Crow Lake

by Mary Lawson

  That awful year, as every year, I walked to school each day along the railroad tracks. It was the shortest route; the road meandered around, while the railroad tracks ran straight. In fact the straightness of them amazes me now, though I never gave it a thought as a child. When the crew building the railroad came to an obstacle, they blasted their way through it or hacked it down or filled it in or built a bridge over it, whatever was called for.

  I have seen old photographs of those men and they don’t look like heroes. They are leaning on their picks, their hats shoved back on their heads, grinning at the camera with mouthfuls of bad teeth. Most of them look to be on the small side, lean to the point of skinniness, their muscles corded and stringy rather than bulging out of their shirts. Quite a few look as if they didn’t have enough to eat when they were growing up. But they must have had huge stamina and endurance, no doubt about that.

  The path they cut was three or four times wider than the tracks themselves, and over the years it had filled itself with wildflowers and grasses—fireweed and milkweed, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace, harebell and goat’s beard—so that I walked along the rails each morning as if walking through a meadow. By September everything was in seed. The seed heads shook their contents over you as you passed and the burrs clung to your clothes. Some days thousands of milkweed pods would burst open together, triggered by the heat of the sun; thousands and thousands of small silent explosions repeating themselves in salvos down the miles of tracks. On those days I walked through clouds of silken down drifting about like smoke in the morning breeze.

  I passed through all of this as if I were sleepwalking. I was conscious of it but I did not really see it. At school it was the same; Miss Carrington would lecture us on arithmetic or grammar or history or geography, and I would sit, politely attentive, and take in not a single word. I would be watching the dust motes, perhaps, as they hung in the broad bands of sunlight that slanted through the classroom windows. Or I’d be listening to the thunder of the sugar beets as they were loaded into hopper cars, ready for their trip south. The railroad tracks ran past the bottom of the schoolyard, and the siding where the hopper cars waited their turn to be loaded was directly opposite the school. The weigh scales were there, and the hopper itself—a dilapidated wooden structure shaped like an inverted pyramid—and the long metal and rubber arm of the conveyor belt, which stuck up into the air at an angle and could be swung out over the hopper cars. All through September trucks from the farms would jolt along the rutted path beside the tracks and dump their loads of beets into the hopper with a roar which brought Miss Carrington to a standstill. And then the conveyor belt would be switched on and the beets would start to drop, first one at a time and then in a steady rumble, into the huge hollow drum of a hopper car. In other years, after the first week or so back at school I hadn’t noticed the noise much; we all grew up with that roar, and like the sound of the waves it took its place as part of the background to our lives. That September though, there seemed to be something hypnotic about it. I listened, fascinated, and the dull, heavy rumble seemed to sink into my soul.

  Miss Carrington came home with me. She said, “May I walk home with you Kate? It’s been a while since I saw those handsome brothers of yours. Do you suppose they’d mind if I dropped in?”

  It must have been early October by then. The days were still warm but the evenings were cool and the dark came quickly.

  I didn’t take Miss Carrington along the railroad tracks because she was wearing a long skirt and I thought she’d never get the burrs out of it. We walked home the proper way, along the road, though it took longer and was very dusty. She talked about her home, which was another farming community, though larger and not as remote as ours. She’d lived in a big farmhouse and they’d had a horse.

  She said, “I have brothers too—in fact I have three. But no sister. You’re ahead of me there.”

  She smiled down at me. Her hair was pulled back loosely and tied with a plain blue ribbon. She was tall and thin and her face was too long to be called pretty, but she had nice eyes. They were large and very dark brown, and her hair was brown too, and on sunny days it had red and gold lights in it.

  Luke and Bo were out at the side of the house when we came down the drive, hanging out laundry though it was late and the sun was already losing its heat. Matt was not home yet—the bus dropped him off at the end of the road about four o’clock. Luke stopped when he saw Miss Carrington. He left a diaper hanging by one peg, picked Bo up, and came to meet us. The diaper didn’t look very clean. There were stains on it, and it was a long way off white.

