Patterns of Swallows (13 page)

Not until years later did she
realize that someone else had died to carry that weight, and not
until then did she understand forgiveness. Not until then could she
go on living.

*
* *

It was one of the first things
she knew she had to do as soon as she came back to Arrowhead. First,
she forced herself to walk across the trestle, feeling as though she
might faint at the sight of the river below, visible through the
spaces between the ties of the track. Then she sat trembling on the
edge of the cliff and made herself look down to where the trail to
the cave had been and to the river below. The trail was gone now,
and the cave was closed in. A landslide had changed the face of the
cliff. There was some comfort in that.

The next step was to go and see
the Bellas and tell them the whole story.

That was harder than the trestle
and the sitting on the cliff, but it had to be done, and she did it,
holding nothing back. There in the Bellas' living room, they first
learned the truth behind their son's death. And there she first
learned the truth behind the weight she carried and the one who could
carry it for her. There she learned to know, in a new way, another
who had given his life for hers, even after her rejection of him.
And there she first began to understand forgiveness. There life
began again for her.

Marriage wasn't quite the
proposition that Ruth had expected. She hadn't expected anything in
particular, really. But in spite of having no expectations of
marriage, it still wasn't what she expected. Any long-imagined
event, or even a non-imagined event, has the power to startle just by
its occurrence. By its very reality, nothing is as surprising as
reality.

After her marriage, Ruth
continued to work at the Morning Glory for a few more weeks and then
handed in her notice. In two more weeks, she entered the ranks of
the full-time housewives.

Then her days grew long. At
first, there was enough to do to keep her time well-occupied with the
running of the old farm house and the acre or two that Ruth had
retained when the rest of her land was leased. But Graham didn't
want to stay on the farm. It was too old-fashioned, he said. It was
too much work for her, he said. It was too far out of town, he said.
He needed to be closer to the mill, he said.

Buying a place in town was
beyond their means right away unless they sold the farm, but that was
the thing that Ruth was determined not to do in spite of Graham's
reasoning and bargaining.

She compromised on agreeing to
rent out the farm house. They found a place to rent in town and made
the move.

Then her days grew longer.

The small bungalow in town
practically ran itself. True, there was cleaning to be done and
Graham's meals to cook and his suits to press. But Ruth was quick at
her tasks, and with a kitchen equipped with all the modern
conveniences, her tasks didn't go a long way toward filling up her
days.

If Ruth was the type to enjoy
all the usual things – bridge parties and afternoon teas and
shopping and getting her hair done – time would have passed
quickly, but as it was ...

"You should get out more,"
Graham told her. "The church ladies have all kinds of things
going on. I'm sure you could find something to join."

But Ruth wasn't a joiner. And
wouldn't it look funny for her to start joining things at the church
when they never went to church?

"Why don't you call up Wynn
sometime?" Graham asked. "Or go and see Glo and Jim more.
You can go in and have your lunches at the cafe just to say hi. You
should be grateful that I can earn enough for you not to have to
work. You can do anything you want to with your time."

It was too bad that all Ruth
knew how to do with her time was work.

She did call Wynn from time to
time, but they'd both outgrown treasure maps. Neither could remember
where they'd left off, but wherever it was, they wouldn't have been
able to pick right back up there even if they'd tried. Which they
didn't. Ruth would have been willing to work at it, but she sensed
Wynn's disinterest, whenever there was anything better going, in
pursuing the old friendship, and Ruth wasn't one to force herself on
anyone.

She lunched often at the Morning
Glory just to see everyone. But it wasn't the same at all. Everyone
was hard at work while she ate. They'd stop by her table and chat
when they had time, but she missed the working camaraderie. She knew
Jim and Glo still considered her the closest thing they had to family
in Arrowhead, but she couldn't help feeling like a mere customer when
she ate her lunches at the cafe, watching the others in action.

Gradually, she started the habit
of taking long walks or, before the snow flew, of hopping on her
bicycle and going back to the farm just to see it. She couldn't get
too close to the old house; the renters would wonder if they saw her
skulking around their back door or by their front porch. They might
feel she was spying on them, not realizing it was just the house she
was there to see. So she wandered in the fields or up in the back
pasture by the old giant firs, drinking deeply of it all, slaking her
thirst, to make it last until her next visit.

We'd been friends for years, but
those were the days when we truly got to know each other – to
see through the same eyes, almost, at times. She knew I loved to
walk and also had time on my hands, so more and more often Ruth asked
me to accompany her on her walks. Those walks became lifeblood for
both of us.

We wouldn't go out to the farm
usually when I was with her. We'd often walk along paths branching
off from the back roads or by the train tracks that gave onto a view
of the canyon.

The weather didn't matter to us.
We never let it keep us from a planned outing.

The season didn't matter,
either. To us, the valley was beautiful in all its seasons. Even
the in-between almost-seasons carry their own glory.

In my memory's eye, I can see
those days – those late winter, not-quite spring days, when we
first started walking together.

At first glance, the scene is
set against a backdrop of white – white sky and white fields –
but on closer observation, the white conceals a multitude of touches
of colour: the blue tints hiding in the snow shadows, the dark hues
of the evergreens, the golden browns of the dead weeds and grasses
lifting their heads above the ageing snow, and all the subtle reds –
the deep red of the elderberry branches and the brighter red of the
rose hips and the most startling red of all from the slender wands of
willow growing all around the ditches.

