To Mount Clarewa Part 2

Fiction by Rosie Etheridge

In the centre of Mount Clarewa stands a bronze statue of Cecil Clarewa standing on the very spot where he first struck oil in the 1870s. Cecil stands with his hands in his pockets, looking out on the town he built. His once gleaming moustache is faded and smoothed by the fervent hands throughout the years that have rubbed it for good luck. In the graveyard of the little white church he shares a tombstone with his wife of over fifty years and one of their unluckier children, Albert Clarewa. The oil town, which had flourished for the many years Cecil had been alive, experienced a sudden catastrophic decline after his death in the mid 1920s. A number of the residents had left for the enticement and work of the cities springing up in the west. Numbers dwindled almost until desertion until the building of the nearby road system unintentionally forced all western-bound traffic to pass through the ghostly town. 

There was one, frequently used road in Mount Clarewa (to call it a road was generous, it was more like a dirt track). The majority of buildings lined the one road. There was a post office run with perhaps the slowest service this side of the continent. It seemed that no matter when you got there, no matter the tiny population of the town, there would always be at least two people ahead of you in the queue. There would, without fail, at the front of the queue be some dreary chatter about stamp duties and the weather while the other customers impatiently tapped their feet. Opposite this was a triangular-roofed convenience store whose owner, Mr Grace, appeared to change the sign to ‘Closed’ whenever he sensed imminent customers. This led to much speculation in the area regarding the behaviour of Mr Grace and his store. If you did manage to make it within the store however, you were greeted by a perpetual smell of English mustard and a disproportionate number of buzzing, fluorescent low-hanging lights so that every shopping trip felt like an interrogation. Next to the post office was a quaint little cabin, barely larger than a hut. A finely painted red and gold sign declared it ‘Tabby’s Treasures’ and listed the extensive merchandise housed within including: postcards, books, general curiosities, bikes, jewellery, paints etc. It was run by Dr Tabbitha Westbrook (Tabby). Once a notorious figure in Lymphology, she realised her dream of owning a bookshop in Mount Clarewa and expanded from there. She was said to have read every book in the town at least twice and bore a striking resemblance to a crow. At 8:20 each morning she would climb her rickety wooden ladder to clean the sand from the Tabby’s Treasures sign. Upon stepping down she would wave across the track to Siergi, the owner and sole worker of the Clarewa Garage.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the garage at Clarewa would be constantly teetering on the verge of bankruptcy for lack of customers. Despite the singular track dust road, Clarewa was a crucial point for those motoring in the West. It was the only gas station or settlement of any description for an almost troublesome distance. This meant not only were all motorists forced to stop for supplies, but there was a great number of cars that needed to be towed having underestimated the distance between stations. This was as beneficial for Sizzlin’ Cecil’s Diner and Motel as it was for the garage. There was a constant string of frustrated guests who were housed at the motel while they waited for their car to be fixed. On the few occasions when the garage had the part or solution needed, it could be only a few days’ wait. On most occasions the part had to be delivered from a dishearteningly big distance which led to delays of weeks. On one particular occasion Cerys Dan Lisa’s car had needed a part which nobody this side of America seemed to possess. After weeks of delays Cerys had decided instead on staying in Clarewa and was now one of the residents housed in a neat row of pale blue houses behind the main road. Cerys had then gone on to become the second teacher at the Clarewa school, home to students of all ages. She’d invested a great deal into the renovation of the grand wooden school building (which also served as the town hall).

Clarewa schoolhouse was a pale yellow building, the colour of hazily remembered summers. A pristine row of red and white potted flowers lined the front of the building up to the steps that led to the double brown wood doors. A pair of swallows roosted in rafters of the sloping roof and could be heard chittering throughout the lessons. In the months when they were building their nest, the occasional twig would fall down onto an unlucky student or the creaky floorboards. There was a singular expansive room which made up the classroom for all students. The two teachers split them into the category of younger or older owing to confused and unknown rules. The younger students faced the blackboard at the back of the classroom and were taught by Miss Dan Lisa, the epitome of a primary school teacher. It seemed she had a never ending supply of both patience and long, flowing floor length skirts. The older were taught by the more stern Mrs Grace, wife of the convenience store owner. Much more stern, Mrs Grace’s clothes were perpetually smudged with peculiar mustard-yellow stains. It was the great pleasure of the students to guess and find the locations of these stains each day. Mrs Grace had a special passion for history derived from the belief that she was directly descended from the founder of the town, Cecil Clarewa, although no proof of such was ever offered.

At 3:15 each day when the final school bell had been rung, Cerys packed her chalks, papers to mark and empty coffee flask and headed to Sizzlin’ Cecil’s. Sizzlin’ Cecil’s was a long wooden cabin with large windows all along the front allowing those driving past to see fully in. The floors were faded wooden floorboards and the walls a warm coffee brown littered with pictures from the history of Mount Clarewa. Cecil’s moustache firmly haunted the walls of the diner. Brown and yellow peeled leather booths lined the windows and a wooden bar with stools stretched the full length of the building. The little bell above the door jingled.

Cerys slunk into a stool at the bar.
“The usual?”
Maggie had worked at the diner since she was 17. Each morning she put on the same mustard-yellow uniform with the pinny, frilled skirt, slicked her brown remarkably shiny hair into a ponytail, stuck her pencil through it and marched off to the diner. At 8am she turned around the sign, a drawing of Cecil Clarewa smiling for open and frowning for closed.

“Yah, thanks. How’s it been today?”
Maggie poured the thick pink liquid into a slender milkshake glass and shrugged.

“So-so. The regulars and a coupla motorists.” She topped the strawberry shake with whipped cream, a cherry and a smile. “Anything else I can get ya?”
The bell rattled again and the door opened.