Saltwater Cowboys (17 page)

“Nice vehicle you got there,” said Barry, the owner of the decrepit dog.

Peter smiled as Wanda, weary from lifting children in and out of car seats all day, sat and glowed with pride. His chest puffed as the man praised his taste in vehicles.

“You see,” he whispered to Jack, “this is how you're treated when you've got money.”

If there'd been dirt at that table, they'd have thrown it in our faces
, Jack thought. “Damn the devil,” he whispered. He was up at night alone. All he wanted was to fix things and make everything better. What Peter was doing seemed to be working.
There's a lifetime's worth of gold in that rock; who will miss the amount we take? We won't take that much in the long run, but it'll do so much for our families. How can I say no to Peter? How can I not get in on this?

He rubbed the knee of his grey corduroy pants, ground his palm against the sharp bones like a pepper mill. Flecks of material rubbed off on his hands. He was sweating, and the muscles in his neck had knotted.

What's the risk of getting caught? How likely would it be?
He pictured Peter's sly smile. “They'll never catch me,” he'd surely say, and he'd believe in himself so earnestly that Jack would believe in him too.

He heard Lily cry, a thin, garbled sound, then a few muffled wheezes and she was asleep again.

Think of what the money could do for them. They'd be set for life. We could give them the education we never got. I would have gone to school myself if Katie hadn't have come along so early like she did. Once we started with the kids there was no going back. It's too late now to regret or second-guess it. They're here and they aren't going anywhere soon.

But Peter is going places and fast. If I want what he's got I gotta get there quick about what I'm going to do. This might make Angela feel better. Come now, you know your wife better than that,
he chided himself
. The only thing that will make that woman feel better is another baby. Trinkets won't put the gloss back in her smile. Only another baby will. For the love of Christ, what should I do?

Jack clasped his hands on the back of his neck, ran his thumbs over his spine and slowly grazed his hairline.

Wanda and Peter's new home had a skylight over the kitchen nook and an island with copper pots suspended above. The kitchen cupboards had glass doors and the stove cleaned itself. The carpet in the living room was thick and grey. They had four bedrooms and a garage.

“A bloody garage,” Jack whispered to Angela as they sat in the living room, waiting for Peter and Wanda to bring in the cocktails. “Cocktails?” He'd much rather have beer and a pack of salt and vinegar chips but Wanda had insisted on throwing a proper dinner party, complete with cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and steaks wrapped with bacon. They'd put Lily and Susie down for the night and let Maggie and Katie play in the basement.

Angela reached for a piece of cheese and a slice of shaved ham.

“Kill for a tin of Vienna sausages,” Jack whispered.

Angela nodded vacantly.

Jack felt out of his element, envious and tired; it was a feat to convince Angela to attend. How Jack had managed to get her here he'd never know. They sat in silence as she slowly chewed her cheese and rested her temple on the knuckle of her balled-up fist. Jack sat with his legs crossed and bounced a foot, nervous about sitting through a dinner with his embittered wife, skeptical of his self-absorbed friends and their elevated social status.

Jack fingered a fern that rested on a heavy wooden end table beside him. Katie had read in one of her science magazines that talking to houseplants helped them grow. If a plant was ignored, it withered. A plant would rather be shouted at than be ignored. Jack felt like this now. He'd rather be fighting with Angela; at least then he could feel her. In this state, baffled and uncertain about what to do, she was as foreign to him as this big house, all these fancy cocktails and thick cheeses with blue veins of mould, and this new version of Wanda with her funny new proper accent and silk dresses.

“You'll have to join us for the long weekend at our new cabin,” Wanda said proudly.

“Cabin?” Jack asked.

“Dwayne gave us a mortgage on a property out by the lake,” Peter said.

“That would be nice, sure,” Jack said.

Angela nodded vacantly and they moved into the dining room for supper.

O
n Victoria Day weekend, as they drove southeast from Foxville on the way to Peter's new cabin on the edges of the Athabasca, Maggie fussed and complained about nausea. The car sped along the narrow highway. Rust-coloured moss smothered large boulders, hundreds of rocks scattered in a forest of thick evergreens. The sun was heavy and full in the morning light. Katie sat quietly while Lily mouthed words to her doll. Maggie held on to her stomach, knuckles white from her tight grip.

