A Strange Kind of Comfort

by Gaylene Dutchyshen

  She puts the bowl of clean cucumbers on the kitchen table then sets out on her bike. She’s taken it to meet Nick the last few times; it’s easy to drive on the grass path now that it’s tamped down, and quicker, too, than walking. Sport pads along beside her, used to her frequent visits out to the tree, where he lies, muzzle on paws, watching her and Nick without judgment.

  When she gets there, she finds Nick standing at the edge of the river. It is barely a trickle at this time of the year; stones poke through the shallow surface like a handful of marbles tossed by a boy. Caroline picks up a pebble and flings it over his head so it lands in the water with a soft plop. He turns and a smile lights up his face.

  “God, I’ve missed you. Last night it was so damn hot in my room, I took my pillow and went out to the cot on the porch. I nearly made myself crazy, thinking about you. It was all I could do to stop myself from coming to you. Not even half a mile but it might as well be a hundred. It kills me, wanting you when you’re so close and knowing I can’t have you, that you’re with him.”

  “I miss you, too. I wasn’t even sure I’d see you today, if you’d be able to slip away on such a perfect harvest day.”

  “It’s not getting any easier finding excuses to get away. I told Anton I was taking a shovel to Coyle’s to get fixed. He said it was a damn stupid time to do it, but I said the cultivator needs to be ready for the fall work.”

  “Won’t he wonder what you were doing when he sees the shovel isn’t fixed?”

  “I ran it into town, left it with Coyle, and told him I’d be back in an hour to pick it up. Anton will think I’ve been in town the whole time.”

  Caroline takes his hand and leads him up the small rise toward the tree. “We never have enough time together, just these little crumbs we snatch when we can.”

  “It’s only a matter of time, you know, before someone figures out what we’re up to,” Nick says. He takes the jacket he has slung over his shoulder and spreads it out on the grass. “I think Anton’s beginning to wonder where I go when I take off. I’m not very good at lying to him.”

  “I don’t even want to think what Eldon would do if he ever found out.”

  “I worry about that, too.” Nick runs a hand through his hair. “Sometimes I wish we could just run off together, head to Alberta and make a fresh start.”

  Caroline buries her face in the hollow under his shoulder and breathes in his familiar scent, then takes another deep breath, storing up the soap-and-water smell of him. She’s thought about the same thing, lying alone in her bed at night when sleep won’t come; if only she could start over with Nick, put her life with Eldon behind her, chalk her short marriage up to a hasty mistake. But it will never happen. Divorce is out of the question. Eldon will never let her go.

  “What do you think about that?” Nick asks, pulling her away and putting his hands on her shoulders.

  She steps back, looking up at him, not sure how to tell him leaving with him is impossible.

  “I don’t see why we can’t just start over somewhere else,” he says. “Just like my grandparents did when they left the old country with ten dollars for a homestead and a trunk-load of tools. We’ll be homesteading for ourselves, crossing the prairie instead of the ocean, carrying all we need in the box of my truck. What’s stopping us?”

  Caroline can’t bear the look of hope in his eyes. “I’d go anywhere with you, you know that, don’t you?” Her fingers climb up the front of his shirt, toy with a button. “But this is all too much for me to think about just now.” Her hands glide down, deftly opening each button. “We have so little time, only this moment. Let’s not waste it.” He’s about to answer when she cups his face with her hands and kisses him, inhaling the words from his lips and swallowing them whole so she won’t have to hear whatever it is he has to say. She feels his lips relax as he falls into the slow river of her kiss. She never wants it to end, this tender kiss, this spool of love unwinding.

  Elvina’s new car, square and ugly as a boxcar, is sitting beside the house when Caroline gets home. She rubs a hand over her lips, as though evidence of Nick’s sweet kisses might be visible there, and tries to affect an innocent gaze before she walks into the kitchen. The cucumbers are still in the middle of the table, just where she left them, the kitchen quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. Caroline gently closes the screen door and steps inside.

