Her father had been reading the Manitoba Co-operator, commenting on the market report, which he did every Sunday afternoon. He was a man who believed in hard work, sixteen hours a day, six days a week, and he thought God intended folks to rest on the seventh day like it said in the Bible, although he, himself, didn’t attend services at St. Paul’s Anglican Church with Caroline and her mother. “That’ll be Eldon Webb,” he said, folding the paper and tossing it into a cardboard box he kept next to his chair. He made no effort to move, to look out and see where Eldon had driven off the road or to find his boots and put on his winter parka so he could head out and start up the tractor to pull Eldon’s truck out of the ditch.
“And how would you know that, settin’ there?” Caroline’s mother took the tea towel draped over her arm and swiped at the steamy window again to take another look. “The fool’s not even wearing a hat,” she said, shaking her head.
“I know it because he said he’d stop by one of these days. Said he had something he wanted to talk to me about.”
“Picked a fine time to drop by, in the middle of a bloody snowstorm. What’s he doing coming ’round here?”
“We got business and such to discuss, if you think you need to know.”
“Did you forget about the last time you crossed paths with those Webbs? Old Elvina waving her arms, complaining about that young bull you sold them. You’re just asking for trouble if you plan on selling them any of our stock again.”
“You just don’t worry yourself about what I’m plannin’,” Caroline’s father said, getting up from his chair. He went to the door and threw it wide open before Eldon had a chance to knock. A blast of frigid air and the fresh, crisp smell of newly fallen snow pressed in on the heels of the tall stranger.
“Henry. Mrs. McPhee,” Eldon said. His ears were pink from the cold and the top of his thinning red hair was dusted with feathery snowflakes the size of dimes. He nodded at Caroline and said, “Hello, Caroline,” which surprised her. She’d never met him before, though she’d seen him around town and passing by on the road, barely lifting one finger from the steering wheel to wave. She hadn’t expected him to even know her name. Fine wrinkles fanned out from his pale blue eyes and he had a weak, inconsequential chin, despite the confident way he held his head. He turned back to Caroline’s father. “It’s like driving blind out there. Couldn’t see where the lane was at all and steered my truck straight into the ditch there. Not the first impression I’d hoped to make.”
He laughed and Caroline’s father shook his hand and invited him in. Right away, Caroline’s father started in on a story about an April blizzard just like this one when he was a boy, a tale Caroline had heard before — how he’d found three newborn calves, dead, all twelve legs tangled together, piled up against a fence when the snow melted — so she turned and was on her way up to her room to study when her father called out. “Caroline, don’t run off. Come back here and cut us a piece of that cake you baked yesterday.”
Caroline glanced at her mother, who had actually baked the lemon pound cake. Her mother pursed her lips in that angry way she had whenever Caroline’s father said or did some fool thing that wasn’t worth wasting her breath on. Her mother tipped her head toward the fancy covered cake plate and yanked open a drawer, rifling through the ladles and wooden spoons until she found a serrated knife and set it down on the counter. “First you’d best put the kettle on. We’ll be needing some tea.”
Caroline filled the kettle and put it to boil, aware all the while of Eldon watching her every move. She was conscious of her hair; the careless way she’d bunched it together and tied it into a ponytail with a frayed ribbon that morning without even brushing it when she’d found out they weren’t going to church because of the storm. He was making her feel uneasy, off-kilter, the way she felt when she was called to the blackboard at school by Mr. Nott and given a difficult mathematics question to solve. She pictured herself standing in front of the class, chalk in hand, with no idea where to begin. Picking up the knife, she turned it over and looked at it hopelessly.
“Just cut four pieces,” her mother said, not unkindly, and handed her four china plates. “Where is the blasted teapot?” she muttered under her breath, flinging open the breadbox and every cupboard door before she finally located the teapot next to the drinking-water pail where it always sat.
Caroline cut the cake and placed Eldon’s plate in front of him. He reached for it and his hand, unusually clean for a farmer, with a palm smooth as a tabletop, brushed her arm. “How’s school, Caroline? Only a few months to go, eh?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll be glad when it’s over and summer holidays are here.”
