Clara Callan (8 page)

I don’t believe I felt any fear at the sight of them. I used to watch Father talking to such men through the screen door of the kitchen. Giving them a ten-cent piece or a bag of apples and sending them on their way. Such men nearly always defer to authority. They are used to being told what to do, and so I was not afraid at their approach. When I got within perhaps fifty yards, the man looked up and saw me and stopped. The boy stopped too and stood on the rail with his hand on the man’s shoulder. I walked steadily on. I could see now that the man was grinning with his wide comical mouth and he called out to me. “Hello there, Missus. How are you today? Do you remember Donny and me? We chopped that cord of wood for you yesterday, didn’t we, Donny?”

The boy said nothing, just looked at me. There was only his vacant face with its terrible white eye. I wished them a good day, and then the
man did an annoying thing. As I passed, he turned and began walking alongside me. As I quickened my pace, he did likewise, and all this time he was chattering. “Out for a stroll, are you, Missus? A little nature walk? Sure is a nice day for it. That’s what Donny and me are doing. Taking a stroll and listening to the birdies.” And on and on with this foolishness. The youth followed. The sole on one of his shoes had come loose and was flapping in the cinders between the tracks. I remember that flapping sound behind me. The tramp’s presumption was both irritating and bedevilling. That is how I felt at that point, irritated but not yet fearful, as the man walked along beside me with his chattering, grinning mouth, and the boy followed in his broken shoes.

I kept thinking that it was all quite ridiculous, and finally I halted and told the man to stop his nonsense and get away from me. Then I may have made a mistake. I told him there were men working on the tracks by Trestle Bridge, and they would be along soon, and then he would find himself in serious trouble. The tramp could see I was lying and he may have sensed the beginning of my fear. Then he said something like this.

“Now, Missus, you’re telling us a fib and nice ladies like you shouldn’t tell fibs. There are no men working on that bridge this afternoon. Section men don’t work on Saturday afternoons. Everybody gets a little holiday on Saturday afternoons, even section men. We know that, don’t we, Donny? Me and Donny live on the tracks, Missus. We been on railway tracks all over this country and in the United States of America too.”

I had started forward again, but suddenly he sprang ahead of me and blocked my way. He was one of those loose-jointed men who are perhaps remembered in country towns for nothing more than step-dancing. I must have said something like, “What do you think you’re doing?” and then he said this. I remember these words.

“You live alone, don’t you, Missus? No man around? Nobody to chop your wood or warm your little feet in bed. Oh my, what a shame!”

His words unsettled me, and I’m sure it was then that I knew these men intended to harm me. Then the tramp said, “You’re a good-looking woman and I’ll bet you could use a good ____ing.” At that word I screamed, and I remember that at the edge of the pine woods, several small black-and-yellow birds rushed forth from the grass and rose into the air. The tramp seized my wrists. “Come along now, Missus. I just want to give you a little kiss. I haven’t had a kiss in donkey’s years.”
Donkey’s years!
Yes, he used that expression. And so began my struggle. He was all sharp and flinty, all bones and edges or so it seemed. I remember the sour tobacco stink from his mouth and the unwashed smell of his overalls. A reeking skeleton of a man with a wide mouth.

We swayed in the grass by the side of the tracks. “Now, Missus, now, Missus, you’ll like it, you’ll see.” A kind of mad, skipping song over and over. So we shuffled around in the grass, and the tramp began to laugh and holding me at arm’s-length he twisted me around. He was singing a foolish song. “Have you every been into an Irishman’s shanty? Where money is scarce, but whisky’s a-plenty.” It was all this mad circling and through the turns I could see the boy sitting on the tracks, watching us. The tramp’s face had reddened with his exertions and he had somehow managed to remove his coat and fling it into the grass.

