‘Crossroads’ by Dan MacIsaac

In 1925, people hustled to keep up with all the mudslinging and muckraking. And everybody up and down the Valley was quick to pass that dirt on to the next keen listener. No wonder the whole Valley figured they knew all about Marta Toth playing around. That kind of woman wouldn’t stay penned up in the woods between the mountains and the sea. In the beer parlour, some of the boozers called her the town pump. Though they didn’t dare mouth that slur when her man, the slope-shouldered, lug-knuckled logger, Adam Wainwright, was within earshot, downing a lager, boot heels hooked onto the brass foot rail. Sure, he’d never churched her and she’d never had a child by him. Still, people hissed that she was a cheater all the same. They all just knew Adam had no clue about Marta’s flings. But not even the most hopped-up Comox Valley tattler had the gumption to tip him off. They’d all hush around Adam — when he’d stride by the open window of Tilly’s Tea Shoppe, where the finest townie matrons huddled around the lacy tables; or when in the Quarterway he’d shove his way up to the bar top cluttered with beefy elbows and clunky beer glasses.

By noon of the day after Marta first showed up on the public dock, she’d been tarred and feathered with fibs and perjuries by the scandalmongers in the Valley. The busybodies figured they had all they needed to learn about the new arrival on the night ferry. The scuttlebutt had come right out of the crooked mouth of Merle Bartram the docker. Bartram had the whole morning to rouse the most notorious tongue-waggers, and they’d stuffed a bug-swarm of lies into the town’s collective ear that the logger, on leave from camp, had crossed over to the Mainland to go on a tear. They eagerly passed on the sworn confidence from the dockhand about how Adam had let slip he’d met the young woman turning tricks in Gastown and had talked her into keeping house for him instead of keeping bad company. Adam had paid her ferry ticket, plunked her down in his buckboard, and hauled her up to his cabin by the crossroads. 

Knowing that the logger had a woman now, not one gossiper was surprised to see Adam in the late afternoon stride across the creaky stoop crowded with ne’er-do-wells slouching outside Proctor’s General Store. With a woman — any kind of woman — in the home, he’d need to pick up supplies. Adam pressed through that bunch of loafers and dawdlers, not saying a word. 

The Valley never heard the honest-to-god truth — that Marta only turned mattresses for a living. Backbreaking hours she worked as a chambermaid in the Castle Hotel. That Granville Street establishment was where Adam had been staying while he scouted around the city for a lightly-used McLaughlin touring car that had an engine he could tinker with. He was a saver but not a cheapskate, frugal but also forward-looking. He had money in his pocket to spend on the right vehicle for the right price. It made no sense to keep hitching horseflesh to a buckboard if you wanted to get somewhere in good time.