The Incinerator Incident

It began on the roof. I was up there with a flat shovel, tearing off the old felt. I had studied my neighbour repairing his roof. He’s in his eighties and has one leg. I bent over in the afternoon sun and rammed that shovel under the head of a nail, then I pried it up — prong. I was happy to have work gloves on and my old jeans and a shirt I must have bought twenty years ago. It still had some life in it. My girlfriend tossed me up a bottle of beer. I snagged a long strip of tarred felt and threw it over the side of the house, and the wind caught it and slapped it up against the shed. Then the felt slid to the bright grass. Took a swig. Boy was I enjoying myself. You don’t need skill at this, and yet you can call yourself a handyman.

I stood tall and crowed over the land and the cool northerly blowing in off the ocean. Then I got dizzy because of the drop in blood pressure. The tingle in the backs of my knees. I leaned against the new chimney we’d built out of second-hand bricks. We’d just bought this place. An old-timer in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. When you’re on your roof you own the view. You become kingly. My land, you say.

But bad weather was hauling in from Baccalieu, so I had to get to work. A leaky roof is miserable. I shovelled until there were bare planks and then ran down the ladder and threw the strips of shingle and tarpaper into the back of Edgar Bishop, our pickup. I weighed down the shingles in the truck bed with the old fridge and roped it all down. I had to get this load to the dump before it closed for the weekend.

There’s immense pleasure too in driving a truck with the radio on and your elbow out the open window. Lifting your finger imperceptibly from the top of the steering wheel when a vehicle passes, and you see their finger go up too. I was part of it all. I was living a rural life.

I drove down to Old Perlican — you can see the Bay de Verde incinerator spewing up grey tufts of smoke a full ten minutes before you get there. It looks primitive, Industrial Revolutionish. You lose sight of it as the trees take over, until you hit the gate and you pull in, and you’re faced with the maw of the ramp and the teepee incinerator belching out the fumes of Hades. From the gate, you can see flames licking up out of the open shaft near the top.

I paused at the little cinder-block gatehouse to show my garbage receipt. No one there. So I drove in a little more.

Hey!

And there’s the old guy, furious at me.

I hauled Edgar into reverse and stuck the receipt out the window.

You were in a hurry, he said.