platter on top of the stove then takes off her oven mitts. âIâll have a talk with him. Iâm sure if he sees you there again, heâll treat you like one of the neighbours.â
âIs Walter your neighbour?â
âWalter lives next door in our old house. We moved there from the south coast when I was a teenager. Originally, he was one of my fatherâs pupils. He took care of my grandmother and then my father until he died. He helps me around the property, ploughing my road in the winter, cutting hay in the fall, preparing the garden in the spring.â
âHas your father been dead long?â
She passes me two six-sided plates and two six-sided glasses for water. âHelp me set the table. Iâll tell you about him while we eat.â
Sheâs the third person besides Edith or Mercedes and Cyril to invite me for a meal. Iâve had every type of delicacy including figgy duff, bakeapple bunts, caribou stir-fry, stuffed moose heart, fish and brewis, and barbequed cod tongues. This is my first arctic char in phyllo pastry with a partridgeberry-cognac sauce. We sit at the table. Steam rises off the fish. While I was in the shower, she changed into a sleeveless t-shirt with track pants. Sheâs not wearing aâ
âIf my father was here,â she says, âyouâd see the biggest man with the smallest voice, the most exhausted eyes from reading all the time, the most passionate intellect. Talk about superlatives. Reading was a religion to him, something he worshipped and proselytized about.â She serves me then runs back and forth to the fridge or cupboard for things she forgot to put on the table.
âWhen you meet someone new for the first time, youâll typically ask: âWhere are you from?â or âWhat do you do?â William, Will for short, would ask, âWhat are you reading now?â So, Carl, what are you reading?â
â Robinson Crusoe .â
She holds up her glass of wine like sheâs toasting. âWill would have approved. He would have quoted from it or launched into a lecture on first-person narratives. Youâd wonder if you were sitting in an English class listening to an absentminded professor.â
Itâs not easy to eat with the dogs staring at me through the glass door in the porch, drooling for table scraps. âHe would have made a good librarian.â
âLibraries werenât common in outport Newfoundland, especially in the small communities where Will and his mother lived.â
âA bibliophile with no books?â
âHe had books. Only a few at first, thousands eventually. His mother, Esther, was a midwife.â
âShe gave birth to books?â
She pours more wine. âYou could say that. The islandâs birth rate was one of the highest in the world back then. Esther travelled on coastal boats to communities where her services were needed. Will was always in tow. Most of the time, they paid her in-kind with firewood, plenty of eggs, vegetables, game, fish. Sometimes, in exchange for a service, sheâd ask for a book or two. Thatâs how Will became a collector.â
âIs your mother still living?â
She gets up from the table then goes to the porch to let the dogs outside. A draft of cold air flows into the room. She sits at the table again. âWill didnât really want children, not after spending so much time with a midwife. Thatâs why he married my mother. She was a widow, ten years older. She couldnât have children, or so they thought. She passed away when I was young. He brought a copy of Aliceâs Adventures in Wonderland to the hospital. Baptism by books. Before I turned seven, I had over six hundred.â
âYouâre like Matilda in Roald Dahlâs book. She read all of Dickens before she turned five.â
âI canât claim the same, although I did have the largest collection of childrenâs books in any
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