I walked down the abandoned rail line to the Kingbird Café last week looking for the warmth of human community. No matter what kind of a day I am having, it always lifts my spirits to see familiar faces look up from their Pyrex mugs of coffee and wave me into my spot in the corner booth by the window.
But it was noisy today, a dull roar that suggested trouble. Fingers were pointing, tempers were up, the din was fearful. The new Korean proprietors Suk and Jin looked up from the grill anxiously and hurried around to greet me.
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“Never heard them like this before,” said Suk nervously. “Am I using too many vegetables again?”
“No, no,” I assured them. “The food is fine.” Before I could say another word, I felt a draft and turned to see Reverend Ray coming in the door in muffler and hat. He stamped his feet and smiled grimly.
“I came as quickly as I could.” He solemnly handed me the front section of that day’s Globe and Mail, which carried a large headline announcing “Canada no longer an agricultural superpower”.
“Is this bad news?” asked Suk.
“No, just irritating,” said Ray. “You see, every four or five years our ‘national newspaper’ runs a piece on farming. They usually get the theatre critic or a sports reporter to write it up and it always sets off a riot in here. This morning’s article says Canadian farmers don’t take enough risks, don’t have enough ambition and they’re just too old.”
“Yikes,” I said. “No wonder they’re upset.”
“It gets worse,” said Ray. “The paper is running a week long series. Tomorrow they do frankenfood, then animal rights, supply management and foreign ownership. There will be something to offend everyone.”
He turned to the crowd.
“Gentlemen,” he said in his church voice, clinking a coffee cup with a spoon. “Brothers, a little calm, if you please.” The noise in the room subsided and all faces turned towards the Reverend.
“My text for this morning is taken fromPsalm 59: Verse 12:‘For the sin of their mouths, the words of their lips, let them be trapped in their pride. For the cursing and lies that they utter, consume them in wrath.’”
“Now there’s an idea!” shouted Wilf Smalley. “Consume them in wrath! Let’s burn the blasted newspaper in the street!” There were cheers and the crowd rose as one and barged past us out the door. Ray seemed to say that perhaps Wilf had missed the precise point that King David had made in that particular passage, but if he did, no one heard him.
There are only six copies of the Globe and Mail delivered to Petunia Valley on a weekday, but the farmers managed to find four of them and set fire to them in the middle of the highway outside the diner. Now, you know what a newspaper burns like. It goes up one page at a time and if you don’t keep a rake on it, the wind catches every single piece and floats it away like a flaming kite. Within minutes the dead grass between the snowbanks in front of the church was on fire. To their credit, the farmers switched seamlessly from rampaging protesters into heroic volunteers. Wilf himself had his whiskers singed while moving the Reverend’s car out of the path of the flames. The church itself was never in any danger.
But there was a noticeable bubbling of the paint on the driver’s side of the minister’s car. Ray bent down to examine it. “O ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord,” he muttered glumly.
“Bring it down to the shop, Rev,” said Wilf. “I can buff that up and re-paint it in no time.” The other demonstrators sheepishly opened their wallets and extracted contributions to help with the cost of paint. Then we all went back into the diner and sat in silence, a little wheezy from the smoke and exercise.
“I think the lesson here,” said Ray finally, “is that we should remember that it is probably not a good idea to criticize those mysteries that we can’t understand.”
“Which one of the prophets said that?” asked Wilf. “I believe it was Bob Dylan,” said the Reverend.
