Patterns of Swallows (17 page)

Ruth couldn't speak, but she
shook her head. She wasn't crying about the dream, that much she
knew.

"Is it about the baby?"

Ruth still couldn't speak, but
she didn't shake her head or nod. She just kept trying to stifle the
sobs. She understood Graham's helpless frustration at not being able
to share in her experience and not being able to reach her from his.
She wouldn't have let him know she was crying if there had been any
help for it, but no one has control over her reactions in the middle
of her sleep.

"Shhh, shhh," he kept
repeating. "It's gonna be okay. There will be other chances."

But he wasn't a chance. He was
Samuel.

"There will be other
babies," he said.

But Ruth wanted to know and to
hold that one, even if he had only been a sweet dream to her. She
wanted a dream she could hold. And she wanted that one. There might
be others, but there wouldn't be that one.

*
* *

There must have been some
womanly instinct that told Graham's mother to treat Ruth with more
tenderness after that time. Though they'd told no one about the
baby, Ruth felt the difference in her mother-in-law's attitude toward
her after her miscarriage. There was no tangible reason for it.
Maybe, without noticing, she'd changed toward Graham's mother. Maybe
the common bond of motherhood had drawn them together in some
inexplicable manner.

The breach was not completely
healed at that time, however. There was the desire on the part of
both at that time to understand and respect and love each other, but
in relationships, as in all other areas of life, there is a sizable
gap between design and implementation. Ruth and her mother-in-law
tried hard but weren't entirely easy together. Probably because they
tried hard.

In time, the breach was
completely healed, but that breach-healing came at a terrible cost.

The days were beginning to take
on their spring length. Winter darkness was loosening its hold on
the world. At least on the northern hemisphere.

But other than the additional
daylight, early March wasn't noticeably thinking any thoughts about
becoming springtime by the twenty-first of that month. The frequent
snowstorms that recurred throughout the true winter months continued
to plague Arrowhead into the first weeks of March.

"Snowing again. Looks like
it might be a heavy one," Ruth said to her husband, looking out
of the office window into the mill yard.

"Hmmm," he said, his
mind elsewhere. "Ruth, where did Dad go? He left more than an
hour ago and didn't tell me where he was going. It's not like him to
take off during the middle of the day. I need to ask him something
about these figures."

"I don't know. I saw him
leave, but he didn't say anything to me about where he was going.
Maybe he had to take your mom to an appointment. Maybe he had to go
pick something up. I dunno."

"It's odd. It's not like
him not to tell someone where he was going."

"Well, maybe Dorothy
knows."

But Dorothy didn't know. Mr.
MacKellum had told no one where he was planning to go or what he was
planning to do. Maybe he hadn't known where he was going or what he
was going to do.

By the end of the work day,
there had been no reappearance of Mr. MacKellum. Graham and Ruth
both found it strange, but Ruth decided he'd come down with something
very suddenly and had gone home to bed. It was 'flu season, after
all. The strangest part was his not saying anything to anyone about
where he was going, but there was some reason for it, no doubt.

*
* *

Ruth and Graham were in the
middle of supper when the phone rang.

"Never fails," Graham
grumbled.

"Hello?" Ruth answered
it.

"Is Guy there? I'd like to
speak to him, if I could," her mother-in-law's voice said.

"No, he left work early,
and we haven't seen him since. I assumed he went home," Ruth
answered.

"Is Graham there, then?
I'd like to speak to him, please."

Ruth couldn't make out much from
Graham's side of the conversation except the clear fact that Graham's
father hadn't come home from work.

"Your dad didn't go home
when he left work?" Ruth asked Graham when he hung up the
receiver.

"Apparently not,"
Graham said shortly. He was already putting on an overcoat.

"What're you gonna do?"

"Mom's all worried about
him. Honestly, I'm a little concerned, too. It's just not like him.
I'm sure there's some explanation, and no doubt he's fine, but he
may have driven off the road in that snow. I'm going out to drive
around and look for him."

"I'm coming with you,"
Ruth told him.

"No need. Why should both
of us go out and get cold and wet?"

"Because you could use an
extra pair of eyes. It's dark. It's snowing. You need to watch the
road. We don't need two of you off the road. I can look for his
car, and you can drive."

There was sense in what Ruth
said, and Graham saw it, but there was sense in Ruth staying in, too.

"You should stay here in
case someone telephones to say they found him. Mom's going to call
around to every other place he might be. She said she'd call back
here if she heard anything."

"Well, we'll try calling
her as soon as we get home if we don't find him. I'd have no way of
getting a hold of you, anyways, so you'd still be out driving around.
I might as well be with you."

Graham didn't answer her which
Ruth took for permission to get her coat and boots.

It was miserable driving. The
slush on the roads conformed the tires to its will. Graham had sold
his pickup and bought a car in that first year of his marriage, and
now he regretted it. The car was not good in the snow. Graham
squinted against the heavy, wet snow pelting the windshield and crept
along, fighting continuously with the steering wheel against the pull
of the slush, while Ruth scanned the dark countryside out the
passenger window and the front windshield.

They tried all the obvious
routes. Then they tried the common back roads. But all without
success.

After two hours of
tension-filled and exhausting driving, Graham admitted defeat.

"Maybe Mom's found out
something by now. I can't think of anywhere else he would've gone
for any reason."

"Maybe something came up
suddenly, and he had to go out of town for business."