“All right? It’s better than all right. She won’t say, but she walks away with all sorts of awards each year for high marks and such,” her father said, with the same enthusiasm he had when he talked about the brand new Farmall tractor parked out in the shed.
“Dad,” Caroline said, looking down at her plate. “Last year I got an award for history. It’s Susan who gets all the awards.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, missy. Our Caroline’s one smart cookie, isn’t she, Mother?”
Caroline’s mother stood at the sink, eating her cake standing up the way she always ate her dessert. “I will say she’s got a brain in her head, which is more than some people,” she said.
Caroline’s father took a huge gulp of tea then shifted the conversation to the market outlook for wheat until they were finished.
“That was a fine cake, Caroline,” Eldon said as he was putting on his coat. Her father had already gone to start up the tractor and her mother was clattering plates into the enamel dishpan behind them. “Maybe I’ll stop by again, if that’s all right with you.”
Caroline didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t heard her father and Eldon discuss any sort of business at the table but perhaps they hadn’t gotten around to talking about the purchase of bulls or yearling heifers. She wasn’t sure why he needed her approval to come back and speak to her father.
As soon as Eldon was out the door her mother said, “You should have said no, Caroline. ‘No, it’s not all right with me.’” She dumped the tea leaves into the slop pail under the sink and rinsed out the pot. “I don’t want that man coming ’round. Just wait until your father comes back. By God, he’ll hear what I think about Eldon Webb sniffing ’round here.” She pumped a splash of water into the dishpan, added some hot water from the kettle and took a deep breath. She turned, calmer now, and put her hands on Caroline’s shoulders. “I’ll wash up these plates. You go on up to your room and study for that test. I don’t care, one way or another, ’bout any awards, but you will graduate and head off to the city this fall like we talked about.”
Later, after Caroline closed her notebook and was preparing for bed, she heard the rising swell of her mother’s voice coming from the kitchen and the low rumble of her father’s voice as he answered. He had returned to the house after pulling Eldon out of the ditch, stamping snow off his boots and raving about the new truck Eldon had just bought at Hubley Ford. Her mother just sat there at the table with one of his grey work socks stretched over a jar, darning a hole in its heel, and didn’t say a word, not about Eldon or his truck or any other thing. Caroline’s father said, “Well, that’s that, then,” and there was nothing but stony silence between them for the rest of the afternoon and all through the evening — the only sounds the sizzle of frying pork, the rustle of newspaper pages, the scraping of forks against plates during supper. So when Caroline heard her parents begin to speak, she crept out of her room to the top of the dark stairs and crouched there to listen.
“What were you thinking, Henry? What are you up to?”
“Leave it alone, Violet. It’s none of your concern.”
“If Caroline’s not my concern, then what is? Thirty-four years it’s been without a word from me, settin’ back and letting you take the reins, making all the choices for this farm, this life we set out on
together. Settin’ there all those years ago, quiet as a fence post, when you waltzed into the bank and borrowed money to buy Beulah’s land, without the thought even entering your skull that maybe you shoulda asked my opinion. And it grieved me when you lost it, and to William Webb, no less, but I never said a thing. I kept my mouth shut, even though I knew better, when you sowed the oats that year ahead of all the neighbours so’s it froze and wasted all that seed. But I’ll be damned if you won’t hear what I have to say when it comes to my own daughter.”
A chair scraped across the floor.
“Don’t you go running off to the barn like you do. I want an answer. What was Eldon Webb doing here? And don’t start up with one of your fancy tales.”
“Bumped into him in town yesterday, is all. And I thought maybe, instead of him sittin’ up there in that big house on a Sunday afternoon, he might want to come by for a cuppa coffee.”
A cupboard door slammed. “He can have coffee with that hoity-toity mother of his, the two of them, settin’ there in that fancy house with their noses stuck up in the air, thinking they’re better than the rest of us. When we all know she grew up poor as a church mouse, like we all did. Married for money, and flauntin’ it over all the rest of us.”
“What’s it gonna hurt? Him meetin’ Caroline? She’s as pretty as any other girl in Ross Prairie, and just as smart.”
“I knew you were trotting her out for a reason, you old fool. Have I been talking to the barn door these last couple years? She’s decided to head off to work in the city this fall whether you like it or not. She wants an education. If you’d set aside money every year like I asked, she’d be able to start class with Susan in September instead of having to wait until she’s saved up enough on her own.”
