The Signal Flame

by Andrew Krivak

  Where are you going? Ruth asked.

  Out to the barn.

  Can I go?

  Sure, Hannah said, and pointed to a bench by the door. You can slip on my gardening boots there and grab that basket.

  The morning air was warm, though it was not quite six-thirty. They walked through the orchard, where the smell of rotting ground apples that had fallen early mixed with the smell of weed pollen. Ruth seemed to want to walk fast but was laboring to do so, and Hannah asked how she was feeling.

  Better, Ruth said. Just stiff from sleeping. And hungry now, too.

  We’ll take care of both of those, Hannah said.

  Inside the barn she turned on the light and showed Ruth where they kept the feed for the cow. Take a handful, she said, and drop it in that pail of hers. She’ll eat.

  Do you milk her?

  Not anymore. You’re standing in the cow equivalent of a retirement home. The next stop for her’s that great big pasture in the sky.

  That’s sad, Ruth said.

  Why? She’s had a good life.

  How old is she?

  My father bought her a year after Becks died, so she’s getting close to twenty. We had a couple of cows then, and a bull. We got all our milk right here. But you’ve got to keep them calving, otherwise they stop. Hannah patted Miss Wayne. This old girl is the last one left.

  They went into the chicken coop and Hannah opened the cages and let them out into the yard. Two flew at each other and broke off. The rest set to scratching in the grass.

  You just leave them? Ruth asked. Like the ones I saw the other day?

  Same ones. I’ll put them back into the coop before we leave later.

  Why don’t they fly away?

  I suppose they would if they could. But they know where the food is. And where the hawks and raccoons are not. Krasna helps, too. I remember when that dog was a puppy and she came racing past me on her way to the henhouse and caught up a new pullet right in her mouth. Mr. Vinich walloped her so hard she never went after a chicken with an open mouth again.

  Hannah reached into a nest box and pulled out an egg. Bring that basket, she said. Ruth walked over and held out the basket and Hannah placed the egg inside. You can check all of those boxes and see what you find, she said to Ruth. There should be an egg or two in each one.

  There were five nest boxes and Ruth got four eggs. A black-and-white-speckled hen came back in from the yard and clucked around her feet.

  That’s Celeste, Hannah said. She’s my favorite. She and Miss Wayne are on the same plan. Hannah reached down and picked up the hen and stroked her along the back and the hen let her. Ruth put the basket on the ground and held out her arms and Hannah put Celeste into them, Ruth gathering up the hen and petting her in the same way.

  Looks like you made another friend, Hannah said.

  After breakfast they went upstairs to Hannah’s room and took from her wardrobe two more dresses, three blouses, and a pair of Lee jeans Hannah said she had bought back when a woman would not be caught dead in jeans. Then she rummaged around in the corner of the closet until she came up with a pair of brown Frye harness boots. Size nine, right?

  Ruth nodded and took the boots. Where did you get these? she asked.

  I bought them right here in Dardan a few years ago. I used to wear them, too. They’re nice and broken in. Hannah reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of socks and tossed them to Ruth. Put them on, she said.

  Ruth put on the socks and boots and stood with her hands on her hips and her head turned to one side. How do I look?

  Like you missed your call.

  Ruth laughed. No, she said, and gathered up the clothes. I didn’t.

  The two of them walked down the hall to Ruth’s room and hung up the dresses in the empty closet. Ruth sat on the bed and bent down to take the boots off, and Hannah said, Keep those on. There’s someplace I want to take you.

  They had another coffee in the kitchen while Hannah packed a picnic basket with some sandwiches, banana bread, and a thermos of tea. Then they went outside and locked the chickens back in the coop and got in the Dart and drove west, out past the lake and farther into the mountains, where Hannah turned onto a back road that crossed over a large freestone stream and wound up and into hills with which Ruth was unfamiliar, until they came to a farm that looked as though it had been dropped down onto those hills from above. Corn grew in green and yellow rows across the rolling field, and there was a modest two-story farmhouse at the end of the drive where Hannah stopped the car. Beyond that there were two barns, one of wood and painted red, and another that looked like a stone cabin from another century to which was attached a long light-framed shed.

