Famous Blue Suitcases
For M
If I knew the whole story, believe me, I would tell you. So would my cousin Billy who was there with me when the mystery began to unravel.
No one told any of us much so there are a lot of blanks in what I’m telling you here. All Billy and I really knew was that the bunch of them had it all organized for the big send-off supper. Anything else, we had to find out from overhearing adult conversations, interpreting looks and nods, and trying our best to piece odds and ends together.
The house in our grandparents little village in Southwestern Ontario was full that week, that’s for sure. A slew of cousins all over the place. A few aunts and uncles came and went and came back again. And my grandmother’s sister was there. The one from next door, not the one from down the street who never left her house after their son was killed.
The village sign said, ‘Population 100.’ It didn’t say ‘including all the cats and dogs,’ which it should have. Still, a lot more goes on in these little villages than you might think.
Billy and I were the oldest cousins there. The rest of our cousins, hordes of them, were — as we saw it — loudmouthed little kids. But cool young teenagers me and Billy were. Cool but mostly oblivious to what all that was going around us all meant.
When was the party? “Soon,” they said. About the only thing they all agreed on. “Soon.” The guests of honour were “on their way, almost.” The two of them were going to catch an airplane and this house in my grandparents’ village was the closest family home to the airport. And, since this shindig was being held in their house, my grandparents wouldn’t have to be driven anywhere. So here we all were. With more of us expected.
Every family had brought something to eat. Meatballs; macaroni and cheese; broccoli from one of the aunts. Devilled eggs. And tomatoes, different sizes, ‘fresh from the garden’ they kept saying. And three bowls of potato salad, including the one that nobody liked but nobody said so. Cookies, of course. Chocolate chip and those big round flat oatmeal cookies from my mother; the ones you were supposed to squish together with dates in between like a sandwich. And grandma’s sugar cookies with the frilly edges and the rock-hard round red candy in the middle. Red and green wintergreen-flavoured hard-as rock-pearl candies embedded in the white icing in the centre.
Billy and I walked downtown — if downtown is the word for one short street with a bank, a hardware, a grocery store and a farm implements dealer. But downtown that’s what they called it. We walked there every day we visited except Sundays when the Post Office and everything else was closed.
There was no sidewalk, and the street was dusty. Our job was to pick up Grandpa and Grandma’s mail, Box 45 at the Post Office, which was part of the bank building. We expected it to be “chock full” — as the Postmaster used to say if he was around — sometimes even with a note in it that said there was a package we’d have to pick up from the bank. It wasn’t empty often. Then Billy and I would take turns sticking our hands in there and rooting around to make sure there hadn’t been some unfortunate mistake. We were sure to be questioned back home. “Did you check? Are you sure?”
While Billy and I carried out various almost-grown-up responsibilities, the other cousins stayed close to home or went to the baseball field, or the obsolete railway crossing, or the ballpark. One of the younger ones, the adventurous one with the grin he couldn’t hide, said he sneaked off to the grain elevator. Said he got inside and stood on the platform. Said he dove from the platform into the grain.
