*Spoiler Alert: You may want to finish the novel BEFORE reading this essay.
 
We don’t know exactly what is going to happen to Rosie at the end of A Seven Year Ache, but there are reasons aplenty to suspect that it’s not going to be good.
 
Not only has Rosie lost Culain forever, but Doc True has passed away, Mitch is terribly sick and gone to the sanitarium, and Baby and Sunshine, Mother’s oxen, have both died, leaving the family more isolated than ever. Rosie seems determined to head north where there are “six men for every girl,” a plan with which we know Mother is absolutely not on board. The symbolism of Rosie’s intention to leave (baby) Hope behind is not lost on us, and Rosie’s dreams, often disturbing, certainly do not bode well at the end.
 
Most readers of novels expect, and are granted, a happy ending. Writers are taught that protagonists, over the course of the novel, will usually resolve the central conflict and, by changing themselves or their circumstance in some way, should obtain happiness, or at least hope, in the end. So even if it’s not a happy-ever-after ending, at least the reader is left with a sense of optimism and satisfaction.
 
The main reason A Seven Year Ache doesn’t have a happy ending is because it’s based on the lives of real working class people in the early Twentieth century, unconventional women with unconventional lives, and those kinds of lives just rarely had pretty endings.
 
All of the devastating things that happened to characters in A Seven Year Ache actually happened to my relatives on whom those characters were based. My little auntie Kathleen (Carlene in the book) really did die of fever in the early days. My Auntie Eileen really did get pregnant by her married employer and die of a botched abortion in 1937. My actual grandfather died excruciatingly of an untreated throat cancer.
 
And my then-thirteen year old Auntie Beatrice really was sexually abused by two adult men for whom, when my Gramma reported it to the constable, the only repercussions were that each was fined $5.00. But Beatrice was incarcerated in the Winnipeg Home for Girls, where she was sterilized and physically and sexually abused over a period of eight years, eventually emerging as a damaged and tragic, often violent, woman.
 
Similarly, I knew my Auntie Rosie well, and although A Seven Year Ache is a snapshot of her life and decisions in the early days, Rosie’s life went on in that same formative direction. A parade of new-man solutions, invariably turning into new man-problems. And I know where that pathway led her. It was not the devastating journey taken by Beatrice, but hers was also certainly not a fun fall.
 
So, having a view of Rosie’s story in the context of her larger life, I could not in good conscience weave a happy resolution at this point.
 
For those of you who were truly saddened by the novel’s ending—and I’ve heard from several—I can offer the consolation that you will meet our Rosie again in the second novel, Three Days Till Rapture. The protagonists for that one are Grace Kirk and Valentine Labeau, but Rosie will be there too, and you’ll have a chance to catch up on where her life has gotten her at that point.
 
Poor, dear Rosie.
 
So the truth of my aunties’ lives determines the resolution of A Seven Year Ache. But I feel that the lives of working class people today also demand resistance to the expectation that we “play nice” and smile for the camera.
 
You know, life is getting harder for the poor today, not easier. And when I look around me at my relatives, neighbours and friends, it is not a pretty picture I see. Many, many lives of quiet desperation, unmet dreams, failed relationships, and abandonment by adult children and extended family. Poverty. Addictions. Poor health. Hopelessness.
 
Years ago, when I had suffered yet another upset in my personal life, a beloved therapist posed this question to me. “Oh Fisher, when are you going to get your happy ending?”
 
These years later, I find humour in the actual wording of her question. In my writings as a therapist now myself, I have referred to the multiple and seemingly unending problems suffered by the poor. And to the lack of awareness of many counsellors about the persistence, and the sheer magnitude of problems we typically bear. The unsolve-ability. That’s why we just need therapists to listen! And midwife us along our way. Instead, they get discouraged with us, primed as they are for a privileged client and their typical one-time issue—then back to living the dream.
 
So, understanding the larger context of the lives of the poor, I do quite willfully write this subtext into my stories. That poor people, and particularly poor women, are dealing with myriad challenges and abuses that are unlikely to result in pleasant returns.
 