"Without telling
anyone?"
"Well, I dunno. He must be somewhere. And
wherever he is he went there without telling anyone. Or maybe he
went out of town and left a note for your mom, and she hadn't found
it by the time she called us."

"Guess we'll know when we
try calling her when we get home. At any rate, no sense our driving
around all night. He's probably home by now, anyways, my guess
is."
But once back at home, the phone call to Mrs. MacKellum
left them where they'd been two hours earlier. Except more
concerned.

"Nothing else we can do
tonight," Graham told his mom. "If he hasn't turned up by
morning, we'll have to get up a search party or something. Try not
to worry about it tonight. Ruth thinks he may have had to go out of
town for business."

"Did he say something to
that effect to her?" Mrs. MacKellum asked eagerly.

"No, I don't think so. She
just thought it might be an explanation. Any chance you might have
missed a note anywhere?"

But there had been no note.
Mrs. MacKellum was quite sure on that point.

"You'll call us as soon as
you hear anything, won't you?" Graham asked.

"Of course, and you, too,
if you hear anything."
"Of course we will. Look, Mom.
You could come spend the night with us so you're not up all night
worrying."

But his mother thought she'd be
better off in her own home where she'd know the instant Guy came home
if he came home that night.

Ruth and Graham went to bed but
not to a sound sleep. After too many hours of restlessness and
broken dozing, Ruth offered to get up and put on the coffee.

They threw on clothes to be
ready for anything and sat at the kitchen table sipping cup after cup
and discussing theories and possible plans of action until the
blackness outside the window gave way to a worn, grey light and then
to colourbursts as the sun coming over the Purcells pushed the clouds
out of its way.

The snow had stopped. The day
held the promise of beauty.

And then the phone rang.

*
* *

In winter, by the time Dwight
Morrow left his home fifteen miles outside of Arrowhead to drive the
long stretch into town for his shift at the mill, the mornings were
still velvet and starlit. By March, the black velvet was fading to
grey when he left for work, but it was still dark.

That morning, his headlights
caught the reflection of taillights in the ditch along the side of
the road.

It might make him late for work,
but the car in the ditch caused him an uneasiness that would only
dissipate if he stopped to see if anyone needed help. What else
could he do? After all, he wasn't the kind of man to keep driving
past when someone might be in trouble.

He didn't recognize the car.
(He worked for Turnbulls', not MacKellums', or he would have.)

"Hello? Hello?" he
called, rapping on the driver's side window. The car was empty, he
could see when he pushed the snow, clinging to the window, off by
handfuls onto the ground. There didn't seem to be any visible damage
to the car.

The next thing he noticed was
the tracks in the snow. The new, heavy, wet snow covered over any
obvious footprints, but beneath the layer of fresh snow, he could see
the deep indents in the snowscape that a pair of human feet had made
by breaking through the thin crust of the old snow that came halfway
to his knees. Those feet had been heading in the direction of the
woods.

The uneasiness in him grew
rapidly. Had the car been there all night? It must have been to
judge from the amount of snow on the windows. Why would anyone
abandon a car in the ditch and take to the woods rather than keeping
to the road where he might have had a chance of a ride back into
town? Or why hadn't the unknown owner of the car made for the Morrow
place? The lights of it should have been visible from the road where
the car was.

He'd be late for sure now if he
followed the tracks into the woods, but he didn't see what else he
could do.

He plunged into the deep snow,
filling his work boots and wool socks with ice crystals that seared
his skin like cold fire.

The snow in his boots melted
quickly as he plowed through the snow into the woods. He'd have to
go back home for dry socks before he could go to work. He wasn't
partial to working a full day with wet feet. He'd be late for sure.
He'd better have some good reason to tell the boss. If this was all
a wild goose chase ...

He was in the trees now where
the snow was thinner and the ground bare in spots, except for
evergreen needles. The going was easier but the tracks harder to
follow. He lost them entirely for a moment on a patch of dry earth.

Then his eyes fell on the dark,
humped mound, thirty or so feet ahead. Pray God it wasn't human!
But he knew it was a futile prayer.

He began to run clumsily toward
... whatever it was.

As he got closer, his eyes took
in more details. There was a sort of shadowy substance spreading out
around the mound like spilled ink. It was impossible to tell colours
in the predawn, but he knew instinctively the spilled ink would be
red.

There was another dark shape
against the whiteness – just a narrow, black line in the snow,
partially concealed by the angle of the body (he was beginning to
admit to himself that it was a body), but not so concealed that he
couldn't tell what it was.

He began to feel sick and knew
he didn't want to go any closer. It was obvious there was nothing he
could do here. He didn't want to know who it was. The thought of
going near enough to touch the thing or see the face made a sweat
break out on his forehead in spite of the chill air.

The best thing to do was to go
back to the house and put in a phone call to the R.C.M.P. and then to
the mill to let them know why he was going to be late. If he'd even
make it in to work today with the endless questioning and repeating
of the story he knew he would have to do while stoic-faced constables
filled out form after form. He could picture it clearly, just as
he'd pictured himself examining the body and seeing the face. He'd
always had a vivid imagination; that was his problem. He knew he'd
replay this morning's scene over and over in his mind for months to
come.

And he'd be lucky if they
accepted his explanation for his absence at the mill. He was
beginning to picture the trouble that might follow if they didn't.
Why did things like this happen to him? Things always happened to
him. Maybe nothing quite like this before, but other things had
happened to him. He was just unluckier than the rest of humankind,
he supposed.