The Winter Helen Dropped By

‘I suspect pectin comes from the East,’ Daddy said. ‘Most everything suspicious emanates from there.’

It wasn’t until the final rocket had been placed in the ground by Daddy and lighted by Bandy Wicker that anyone noticed fire was attacking the community of Doreen Beach from a number of angles.

Everyone began to run around, most getting away from the fire, but some, like Bandy Wicker and my daddy, getting closer and attempting to form some strategy for firefighting. Someone said they sure wished that Doreen Beach was located on a lake like it should be, but Doreen Beach was about four miles from Purgatory Lake and not even located on a creek, the only water coming from a communal well shared by Torval Osbaldson and the current owners of the Doreen Beach General Store, a sallow Chinese with sunken eyes and stooped shoulders and his wispy wife who seldom came out of the attached lean-to they lived in, though they talked back and forth from the lean-to to the store, and listening to them talking was like listening to the morose gobble of turkeys.

Earl J. Rasmussen was already hauling water up from the communal well, and the sallow Chinese had donated his stock of three new galvanized water buckets, so a bucket brigade of sorts was formed, the purpose of which was to save the house of Torval and Tillie Osbaldson.

Bandy Wicker had been a volunteer firefighter in Odessa, Texas, and had brought with him to Alberta his genuine firefighter’s hat, scoop-shaped, red and shiny, which he kept on the top shelf of the closet in his and Mrs. Bandy Wicker’s bedroom. He let his son, my rabbit-snaring buddy, Floyd Wicker, try on that hat of a Christmas morning and on Floyd’s birthday.

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