Elvina is glaring at Caroline, demanding solidarity, Caroline knows, although she can’t be expected to lie about the frost. The wheat in question was planted on the home quarter and it took the same hit as the rest of the fields in and around Ross Prairie. No one had expected a hard frost on the first day of September, but the sky had been clear that night, a black canvas of shimmering stars, and the temperatures had been unseasonably cool for days before. Caroline had covered as much of the garden as she could, the sheets glowing like recumbent ghosts under the white light of a full moon, but she was unable to save it all. There was no sweet corn last season at all; the slim ears failed to fill when the leaves turned brittle and silvery brown.
“Eldon is certain our wheat was too ripe to have been affected by the frost,” Elvina continues. “Nevertheless, those bandits at the grain elevators will do whatever they can to squeeze another nickel out of Eldon to keep for the company. They expect us to get by on less and less every year, it seems.”
“There are many others in that same boat, Elvina. The whole town’s been feeling the effect of last fall’s poor crops,” Mavis says. “You’d be surprised how my business falls off when the farmers are hurting.”
Elvina looks surprised. Clearly, she has never considered the town’s fortune is linked to the whims of nature in much the same way as the farmers’. “At any rate, I was glad I bumped into Eldon so I could tell him I’d like you both to watch the parade with me from my front yard. Those lovely elms along the street will keep us comfortable and there will be fewer children scrambling about.”
Caroline’s heart sinks. She’s been looking forward to mingling with the crowds on Main Street. There is an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation at the top of the parade route that can’t be matched by the thinner crowds as the parade passes by the residential streets. And she was hoping she might see Nick in the crowd, although she knows she could never speak to him with Eldon and Elvina standing beside her. But it would be enough to catch a glimpse of him — those strong, wide shoulders and that endearing smile — across the street. “I thought we could all watch from the same place we did last year, across from the post office,” she says.
“We didn’t have a finished house along the parade route last year, did we? And it’s much too hot to be corralled among the crowds on Main Street,” Elvina says dismissively. “There’s no sense pulling that long face, Caroline, or trying to get Eldon to change his mind. He’s already agreed.”
Caroline quickly selects a package of plain white buttons, hands it to Mavis and searches in her change purse for a quarter. “I watch the parade from the front of my store every year and there’s always so much commotion on this corner. Just as well to visit and see folks at the fairgrounds tomorrow, anyway,” Mavis says, a look of sympathy on her face as though she fully understands what it must be like having Elvina Webb for a mother-in-law.
Caroline blinks quickly and slips the slim package into her purse. “You’re right, Mavis. Thank you. I must get going. I told Eldon I’d meet him at eleven thirty and it must be getting close to that time and he really doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” She is rambling, she knows, but she cannot get away from Elvina fast enough. She doesn’t want her to see the disappointment that is surely written all over her face. It was wrong to think about seeing Nick all week, getting her hopes up. She’d convinced herself that she would see him wandering up and down each side of the street with the same thought in mind, searching for her among the crowds, hoping to see her, too.
The next afternoon, Caroline fans herself with the pamphlet she was given at the gate. The cruel sun bears down, so unforgiving it has leached the brilliant blue right out of the sky. They are sitting on the bleachers, facing the dirt track, waiting for the races to start. Behind them, on the ball diamond, there is a splintering crack and an umpire bellows, “Foul ball!”
“I really can’t take this heat,” Caroline says. “I’m feeling a little light-headed.”
“I told you to wear a hat.” Eldon looks down at her from under the brim of his own straw hat. “You should have listened to me.”
Caroline doesn’t like to cover her hair. Today, she’s rolled it up into a sleek French knot and adorned it with a rhinestone clip shaped like a butterfly. “Well, I didn’t and now I don’t think I can sit here under this sun another minute. I’m going to the ladies’ room. Maybe if I splash my face and have a drink of cold water, I’ll feel a little better.”