Then I fell and he covered me with himself. There was something sharp against my cheek from one of his pockets. A pencil maybe or the stem of a pipe. The terrible stink of him and his hand was beneath my dress, tearing at my underclothes. Ripping them away from me. I was dizzy from all that turning and sick with the notion of what was happening. I said to the tramp, “You musn’t do this to me. You musn’t harm me like this.” But he was only desperate and obscene. “Oh yes, Missus. Yes, Missus. I want to ____ you so bad. I do. You’ll like it, Missus. You’ll like it.” His words were something like that. Then I thought this. A terrible thing is going to happen and I can do nothing about it. It will be an ordeal but I do not think they will kill me. They are not murdering men. They will run away as soon as this
is over. My eyes were closed and I shuddered with the pain of his entrance into my body.

Then the frantic thrusting inside me. I counted nine, ten, perhaps a dozen before he spent himself. And all the while I was thinking this. I was thinking how suddenly a life can become misshapen, divided brutally into before and after a dire event. So it must be with all who endure calamity: those who must remember the day of the motor car accident, the afternoon the child fell through the ice, the winter night’s blaze that awakened the dreamers.

The tramp was now quiet. I could feel his racing heartbeat. He had shifted his weight and so my cheek no longer hurt. But my insides were burning and I wondered if I now had some unspeakable disease swimming within me. Or perhaps I had become impregnated. It is indeed something to worry about, for I believe I am about in the middle of my month. When I opened my eyes, he was standing over me, buttoning himself. He looked out of sorts now. Ill-tempered. He called to the youth. “Come over here and have some too. You’ll never have a better chance than this.” I watched him buckling the straps of his overalls and looking for the coat he had flung aside in the grass. How I longed to set that grass on fire! Consume all three of us in a sudden flaring burst of flame. A field of fiery grass that would scour everything and leave the earth blackened and cleansed.

The tramp now seemed hurried and vexed with the boy. “Come on now, hurry it up! Get that thing out of your pants and give it to her. She’s never going to see anything like that again.”

The boy had come across from the tracks and was looking down at me. Fumbling with his buttons. His member was grotesque. A huge red thing and I said to myself he will tear me apart with it. Then the boy fell to his knees between my legs and I closed my eyes, for I could not bear to look at that vacant, ruined face. Almost at once I felt him spilling himself across my legs. I could feel it pouring over me as he worked it out of himself with his own hands. And so I was spared that. The tramp was now laughing. Calling the boy a damn fool.

They left then. The man scolding the boy as they went away. I heard his voice fading, and when I turned on my side, I could see his long legs moving through the grass and the boy’s too climbing to the railway tracks. I knelt and watched them walking along the tracks towards Trestle Bridge. The boy was hurrying and at one point the man stopped to cuff him across the back of the head. Then he hurried on, the boy endeavouring to keep up, and then they disappeared around the bend in the tracks. I lay down again, for I felt sick to my stomach and I was bleeding. After a few minutes I cleaned myself again with my torn bloomers, and I wondered how I would get home. What I wanted to do was sit in a hot bath and clean myself properly. Yet that seemed like such an undertaking, such an impossibly complicated and far-off task, that I began to weep and beat the ground with the palms of my hands. I also kicked my feet. I had a little spell there lying in the grass. A tantrum such as an hysterical child might have. It left
me panting and exhausted in the sunlight. From time to time I had to clean myself again and then I would wonder what to do if my insides were swimming in disease or if I were pregnant with the tramp’s child. I could not bear the idea of facing a doctor over in Linden. I would have to go down to Toronto and find someone to help me. But where would I look and what would I say to him? I could not bring myself to tell anyone about this. I got myself into another state thinking about all that, and then I thought how grateful I would be if only I could turn back time and now be walking home with a copy of the
Herald
, looking forward to my supper, dealing as we all do with the fuss and worries of everyday life. Grumbling about them. When what we should do, if we could only be reminded, is to be grateful for the small routine difficulties of our days and nights.

I thought about all that as the sun moved through the pine woods and the air and ground cooled. I would have to wait until dark before making my way home. I imagined myself looking wild-eyed and distraught (perhaps I didn’t look that way at all), but I was afraid I
might burst into tears or say something outrageous at a simple greeting on the street. And the aftermath of such a display?

“What is it, Miss Callan? What’s the trouble?”