In Rosie’s case, there is also the lesson of the ethic, taught to every poor girl of that era at her mother’s knee. Be a “good” girl, follow the rules, marry the right man, and you should be okay. But break the rules, be a “bad” girl, and you will reap the whirlwind.
 
In Three Days Till Rapture, we will see how the “good girl” ethic works out for Grace when she meets her undoing in the person of Valentine Labeau.
 
But for Rosie and the story before us, the possibilities seem pretty bleak.

​And that’s the truth.

NOTE: THIS STORY IS BASED ON TRUE ORAL ACCOUNTS OF WORKING CLASS LIFE as told to Fisher Lavell
 
I try to envision him there in a Dutch field hospital in 1944, not the grizzled old man, Tom, sitting across the table from me, whose reminiscence is spare and plain. But Tommy, a boy of twenty-one, far from home; his strong, young leg blown away and what is left of his knee, shredded and bloody. The mattress is dank-smelling and dull, crusted here and there with clots of dried liquid—he does not want to know what. Surrounding him is a decimation of strapping, youthful bodies, a din of moans and prayers, the next shipment of life-saving drugs, uncertain.
 
Later, upright, the awkward man-hewn leg strapped to his hip, and newly learned to walk again, he had bought the pair of wooden shoes, a treasured gift for his baby sister, Violet, my mother. Hand-carved by a young Dutch woman named Greta—the meticulously painted blue windmills, the lone tree billowing beneath it. Majestic, golden, unbowed.
 
Greta had lost everything; her mother to starvation fever, young husband shot dead in the countryside stealing apples to feed their three-year old daughter, Yrena, who sickened that March anyway. And Greta had recovered her dead father’s carving trade, enough at least to fashion the wooden cross, inscribed Yrena 1942-1944, above cherubic hands clasped in prayer.
 
Tommy could see the depth of sorrow in the young woman’s eyes, could feel the gratitude from her heart to his when he handed over the last seven guilders he had to his name, then cradled the precious shoes, so marvelously light and strong and strange, to his heart.
 
They were stolen from his gear as he slept, fitful and fevered, on the rough crossing back to England.
 
My uncle Tom, the old man in his plaid cotton shirt and time-worn suspenders, is unperturbed by this. But I, listening to his story, am miffed. “Stealing from a wounded soldier?” I say, eyebrows vexed. “What kind of person would do such a thing!”
 
“Musta ben another boy,” he explains, graciously. “Whoever took ‘em. Musta ben a soldier too, prob’ly hurt and homesick and desperate to bring back something good. Something good outta all the bad. So I ain’t sore about it, not now anyways. I cried like a kid at the time!”
 
From my view looking back, he was a kid at the time.
 
I try to think of him before that, landing on the shores of Normandy on June the ninth, three days behind the D-day troops. Neck-deep in cold salt water, his two strong legs thrashing, finally able to right his balance under the eighty-pound pack slung onto him. Tommy. Dirty blonde hair all crazy curls, eyes like Manitoba sky on a summer’s day—blue, calm, promising.
 
Or back before that even, at the staging area on the Salisbury Plain. “We knew something was coming,” he says. “Turned out to be D-day, though we didn’t know it yet. We didn’t know what, and we didn’t know when. Just knew it was something big, and it was coming.”

He says that when he first ran away from home at seventeen so he could lie about his age and get into the army, he was just in it for the three square meals a day. They had come from such poverty and hard times that the idea of becoming a soldier, getting fed well, wearing the uniform, and having a new pair of boots, sounded like a splendid deal. He’d sign up, he thought, the war would be over by Christmas like everyone was saying, and then he’d just come home again, new boots and all. Girls in town who wouldn’t give a Church boy the time of day were google-eyed over every man in uniform.
 
But by the time he had gone through basic training with the Princess Pats, more training in Ontario, and then shipped out to England from Truro, Nova Scotia, it had finally sunk into him that he was going into battle. And it had dawned on him, and everybody else, that people were going to die.
 
