“You figure a careful man like Stutz hands over his savings like that without he has a view to something in particular?”
Vera found her father’s tone annoying. “A view to something else. What?”
“You really ought to dig a little deeper into your business partners,” said the old man. “Of course, how were you to know all the lengths Stutz went to over the last fifteen years trying to land himself a wife? Went to each of the three Protestant churches in turn – Anglican, United, and Lutheran – in search of the girl of his dreams. The only man in town to have sung in all three choirs. Offered to tie himself to anything available for the three-legged races at the church picnics. No takers though, no one willing to lend him a leg. Maybe it was his honesty worked against him, his talk of tithing and his glass eye. They found it very off-putting, virgins and widows alike, the tithing and the glass eye – not to mention the man is as homely as a mud fence. But despite his setbacks Stutz doesn’t lose hope. Seems he’s still in there pitching. Has he referred to the glass eye yet? They say it’s a foolproof sign of serious intentions once Stutz gets around to confessing the glass eye. Mr. Stutz doesn’t want any of his prospective brides to be buying a pig in a poke, so he’s always perfectly honest about that glass eye of his. Try and act surprised when he tells you.”
Vera slammed down the receiver on the mocking voice, hard.
The day of The Bluebird’s official opening Vera hosted a crowd of respectable size lured by free coffee and doughnuts and rumours of a falling-out between Alec Monkman and his daughter. Visitors were quick to note that there was no sign of the old man about the place, just the boy passing around a plate of sugar doughnuts and Vera smiling in a new apron as she poured the coffee. The puzzling element was Mr. Stutz nodding to everyone with a proprietorial air from a back table. No one was sure how to read the significance of that, Mr. Stutz, Alec Monkman’s right-hand man, conspicuously seated at a back table in The Bluebird.
Despite the modest but encouraging success of the Grand Opening, in the days and weeks immediately following, business was slack. There was no give in the market. Alec Monkman kept his regulars because his regulars were creatures of habit. The local storekeepers and clerks still migrated twice a day to the hotel and seated themselves at their customary tables during coffee breaks. They were like dumb horses plodding to familiar stalls, thought Vera. That way get-togethers remained cozy and unchanging, as unchanging as arguments about Saturday night’s hockey game, or the time-honoured ritual of matching for the coffee bill. Each morning and each afternoon the jokes made at the loser’s expense would be repeated and the laughter would be just as loud and appreciative as if it was all happening fresh and for the first time. What Vera couldn’t understand was that the old jokes were better because they were predictable and comfortable. It seemed that people in Connaught didn’t like surprises.
Her father had close to twenty regulars upon whom he could depend. Vera had one, an admirer of her raisin pie, the jeweller Wiens, a German immigrant and resolutely solitary man who appeared punctually at ten-fifteen each morning and three-fifteen each afternoon for a glass of chocolate milk and slice of raisin pie which he consumed in sad silence. After scraping his plate with his fork he rose, paid his bill, and left, having scarcely uttered a word.
A business, Vera had to remind herself, could not be supported on the back of a Mr. Wiens, no matter how faithful he was to her cooking. It was discouraging but true that the only times when The Bluebird held more than a single customer was when the quota opened at the elevator and grain trucks backed up for more than a block waiting to deliver their wheat to the Pool. Then the farmers who couldn’t find a seat at the hotel crossed the street to Vera’s so they could nurse a cup of coffee and not have to wait in the bitter cold to unload.
With so few demands on her time Vera could often be seen standing in the large front window of The Bluebird, arms folded over her breasts as she meditated on the snow blowing and shuddering like smoke on the roofs across the way. There were afternoons she didn’t speak to a soul until Mr. Stutz dropped in to have his supper after work. Regardless of her objections, Mr. Stutz always insisted on paying for his evening meal, which only made Vera feel even more of a charity case. Many nights he sat at the back table as late as eight o’clock, toying with his coffee cup and being sickeningly cheerful, advising her not to worry, she’d soon turn the corner. By mid-February, Vera was convinced there wasn’t any corner to turn, no corner existed. Her sole concern was now endeavouring to desperately pry a nickel loose here and there. That was what it had come to, a scramble for nickels. She hoped that by staying open two hours later than her father’s restaurant she might capture a few dregs of business, but what she got was scarcely enough to pay for the extra electric light she burned. The Bluebird had rapidly become a losing proposition. Night after night while Daniel worked on his homework in one of the booths, Vera perched on a stool at the deserted counter, crossed her right leg over her left and flicked her foot up and down like a cat does its tail as it watches the mouse’s hole. Her anxious eyes seldom left the door of The Bluebird as she waited in a misery of anticipation, an ashtray overflowing at her elbow. If the door did swing open it was sure to be a teenager wanting a package of Old Dutch potato chips, or a Coke, or a young father asking if he could buy a bottle of milk from her because his wife had forgotten to go to the store that day and now they were out and the baby was crying for a bottle. Slim profits in a bag of chips or a quart of milk.
It was a relief, when midnight finally crawled round, to check the grill, draw the blinds, and lock the door. In seven short hours Vera would be obliged to start the slow water-torture all over again. Until then there was sleep, an exhausted reprieve from worrying how to meet the rent in March or thoughts of the $3100 she now owed Mr. Stutz. That was how winter stumbled on. Vera barely noticed the sun gaining strength, the icicles hanging from the eaves suddenly one day releasing a rain of pattering drops on the sidewalk outside The Bluebird’s window, the children running home from school with their coats unbuttoned, their toques clutched in their hands, the puddles in the shining gravel of Main Street reflecting blue sky.
The change of seasons also seemed to bring a change of luck. Vera had the Portuguese to thank for that. The motives behind the arrival of the Portuguese in Connaught were by no means straightforward or simple. For more than a year there had been vague but persistent rumours circulating that an American mining company was considering establishing a potash mine somewhere in the vicinity of Connaught. The rumours could not be dismissed as farfetched since a mine had opened in the province only five or six years before. Nevertheless, for months no one could really believe such a stroke of good fortune could smite their particular sleepy backwater. Yet, if it did, the stakes would be enormous. If the mine did go ahead, the American company would need to choose a town for their headquarters, a town in which to settle office staff and miners. That would mean prosperity and unprecedented growth, a spectacular, heady boom in business. Anyone with a head on his shoulders could see that if a mine were to be established in the district there were only three possible choices for a headquarters, the three towns which stood within twenty miles of one another – Hildebrook, Czar, and Connaught. Of course, it was all a gamble, a gamble that the mine would go ahead at all, a gamble as to which town would claim the glittering prize if it did. But it was Connaught’s town council which acted first, having weighed the odds, then hesitated and see-sawed for months before taking a deep breath and casting the dice. The stakes were too high, too tempting to stand aside. Besides, all of the councillors were also businessmen and stood the most to gain from risking the taxpayers’ money. They reasoned that if the mine was to proceed, the Americans would select the most progressive, the most go-ahead town as centre of their operations. As Councillor Stevenson, who owned a plumbing business, put it, “No American is going to pick some backward shit hole to live.” This was the argument that clinched the decision to pave Connaught’s dirt roads and lay new cement sidewalks as an enticement to the Americans and a way of gaining a march on Connaught’s unpaved rivals. A contract was hurriedly signed with an Edmonton company and, on May 1, the Portuguese arrived to lay asphalt and pour cement.