A Strange Kind of Comfort

by Gaylene Dutchyshen

  * * *

  The clouds are close and black in the muttering sky as she runs toward the river, squelching her panic, pushing it back down her throat until she stops, panting, next to the stone pile. She looks across the meadow and calls, “Connor? Are you here?”

  She scrambles down the ravine. The water is only a few inches deep, just as she expected at this time of year, and she steps carefully across the first few stones, the way she and Becca once did. Stopping, she peers across to the other side into the stand of poplars, the underbrush thick, overgrown after so many years undisturbed by Eldon’s cattle. A magpie squawks from the sparse branches at the top of a tall poplar then flaps off. Sarah waits, listening. From the dense underbrush, she hears a sudden furtive rustling. Across the river, a wolf slinks out of the bush, carrying a small wad of red fur in his teeth. He stops near the bank and, when he sees Sarah, he drops it, curls a corner of his lip, and growls, a menacing rumble, deep in his throat.

  Fear clenches a fist in her gut but Sarah doesn’t move. The wolf’s body is tense, his wiry coat patchy with mange. He stares her down from only metres away. With two or three bounds, he could easily rip open her throat. His teeth sinking deep into the soft flesh where Jack kissed her this morning. She reaches into her pocket for a bullet without taking her eyes off him; she’s not blinking and neither is he. Why hadn’t she loaded the damn gun? She cocks the rifle — the sound like kindling splitting across a knee — and slides the shell into the chamber. The wolf lowers his head and steps forward, growling louder now, and Sarah doesn’t hesitate. She lifts the rifle to her shoulder, his wide head lined in her sights. Amber eyes, unblinking. She feels the cool metal of the trigger on her finger and she presses it back in a sure, steady way. There’s a thunderous roar; the kick from the gun slams into her shoulder and the blast hurls the beast into the air. A small flock of sparrows bursts out of the trees, scattering like buckshot across the sky then circling and swooping back to alight again in the scrawny poplars, this time on Sarah’s side of the river.

  She waits for a minute while her heart slows, watching to see if he moves, although she knows it’s impossible. A brilliantly red patch seeps and spreads into the gravelly pebbles next to what’s left of his head. Her bullet got him right between those gold-flecked eyes.

  CAROLINE

  Becca comes to Caroline during the night, alone this time, her raving hair wild, her eyes harsh and accusing. In the dream, they’re in the kitchen, the calico curtains drawn across bricked-over windows. The dark is thick as tar in every corner, the only light a flickering candle in the middle of the table, and Caroline knows, without seeing, the house is empty, devoid of everyday life as if ransacked by thieves. And then Nick is standing there as young and alive as he was the day he came over to tell Eldon about the wandering cows. Here he is. This is your father. Caroline is relieved to tell Becca the secret she’s been carrying for so long; it’s like a tumour split open, releasing the poisonous truth. Why didn’t you tell me before? I had the right to know. Caroline’s not sure of the sound, a click-click like the sound of a gun being cocked and, when she turns to look, Eldon is standing behind her, the muzzle of his gun dripping blood. And there’s Sport on the floor, the life draining out of him and pooling thick and black at her feet. We need to get out! She turns to take Becca and Nick by the hand and run but they’re gone, although she can still see their shadows lying long on the floor. Caroline turns, crashes into the table, knocking over the candle and pitching her into complete darkness. Then the hiss of a match, the sulfuric smell of the devil himself, and Eldon holds the quivering match to his face.

  You will never leave me. I’ll never let you go.

  Caroline opens her mouth to scream — and awakens in her own safe room. Her pillow’s on the floor, the water glass at her bedside tipped over. Using her hands, she hoists herself up and leans against the headboard, heart pounding. The only thing she remembers from the nightmare with any clarity is the claustrophobic sensation of being locked away in a walled-in room.

  When she returned from Victoria, her car wasn’t parked in the Greyhound parking lot in Locklin where she’d left it. She assumed Eldon had tracked it down and driven it home with the second set of keys. She had no choice but to call him from a pay phone and ask him to pick her up. Where else could she go?

