Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace

by David Adams Richards

  Ivan turned and walked out the door.

  “Well, where the hell are you going?” Antony said, still holding the oats in his hand.

  “I’m going to get Rudolf,” Ivan said.

  Antony then got agitated. “The trouble is the sleigh is there and the lumber,” Antony said.

  “The sleigh in August? He can’t haul a sleigh!”

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Antony said in a reasonable voice. “You gonna let that lumber burn –”

  “What lumber?”

  “Oh, who knows what lumber – it was just lying there.”

  “That’s Dr. Hennessey’s lumber,” Ivan said.

  Antony then took the flat of his right thumb and rubbed the inside of his right nostril, while looking with his big brown eyes at his son.

  Ivan shook his head.

  “Well – I gotta see about getting this fire fought – I can’t stand about all day looking after an old horse,” Antony said.

  Ivan went towards the door. Antony followed him and Margaret followed Antony.

  At the last moment Antony got in an argument with the forestry over how much he would be paid and decided not to trouble himself working the fire. He had lit the fire, he believed, because the night before Gordon had ignored him at the Portage Restaurant, and he felt once again outside that circle of events and people he so wished to be included into. They had all gone to the restaurant, and Antony had to sit at a corner, and ask for a knife and fork. Gordon teased him about this – and Antony kept trying to be included in the conversation about the snow-crab industry in Lemec – as if this conversation and his inclusion into it was the one important yardstick by which everything else was measured. Gordon and his friends ignored him for the most part, and Antony ordered a salad because others had also, wearing his ELVIS LIVES button on his black welder’s cap.

  The woods to the left of his grandfather’s house was dry and warm. Ivan could smell sun on his jacket and the faint tang of smoke far away.

  He walked straight through the woods and hit the road about an hour later.

  He walked along the road, stepping gingerly here and there, moving from one side to the other, looking up at the trees for a sign of wind.

  After almost an hour on the road he reached the giant puddle, where Nevin and Antony had encountered the moose the month before, and turned briskly to his right, heading through the trees. Within twenty minutes he was at the fringe of the bog. Far across the bog was the maple tree that he had fallen from.

  The sleigh was tipped over and lying on the horse’s right-hand side, with one of the runners touching the horse’s withers. It had gone off the bridge where half the lumber still sat.

  “Oats,” Ivan said.

  The woods was quiet. Some crows flew south high above him. Up in the tree he was standing under, a small grey squirrel chattered, sucked, and whistled, its body trembling.

  “Oats,” Ivan said again, shaking his head.

  Then he said, “Plus defuss” which is what Antony said whenever he was in trouble.

  “Plus defuss tout le temps,” he said, and he sat down and lit a cigarette.

  Old Rudolf had exhausted his strength trying to get back up on the bridge, trying to escape the sleigh and the stab of the runner, trying to move forward as Antony had coaxed and beaten him – first with his fist, and then with a switch he had cut, but all to no avail. Now the animal was looking gloomily about, now and again trying to bite at some deerflies.

  The water in the bog rippled with a breeze that ran from the north towards where Ivan was sitting.

  Ivan then butted his cigarette, and then, yanking the belt on his new corduroy pants tighter, he found a suitable place, and started across the bog towards the horse.

  By the time water tankers got down, the fire had cut the dirt road at two places, burning over an old burn to the left of the bog, and going away from it.

  People on the highway had already pulled over in their cars to watch the smoke, and then, as men in trucks started back towards it, they could see the first flames, fanned by a small late-summer breeze hitting the air.

  One person who saw the smoke was Vera. She was hanging out her wash, standing in heavy black shoes with red socks, and she could see the trail of smoke that whiskered up over the trees.

  But she didn’t know what it was. Adele and Ralphie, who were down to see her, told her it had to be a fire.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Couldn’t be anything else,” Adele said and then shrugged.

