employ it, because she looked about a hundred years old, mostly because she was about a hundred years old. She was, I found out subsequently, one hundred and four. The Head Librarian was a tiny, withered thing, seeming to be much smaller than any one of her monstrous cats. She lit her cigarette with a match and then she waved the match in the air in order to kill the flame. The flame didn’t go away; she stepped up the amplitude of her waving, but the flame continued to march determinedly toward her gnarly fingers. Frantically, the old woman began to blow at it —once or twice she caused the flame to flicker, but it was not extinguished. Finally the flame touched her hand. “Fizzle!” she said, dropping the match into the thick pile carpet, where it died a natural death. I saw that the rug was covered with burn marks.

“Hello,” I said.

She turned around to look at me. Most of her trembled slightly, and her mouth and eyes worked all the time, opening, closing, doing strenuous facial exercise. “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “Who are you?”

I introduced myself.

The Head Librarian seemed relieved, and one palsied hand went to her breast. “Thank Christ,” she said.

“This is the Library?” I asked, for it was possible that I’d made a mistake and wandered into someone’s home.

“Is it ever!” said the Head Librarian. “Look at all the books.”

There were admittedly a lot of books, but even a cursory glance informed me that few had been published since 1930. Moreover, the books were placed randomly on the shelves so that
Walden
sat between
Nana
and
Treasure Island
.

“I am Miss Dierdra Violet Cumbridge,” said the Head Librarian. “Call me Deedee.” Deedee had polished off her cigarette, even though it was one of those hundred millimeter jobs. Near the sofa was an enormous ceramic ashtray, about the size and shape of a toilet bowl, and Deedee flipped her butt into it.

The quizmaster was back on the TV. “What is the state bird of California?” he demanded.

“Oh, for gosh sakes. The valley quail.”

“Who was Sennacherib?”

Deedee sputtered a bit, the answer getting lodged in her dentures. Finally she spit out, “The King of Assyria!”

“What branch of science deals with the study of cells?”

“Oh, come on, now! Cytology, what else!”

“I’m doing some research,” I said politely. “I am researching this town and its founder, Joseph Ben …”

“You are?” Deedee Cumbridge crossed her arms and nodded vigorously. “Good for you, Patrick. I think more people should be doing research on just that very thing! My gracious, it’s a fascinating story. There’s nothing like a good murder, that’s what I always say.”

I’ve no doubt that my eyes lit up like headlamps. “A good what?”

“Murder,” repeated Ms. Cumbridge.

“Yippee!” I clapped my hands and gave a thumbs-up to the Fates. “And who, pray tell, was murdered?”

“Well, who the hickory do you think?” demanded Deedee. “Let’s go to the special Hope Room and do some research.”

“Okay! Let’s go.”

Deedee reached down beside the sofa and picked up two thick canes. She laboriously raised herself to her feet, taking about four minutes. Then she stared at me. “Peter,” she said, “you’re a nice big boy. I don’t say porky, I say big.”

I nodded thanks for this sensitivity.

“Even though we’ve only known each other ten minutes, I’m not embarrassed to ask. Would you please carry me into the Hope Room?”

“Sure.”

I picked up Deedee Cumbridge, cradling her in my arms. She weighed sixty pounds, tops.

“Thank you, Phillip,” she said.

The Hope Room was near the back of the house. Books lined the walls, but the room also contained a bed and another television set. Deedee had me turn it on. There was another quizmaster.

“What was the name of the first professional baseball team?”

(It was “That’s A Sport,” my Waterloo.)

As I laid Deedee down on the bed she yelled, “The Cincinnati Red Stockings!”

“Right!” I said adamantly. Then I looked through the books as Deedee screamed out answers to questions on quiz shows. She didn’t miss a single one.

To my astonishment, there were a great number of books written about J. B. Hope and his Perfectionist followers. Without going into my process of selection, which was a little fluky, let me simply state my bibliography right here and now.

For the history of the community at Hope, Ontario, I used
The History of the Community at Hope, Ontario
, written by Parker T. Sullivan in fulfillment of his doctoral program in Sociology, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958. The best biography of Hope I found was written by Edgar Muncie, entitled
The Perfectionist
, published by Kinlow-Clark, Ill., 1944. Mind you, Muncie tends to be sympathetic toward Hope, so for a more balanced perspective I found it necessary to dig into the past a bit, coming up with a masterpiece of abusive literature,
The Lecher
(Copp & Sons, N.Y., N.Y., 1883), by the Reverend Doctor Ian John Robert McDougall, Barrister & Solicitor. A much nicer book, invaluable for its portrayal of the other important Perfectionists, is
O, But the Days Were Sweet
(Mester & Beatty, 1894), which are the memoirs of Cairine McDiarmid. Also invaluable in this regard are my old standby,
Fishing for Ol’ Mossback
, by Gregory Opdycke, and a two-penny pulp novel,
The Fish
, by Isaiah Hope. Two books that I used sparingly, and that are only of a scholastic interest, are:
Sexual Practices of the Hope Community
, a monograph written by Prof. Sterling Mycroft of Chiliast University (I lacked interest in this work only because I couldn’t understand any of it) and a scuzzy little paperback,
Hook, Line and Sinker: The Updike Empire
.