by Patrick Lane
The far hills were a heavy blue, the pines in the arroyo shadows, their green so deep it seemed they were under-water. He could see the hills and below them the squat glow of the town. He lay there on the tree limb for a long time, and then just before dawn Eddy walked up over the hill on the road a half mile away. His brother had come back, the life that had stopped a year ago starting again.
Tom gritted his teeth now, angry, as if such thinking was a weakness in him. He undid his pants and took a piss, water frothing at his boots. Out on the other side of the lake he saw a flock of mallards among the cattails in the shallows. The birds were feeding through their last days, their migration just a week or two away when they’d track the stars on their night journey down the mountain trenches and through the vast deserts to the coasts of Texas and Mexico. Go on now, he muttered. The mallards ignored him, turning tails up as they tore at the soft bulrush shoots buried in the mud below. He did up his pants and stared into the brown, baked hills to the south and west.
The whistle blew its warning and Tom turned away from the lake and walked back to the mill. The green-chain jerked into life and began its long, steady clanking. It was mid-morning, six more hours of work before he could finally go home. Lumber that had been piled up at the barrier began to rattle, a tangle of cracked and broken two-by-fours. He stepped up, placed his feet in the grooves, and heard Carl come up behind him in the forklift.
Hey, Tom, he shouted.
Tom straightened a few wayward boards in the pile beside him and waved. Carl was heavier than he used to be when he’d first seen him years ago at the farm.
He watched him climb down off the machine and take off his hard hat as he came over to the chain.
Carl stroked his damp hair back on his head. You’re looking kind of troubled, he said. You okay?
It’s nothing, Tom said as he pulled and stacked the lumber.
There’s been some talk in town, Carl said, about that party out at your house.
Things have been a little crazy lately, said Tom, grabbing a wayward board.
So I’ve heard, said Carl. He told Tom people had been talking about some guy getting shot.
Tom pulled two more boards off and slid them onto the pile. Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t that big a deal, he said, more lumber stumbling toward him down the chain.
Carl looked sombre as he climbed back up on the forklift. You take it easy, he shouted, and Tom nodded as he bent to the chain deck.
We’re okay, he said to himself, almost believing it, as Carl moved away with a full stack of two-by-fours, his hard hat tipped back as he waved.
14
marilyn pushed the bucket full of soapy water forward and leaned into the rough cloth she held in her fists, scouring the floor to the side of the stove. The flensing knife she’d found in a drawer to scrape off the greasy dirt from the cracks in the old linoleum stuck out of the pocket of the apron she’d found in the closet in the crib room. The apron had hung in there probably for years, the edges where it was folded gone yellow from time. It was embroidered with bluebirds, two on either side, each one bearing in its faded beak a twist of ivy, leaves twining under their wings. When she’d tied it around her waist in the morning, it had been clean.
She’d already taken the dishes out of the cupboards and wiped the shelves and then under the sink, the floor soft where the drain went down, a thick smell of damp rising. She’d scoured it there as best she could, leaving the doors open so the wood might dry a little, and then started on the floor. She ignored Tom’s mother, who had come out of her room, covered in a shapeless dress. She seemed so much older than her own mother, the skin on the woman’s hands and face lined and worn, her hair with so much grey in it. She sat now on a kitchen chair, a mug of coffee clasped in her hands as she watched Marilyn drag the cloth across the floor.
I put those birds on that apron when I was a girl a lot younger than you, she said, her voice loud. I cut and sewed and hemmed it and then I embroidered those birds.
Mother went on as if talking to herself, her voice adrift. It was a bird I’d seen before, she said, not like the ones in Ladies Home Companion. My mother always borrowed the magazine from a woman on the farm down the road. The bluebirds in it were nothing like the ones we had around our place.
She was still for a moment as she sucked on her cigarette.
They’re pretty enough, Marilyn said.
Mother seemed to her to hesitate then, as if wondering why this girl was talking, least of all to her. Marilyn watched her puff at the stub of cigarette that was stuck in the corner of her mouth. I used to be good with a needle and thread, Mother said. She picked up her mug and swirled the coffee around. This coffee’s watery and it’s barely warm too. Why don’t you push that pot over onto the front of the stove. It won’t get hot where you’ve got it sitting.