There would be talk and talk and more talk.

“She started crying right there on the street? Who? Clara Callan? I don’t believe it. That’s not like her. Why would she do that? She could be having some kind of breakdown. All alone in that house. Ever since her father passed away.”

I would stay where I was until dark. I made up my mind about that.

I thought then of how the tramp had hurt me for no reason other than his lust, and he would go unpunished. A year ago I might have taken comfort believing God had seen this man do what he did to me and He would punish him. But now I believe there is often no retribution in human affairs. People rob and murder and rape one another and often go to their graves without ever being brought to justice. And this notion bothered me almost as much as anything.

Around seven o’clock I heard the whistle of the evening train from Toronto and soon the tracks began to creak under the weight of its approach. Listening to this gathering onrush of iron noise, headlong and terrifying, I wondered again if Mother had deliberately stepped in front of such fury. The train passed by me twenty feet away. I caught a glimpse of the locomotive’s wheels and raising myself I saw the coaches passing and a woman’s head in profile. Someone reading a newspaper at the end of her ordinary day. How I envied her!

The sky through the pine woods blazed in afterglow and then darkened. Twilight seemed long. A new moon appeared, resting on its back. Farmers say such a moon is holding water so the weather will stay dry. I wondered about the truth of such sayings. Oh, I may not have been in my right mind, for all this time I was walking back and forth, stopping now and then to clean myself. I had thrown away the disgraceful bloomers and had to use my stockings. From time to time I sat down on the track. Just about where the youth had sat watching us. I pictured the boy and the man now crossing a field, chewing on
green apples or spring onions pulled from a garden, the man chattering on or perhaps now quietly sullen. I saw this boy crossing the field staring out at the world with his one good eye. Then I started back along the tracks towards Whitfield, thinking how peculiar I would have seemed to anyone who came upon me. Near the station at the edge of the village I crouched in the grass. At the side of the stationmaster’s
house, some men were leaning against an automobile and talking. Their voices and laughter travelled across the dark fields to me. His children were still playing, running around the house and shouting until their mother came to the back door and called them in. The men continued to talk for the longest time until finally they drifted away to their homes. I waited for perhaps another hour. The dogs stopped barking and then I walked to the railway station and up Church Street and home. It was nearly ten-thirty when I started a fire in the kitchen stove and began to heat the water for my baths.

As I read it over, I thought my account of what happened yesterday afternoon was too feverish, but now I don’t think so. That is what occurred as truthfully as I can set it down. I finally fell asleep, just as the birds were starting. Awakened to the church bell and thought of how a year ago I would have been walking out the door with others at this hour. Drifted back to sleep for half an hour and then got up to heat more water.

An hour ago Mrs. Bryden came to the door. She had seen no lights until late last night and wondered if I were ill. Was there anything she could do? I told her I’d had a touch of something and had gone to bed early and then awakened later and read myself back to sleep. As I talked to her, I wondered if she believed me or if I looked different to her. There is still a small mark on my cheek from whatever was in the tramp’s pocket. And perhaps what happened has transformed me in the eyes of others. Perhaps they can see the violation in my face. I
thought I sounded convincing, but Mrs. Bryden gave me an odd look. Perhaps it’s only my imagination. After she left, I made some toast and tea. I couldn’t face the prospect of a letter to Nora asking for news “of dear old Whitfield.”

“Oh yes, and by the way, Nora, here is some news. I was raped yesterday afternoon.” Surely such a statement would require at least three of her exclamation marks. Then I thought of how sour and sarcastic and unworthy that was. I can be such a hateful person, and I can seem to do nothing about it.

Glad to be back in the classroom and grateful for routine that woe makes way for: a roomful of children allows no time for reflection. When they trooped out to the schoolyard for recess, however, I thought of how it must be like this when you have a fatal disease. A flurry of activity distracts you, but once alone, the predicament returns to poison your day. At the window I watched Milton in his shirtsleeves playing softball with the children. I wondered what he would think if I told him what had happened to me on Saturday. But I cannot imagine myself doing such a thing. It’s just too outlandish.