So when his friend Chris from back home in the Swan Valley, came to see him and said he should transfer over to his outfit so they could be together, Tommy turned him down.
 
Because he thought, if he was going to have to see people die, or if they were going to see him die, he didn’t want them to be people he knew and cared about. He didn’t want to have to see his friends die. Didn’t want to have to see people he knew get shot or blown up, and he didn’t want them to see him that way either. He thought, if that was what was coming, and he knew by then that it was, then he’d just rather be with strangers. That wouldn’t be as awful, to have to see a stranger die.
 
So he told Chris no, he would just stay put.
 
There were 50,000 men by then, amassing on the Salisbury Plain, ready, it was May, 1944, and minds and courage were frayed. And then, Chris came to see him again, scared shitless, and with this plan about a blighty. A blighty was a self-inflicted wound, not something serious, just something you could do to yourself so you’d be no good to go into battle. Shoot yourself in the foot, literally. Something like that. That way, you’d get out of it, you’d get to go home and no one would be the wiser.
 
But Tommy told him no. He said, “Look Chris, I’m scared, everyone’s scared, but I mean, this is what we came here for.” By then they had started to hear about the horrors the Germans were doing to the French people and the Dutch and others. And he said, “Chris, this is what has to be done.”
 
Tommy felt bad for Chris, he didn’t blame him for being terrified, everybody was, and he was scared as hell by then himself. But he just didn’t believe it would be right. Chris really pressed him too, and they had a big argument. “You think yur better than me!” Chris screeched, and he went away mad.
 
A few days later, Tom got news that Chris had been hurt while cleaning his gun and was being sent down to London before being shipped back home, He got an Honourable Discharge and he never went across.
 
Tommy didn’t judge him, but he just wouldn’t do what Chris had done. And the rest is history, as they say.
 
Within days, there was an immense movement, all the D-day troops went over, and then, on the third day after D-day, Tommy’s squadron was called up and over the Channel they went, landing at Juno Beach on the French shore. There were thousands upon thousands of Allied troops, they had won the day and driven the Germans back, and thousands were heading east towards Berlin. Tommy’s outfit would go north on foot, up the coast of Normandy, to the liberation of Holland.
 
I try to think of him, just a boy, marching up dusty roads, crossing fields and small streams, walking, striding, two solid legs carrying him onwards, curly blonde hair tousled by breezes, eyes blue and clear, heart strong.

The Dutch people were a beautiful people before the war, he says. They kept dairy cattle and were famous for their milk and cheese and beautiful, healthy children. But those people, when the Canadians came, were in a terrible state. For three years, they had been occupied, the Germans had taken over their businesses and farms and food, and upon their retreat, whatever crops they hadn't eaten, they burned.
 
The Dutch people had been starving, literally starving, for years.  “And if you’ve seen that old black-and-white footage of what the Jewish people looked like when they were found, the few who lived through the concentration camps, just human skeletons with sunken eyes and swollen bellies, well, that’s what the Dutch people looked like when we found them.”
 
Arriving in the Dutch towns and villages, marching or driving, people were just crazy about them, cheering and making parades, patting their backs or arms as they went by. “They just loved us Canadian boys,” my uncle says. “And they were so grateful, it was kind of overwhelming. Here we were, just a bunch of poor prairie boys, not treated particularly well in our own country, welcomed and loved and treated like kings by these poor Dutch people. It was an amazing thing.”
 
But then, of course, the Canadian soldiers had to be billeted there too. They had marched hundreds of miles with only army rations, often running out before reinforcements could get to them, canned Spam and that sort of thing. So then, as they marched through Holland, at each town, a few of them would be billeted at homes and farm houses here and there. And those people, who had been starving, would feed them. The army made arrangements to pay them and kicked in some food too, and then the Dutch families would feed the Canadian soldiers.
 
