“She’s more likely to be studying for some exam than taken up with a mysterious man. You know our Susan.”
Alice takes a sip from her soda, leaving a greasy smear of red lipstick on the rim of the glass. “She’s not likely to ever find a husband if she doesn’t get her nose out of those books.”
Bill Reynolds tosses some change on the table and is about to head for the door when Alice stops him. “Hey, Bill. Where are you off to all by your lonesome?”
“The Silver Creek bridge is washed out south of town. I thought I’d drive out there.”
“Seriously? I hadn’t heard about that.” Her eyes are open wide with a childlike innocence that Caroline knows she’s putting on; Alice and the girls at the phone office know all the news in town.
“Would you like to come with me and take a look?”
Alice springs from her seat, grabs her purse, and is halfway to the door before she stops and looks back. “It’s all right, isn’t it, Caroline? Leaving you here? Eldon will be along shortly, won’t he?”
“Go ahead,” Caroline says. “I’ll be fine. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”
The café is nearly empty, except for a trio of elderly women she doesn’t know, one with black curlers rolled up under a net in her hair, and a small group of high-school boys, smoking at the counter. One of them is Susan’s younger brother, Gerald.
He notices Caroline and sidles over, looking down at her through a hank of black hair hanging over his eyes.
“Hi, Caroline. Long time no see.”
“Hi, Gerry. Did you see Alice leave? We were just talking about Susan and saying we haven’t heard from her in a while. How is she, anyway?”
“She’s just finished writing exams and she’s starting a summer job at the university as a research assistant for one of her professors.”
“How exciting! She’s always been so curious.”
“That’s what Dad says, but Mom’s a little concerned, having Susan working so closely with one of her teachers all summer. She thinks Susan should take a break from campus, maybe find a job selling shoes or cosmetics or something. All Susan can talk about is this professor of hers.”
Just then the bell rings above the door. The boys at the counter look over their shoulders and a hush falls over the café. Eldon is standing there, a greasy smudge across the front of his shirt, and he surveys the room, glaring at the old women who look up from their coffee.
Eldon strides across the café to Caroline’s table. He stops and looks Gerry up and down before turning to her.
“You ready to go?”
“I thought we were staying in town for supper.”
“I’m in no mood for supper. I had to wait at Coyle’s all afternoon to get the damn shears sharpened. Old Jim Coyle used to get my work done soon as I dropped it off. But now that Joe’s running the place, he said I had to wait my turn. There were six other work orders come in before mine. Six! And I was expected to wait. Just got the shears picked up and the groceries collected from Pipers’. We’re heading straight home.” He glowers at Gerry. “If you’re all done here, that is.”
Gerry is standing off to the side and he ducks his head sheepishly. “It was nice talking to you, Caroline.”
“You, too,” she says, scrambling to gather her books and parcels while Gerry hurries back to his friends.
“So who was your young friend there?” Eldon says through clenched teeth. “I thought you were meeting Alice.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s Gerry Wawryk, Susan’s brother. Alice just left a few minutes ago, and he stopped —”
Eldon grasps her arm, clenching his fingers so tightly it makes her wince. “Maybe you should have joined the ladies over there after Alice left instead of inviting that hoodlum over here to your table.”
“I did no such thing,” she says defiantly. “He stopped by on his own and I asked about his sister, is all I did. I didn’t know I needed your permission to inquire about an old friend.”
Eldon squeezes her arm even harder and lifts her to her feet. The woman with the curlers swivels around on her chair to look as Caroline fumbles, drops two books. Eldon stalks out the door. Caroline picks up her books and rushes after him, too ashamed to look up, knowing Gerry is watching.
Eldon backs out onto the street without a glance in the rear-view mirror, guns the motor like a teenage boy with something to prove, and peels out of town. It is raining again, white sheets pouring down, and Eldon, refusing to let the rain get the best of him, doesn’t switch on the wipers. Once he’s on the road, he hammers his foot on the gas and the truck bucks forward. He floors it for a mile and takes the next corner too fast. The truck fishtails wildly and the paper bag of groceries at Caroline’s feet topples over, spilling tin cans.
“Slow down, for heaven’s sake,” she says, bracing her legs. The rain hammers on the roof like pellets on metal and she can hardly see the road through the window.
He barrels on, the truck careening through slick gravel, and Caroline steals a look at him. He grips the steering wheel, his eyes intent on the road. When they get home, he overshoots the spot where he usually parks and slams on the brakes. Instinctively, Caroline cowers against the door.
Eldon heads for the barn and Caroline waits for a moment until her thundering heart begins to slow, then leans down and picks up two tins of Aylmer tomatoes from the floorboards. Outside, Sport is pacing, wiggling his rump, waiting for her to open the door, and he barks twice, a distressed sort of yelp, sensing something is wrong.
“It’s okay, Sport. I’m okay,” Caroline says as she eases out of the truck, checking over her shoulder to see if there’s any sign of Eldon out in the yard. A swath of turf, roots pointing toward the dark sky, lies torn up on the ground. She holds her purse over her head and runs to the house.
