After River (12 page)

‘It was like a Christmas card,' she said. ‘The snow hung heavy on the branches of trees, it rolled off the barn roof like thick icing. Fat, silent flakes fell, dusting the backs of the cows and horses. A stream of smoke curled up from the brick chimney of the farmhouse. It was beautiful…' she mused. ‘In the dairy, the smell of cream, wet cement and bleach was as familiar to me then as it is now.'

‘You sure it wasn't the kiss I stole as soon as the door closed behind us?' my father teased.

Mom ignored him as she poured boiling water into the teapot. She knew with certainty, she went on, that as she followed Dad through the maze of shoulder-high snow banks to the farmhouse that it was her future in-laws she was about to meet.

As she placed the teapot on the table, Dad came up behind Mom and wrapped his arms around her waist. ‘And that was our lucky day,' he said as he spun her around. ‘Underneath those snow clouds, the sun was shining right side up. Eh, Nettie?'

I caught a brief flash of something akin to sorrow fill Mom's eyes as Dad took her into his arms. It was there, then disappeared so quickly, I thought I imagined it. I couldn't tell if River had noticed because when I glanced over at him he was studying his fingernails.

While Dad sang an off-key version of ‘It Had To Be You', Mom frowned in mock exasperation.

‘Oh, Gus,' she sighed, letting him lead her around the kitchen in an exaggerated swaying slow dance, ‘of course it was.'

Nettie

S
HE STANDS AT
the gate. A dust-covered truck lumbers up the dirt road and passes beneath the Ward Dairy sign. The flatbed with its hulking cargo pulls into the farmyard. Carved birds-eye maple legs and foot pedals protrude from beneath the quilted packing blankets. Nettie recognizes the piano, a wedding gift from her parents. It's the same piano she grew up with, took lessons on, and played each day, in her childhood home in Victoria.

‘Probably could have bought a new one for what it cost to bring it up,' Gus's voice whispers in her ear. Nettie smiles.

Gus places his hands over her eyes and leads her to the side of the farmhouse. His first surprise on this her wedding day. He pulls his hands away to reveal the rose garden. It is not her new husband's wedding gift itself so much as the thought that pleases her. The fact that this pragmatic man secretly worked so hard to produce a romantic tribute to her middle name brings tears to her eyes.

Wedding guests gather behind her.

‘Well, he's no gardener by any stretch of the imagination,' Ma Cooper's voice says. ‘When Gus started tilling a small strip of soil between the house and the dairy, Manny and I wondered what he was up to. We watched him mix wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full
of manure from the pile behind the barn, with soil. I was beginning to think he had flipped his lid. Finally he came in and asked us what roses to plant.'

‘Frivolous,' Nettie's new mother-in-law, Manny, snorts. ‘I said it then, and I'm saying it now. Frivolous. I wasn't letting him have any of my vegetable garden to waste on flowers.'

‘I told him to go with yellow tea roses,' Ma Cooper's voice continues. ‘He planted the bushes along the fence. Once they were in we watched Gus stand back and contemplate the effect. It wasn't good enough. Oh, no. He decided it wasn't quite right and dug a larger strip, tilled, manured and planted the red American Beauties. Then he tilled, manured, and planted again, and again, until what started out as a simple border of tea roses turned into this.'

Nettie stands before Gus's labour of love, a profusion of colours, sizes and varieties of roses in an enormous fenced garden, complete with a cedar trellis and an arbour over the gate.

‘Well, I've had about as much gardening as a man needs in his lifetime,' Gus's laughing voice recedes into the dark.

Now she sits on the iron bed in the old miner's cabin by the lake. Gus has fixed up the old one room shack for their honeymoon. Another surprise. She watches Gus blow out the kerosene lamp. He reaches for her in the dark. Nettie's final surprise, in this day of surprises, rings hollow and disappointing.

Nettie wakes, still she hangs on to the images. She wills her life's scenes to play out. She can almost hear the hum of the walk-in cooler in the dairy below as Gus snores beside her. Boyer is born while they live in the room above the dairy. On the day after Gus's father dies of a heart attack, they take their one-year-old son and move in with Gus's widowed mother. Gus adds a downstairs bedroom and a sunroom to the farmhouse. Nettie's dream of her own home disappears.

No matter how she tries, Nettie never grows close to her mother-in-law. Still, they are cordial. Enough so that, as Nettie's family grows, Manny teaches her how to can, to preserve, and bake along with many other skills so foreign to Nettie, but necessary as the wife of a farmer. Nettie even feels some grief when, at the age of sixty-one–after gutting twenty-seven chickens at the kitchen table–Gus's mother lays down for a nap one afternoon and never gets up. Pregnant with her fourth child when she finds her mother-in-law's lifeless body, Nettie fights back the joy she feels at the thought of an extra bedroom. Even now a wave of guilt rises as she allows the scene to replay one last time.

