The Freedom in American Songs Read Online Free PDF Page B

had not devoured cake with them by the trout pond while Mrs. Halloran climbed overhead searching for lost lures. Marianne murmured no rosary in blessed light from a rose window. Her well had shrews drowned in it and she was foolish enough to strain them out and drink the water. She threw sallysuckers in her soup, and one day she would take off with that weekend boyfriend of hers with the silken hands, and would resume the life she had left in the city for this borrowed bit of cove life. She sensed her mourning for the torn and sold meadow marked her every bit as lost as Mrs. Halloran would appear once the sod money was spent, caught in a stranger’s headlights in the snow, beseeching him to drive her to bingo, and she shut her bedroom window and did not try to save anything.
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    Every Waking Moment
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    â€œThe Worship Centre welcomes you downtown.” Black letters on mango-coloured poster paper. They were up all along Duckworth Street, on telephone poles and in store windows. Marianne ripped one off the green wooden doors of Tom Callahan: Novelties, Gifts, Tobacconist, which had closed down three years ago.
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    â€œTO HEAR: TO ENJOY: TO CONSIDER: TO RECEIVE: God’s Word of Love—Special Music & Congregational Singing—Living Testimonies—Fellowship. SUNDAY EVENINGS 6:30pm January 24, 31. February 7, 14. FREE ADMISSION. At Belle Isle “B” Ballroom Rubicon Plaza Hotel 160 New Spencer
Street. IF YOU NEED—Transportation—Prayer/Counselling—Information CALL 268-1883, 765-4708, 592-3397. Pastors Kevin Woolridge, Don Maynard.”
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    At the top of the poster had been drawn a stylized dove and cross. At the bottom was an ornate R in a circle, the logo of the Rubicon Hotel. The Rubicon was new. Reflected in its shining walls were the brine-worn facades of saddleries, warehouses and pubs across New Spencer Street. Marianne had never been in there, but she had hitched a ride once from Aspel Harbour to town with Rose, who had a new job there as a room service maid. Rose had been looking forward to meeting the important guests who would, the management told her, be coming. They would tip well. Before the place opened there had been a dinner for the staff and local dignitaries like the premier. There had been a gelatin salmon with a real salmon suspended in it, with mint leaves down the middle and devilled eggs with blue food colouring in the yolks down the sides. There had been rehearsals for staff members before the hotel opened. Rose had had to take trays of tea and coffee and baskets of fruit and steaming tureens up the elevator and along the corridors without taking too long and without spilling anything. She told Marianne there hadn’t been enough rehearsals and she was nervous. The hotel had been opening the day Marianne hitched the ride.
    The poster had the initials P.A.O.N. in fine print at the bottom. Marianne knew that meant it came from the Pentecostals. Her family was not Pentecostal. Her brother, the one like Burt Reynolds, had gone out with Pentecostal girls. They had been clean and pretty, and they had studied French and been intelligent. Marianne’s brother was too wild for them, and they had each married someone else.
    The Pentecostals were pretty crazy. Everyone knew that. But Marianne wanted to go. She wanted TO HEAR: TO ENJOY: TO CONSIDER: TO RECEIVE: God’s Word of Love, the special music and singing, and the fellowship. She could do without the living testimonies, but she was hungry for the rest, because all her searching through sacred teachings of the east and the west had led her to this street, and to this orange poster. The Anglican Cathedral up the road had a museum in it. In the museum was the skeleton of a church mouse from Westminster Abbey. The skeleton was dark brown with holes in it, and to Marianne that skeleton was the same as the cathedral: dark, with holes, dead, and scary. When she