  Miss Carrington said, “Hello Luke. I hope you don’t mind. I just came to see how you were getting on.”

  Luke looked embarrassed. He didn’t like Miss Carrington seeing him doing diapers. He said, “Um, fine, thanks. I’m a bit behind… .” He gestured at the laundry. “I meant to get it out this morning, but Bo was into everything.”

  He was always late hanging out the diapers. They were his least favourite job and he put off doing them all day.

  He put Bo down but she whined and started climbing his trouser leg so he picked her up again. He ran his free hand through his hair and said, “Anyway, would you like a drink or something?” He looked vaguely toward the house.

  “No no,” Miss Carrington said. “I’m not staying. I just wondered how you were making out.”

  Luke nodded. “Fine thanks. It’s going okay” He hesitated. “But look, come in and sit down for a bit. It’s hot out here. You must want a drink of something. There’s, um … tea.”

  “A glass of water,” Miss Carrington said. “A glass of water would be lovely. But I won’t come in. I only wanted to see how you were doing and to have a quick word about something.”

  “Oh,” Luke said, looking at her. “Oh. Right. Um, Kate, would you get Miss Carrington a glass of water? You … um … might have to wash a glass.”

  I went up to the house. It was a mess. The kitchen was the worst; there were dirty plates and cups all over the counter and bits of food lying around. At some stage Bo had pulled all the pots and pans out of the bottom cupboards and you had to pick your way through them to get at anything. I found a glass and washed it under the tap and then filled it with cold water and took it back out. Milk had dried in it and there was still a white circle at the bottom, but I hoped Miss Carrington wouldn’t notice.

  She and Luke were talking. Luke was still holding Bo; she was sucking her thumb and clutching a clothespin in the same hand. The clothespin was digging into her cheek, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was giving Miss Carrington her narrow-eyed look, but Miss Carrington was concentrating on what Luke was saying. He was asking her a question. Something about Dr. Christopherson.

  “I don’t think so,” Miss Carrington said. “I doubt there’s much he could do, quite honestly. I think it’s probably just a matter of time. I just think we should keep in touch. You know, monitor the progress… .”

  She saw me coming with her glass of water and smiled at me. “Thank you Kate. That’s just the ticket.”

  “Joos,” Bo said, reaching for the glass.

  “Could you take her, Kate?” Luke said. “Could you get her a drink and a piece of bread or something? She didn’t have much lunch.”

  He passed Bo down to me, and I staggered under her weight. She took her thumb out and grinned at me. “KatieKatieKate,” she said, and showed me her clothespin.

  I carried her into the house and got her some juice. Then I got some bread out of the breadbox and cut a slice.

  “Here’s some bread, Bo.”

  She took the bread and examined it suspiciously. I went over to the window. Luke and Miss Carrington were still talking. It was after four, but Matt still wasn’t home. Whenever the school bus was late I started imagining accidents—another logging truck, the bus on its side, bodies, Matt lying dead. But suddenly, there he was, coming down the drive, his books under his arm. He’d seen Luke and Miss Carrington and went over to
join them. I saw Miss Carrington turn and smile at him and wait for him to come up. She looked strange beside them. It was hard to believe she’d been their teacher; they were both much bigger than she was, especially Luke, and she didn’t look all that much older than they were.

  She said something to Matt, and he nodded. He watched her face while she spoke and then looked at the ground. He shifted his books to his other arm, nodding slowly, head down. Miss Carrington made a little gesture with her hands, and he looked at her and gave a faint smile. Matt’s face was the most familiar thing in my universe; it was the hint of anxiety in his smile that made me suspect that they were talking about me. What were they saying? Had I done something wrong in class? My stomach contracted with dread. Miss Carrington had reproved me, gently, several times, for not paying attention. Was that it? Luke wouldn’t care—he’d never been a great one for paying attention himself. But Matt … I wasn’t afraid that he would be cross with me, but I was very afraid of disappointing him, or of not being as clever as he wanted me to be.