  He didn’t speak when he drove up or even ask her where she’d been. He stowed her suitcase in the trunk and, on the way home, Caroline tried to explain why she went to B.C. without his permission. He never asked if she’d found Becca in Victoria. The moment they stepped through the door, he lashed out with his fists, punching her in the stomach, then the face. “You. Will. Never. Leave. Me.”

  She cowered on the floor while he kicked her with his boots. After he’d driven out his rage, she crawled upstairs, the pain so intense it ached to draw a breath. She surely had broken ribs. Her body was covered with bruises the colour of raw beets, and her right eye quickly swelled shut.

  She should have left him after that. But she stayed, believing her presence in Eldon’s house was her penance, her suffering at his hands atonement for what she had done. She was an adulteress who gave birth to another man’s child and let her unsuspecting husband raise it as his own. And so she stayed, surviving on hope. Hope that Becca would forgive her. Hope that she’d eventually come home.

  Eldon didn’t seem to care one way or another about Rebecca at all — discarding without thought or distress all the years he’d supposedly loved her. He steeled himself to the world as though his heart were coated with pitch, going about his daily chores as though Becca had never existed.

  Nothing changed in the routine of their daily lives. She felt no different than Elvina’s housekeeper, Vera Kalyniuk, forever in the kitchen, cooking and baking, washing and cleaning, as well as tending to Eldon’s physical needs in every possible way. He came to her bed from time to time and she tolerated it as she did any other chore. As weeks became months and months became years, the hope of seeing Becca again began to fade, but Caroline held on to it in the same way a drowning man grasps on to a rope, thinking she might yet see her one day, walking down the lane with a suitcase in one hand and a child in the other. She often thought of leaving Eldon, finding a job in a bank, perhaps, but the brick house was where Becca would inevitably come back to, so Caroline stayed, waiting for her. She stayed until the years became decades and her eyesight began to fail and, finally, Eldon passed away.

  Down the hall, Caroline hears the clatter of dishes. The early shift of kitchen staff has arrived to cook breakfast. Hopefully, later, Sarah will come by. Sometimes she brings Joe into her room, sits him down in the wooden chair she moves over from his room. He’s as docile as a lump of dough if it’s early in the day, smiling and nodding as though he knows what they’re talking about. Such a wonderful woman Sarah has turned out to be, and lovely to look at, too. It makes Caroline wonder if Becca has aged gracefully, and whether she colours her hair. Is she a good mother, as Sarah seems to be, and happily married?

  Loving Becca was not always easy; she had the same prideful, selfish way about her as Eldon and his mother, although how that was possible, Caroline didn’t know. There seemed to be no hint of Nick in her at all, in either looks or in nature. Eldon spoiled her, not only with material things, but by letting her have her way. She was a self-indulgent girl who expected to get what she wanted. Caroline wishes she’d tried harder to shape Becca into a different sort of girl, one like Sarah who was gentle and kind and appreciated every single thing she had.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Cara says, smiling at the door. She is always in good spirits, even as early as this. “Did you sleep well?” she asks as she bounces into the room on those squeaky sneakers she wears. There’s a genuine look of concern on her face and Caroline re-evaluates her early opinion of Cara; what she lacks in competence she makes up for in goodness.

  “I woke from another bad dream only minutes ago. I can’t remember a thing; you know how it is with dreams,
exploding into a million small pieces you’ll never remember once you open your eyes. It seemed I was in some sort of jail, one with bricks instead of bars in the windows.”

  Cara rolls her arm under Caroline’s back to help her sit up and swing her legs over the edge of the bed. “Maybe you’re dreaming about this place. John McTavish calls it the Sunny Haven Correctional Facility.”

  Caroline has to admit, she’s thought of it that way herself. “It’s not as bad as all that. At least you don’t make us wear those orange jumpsuits.”

