The Soured Earth

by Sophie Weeks

  “Are you kidding? That's her favorite part.” Jon smiled, then said a little anxiously, “You aren't—you don't hate it here …” He fumbled for words. Though more articulate than some men of his generation, there were still times when emotional conversations perplexed him.

  “I don't hate it,” Margaret said. “Much.”

  “I guess I'll take that.” He gave her a one-armed hug. “We'll try for Banff. No promises, though. Anything could happen.”

  ***

  The next night was extremely cold, and they lingered around the dinner table while the trucks warmed up. “We're going to be late,” Sam whined. “I want to get a place close to the fire.”

  “We'll be fine,” Margaret assured her. “And I packed lots of blankets.” The dance was always performed at night, right around the time of the first frost. There was a loud honk, and they went outside and piled into the vehicles. It was only maybe twenty minutes to the reserve, and when they climbed out in the flat area that served for parking, Jon stepped out and shook the hand of Joseph Moyer, one of the elders. “Hey there, Joseph. How's it been?”

  “Good. You got your daughter back here again?” He peered around at Margaret and held out his hand to her as well. “Hello, Margaret. Didn't know I'd be seeing you, or I would have told Christopher.” Margaret and Joseph's son Christopher had shared one experimental kiss, been caught, and had never been allowed to live it down.

  “How's he doing?” Margaret asked.

  “Pretty good, pretty good. He's got a government job now. Scientist. Pays real good.”

  “Always was smart as the devil,” Louise confirmed. “And Ellie?”

  “She has a new daughter. Let me show you …” The older man reached into his wallet and pulled out a picture of the baby. “There. Look at that one.” Louise and Margaret obligingly approved the baby as adorable, then moved to a place near the fire in the circled benches. Conscious of their status as visitors, though, they left the front benches open for the elders.

  “There's old Thomas Delaney. Guess he's still doing the dance,” Jon whispered. “God knows how he hasn't drunk himself to death twenty years since.”

  Margaret watched Thomas, dressed in the traditional Cree caribou-skin dress, throw an empty Budweiser bottle at the fire. “Yeah.” A visit to the reserve wasn't always a happy occasion. There was little money or infrastructure and not a lot of hope. Christopher, who was a microbiologist, was a big hero around here.

  Sad thoughts were banished as the drumming began, and Margaret gave a low shiver, as she always did. There was something in those loud drumbeats that made her feel small and vulnerable. In the firelight, she could see the men's arms pounding away rhythmically, their faces completely expressionless. Sam, who looked like an adorable penguin in her big jacket, pushed a blanket at her, and Margaret wrapped herself in it, more for comfort than for warmth.

  Then Thomas stepped forward, and if five minutes before he'd been a laughing drunk, now he was something very different. He had a war club in his hand, and the way he was brandishing it, Margaret would not have wanted to be on the wrong end of the thing. His dark eyes glittered in the firelight, and he began to move, chanting the old song, the words whose meaning was now purely ceremonial, like the rest of the dance. It was, Margaret had always thought, a strange dance for harvest time. There was nothing thankful, nothing complacent about it. It was an angry dance, fraught with fearfulness. Thomas sang the cold prairie winds, and he danced the snowfall. He danced the evil spirits who stole the crops, who kept back the rain, who sent snow that killed cattle. And as he danced them into being, he attacked them.

  Thomas whirled fast now, his war club held high, and each powerful swing and twirl of his strong arms spoke of the battle he was waging on their behalf. Thick and fast the evil came, and Thomas was hard-pressed by spirits. Blizzard, sickness, blight—they pushed, and he pushed back hard. Margaret took a deep breath, and only then did she realize she had been holding it.

  But then something happened. Thomas' high steps slowed and stumbled. The words slurred, then stopped. “Is he—” Sam whispered, and then Thomas fell over, pretty much answering the unspoken question.

  Louise sternly held Emilie back as she started forward. “Don't crowd.” Margaret was trying to reassure Sam and Jess, who seemed deeply unnerved by what they'd just seen. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jon stepping forward to speak to Joseph again, no doubt offering his assistance. After a moment or two, during which he spoke to the other ranching families present, he came back and began steering the rest towards the trucks. “They're going to drive him to the hospital—they can get there as fast as the ambulance could get here. We should clear out, give them space.” He grabbed Sam and Jess, picking them up by the waist and putting them in the cab. “Em, Margaret, you ride home with Rob or Gene.”