  Miss Carrington said something else and they both looked at her and then both said something in reply, and she smiled and turned and walked off up the drive. Matt and Luke came toward the house, talking, their heads down.

  “Anyway, I’d better get to the store. I’m late already,” Luke said as they came in. “Could you finish hanging out the diapers? She caught me in the middle of it.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Matt dropped his books on the table and smiled at me and Bo. “Hi ladies,” he said. “How was the day?”

  Bo was breaking chunks off the bread and pushing them into her mouth. Her chin worked up and down, chewing busily, but she beamed at Matt and waved a crust at him. Crumbs of bread trickled down her front onto the floor.

  “I’m off,” Luke said. He took the car keys from the windowsill and went out, letting the door bang behind him.

  Matt leaned against the door frame, surveying the mess. After a minute he said, “I’ll tell you what the problem is, ladies. The problem is that Bo here is better at making a mess than Luke is at cleaning it up. That is the problem in a nutshell.”

  He made it sound like a joke, but the chaos bothered him. I think he saw it as symbolic; the mess the house was in reflected the mess our lives were in. It gave weight to his fear that Luke’s grand plan wasn’t going to work. Luke didn’t see it like that. As far as he was concerned, a mess was a mess and so what?

  But I didn’t care about any of that at the moment.

  I said, “What did Miss Carrington want?”

  “Oh, she just wondered how we were doing. You know, like everyone does. It was nice of her to come all this way, wasn’t it?”

  He started picking up the saucepans, wiping the dirt off their bases with his hand before stacking them inside each other.

  “Did she talk about me?”

  “Sure. She talked about all of us.”

  “Yes, but specially about me? What did she say about me?”

  My mouth was quivering. I tried to press my lips together, but still it quivered. Matt looked at me carefully, put the saucepans down on the counter, stepped over to me—circumventing Bo, who was mashing crumbs into the floor with her toe—and tugged reprovingly on one of my braids.

  “Hey. What are you getting upset for? She didn’t say anything bad about you.”

  “But what?”

  He suppressed a sigh, and I was afraid that on top of everything else I was making him more tired and more unhappy than he already was.

  “She said you were kind of quiet sometimes, Katie. That was all, okay? And that’s not bad. There’s nothing wrong with being quiet. In fact it’s good. I like quiet women.” He frowned at Bo. “Are you listening, Bo? I like quiet women. It’s the loud ones that drive you crazy.”

  At night I lay in bed and listened to the cries of the snow geese as they passed overhead. Day and night they flew, tens of thousands of them, trailing their long ragged V-shapes across the sky, urging each other on with their harsh, sad cries. Leaving us for the winter.

  I think it was around that time that there was a fight in the schoolyard. There were frequently fights in the schoolyard, boys being boys, but this one was more savage than usual.

  It took place in the belt of trees that formed the boundary of the school property, out beyond the sand-burr-studded dust the boys used as a baseball diamond. If it had been out in the open Miss Carrington would have spotted it sooner and put a stop to it. As it was, awareness spread slowly. The boys were playing baseball at the time; several of them noticed that something was going on and sloped off to watch. Their movement was noticed by the older girls, who had been clustered together at the corner of the school, watching the boys from a distance, and who stopped talking and stood looking toward the trees. They in turn were noticed by a few of the younger girls, who were playing double Dutch on the small paved area at the bottom of the school steps, and finally by Miss Carrington, who was sitting on the steps marking spellings and was suddenly arrested by the silence.

  She stood up and looked over at the trees for a moment and then began walking quickly toward them. A boy emerged, running. We saw him gesturing and Miss Carrington broke into a run, her long skirt flapping. And then she disappeared into the trees, and we all stood, waiting, not knowing what was going on.

  Then Miss Carrington reappeared, striding toward the school, accompanied by two boys who were half-carrying, half-dragging a third. The third was covered in blood. It was running from his nose, from his mouth, from his ear, running down his neck, soaking his shirt. Miss Carrington strode past us, white-faced. She said, “Bring him in,” to the boys, and went into the school. The injured boy was Alex Kirby, a farm boy and a prize bully.