They're all gone now: Ma Cooper, Manny and Gus. Morgan and Carl have moved so far away. And Natalie. Natalie was the first to leave. Nothing is the same any more. Even the rose garden no longer exists. But Boyer is still out at the farm. Boyer and the piano.

Home. She wants to go home, to give herself over to the soothing, healing sounds of music once again.

She sits in the parlour. She will play Natalie's favourite song; maybe the notes will hurry her daughter home. Then she can tell her.

She pushes back the wooden lid and places her hands on the ivory keys. Her fingers deftly find the chords. But no matter how hard she presses no sound comes.

T
HE BUS LEAVES
me at Cache Creek. I eat my lunch outside the motel restaurant that serves as a bus depot while I wait for my connection to Kelowna. Two hours to kill.

I feel a nagging regret kindling over my stubbornness in not allowing Vern to drive me to Atwood. I try to ignore the meaning behind his words this morning. His unfinished sentence about not having a chance to meet my mother. But he's right. Her dying is more a reality than a probability. A spark of fear ignites in the pit of my stomach. The fear that I might be too late.

I push aside the last of my salad. My notebooks and laptop are spread out on the table top, open, ready, waiting for words to flow from thin air to keyboard, to hard drive. Nothing comes. I am working on a series of articles about northern women for the
Prince George Chronicle
. Inspiration wanes as I travel south.

Before me a swimmer does laps in the motel pool. I watch indifferently as an arm arches up. Water cascades over tanned skin, a strawberry blond head lifts and turns from side to side. Something familiar wakes me to the moment. I am sure the swimmer is Ken.

Kenneth Jones, my second husband. I'm afraid to look too closely. How would I feel if he stood up, removed his goggles, and walked toward me? What would we say to each other? But no, no it can't be.

Still, each time the swimmer's head comes up for air I'm less certain. The features, the shape of the back, the long arms, are all my ex-husband's. But the way this swimmer carries himself is not the way the man I was married to for nine years did. The constantly nervous Ken that I knew would never have glided through the water with such self-control. He would have stopped many times to see who was watching, to flash a timorous smile, as if apologizing for being there, for taking up space. And yet, as I watch him, almost mesmerized by oblique possibility, I am not sure. It occurs to me that perhaps the anxiety, the lack of confidence, was only there when I was. Maybe this is who he is now that I am not in his life, not threatening to leave.

As if I have willed him to, the swimmer stands in the middle of a lap. He pulls off his goggles and wipes a hand over his face and shakes the excess water away. He looks at me, then through me. I am of no more importance in this stranger's life than he is in mine. I don't even see now what it was about him that brought Ken–who I haven't seen for over fifteen years–to mind. The men in your life never really go away; they only disappear. Or you do.

Vern pointed out not long ago that my staying power in marriage seems to be ten years. We were in our basement getting ready for a yard sale when he made the observation. I looked up from the cardboard box I was filling with books. ‘Where did that come from?' I asked.

‘Just a thought,' he said as he closed one of my photograph albums and replaced it on the shelf.

‘You might be right,' I answered and lifted the box of books. ‘That's about the time it takes to reach the line.'

‘The line?'

‘Every relationship has a line. The moment you step over it, love begins to diminish.'

Vern raised an eyebrow. ‘What about unconditional love?' he asked.

‘Sure, until you cross that line.'

‘I don't have a line, Natalie.'

‘Everyone has a line. Some are just closer than others.'

I found my family's line when I was seventeen.

Two backpackers interrupt my musing. They throw their bags on the ground beside the next picnic table. The young man sits and leans backward against the tabletop, dreadlocks, nose ring, earrings and all. He stretches his legs and turns his face to the autumn sun. His female companion, wearing a matching army fatigue jacket and baggy pants, joins him. The uniform of rebel youth. They think it's new.

The girl glances at the newspaper stand and shakes her head. ‘It's Vietnam all over again,' she says.

I study the faces of two American soldiers staring out from the front page of the
Vancouver Sun
and wonder sadly when the casualties of this war will stop having names and become part of a body count.

While the two backpackers debate America's involvement in Iraq–another war based on lies–I want to tell them that it's not quite the same, one difference being that the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are there by choice. No draft or conscription has forced them to choose between armed combat or fleeing their country. Yet.