  Margaret made sure to be in Rob's truck before Emilie even thought of going near it, and she shivered and pulled the blanket she was still holding more tightly around herself.

  “You okay?” Rob said, glancing over at her.

  Margaret nodded. “It's really cold away from the fire.”

  “Just give it a minute to warm up, and I'll put the heat on full.” Rob was solicitous, and it annoyed Margaret, just reminded her of the reason he was being so circumspect. But the heat felt good, and she was just starting to relax when big, fluffy snowflakes began to hit the windshield.

  “Snow? No one said it was going to snow.”

  “It wasn't supposed to. Not till next week. I don't have chains on yet.”

  “It can't snow enough to need chains.” But even as Margaret spoke, the snow was falling harder, the wipers going furiously. The dirt road was already being obscured. “This is crazy.”

  “It's all right.” Rob was leaning forward, his gaze intent on the taillights in front of him, which provided pretty well his only guide through the white whirling darkness. “Good thing Jon had us make sure everything got done last week. He got the big furnace going this morning.”

  Margaret nodded, then finally said, “What do you think happened? To Thomas?”

  “Stroke, maybe? I don't know. Maybe a heart attack. That dance is pretty hard on an older man.” Rob didn't say much more until he pulled in the drive to Sandy's Acres and parked the truck in front of the house. “There,” he said, sighing with relief. “Safe and sound.”

  Margaret climbed out, and just then Jon pulled up. His focus entirely on the children for the moment, he made them go inside the house, and Louise went too, to get them a hot drink. “I was going to drop off Jess,” he said, “but it started snowing so hard I wasn't sure if we'd be able to get home if I did.”

  “I'll call Kate,” Margaret said. “Where did that storm come from?”

  “Somewhere in the direction of a witch's left tit, I'm thinking.” Jon steered her and Emilie towards the house, looking like an uneasy sheepdog who senses a danger to the herd. “You go on. I need to check on the barn, make sure it's not too cold in there.”

  Inside the kitchen, it was warm and bright. There was a pan of hot milk coming to a simmer, and soon Louise was making everyone drink cocoa, whether they wanted it or not. “What happened to that man?” Sam asked in a small voice.

  “We don't know,” Margaret answered. “He got sick. They'll get him to the hospital fast, though, so someone can help him.” She gave Jess a tight smile. “Now I need to call your mother.”

  “She turns her phone off when she's busy, ma'am,” Jess said. “But I reckon you can leave her a message.” She looked a little white and withdrawn too, but wasn't quite as visibly scared as Sam.

  Margaret did just that, wondering what kind of mother wouldn't be worried with her daughter out in a whiteout. “I'm going to check the weather,” she said, but the weather had pretty much decided that television reception was not on the menu.

  Jon came in, stamping hard to get the soft, powdery snow off his boots. “It's all right. I'll check again in the morning, though.” He glanced ar
ound the kitchen, doing a silent headcount, then relaxing when he was satisfied. He started a fresh pot of coffee.

  “Will the wheat survive?” Louise asked.

  “Should. But I can't promise. No one expected snow this early.”

  “Mmph,” Louise said, but she didn't sound pleased.

  “Mom, please not now.”

  As soon as Jon sat down, Sam was glued to him like a little shadow, which was unusual. An independent girl, she usually gave her busy uncle a wide berth. Tonight, though, she didn't seem to want to be anywhere but beside him. She seemed more shaken by the incident at the reserve than any of them and wasn't far from tears at any given moment.

  They all sat up late until Louise roused herself and sent the girls to bed. Slowly, the house quieted and grew dark as they all went to sleep, but the sounds of the storm outside didn't subside until nearly dawn.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING INVOLVED a lot of shoveling. Even Emilie didn't protest, just took up a shovel while Gene went over the vehicles, adding the snow chains so they'd be able to get out. Jess and Sam helped too, but they spent more time getting each other with covert snowballs than actually shoveling. Their shrieks rang out through the cold, clear morning and made everyone smile a little. Margaret made cinnamon rolls and fresh applesauce with Louise's help, and it was like a holiday, despite the strange events of the night before.