  Vera had invited them down because she didn’t want to be alone with Nevin – though she had not told them this. Every time Nevin said or did anything she would smile as usual, yet this smile, which was the same as always, seemed to betray everything.

  “Good,” Nevin said, when he heard the news, “I hope we all burn down.”

  Vera, in those heavy black shoes with red socks, walked across the room to open up the drapes.

  “I think it’s burning away from us anyway,” she said in a very certain voice, her cheeks fatter because of the pregnancy and her eyes squinting.

  “Well, I hope it turns around soon and starts towards us,” Nevin said.

  Ralphie then left the house, and in a few minutes they could hear him up on the roof, walking about. Nevin went outside and sat on a sawhorse in the long grass near their back shed, looking up at him.

  “Can you see it?”

  “Oh ya – it’s pretty big – want to come up?”

  Nevin smiled, jumped to his feet, walked over to the oil barrel, and went to take Ralphie’s hand – Ralphie was leaning over the roof edge, as easy as could be.

  “Na – never mind,” Nevin said, and he went and sat on the sawhorse again.

  An hour passed as Ralphie watched the sky.

  “How is it now?” Nevin asked.

  “Not too good – but I can’t tell which way it’s burning. Oh listen, here comes a water bomber. Oh look – that big pine – no, the pine behind it is burning – water bomber dropped its load too soon – no – well, here comes another one.”

  “Ah,” Nevin said, “once you’ve seen one fire, you’ve just about seen them all, I figure?”

  But already, even though he was miles away from it, Nevin was already worried about dying in it – and secretly wanted to run away.

  The sky was darkening. There was a low cloud hanging along the side of ditches on both sides of the main highway and it had the smell of burning leaves. Down the highway from Garrett’s, a moose wandered out and stood still, watching the traffic. Then it moved across and into the woods on the other side. A water bomber scared it, and it went at a run into the bushes.

  There was no thought of evacuating any houses above Garrett’s. But down below them, below Oyster River, the fire had run almost to the bridge, and three families had left their houses and were standing in their yards with water hoses.

  Antony was now standing out alongside the highway, near his yard, much the way he did in the spring when Valerie sold her worms. People pulled over in their cars to talk, and Antony would give advice.

  “Can we get down to Oak Point?”

  “Sure, just take it slow – there’s not much more than smoke. Turn your lights on – it’s not a big fire – just a little one. A lot a smoke – the wind’s sinful though.”

  Then a forestry half-ton pulled up and the driver said in a joyful voice that fires sometimes give people, “You coming with us, Antony?”

  “No, I got sore feet,” Antony said. “I worked all night.”

  “You probably lit her, did you?” the young boy on the passenger side said as a joke. But Antony glared at him with a terrible ferociousness, and the boy looked guiltily out of the cab window.

  “Don’t say that on this side of the river,” Antony said, because the youngster was from Napan. “Save that there talk for Black River – right, Terry?” he said to the driver.

  After the truck left he hobbled back into his yard, picked up the same block of wo
od he had picked up two months earlier, and threw it into the bushes. Then he walked into the shed. He sat down among his few yapping foxes and drank, looking at Rudolf’s old shoes.

  Still everything was going normally at Vera’s. Even little Cora and Rosie showed up for their piano lesson, just as they were scheduled.

  “You can’t give them piano lessons,” Nevin said. He was getting more and more agitated.

  However the little girls were seated across from each other in the piano room, hiding their hands. And Vera was walking about, with the scissors.

  “Who’s first?” she said.

  “Cora,” Rosie said.

  “Rosie,” Cora said.

  “I’ll go first,” Rosie said, holding out her fingers.

  “No, I will,” Cora said, holding out hers.

  And Vera looked from one to the other, snipping the air with her pair of scissors.

  “You,” Vera said to Cora, grabbing her left hand and cutting her nails. “Now the right.”

  After Cora was done she walked about the room, something like a little disembodied soul, looking at her fingers to see how close the nails had been clipped, while Rosie, whose operation had not yet begun, cringed and closed her eyes.