And that freedom to choose is in large part thanks to young men like River Jordan who defied the system back then. Still, the current events are so confusing. It's a changed world. And harder to hang on to the simplistic '60's belief that, ‘if there were no soldiers there would be no wars.'

‘I
T'S AN ILL
wind that blows no good,' Mom was fond of saying. But I wonder what she would have called the winds that blew River Jordan into our lives.

‘The winds of discontent,' River called them one night when the conversation turned to the protests sweeping through the university and college campuses of America. He told us that for him, those winds began in Washington D.C. the year before.

‘On November 2, 1965,' he said, ‘beneath Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's Pentagon window, a young Quaker pacifist, Norman Morrison, doused himself in gasoline. Then he lit a match.

‘A split second before he exploded into flames,' River went on, his voice growing quieter, ‘he handed his one-year-old daughter to a bystander.'

I gave an involuntary shudder as the image of a human fireball flashed through my mind.

River looked up and his eyes met mine. ‘When I heard the news in my dorm room at Montana State University,' he said, ‘I felt that same shudder in my soul.' He reached into his jean pocket. ‘The next day I found this article on the front page of the
New York Times
.' He pulled a folded newspaper clipping from his wallet.

As he passed it to Boyer I caught the headline; ‘Vietnam Foe Burns To Death.'

‘It was the word “foe” that caught me,' River said. ‘How easily they used that word. I knew it wasn't meant that way, but to me if felt as if to be in opposition to the war made him the enemy.'

While Boyer read, my father cleared his throat and pushed his chair back. He left the table and slipped out the door as the article was passed around. When it reached me I read the fading words.

‘Norman Morrison woke me up,' River said after the article was back in his wallet. ‘I couldn't ignore what was happening any longer. I wasn't willing to make his sacrifice but I could stand up and be counted.'

He told us that after he left university he began marching in protests, attending rallies and sit-ins across the country. ‘I believed I was exercising my democratic right to protest,' he said. ‘But with the National Guard and the police attacking demonstrators, the streets and campuses of America don't look very democratic right now.' He sighed then added, ‘Even the student movement is becoming militant. When my draft card came it was an easy decision to burn it.'

The table was silent. Neither Morgan nor Carl, or any of their friends, had a witty comeback for River's quiet words that day.

It was obvious from the first that he was different from the usual strays who found their way out to our farm. Like Boyer, River had no need to fill the empty spaces in conversation with words. His
quiet maturity made the constant bantering between all the town kids who crowded around our table seem like mindless chatter.

Indirectly, I guess, all those young people could be held responsible for everything that happened after River. If they hadn't crowded Jake out, River would never have come to us.

Like each person in our family, while Jake lived with us he had his customary place at mealtime. He sat on the opposite end of the table from Dad, beside Boyer. Guests either squeezed in on the bench with Morgan and Carl or pulled extra chairs up beside Mom and me. If anyone dared sit in Jake's chair, he grabbed his plate and filled it up before slamming out the door.

Mom blamed our expanding circle of friends for his leaving. ‘Poor old Jake,' she said after, ‘he just couldn't tolerate all those young people.'

Whatever the reason, out of the blue one day, Jake packed up and said, ‘Well, guess it's time for me to move on,' as if he had been there for a few weeks instead of over twenty years. Then he surprised all of us, and the entire town I'm sure, by moving in with Widow Beckett. On the day he left, he and the widow, who had never been known to even talk to each other, much less have a relationship, were married at the town's courthouse. We saw little of either of them after that. On the following Monday, Ma Cooper arrived as usual, for ironing day. She appeared stunned and, for once, at a loss for words.

The loss of her sidekick didn't slow Ma Cooper down for long though. She continued her weekly updates of the local goings-on in our little town each Monday. Her stories were even more embellished when she had an audience. I think she enjoyed shocking the girls who filled our kitchen then as much as Morgan and Carl enjoyed teasing them.

One Monday afternoon, not long after River arrived, Elizabeth-Ann and I sat at the kitchen table helping Mom can peaches. Our hands were wrinkled and stained orange from peeling and pitting. Every once in a while Elizabeth-Ann let out a shriek at the sight of a slithering earwig side-winding its way out of the pits of the over-ripe fruit. The air in the kitchen was heavy with the aroma of baking bread and boiling syrup. Steam hissed from the large blue canning pot as it bubbled and rocked on the stove.

Ma Cooper stood at the ironing board, the loose white flesh of her huge bare arms swayed in rhythm with her heavy-handed ironing.

‘It's not decent the way some of those girls are strutting around town,' she said as she pulled a blue smock middy from the board and hung it up.