He says he remembers sitting on benches at those long wooden tables in the farm kitchen, him and a few other fellows, eating. The man and wife would sit with them, and they’d have plates but not much food on them, just being polite, pretending to eat. And they’d load up the Canadian soldiers’ plates with steaming food, because that was their food that the army had paid for. And the children, little children of all ages, would be leaning up against a wall or peeking around a doorway, watching. “Watching us eat, with their hungry eyes,” my old uncle says.

“Well, I couldn’t do it,” he says. “Little children. Starving. And we were sitting at the table, eating.” So while he was eating, he would take things, potatoes, chunks of meat and cheese, an apple, and he would slip them in his pockets, so he could sneak them out and give them to the children later.
 
“Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “we needed that food. We were pretty close to starving ourselves. Not like the Dutch were, but we had been on the move for months, marching, running, hiding, digging in, and we had had to fight, shooting and being shot at, bombs flying, and it wasn’t over yet. And all that time, we were carrying heavy gear, eighty pounds or more. It was hard physical work and we had all had to tighten our belts, literally, more than one notch. But how can a man sit and eat, with children going hungry?”
 
So he would go out to the yard after supper, lean up against a shed, and light a smoke. And the little kids would come out, shy, with their big eyes. And he’d wave them over, and give them his supper, as much of it as he could spare. And he was not the only Canadian boy who did that either, he’d see other guys from his outfit, over by the barn or leaned up against a tree, giving away their supper to the little Dutch kids.
 
Tommy was wounded three different times in the liberation of Holland. The first time was on the hike up the Normandy coast, a mine had exploded nearby and he took some shrapnel in the leg. One big rusty shard in the right calf and a bunch of nicks, cuts, and burns on the outside of the leg and thigh. Him and his sergeant dug out as much shrapnel as they could, and then they had a couple fellows hold him down while they pulled out that big shard.
 
“Jesus! I screamed and wailed and begged them to stop,” he admits. “I thought it was the worst pain possible at the time. . . Little did I know.” 
 
They put on sulpha powder so it wouldn’t go to gangrene and bandaged it up pretty good, and his Sarg told him he could wait on the side of the road for a field ambulance if he wanted. But they were half ways up the coast and Tommy didn’t want to leave the guys in the lurch. He said he’d be fine, he would just be gimpy for a day or two. He walked another thirty miles before the pain abated.
 
“It was just the first couple days it almost killed me,” he says. “But I had a chunk of wood I kept tucked back between my teeth, and I could chew down on that when it got real bad, and keep on going till the next time we took a break.”

​The second time he got hit was after they’d already reached the Netherlands.
 
“We were up north of Rotterdam, we’d been picked up by the rest of the Second Canadian Corps, a good bunch of fellows, we’d been joking and talking. Maybe I was too comfortable, distracted and had let my guard down, but anyways, it was early evening, we were posted around the central area and I figured I’d roll a smoke. I guess it was a grenade, but all I knew was there was a whiz and a thunk, “Jesus! Jesus!” some guy was yelling, and the next time I opened my eyes, I was laying in a hospital tent somewheres, cold as hell, head all bandaged up, with a headache that would kill a moose.”
 
He was there for about two weeks and the pain was starting to let off a bit. He wasn’t seeing double anymore and he’d gotten over that thing where he wanted to throw up every time he tried to walk. They said he got a pretty nasty hit, there was still shrapnel in his skull the doc said was too deep embedded, it would be more dangerous to try to get it out. So they just left it in there. He told them he’d be fine, he just wanted to get back to his outfit.
 
Well, the commander came in and he said, “Son, you done your duty. You don’t need to go back no more. As far as the Canadian army is concerned, you’ve earned your Honourable Discharge. You can go home. Just wait here till the next supply run is heading south and jump on. You could be there with your family in a month.”
 
Well, he told the C.O. he didn’t want to do that because all them guys in his outfit were still out there. Still getting shot at and dodging bombs, still sleeping in the cold. How could he go home and leave them here? He told the man no, he better get back to them damn fools in his outfit, or they might get themselves killed without him.
 