“A girl her age needs a husband. With land. Lots of it. Not more schoolin’.”
“What’s a girl to do without schooling? Where did that get me? Bound to this farm tighter than twine to a spool, that’s where. Working harder than any hired hand ever did till Caroline came along. Nothing to show for it but raw knuckles and an aching back.” A lid clanked forcefully on a pan.
“I never made you stay. You could’ve set off down that road any time you cared to.”
“And gone where?” Her mother’s voice was trembling now. “With nothing more than the shirt on my own back?”
“That’s the trouble with you. You were never happy. Not with this farm or any other damn thing I ever did.” The screen door hit the wall then the big door slammed.
“You’re wrong about that. I got Caroline, didn’t I? The only damn thing you ever did right!” Caroline’s mother called after him.
Soon the light would come on in the barn like it always did after one of her parents’ late-night arguments. When the weather was fair, her father would often stay there all night, sleeping in the straw under a worn wool blanket. Their battles were fierce but brief, moving in like late-summer thunderstorms, over quickly after a few harsh words. Caroline wondered if everyone’s parents fought that way. She couldn’t imagine her friend Susan’s parents saying the hurtful things her parents shouted to one another. She had spent enough time at the Wawryks’ place, all those noisy brothers and sisters — eight others besides Susan — and her jolly mother with a baby in her arms as long as Caroline had known her. When Susan’s father came in from the dairy barn, long after the children had been fed, he would kiss Susan’s mother on the cheek and say, “How’s my Missus?” And she would blush and hand him a child and set out the dinner plate she’d kept warm for him in the oven.
The next day at school, Caroline found Alice and Susan waiting for her beside the water fountain. Lurking nearby were the Tupper twins, the worst gossips at school. Caroline put her arms around her friends’ shoulders and they huddled, heads together, while she told them about Eldon’s visit.
“You’re so lucky!” Alice said, popping up her head and stepping back.
“Lucky?” Caroline asked. “What’s so lucky about that?”
“He is the most eligible bachelor in Ross Prairie. A real catch.” Alice, with her dowdy dresses and mousy hair, was plain as a paper bag. She was always talking about boys and her main ambition in life seemed to be securing a boyfriend for herself. “Any girl would give her right arm to be married to him.”
“Who’s talking about marriage?” Caroline grabbed Alice’s arm and steered her away from the eavesdropping Tupper twins and down the hallway toward their classroom.
“And how old is he?” Susan asked, following along. “I’ve heard my Aunt Jane mention him. They went to school together. He has to be in his thirties.”
“Geez Louise,” Alice said as they waited outside their classroom for the bell to ring. “He’s obviously trying to court you, Caroline. You two both need to learn a thing or two about men.”
Caroline rolled her eyes. As if Alice was such an expert. She lived under the strict thumb of her mother and wasn’t allowed to stay out past eight o’clock, even on weekends. She’d never even had a boyfriend. Not that Caroline had much experience. She’d only ever dated one boy, Robby Mathers, when she was in grade ten. He was a town boy, cheeky and loud, but he was good-looking with that cleft in his chin like Kirk Douglas, so she’d agreed to go to a dance with him. But once he asked her to go steady, he changed, or else she hadn’t noticed his annoying habits before. She disliked the way he acted, showing off in front of the other boys, tripping poor Gregory Porter and knocking him around, bragging about his father’s new car, as though that might impress her. They’d broken up after two months.
“He talked to my father most of the time and we had cake, for goodness’ sake,” Caroline said. The Tupper twins were skulking behind them again so she dropped her voice. “I’m not marrying the man.”
“But let’s just say you did,” Alice continued. Caroline could tell she was enjoying the fantasy, imagining herself, perhaps, in Caroline’s shoes. “If you did, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. His mother never does. They have a housekeeper and a hired man to do the outside chores. And you could take the train to Winnipeg like Mrs. Webb does and stay at the Fort Garry Hotel and buy all your clothes at Eaton’s or Hudson’s Bay. Can you imagine never wearing another homemade dress and having all those shoes?”