We all knew ‘those' girls were the very ones whose uniforms she was working up a sweat ironing. Like Mom she was a hardworking member of the Catholic Ladies Auxiliary. Her deeds may have been charitable, but her comments about the girls from Our Lady of Compassion seldom were.

Everyone in town knew that the school for girls next to St Helena's Hospital was really a home for unwed mothers run by the Catholic Church. ‘City girls,' Ma went on. ‘Their families send their bad girls up here when they get caught. Guess they think we don't care here in the sticks!'

I had often heard Ma and other women from the church complain about the idea of these girls walking around town and the influence they might have on their own daughters. But Mom was always ready to defend them.

‘They're just kids who've made a mistake,' she said. ‘Kids who deserve our “compassionate understanding”,' she reminded Ma.

Every week Dad donated milk to the home. And Mom always seemed to find extra eggs or cream to send along with him. Once, when I was young, while Dad was making a delivery, I peeked in through a hole in the thick hedge. The way Ma Cooper talked about those girls, I expected them to have horns. The ones behind the hedge didn't look much different from the teenage girls in our town, with the exception that they all seemed to have various sizes of watermelons tucked beneath their identical blue smocks. They were not weeping or praying, as Ma Cooper seemed to think they should be, but talking and laughing with each other as they lounged on the lawn in the morning sunshine.

‘Bold as brass,' Ma went on as she ironed. ‘I saw two of them walk into the post office on Saturday. Those girls have no shame.'

‘Now, Ma,' Mom said while she opened the oven to retrieve a batch of bread, ‘they need fresh air and exercise as much as anyone else. Maybe more.'

Just as Ma's mouth began to form a reply, the screen door screeched open. Without entering the kitchen River leaned in and placed a brown grocery bag on the corner of the counter. ‘Here's your lids for the mason jars, Nettie,' he said. His smile took everyone in, then the screen door closed behind him.

‘Thanks for picking them up,' Mom called after him as she placed a steaming loaf on the sideboard. She removed her mitts then picked up the bag as she gazed out the screen door.

‘That young man is too handsome for his own good,' Ma Cooper sniffed as soon as River was out of earshot. ‘He reminds me of the hired man who worked for old Angus and Manny years ago.'

Mom and I rolled our eyes at each other. We knew there would be no stopping Ma. She would tell the story of my grandparents and the farm hand yet again.

‘That fella was a hard worker too, but, oh, he had an eye for Manny,' she told us. ‘Guess he figured he was too handsome for anyone to resist. Wouldn't stop pestering your grandmother whenever they were alone. She never told Angus 'cause she was afraid to lose the help. She figured she could handle him herself. But he kept at her, making rude suggestions that drove your gramma crazy. Then one day when your grandpa was out delivering the milk, that cocky young man came into the kitchen while Manny was alone. She was standing here chopping meat at this very table.'

Mom breathed an exaggerated sigh as she sliced peaches into jars. We'd both heard this story before and knew where it was going, but Ma was telling it for the new ears in the room.

‘He started teasing Manny that they could have some fun while Angus was away,' Ma went on. ‘Your gramma told him to git and just ignored him. She kept working. Next thing she knew he was standing right beside her whispering, “I got something for ya, Manny.” Before she knew it he'd unbuttoned his pants, flapped his pecker right out there onto the table, saying, proud as punch, “How'd ya like that?” as if it was some gift he was presenting!' Ma stopped for only a moment to catch her breath and retrieve another uniform from the basket.

Elizabeth-Ann stopped peeling fruit and stared open-mouthed at Ma.

‘Well, Manny, she kept on chopping that meat, staring straight ahead.' Ma Cooper pantomimed the motions on the ironing board,

‘Chop, chop, chop and then,
WHAM
! The cleaver flew to the side and clean took off half of his…his…well, you know what.'

Elizabeth-Ann gasped. She looked from Ma, to me, then to Mom who shrugged her shoulders to confirm that as far as she knew, the story was true. Elizabeth-Ann thought for a moment, then in a
hushed voice asked, ‘Did he die? What happened to the…to the…to it? Could they sew it back on?'

Ma Cooper brushed the questions away, a satisfied smile creasing her face. ‘Don't know,' she shrugged. ‘He just disappeared. Was never heard from again.'

I shivered. Once again the story left me with the image of a faceless man running out of our kitchen door and down the road clutching the remaining stub of his blood-spurting penis. Only this time the image had a face. The face of Mr Ryan.

Ma Cooper unplugged the iron. ‘Can't help but notice that Gus takes this here young man on the milk round with him every day,' she said in a coy voice. ‘Maybe he's afraid to leave him alone with you, Nettie.'

Mom blushed, then gave a short laugh and said, ‘There's no such thing as alone on this farm.'