She’ll go back to bring in her things later, after the rain has stopped. For now, she’ll set out the Sunday plates, make Eldon a nice supper. Cube the leftover potatoes and fry them with chopped green onion and lots of butter until they’re crispy and brown. Open a jar of canned chicken and another of pickled beets. She won’t say a word to him while he eats his supper; she’ll wait until he’s ready, until the storm of his anger has passed. She should have known better, sassing back like that at the café, when he’d just told her how rude Joe Coyle had been. Eldon Webb should not be expected to wait for anyone or anything. He was upset, and she made it worse, and now she has to make it up to him.
She’ll bring up a jar of wild plums from the cellar. He will take a spoonful of syrupy sweetness, bite into a soft, red plum, the fruit a tart explosion. The hard, rough stone hidden inside will grate against his tongue.
JUNE
A pot of beef barley soup simmers on the rear element of Caroline’s white electric stove. Her father never fails to point out how fortunate she is to have it, and a refrigerator, too. At her father’s house, the wood stove still stands in the corner of the kitchen, though now it is cold for most of the day, stoked and lit only in the evening when her father fries himself a couple of eggs or cooks a potato.
Caroline removes the lid, pokes a carrot with a fork, and realizes she has forgotten to add potatoes to the broth. She makes her way to the root cellar down the narrow, dark staircase and waves her hand around in the middle of the pitch-black room until she locates the string attached to the single light bulb. Weak yellow light illuminates the cavernous space where her preserves are stacked on narrow shelves along one rough wall. She reaches into the potato bin and fumbles blindly, imagining spiders brushing her fingers. Outside, Sport barks — not his frantic barking that alerts her to danger but the familiar, happy bark that lets her know he’s surprised or excited about something. She grabs two potatoes and hurries up the stairs.
Through the screen door, she sees Sport stretched on his back, wiggling in delight as a man crouches beside him, rubbing his belly. The man stands and removes his cap, revealing a thin, white band of skin on his forehead beneath thick, walnut-colou
red hair. It’s Nick Bilyk, who lives on the farm next to theirs. His shirt sleeves are rolled up past his elbows and she notices his well-muscled forearms are deeply tanned, unlike Eldon’s and her father’s, which are covered in long sleeves, summer and winter.
“Hello, Mrs. Webb. I think I’ve made a new friend,” he says.
“Caroline, please,” she says as she holds open the door. “Mrs. Webb moved out of this house and into town a while back, in case you hadn’t heard.”
“Caroline, then.” Nick steps through the door, holds out a calloused hand, and smiles. “Is Eldon around?” he says, looking past her as though he expects to see him sitting at the table. Caroline shakes his hand, then tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear and flattens the creases on the front of her faded housedress, wishing she was wearing a better one, or had at least tied an apron around it to cover the coffee stain on the front. It surprises her to see Nick at their door. A grudging sort of feud has brewed between the Bilyks and the Webbs since Nick’s older brother, Anton, bought the farm next door right out from under Eldon’s nose five years earlier. Eldon had naturally assumed he would buy that piece of land someday when old Pete Tilley retired or died, but Anton approached Tilley first. Anton allowed Pete to stay on in the old house in the yard and he built a new house for himself and his family. When Pete died, Nick and his mother moved to the farm and settled in Pete’s old house.
“He’s gone off to town to pick up a part for the mower. Can I help you with something?”
“His cows got through the fence and are over on our side of the river. We let out the bulls and, well, you know how Eldon is about mixing Hereford blood into his line.”
“And he’ll blame you, surely, for your bulls enticing our cows through the fence,” Caroline says with a nervous laugh.
“You got that right.” He smiles and ducks his head, as though he is embarrassed at the mention of his lustful bulls.
“That will be quite a job, separating the cows out in the open like that,” she says, moving across the room and pulling a chair away from the table.
“Guess I should wait for Eldon and I’ll give him and Bert a hand. He’ll be mad as hell, but they’ll need an extra man getting the cows back over.”
“Sit down while you wait. There’s still some coffee. And leave your boots on. I’m used to sweeping up Eldon’s dirt a dozen times a day.”
She retrieves the coffee pot from the stove and fills Nick’s cup with an unsteady hand. She is so close to him she can smell the earthy scent of freshly turned soil on his workboots.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Just sugar.”
She sits down across from him and imagines what Eldon’s reaction will be when he comes through the door, hungry and expecting his meal laid out, and instead finds Nick Bilyk sitting at his table. She considers getting up and peeling the potatoes to add to the soup, but decides against it and pours herself the last of the coffee.
Nick is the youngest of the Bilyks, a big family that started out on stonier land further north of town. He is older than Caroline and had already quit high school, like many farm boys, by the time she got to grade nine. When Caroline sees him, he always smiles or tips his cap. Before today, she hadn’t noticed his broad shoulders, or the way his chest strains against the thin fabric of his shirt. He has a thick scar — a smooth, pink welt — that protrudes from the stubble of his chin — and, unexpectedly, she wonders what it would feel like to trace it with her finger.
“Where did the cows get across anyway?”
“I noticed the fence is down closer to the dirt road, near the stone pile and that old elm tree.”
“My reading tree,” Caroline says. “There’s a natural hollow there where I like to settle in with a good book.”
