Stop Sign

Sheila Martin smacked her gavel on the mayor’s table.

Or, her “hammer thing” as Councillor Finbar O’Toole called it. It was an actual maple gavel that Sheila had found on eBay—placed there by a retired “President of … Local … union,” the details of which had been mostly sanded off—for $9.75, which she had acquired for $7.75, hers being the only bid.

The table quivered on its four folding legs. Mayor Sheila had ordered a proper mayor’s desk from a dealer in Victoria, but they had asked for a credit card number, in the name of the new Spinner’s Inlet council, before they would ship it. After an emotional appeal to council to accept its fiduciary duty had been met with a restless silence, except for Randolph Champion humming tunelessly and Samson Spinner murmuring, “Nice try and good luck,” she had eventually snapped that she would pay for the desk herself.

That may have still been on her mind when she demanded, “Order,” although the only disruption to the current debate was Councillor Annabelle Bell-Atkinson. She was instructing one of her two geek nephews sitting in the public gallery (two picnic-table benches donated by Ali Hanif who had found four of them decomposing in a blackberry thicket, resurrected them, and applied a thick coat of leftover outdoor paint in a startling shade of royal blue) to go get her a coffee from Gilbert’s Groceries across the street. “Double shot with two Splendas, and remind them that it’s only two dollars at Timmies in town,” she had whispered, though clearly not quietly enough to suit Sheila, who glared and pointed a warning finger at them. The geeks sniggered. Sheila frowned; it used to work when she was a secondary school teacher.

The debate concerned the proposed placement of a stop sign and/or a crosswalk near the seniors complex. The provincial government’s highways department had been consulted, but an immediate return email had made it clear that those in Victoria who were familiar with Spinner’s Inlet and its population were reluctant to get involved in anything there that might become controversial and worse—God forbid—require a decision.

“The minister has been advised of your concern and has forwarded the information to your Independent MLA, Jethro Wallace, who, the minister is sure, will give it his earliest attention.”

“Do it ourselves, then,” Samson Spinner had concluded.

And thus the present council gathering, where contributions to the debate had been varied.

“The codgers should have enough sense at their age to be able take care of themselves if they get let out,” said O’Toole, who added, “but if it has to be, I would give a good rate for all the painting and sign-building.”

“Let the record show that he is all heart,” said Samson.

Annabelle Bell-Atkinson noticed that Cameron Girard was busy with his pen. “Duty!” she declaimed, her eyes sweeping the public benches and the one chair with a cardboard label stating “PRESS ONLY” tacked to it, where Cameron sat, apparently paying attention. The public benches held the geeks, Erik Karlsson, the recent arrival to the Inlet, great-great-nephew of the late Swede, who was trying hard to get used to his new surroundings, and a couple from Mississippi.

When they had met the nosey Clements kids at the ferry dock, they had declared where they were from and asked if they needed to show their passports or were they still in America. They had then been treated to a chanted duet of the spelling drill—“Em-i-ess-ess-i-ess-ess-i-pee-pee-i”—of their home state, along with Jillian’s dance version, and had escaped into the council meeting looking for directions as to how to get home.

“Duty to the needy and the old!” Annabelle continued. “Imagine when we have reached their stage in life and need to cross the road in safety. Who will be there for us?”

The coffee-run geek had just re-entered. He waved his free hand. “I will!” he promised, while his twin nodded approval and shot a thumbs-up toward his aunt.

Mayor Sheila slammed her gavel down. “Take your seat—this is not a public debate.”

“Christ,” Samson Spinner said.

Councillor Finbar O’Toole got the nod from Sheila to speak. But then she raised a palm—meaning hold on—crooked a finger at the coffee gofer, and when he approached her, apprehensive, she said, “Get me the same. I’ll pay you later. And a doughnut.” She smiled and the twin fled. “You were saying … ?” she said to Finbar.

Finbar’s brow creased, then, “Yes, I was, but with all this stuff going on … give me a minute, Your Honour,” and he sat down.

“She must be the judge,” the American husband remarked. “I thought they wore wigs.”

His wife asked, “Where’s the perp?”

A few minutes earlier the Americans had had the significance of the forty-ninth parallel explained to them by Aila Hanif, who had started studying for her eventual citizenship test and had dropped in to experience the local version of democracy in action.

Finbar rose again. “I wish to make a movement.”

“Not here, you don’t,” the mayor corrected him. “Try a motion.”

“Right, then. I motion that we secede from a government that passes the buck, like the highways department, and join somewhere else that would be more helpful.”

“We could inquire about that, if you like,” the American wife offered. She seemed miffed when Sheila pointed a stern finger at her and made the zip-your-lip motion.

Dr. Timothy, who had just joined the meeting, said, “I tried that with the Turks and Caicos Islands years ago and they were willing—Turks, Caicos, and Spinner’s Inlet, it would have been. We could have had Christmas and everything down there, but Ottawa turned it down and buggered it up. I’ll give them another shout when Megan and I go down there again.”

Mayor Sheila tasted her coffee. She frowned, beckoned the twin back up. “You forgot the Splenda,” and handed him the mug. As he tottered away with it, his brother shook his head sadly and muttered, “You ask him to do one thing.”

Sheila took a deep breath. “All in favour of the motion—Councillor O’Toole’s, that is.”

Both Americans raised their left hand while placing their right on their hearts. No one else moved.

The mayor’s head drooped. “Motion is defeated,” she sighed.

Samson thought she might be finding that running the new council was a different game from commanding a couple generations of students in the secondary school. And this was only the first council meeting. He was feeling relieved that he hadn’t won.

Sheila hammered the table. “Meeting adjourned.”

Cameron was just closing his notebook on a page that contained an especially lifelike image of the mayor, but with smoke issuing from her ears and flames—courtesy of a red Sharpie he carried and usually used to mark his golf balls—from her mouth.

Annabelle tried to get the reporter’s attention, but Cameron sidestepped her and went to Karlsson.

For the next day’s edition of The Tidal Times, Cameron wrote a profile of Karlsson under the heading “New Faces,” in which the new Swede talked about the fascinating life history of his great-great-uncle, which he had discovered when he unearthed a will and a pile of almost legible notes at the bottom of a chest under a heap of used chainsaw files. The will had been witnessed by “Jimmy Plummer, Chief, First Nations Lands temporarily known as Spinner’s Inlet.”

In his regular news roundup, Cameron noted that the question of the stop sign and crosswalk at the seniors complex remained unresolved due to time constraints.