“Hold your head out the window,” Angela ordered and reached behind her seat to lock the door and unroll the window. The choppy wind picked up strands of Maggie's hair and sucked it out the window. She lay with one ear on the plastic doorframe and closed her weak eyes.

“She's turning green,” Jack whispered, looking at Maggie through the severely tilted rear-view mirror.

“We're almost there honey, hang on,” Angela said gently.

Maggie's tongue lolled out of her mouth and dangled to one side limply while drool trickled out the corner.

“Momma,” Katie whispered, “I don't think Maggie's feeling better.”

Maggie heaved loudly, followed by a slew of vomit. Lily cried; some of the mess had hit her. Jack braked quickly and pulled to the side of the road. “Maggie, my love,” he said and turned to look at her with wide eyes. A few feet ahead, Peter stopped his four-by-four and backed up, frantically beeping his horn.

“What happened?” Wanda asked as she hung out the window.

“Maggie got sick,” Jack answered as Angela knelt by the open rear door, scraping vomit from Maggie's shirt. The other two were pinching their noses and complaining loudly.

“Pass me some water, will you,” Angela snapped irritably. Jack passed her a jug of warm water. She dribbled a few drops on a cloth and wiped Maggie's mouth.

“Mommy needs to take care of Maggie. She's very sick and I have a headache, so I need you to be quiet and good,” she said to the other two children.

Maggie hurled more clumpy beige vomit into the back of the car.

“Jesus Christ,” Angela said as the hot bile splashed her arms and bare hands.

“Should we give her some Gravol?” Jack asked helpfully.

“I would have suggested that if I'd remembered to buy some,” Angela said.

“You sure there isn't any?”

“I'm sure,” she said tersely.

Jack ruffled through the glove compartment and found a tiny peach pill inside a bottle of Tylenol. “Here's one, we can break it up into a quarter and —”

“You're contradicting me in front of the girls,” Angela hissed.

“No, I'm not,” Jack whispered gently.

“I said we didn't have any. Give me that then,” she said and snatched the pill out of his hand. She broke it into four tiny pieces and gave a grainy bit to Maggie, coaxing her to swallow it. “Come on, sweetie, just a few sips of water and this will make your stomach feel better.”

Maggie moaned but opened her mouth and took a gentle sip. She fell back to rest on the seat. Katie and Lily stared at her, hostile and unforgiving.

“Don't stare at her, girls, let her rest now. You two go back to playing,” Angela ordered roughly as she scooped the vomit from t-shirt and shorts.

“I'm sorry, Momma,” Maggie whispered groggily.

“Do you need a hand?” Peter and Wanda asked in unison.

“No, Christ, both of you leave me alone, I need to pee,” Angela said and took some tissue from the front seat. She wandered into the woods to find a tree big enough to hide behind. They heard her muttering and sighing as she walked over snapping twigs, cursing and yelling with pain from the sting of milk thistle and wild rosehip thorns.

Wanda and Jack looked at each other weakly. Jack shrugged and shook his head, helpless to alter Angela's mood.
It's my fault; I need to make it up to her
. He still felt overwhelmed by guilt.
Look at what I'm doing to her, she's miserable
, he thought. He started the car when he saw her coming out of the forest, brushing the foliage from her shorts.

Angela brightened when they turned the final corner down the lane toward Peter's new cabin. The car slowed as it went over the potholes on the rocky dirt road. Maggie moaned again. Jack drove cautiously as the car squeezed and brushed by crowded thick tree branches on either side of the road. Angela marvelled at the careless beauty of the place. The cabin leapt into view, a beautiful pine bungalow with floor-to-ceiling windows and a strong brick chimney for the expansive fireplace, surrounded by a new plot of dirt, fit for a lovely fruit and vegetable garden. It sat on the banks of a beautiful lake with a brand-new small canoe tied to a rustic wooden dock.

