by Mary Lawson
The snake, having moved its jaws about until the frog was in exact alignment, began to swallow, slowly—the lack of haste was the most disconcerting thing about it. Waves of contractions flowed along its body, sucking the frog down. The frog fought furiously. It managed to hook the toes of its left hind foot into the hard edge of the snake’s lower jaw and set its right hind foot against the side of Ian’s shoe and pushed for all it was worth, muscles swelling and straining with the effort. The fight went on and on. Sometimes it almost seemed that the frog would win its freedom, but blood was making a red slick on its back now and there was no real doubt about the outcome. This is how it goes, Ian thought. Like it or not, this is how it goes.
It was nearly dusk by the time he turned back. The wind was increasing and the waves were building up. They weren’t big yet but the water was choppy and the canoe bounced around like an eggshell. As Ian neared the dock he saw that there was someone sitting on it, a dark figure, with knees drawn up, arms clasped around knees. Cathy.
She watched him silently as he maneuvered the canoe alongside. He put down his paddle and grabbed the dock to stop the canoe smacking against it.
“Hi,” he said cautiously.
“Hi.”
He got out of the canoe and hauled it up, then flipped it over, belly down, in case of rain. “You been here long?”
“A while.” Her voice was muffled by her arms, which were still wrapped around her knees. She was wearing a light jacket that made a ruffling sound in the wind. When he sat down beside her he noticed that she’d been crying, and his heart sank.
“You okay?” he said. She put her head on her arms and began to cry. “Hey,” he said, his heart sinking lower still. He put his arm around her. “Hey, Cath, what’s wrong? What’s happened? Has something happened?”
He pulled her closer, searching guiltily through his mind for something he might have done to upset her further—apart from not missing her all that much, which she couldn’t have known about. She was leaning against his shoulder now and he could feel his shirt getting wet.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Come on. Tell me what’s happened.”
She lifted her head, finally, and looked at him. She was very pretty when she cried. Her eyes became luminous pools and when the pools spilled over, the tears traced clear silvery lines down her cheeks. He wondered if she would have cried so much if she’d been made ugly by tears, if her nose became red and swollen and her eyes puffed up.
“Nothing’s happened,” she said. “Not really. It’s just that I’ve discovered…how much I love you. I’ve just wanted to…die, Ian. These past few weeks, I’ve just wanted to die. I just…don’t care about…anything anymore. About the exams or anything else. I’m going to fail, and I don’t care. I just need to be with you. I’ve just realized that it’s the only thing that matters.”
Oh God, he thought. He looked out over the lake. Whitecaps were starting to appear; a last lone gull was skimming the tops of them, graceful as a skater. He felt bowed down under the weight of her love. He wanted to say, Look, I’m sorry, but I’m just too tired to think about this at the moment, could you come back next week? But he couldn’t say that, and anyway, next week he still wouldn’t know how to reply.
And then, to complicate things still further, the thought slid into his mind that given how Cathy was feeling, he could almost certainly persuade her to have sex with him, right now, right here on the dock. He was sure of it. He started to get an erection just thinking about it. He shifted his position, drew her closer to him, and with his free hand unzipped her jacket. She was wearing a sweater over her blouse; he slid his hand up underneath it, cupped her breast for a moment, then began undoing buttons. Cathy turned her face toward him and lifted her mouth to his, willingly, trustingly, and he knew she was going to let him, and simultaneously, with a feeling close to despair, knew that he couldn’t go through with it. Not because of his principles, not because it would be taking advantage of her, but because, when it came right down to it, he was chicken. Too scared of the consequences to take the risk.
Cathy was still looking up at him, her eyes questioning now. He had to say something. He whispered, “I respect you too much, Cath. We should wait.”
It sounded so false, so unbelievably corny, that if he had been her he would have got up and walked off and never spoken to him again. But Cathy smiled, and curled up against him, and whispered back, “I’m so lucky to have found someone like you. I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
It was a relief when Saturday came. There was a simplicity about his work on the farm that seemed to be the perfect antidote to everything else. He envied Arthur the smooth pattern of his days. Sure, he had worries, but in many ways there just couldn’t be a more perfect life than plodding up and down a field all day, under the pure, uncomplicated sky.