  Upstairs, she hears the scraping of a box being dragged over the floor and then the heavy thump of Elvina’s feet on the stairs. Elvina claps a hand to her thick bosom when she walks into the kitchen, carrying a cumbersome glass vase, quite likely the most hideous thing Caroline has ever seen.

  “Mercy, you startled me. What are you doing here?” Elvina puts the vase on the table next to the cucumbers. “I mean, where have you been until now? I searched through the house and walked out to the garden but you were nowhere to be found. I needed your help with a box in the attic. It’s hot as Hades up there.” Elvina sinks into a kitchen chair and lifts the hem of her skirt to her knees, flapping it a few times.

  “I went for a bike ride. The house was closing in on me and I needed some fresh air.”

  “Hmmm,” Elvina says. “Eldon tells me you’ve been under the weather lately.” She gets two glasses from the cupboard and fills them with water from the pitcher in the fridge. “I hope you’re taking proper care of yourself.”

  “What’s the vase for?” Caroline sits down across from Elvina and takes a sip.

  “It’s the Morrises’ fiftieth wedding anniversary this Sunday and we’re having a tea for them after the service. Vivian Waller has all those spectacular mums in her garden and we’re short a few vases. You will be in church this Sunday, won’t you? Millie Tupper’s been asking questions, raising those painted-on eyebrows of hers; she seems unusually interested in your well-being and wonders why you’ve been missing services.”

  Caroline’s missed two Sundays in a row and she doesn’t need Millie Tupper spreading any rumours. “I’ve been feeling better this week so I’m sure I’ll be there. I wouldn’t want to miss the Morrises’ tea.”

  Elvina drains her glass of water in one long swallow and swipes the wet circle it leaves on the table with the sleeve of her blouse. “There’s nothing you’d like to tell me, is there?”

  Caroline’s heart stutters. Elvina can be so much like Eldon, trying to trick her into saying something she hadn’t intended to say. What does she mean, exactly? What does she know?

  “I know some women don’t like to announce anything until they’re absolutely sure, but if you’re anything like me, I knew straight away,” she continues. “I was so sick each morning, I could scarcely get out of bed, my stomach rolling and pitching until noon. William’s cigars were the worst, the smell sent me running to the bucket, day or night. I haven’t said anything about my suspicions to Eldon and he hasn’t commented one way or the other so I’m assuming you haven’t told him yet.”

  Elvina is looking at her in such a kind way that it throws Caroline off; she feels as though the kitchen floor has suddenly tilted on its joists.

  “You’re looking a little peaked all of a sudden, dear. Have some more water,” Elvina says, getting up to refill Caroline’s glass. “Of course, I didn’t say anything when Millie asked, although she was hoping for confirmation, I could tell. Even Betty Cornforth mentioned the telltale glow she noticed the last time she saw you.”

  There is a distant rumble of thunder and Sport whines at the door, denting the screen with his nose. Within minutes, rain is pelting down on the windows and drumming on the roof. Elvina leaves with her horrid vase, wanting to get her new car home and into the garage in the event of hail. Caroline still feels unsettled, so she steps out on the porch and sits on the rocking chair with Sport’s head on her lap, breathing in the fresh smell and listening to the rain from the gutters pour into the rain barrel as though a giant hand is pumping it off the roof.

  There is a reason for the rosy glow on her face and it’s these feelings f
or Nick, but thanks to Millie Tupper, Betty and Elvina have been fooled into believing it’s because Eldon’s baby is growing inside her. She knows it’s untrue; she’s just finished her monthly and Nick’s been careful not to spill his seed inside her. She could set them all straight on Sunday after the tea, but it’s a convenient ruse, and one she can use for another month, maybe two, until they discover she’s not pregnant at all.