“We're here,” Angela yelled excitedly and gently roused Maggie, who slowly opened her glassy eyes. Her lips were dry and white; she shivered and raised limp hands to wipe her eyes. Katie had already opened the car door and was running toward the lake.

“Katherine, get back here and help us unpack,” Jack yelled.

Katie stopped and wheeled around dutifully, kicking stones on her way back. “But Dad, I want to go see the lake,” she said and squirmed uncomfortably as he handed her a sleeping bag.

“Not until you bring this inside,” he said.

She grumbled and complained loudly.

“Katherine,” Angela warned and looked at Jack imploringly. He nodded and met her eyes then held them for a minute while she pursed her lips.

Angela hoisted Maggie out of the car and held her hand as they walked toward the cabin. Maggie was unsteady, stumbling over stones and gravel on the walkway. Wanda and Peter drove in, blasting the horn, startling them and spraying dirt as the car pulled up alongside Jack's vehicle. The car screeched to a stop in front of a plump evergreen.

“Everyone alright?” Wanda asked as she excitedly got out of the car.

“Here she is, our new cabin,” Peter said. He approached the front door ceremoniously and turned the key in the lock. The cabin door creaked on its hinges and parted to reveal cozy new furniture and a long breakfast nook by the large window facing the lake, directly across from a fireplace encased in large stones, decorated with boulders collected from the lakeshore.

Even though both Peter and Jack enjoyed fishing, Wanda had refused to hang stuffed fish carcasses on wooden plaques, and besides, “Newfoundlanders eat fish, not mount them as trophies,” she'd said when she'd described the cabin earlier that month.

Wanda walked Maggie up the winding staircase to the loft and led her toward the largest bed. She pulled back several white cotton blankets and gently tucked her in.

Angela stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked at her sticky hands and stained T-shirt, grimaced, and surveyed the mess of luggage in the front foyer. She glanced at the family photos on the wall opposite the staircase, generations of smiling Fifield and Pitcher family faces, framed in gold-tinted metal, winding down toward the bottom step.

Out the open front door Jack was walking up the driveway carrying their beautiful daughter Lily inside; she was laughing with him. His arms were full of sleeping bags and pillows. Out the patio window, Katie was down by the lake picking dandelions, blowing the wilting seeds, the wind carrying them beautifully like lightweight cotton puffs. This was what made Angela happy and kept her so; she knew that this was all she'd ever want or need.

She stood still at the foot of Wanda's new staircase longer than she'd anticipated, gaping at everything around her, gripping the banister tightly, the hard wood smooth and invincible underneath her fierce grip. The air was soft, enveloping, and warm against her skin. The sweet perfume of roses and pine wafted in the front door.

“I need to clean this wreck off my hands,” Angela said matter-of-factly, and sighed. She riffled through the bags looking for a towel and a bar of soap.

“I'll go set up the bathroom,” Wanda offered, eager to please and make up, somehow, for the fact that Angela had been vomited on.

Angela set the picnic table with red gingham plastic plates and blue cups. Wanda picked flowers with Susie and Lily, tiny white wildflowers and yellow buttercups, stems clasped so hard in their pudgy little hands that they wilted and drooped over the sides of her palms.

Peter stood at his new barbecue and placed a dozen pork chops on the grill. Jack was lost in thought. He remembered his father's pigpen a few miles down from Red Lake. He raised pigs and in the winter slaughtered them for a full winter's supply of meat. John McCarthy would take his sons Bill and Jack to help him with the pigs; Bill would eagerly assist and hold their throats while John siphoned a neat cut in their necks, drained their blood, discarded the bones, and cleaned up the slicing area.

Jack would nearly faint with fear and disgust. He'd beg Bill to do it all, and Bill always covered for him, pretending that Jack had helped. But one fall day their father had caught Jack retching in the corner of the pigpen and had chided him mercilessly. Jack shuddered with shame even now as Peter asked him to turn over the chops so he could go inside and get some salt.

“Honey,” Angela said, “you dropped one,” and pointed to a steaming pork chop on the dirt.

“I'm sorry,” Jack said and scrambled to pick it up and threw it in the brown paper wrapping.
I can't even help Peter cook without making some stupid mistake
, he thought.