That morning he began plowing the ten-acre, which bordered the northernmost edge of the farm. The Dunns’ boundary was marked by the Crow River, and when you were working on the ten-acre you could hear it in the background all day, the smooth cold rushing of it filling the gaps between the clinking of the horses’ harnesses and the bickering of crows. It was his favorite field. More than in the others, which were so well tended, so tamed, you could see the history of the farm in this field.
Needless to say, it wasn’t Arthur who had told him its history: it was Laura. Details came out from time to time, generally at dinner. “It was a bush farm, wasn’t it, Arthur? Just a small clearing hacked out of the bush. By your grandfather?”
A nod from Arthur. “Yeah.”
“Most of the farms up here started off as bush farms, Ian. Sometimes they didn’t even bother felling the trees to begin with, they just planted turnips and potatoes in among them, to tide them over the first winter. And then when they did cut down the trees, they had to wait years for the stumps to rot enough to dig them out. How many years does it take, Arthur? Five? Or even more than that?”
“Kinda depends.”
“And the rocks—getting the rocks out. You’ve seen the size of some of them, Ian. Can you imagine the work?”
Down at the ten-acre he could imagine it. Just yards away, on the other side of the river, it was wilderness still.
He liked plowing. He was getting good at it, too. When he first started he’d been astoundingly bad. He had thought there was nothing to it, that you lined up the horses and leaned on the plow and off you went—Arthur made it look that easy. His furrows were so straight they looked as if they’d been drawn with a ruler. And the horses were every bit as good; you didn’t have to tell them a thing. They lined themselves up, side by side, one standing in the latest furrow, the other on unplowed land, and then they set off, the one in the furrow placing each huge dinner-plate-sized foot exactly in front of the last. When they got to the end they turned themselves around, stepping sideways, precisely in time with each other, big as buses, delicate as dancers, sidling around until they were lined up again, facing the other way. A tractor couldn’t have turned that tightly in a million years. Ian never got tired of watching them.
His own first furrow had looked like the path of a drunk on a Saturday night. Arthur had set him up with Robert and Edward because they were the more experienced team, and Ian had thought he was doing fine until they got to the end of the field and turned around. The horses had practically recoiled with shock—certainly they both took a step backward. Robert had looked at him over his shoulder as if to say, What the hell is that? It had taken Ian months to get the hang of it. But he took pride in his fields now. They were nothing compared to Arthur’s, but they were no longer a total disgrace.
Carter had a row with his mother over dinner.
“I told you I was goin’!” He was red in the face and his voice was shrill. “I told you Lucas said to come on Saturday afternoon, and you said okay!”
“Carter, I can’t believe I said you could be away for the whole of a Saturday afternoon. I need you to do the row crops. I haven’t been able to get at t
hem all week.”
“You did!” Carter was so outraged that Ian decided he was telling the truth. “I told you he’s got these steer-horn handlebars, and he doesn’t like them, so he said we could swap and I should come out to his place today! I told you!”
“Why can’t you both bring your bikes to school?” Laura said, slapping a great mound of mashed potato onto his plate, spilling half of it onto the table in her exasperation. “Why can’t you swap there?”
“He can’t cycle to school!” Carter said. “He lives miles away! He gets the bus! That’s why I have to go today—it’ll take me hours! I told you, Mum! I told you on Monday! You never listen!” He pushed his chair back from the table and slammed out of the house. A moment later they heard the crunch of bicycle wheels on the drive.
“I do remember something about it,” Laura said wearily. “But I’m sure I wouldn’t have said he could go today.”
The truth was, Ian admitted to himself, she didn’t listen. Sometimes it was as if she were in a world of her own. A quieter one, presumably. One where there weren’t unceasing demands on her time. He tried to imagine her sitting on a sofa with her feet up, but abruptly he was reminded of his mother, so he pushed the thought away.