  SEPTEMBER

  It is raining again; the second week of endless mist interrupted by occasional bursts of rain pouring down. Eldon paces between his chair and the kitchen window overlooking the yard. The oats, cut but not yet combined, are getting soaked in the rain and he is convinced the swaths will sprout once the sun comes back out. Each morning he dresses in his slicker and heads out to the barn to check the rain gauge, coming back in a mood worse than before. His shoulder aches from the damp chill and Caroline spends an hour each evening rubbing it with liniment so he can sleep. She does what she can, trying to cheer him, but he snaps at her whenever she opens her mouth, so once her chores are done, she withdraws to her sewing room and keeps to herself.

  She hasn’t seen Nick since the day Elvina came for the vase. She misses the touch of his skin and the gentle look in his eyes with a pain so intense there is no balm to soothe it. The next time she and Nick were to meet, Eldon came stomping into the house, dripping water all over the floor, at the exact time Caroline was due at the tree, and he stayed in the house for the rest of the day. She pictured Nick waiting for hours, rain sluicing over his face, drenched to the skin. She had no way of communicating with him. The dreary grey-blue days plodded by and she had no idea when she’d see him again.

  Yesterday, when the sun tried to break through the clouds, she escaped to the tree, slogging along the muddy grass trail, hoping Nick would read the sun’s brief appearance as some sort of cosmic sign to meet her, but he wasn’t there. She sank into the hollow, soaking her skirt through to her undergarments, while tears of disappointment coursed down her cheeks.

  Sport’s ears perk up and he looks to the door then barks as someone drives down the lane. Caroline’s heart pitches forward, thinking perhaps Nick has decided to drop by, Eldon be damned; he, too, is dying without her. But, of course it’s not him, only her father, and he walks right in with his muddy boots and sits down at the table.

  “You talk to Howard today?” he asks Eldon, stirring three teaspoons of sugar into his cup once Caroline has filled it.

  “I haven’t seen him. I wasn’t out today, except to check the gauge. If this damn rain doesn’t quit soon, we won’t get the fall work done at all.”

  “There’ll be a good stretch of weather yet, there always is.”

  “October third, it snowed and stayed, that one year,” Eldon says. “What’s going on with Howard?”

  “He lost a calf, same as Walter Nychuk. Dead in the pen. It was Betty who heard the calves bawling when she got up in the middle of the night. She woke Howard and he went out with his twenty-two. Shot it into the air and scared them off. Luckily, though, he was able to get a good look at them.”

  “Coyotes?” Eldon reaches for a muffin Caroline has set out on the table.

  Caroline’s father shakes his head. “Dogs. It was a shepherd — quite possibly the Bilyks’ — leading the pack, and Howard’s own dog, Jip, among them. Guess that’s why he didn’t bark. He was up to no good with the rest of them.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Caroline says quickly. “Jip’s such a gentle soul. He wouldn’t hurt anything, let alone calves in his own yard.”

  “They say a dog gets turned once he has a taste of it. The chase, the hunt, the kill. It’s instinct, they can’t help themselves, no matter how gentle they are,” her father continues. “Once they start to pack, there’s no going back. It happened to a dog we had when I was a boy. My mother feared for the little ones so we had to put him down.”

  Sport pads up to Caroline, plants his muzzle in her lap. She strokes his head and he sweeps the floor with his tail.

  “I still don’t believe it,” Caroline says. “Jip’s so old and he has that bad hip. I can’t imagine him chasing down a calf.”

  “Believe it,” Eldon says. “There’s a primitive need in every living creature. A mother’s need to protect her young, for instance, or man’s urge to survive.”

  “The rain’s let up,” Caroline’s father says, clapping his hand against the table. “Time to get going. Would you come out and take a look under my hood? The carburetor’s been acting up.”

  After the men leave, Caroline cleans up the kitchen and wanders upstairs, fingering the carmine gabardine she’s laid out on her sewing table with the pattern pinned on. The stack of library books she picked up last week sits on her bedside table, untouched. She’s been planning to start a new skirt but she has no desire to sew, no interest in reading; there’s nothing to do but sit in her rocker and think about Nick. There’s a need she has, and the last two weeks of confinement have made her realize what lies beneath it. She’s tasted the sweetness of desire and it is growing inside her. It is love that she craves — to love and be loved — and she can’t live without it; that soft, endless falling.

