Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (16 page)

He remembered his father coming home late at night – and when he opened the door he brought the glittering cold in with him on his skin. He would smile and hand Ivan an apple. There would be chunks of maple burning in the stove.

Of course, it wasn’t his father at all – it was Margaret, washing his arm, and the facecloth had become red with dried blood.

She lifted him up with her left arm, and held him against her breast to see where he’d cut his head open in the fall. Ivan hadn’t remembered anything about cutting his head open. He only remembered he thought there was more blood than there should be from the coyote bite and that he had gotten very dizzy when he climbed the hill.

Then there was the time he stole three cars in one night – and drove them about, but got caught because when he took them back he parked them in the wrong driveways. The next day a lady from the Children’s Aid and a police constable took him from one house to the next.

“The Ford is supposed to be parked here – not the Datsun.”

“Is that right?” Ivan said. “How did they get mixed up–”

“How did you do that?” the lady asked.

“I didn’t – the coyote did,” he said.

Margaret had lain him back on the cot, and he answered her. She spoke French and he answered her in French.

It seemed important that he tell her something – but she had left the room.

Margaret ran downstairs, facecloth in hand, and began to wash it. She went back up and sat beside her brother for almost two hours, and then went downstairs to check the time. It was two in the morning, and
the wind was cool, the sky dark, and she could hear a bird screech somewhere. She did not know if she should phone an ambulance or not, and when she went back upstairs she saw Ivan sitting up in bed, trying to light a cigarette. He had loosened his pants and had his shirt off, so she could see all the marks on him – not only from his fall, but from other things as well.

He looked up at her, dragged on his cigarette, and then leaned back to look under the curtain at the night.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Two or something,” Margaret said. “I’ll phone the hospital.”

“I don’t need any hospital – where is everybody?”

“In bed–”

“Two in the morning –” Ivan said.

“Yes, it’s dark out.”

Ivan nodded as if in a daze and dragged from his smoke again, then looked over at his boots.

“What’s on
TV?”
he said.

“Nothing – it’s off the air.”

Ivan had forgotten that though he could get cable just five miles away, Margaret was unable to.

Then he asked her to make him something to eat, and got to his feet.

“I need an ice pack for me head too,” he smiled.

“What do you want to eat?” Margaret asked.

“Bacon,” he said. He could smell frost on the dark sill, and in the air about the pictures, and in the air near the flower pot filled with dry soil and a plant that hadn’t grown.

Now he sat in the kitchen and looked at his arm and chest. His chest had been scraped almost raw in the
fall, his rib cage on his left side was blueish yellow. “Where’s Dad?”

“Down river.”

Ivan said nothing.

“You probably need a tetanus shot for your arm,” Margaret said to him.

“Probably,” he said, looking at it and shaking his head.

“So,” he said, “how was yer summer there, Maggie Muggins?”

“I didn’t do too much,” she spoke as she worked, making noise with the dishes and frying pan, as if she wasn’t certain of what she was saying. She didn’t mention Nevin. “I saved money for the Exhibition,” she said, “and Cindi said she would take me.” She didn’t look at him, she looked at the stove. “I asked her if you could come too – and she didn’t say no,” she said, as if an afterthought. But still she didh’t look his way.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t feel like eating either. His head seemed to be numb, and he felt like he might get sick again.

“But I didn’t say yes or no to anything,” Margaret said. “I bought a belt, too – you want to see it?”

She went inside, and got the belt from the closet.

“It was for when I go to the Exhibition,” she said, as always when she tried to be grown-up she sounded like a little girl.

He smiled at her for a long time, and at the belt in her hands.

Then, after trying to eat some bacon and eggs, he went back to the room and fell asleep almost at once.

He slept for another day.

Cindi had begun to realize the shifting attitudes. Ruby now no longer saw Dr. Savard – whom she had been “totally” in love with – and she and Dorval Gene had had that falling out which usually happens to conspirators – even when they only realize the nature of their conspiring in hindsight, and still believe in its purpose.

It tumbled all over her at once and troubled her.

