The Shop on Bell's Island

The Shop on Bell’s Island

 

Is it open, I asked myself, glancing at once, from habit, to see whether the small iron bar of the latch extended over the crack between door and frame.  Open, I decided, since no interruption in the space was visible.  Other shops with which I was familiar advertise their willingness to take your money loudly, with signs, flashing lights, or at least an “Open” sign.  Not the shop on Bell’s Island.

Only if that 2 inches of iron bar was drawn to the left rather than the right could you be sure, in spite of the dark window and the silence encasing the shop like smoke, that there would be someone inside.  Although the proprietor’s house was less than thirty feet from this center of commerce, on this isolated island of approximately ten families, the shop was never left unlocked.  If the door was unbarred either Malcolm or Jessie would be inside. 

Today it was Malcolm, Mr. Baggett, leaning back in his straight chair behind the counter to catch what light came through  the single window, reading an adventure novel he had taken from the Book Mobile’s most recent deposit.   There was a light bulb over his head, the string hanging down to hand, but why waste electricity if you can make out the print without it?

“Hullo”, he said, as I creaked open the inner door and pushed through the screen door, “Hullo, Hawdie, warm enough for you?”

“Yes,” I said, sinking down gratefully on the gray bench in front of the counter.  “It’s wonderful to have it warm at last.”

“You sail in?” he asked, standing up slowly to signal his readiness to do business, and I responded on cue, “Let’s see, I need eggs, and butter, and bacon, oh, and canned milk.”  Although the butter would come out of a refrigerator  and the bacon from the freezer, Malcolm never carried fresh milk.  Before electricity came to the islands the fishermen relied upon canned milk, and, although they’d had electricity for forty years, refrigerators for thirty, and a road to the mainland for four, the shop continued to stock what it had always stocked.

As Malcolm lumbered slowly towards the back room to count out twelve eggs from the big crate I looked carefully around the shop, fixing the landscape in my mind.  Canned milk filled two shelves, one shelf for Carnation, one for Pet. This in itself was a concession: baked beans in cans were the only other commodity offered in more than one brand.  Over the top shelf, which ran the length of the shop on the left, cans of pamplemoose, French side out, and cans of tomato juice marched side by side. The shelves below displayed chewing and pipe tobacco, matches, tea, canned fruits and vegetables.  Prices were indicated on small bits of neatly cut cardboard, thumbtacked to each shelf and lettered in pencil.  They looked as though they had been there since World War II. 

Similar shelves, stocked with crackers, candy or corned beef, Spam and boxes of soap lined all the available wall space on the  other side. On the right side also, a wide gray bench ran before the counter for the convenience of fishermen who came to the shop as much to chat as to buy.  All of the woodwork except for the facing benches was painted with a high gloss pale green enamel, now dulled by time and the fumes from the kerosene stove at the end of the small room.

I put my feet up on the bench and leaned back against the front wall; this was going to be a social as well as a business call.   As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could just make out the soda case in the far corner: plain, gray, waist high.  Inside the bottles of grape and orange soda would be lined up like perspiring soldiers, small drops of moisture clinging to the sides, and, when you lifted the lid a welcome wave of cool air would escape into the room like a genii let out of a bottle.  When the children were younger it had been the main attraction of the shop. Bribed by the promise of a bottle of purple pop or Orange Crush they could always be induced to row over to the shop for the tea or the matches which were needed immediately.

Malcolm came back to his place at the counter and carefully tied a string around the eggs in their paper bag.  Dear God, I thought, as I had so often thought before, eggs in a paper bag, help me to get them home intact in that tippy boat. 

“What have you got for fresh vegetables”, I asked, knowing the answer already. 

“Potatoes”, he said, looking at me solemnly,”and onions and carrots”.

“No cabbage?”

No cabbage.” And certainly no lettuce or celery or any other vegetable which would have been unavailable thirty years ago, though I knew Malcolm went to town twice a week by car now. Every year there were fewer fishermen in the shop and more summer residents like us but although tastes and needs changed the stock remained the same, back there in time.

While I watched he wrapped the butter too.  The edge of brown  paper gave a sharp gratifying grrr as he ripped it off the paper cutter, and then reached up automatically for the thin end of string which ran from a spool above, through three galvanized eyes, and down to hand’s reach just above the counter.  I loved the old string and paper routine, and I loved the old weighing machine with its pinched in waist and white enamel frame, standing smugly on the counter between the candy bars and a small box of fresh plums: the luxury item for the week at 15 cents a plum.

“Now, what else do I need?” I mentally ticked off the staples: sugar, yeast, toilet paper, rosebuds, ah rosebuds !, small candy kisses innocent of silver paper.  The delight of the young, and of the old too for that matter. Under a glass cover, just over there behind the candy bars, loose in three compartments sat the mints, macaroons and rosebuds. For seventy-five cents a pound of the later, carefully weighed on the enamel scale and wrapped in brown paper could go home to be measured out again, ”How many each, Mummy?” 

“One, two, three, four, five, six , seven, eight, nine, ten, -  ten for you Rebecca. One, two, ... ten for Elianne, ten for me.  No need to make dessert tonight; another hour from the kitchen cheaply purchased.

“Malcolm”, I said, “who reads those books?”, pointing to a small collection on the opposite counter, half-hidden behind the Tip-Top bread and sweet rolls.  They were mostly paper backs of the romantic or swashbuckling variety, a few of the currently popular catastrophe type, a hard cover book on fish cookery, though the shop never stocked fish - that would be like selling potatoes in Aroostock County - and the ubiquitous set of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

“Why”, he said cautiously, “I read most of them.  Jerry reads some, and then there’s the two kids over on Wolfe’s Island.”  It was a nice idea, bringing a fresh supply of books from the Book Mobile once a month, and underscored the fact that the shop was, in all it’s unadorned simplicity, the only public meeting place on the islands now.  Here, I remembered, a fisheries announcement on what to do with banded salmon had appeared on one of the supporting posts last summer. Other public notices would go here - where else?

“Oh, and Malcolm, could I use your phone?”  It wasn’t a public phone, indeed it was their only phone and it was here in the shop, not up in the house, but getting to a telephone anywhere on the islands was an adventure in itself, and it would be a cold day in Hell, I thought to myself before we’d want a telephone on Middle Island. 

“You could use it”, he said ponderously, leaning on his hands and blinking owlishly, “but  you can’t use it because it’s out of order.”

The door behind me scraped and the bell tinkled as Jessie momentarily blocked the entrance.  She was wearing one of her flowered polyester dresses, carefully covered with a very clean white apron, and her round face was wreathed in permanent curls.  She had heard the last of her husband’s words and her plucked eyebrows rose in astonishment at such a bold faced lie.  She giggled and he gazed back at her impassively.

“It’s out?” I said, “For how long?” And then, “How are you, Jessie?”

“Not too bad, Haw-di”, she said. “Ain’t it a fine day?” And to Malcolm, “I‘m making a cake for the variety supper and I just come down to get some lemon extract.”

Malcolm reached down the extract and, making a note of it on a small pad, explained, “They’re workin’ on it now.”  Then Jessie, smiling and nodding, disappeared up the hill and and the door creaked shut again.

Might as well wait, I thought, though I didn’t have much hope. The children were at their cousins and would be in no hurry to get home. “Malcolm, do you know that story Vernon Baker tells about John Berrigan and the lemon extract? I just heard it from him last night.”

“Nope”, he said, in a neutral tone and I proceeded to retell the story while Malcolm listened impassively. I’d taken a small jar of Middle Island jam to Joyce and Vernon, an excuse to stop in, and Vernon, who was born on Middle Island, began telling stories about John Berrigan, the last owner but one of the house we lived in now.

I’d knocked on the kitchen door, knowing enough to abjure the formal front door which was never used, and Vernon had invited me in for a cup of coffee. After we’d commiserated a while over the unreliable state of the weather and the havoc of winter storms I asked him whether he’d known John Berrigan, the last owner but one of the house we lived in. He was leaning with his elbows on the table and now, with a grin and a sideways, deprecating shake of his head, “Ayuh, John Berrigan he was somethin’.  He had this little pipe, yew,” sketching a small pipe out of the side of his mouth, “and he really loved his rum.” I remembered the dusty green bottles we’d found hidden in the crawl space below the house, bottles with berries fermented in the bottom. “But when he couldn’t get his rum,” Vernon went on, “why, he’d drink lemon juice.”

“Straight lemon juice?” I heard the astonishment in my voice.

“Ayuh.  He had one of them big sails, and he'd put it on his little punt, and he could sail that thing good, yew, as good as most people can sail a yacht.  And he’d sail over to the shop on Bell’s Island, over there”, waving in the general direction of their kitchen door, “and he’d go in, and the fellas would be sitting around talkin’, you know, but he wouldn't stay that long.’ Malcolm was still deadpan.  “I suppose that was before you owned the shop, Malcolm? “

Malcolm nodded, “Ayuh, that’d have been Jim Tumblin’s shop.” but said no more so I continued.

“So then,” Vernon had said, ‘John Berrigan’d set there for a little while, yew, and then he’d say, “Well, Hattie’s bakin’ a cake, so I guess I’d better take some of that lemon flavorin’.”, and the shopkeeper would give him a bottle of lemon extract.  So then, pretty soon, he’d go down to the boat and you could see him take the bottle out of his pocket, pull out the cork and just drink it down’. Here Vernon threw back his head and raised his hand to show how the bottle of lemon extract was emptied down his throat.

“Ayuh,” Vernon had continued, “so then he’d set the sail and come over to Corkum’s shop, down here,” with a wave in the direction of the wall opposite the kitchen door, “and he’d go in and he'd say, ‘Hattie’s bakin’ a cake so I need some of that lemon flavorin’, and soon as he'd got back to the boat, down it'd go.’ Here  he made the appropriate motions again, emphazing the final swallow. And of course they all knew what he was doin’.” He’d grinned, and Malcolm, I saw, was grinning too.

“Oh,” I’d said, finally getting it, “there’s alcohol in those extracts?”

“Ayuh, it’d give you quite a kick I imagine. Quite a kick.”

Malcolm looked less dour as I concluded the story with a sideways shake of the head, like Vernon’s, and for a moment I thought I might be rewarded by one of his stories. Malcolm could tell some good ones too, but the bell jangled and young David Hirtle lumbered in, greeting me with “Hul-lo, Mrs. Wa-atts” and handed Malcolm a list from his mother, so I gathered up my eggs and rosebuds, decided the telephone call wasn’t that important after all, and said goodbye, aware that I was leaving with more than my money’s worth.

1969 revised 2002