“The thing is,” Laura was saying, “Betty Hart is sick. Your father said she’d end up in the hospital if she didn’t stay in bed, Ian, so I’ve been looking after her little one all week. I’m taking him again this afternoon. He’s a good child, but clingy, you can’t put him down, and the row crops are in such a state.”
“Would you like me to do them?” Ian asked. The vegetable garden was just around the side of the house. He looked at Arthur. “Or do you want me to carry on with the plowing?”
Arthur chewed, considering. “Guess you’d better do the row crops.”
“That would be wonderful,” Laura said. “Just wonderful.”
Which was great. The garden would get done, and maybe Laura wouldn’t go on at Carter when he got back, and he, Ian, would be less than a hundred yards away from her for the whole afternoon.
Julie and March came with him when he went out to start on the row crops. They announced that they were going to help.
“I had a feeling you might,” Ian said resignedly. “Do you help your mum when she does the weeding?”
“No,” Julie said. “She doesn’t need help.”
“I see,” Ian said. He rummaged around in the toolshed and found a couple of hand forks. “Here you go. Do you know which ones are weeds?”
“The green ones,” March said.
“Well, yes and no,” Ian said. “The big green ones are vegetables. See this?” He pointed to the feathery top of a carrot. “This is a carrot. You don’t want to dig it out, it needs to grow some more.”
March looked at him suspiciously. “That’s not a carrot,” he said.
“Yes it is.” Ian eased enough soil back from the carrot to show its root. “See?”
March looked flabbergasted. “It’s a carrot!” he said. The good thing about kids, Ian thought—one of the few compensations for them being such a pain in the neck—was how astonished they could be by things you completely took for granted.
“He didn’t even know!” Julie said, doubling over with mirth.
“Get weeding, you,” Ian said. “You’re wasting time being mean to your brother. These little green things are the weeds, March, and you don’t pull them out, you dig them out. Everybody okay with that?”
March dug furiously for a minute and a half and then wandered off, back to the house. Julie carried on for a while, carefully digging out each weed and placing it neatly on the grass at the edge of the vegetable patch, all the little thread-like roots pointing in the same direction. After a while she got tired of that and just scratched around with a stick. Then she got tired of that too and sat down on the grass to watch Ian.
“Having a break already?” he said.
She nodded. She was looking quite a bit like her mother today, Ian thought. One day she might be almost as beautiful.
There was a call from the house—Laura’s voice, calling Julie. Julie narrowed her eyes, wondering whether to hear it or not.
“Your mum’s calling,” Ian said firmly. “Go and see what she wants.”
She ran off and disappeared around the side of the house. A minute or two later March appeared, carrying something—a plate of cookies. He was walking very carefully, holding the plate in both hands, concentrating hard.
“That’s very nice of you,” Ian said when March came up. He put down his hoe and rescued the plate, which was listing dangerously. “Are they all for me?”
“No,” March said.
“Oh. Right. Are any of them for me?”
“I can have one,” March said, his tone of voice showing what he thought of that.
“You’d better choose which one you want first, then.” Ian squatted down and held out the plate so that March could see the options. March picked up a cookie, hesitated, put it back. Picked up another one, put it back. And another.
“What exactly is it that you’re looking for?” Ian asked when they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. “The biggest one or the one with most chocolate chips?”
March twisted the bottom of his T-shirt in both hands and hoisted it up and down over his smooth round belly.
“Oh, I get it,” Ian said. “You want the biggest one and the most chocolate chips. Tricky.”
A movement at the edge of his field of vision caused him to look up. Julie had appeared around the corner of the house, carrying a tray of glasses. Behind her was Laura, with Mrs. Hart’s baby in her arms. Ian felt a surge of pleasure.
“Here comes your mum,” he said. March quickly crammed a cookie into his mouth and chewed fast.
Laura frowned at him as she came up. “Now that’s the last one,” she said. The baby was covered in chocolate from ear to ear.
Julie held the tray of glasses out for Ian. “It’s lemonade,” she said.
