A poem by Phillip Crymble
Paydays
Sitting here at the Hortons, so you know this is important. —Gord Downie, “Vancouver Divorce”
On paydays back when we were boys—the dinner smells still hanging in the kitchen and the entryway—my father’d light a Rothmans at the table, search the pockets of his pearl-snap denim workshirt, find some silver or a dollar bill—send us out into the brittle winter twilight. A tradesman with three mouths to feed, divorced, his thumbs and fingers cracked from years of crimping leads and wiring breakers, he made the most of precious little—drove an oil-burning AMC sedan—had it up on ramps at weekends. The Esso station down the street from Stelco closed its doors in 1963. Tim Horton took a flier on the forfeit lease—used the money he earned anchoring the blue line for the Maple Leafs to seed a modest business. The rest is now our history as a people. Unmodified, a Seventies Pantera runs the quarter in the low 14s. Included in the fine print of his late September offer sheet, the one that Horton died in clipped a storm drain on the QE East—collided with a wall of armoured concrete. That winter back in ’83, my father spent his evenings ripping studs and driving nails, drinking cans of Old Vienna at the workmate— keeping time to Kenny Rogers and the rhythms of the Skilsaw blade. By June he’d hung the sheetrock—mudded over all the joining tape— bought Cinzano and Campari for the wet bar—ordered Tennents Lager spill mats and the brackets for an optic rail. Detectives at the Lake Street exit crash scene found barbiturates and eyeglass frames, some wine-tipped cigarillos and a monogrammed black suitcase. Discovered in the swale grass—prone and muddy by the chassis plate—a shattered fifth of vodka like a nestling too far gone to save. The year I started grade thirteen, our sage green Lady Kenmore blew a washer—filled the basement like the basin of a floodplain after thawing rains. My father put on slippers, trudged through water grey as spillage in the bilge-well of a submarine. When they pulled the spiral deck nail from his instep in emergency his foot was like a staph-infected udder. That night, he woke from fevered sleep not knowing who he was—as if his memory’d been winded— tripped its circuitry. Bobby Baun and Billy Harris carried Horton to his grave—the Chief and Allan Stanley—old teammates from the glory days. Mourners lined the sidewalks. It was sunny. Minus 17. And I’m back home with my brother. Back in ’83. Our wind-abraded cheeks like they’ve been slapped. The yellow light inside the kitchen. Mugs of builder’s tea. The box of payday donuts on the table like a centrepiece. My father with a dish-cloth on his shoulder.
Phillip Crymble
This poem won The Puritan's Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in 2016