Marilyn wrung out her cloth in the pan beside her and began scrubbing again as she tried to ignore the woman, but Mother kept on.
I wanted that apron to be nice. Marilyn looked up and nodded, but Mother’s gaze was turned from her to the window as if she was speaking to the mountain looming there. If my girls had lived, I’d have given that apron to one of them, she said. My girls are dead, you know. She hesitated and added: A darkness took me up when they were born. I couldn’t see for it.
The coarse weave of cloth ground down in endless circles in front of Marilyn, the woman on the chair going on, in her voice a vague reflecting Marilyn had heard before when her grandmother was alive and talked of the old days. Marilyn looked down at her hands as they scrubbed, a pattern on the linoleum rising from the grey froth, flowers repeating themselves, red ones, roses it looked like, the outline of them worn away by the boots and shoes and feet that had stood at the sink and stove over the years. Here and there a flower appeared, an outline only, the colour mostly gone.
Mother lifted her mug, looking like she was trying to follow the brown geese flying around the rim. Stupid birds, she said. They never get it right. Not these geese and not those bluebirds either. The ones we had on the prairie were pure blue and not ones with rosy breasts. She continued to look out at the fields.
I don’t remember my girls much. I just wanted to be left alone in my bed. I think it was Father told me they passed on, or was it Tom? He’d have known. He was in that room with Alice night and day. Tom’s always wanted to be around things that can’t be fixed. It’s just like that dog he used to have. He sure loved that dog, she said, and started fussing with her dress.
Marilyn stared at her, the cloth in her hand.
What’re you looking at me for? That dog of his died a long time ago. She pushed at her mug, the coffee slopping onto the table. Things just went wrong, she said, no help from anyone.
Marilyn took the knife from her apron pocket and began scraping at the floor.
Oh, forget it, Mother said sharply. She stopped for a moment and fanned her face with her hand. I liked the meadowlarks best. When I was a girl, boys used to sneak up on their nests and shoot them with slingshots. There was this one boy from down the road who was always doing that. His people were foreigners. They’re like that.
There aren’t hardly any bluebirds around here, said Mother. They’ve all died off from something. People from town keep putting up nesting boxes on the fence posts along the road, but it doesn’t bring them back. That boy now, I remember him. He had a mean look around his eyes. I think they were from Germany. There were lots of Germans around after the war, but you’d never know it.
Marilyn sat back and looked at Mother’s narrow blue eyes. She seemed wily now, some kind of cunning in her.
Mother rubbed her cheek with the back of her wrist, opened the tobacco can, and started rolling another cigarette.
Marilyn leaned back down and started scrubbing the floor again.
Keep scrubbing like that, Mother said, and you’ll wear your way through that floor right into the dirt, wolf spiders and god-knows-what under the house in the crawl space coming up to bite you. Likely snakes to
o.
Marilyn got up and pushed two more pieces of wood into the stove. She glanced over and saw Mother staring out the window again. Nothing was different out there since the last time she looked, Marilyn thought. The mountain was still there, just like it’d always been. Who knew what she was thinking? She carried the bucket to the back and threw the dirty water out onto the gravel. A breeze shivered the needles on the old fir tree at the head of the drive way. The mountain was blocking the early light, the rising sun still hidden from the side of the house, the driveway in shadow. Tom and me are going to be fine, she thought. It’s going to be different around here. I’m going to be living in this house. She’ll just have to put up with it. She turned her head and looked for a moment at Tom’s mother sitting with a new cigarette wedged into the corner of her mouth, smouldering there.
I don’t know why that mountain hasn’t got a name, Mother said, distracted. That’s the trouble with things around here. Nobody knows what anything is called.