“Thank you,” Ian said, taking one and putting the plate of cookies down on the grass. If only the kids would go now, and take the baby, and leave Laura and him alone, just for two minutes. Just two minutes of her uninterrupted presence, on this beautiful warm afternoon.
There was the sound of a car and they all looked up. It was coming along the track from the main road, trailing a cloud of dust. Ian didn’t recognize it—it didn’t belong to anyone in the area. As it got closer he saw that it was a Cadillac, two-tone, red and cream, big wings at the back, shiny chrome trim. Ian watched it admiringly—he’d never seen one like it.
“Who could this be?” said Laura, swinging the baby over to her other hip. “Someone must be lost.”
The car pulled into the farmyard and they all started walking toward it. March ran ahead, Julie hung on to her mother, Ian followed on behind, intrigued. The car came to a stop and the dust caught up with it and settled slowly. The door opened and a man got out. Laura stopped so suddenly that Ian bumped into her.
“Sorry,” he said.
She didn’t reply. She stood there, motionless. Across the farmyard, the stranger leaned back comfortably against the car, folded his arms, and smiled at them.
Afterward, looking back on that first meeting, trying to remember what his initial reaction had been, searching through his memory for any clue, however small, to what was to come, all that Ian could remember was the smile.
EIGHT
ONLY ONE-FIFTH OF SEEDING COMPLETED PRIOR TO DOWNPOUR
PREMIER KING GIVES PARLIAMENT OUTLINE OF WAR PROGRAM
—Temiskaming Speaker, May 1940
Listen, Artur,” Otto Luntz said. “Sit down, listen. I read you.”
He fumbled around in his shirt pocket for his spectacles and grimly set them on his nose. “It is still raining,” he read. He made his voice deep and slow, the way Gunter’s was, so that was who the letter was from. Every couple of weeks Arthur went over to the Luntzes’ farm after supper to see if there were any letters from the boys; none
of them was what you’d call a born letter writer, but something generally arrived from one or other of them about twice a month.
Otto Luntz looked up. “Dey are in England still. Still! Doing nut-ting! Sitting around all day, fat as pigs!”
“Read the letter, Otto!” Mrs. Luntz said, setting a cup of tea and a plate of cookies in front of Arthur. He could always tell if a letter had arrived the minute she opened the door. She was a big, heavy woman, somewhat stern, unleavened by the humor her husband had in such abundance, but when she’d heard from her boys it seemed to Arthur that her whole body got lighter; she positively floated around that kitchen.
In the early days he had felt ashamed and embarrassed to be there when their sons were not, but both Mr. and Mrs. Luntz seemed so genuinely glad to see him that he had stopped worrying about it. He saw that apart from anything else, it gave them an excuse to read the letters yet again, to hear the boys’ voices in the words they wrote. The letters were just about in shreds from being folded and unfolded so often.
“You never seen so much rain,” Mr. Luntz read on. “It’s been raining for weeks, everything’s soaked. No action yet and nobody seems to know when there will be. We went on a training course, pretty good, except we already knew it all. Eric and Carl doing fine, send their love. Well, no more news. Hope you are both doing okay.”
He put the letter down and looked at Arthur with mock severity. “Vot sort of letter, eh? ‘It’s raining.’ So vot! It is raining here! One, two, tree…five sentences, an’ den dey say, ‘No more news.’ I tell you, Artur, Gertie and me, ve give our farm to you, okay? In our vills, ve leave everyting to you. Our boys don’t deserve it.”
But the relief showed plain in his face. No news was good news.
Month after month, the letters kept coming from England. Practically the whole Canadian army seemed to be stuck there, sitting on its hands. Went to London last week on leave, Carl wrote. (The best letters were from Carl, in Arthur’s opinion.) You never seen such a town, it’d take you days just to walk across it. Saved up our pay, went to see a show—you wouldn’t approve of the women, Ma. Tarts on the street, too, all made up like I don’t know what. If you see Art, tell him he’s missing out on a real education.