“Well alright,” the C.O. said. “If you’re that determined, we won’t stop you.”
 
So he hitched a ride with the next supply shipment going north instead. It took him days but he finally caught up with the Second Canadian Corps just north of the Hague, and him and the guys traveled with them a few more weeks.
 
“That last time,” he says, “we were on reconnaissance, and clearing in the area north of the Maas River. They’d been rounding up any Germans still around and we were checking for stragglers. It was October, I remember, just a miserable cold, wet drizzle in the air, and we were out in the woods on this hillside, and there was a deserted cottage and some out buildings. So a bunch of our guys went to check the out buildings and me and this other young fella, his name was Les Dawson and he wasn’t much older than me, a good guy all round, well, me and Les went to check inside the cottage.” 

​“And pretty much as soon as we got in there, we could hear that German Howitzer begin to fire. That’s their big 88’s, the big guns. When you hear that thing, you know you only have seconds before it hits. But we didn’t really know exactly where it was going to land, outside where the other guys were, or on the cottage, or what. But, so me and Les heard the report and we both threw ourselves down on the floor. And as I dove down, the place had been all trashed and there was this long wooden table laying on its side and I threw myself that way and kind of got behind it. Only thing was, my leg sticking out.” 
 
“And it was a direct hit, I guess, on the cottage. Total direct hit. I don’t remember anything very well after that, but there was the damage of the explosion, the roof smashed right in, half the floor gone, and then  shrapnel everywhere. I was knocked senseless, but apart from that, I wasn’t bad. Because I’d been mostly behind that big table by the wall. Except my leg that was sticking out, which was bad.”
 
“But Les, my buddy there, well, he wasn’t behind nothing, there was jist him and the 88. He must have been dead right there on the spot, the moment that thing hit.”
 
“I looked down and I seen my leg, or where my leg used to be, I guess. And it meant nothing to me,” he says. “I actually didn’t feel a damn thing at that time, that’s how shock works. And then I was out again. I woke up in a French field hospital, that’s where they did the operation, and that is where the pain began. Jesus, I thought I would die just from the pain alone. . . But I still to this day can feel that damn leg at times, phantom leg as they call it. Sometimes the little toe still itches me mercilessly.”
 
“Oh,” I say. “So that is a real thing.”
 
“Yes,” Old Tommy says. “So that was it. That was it for me and the war, the liberation of Holland, and everything. I didn’t make it home for many months after that, because of all the surgeries I still needed. But I did eventually make it.”
 
I don’t really know what a person should say at this point. But I want to say something. “You lost a lot, my dear uncle,” I observe. “What a journey, what – what a gift you gave. What a sacrifice.”
 
“Yes,” the old man says quietly, looking away towards the small window. “Too much really. More than a man should be asked to give.”
 
I reflect upon the story my uncle has told, sitting amicably in his small dining room, the light of one small window going softly to gray. He refused to go into battle with boys he knew, because he didn’t want to see them die, choosing instead to go with strangers. Then wound up caring so much for those strangers, now friends, that he clawed his way back to them, not once, but twice, when he was wounded and could have gone home.
 
He lost his leg and more than that, for the love of strangers who had become brothers. A movie trope based on truth.
 
Beyond the window is a blood-red hummingbird feeder and a small yard; tame roses, big garden, and a wooden flag post, painted white, flying the Maple Leaf.
 
“But after all that happened over there, all that was lost, the leg, everything, I’m still glad we went.”
 
Our hands rest casually on the plastic cover of his dining room table, and he reaches out and slaps the back of my hand affectionately, blue eyes twinkling clear as ever. I grin quietly back, turning my hand so I can fondly take hold of his old paw.
 
“I wish I hadn’t lost my damn leg!” he concedes. “I’d give a lot for that. I’d give almost everything, I guess. But those were beautiful people, the Dutch people, and it was a crime beyond imagining what was done to them. It was not right. And what we done there, the Canadian boys, liberating those people and driving the Germans out, well that was a thing worth doing.”  

NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE STORY OF WORKING CLASS LIFE
​
Only rare people get a private audience with Her Majesty the Queen. But the great lady granted one to my best friend Caroline in 1970 . . . though not by design.

That was the year of Manitoba’s centennial and for several days in July, the Queen and her family travelled across Manitoba by train, stopping over briefly at many a town and village. And our little town, Swan River, was lucky enough to be one of them.

This caused a great stir uptown, as all the town leaders got busy trying to put together a plan that would wow the Royal Family, something worthy we could present to them, a unique something our little town had to offer. It made sense that they came up with a little specialty rodeo, as the big summer event that always came later in July was the Northwest Roundup and Exhibition.

​Our whole town is a little horse-crazy, rich and poor alike.

All the important people of the town were vying for optimal seating at the event, and vying to get their daughters introduced to the very eligible Prince of Wales.

Down at our end of the tracks, we laboured under no such illusions. The one-hour rodeo was too rich for our blood. We were pretty poor and so lacking in prestige or influence that, even in the seventies (as to this very day), our roads were not paved and the town did not supply either waterworks or sewer services. The closest any of us would get to royalty was when the Queen and Prince Phillip and their two eldest children were to do a walking tour down Main Street to the Fair Grounds. The streets en route would be lined with adoring fans.

My dad did tease me though. “Don’t ya wanna get up there with the bigwigs and meet the Queen? Try to make googly eyes at young Prince Charles there? I hear he’s lookin’ for a wife.”

“As if!” I giggled, wrinkling my nose.

I would actually have dearly loved to go, but I had already agreed to babysit four kids for my regular lady so she could go and see them walk by. I sighed and accepted that I would miss the whole thing. 

And I did miss out on seeing the Queen that day. But my friend, Caroline, didn't. She got a private audience instead. 

Caroline was a different kind of girl, she didn’t even care about seeing the Queen. She was a tough girl who lived in jeans and would always rather be out somewhere on God’s green earth, not crowded in with a bunch of preening girls, trying to get seen.

So when she told me the next day that, actually, she had met the Queen and they had a nice visit, I just thought, “Well, that figures!”

She said that in the evening after the town’s big deal, she was with her then-boyfriend, Roe, riding horses on the path between Railroad Avenue and the tracks. They had Flicka, the big black work horse, and that beautiful palomino mare, Dolly.

And suddenly, running down the tracks towards them, flashing badges, was about twenty guys in suits.

We didn’t, and don’t, get a whole lot of guys in suits down our end of town.

So then, they didn’t know what was going on, Caroline and Roe, and they got down from the horses as  told, nervous, surrounded by this sea of suits, and wondering what the heck was going on. Were they in some kind of trouble?

And then, the sea of suits parted and some lady and this young guy come walking up to them. And it was the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, no kidding, wearing boots and pants and she's wearing a kerchief on her head and he’s got on, like, a little birding cap or something.

And they just come right up to Caroline and Roe, and start chatting with them. Asking like, how old the horses are, what their breeding is, what is their feed, normal stuff. And the queen actually comes in by Dolly, and says, “May I?” and Caroline says, “Sure.”

And the Queen takes hold of her bridle and strokes Dolly’s cheek, she’s just a natural with the mare, and she smiles up and coos to the horse, a look of pure, soft delight on her face. “Now aren’t you a beautiful girl?” she says.

And they continue to chat a little, quietly, just casual, like when you meet any other human being along the path on a Manitoba evening. And then the Royals leave and go walking back up the track to their train.

And this is a true story. This really happened in July, 1970. My friend Caroline met up with the Queen of England on a path by a gravel road. Completely unrehearsed.

And she just seemed like a really nice lady, except for being the Queen.