Marilyn pretended she didn’t hear her, leaned down, and picked up a shard of broken rock lying on the edge of the step and turned it in her fingers. She remembered when she was a little girl and her mother was cleaning houses for the rich people up on the hill. There was that time she’d been given a sweater by the mother of one of her classmates. The daughter had thrown it on the floor and the girl’s mother said she didn’t deserve to own the sweater if she treated it like that, and Marilyn had worn it to school the next day. It was a nice sweater, powder blue with short sleeves that puffed out at the shoulders. It was too big for her, but she wore it anyway. And then in the lunchroom the girl told everyone it was hers, saying Marilyn’s mother had stolen it. Marilyn never wore that sweater again, not even at home. She threw the rock out onto the gravel reach, the bit of stone bouncing twice and then vanishing among the other rocks, indistinguishable from every other pebble around it.
She went back into the house and filled the bucket with warm water from the tap, heating it up from the seething kettle on the stove.
A drink of whiskey would be nice, Mother said. Just a sip or two to settle my stomach and calm my nerves. I get so tired all the time. I worry too. Where’s Eddy? He didn’t come home last night.
I don’t know, Marilyn said.
It’s damned hot, said Mother. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped feeding that stove?
Marilyn ignored her now, her arms straight as she pushed hard with the cloth, the job almost done. She’d finished the floor in front of the stove and was working at what was left of the linoleum by the cupboards. It was cracked and broken, bits of food worn down into the pine boards that showed through. She scraped the blade of her knife into the seams between them. A curl of stiff grease twisted black along the knife blade like a wild morning-glory vine. She placed the curls into the bucket beside her. This house is dirty, Marilyn said. She looked up briefly, judging Tom’s mother and her careless ways.
What was I to do? Mother asked, and she lifted the coffee to her lips and took another sip. It’s not as if I can get down on my knees and take care of that kind of work any more. I’ve been telling Tom to help with the cleaning up around here, but does he ever get around to doing anything? Oh, he’ll throw dishwater at the floor once in a while and sweep the water out with a broom, but what good does that do?
Marilyn didn’t reply, and Mother sneered and brushed a piece of hair off her cheek with her fingertips. Why have you got that fire burning so hard? A body could cook in here. It’s a waste of good wood.
I need hot water for this, said Marilyn, nudging the bucket a little farther on.
Marilyn almost felt like the house belonged to her. She thought some fresh paint on the cupboards would do wonders. Look at this, she said, holding the square of dish-cloth out to Mother. This dirt here is from a meal you probably cooked when Tom was still a boy.
Tom always liked porridge in the morning, Mother said. I used to make it for him. He’d sit in his high chair right there, she said, and her hand waved vaguely. He wasn’t like Eddy. Tom never spoke till he was better than three years old. It was Eddy did the talking for him. She put her mug down and poked her cigarette butt into an ashtray full of sand. She folded her hands. Eddy never ate porridge, Mother said. He’d only eat soft-boiled eggs and store-bought bread. Just like his father. I don’t know what ever happened to that high chair. Elmer likely broke it up for firewood some night. It would’ve been like him to do that. She glared at Marilyn. You should tie that hair of yours back, you know, Mother said. It falls in your face when you’re scrubbing.
Marilyn frowned as she saw Mother fumbling, pulling a wrinkled red bandana from her pocket. The woman got up, seemed to steady herself a moment, and then she came over to her. Sit still, she said. Marilyn felt her pull the kerchief tight across her forehead and tie it under her hair at the base of her neck.
See, Mother said, straightening up. That’s called a babushka. A woman from Ukrainia showed me how to do that. Her family lived in a cabin out past Black Rock. She’d come to the house to pick the leftover raspberries in the patch out back. She was a DP like all the rest of them come over here after the war. You couldn’t hardly understand her. Mother stepped back, suddenly awkward.
I made that apron you’re wearing, she said. I was just a girl. When Marilyn turned away, Mother said: Maybe you think you’re something special being with Tom and all, but what do you know? You’re the first girl he’s ever brought around here. I thought you were with Eddy when I saw you. Eddy’s the one for the girls, not Tom.
Well, Tom likes me, Marilyn said.
