The Day the Falls Stood Still

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  “It isn’t the same for joy,” he says, “when it’s divided up.”

  I lean my temple against his shoulder to show him I have understood. Joy shared with another is so much larger than joy felt alone.

  We sit a little longer, until the telephone rings, splintering the quiet. It happens every three or four weeks, our telephone ringing late in the night. Once it was a group of boys who had been making mischief at the whirlpool when they snagged a burlap sack with a rotting torso inside. Another time it was a drunkard, who was convinced he had seen fairies swimming in the plunge pool at the base of the falls. Sometimes a woman is on the line; her husband is late. Other times it is the police. And Tom always goes.

  Through the screen door I hear him say, “Where, exactly?” and “How many are onboard?” and “Has anyone called the coast guard at Fort Niagara? They’ve got a lifeline gun.”

  He is back a moment later with his waders and the packsack he keeps by the kitchen door. “There’s a boat grounded in the upper rapids,” he says. “Two men are onboard.”

  I nod, though I do not want him to go, not tonight, not with the warmth between the two of us, not with the worry that will surely take its place.

  He kisses me on the forehead and touches his fingertips to Francis’s cheek. Then he lopes off with his waders and packsack of grappling hooks and rope.

  He knows my fears. I have told him, once when we were lying together. He laughed when I first began and said that I had forgotten about the caul, that he could never drown. When he saw my seriousness, he pulled me close. “I’m careful, Bess. I know what the river can do.”

  I wish I could pray. I wish I thought it would do a bit of good.

  I wait with sleeping Francis on the back stoop for what must be the better part of an hour. His brow is smooth and his lips pucker now and then as though he is nursing in his dreams. There is something wistful about this child sleeping in my arms when he mostly spends his days venturing ever farther away from me, or stamping his feet and saying, “I’m a big boy,” when I hand him some toy Jesse long ago gave up. I do my best to focus on these thoughts, rather than on Tom, the river, and the ropes.

  Maybe I will become pregnant again, now that Francis manages so much on his own, though the timing is hardly right. I am earning less than I was a year ago, when I could barely manage to fit in a new coat. High unemployment has led to thrift, and what is more, women’s fashions have become a whole lot less painstaking to make. Waistlines have dropped and in some cases altogether disappeared. Fabrics are soft, pliable, comfortable to wear. Hemlines have stayed at the ankle or midcalf, out of the way. A dress is no longer a second skin, close-fitting when a figure is good, even more so when flesh must be cajoled into place. And then there is Mrs. Coulson, who has curtailed her orders since the opening of the powerhouse. She came the Monday afterward but left in a snit when I said, “It just isn’t possible,” to her demand that I piece together a dress for her with what was left of Isabel’s wedding gown and the dress I had made from it for myself. Still, I am managing all right. Quite a few of the women who come to me are from households with buffer enough to ignore the economic woes. They still want a bit of glitz appliquéd to their formless frocks. And then there is Kit, who had never put much thought into clothes, suddenly needing a suit, a frock, a gown. I am glad for the work. I need it, but more than that, I am glad for the evenings together in my sewing room.

  The last time she came, I was marking darts when she reminded me of the stray cat Isabel had charmed with bits of meat smuggled from the dining hall. Eventually, there was a basket attached to a rope, lowered from her window and pulled up once Puss was inside. But Puss was restless in her dorm room, meowing, rubbing up against bed and chair legs, leaping from bookshelf to windowsill to desk, eventually knocking over a vase of lilacs onto an unfinished prose composition. The ink ran. The paper rippled. Isabel snickered and complained furiously to the sisters: “I won’t start again, not when the sanitation here is so lax we’ve got wild beasts in our rooms.” She produced a soggy essay with a scattering of paw prints as proof. Kit mimicked Isabel’s outrage in the sewing room, and we laughed, great quaking snorts.

  When I hear footsteps coming around the side of the house toward the back stoop, I assume it is Tom and let out a sigh. But the man who comes into the backyard is not him. Even in the dim light, I can see he is not nearly so tall. There is a moment of fear when I think, If I am quick, I might manage to get Francis into the house, but then I see the man is wearing a constable’s uniform. Fresh fear comes. I want to say “Where is Tom?” but press my lips closed.