Also, Cindi was beginning to see that everything had been done on a whim – that if, for instance, Ruby wasn’t in love with Armand, it might not have happened, or if Armand wasn’t agitated by that case where the woman was sent to Moncton, it might not have happened. It might not have happened if she and Dorval Gene had stood up to Ruby – who wanted them to pretend that they were in the depths of that inner circle, simply because she was in love with Armand and had written his name on a stall.

By now everyone had tired of it. No one cared about Cindi. She was almost completely forgotten. Part of this was because there were other events which usurped her.

When weeks before she was the most high-profile person she had ever been, no one paid attention to her any more. The old doctor still dropped in now and again. Margaret came over to visit, and Adele still came down once a week.

Every time the doctor came in he would talk roughly, say too much, and be sorry for it. Then he would ask her if she had seen Ivan.

“No one’s seen him at all,” Cindi would say. She would sigh as if she was as puzzled as everyone else.

He would look down at her, then shuffle across to the refrigerator and look into it – to make sure that
she had enough food – but really to make sure that she was eating food at all.

“I think he just went way up into the woods,” Hennessey said one day, almost fondly, as he leaned against the fridge to make it close.

“Maybe,” Cindi answered.

Finally Cindi went out of the apartment.

It was a bright cool day in August, so she wore a sweater that came down over her shorts. Half her toes were painted red, the other half were painted green – she liked to mix them up, every second toe.

Her hair was piled loosely on her head with pins, so that it lifted upwards from her ears. She walked with the characteristic wiggle she always had, a wiggle that was almost unnoticeable but gave a curious and wonderful sensuality to her movement that had attracted far more men than one might, at first, suppose. She had put some blush on her cheeks and did her eyelashes while she stood outside in the sun. A little boy – Harvey LeBlanc, he was called – went around and around her with his tricycle, taking shots at her with a water pistol.

She lit a cigarette and walked down the road, holding the cigarette outward at her right hip.

There was a smell of manure and hay, and the tick, tick of grass. The bay was blue, and so were the trees in the distance.

Cindi found Ruby in the barn with Tantramar. Ivan had told her not to jump with Tantramar when he wasn’t there, but she had the jumps set up, and was leading the horse out into the arena with the crop in her left hand.

Cindi was not allowed to go near any of the horses in the upper stalls. Tantramar was one. It was Ruby’s
horse. Anything that was Ruby’s one was not allowed to touch. Except for her father, who continually took things away from her – like her credit cards – and then gave them back twofold. That was how she got the colt. He took Tantramar away from her and then let her have Tantramar back, and bought her a colt.

Cindi stood for a long time without being noticed. Ruby tightened the girth and tried to get a boot into the stirrup, as the horse moved in a very slow circle around her. She was wearing dark tight breeches and big black boots.

“Will you settle the fuck down,” Ruby said. She was so beautiful. No wonder so many loved her.

“Ruby–”

Ruby turned about and looked at her. The horse gave a snort.

“I’m sorry,” Cindi said, “for the trouble I caused.” And then, taking a breath, she said, “I want you to forgive me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ruby said, looking over at her.

“I caused a lot of trouble for everyone,” Cindi said.

“Who doesn’t?” Ruby said, walking Tantramar to the box so she could get into the saddle.

“I guess we all do at times,” Cindi said, smiling faintly.

“Uh huh,” Ruby said, checking the length of the stirrups – as if this suddenly showed that she knew she had been betrayed.

“How’s Dorval?” Cindi said.

“Dorval who? Don’t mention that cocksucking backstabber to me – he’s gone home to Montreal.”

Then, after saying this, and as if this action, too, showed that everyone she knew and helped had disappointed
her, she shortened her contact, snapped the crop, and sent Tantramar around the outside rail at a canter.

When she looked back towards the arena door, Cindi was gone. She brought the horse back to a trot and patted its glossy neck.

When Cindi left the barn, Margaret, who was standing near the paddock fence, called her over to tell her about Ivan.

When Ivan woke, it was glowing red twilight. She was sitting in the corner, with a fruit basket in her hands, looking at him.