  A man with silver hair and wearing brown overalls came out of the red barn and walked over to the car. Hannah got out and the man said, Hannah Konar, I have not seen you in a blue moon.

  She held out her hand and the man pulled her in close and hugged her, then held her by the shoulders and said, I missed seeing your father around here in the spring. Have you been faring all right?

  As well as can be, Virgil.

  Well, you have made my day. And who is this pretty little thing? he said, turning to Ruth.

  Hannah said, This is Ruth Younger, Virgil. She’s staying with us for a while.

  Hannah waited to see if the Younger name registered any sign of recognition on the man’s face. If it did, he was polite enough not to show it. He stepped over to Ruth and took her hand and said, I am pleased to meet you, Ruth Younger.

  And Hannah said, Ruth, this is Virgil Kravits. The man with the chickens.

  I’ve been called worse, Virgil said. What brings you two girls around?

  We came to see you about some started pullets. We’d like to get the flock back up to twelve.

  Got some nice healthy ones. Barred Rocks, I think you have. Don’t you?

  Yes, Hannah said.

  Any cockerels?

  No. Just hens.

  All right. And how many will get you back up to twelve, as you say?

  Seven.

  He nodded. You still got Celeste, don’t you? You were always partial to her, I could tell.

  Hannah smiled and said, Partial to the underdog.

  Underdog, he said, and laughed. He turned to Ruth. Been like that ever since she was a girl and her daddy brought her out here to buy some chicks. She left with some babies, all right, but she had convinced her father to take two hens who had their feathers bit and their eyes about scratched out. Rosemarie had them slated for the pot that night, and I had to tell her Hannah Konar came by and rescued them. So we had vegetable soup for dinner.

  They had walked away from the barn and toward the stone house, where they entered and were descended upon by the din of hundreds of chickens and roosters squawking and clucking, so that Ruth backed up and put her hands to her ears. Hannah waved for her to follow, and they went through a door into the wooden shed and over to a sink, where there was a bar of lye soap in a metal dish bolted to the wall, and they all three washed their hands and shook them dry.

  The noise was lessened in there, though higher-pitched, and there were fenced-off areas of smaller, thinner-feathered chickens running around feeding troughs and watering pans.

  These here are the pullet cages, Virgil said just below a shout. I got some Barred Rocks right over there, Hannah. Let’s go and pick out your seven.

  They walked to the front of a six-foot-by-six-foot pen, where several small chickens strutted around and pecked through scratch and wood shavings on the floor. Hannah watched them and the man waited, and then she started to point to the ones she wanted, and he nodded and said, Done. I’ll have George bring them over to you tomorrow in the truck. We’ve got to do a few errands in Dardan.

  He took the women out through a door at the far end of the shed and they stood in a dirt yard that backed up onto one of the cornfields.

  I’ll put some feed and grit in with that order, too, Virgil said. And don’t forget to keep the new ones sepa
rated from the older girls until they all get used to each other. Otherwise you’re going to be breaking up fights. Or worse.

  Will do, Virgil, Hannah said. Tell George he can come around whenever it’s convenient for him.

  Virgil held out his hand and he and Hannah shook. Then Virgil turned to Ruth and said, It was nice to meet you, young lady. You enjoy those chickens, hear?

  Ruth thanked him, and she and Hannah walked back down the drive to the car.

  You do that every year? Ruth asked.

  Used to. In the spring. But I’ve been wanting to get some new hens. And started pullets are easier than chicks.

  How do you know he’ll bring you exactly the ones you pointed to?

  Hannah shrugged. He just will. That man was raising chicks three days before water flowed. Besides, it doesn’t really matter which ones I pointed to and which ones he brings. There’ll be seven Barred Rocks from that pen. The selection is a kind of ritual we go through. We have ever since I was a girl and my father brought me here. He had me convinced that every chick I pointed to was one that wanted nothing more than to be with me on our farm.