  “Mrs. Cole?” says the constable.

  “Yes.” I get up from the stoop.

  “Tom asked me to come.”

  “He’s all right, then?”

  “He’ll be a while. He wanted me to tell you that.”

  I suppose I ought to be thankful. Yet I am not. “What’s happening?” I say.

  “The Hydro was dredging around the intake gates, and the scow they were filling up with the sediment broke free from its tugboat and got pulled into the middle of the river. The men opened the hatches and dropped the anchor, and now they’re caught on a ledge a short ways back from the brink.”

  I imagine Tom wading out to the scow, certain his legs will not be swept from beneath him. He will give me some nonsense about knowing it was safe, some hogwash about reading the current and working out the stability of the riverbed footholds beneath. “I can’t explain it,” he will say, “but sometimes I just know.”

  “The coast guard shot a line out to the scow,” the constable says, “and rigged up a pulley and sling to cart the men back, but the lines got tangled up in the current. Tom was out, untangling the lines, when I left.”

  “He went into the river?” I ask. Francis stirs in my arms.

  “He went out in a second sling, pulling himself hand over hand.”

  “I see,” I say, but I do not. A scow is held back from the brink by a bit of rocky ledge and yet it serves as anchor to the lines Tom is dangling from. Should that scow shift in the torrent of the upper rapids, should the bit of rock give way, the scow along with the tangled lines, the pulley and sling, and Tom will be pitched over the falls.

  A long while after the constable goes, I put Francis in his bed, and, with the first light of day, I walk across the empty lot to fetch Mrs. Mancuso from her house to watch the boys. She will be up, baking the ciabatta Mr. Mancuso prefers to eat warm.

  From a ways off I see several lines strung from the roof of the Toronto powerhouse to a scow lodged midway between Goat Island and the Canadian shore. Ten yards from the scow, a man hangs from the lines, the torrent beneath him lashing at his feet. By the time I reach the crowd gathered at the powerhouse, the man has been hauled close enough to the shore for me to know he is not Tom but rather one of the rescued men. Beyond the man the scow is now an empty hull.

  The crowd is whooping it up with far too much glee for anyone to have been lost, yet Tom is nowhere to be seen. Eventually the constable who came into our yard taps my shoulder from behind. “Tom is up top,” he says, pointing to the roof of the powerhouse. “I can take you up.”

  As we walk, I catch words spoken in the crowd: “It’s the wife, the riverman’s wife.”

  The interior of the powerhouse is vast, empty except for a half dozen large drums housing the magnets and copper-clad rotors that make electricity. It is quiet, only the whir coming from the generators and our footsteps bouncing off the polished floor, echoing in the hollow space. Midway up the stairs the constable says, “He was out there a good two hours the first time, but the lines were a mess. He had to wait for daylight and go back. Shame you missed it, Mrs. Cole. You would’ve been bursting with pride.”

  I am alone in my disapproval. The others all sigh a great communal sigh and applaud when Tom Cole shows up with his waders and grappling hooks and rope. Everything will be all right. The riverman is here.

  When we pass from the stairwell out o
nto the roof, one of the men from the scow is being helped from a sling attached to the line. He kisses the powerhouse beneath his feet, which I suppose seems as good as solid earth. Then he throws his arms around Tom, who is huddled in a blanket, looking cold and tired.

  When he sees me, he lets the blanket fall from his shoulders. Then his arms are around me, squeezing me until my feet leave the roof. “Francis?” he says into my ear. “He’s fine,” I say back. Then, he makes a show of kissing me, and the dozen or so men on the roof applaud.

  Is it glory he seeks, dangling above the falls, leaping from one cake of ice to the next? I am almost convinced of it, but when I say I would like to go home, he says he wants to wait on the roof awhile, until the crowd below thins out. And when a photographer from the Evening Review wants to come out onto the roof, the constable checks with Tom and then tells the photographer he cannot.