“The race is about to start,” Eldon says, nodding at the six wagons pulling up to the gate.
“I won’t be long. I’ll be back before you know it.” She gets to her feet and steps around a broad-backed farmer in bibbed overalls and a cowboy hat, sitting in front of her. He smiles and lifts his hand to help her down the first wide riser.
“And come straight back. I didn’t bring you to the fair to sit in this damn bloody heat by myself,” Eldon says as he glares at the farmer until he abruptly drops her hand. “Stop at one of the booths on your way back and bring me a root beer.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a few coins and hands them to Caroline.
She palms the money, continues down the steep risers, and hurries to the newly built high school, where the exhibition hall is located, taking a shortcut through the parked cars.
The gymnasium is blissfully cool and full of people escaping the heat. They stroll past long, skirted tables, examining jams and jellies, cookies and cakes, crocheted doilies and handiwork, children’s school work and hand-stitched quilts. She’d taken her time in the exhibit hall yesterday, admiring all the entries and noting the winners in each category. One of Polly Garwood’s dresses won the red ribbon for the second year in a row. Caroline had won the first-place ribbon in the junior category for four consecutive years. In the first year she was married she had intended to enter a two-piece suit she’d made, but Eldon forebade it. No wife of his was going to put her garments on public display, he said, and it irked her, being told what she could and couldn’t do with her own suit. Even through the wire cage that covers the table, Caroline could see the sloppy workmanship on Polly’s buttonholes and knew she could have won first place if she’d been allowed to enter something.
She feels better after she has a cold drink at the water fountain and pats her neck and arms with a damp paper towel in the washroom. In the hallway, across from the principal’s office, Betty Cornforth, Millie Tupper, and Margaret Farley are sitting behind a long table along the wall.
“Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Eldon Webb,” Millie says when Caroline walks by.
Caroline stops to say hello. For as long as she can remember, Margaret Farley has planted herself at a table in the old exhibit hall for both days of the fair, handing out the prize money. She is blind as a badger and she peers at Caroline over eyeglasses pushed down on her nose. “Isn’t that Caroline McPhee?”
“Well, she’s Caroline Webb now, you remember,” Millie says.
Mrs. Farley bends her head inches from the sheets spread out in front of her and runs her finger down a long list of names. “Webb, Webb. I don’t see it.”
“Of course you won’t see it,” Millie says impatiently. “She’s not here to collect prize winnings. She doesn’t even have an entry.”
Mrs. Farley sits bolt upright. “She’s not?” She looks at Millie and frowns. “Then why did you have me look up her name?”
Betty smiles and winks at Caroline. “Are you back today for a second look? Seems a lot of folks have escaped in here, out of the heat.”
“I had to get out of the sun. I felt faint and a bit sick to my stomach.”
Millie looks up from the quarters she is stacking in piles of four. “Oh, I know what that means. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Caroline with a baby carriage,” she says in a sing-song way.
Caroline feels herself blush. It’s such a private matter, this business of creating a baby; she wishes people wouldn’t comment so freely about it.
“Good heavens, Millie, that’s not
necessarily so,” Betty says. “It could just be this blistering heat. Howard insisted on standing in front of Pipers’ for the parade yesterday and I nearly collapsed myself after an hour.”
At that very moment, Caroline glances down the hall toward the exit door and sees a dark figure against the white light by the door. Her heart flips with a sudden pump of adrenalin. It’s him; there’s no mistaking those broad shoulders.
“I have to go,” she manages to say and rushes away from the women so they can’t read her face; a delightful feeling of elation and joy is bubbling up inside her. When she gets closer, she sees that Nick is grinning, walking quickly toward her.
“It is you. I couldn’t be sure until my eyes adjusted for the light. It was your hair that gave you away. Even twisted up like that, I knew it was you.”
He is wearing a white T-shirt, the kind Eldon wears under his work shirts, so tight it reveals each rippling muscle on his chest. His hair is tousled and she is filled with a desire to reach up and tame it down with her hands.