  Every time Nevin went outside he smelled smoke, saw the darkening air, looked at the bay water, which looked sludgy and white, and felt that none of them were doing the right things. They should all be going somewhere.

  He walked outside and shouted up at Ralphie: “How is it, now –”

  “I don’t know – it hasn’t crossed the road yet.”

  “Well, I want to take some things out of the house.”

  “Where will you put them?”

  “We’ll pile them in the field. Come on, snap to it, let’s go.”

  And Ralphie stood, walked across the roof as if he were wearing some type of magnets on his boots, and grabbed on to the eaves, and swung down onto the oil barrel.

  When they walked inside, the tick, tick could be heard from the metronome, and every now and then Vera would slap a page with her pointer.

  “Da, da, da,” she would say. “Listen.” And, standing above the little girls, and playing with the fingers of her right hand, she would show them where they were getting mixed up.

  “We’re taking the piano,” Nevin said, coming into the music room. “Everyone out.”

  And with that Nevin started his day of panic and alarm, which for the life of him he could not control, and like all panic-stricken people he was propelled by some force to start panic in others.

  Ivan had now climbed upon Rudolf’s back and slid forward to its head, trying to unhook the sleigh as he did so, his pants soaked in mud.

  The old horse, with its bobbed tail, old studded collar, and twisted blinkers, with two tiny Canadian flags sticking from them, looked back at him. It put its ears back, as Ivan urged it forward, while deerflies and mooseflies landed in the sores the old studded collar had made.

  Rudolf, as always, tried to obey, as it did when it hauled thirty kids up the snowy roads, with antlers stuck upon its head, and icicles growing on its mouth, while every time it slipped on its uncleated shoes, the children would roar and laugh, and Santa would slap it forward with a switch.

  But when Ivan kicked it, it didn’t even bother to move. The sleigh was sideways, the wiffle tree jarred, and its left hind leg was caught. Taking the straps off did not free the animal, as Ivan found out.

  “Son of a bitch,” he thought, scratching his hands, and getting up on the old bridge to have the advantage of looking into the water. Still he could not tell much of what was going on.

  Ivan saw where Antony had made a frantic effort to turn back in the middle of the bridge, but the horse had tried to plod on to cross in time.

  “Son of a whore – you’re smarter than the old man,” Ivan said, while large inch-long mooseflies landed on the back of the horse’s ears and on the old scars made from the straps. The horse shook his head, and looked around when Ivan spoke to him. Then he sighed one of those plaintive horse sighs, and lowered his head and sucked some water.

  “Well – I’m going – I can’t be expected to stay here – I’ve got Sudbury to think of,” Ivan said.

  Ivan got almost two hundred yards away, and waited. The horse was very small. His head was down, and every now and then he looked over at him calmly, as if to see where he was.

  Ivan lit a cigarette and kept batting the flies from his head. He’d grab deerflies out of the air with his right hand and crush them, saying: “How do you like me now, you cocksucker?”

  Then he said to the horse: “I’m not going back to you – so you don’t have to look in this direction, because I’m on my way to Sudbury – take a piece of ass on the train for once.” He then butted his cigarette, though he didn’t know why, since the fire Antony had started was burning right towards him.

  The horse simply looked his way and when it moved its head its two silver bells jingled. Ivan sighed and scratched his ear. Then, taking his hands and rubbing mud off his new corduroy pants, he walked into the water, and back towards the horse.

  Reaching the animal once more, he began packing the horse’s hide with mud to keep the flies away from it.

  Just then, the top part of the bridge, which was dry as shredded tar paper, caught on fire.

  “Ah, you motherfucker,” he said, and, taking off his jacket and soaking it in water, he climbed atop the bridge and began beating down the flames, now and then kicking at the rotted planking with his feet.