  Margaret said to Jess, “If you want, Whisper and I could take you home. You could ride Scooby.” Scooby was a beautiful chocolate Rocky Mountain horse with a strikingly pale mane. He was a big gentle gelding with a particularly sweet nature.

  “That's a kid's horse,” Jess protested.

  “He's a cow horse,” Margaret said. “Even Dad uses him for cutting when Queen Jane can't work.”

  That piece of information seemed to make Scooby a lot more acceptable, and pretty soon Margaret and Jess were riding through the bright, snowy landscape. “You rode cross-country, right, ma'am?” Jess asked. “I saw the pictures.”

  “I competed for two years.”

  “Why'd you stop?”

  “I guess there were a lot of reasons. I had deferred college for a year, and I didn't want to defer it forever. And then one time, I was supposed to ride in an event in Ottawa. It was a big deal. Bonne-maman came with me. But when I was walking the course, I didn't like the footing. It wasn't horrible, but I didn't think it would do Whisper any good to run it. So I scratched at the last minute. And everybody was so angry with me. Bonne-maman said I ruined the trip, and Dad spent two days yelling about the expense. After that I rode a few more local events, but I just didn't feel like I wanted it to be my life.”

  “I guess cross-country is mostly a girl thing.”

  “Just because it's something girls can be very good at doesn't make it a girl thing,” Margaret chided her. “Plenty of men do it too. It's one of the most demanding competitions because it requires the horse to demonstrate endurance, skill, and speed. With a horse like Whisper, it's beautiful to watch him perform.” She patted the horse on the neck, then glanced over at Jess. “How come you don't like girl things?”

  “Guess it never much suited,” Jess said, tossing up her little chin defiantly. “Most girls like stupid stuff. They just care about looking good.”

  “There's nothing wrong with looking good. Looking good makes you feel good.”

  “You mean like what you do. Fashion.” Jess sounded just a bit scornful.

  “Yes, fashion.” Margaret reached over and grabbed Jess's hat. “How do you feel when you put this on?”

  “Gimme back my hat!”

  “Why? Why's it a good hat?” Margaret pressed.

  Jess sputtered and grabbed for a minute, but finally said, “Makes me feel like a cowboy.”

  Margaret grinned and handed the hat back. “That's all I'm trying to do. Make clothes that make people feel good, like your hat makes you feel good.”

  “My grandpa gave me the hat. Before he moved to Edmonton.”

  “Did your grandpa teach you how to ride?” Margaret couldn't remember Kate being much of a horsewoman.

  Jess nodded. “He had a little horse named Bill. But he doesn't have Bill anymore.”

  “Do you get to see him much? Your grandpa, I mean.”

  “He and my mom had a fight …” Jess glanced over at Margaret uneasily but said, “I call him sometimes. I told him about how I was riding with Sam. He liked that.”

  When they reached the little mobile park, Jess started to look tense again. Margaret was matter-of-fact, though, as she swung off her horse and tied him to a post on the rickety front porch attached to the trailer. “You don't have to come in, ma'am,” Jess said, anxiously.

  “I'll just say hi to your mom,” Margaret said reassuringly. “It's been a long time since I saw her.” She climbed up on the porch and knocked at the door.

  After a couple of moments, Kate came to the door, and she seemed startled to see Margaret there. “Oh! Margaret. I got your voicemail.”

  “Yeah,” Margaret said. “We just didn't want you to worry.”

  “I got stuck in Red Deer for the night, anyway. The roads were real bad.” Kate pushed a hand through her brassily highlighted hair. “I only got home a little while ago. Do you want to come in for coffee?”

  Jess stirred a little. “Mom, the horses shouldn't stand out here.”

  “They'll be all right for a couple of minutes,” Margaret said. “It's not too cold now.” Smiling at Kate, she stepped inside.

  The trailer was small but gleamed cleanness from every corner, with light dancing off a number of saccharine little figurines. There was a cow wearing a dress that Margaret kind of wanted to smash, just on general principle.

  “So you're back out at Sandy's Acres,” Kate said, handing Margaret a cup of coffee and motioning to the milk and the sugar bowl.

  “Yeah.” Margaret smiled a bit. “Not something I expected.”

  “I guess you never wanted to come back here.” There was something hostile in Kate's voice, though it was well controlled.

  “Well, Dad needed help. You know how it is.”

  “It must be such a drag, after living in London.” Kate offered an unpleasant smile.

  Margaret gave a very uncomfortable shrug and changed the subject. “Jess is such a sweetheart. Sam likes her a lot.”

  “Yeah. She loves it over there.”

  “Sorry to hear about your dad's place. Bad luck.”

  “Yeah. Bad luck. Campbells are immune to that, though, right?” Kate stood up and banged her cup into the sink.

  Margaret rose as well, feeling a little as though she'd just been slapped. “I think Sam and Emilie would probably argue that one with you. None of us have been feeling very lucky over the last year.” She laid her cup on the table. “Thank you for the coffee.”

  “Thanks for bringing Jess home.” Kate wouldn't look at her now. “Bye.”

  Jess, who was still out on the porch, handed her Scooby's reins, which she'd been holding like an anxious little groom. “Thanks, Miss Campbell.”

  “Margaret,” she corrected. “We'll see you soon, okay, Jess?” She swung up on Whisper.

  Jess's whole face lit up at that. “Yes, ma'am. You ride safe.”

  ***

  The week that followed was busy but not unpleasantly so. Most of the heavy work of getting ready for winter had been done already. Margaret was able to spend more time relaxing with a fashion magazine, which had a marked effect on her mood. Emilie was still on what passed for her best behavior, hoping to get her cell phone back, and so the house was generally more harmonious. Midweek, they finally got word that Thomas had had a stroke during the dance, but he was recovering now. Louise sent flowers because, she said, if you actually watched someone have the stroke, flowers were required.

  Jon had buyers coming for some of the alfalfa on Friday, and he seemed pleased at the price he was getting, so Margaret was hopeful it might be a good winter. Maybe with a good harvest and the weathe
r getting colder, he'd stop working himself to death quite so mercilessly.

  Margaret had just put the laundry in the washer when the truck pulled up, a fact she would remember only two days later when she found the dank, sour clothes still in the machine. The bales of alfalfa were stacked high, and the man walked around, looking at them. “Good quality. All right, load it up.” But the moment the first bale was lifted, he said, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, what the hell, Campbell?”

  “What is it?” Jon said, stepping forward.

  “What are you playing at? This is rotted hay.” He put his checkbook away and looked at Jon reproachfully. “I wouldn't have thought you'd try and play a trick like that on me.”

  “Rick, we just got that in last week. It hasn't seen weather until this afternoon …” Jon began pushing through the bales. In every crevice, every place the bales touched, there was black. “This isn't possible.”

  “Call me when you have a fresh crop, Campbell,” the man said, climbing back into the big truck.

  Margaret stepped down off the porch. “Dad, what happened?”

  “There's rot. There's rot in every damn bale,” he said blankly. “Rob!” His voice was a bellow. “Go check on the stacks in the barn.”

  Rob hurried off, and all Margaret could do was watch with dismay as Jon drove his fist against one of the bales. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.”

  “Dad, please,” Margaret begged. “It's okay.”

  He didn't listen, and a stream of profanities emerged as he punched the hay again and again. Margaret sat down on the porch and mentally kissed the idea of a Banff trip goodbye. The amount they'd just lost was significant—if the hay stored in the barn was rotted too, it would be even worse. Then they'd have feed bills for the horses all winter long.

  Rob came back breathless and said, “Everything in the barn's clean.”

  “Then what the hell?” Jon said. “We stored every bit of this hay. I put it in there with my hands.” He strode off towards the bag silos with Gene and Rob right behind him. Margaret just sat there on the steps, her chest feeling tight. This was one of the reasons she hated coming home. A bad crop, a late frost, a long storm—everything seemed to spell disaster, and it was easier to reason that it wasn't really disaster when she didn't have to deal with it firsthand.