Mother pursed her lips as if struggling to understand something that had escaped her. She stopped playing with the buttons on her dress. You don’t look old enough to be anybody’s girl, Mother said. You should be home making a quilt for when you get married. A Honeymoon Quilt, that’s what you should make.
But Marilyn didn’t rise to what she saw as meanness. She was tired and told her to move out of the way. Mother touched a stray lock of hair by her ear with the heel of her hand. Go on outside and get some sun, Marilyn said.
Mother walked out the back door and stood on the cement stoop. Marilyn could see through the open door the woman there, the gravel reach, and the shed. She thought of Tom. She smiled to think how she’d been with him when they woke up. She’d felt shy, as if what she’d done with him in the night was somehow wrong, her wildness, the way she’d been with him out by the water barrel and then in his bed. She liked tending to him. Her own mother’s ways around wounds had taught her how to care for them. She’d found a roll of gauze and a bottle of iodine in a drawer in the bathroom. She’d bound his hurt hand tight.
Winter’s coming, Mother said, as if she was dreaming. She turned then, came in off the stoop and stood in the doorway, her face in shadow. There’s a storm coming any day now, Mother said, cold too. When’s Eddy coming home?
Marilyn shook her head and pushed the table and chairs back over onto the clean floor and got down on her knees.
That boy, Mother said, her hands loose. What can anyone do?
When Marilyn didn’t say anything, Mother went back to the table and looked down at her. What’re you doing here anyway? Who asked you to start messing around in this house?
Marilyn settled on her heels, took the bandana off, and wiped her bare arm across her forehead. You can talk to Tom like that, she said, but not to me. I don’t want to hear it. Now, shift over so’s I can finish this floor.
Mother glared at her again as she went to the stove and poured herself more coffee, dropping into her mug the chunk of dried-out brown sugar she’d chipped from the bowl sitting on the counter. She sniffed at the milk bottle as she passed by the counter, walking across the wet floor past the bathroom in her wrecked slippers. Marilyn heard her close her door at the end of the hall. She thought of Tom’s mother and her own and what the years had done to each of them in their way, what they’d done to themselves. It didn’t seem right they’d let that happen.
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nbsp; Tom and her could make a life in this house, she thought. He didn’t know it yet, but he would. She could raise chickens maybe and sell eggs from a stand out on Ranch Road, and for a moment she saw herself throwing grain out to a flock of chickens, the hens pecking around her feet. Eggs, and they could grow fresh vegetables and fruit and sell them too. Tom could even have a few sheep out there in the field. There were lots of people who liked to eat lamb. They could even raise a pig or two. And they could maybe fix up those old apple trees in the garden. She’d seen fruit stands along the road north of town. She and Tom could save up and buy a roll of new linoleum and some paint and make this into a real kitchen. A breeze came through the open side window, its screen brushed and clean. That’s better, she said, wringing her hands dry on her apron.
She didn’t want to think of her own child dying. If she had a baby girl, she’d look after her like nobody’s business.
She went to the porch. There were no more flies. She’d swept their dead bodies out with the broom after breakfast. When she finished eating her toast, she’d tacked a piece of cardboard in the door frame, large enough to cover the space where the screen on the door had been ripped away. She let the screen door close quietly behind her so it wouldn’t wake Mother in case she was sleeping now, picked up an empty pail from under the clothesline stand, and walked into the garden.
I’m a woman now and not a girl, she said to a flicker pecking at fallen fruit, little chips of red flesh disappearing into the bird’s long beak. We all got to eat, she said to the bird. She looked to where scarlet runner beans hung down in their dry pods from the yellowed corn stalks. She knelt in a furrow of dead bush beans and began picking off the slender pods, dry beans rattling inside the husks. She took one and cracked it open with her thumbs. The white beans clicked in her closed hand.
Tom.
She said his name into the small cave of her fist, her breath warm, the beans there cool as creek pebbles on her skin. She lowered her hand to the bucket and opened it, the beans dribbling through her fingers into the galvanized pail. Her hands disappeared then among the desiccated plants as she stripped and cracked open the pods, dry beans dropping one by one into the bucket.