“I’ve seen you,” Nick admits. “When I’m working the piece at the top of the ridge, I’ve watched you making your way through the wildflowers along the fence line.”
Caroline takes a sip of coffee, studying him as he adds a teaspoon of sugar to his cup. She is intrigued by the notion that Nick has watched her as she steals away to her secret place — a place, as far as she knows, Eldon doesn’t even know about.
“Do you go there often?” There is an inquisitive honesty to his face; he seems genuinely interested in what she has to say.
“I used to go more often, when Elvina lived here and Vera came by all week. But I still like to walk out there every now and then when I need a quiet place to be by myself. I like listening to the birds and the sound of the river.”
“We all need a place like that. Somewhere to think. I climb up into the hay loft. It’s quiet up there, no one’s around, except for the cats. I like to look out through the loft doors at the whole, wide world.” There is a childlike innocence to the way Nick says this and Caroline can almost see him standing in the opening on the upper storey of a huge red barn, hands on hips, surveying the cows and pigs, the chickens and the ducks, in that self-contained world.
“I heard you bought the Morgan place.”
Nick takes a sip of coffee then adds another half teaspoon of sugar. “It’s close by. Buying my first piece of land is just the start. I’d like to set out on my own eventually. I’m thinking of expanding my herd, concentrating on cattle instead of grain crops, like Anton. As I get older, with ideas of my own, Anton and I are starting to butt heads, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. I can’t imagine Eldon farming with a brother or any partner, for that matter. He’s so set in his ways, he’d never want anyone else telling him what to do.”
“I used to think about pulling out and moving to Alberta, actually. Buy a big ranch somewhere along the foothills, hundreds and hundreds of acres all in one uninterrupted piece. It’s a crazy dream, I know,” he says, smiling so earnestly Caroline feels a little pull, like the tug of a stitch, on her heart. She’d forgotten what it felt like, having a dream of her own, a secret ambition to do something other than what everyone expected of her.
“It’s not the least bit crazy. You should never give up on your dreams,” she says. She finishes her coffee, puts the spoon in her cup. “I can picture you on some wide, open range, sitting tall in a saddle on a Palomino.” She smiles. “Cowboy Nick.”
“Guess I’d have to brush up on my riding and roping skills if I moved out west. Here, you’re more likely to see me bouncing around on my tractor than riding my horse. How about you? Do you ride?”
Caroline shakes her head. “We just had old Molly, my father’s chore horse, when I was growing up. I always wanted to, but my mother was afraid of horses and wouldn’t let me near them. Her brother was bucked from a horse and killed when she was a child. And Eldon thinks horses are a relic of the past. He won’t have one on the place.”
“Our mare, June, is as gentle as a kitten. If you’d like, I could teach you to ride. There’s a great trail, once you get to the edge of the mountain, past the old sawmills, leading all the way to Bride’s Lake.”
“I’d love that,” Caroline blurts out, without thinking. She is caught up in the moment, imagining herself cantering along a sun-dappled trail, birds trilling in the treetops, Nick ahead of her on his own spirited horse. As soon as she says it, she realizes how foolish it is. Of course she can’t go riding with Nick Bilyk. What was she thinking? She blushes furiously, reaches for her empty cup, hands trembling, clatters it against the saucer. It’s the loneliness gnawing away inside her and the softness in Nick’s eyes that made her say such a silly thing and now there’s no way to unsay it. What would she do if Nick showed up someday on horseback, leading June?
By the screen door, Sport stands and stretches and huffs a warning as Eldon’s truck pulls in the yard. Caroline straightens her skirt, pats down her hair. Her heart is aflutter. Her mouth has gone dry. She feels like she did when she was in grade five, caught by the teacher passing Susan a note.
Nick seems to sense her distress. He stands up, picks up his cup, twists it around in his hands.
Eldon, his face shad
owed by his cap, appears in the door. “Bilyk,” he says, but he is staring directly at Caroline. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The following Sunday, the sky is dark and a low rumble of thunder threatens rain.
“I’m leaving to get Mother,” Eldon says as he puts on his cap. “She’ll have had her rest and is sure to be sitting there, watching the clock, dressed and waiting. Be sure that mutt is gone by the time we’re back.” He gestures to Sport, who sits by the screen door on one of Caroline’s mother’s colourful rag rugs, as he walks out.
“Off, boy,” she says to Sport, and picks up the rug. “Out you go.” Sport tilts his head and whines. He is afraid of thunder and Caroline usually lets him stay inside whenever there’s a storm. Lady stayed with her father after she married and Caroline missed having a dog of her own so, two years ago, the Wawryks gave her a puppy, the runt of the litter from their golden Lab, Gem. Susan thought he’d be good company for Caroline, a small and helpless thing to care for. Eldon wasn’t in favour of Caroline getting the dog; Elvina didn’t approve and he didn’t want his workboots chewed or knuckle bones lying around the yard. She begged him to go against his mother, just this once, and he finally gave in and allowed her to bring the pup home.
“Elvina’s coming,” she says to Sport, by way of explanation. “You can’t imagine the fuss she’d make if she knew you were allowed to stay in her house.”
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 13