The bell rang and Caroline linked her arm with Susan’s as they proceeded to assembly. “I’m not the least bit interested in dating him,” she said. “I’m going to the city with Susan in September like we planned. I’m going to work in an office or a department store while she’s in class at United College.” She glanced over her shoulder at the Tupper twins. “We’re leaving this boring little town for bigger and better things, aren’t we, Susan? And we’re never coming back.”
It was the middle of May and the sun lingered a few extra minutes each day, warming the earth. Tractors and drills had been rolling for a couple of weeks and Caroline’s father was keeping long hours, trying to finish sowing the wheat by Victoria Day.
Caroline noticed the clothesline as she walked down the lane after the school van dropped her off, the careless way her mother had hung out the laundry — everything dangling willy-nilly, flapping towels mixed here and there among Caroline’s blouses and her mother’s wide skirts, her father’s bibbed overalls brushing the grass next to short red-toed socks and two sets of pillow cases, not a one of them paired. A rake leaned against the clothesline pole, another job unfinished, and the wind whipped the wispy grass and crumbled leaves from a pile close to the house, scattering them back over the yard.
Old Smoky, the grain truck, its front fender tacked on with a twist of baling wire, was parked next to the house. It was her mother’s job to drive the old relic out to the fields, hauling whatever seed was needed to fill up the drill, matching Henry’s long hours, although lately she’d complained about the way her arms ached at the end of the day from wrestling with the steering wheel, holding Old Smoky to the road.
Caroline’s old Lab, Lady, shaggy winter coat not yet completely gone, loped up an
d bunted her on the shin. “Hiya, girl,” Caroline said, and reached down to scratch her under the chin.
Caroline opened the back door and dropped her books on the floor. The aroma of beef stew wafted through the kitchen from a covered pot simmering on the stove. The morning wash water, with its curdly film, still stood in a pail by the door and the sink was piled with unwashed dishes and pots. Half of a fat turnip, speared with a knife, sat in the middle of the otherwise empty table like a ghoulish centrepiece. There was no sound except the ticking clock and an occasional pop from the dying embers in the stove.
“Mum?” Her mother’s workboots sat on the rug next to the door, her red flowered kerchief draped over a wooden chair. “Are you here?”
From upstairs, the familiar creak of the floorboard outside her parents’ room and then the soft tread of her mother’s feet on the stairs. She came around the corner, buttoning her blouse. Her hair — whiter than it had seemed just last week — was tousled, her eyes puffy from sleep.
“Are you home already?” she said, looking up at the clock. “I was supposed to have a box load of wheat seed at the Maxwell quarter by four thirty.” She took her faded jacket from a hook by the door, put it on, and tied the red kerchief over her hair. “Make dumplings for the stew and leave the rest of this mess. I’ll get to it later.” She stepped into her boots, about to head out the door. “If I’m not back in an hour, come looking for me. Smoky’s been acting up more than usual these last couple days and I don’t need to be settin’ somewhere, stranded on an old dirt road, when there’s so much work to do.”
A minute later, the truck roared out of the yard and Caroline glanced at the clock, then checked the stew. Her mother had hurriedly scratched out her dumpling recipe on an envelope and left it next to the breadbox. Caroline rarely saw her mother read a recipe; her cookbooks sat untouched on a shelf. She made buns and bread, white and chocolate and coconut cakes, oatmeal cookies and buttermilk muffins straight from her head, baking and cooking in the same easy way Mrs. Bell, the music teacher, sat down at the piano and played any tune. Caroline picked up the envelope and was headed to the pantry for the flour bin when she heard Lady bark. She peered out the window over the kitchen sink. A shiny blue truck bounced across the rutted yard and stopped by the house. During hard spring rains, her father — complaining about his arthritic hip and the time it took him to pick his way across the sloppy yard — often drove the tractor right up to the back door when he came in for meals, even though her mother nagged him often enough about the deep ruts it left. She had salvaged half a dozen old two-by-fours from the junk pile and thrown them over the ruts to keep mud from tracking in. Now, Eldon Webb carefully made his way across the planks, balancing with his arms outstretched, one foot in front of the other, even though the ground was perfectly dry and he could have walked right up to the house alongside her mother’s flower bed if he wanted to.
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 4