“Are you alright?” Angela asked.

Jack reddened and stammered, “I-I'll barbecue the best meat in the world for you.”

“You'll do alright. Relax,” Angela said and kept her head down as she set the picnic table.

After dinner, they moved inside to have dessert. It was cooler, and the sun had almost set. Wanda moved effortlessly around the kitchen. She filled up the sugar bowl, snipped the plastic off the milk bag, and poured it into a small white ceramic cream dispenser. She'd purchased a new tea set from the Hudson's Bay Company, “Pushed aside that Indian woman you bang around with, what's her name, Olivia?” Wanda asked absently as she poured tea and spooned ice cream on new silvery-blue plates.

“Olive,” Angela said meekly, holding Lily on her lap. Jack sat next to her with his arms crossed, staring vacantly at his plate.

“I pushed her right aside; she was looking at my set, she wasn't going to have it,” Wanda said and delicately placed the creamer on the table, triumphant with her spoils. She floated back into the kitchen, opened the fridge door, and took out a homemade angel food cake. “And this serving tray has a marble top. What do you think?” she asked Angela.

“Lovely….” Angela said, her voice trailing off.

“Just as I purchased this I ran into Tanya Ann Cooper, the mayor's wife. She came round the corner in her fur-trimmed coat, and she stopped and we had some good chat. We played bridge last week. I'm getting better at the game. It's not as boring as I'd thought,” Wanda said proudly.

“We're getting a new car,” Jack blurted out hurriedly.

Angela looked at him sharply.

“A Grand Marquis. I've been playing the stock market too,” Jack said. “I spoke with a fellow in Calgary today. You should see her, some shiny she is, she's white, with black leather seats.”

“We'd considered that model,” Wanda says brazenly, “but we knew we could get something better.”

“Hey,” Peter mumbled warningly.

“Well, we can,” Wanda protested. “I'm just being honest. I mean, if you can't be honest with your best friends, who can you be with, right?” she said and laughed heartily. “Now, if we're all done here, I'll clean up.”

Jack smiled faintly while Angela rose to help clear away the dishes.

After supper, with the children tucked in bed, Peter invited Maureen and Steve from the cabin next door to join them at their campfire. They were both schoolteachers in town, and Steve had played on Peter's curling team over the winter. Maureen and Steve sat with their backs to the lake, a bottle of beer in each of their laps. Angela was roasting marshmallows; Wanda was in charge of the wieners. They passed the food along when it was ready.

“These cabins are the best in the area,” Steve said to Pete.

“Did you see some of the others next to the marsh?” Pete said and laughed.

Jack and Angela were silent. Angela picked at the burned skin on a marshmallow. “Who cares about all of this nonsense,” she said and slid the burned scab off entirely, revealing a steaming clump of white candy.

The men were silent.

“The homes on Wild Rose Avenue are grand, aren't they?” Pete said brightly.

“We're buying there,” Maureen said excitedly. “Dwayne's working on an acquisition for us.”

“It was easy to leave Fort McMurray,” Steve stated firmly.

“Better wages up here,” Maureen added.

Susie wailed from inside the cabin. “Time to do my duty,” Wanda said and ran off to feed her.

Jack was silent as the others conversed amongst themselves. Angela glared at him, her eyes off the marshmallow over the fire, now scorched black and bubbling.

“Watch what you're doing,” Jack said and pointed to the end of the stick.

“Don't you tell me to watch what I'm doing,” Angela mumbled.

An awkward silence ensued, broken by the sizzle and groan of a deflated marshmallow.

“Well, that'll conk Susie out for the night,” Wanda said and flopped down into her lawn chair. “Why the long faces?” She raised her drink. “Maureen, get out your guitar, Peter, get me the mandolin.”

They tuned their instruments and played music all night long until morning light pierced through the gaps in the trees.

“Everyone is asleep. I hope we can get a few hours in before the kids get up,” Jack said and crawled into bed beside Angela. He wrapped his arms around her slender waist and she moved as if offended. Jack was startled; he shrank back, coiled like a slug, as if drenched by salty water.