He is all she’s been able to think about since that day in her kitchen. She walked to her reading tree countless times, hoping to find him mending fences or working with his cattle down by the river, but he was never there. She considered leaving him a note pinned to the tree or a fence post in the remote chance he might come looking for her, but she couldn’t take the chance Eldon might find it. She lies awake at night, kicking away hot, twisted sheets, wondering if he is thinking about her, too. And now here he is and she doesn’t know what to say.
“I was hoping I would bump into you on the fairgrounds, or at the parade. I walked up and down Main Street from the tracks to the post office yesterday, twice both ways, and couldn’t spot you anywhere.”
“Eldon’s mother had us come to watch the parade with her in front of her house.”
“That explains it. When I couldn’t find you, I knew I had to come back to the fairgrounds today and keep looking.” He seems emboldened by this admission. “I wanted to talk to you again.”
A long silence stretches between them; Caroline is thrilled he was looking for her, just as she hoped he would, but she doesn’t know if she should tell him so.
Caroline is keenly aware of Millie Tupper’s prying eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” she says and they step out of the busy hallway into a deserted side corridor. She walks briskly alongside him, keenly aware of the long, hard plane of his thigh brushing against her leg. They turn a corner into a small alcove across from a locked exit door, a space where, during the school year, a rack for outdoor footwear might stand.
When they’re completely out of sight, he swivels his hand to her waist and draws her in to his chest. Her arms go up and twine around his neck so naturally it shocks her. Her heart is racing, whirring away like her sewing machine when she pumps hard on the treadle, and she’s not sure if it’s from the danger of being discovered or from the feeling of him pressing against her. His chin rests on the top of her head and she feels his chest swell when he breathes in the scent of her hair. After a moment, he pulls away and studies her eyes.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I tell myself it’s wrong, you’re his wife, but it’s your face I see every waking moment.”
“I think about you, too. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I was yesterday when I didn’t see you during the parade. I go to my tree nearly every day, hoping you might be nearby,” Caroline admits. “I don’t allow myself to think about the right or the wrong of it and I don’t care. I just want to see you.”
Nick tips his head back, laughs out loud. “I’ve done the same thing, thinking maybe I’d catch you out there reading, but we must keep missing each other. It is a good place to meet, close enough for you to walk to, and out of sight.”
Caroline doesn’t feel the need to be coy, she might as well come right out and say what she wants. “Can you meet me there one day this week?”
Nick answers with his eyes. He wanted her to ask, she can tell. Of course he will. “When?”
“Wednesday?” she says, then wishes she’d said tomorrow, or Monday. Four days is too long.
A couple of boys round the corner, jostling each other and laughing. Caroline drops her arms from Nick’s neck and he leans into the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets. The boys go quiet when they see them. It’s the box boy from Pipers’ store and the younger one is Joe Coyle’s boy; she’d know that red hair anywhere. There is no exit from the hallway, no reason for the boys to come this way unless they’re up to something — pulling a prank like setting off the fire alarm or hiding out to have a smoke — and they stare guiltily at their shoes until the Coyle boy turns on his heel and they slink away.
“I have to go,” Caroline says when the boys are out of earshot. “He’ll be wondering where I am.” She turns and is hurrying away when she hears Nick call out, “Time?”
The boys are loitering at the end of the corridor and she acts as though she didn’t hear him. She holds up one finger behind her back — one o’clock — and keeps walking, head down, averting her eyes when she passes Millie and Betty and Mrs. Farley. She hurries back through the gymnasium and, once she is on the fairgrounds, breaks into a run, Eldon’s coins jingling in her pocket. His root beer! She’s completely forgotten.