  It was close to twelve as they drove down the mountain and around the bend that dead-ended at the lake. Hannah took the shore road going east past the parking lot of a restaurant called the Sunset, a white shack with a neon sign on the front that said PIZZA. It sat alone in a dirt parking lot dotted with boat trailers next to a launch ramp and the marina, which was no more than a few slips on a marsh with a narrow cut for access to the open water. Hannah drove over an old stone bridge and kept going along the lake road into more forested terrain, a few summer shacks built back against the hillside, and then there was just road, tall trees, and the dark green water of the lake, into which an occasional dock jutted out from the shore.

  When they got to Asa Pound’s place, Hannah pulled over on the opposite side of the road and parked under the shade of a broad white pine. She reached into the backseat, where she had put the picnic basket and some towels, and they got out and walked across the road and down the steps cut into the bank that led to the lakeside and the dock. They walked to the end of it and sat down in two Adirondack chairs.

  You know whose place this is? Hannah asked.

  Ruth nodded. Sam told me about Will once when we were driving past.

  Hannah pulled one of the chairs closer to the edge of the water and said, I haven’t seen Asa out here since his son died. And yet every spring these Adirondacks come out. And every fall they disappear.

  She dropped the towels and the picnic basket on the boards and watched a pair of mallards swim toward the dock, dive and come back up, then move along the edge of the lake in the direction of the breeze.

  Becks and I used to come out here on hot days in the summer before we were even married. That was the late thirties. We’d swim all day and collapse on this dock and wake up shivering and mosquito-bit because the sun had gone down. My father would be mad as hell when we got back to the house, but I knew he envied us. That freedom just to be young.

  Hannah opened the picnic basket and took out the thermos of iced tea, sandwiches, and banana bread, and she and Ruth drank and ate and threw the crumbs in to the ducks, who had come around for a second pass.

  When they were done, Hannah said, I never believed that nonsense of waiting an hour before you swim. There won’t be enough sun to warm a stone around here in an hour.

  She pulled her dress over her head and slipped out of her bra and underpants and jumped into the water, surfaced, and yelled to Ruth, You better hurry! It’s not getting any warmer.

  Ruth turned around and took off her dress and underwear, slid her hand through her hair as though she had more of it than she did, and turned back to the water and jumped in. Hannah had already begun to swim out, but she waited as Ruth stroked toward her. When they were side by side they swam away from the dock through patches of warm and cold, where currents from the deeper part of the lake rose toward the surface and then slid back into the dark of it. They settled into longer, more powerful strides as they went, Ruth letting her ears fill with water each time she turned for air, so she felt as though she were swimming deaf to all but Hannah Konar’s strong and gently knifing splash across the deep lake, until they reached the middle and Hannah stopped and treaded water, then pointed to a place off in the distance. Ruth turned and could see a worn rock peak that rose out of the forest of hardwoods like an old watch cap on the head of a solitary man just before he hunched down into his shoulders and disappeared.

  It was Solace Mountain, Hannah told her, a mountain tucked so deeply in among the others surrounding it that it could be seen unobstructed only from the middle of the lake.

  Ruth stared at the distant hill. Her teeth chattered and she worked her arms and legs in the water and said, Sam and I were going to climb it that summer he got arrested. That night was the last time I was out here. Seems a shame now.

  Hannah nodded and lifted her chin as though to point in the direction of the dock and said, Let’s get back.

  The sun was still high when they climbed out of the water, and they sat wrapped in towels in their chairs for a long time with their faces turned in that direction.

  When they had stopped shivering, Hannah said, I’m sorry if coming out here has got you thinking about Sam all over again. I could tell when we drove past the Sunset. You were looking in there like it was the last place you wanted to visit.

  Ruth peered out of the fold of her towel at Hannah and was struck not for the first time at how much Sam resembled his mother.