  Tom speaks with the rescued men awhile, until a handful of the others on the roof work up the nerve to join the group. I pay little attention to the conversation that follows, talk of lifeline guns and pulleys and a riverbed just rough enough to snag a scow. Still, I manage to smile dutifully when it seems I should.

  On the walk home I notice my pace is brisk. I notice myself ready to pounce. But my anger feels petty when Tom has been heroic, when lives have been saved. I reach for his hand, wondering if I should tell him yet again how it is for me when he is on the river, anesthetized to the risks, fueled by some notion of invincibility.

  “Jesse would’ve been interested in all this,” he says.

  It is more than I can bear, his suggestion that I should have brought Jesse. “I’m not much interested in having him watch his father drown.”

  “Bess, that wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Another line could have been shot out. Another pulley and sling could’ve been rigged up. You didn’t need to go out.”

  “God, you’re pretty when you’re worked up,” he says with a careful smile.

  It is an effort to charm me from my mood, and any other day I would be pleased. Not today though. Today I fold my arms.

  “We would have had to send for new lines,” he says. “All that takes time.”

  “You’re saying that there wasn’t time, that the scow was set to go over the brink?”

  “I knew what I was doing,” he says. “I was sure.”

  I want to yell, to fall to my knees. Instead I breathe deeply, steadying myself. “But the lines holding you up were tied to the scow.”

  “That scow wasn’t going anywhere. It’ll be there until the bottom rusts out.”

  “But if you were sure it’d stay put, all the more reason to wait for new lines. Why didn’t you just wait?” I keep up the pace though I am becoming short of breath.

  “Those men had been out there half the night, and they were scared to death.”

  “You have a family,” I say. “And I feel like an afterthought. Do you think I wasn’t afraid? Think of me. Think of your sons, instead of two men you don’t even know.”

  “Bess, I could just tell. I just knew.”

  “Fergus isn’t out there with you, keeping an eye on things, if that’s what you think.” There is a mocking lilt in my voice.

  He stops, waits for me to do the same. He looks me in the eye. “There’s something.”

  “There isn’t. You’re alone.” I spit the words, feel my throat constrict. “Fergus is gone. Dead. Dust.” My voice breaks as I say, “Like Isabel,” and Tom reaches for my hand but stops short as I jerk it away.

  “Way back you told me you’d seen bits of silver—prayers—in the mist,” he says.

  “I was wrong,” I say, resuming the march home.

  We walk on in silence, his gait sluggish now, lagging my own furious stride.

  Midmorning, I am alone in the kitchen, giving the final pressing to the pleated skirt of a dress for Mrs. Ross. The boys are with Mrs. Mancuso, and Tom has gone off to work. If we had been speaking, I might have told him not to go. He was shivering, despite a flannel shirt and knitted vest, despite a bowl of oatmeal and a mug of tea. The room is silent, except for a clunk when I roughly set the flatiron on the trivet, annoyed with myself for the sloppy job I am making of the pleats.

  I pace the main-floor rooms, mulling over the morning, my argument with Tom. I hesitate in the dining room, empty except for a pine sideboard delivered just the other day. Tom’s notebook is facedown, spread open on the sideboard, the way he left it last night. I leaf through pages of tables, columns of carefully printed numbers and dates, margins filled with notes, some underlined so heavily that the paper is nearly worn through.

  As I close the cover, I am clear-eyed about what Tom saw when he stepped into our May Avenue house for the first time. He saw more house than he thought necessary. He saw a costly mantelpiece. He saw empty rooms, a kitchen without so much as a table, three bedrooms without so much as a single bed. He saw yet another tether strung between himself and the Hydro-Electric Power Commission.

  He has said more than once that much of the Queenston-Chippawa power project is complete, that already men are being laid off. It seems he had said it clinging to the possibility he would one day finally be free from the place. But I had not wanted to hear. “Mr. Coulson’s watching out for you,” I had said, and Tom had stayed on.

  So now there is the notebook full of tables, and I think I understand the rationale behind measurements better than he does himself. His penance for contributing to the Queenston-Chippawa power project would include making himself acutely aware of just how much damage was done, just how much he had caused his river to suffer.