The food booths are just ahead, she can smell the fried onions, and she is about to stop when she sees Eldon stalking toward her through the rows of parked cars. “Where have you been? I look the fool sitting there by myself for so long.” He is red-faced, his forehead slick with sweat.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, hoping no one passing by will notice the way he’s grabbed hold of her wrist. “I stopped for a few minutes to speak with Betty Cornforth and the ladies. You know how Betty can be, getting carried away with her stories.” The sharp edge of suspicion eases from his eyes and he lets go of her hand.
“You still haven’t got my drink, I see. I’ll have a box of popcorn, too, and be quick about it. The finals are about to begin.”
Later, in the truck as they ride home, Eldon lights up a cigarette and Caroline slides over and rolls down her window. He likes her to sit beside him, as close as she can without the gear shift knocking her knees. She thinks it’s ridiculous, a married woman sitting up next to her husband like a lovesick teenager, but she humours him, although she draws the line when he puffs smoke in her face.
“You don’t need that window open,” Eldon says without taking his eyes off the road.
She does as she’s told and cranks the window back up.
“So what did Betty Cornforth and the ladies have to tell you?”
“The usual things. We talked about the number of fair entries, down this year by twenty percent they said, especially in the baking section. No one wants to be stuck in the kitchen baking pies and muffins when it’s this hot.” She surprises herself with the easy way this made-up story slides off her tongue.
“Hmm,” he says, tapping ash into the tray. “See anybody else? Stop to talk?” He asks this casually, but she can tell from his tone he is fishing for something, possibly setting a trap. Could he have come in another door? Seen her talking to Nick?
Her heart flutters. “Well, of course I saw lots of other people.”
“Hmm,” Eldon says again and drives on another mile. “Like who?”
Her mind races, trying to think of someone else she might have stopped to talk to. She pictures Emily Poloski lifting her little girl to the water fountain, one hand boosting that frilly, diapered rump. She could make something up, tell another story, but she stops herself.
“Like I said. Lots of people. What does it matter?”
Eldon takes another long, thoughtful pull on his cigarette, contemplating an answer. They drive the rest of the way home in silence and pull into the yard. Sport gets up from the porch and ambles over to greet her. She squats down and gives him a good rub on his belly, and he whines with pure joy.
Eldon is blocking the door when she gets to the house,
one arm stretched out with his palm on the jamb. He lifts the burned-down stub to his lips and takes a long drag, exhaling the smoke in her face. “Just so you’d know,” he says, “it does matter to me. Who you see. Who you talk to. Every single thing you do matters to me, Caroline.”
Caroline tries to duck under his arm, push open the screen door. “You’re being ridiculous,” she says. “Now let me in the house.”
He rips the nub away from his lips and crushes it on the porch under the toe of his boot. His face is inches from hers; she breathes in the rank, smoky smell of his breath.
“You’ll go in the house when I say you go in the house.”
Caroline turns away, sinks into the cushion on the old rocker beside the screen door. “Why are you doing this, Eldon? Why do you care who I talk to?”
“It’s not that I care who you talk to, Caroline,” Eldon says quietly. He wraps his fingers around her wrist like he did on the fairgrounds, squeezing harder this time, tighter and tighter until Caroline imagines she hears a soft snap, like an egg cracking on the edge of a pan.
“I care so much more about who talks to you.”
On Wednesday, Eldon is late for lunch. Of all days, Caroline thinks impatiently, as she stirs the soup. It has stuck to the bottom of the pot from simmering so long. A fan blows uselessly in the corner. It has to be ninety degrees by now and she feels like she’s melting away. She took such care with her bath this morning and now, here she is, sweating as though she’s just spent an hour hoeing the garden.
The screen door squeaks open and Eldon walks in and goes straight to the table, flinging his cap on the chair by the door, not bothering to wash his hands.
“There you are,” Caroline says, ladling out a bowl and setting it in front of him. “It’s not like you to be this late.”
“Your father stopped me on the road just now. He asked if I’d heard about Walter Nychuk’s dead steer. It seems he found it dead in the pen, trampled or chased down until it collapsed from exhaustion, so I drove out to the pasture to check on the calves.”
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 15