  Caroline looks up from the garden as a gusty wind scatters the swaths of thin clouds, making way for a honking flock of Canada geese to pass over. She is digging muddy potatoes, the size of pint jars, and tossing them into the furrow to lie in the sun. They will have to be washed then spread out to dry before they can be collected in burlap sacks and carried to the cellar. Extra work, she knows, but there’s no guarantee the soil will dry up this late in the season and who knows when winter will arrive after this late surge of Indian summer.

  There have been four consecutive days of sunny weather with temperatures soaring and hot, eager winds. Combines once again lumber through the fields, collecting the last of the grain. Eldon’s been in and out of the yard, hauling the oats instead of running the combine like he usually does. She had only one brief chance to walk to the tree but Nick wasn’t there. She wants to hang on to this last bit of summer, knowing that soon her trips to the tree will end and she might go weeks, if not months, without seeing him. She doesn’t know how she will survive the emptiness of her mundane life all winter; waking up each morning to the monotony of everyday chores and Eldon’s dark moods.

  He came to her bed last night, his hard lips prodding and tugging, and she hiked up her nightgown to allow him his pleasure. She bit her lip in the darkness until she tasted the sharp tang of blood. His visits are getting harder and harder to bear.

  Sport barks at a squirrel he’s chased up one of the spruce trees. The squirrel scolds back and Sport circles, yapping and digging his front claws into the trunk, trying to scale the tree.

  “I don’t know which of them has the upper hand but young Sport seems to be living up to his name,” Betty Cornforth says. She is standing at the edge of the garden, dressed for town, wearing summer shoes. Through the trees, Caroline sees Howard’s truck parked by Eldon’s workshop.

  “I’m leaving mine for another few days,” she says, referring to the potatoes. “Maybe this heat will dry things up.”

  “I thought it best to get them off as soon as I could.” Four curious hens are scratching for worms where Caroline’s dug up the soil and they scatter when she spears her fork in the ground.

  “Are you sure you should be doing that? The garden’s still so wet and it must be hard work, fighting with that mud. I surely hope Eldon is going to carry the potatoes into the cellar for you.”

  “Would you like to come inside for a glass of something cold to drink? I know I could use something,” Caroline says, remembering her manners.

  “Oh, no. We’re just on our way to town. Howard just had to return some tool he borrowed from Eldon.”

  Caroline pulls out a hankie she’s tucked under the sleeve of her blouse and pats the sweat from her brow. “Can you believe this heat for mid-September? It was eighty-three degrees yesterday afternoon.”

  Sport
has stopped tormenting the squirrel and comes over to sniff Betty’s hem and nose the heels of her shoes.

  “You’ve heard about the dogs, have you?” Betty asks, leaning down to scratch Sport behind the ears.

  “Yes. I was sorry to hear about Jip.”

  “Howard didn’t have the heart to put him down so we’ve been keeping him chained, though that’s no way for an old dog like Jip to spend the last of his days.” There is a sudden honk from Howard’s truck horn, two short toots. “That’s my signal,” Betty says. “Take care in this heat and don’t do more than you should.” She looks Caroline over then nods her head and makes her way back through the trees.

  The open screen does nothing to stir the sultry air and it settles on Caroline like a counterpane, weighing down her limbs. Her legs swim restlessly against the damp sheets and she bunches the top sheet into a ball with her toes and slides it to the foot of the bed. ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both …’ Outside her window, she hears the crickets. One, two, three — she counts their frenzied song, calculating the temperature outside using a trick her mother once taught her. Seventy-two degrees, even though it’s 2:00 a.m.

  She remembers what Nick told her about escaping to the veranda to sleep on hot, humid nights like this and she pictures him there, less than a mile away, asleep on his mother’s screened-in porch. Considering her own porch an improvement to the airless bedroom, she takes her pillow and steps into the hallway, listening for the rhythmic sound of Eldon’s snoring from his room, and creeps down the stairs.