  I am back in the kitchen, taking another stab at the pleats, when Tom comes in the door. “Everyone’s heard about the scow, and I was told to go home and get some sleep,” he says. “I won’t get docked for the time off.”

  “I know you go to work for me, for the boys,” I tell him. “I know we’re not an afterthought. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “I don’t want you to be afraid,” he says. He slips his arms around my waist, gently kisses my brow.

  Mrs. Ross will not come by for another hour, and I have only a small section of skirt left to iron. I would like nothing better than to set the flatiron on the trivet, gently this time, and follow Tom upstairs, but there is the hollow rap of the door knocker.

  I open the door to Mr. Coulson on the veranda, grinning, shaking his head, and then, a moment later, clapping Tom on the back. I offer tea, usher him into the kitchen—there is not yet seating for three in the living room—and thank my lucky stars the breakfast dishes are washed, even if the ironing board is set up in the middle of the room. “Quite a feat this morning,” Mr. Coulson says, taking a seat.

  “I guess,” Tom says, sitting down opposite him.

  And then the conversation continues with Mr. Coulson asking questions and Tom offering precious few words in response, until Mr. Coulson says, “I expect those two fellows told you they were under contract with us.”

  “Those men, they had no business out in that scow,” Tom says. “The only dredging they’d ever done was in some creek up in Alaska, looking for gold.”

  “We put the work to tender. We explained exactly what our requirement was. The specifics were laid out.”

  “Men are desperate. Men will say they know about tugs and scows and the river if it means a few dollars.”

  “Drury’s got a commission investigating cost overruns, and they’re breathing down my neck.”

  “Still,” Tom says, hardening his gaze. “For the sake of a few dollars the Hydro could have lost a couple of men.”

  Mr. Coulson pushes himself back from the table, from Tom. “You might want to take it up with Leslie Scott. He signed off on the work order. Dredging is his bailiwick.”

  For a split second Tom looks perplexed, but then he says, “I see.” It would have been Mrs. Coulson who told him my family spends more than the occasional evening with Kit and Leslie. Only last Saturday I had looked at the tw
o of them—Leslie with his spectacles and hollow chest, Tom with his height and rolled-up shirtsleeves—and thought what an unlikely pair they were. Even so, they were talking up plans for a campout in the glen.

  Mr. Coulson takes off his spectacles, rubs them with a handkerchief. He glances at his watch. “I’m due at the office,” he says, standing up. Then he produces a stack of notes and holds it out to Tom.

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “You risked your life. You had the wherewithal to send for a lifeline gun and then the courage to go out to the men.”

  Tom’s hands remain folded on the table.

  “Take it,” Mr. Coulson says. “Think of it as pay for a job well done. You’ve saved the Hydro a great deal of trouble. You saved the lives of two men.”

  Mr. Coulson sets the notes on the table, nudges them toward Tom.

  After Mr. Coulson leaves, with only me escorting him to the door, Tom sits still a long while, and I pick up the flatiron and do my best to turn my attention to the pleats. Eventually he picks up the notes, counts them, and then counts them again. “A hundred dollars,” he says.

  “A hundred dollars?”

  “Three weeks’ pay. Six weeks', if Mr. Coulson hadn’t decided I’m worth more to the Hydro than any other workingman.”

  “It’s generous.”

  “I’m being paid to keep my mouth shut.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say, setting the flatiron on the trivet, giving up on the pleats.

  “He practically came right out and said the Hydro would make a show of doing the right thing and sack Leslie if anyone kicked up a fuss.”

  “I think that’s a bit of a leap.”

  It has not escaped me that Tom had dangled above the Niagara River just upriver from the brink, that he had done it to save the lives of two men who had ended up there because prudence had been swept aside for the sake of profit. Still, it seems Tom, with Leslie in mind, will not publicly lay blame, and among the sensations churning in my gut there is relief. Also, there is fear, even shame, that Tom spoke so harshly to the man I have grown used to assuming would catch us if we fell. And there is something new. Doubt. Has it always been that Mr. Coulson is really only looking out for himself?