  “Ha! That’s funny. It would be a pain to dress you up in one of those.” Cara’s at the closet, holding up two dresses, one pale blue and one with pink flowers. “Which one will it be?”

  SARAH

  When Sarah tells Jack about the wolf, she credits motherly intuition. She has no other way to explain it. A powerful force drove her to the river with the rifle, knowing she had to protect Connor. After she killed the wolf and returned to the yard, she found Connor in the workshop, perched on the riding lawnmower, turning the wheel. He had heard her calling, but thought it a game to make her look, so he sat very still in the dim shop when Sarah came dashing through. In her panic, she didn’t see him. She was relieved and angry at the same time after she found him, but all she could do was hug him.

  Later, after Jason picks up Connor, Sarah walks back to the river. There is a bloody trail on the opposite bank where Jack dragged the wolf into the trees.

  On her way back to the house, she pauses at the stone pile to select a few stones to prop among her recently transplanted lilies. A grey rock with a raised, rough marking that looks like a cross catches her eye. Jack must have picked it this spring and she hadn’t noticed it on top of the pile before now. The rain has washed it clean and the sun glimmers off the silver-flecked granite. She climbs on the pile and, using her legs, dislodges the stone and pushes it off. It tumbles into the grass and lands on its flat bottom. Sitting there, with its purple-coloured cross facing east, it reminds Sarah of a tombstone. It’s too heavy to move so she leaves it for Jack to pick up later with the front-end loader.

  The next morning, Sarah pours three cups of coffee and pops two slices of bread into the toaster. Toni is making a sandwich for her lunch. She has just two more days of work and then, before the Labour Day weekend, she is heading back to university.

  “What’s new at Sunny Haven? How’s Grandpa? I guess I’d better stop in and have one last visit with him before I head back,” Toni says.

  “He’s the same as always,” Sarah says. She takes a sip of coffee. “It’s Caroline that seems to be failing. She can’t sleep and it’s taking a toll on her.”

  Jack is flipping through the Country Guide and doesn’t appear to be listening.

  “Why? What’s wrong with her?” Toni asks.

  “She’s having nightmares and something’s weighing on her mind. I wish there was a way I could help her.”

  Toni spreads peanut butter on her toast and sits down at the table. “Isn’t there a story about Dad when he was a little kid? Something about your baba curing him of nightmares?”

  “You’re right. She performed her wax ritual,” Sarah says, nodding.

  “That’s almost hard to believe.” Toni looks at Jack. “Do you ever have nightmares, now?”

  Jack glances up from the magazine. “Worked like a charm. Never had another one.”

  After Jack and Toni are gone, Sarah wanders into the living room to find the tin box and its contents on the coffee table where she left them. She picks up the red book and, as she leafs through it, it occurs to her she might use the wax ritual to help Caroline. She’s had no luck finding Becca, but what if she can help rid Caroline of her terrible dreams? Maybe she can chase away the tormenting nightmares in much the same way Baba did for Jack when he was a boy all those years ago.

  Of course I can’t. I’m nothing like Baba.

  She returns to the china cabinet, retrieves Baba’s things, and places them into the small basket. The wax is firm and smooth in her hand and she feels a comforting warmth from it, as though Baba’s spirit is contained in that fragrant lump.

  It’s intention that matters. And being a good person.

  God. Spirit. Call it what you will, Sarah does believe there’s something bigger than herself, and she taught her daughters to live with the notion of such a higher power. To be grateful and gracious and kind. She’s tried to live that way herself.

  She loves Caroline. She always has. Why wouldn’t she try whatever she could to help bring her the peace she deserves? Taking the red book, she heads out the door.

  The next morning, Sarah stands next to Caroline in the dining room, holding the basket with Baba’s things.

  “What on earth do you have there?” Caroline sits up tall in her chair, trying to peer inside it.

  “I think I might have a way to get rid of your nightmares.”

  “How do you intend to do that?” Caroline asks, wide-eyed.

  “I’ll tell you all about it back in your room. I’ll just say hello to my dad.”