She had worn her blue dress, the one she had bought in Moncton, and she was wearing a tam on her head. She had combed her hair so it fell straight down across her ears, and she had a small heart-shaped pendant about her neck. That is, she looked totally different than he had ever seen her look before. The plastic was pulled across the top of the fruit basket so stiffly that it seemed to make her air more formal.

“Hello, Ivan,” she said. She smiled, just slightly. “Here,” she said, handing him the basket – and it was done so abruptly she almost let it drop on the floor.

“And I’ve got you a card – now where is that card?” She began looking through her purse. “Where is that card – I got it – where –” As she looked for the card she glanced at him, trying to smile, and then looked quickly into her purse.

“Here,” she said, hauling it out. “Of course it says, ‘I hope all the nurses are pretty,’ but there are no nurses
here, so you’ll have to imagine nurses.” Again she smiled and then looked about.

He looked at the card and basket, and watched her. There were some last slivers of light, and then they paled away. Car lights from the highway flickered into the room as they passed, and every time the car lights passed he could see the little heart-shaped pendant around her neck.

Every now and then she would look at him, and smile in a frightened way, and look around the room again.

“Is that Ralphie’s picture there?” she said. He nodded.

Though it was dark, she picked it up for a moment and looked at it. She didn’t know what to do, so she put the picture back, rubbing her hand along its frame.

“He’s a good friend to give you that picture,” she said, as if she were talking to a child.

He nodded, but she did not see his nod.

“He’s a good friend,” Cindi said again, as a person will to comfort herself when her statement has not been answered.

Then a sudden dreadful silence came upon them both for a long time.

She sat on the far edge of the bed and didn’t look his way.

When he woke up much later, she was still sitting there. And, as always with her, she could tell that he was awake.

“Are we gonna go home tomorrow?” he said.

They were making other plans. By the last of August they had their apartment cleared out, the bags and boxes packed, and were ready to leave.

First they were going to Kingston, and then on to Sudbury, where one of Ivan’s uncles worked and had promised him a job if he could get there by the end of September.

At the last moment they decided to send their belongings by freight on to Sudbury, take the train to Kingston, and buy a car there.

Ivan had gone to the wharf, had taken the little dog to Cindi’s mother and asked her to keep it, and he would send for it when they settled. He had met Frank and Jeannie Russell one day as he walked along the road. They were walking towards him. They didn’t speak until the last moment, and then in a litany of outrage at the boys on the road who were bothering their mackerel nets, asking him if he’d seen any of them, and looking at him as if he would understand their complaints against all others who made the mistake of living.

“I haven’t seen no one about today,” he said.

“Young ones on the road,” Jeannie said, sniffing and looking up at him with a dour expression.

“Some big-feelinged lads,” Frank said, as his wife looked up at him.

There was a silence.

“Mr. Big-feelinged Lads,” Frank said and they moved slowly away, cutting down the wagon road and into the stubby field near their house, Jeannie walking behind him, her movement in her square red jacket somehow totally womanly.

“Do you want to invite Adele and Ralphie down for supper before we go away?” Cindi asked.

There was a long pause.

“No,” he said.

Adele, finding out that they were going, invited them up to the house. But at the last moment Ivan, who was ready to go, couldn’t bring himself to go. He sat near the kitchen table, in his new corduroy pants and nylon jacket, looking now and again at the clock on the wall, and looking away from it as if the time caused him pain.

Olive came by with money because he had spent his time to trap the coyote, but he didn’t want the money, and so refused to take it – and this made him feel sad for her. She was a small woman with black hair and oyster-coloured skin.

“Well, you saved us a lot of worry at any rate,” she said.

“Oh, they weren’t doing too much, those fellas – just out about,” he said, smiling. Then he lowered his eyes and looked away.

There was a party hastily arranged for them at Allain’s, and they went down.

Antony wasn’t there. He was in Lemec at this time. So Ivan didn’t get to see him.

It seemed to everyone in the house that they were just leaving after their marriage – and that there was going to be a new start to everything.