  No more or less than any other, she said. I’m just trying to keep it all together so you don’t think I’m some kind of flower girl who was too delicate for your son.

  I don’t think that, Hannah said.

  Ruth got up and pulled her chair closer to the water and sat back down. She stared out into the lake and smiled and said, That’s what I thought when I said more than two words to him. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him, and we exchanged glances, you know, the way high school kids do. But that fall I had become a cheerleader because a friend of mine, Janey Landis, was on the squad. And after a practice where the coach had been yelling at everyone to look at Konar, Konar did it right, Konar gave his all, the team came charging off the field into the locker room and I wasn’t looking where I was going. Sam crashed right into me. Knocked me down. It wasn’t that hard, but he was strong. I stood up before he could help me, and said, Wow, now I know how the other guys feel. He gave me that wink of his and said, No, you don’t, and ran into the locker room. I remember thinking Sam Konar could probably do whatever he wanted to do in this world, and I wondered what that was like.

  Hannah stared down at the bleached-out cedar planks of the dock and said, I could tell whenever he’d been with you. He had a look. A calm look. Like he’d found an answer to some question that had been bothering him.

  But it bothered you, Ruth said.

  Hannah shifted in her chair and looked up. Sometimes. Yes, she said. The funny thing about raising boys, Ruth, is that they’re so easy to get so close to for so long. It’s like their heads have a gear in them that always makes them turn back to find out where their mother is. No matter what they’re doing or where. Then one day that gear shifts and they look elsewhere. They know you’re there, but they’re moving in a different direction for a different reason. Whatever reason it is they’ve chosen. And Sam chose you.

  But didn’t Bo get you used to that?

  Bo had this sweetheart at college who died while she was home on winter break. That became the reason he never left Dardan, I guess. But Sam was different. He wanted to move from day one. And I knew that gear was going to shift fast. It’s just— Well, no. I didn’t get used to it. You never get used to it.

  The breeze had died, and the last of the sun was at their backs so they were warm sitting on the dock now.

  Ruth said, That mountain got me thinking all of a sudden about the night Sam raced that boy from Williamsport, becau
se I swear we were going to climb it the very next day. Did he ever tell you the story? About the race? It wasn’t like what the cops said.

  No, Hannah said, and shook her head. He never told me.

  Must have been that gear had shifted, huh?

  Hannah nodded. Must have been.

  Ruth told her how, on that night in June 1967, when Sam had just graduated high school and turned eighteen, he and Ruth were celebrating at the Sunset with some friends. It was about nine o’clock and a guy no one had ever seen pulled into the parking lot in a brand-new Barracuda 383. He walked into the restaurant and started hitting on Ruth as though no one else were in there. Sam stood up and told the guy to leave. The place got quiet, like there was going to be a fight, and then Sam looked out at the car—red and chrome and catching the glare of the streetlights—and said, Why don’t we race for her?

  The guy thought he meant Ruth, but Sam said, No, the car.

  The guy sat down as though thinking hard about whether Sam Konar’s 426 Hemi was worth it. I win and I get your Dodge? he said, and Sam asked what was under the hood of the Plymouth. The guy told him it was a four-barrel, which Sam already knew, but he opened his eyes wide and said, Your driveway will look like a Mopar ad.

  And then they were all out on the road where those races happened, a quarter-mile stretch along the creek that flowed out of the lake. The drivers started at the bottom when a spotter at the top gave the signal that there was no traffic coming, and they raced on the slight uphill that drifted gently to the right and then flattened out for the last hundred yards. Ruth was the flagger and the Barracuda jumped the start, but Sam had guessed he would and let him go and watched the car head into the bend too fast, fishtail, and slow just enough for Sam to sprint past and win by a hood length.

  There was a lot of shouting and threatening in the air, and the guy who drove the Barracuda insisted on two more runs, best out of three, saying that where he was from, no one bet a car like that on one race. Sam grinned his boyish grin and said, Well then, you’d better go back to where you’re from and think hard about what’s yours and what’s not before you open your mouth again.