  It was after one in the afternoon. The giant maple waved in the distance, as flecks of ash-coloured sunlight filtered dazzlingly through its boughs. The first things to catch on fire were the nettles beneath it, which served as a springboard for this whole section of woods. Ivan tried to calm his growing fear and instinctively stuck close to the animal next to him.

  There were other people who were surprised by the fire. Ruby Madgill was one. She had brushed Tantramar, turned him out, brought him in, and groomed him completely, and then saddled him ready to go for a ride. When she got into the saddle she looked up and saw the smoke.

  “Where you going?” Lloyd said.

  “I’m riding over to the house,” she answered, holding the reins tight so that Tantramar continued to back as Lloyd spoke.

  “Well, don’t go too far – look at the fire.”

  “Ah, for Christ’s sake,” she said.

  And she slapped the horse with a crop and he broke into a fast trot, leaning right, out of the paddock.

  Ruby was very upset with everyone these last three weeks. She tormented Lloyd. She came in at three in the morning and slept until noon – and the meticulous care of her horse this morning was just a part of the common thread of her dissatisfaction with the summer, her anger at Dorval Gene, and her refusal to look Armand Savard in the eye, when they passed each other on the road in their cars.

  Off she rode to see her house. The day was very bright and the sky was glossy blue in the distance.

  Ruby had hoped the fire would destroy her new house, but she had no such luck.

  “It’s likely I’ll be living in the fucking thing yet,” she said looking at it. “What a cocksuckin monstrosity you are – ninety thousand dollars worth of brick shit-house if you ask me!”

  The trouble was she couldn’t find the fire at all, and wearing her tight breeches, and high English-style riding boots, she rose and fell on the saddle, hoping that the fire would come out and destroy something so she could see it.

  But there were only some puffs of smoke in the distant sky, and the leaves at the edge of the field were turning golden by the late-August nights. There was a smell of fall in the air.

  She brought her right foot out of the stirrup and hooked it over the saddle, and taking an orange from her pocket, peeled it with her long fingernails, sucking at it as she did, and, looking towards the trees, rested the crop between her legs.

  Now a column of smoke plummeted towards the south, far above her hea
d – and a new, darker smoke billowed inside the greyish cloud.

  She looked at it and sniffed the wind, found the stirrup, and holding the reins tight, jabbed the horse softly, so that Tantramar, already glossy with sweat, moved backwards, the sound of its hooves sharp on the stones beneath it.

  Ruby kept backing the horse up, until it turned on the right lead and began to canter about the property, its head high because of her contact on the reins, and its black coat as glossy as the saddle beneath her. Because its head was held so high it stepped on loose boards and planks, and cut its right hoof on a chip of cement that had a nail embedded in it.

  She kept riding the horse like this, for twenty minutes, hitting it with the crop each time it slowed its pace, and surveying her property. After a while, she brought the horse back to a walk, and looked behind her with her hand on the horse’s rump. She saw a tuft of bright green grass just below her bedroom window. “I love you as the grass is green,” she remembered Missle Ryan say. “I love you as the grass is green,” she said now, to no one, it seemed, but the horse’s rump.

  Then she went home, and not bothering to unsaddle or cool down the animal, left it in its stall, walked into the house, and sat in Big Clay’s cold black-leather chair in the den, with his gun collection in the rack behind her beautiful head, and tears in her eyes.

  Cindi had gone with her mother to the station, leaving a note that she would meet Ivan there, and writing that she had taken all the bags, in her scrawl that was unreadable because she had never gotten over the habit that when she crossed a t, she crossed out the whole word. So the note was posted on the door, the cupboards opened, and the bathroom light left on.

  And there, at the station, she began her wait in her new pantsuit, with the Elizabethan-collared blouse with long white sleeves, holding her gigantic house-plant on her lap, every now and then peering through it when the door opened, and blinking her albino-coloured eyelashes.

  Nevin had lost control of himself completely and was terrorizing everyone. He had moved all of the furniture into the middle of the field, and waving a stick and shouting, made the little girls, who were sitting hugging each other, shake like leaves.