And she knew a beautiful horse when she saw one. 
​

NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE ORAL STORY OF WORKING-CLASS LIFE as told to Fisher Lavell

Bill and Ollie Up a Tree, Told by brother Tom Church

Back when they were about twelve and thirteen, Bill and Oliver was out in the bush about a half mile from home, hunting for squirrels with a twenty-two, and they seen a moose. Well, it was out of season and the game wardens were always around, keeping an eye out for poachers. They could fine you or even throw you in jail if you got caught. Because what with it being the Depression and people literally starving, you wouldn’t want some poor sod to shoot one and feed their children.

Well, all they had was the twenty-two, not nearly enough fire power to kill something that big, but brother Bill decides he’s going to shoot the moose. So he takes aim, shoots him in the shoulder, which pisses off Mr. Moose and he comes stampeding after Bill and Ollie.

So Jesus, they shimmy up a couple little poplar trees and the moose is madder than hell and starts ramming the tree that Bill is in. And Bill’s got the twenty-two, so he shoots the moose a couple more times, which only makes the moose madder and he’s going crazy on Bill’s tree till it feels like it’s going to topple. Bill can’t even get a bead on him anymore and then he drops the gun and it falls on the ground right behind the moose.

So then Bill’s yelling for Ollie to get down and get the twenty-two, and Ollie says, “Why? Why does it have to be me? I don’t want to get down there.”

But Bill yells at him to get the goddamn gun. So Ollie gets down, grabs the gun, and starts climbing his tree again, but this draws the moose so then he’s ramming hell out of Ollie’s tree. Ollie’s screaming, clinging on for dear life, and Bill’s yelling, “Throw it to me! Throw it to me!” So Ollie somehow manages to throw the gun back to Bill, Bill shoots the moose a couple more times, and lo and behold, the moose drops dead. Killed by a twenty-two.

Well, the boys are just giddy, they got a big, beautiful moose, enough to feed the whole neighbourhood for weeks, and they go running home. Dad’s out in the yard and they’re all excited, yelling that they took down a moose with the twenty-two, they got  him and he’s just out back down by the creek.

Well, dad hauls off and cuffs them, cursing. “Don’t be ridiculous!” he tells them. “You know goddamn well a moose cannot be killed with a twenty-two! You need your head examined!”
​
Ollie’s holding his ear there, crying, and then they see the game wardens over by their truck in the yard. Apparently, they’d been doing the rounds, looking for poachers.

Dad rants on at the boys about how it ain’t funny to tell lies and stop their damn joking and get them chores done like he told them. Game wardens give it all another glare and finally crawl up into their truck and go chugging out the lane.

Only after they’re long gone does dad say, “Okay boys. Let’s go get that goddamn moose youz took down with a twenty-two.”
​

Oh Yes, I Will, Told by brother Charlie Church

That was me that took out my brother Bill Church’s eye, although it wasn’t on purpose.

We were just little guys, I was six and he was five, and we were out at the barn doing chores. We’d been arguing for hours, trying to outdo and outbrag each other over every damn thing. We had watered the animals and shovelled manure and then I was up in the loft, pitching down hay, and Bill was at the bottom, telling me that he could do this better than me and he could do that better than me.

And I said, “Bill Church, you shut up. Or I’m gonna poke you right in the eye with this pitchfork.”

And he said, “Oh no, you won’t.”

And I said, “Oh yes, I will.”

And he said, “Oh no, you won’t.”

And I said, “Oh yes, I will.”

And I took a jab at him, just in play, jabbing to the right of his eye so I’d miss it, but at the same time, he ducked left. And I poked him right in the eye with the pitchfork.

Hell of a thing. I never meant to do it and I told him after, I was so goddamn good and sorry. But Bill lost his vision in that eye at just five years of age. That’s what kept him out of the army when the war came around.

But apart from that, it don’t seem to have kept him back from anything else much.

​End of Part 2 of 3

NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE ORAL STORY OF WORKING-CLASS LIFE as told to Fisher Lavell

​Bill Church’s Two-legged Dog/ Kids in the Fire

Crazy about a baseball

The pitch black of night and the house was ablaze

​NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE ORAL STORY OF WORKING-CLASS LIFE as told to Fisher Lavell

True story 1940s