Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (17 page)

One person who saw the smoke was Vera. She was hanging out her wash, standing in heavy black shoes with red socks, and she could see the trail of smoke that whiskered up over the trees.

But she didn’t know what it was. Adele and Ralphie, who were down to see her, told her it had to be a fire.

“Are you sure?”

“Couldn’t be anything else,” Adele said and then shrugged.

Vera had invited them down because she didn’t want to be alone with Nevin – though she had not told them this. Every time Nevin said or did anything she would smile as usual, yet this smile, which was the same as always, seemed to betray everything.

“Good,” Nevin said, when he heard the news, “I hope we all burn down.”

Vera, in those heavy black shoes with red socks, walked across the room to open up the drapes.

“I think it’s burning away from us anyway,” she said in a very certain voice, her cheeks fatter because of the pregnancy and her eyes squinting.

“Well, I hope it turns around soon and starts towards us,” Nevin said.

Ralphie then left the house, and in a few minutes they could hear him up on the roof, walking about. Nevin went outside and sat on a sawhorse in the long grass near their back shed, looking up at him.

“Can you see it?”

“Oh ya – it’s pretty big – want to come up?”

Nevin smiled, jumped to his feet, walked over to the oil barrel, and went to take Ralphie’s hand – Ralphie was leaning over the roof edge, as easy as could be.

“Na – never mind,” Nevin said, and he went and sat on the sawhorse again.

An hour passed as Ralphie watched the sky.

“How is it now?” Nevin asked.

“Not too good – but I can’t tell which way it’s burning. Oh listen, here comes a water bomber. Oh look – that
big pine – no, the pine behind it is burning – water bomber dropped its load too soon – no – well, here comes another one.”

“Ah,” Nevin said, “once you’ve seen one fire, you’ve just about seen them all, I figure?”

But already, even though he was miles away from it, Nevin was already worried about dying in it – and secretly wanted to run away.

The sky was darkening. There was a low cloud hanging along the side of ditches on both sides of the main highway and it had the smell of burning leaves. Down the highway from Garrett’s, a moose wandered out and stood still, watching the traffic. Then it moved across and into the woods on the other side. A water bomber scared it, and it went at a run into the bushes.

There was no thought of evacuating any houses above Garrett’s. But down below them, below Oyster River, the fire had run almost to the bridge, and three families had left their houses and were standing in their yards with water hoses.

Antony was now standing out alongside the highway, near his yard, much the way he did in the spring when Valerie sold her worms. People pulled over in their cars to talk, and Antony would give advice.

“Can we get down to Oak Point?”

“Sure, just take it slow – there’s not much more than smoke. Turn your lights on – it’s not a big fire – just a little one. A lot a smoke – the wind’s sinful though.”

Then a forestry half-ton pulled up and the driver said in a joyful voice that fires sometimes give people, “You coming with us, Antony?”

“No, I got sore feet,” Antony said. “I worked all night.”

“You probably lit her, did you?” the young boy on the passenger side said as a joke. But Antony glared at him with a terrible ferociousness, and the boy looked guiltily out of the cab window.

“Don’t say that on this side of the river,” Antony said, because the youngster was from Napan. “Save that there talk for Black River – right, Terry?” he said to the driver.

After the truck left he hobbled back into his yard, picked up the same block of wood he had picked up two months earlier, and threw it into the bushes. Then he walked into the shed. He sat down among his few yapping foxes and drank, looking at Rudolf’s old shoes.

Still everything was going normally at Vera’s. Even little Cora and Rosie showed up for their piano lesson, just as they were scheduled.

“You can’t give them piano lessons,” Nevin said. He was getting more and more agitated.

However the little girls were seated across from each other in the piano room, hiding their hands. And Vera was walking about, with the scissors.

“Who’s first?” she said.

“Cora,” Rosie said.

“Rosie,” Cora said.

“I’ll go first,” Rosie said, holding out her fingers.

“No, I will,” Cora said, holding out hers.

And Vera looked from one to the other, snipping the air with her pair of scissors.

“You,” Vera said to Cora, grabbing her left hand and cutting her nails. “Now the right.”

After Cora was done she walked about the room, something like a little disembodied soul, looking at her fingers to see how close the nails had been clipped, while Rosie, whose operation had not yet begun, cringed and closed her eyes.

Every time Nevin went outside he smelled smoke, saw the darkening air, looked at the bay water, which looked sludgy and white, and felt that none of them were doing the right things. They should all be going somewhere.