  The rest of the boys arrived, glancing back over their shoulders at a straggler, who walked slowly, stiffly, and who also had blood on him. Their expressions were slightly awed, slightly alarmed. The straggler was Laurie Pye.

  The other boys crowded around the step with the girls. Laurie stopped a little way off. I watched him. I was standing by the wall, where I’d been all along, watching the other girls skip. (Watching was all I did that year. Rosie Pye had been standing by the wall too— watching was all Rosie had ever done, but our isolation had not formed a bond between us.)

  Laurie’s nose was bloody and the knuckles of his right hand were split. He stood for a minute or two, looking at the crowd around the step without any expression. Rosie was looking at him, her face as expressionless as his, but he didn’t notice her.

  Then he must have become aware of his hand because he looked at it, and in doing so caught sight of his shirt, which was practically hanging off him. It had torn right down the side seam and partway across the back. He lifted it out from himself, turning slightly, examining the damage, and I saw his back and side, his ribs like a washboard. There were marks on his back. Small curved marks like little horseshoes. Some were bluish red and stood out from the skin, and some were white and faded and flat. His back was covered with them, all the same shape, like a U on its side. Then Laurie pieced the edges of the seam together and tucked the shirt into his jeans, awkwardly, not using his right hand, and you couldn’t see the marks any more.

  He’d just finished when Miss Carrington appeared. She stood in the doorway, looking at him, and then seemed to become aware of the rest of us. “You’re dismissed,” she said to us. “You can go home. Alex is all right—the doctor’s coming. You can all go home.”

  Then she looked past us at Laurie again. She looked worried. I don’t imagine Laurie had been involved in a fight before. He was not popular with the other boys, but they’d avoided him rather than picking on him. As I say, there was something about his eyes.

  Miss Carrington said, “Come in, Laurie. I want to talk to you.”

  Laurie turned around and walked away.

  I don’t know what the fight was about, though I’ve no doubt Alex Kirby started it. He suffered a broken nose and his left ear was partly torn off. He was back at sch
ool the next day, with gruesome black stitches holding his ear on.

  Laurie didn’t come back at all.

  As for what I had seen—well, I didn’t know what they were, those small horseshoes. They had no meaning, no significance. Even if I’d known what was going on at the Pyes’ farm that autumn, I doubt if I’d have put two and two together. I wasn’t taking much in, that year.

  So I didn’t mention the marks to anyone. And of course there’s no way of knowing if it would have made any difference if I had.

  chapter

  TWELVE

  Sunday October 11th

  Dear Aunt Annie,

  How are you? I hope you are well. We are all well. Bo is well. Miss Carrington came. Mrs. Mitchell came she brot stew. Mrs. Stanovich came she brot pie.

  Love, Kate

  Sunday October 18th

  Dear Aunt Annie,

  How are you? I hope you are well. We are all well. Mrs. Stanovich came she brot a chicken. Mrs. Tadworth came she brot ham.

  Love, Kate

  I have those letters now. Aunt Annie died a year ago of cancer, and after her death Uncle William sent them to me. I was touched that she had kept them, particularly given their remarkably consistent lack of style and content. There was a whole box of them, covering a period of several years, and when I read through the early ones, I thought, good God, they say absolutely nothing. Looking through them again though, trying to imagine Aunt Annie reading them, picturing her unfolding the ragged little scraps of paper, adjusting her spectacles, and peering at my scrawl, I realized that if she looked hard— and she would have looked hard—she probably found a certain amount of comfort between the lines.

  For a start, she would know that we were not starving and that we had not been forgotten by the community. She would know that I was in good enough shape to sit down and write a letter and that Luke and Matt were organized enough to see that I did. The fact that I invariably wrote on a Sunday implied that we had a routine, and Aunt Annie was of the school which set great store by routines. And every now and then there would be a scrap of genuine news: