Patterns of Swallows

by Connie Cook

  When Bo was finished with the irrigation lines, he led Ruth to where he'd parked the pickup.

  He surprised her by taking the road that led to the farm.

  "Where are we going? Are you taking me home first? What'd you wanna show me?" she couldn't stop herself from asking.

  "Haven't you ever heard that patience is a virtue?" Bo asked, visibly excited about something.

  "So I've heard. But you should know by now, it's a virtue I'm lacking."

  "That's my role. To try your patience till it grows and develops."

  "Oh, all right then. Be mysterious."

  Bo pulled into the driveway of the farm house, but he guided her toward the fence line instead of toward the farm house.

  "We're going trespassing on my neighbour's property? That's what you brought me here for?"

  "It's not your neighbour's property."

  "Sure is. Don't you remember? I told you I sold it to him. It's been his for months now; almost a year."

  "And I'm telling you it's not your neighbour's property."

  "You mean Johnny sold it? Without saying a word to me about it? To who? To whom, I mean?"

  "Didn't you hear that Johnny's packing up and moving back to the Okanagan? Sold off all the cattle. He wanted to get away from large animal farming, I guess. He put in an offer on a chicken farm near Kelowna, and it was accepted."

  "How do you know so much about it? Why didn't he say a word to me?"

  "Because I asked him not to. I wanted to keep it as a surprise."

  "Bo! You're not serious! You don't mean ..."

  "I do mean."

  Ruth wasn't a squealer typically, but what followed could only be described as a squeal. With nothing half-hearted about it, either. And she threw herself at Bo to hang off his neck.

  "Well!" he said.

  "I'd been saving for the perfect piece of land someday," he explained after Ruth had regretfully let go of his neck. "If this isn't it, I don't know what would be. The timing of it all was a little suspicious, don't you think? Almost as though some divine hand was in it all maybe? I know how much you love this land. You know I've always wanted to own my own orchard someday. Don't you think the acres I bought from Johnny would be ideal for putting in apples, maybe some cherries? Maybe a few peaches?"

  "I think it would make an ideal orchard," she agreed in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

  "Wanna go exploring my new land with me?" he asked. "Our land, I mean."

  "Our land?" Ruth said.

  "You think I bought it just so we could be next-door neighbours?"

  "How am I supposed to know why you bought it?" Ruth asked mischievously. "You haven't told me why you bought it. Other than because it would make ideal orchard land. What's that got to do with me?"

  "Oh, come on, Ruth. We don't need to play games with each other. You know what it's got to do with you."

  "And if I do, Mr. Weaver, don't you think a girl likes to hear it in words? To be asked even? Rather than to have her answer assumed. I don't think it's playing games to do a little asking. And a little waiting for an answer."

  "You know I'm not much of a hand with fancy words ..."

  "Now, don't give me that old line. They don't have to be fancy words. You don't have to be a mighty orator to ask a simple question. Besides, you can be a very good hand with words when you want to be."

  "But you know how much I ... and we both ... I told you I'm not much of a hand with words."

  "Yes, you told me already."

  "This isn't going very well, is it?"

  Ruth laughed with pure joy. Where did this terrible streak of cruelty in her come from that delighted to see her beloved squirming like an insect stuck through with a pin? She relented and removed the pin.

  "It's going just fine. I know you're not much of a hand with words."

  Bo never did manage to phrase the question to his own satisfaction. Ruth didn't hold it against him.

  In later years, it became the oldest running joke of their marriage, the fact that he never quite got around to proposing.

  "Maybe this year you can propose to me for our anniversary," she'd tease. And he'd say, "I'm still looking for the right words. I'm not much a hand with words, y'know." And they'd laugh. It was astonishing how many years, year after year, they could still find the same joke humorous.

  But that day, the day Bo never quite got around to proposing, they spent the majority of the day exploring their new land rather than wasting their precious time together in looking for the right words to state what was already obvious to both. Instead, they made practical plans as they walked.

  "We'll keep on living in your farm house, of course. I mean, if that's what you want. Do you?"

  "How well you know me! Yes, I'd like that. Don't go building me any palaces."

  "And, of course, your mother-in-law will always have a home with us. I hope she knows that. I owe her more than I'll ever be able to repay." He grinned down at Ruth.

  "I hope she knows it, too. I hope she doesn't start talking silly about going to live with her daughter again when she hears about you and me."

  "Well, make sure you tell her the next time you see her that we want her to live with us."

  "And your mother, too."

  "She'll probably stay on in her own home for now with three of the kids still living at home. She's doing fine financially now, thanks to you. We can help support the kids, though, of course. Some might want to go to college."

  "And what about adopting Gabe if we can?"

  "Of course!"

  When all the pressing arrangements for their future together had been made, they stopped by the old hay shed to watch the barn swallows building a nest in the eaves. Their swooping and soaring traced dark patterns in the blue of the sky.

  "Don't knock their nests down, okay, Bo?"

  "I wouldn't!" He sounded shocked.

  "A lot of farmers do. They think they're messy. It doesn't do any good though. They just keep coming back to the same old spot. They have persistence."

  "Stubbornness, you mean," he said, teasing her and pulling her into his side with one arm. "Not unlike someone else I know."

  "You think I'm stubborn?" she asked him seriously.

  "I think you're the very model of uncompromising faithfulness," he answered her just as seriously.

  "In other words, stubborn. So much for you not being much of a hand at fancy words," her serious mood was gone.

  But Bo's wasn't.

  "You can't be knocked down, either. Some may call it stubbornness. Let 'em. What do we care? I call it unchangingness. And other than that one exception for which I will be eternally grateful, I love your unchangingness. A fellow will always know where he's at with you. One of the many things I love about you."

  "Not bad for a man who's not much of a hand at words."

  "You inspire me, I guess." They laughed together from sheer delight.

  "They almost fly as if they had a flight plan to follow, don't they?" Ruth said, turning her eyes back to the birds. "I wonder if their flight plan has a pattern they can see from the sky that we can't see from earth. Beautiful, aren't they? Funny, too, when you consider how ugly they are when they begin life. But in flight, they sure are beautiful to watch. I've always thought there's almost nothing more beautiful than a swallow in flight."

  "Almost nothing," Bo said, but he wasn't looking at the birds.

  Watching the birds but not really thinking about them any longer, Ruth mused, "Beauty from ugliness. That's the pattern, even in nature. That's what redemption really is, isn't it? There's only one Person who could do that work. '... beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning ...' "

  " 'He hath made everything beautiful in his time ...' " Bo quoted softly. And he still wasn't looking at the birds.

  * * *

  Ruth and Bo were married just shy of forty years. Besides Gabriel, Ruth and Bo raised four children of their own: three fine, God-fearing boys and one girl who is very much like her mother and no
w a close friend of mine as well.

  Naomi MacKellum, Ruth's first mother-in-law, never remarried and lived with the Weaver family until she died four years ago at the age of ninety-two. She outlasted Ruth who died two years before her when cancer returned to take her home.

  We all knew, especially Ruth herself knew, when the cancer came back the second time that it was her time.

  Bo continues to grieve in his quiet way, but he looks forward to seeing her again in that place where cancer can never enter and death has no more power to separate.

  * * *

  Much has been written on the topic of innocence corrupted. The perception of the masses is that corruption follows doggedly and inevitably on the heels of innocence like a wolf on the heels of a lamb. Literary works written on sordid themes abound and fail to shock by the very number in existence. And, in fact, the corruption of innocence in life is so commonplace as to hardly need the commentary of art – which exists, surely, not only to show us what is but what could be. To show us not only what is ordinary but what is extraordinary.

  I read a story-poem once about a young girl in Italy who goes about singing on her one day of holiday in the year. And as she passes through the midst of the corruption of her surroundings (to which she is oblivious), her surroundings are altered. Through her innocent singing, a window is given her listeners on life as it could be. Corruption is seen for what it is. Momentous decisions are made. Destinies are decided. There is a power in innocence.

  The beauty of ignorant innocence is a theme I prefer to that of the squalor of corrupted innocence.

  But I've always wanted to write a different kind of a work. A work about the beauty of true goodness. The beauty of goodness with its eyes wide open – to know the corruption of its surroundings. Yet which goes on being goodness in spite of the surrounding corruption. A goodness which chooses the good in spite of whatever the rest of the world may choose. There, I believe, is a theme worth immortalizing as being something above the commonplace.

  And for those who insist that art should be merely the reflection of life, not its sculptor, let me say that I have written what I know. To find such a quality as goodness from life may be extraordinary, but it is not impossible.

  Yet we're assured by the authority on the subject that there is none good but God. For lives of goodness such as I have described, there is only one explanation. One's own goodness is not, could never be, the source of the extraordinary goodness some lives display.

  * * *

  I've told you that I am my own main character, and that is true. Though I prefer to avoid centre stage, I am my own main character. And because you, of necessity, have seen this story through my eyes, I, of necessity, have also become your main character while we travelled this road together for a time.

  There are those who say one can never know the truth about anything. It's true that things are not always what they seem. Still, there's a truth about them regardless of whether everyone can see it.

  I've revealed myself to you on two different levels. You've been able to see me through the eyes of the world at large. Yet, you've also come to know the secret me of which the world at large knows nothing.

  I know the townspeople have always thought of me as slow. Because I failed grade nine arithmetic three times (I've never had a head for numbers) and because I have a hard time keeping my attention on a task and because I've never known how to act around people or what to say to them, the general tendency is to assume there must be something wrong with my mind.

  But the truth is, I see things other people don't. When you spend your time as an observer of life rather than a participant, you get to see things. You begin to learn the art of knowing people.

  And I believe I knew Ruth as well as anyone.

  Her life looked ordinary by the common standards. She didn't achieve any greatness that the world calls greatness. And yet, she was a great lady.

  As people have said, she was my only real friend. Apart from my mother, that is.

  Mother goes on living. We continue to look after each other. At ninety-eight, she's still sound of mind – as clear as a bell. And she's in good health though in a wheelchair. But I know time will have its way with her before long. When she goes, I know I'll be utterly alone.

  I fear that time. But perhaps I won't outlive her by many years. If at all.

  I know what people will say after I'm dead.

  "Poor old Philippa. What a life she led! It wasn't much of a life, was it?"

  But I hope you'll remember that things are not always what they seem.