He walked outside and shouted up at Ralphie: “How is it, now –”

“I don’t know – it hasn’t crossed the road yet.”

“Well, I want to take some things out of the house.”

“Where will you put them?”

“We’ll pile them in the field. Come on, snap to it, let’s go.”

And Ralphie stood, walked across the roof as if he were wearing some type of magnets on his boots, and grabbed on to the eaves, and swung down onto the oil barrel.

When they walked inside, the tick, tick could be heard from the metronome, and every now and then Vera would slap a page with her pointer.

“Da, da, da,” she would say. “Listen.” And, standing above the little girls, and playing with the fingers of her right hand, she would show them where they were getting mixed up.

“We’re taking the piano,” Nevin said, coming into the music room. “Everyone out.”

And with that Nevin started his day of panic and alarm, which for the life of him he could not control,
and like all panic-stricken people he was propelled by some force to start panic in others.

Ivan had now climbed upon Rudolf’s back and slid forward to its head, trying to unhook the sleigh as he did so, his pants soaked in mud.

The old horse, with its bobbed tail, old studded collar, and twisted blinkers, with two tiny Canadian flags sticking from them, looked back at him. It put its ears back, as Ivan urged it forward, while deerflies and mooseflies landed in the sores the old studded collar had made.

Rudolf, as always, tried to obey, as it did when it hauled thirty kids up the snowy roads, with antlers stuck upon its head, and icicles growing on its mouth, while every time it slipped on its uncleated shoes, the children would roar and laugh, and Santa would slap it forward with a switch.

But when Ivan kicked it, it didn’t even bother to move. The sleigh was sideways, the wiffle tree jarred, and its left hind leg was caught. Taking the straps off did not free the animal, as Ivan found out.

“Son of a bitch,” he thought, scratching his hands, and getting up on the old bridge to have the advantage of looking into the water. Still he could not tell much of what was going on.

Ivan saw where Antony had made a frantic effort to turn back in the middle of the bridge, but the horse had tried to plod on to cross in time.

“Son of a whore – you’re smarter than the old man,” Ivan said, while large inch-long mooseflies landed on the back of the horse’s ears and on the old scars made
from the straps. The horse shook his head, and looked around when Ivan spoke to him. Then he sighed one of those plaintive horse sighs, and lowered his head and sucked some water.

“Well – I’m going – I can’t be expected to stay here – I’ve got Sudbury to think of,” Ivan said.

Ivan got almost two hundred yards away, and waited. The horse was very small. His head was down, and every now and then he looked over at him calmly, as if to see where he was.

Ivan lit a cigarette and kept batting the flies from his head. He’d grab deerflies out of the air with his right hand and crush them, saying: “How do you like me now, you cocksucker?”

Then he said to the horse: “I’m not going back to you – so you don’t have to look in this direction, because I’m on my way to Sudbury – take a piece of ass on the train for once.” He then butted his cigarette, though he didn’t know why, since the fire Antony had started was burning right towards him.

The horse simply looked his way and when it moved its head its two silver bells jingled. Ivan sighed and scratched his ear. Then, taking his hands and rubbing mud off his new corduroy pants, he walked into the water, and back towards the horse.

Reaching the animal once more, he began packing the horse’s hide with mud to keep the flies away from it.

Just then, the top part of the bridge, which was dry as shredded tar paper, caught on fire.

“Ah, you motherfucker,” he said, and, taking off his jacket and soaking it in water, he climbed atop the bridge and began beating down the flames, now and then kicking at the rotted planking with his feet.

It was after one in the afternoon. The giant maple
waved in the distance, as flecks of ash-coloured sunlight filtered dazzlingly through its boughs. The first things to catch on fire were the nettles beneath it, which served as a springboard for this whole section of woods. Ivan tried to calm his growing fear and instinctively stuck close to the animal next to him.

There were other people who were surprised by the fire. Ruby Madgill was one. She had brushed Tantramar, turned him out, brought him in, and groomed him completely, and then saddled him ready to go for a ride. When she got into the saddle she looked up and saw the smoke.

“Where you going?” Lloyd said.

“I’m riding over to the house,” she answered, holding the reins tight so that Tantramar continued to back as Lloyd spoke.

“Well, don’t go too far – look at the fire.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” she said.

And she slapped the horse with a crop and he broke into a fast trot, leaning right, out of the paddock.