  Addie is urging him to finish his juice but he’s shaking his head, his lips pressed tight.

  “What’s up with the basket?” Addie asks, wiping Joe’s chin.

  “It was my grandmother’s. It sat on a small table in her house for as long as I can remember.”

  “I didn’t ask whose. What are you doing with it?”

  Most people, including Addie, knew about Halya Petrenko and her faith healing, but Sarah has to admit she used to be ashamed of Baba’s old-world ways. Once, when she and Addie and Becca were sitting in a booth at the King’s Café with a couple of boys, Baba came through the door, bent over her cane. She was dressed no differently than any other day of the week, in her babushka and bright flowered dress. Sarah’s face burned with shame and she stared into her milkshake, not daring to look up in case Baba would see her. When she finally looked, Baba still stood at the counter, peeling the foil from a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. She caught Sarah’s eye then looked quickly away and followed her cane out the door.

  “I’m going to light a few candles in Caroline’s room. Try some old-time meditation like my grandmother used to do. I thought maybe it would help her sleep.”

  “Strange time of day to try to help somebody sleep, isn’t it?” Addie pulls Simon’s wheelchair away from the table and unfastens his bib. “But it won’t hurt to try. She’s too stubborn to take a pill and we’ve tried everything else we can think of.”

  Addie and Sarah take her father and Simon back to their rooms. Once her dad’s settled in his chair, Sarah tells him about the wolf, holding out the full length of her arm with her finger pointed then jerking it back to show him how she killed it. He nods, with a knowing look on his face, and Sarah is thrilled when he says, “I got a jumper, too.” She hopes he’s remembering the hunting trips he used to take for white-tailed deer with Patrick and Paul.

  When Sarah comes into her room and closes the door, Caroline skims across the floor in her chair, eyes bright. “What is it? Have you brought me something to eat?” She looks at the things in the basket. “What is all this for?”

  “When Jack was a little boy his mother brought him to my grandmother. He had bad dreams — night terrors are what they call them now — and my grandmother was able to help him.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” Caroline lifts her eyebrows suspiciously.

  “She believed many ills were rooted in some sort of trauma or fear. I’ve seen her cure everything from bed-wetting to post-partum depression.” Sarah explains the whole mysterious ritual and shows Caroline the paper with the words Anton translated from Ukrainian to English.

  She took the red book to his house yesterday and had him decipher the ritual word by word while she recorded him on her phone. It took a few hours — Anton stopped often to add his own wisdom — but eventually they got through it. Sarah spent the rest of the day painstakingly transcribing the words onto paper.

  “And this will stop
the dreams? Help me sleep?”

  “I figure it’s worth a shot. There’s just one thing I need … and that’s for you to believe.”

  “Sounds hokey to me.” Caroline wheels away to look out the window. “I’m not even Ukrainian.”

  “I don’t think you have to be. All you need is faith.” Sarah places the enamel bowl on Caroline’s desk, fills it with a jarful of water she drew from the well, and adds a few drops of blessed water. She steadies a candle in the glass holder she brought, then lights it. “And I need to believe I can do this. We need to have faith in each other. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

  Caroline nods. “I suppose so. You’ve always been a sensible girl and I trust you.”

  The familiar self-doubt creeps back in but Sarah presses on, for Caroline’s sake. “Why don’t we just get started? See how it goes.” She pushes Caroline’s wheelchair to the centre of the room and stands behind it, facing the east window. The wax is warm in her hand. She drops it in the cup and holds it to the flame.

  CAROLINE

  How can this possibly get rid of her night visitations? It’s crossed Caroline’s mind more than once that the visions and dreams mean her end is drawing near, and it weighs heavily on her. Her mother’s face is creased with a deep, indelible sorrow each time she comes and Caroline takes it to mean she wants Caroline to atone for her mistakes before she dies. But she’s paid her debt. Isn’t it enough that Nick was ripped from the life they planned, crushed into the earth beneath that tractor, before it even began? And the daughter he gave her, snatched away just as suddenly on that fateful June day?