Their wedding had taken place two years ago. Everyone got drunk and Cindi was kidnapped. They put her in a shed, and then forgot where they had taken her, leaving her there for three hours alone, singing her lungs out. They had Kentucky-fried chicken and had toasted the bride with Golden Nut wine. Then they all had to go out and try to find the bride, late at night checking sheds and barns, and calling her name in the dark along the road.

The day before they were to leave for the train station, Cindi asked Ivan to take two pie plates back to his grandmother.

The woods behind his grandfather’s, to the left of the road, was ablaze – there was a good black smoke rising over the trees about three miles away.

When he went into the house, Valerie was busy making herself breakfast as nonchalant as anyone. There was already a haze in the porch, and a smell, as of an old tire.

“Where’s Dad?” he said.

“He took Rudolf and went into the woods last night. I think he went poaching salmon,” she said, as nondescript as always.

“Ya – and he went in and lit a fire so he could get hired by the forestry to put it out – another make-work project for himself,” Ivan said, looking towards the trees.

Valerie went over and looked towards the trees also, sniffed, and said nothing.

“It’s likely this is what the old man did,” Ivan said, patting her once on the head.

“Pretty likely,” Valerie said.

This was not an entirely new phenomenon with Antony. He had discovered this ability to light fires a while ago. He had always complained to Ivan that it was after his marriage had broken up and he was out of work. He had come home from visiting his friends in the north of the province, and found that they did this almost every summer. He began to do it, now and again, himself.

Although Ivan couldn’t be 100 per cent positive it was Antony’s fire, he couldn’t think of any other way it had started.

“I gotta get to the train,” he said. “I can’t be fuckin about with this all day –”

“No, you can’t be fuckin about with this,” Valerie said.

“Watch yer mouth,” he said. “Jesus Christ, Valerie.”

Then he went out and looked into the shed. Rudolf was gone all right. He looked in its stall, saw where it had breathed the last of the dusty oats about in the box, where it had tried to place the hay under it to lay down – just as it had always done. He saw two of its shoes in the corner near the fox mash.

Ivan looked about and picked up a chain lying on the floor and threw it across a beam and started out. Margaret was in the yard.

“Did you see the fire back there?” she said.

Ivan looked up at the trees and nodded matter-of-factly.

“I think the wind is blowing away from us though – don’t you?”

Ivan wetted his finger and stuck it into the air as he passed her, so that she laughed.

“I don’t think there’s any wind at all at the moment,” he said.

Margaret had come from her swim and was wearing her black bathing suit. Her skin was covered with goose bumps. She was in bare feet, some dirt had caught on the back of her right leg, and the air smelled hazy.

“Where are you going?” she said.

He turned quickly and kissed her.

“To Sudbury,” he said.

“I know that! But I want to show you my jigsaw puzzle first.”

So he walked up the stairs and into her bedroom, where half of her room had been taken over by two card tables, upon which a huge jigsaw puzzle lay. It was a winter panorama, but one piece was missing. She had searched her room for days.

“Well – that’s too bad,” Ivan said.

“Well – I was going to get it put up on the wall, but I won’t if I can’t find the piece,” she said. “It took me five weeks.”

They both looked at the puzzle glumly, as if, because of that one piece, they held something against it.

She began to dry her hair with a towel, and it suddenly struck him as very womanly the way she did this.

Just then he heard a voice downstairs. Antony had come home.

“Ivan,” he said.

“I’m up here,” Ivan said.

Antony moved slowly up the stairs, breathing heavily and clomping along the hallway, banging on his father’s door as he passed.

“Fire,” he said.

He came to Margaret’s door and looked in at them. He was covered in mud and dirt.

“Fire,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s a fire.”

“I know,” Ivan said.

“Well, aren’t you going to do something about it?”

“No,” Ivan said, “I’m going to Sudbury.”

“Oh, look,” Antony said suddenly, “you’ve got yer puzzle done –”

“I have it all together but I can’t find one piece,” she said.

“Oh,” Antony said. Then he sniffed and rubbed his hand across his head. “You mean this,” he said, going over to the puzzle and taking the piece out of his pocket. “Oh my God – look, it fits,” he said, sniffing and scratching his bum.