The snow berries on otherwise
bare, brown bushes covering the hillsides make the dead February
landscape almost festive and bride-like. The diamond drops of
melting snow suspended like pendants from every branch catch the
light and transform it.

The greyness of the bare
cottonwoods stretches for miles along the river bottom below;
tree-ghosts made visible.

From a neighbouring field comes
the raucous cry of a pheasant.

I remember one day especially, a
day of unusual beauty – unusual even for Arrowhead. The sun was
out, and there was blue to be seen in the sky – always a
welcome sight in February. A bank of clouds hid the mountains to the
east, all but their white, craggy tops which rose up out of the
clouds, looking for all the world like islands floating on a sea of
sky that had somehow slipped down from heaven, misplaced in our
domain.

Ruth and I never talked about
the scenery. What our eyes could take in was not something our
mouths needed to discuss. It needed no analyzing. It needed only
experiencing. I mention the pictures I have now only to hold them
fast in my mind and to plant them in yours.

We talked instead about books, a
subject we were both passionate about. We agreed that the only books
worth reading were the ones that were about beauty in some way.

That day, the day I'm
remembering, I told her the thing I'd told to no one else – my
dream of writing. I told her that I wanted to write about Arrowhead
and its people. I didn't tell her I wanted to write about her. I
didn't know it then.

*
* *

I read to experience the beauty
of worlds that aren't mine. I write to share the beauty of my own.
My life has been small, but there's great beauty in small things.

I've told you I didn't want to
tell you more about myself – at least, not just then. I didn't
mean I would never tell you anything more about myself. There is the
longing to be understood buried deep in every heart. Perhaps that
longing is the reason anyone writes. I write now to be understood,
and I write to help someone understand the beauty of my world.

Those views – the views of
the Arrowhead valley and the views in our minds – were the
views that Ruth and I shared on the particular day I'm remembering.
It was that day that I knew we understood each other. At least, in
our limited, human way. I think that's why my walks with Ruth became
life's blood to me. We understood.

*
* *

As is the way of the world ever
since the time of the Great Flood (even before my time), in that year
– the first year of married life for Graham and Ruth – as
in all other years before it, winter turned into spring, and spring
turned into summer.

Ruth and
Graham ceased to be newlyweds, or at least
new
newlyweds, and marriage ceased to be a strange proposition for Ruth,
like new clothes that lose their novelty when worn day in and day
out. But what they lack in novelty, they make up in comfort.

If happiness could be totted up
and graphed on a chart, Ruth and Graham were likely as happy that
first year as fifty percent of all young married couples. They were
certainly happier than the bottom forty percent. They might even
have been in the top forty percent for happiness in their first year
of marriage. But then, that's hard to say. No one has ever found a
reliable measuring stick for happiness.

And that's talking of their
combined happiness. The equation becomes more complicated when the
fact is taken into consideration that both parties in a marriage may
not be equally happy.

If one was more happy than the
other in Ruth and Graham's first year of marriage, that is
information I'm not privy to. Then again, that's information no one
can be privy to, not even Ruth or Graham. No one can know –
really know, I mean – the standard of measurement for anyone
else's happiness.

One may guess, with fair
certainty, that she feels some deeper emotion than some other one,
but I'm not sure that deeper emotion has any relation to happiness.
Happiness skims only the surface of the heart, after all. The deeper
emotions lie below that surface where happiness may never delve. But
for the possessor of those deeper emotions, happiness is of small
consideration, and the one would not be traded for the other at any
price.

Nevertheless, to all outward
appearances, Graham and Ruth were equally happy with each other, and
they were averagely, or perhaps above averagely, happy.

Not that their first year was
without bumps in the road.

One sticking point between them
was Ruth's relationship with Graham's mother. There was a definite
distance between the two women.

Graham had assumed that once he
and Ruth were an unalterable reality, inseparable by the bonds of
marriage, his parents would resign themselves to Ruth's not being
Lily Turnbull and soon come to see her worth.

As far as he could tell, his
mother was willing to like Ruth, but Ruth wasn't giving her much
opportunity. The problems stemmed from ... well, who knows what the
real stem of the problems was, but there was one early occasion when
the stem of the problem budded out into a full-blown "incident."

The younger MacKellums were
still living in the old farm house at the time. It was the first
time Ruth had invited her in-laws for supper, dreading it mildly, but
feeling it to be her duty to her husband.

Mrs. MacKellum went to make
herself useful in the kitchen as is the way with women, leaving the
men to "talk shop."

Ruth bore with the first three
or four gentle suggestions on how better to drain the potatoes and
how better to get the lumps out while mashing them and how better to
thicken the gravy and how better to season it, but when her new
mother-in-law also had a suggestion on how better to slice the
tomatoes for the tossed salad, Ruth turned on her.

"That
may be how you do it in your kitchen," she said to the older
woman, with a look in her eyes that Graham would have recognized
instantly, having aroused it a time or several, "but right now,
we're in my kitchen, and that's not how
I
do
it!"

Mrs. MacKellum said not a word
in reply. Her lips primmed and her shoulders slightly hunched, she
finished mixing the sugar into the lemonade in silence. Fortunately,
it was the last job to be done before the meal was ready.