“You hid it on me,” Margaret said. And Antony winked and laughed.

Just then Ivan asked where Rudolf was. Antony admired the puzzle for a moment and then shook his head.

“Where’s Rudolf?” Ivan asked a second time.

Antony moved his head, and said, “Oh, he got all caught up on the bridge there and fell into the swamp. I tried for an hour to get him out – but he won’t come.”

“He’s stuck there in the goddamn fire?” Ivan said.

“I tried oats,” Antony said, taking some oats out of his pocket, as if “I tried oats” proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had done all that was humanly possible.

Ivan turned and walked out the door.

“Well, where the hell are you going?” Antony said, still holding the oats in his hand.

“I’m going to get Rudolf,” Ivan said.

Antony then got agitated. “The trouble is the sleigh is there and the lumber,” Antony said.

“The sleigh in August? He can’t haul a sleigh!”

“Well, what are you going to do?” Antony said in a reasonable voice. “You gonna let that lumber burn –”

“What lumber?”

“Oh, who knows what lumber – it was just lying there.”

“That’s Dr. Hennessey’s lumber,” Ivan said.

Antony then took the flat of his right thumb and rubbed the inside of his right nostril, while looking with his big brown eyes at his son.

Ivan shook his head.

“Well – I gotta see about getting this fire fought – I can’t stand about all day looking after an old horse,” Antony said.

Ivan went towards the door. Antony followed him and Margaret followed Antony.

At the last moment Antony got in an argument with the forestry over how much he would be paid and decided not to trouble himself working the fire. He had lit the fire, he believed, because the night before Gordon had ignored him at the Portage Restaurant, and he felt once again outside that circle of events and people he so wished to be included into. They had all gone to the restaurant, and Antony had to sit at a corner, and ask for a knife and fork. Gordon teased him about this – and Antony kept trying to be
included in the conversation about the snow-crab industry in Lemec – as if this conversation and his inclusion into it was the one important yardstick by which everything else was measured. Gordon and his friends ignored him for the most part, and Antony ordered a salad because others had also, wearing his
ELVIS LIVES
button on his black welder’s cap.

The woods to the left of his grandfather’s house was dry and warm. Ivan could smell sun on his jacket and the faint tang of smoke far away.

He walked straight through the woods and hit the road about an hour later.

He walked along the road, stepping gingerly here and there, moving from one side to the other, looking up at the trees for a sign of wind.

After almost an hour on the road he reached the giant puddle, where Nevin and Antony had encountered the moose the month before, and turned briskly to his right, heading through the trees. Within twenty minutes he was at the fringe of the bog. Far across the bog was the maple tree that he had fallen from.

The sleigh was tipped over and lying on the horse’s right-hand side, with one of the runners touching the horse’s withers. It had gone off the bridge where half the lumber still sat.

“Oats,” Ivan said.

The woods was quiet. Some crows flew south high above him. Up in the tree he was standing under, a small grey squirrel chattered, sucked, and whistled, its body trembling.

“Oats,” Ivan said again, shaking his head.

Then he said,
“Plus defuss”
which is what Antony said whenever he was in trouble.

“Plus defuss tout le temps,”
he said, and he sat down and lit a cigarette.

Old Rudolf had exhausted his strength trying to get back up on the bridge, trying to escape the sleigh and the stab of the runner, trying to move forward as Antony had coaxed and beaten him – first with his fist, and then with a switch he had cut, but all to no avail. Now the animal was looking gloomily about, now and again trying to bite at some deerflies.

The water in the bog rippled with a breeze that ran from the north towards where Ivan was sitting.

Ivan then butted his cigarette, and then, yanking the belt on his new corduroy pants tighter, he found a suitable place, and started across the bog towards the horse.

By the time water tankers got down, the fire had cut the dirt road at two places, burning over an old burn to the left of the bog, and going away from it.

People on the highway had already pulled over in their cars to watch the smoke, and then, as men in trucks started back towards it, they could see the first flames, fanned by a small late-summer breeze hitting the air.