“What’s Daisy think of all this?” Alex asks finally.
“The wife’s got a good frontier clothing business going. Country Kitchen Linens: aprons, potholders, napkins, tablecloths, quilts. Has a mill in Mumbai she sources for the cotton. Everything’s organic. Sells it all on the internet. I’ll be damned if I can figure that world out. She’s hired on that young Kelsey. Comes and helps her sew on the weekends. Lots of Americans looking to emulate life in the wild northwest. Quite lucrative.”
I tease him, “You can be the house husband now,” thinking, I already am one, between Vera’s shifts and the girls gone.
“Darn rights. Have my friends over for coffee, watch the soaps. That woman’s got more creativity than all the masters at the Louvre, I reckon. You should see the phone ringing, the pots boiling, sketches in every corner of the kitchen for this and that fabric. The woman’s a veritable goldmine.”
Alex persists, “But if we don’t have grain, what? If we don’t have beef?”
Buster is ignoring Alex’s growing agitation. “I’m going to cut out California imports. Take the hundred-mile diet. Dig out the old root cellar, re-roof it. Grow my own carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and onions. They make a fine stew in winter.”
It is Jack’s turn to run philosophical. “Where did that start, this grand design to end famine? I wonder. When we got television on the farm? When we got radio? The year we got electricity?”
“Nineteen fifty-nine,” I say.
“That started a hunger in us.” Jack looks around the circle. People start to nod their heads. “Suddenly we were listening with our ears turned outward, the world was beaming in on us. News from all four corners. This disaster in Bangladesh, that famine in Eritrea, the war in Biafra. Then television. Live feed in our small, modest living rooms, sitting on our worn couches. This hunger for more meaning. In the sixties, the call to feed the poor. That’s when they started this push to modernize. Our animal manure was inferior. Our yields. We needed fertilizer. Pesticides. Herbicides. The Green Revolution. The grain company man and his promises. How we were going to feed the world!”
Buster shook his head. “It started the moment our grandfathers came across the ocean — newspaper advertisements and lantern shows — the idea of progress.”
“Your people, Buster; yours too, Alex; mine; and Annie’s.” Jack shifts in his seat, looks her in the eye. “All of us leaving famine of some kind. That’s how we got here.”
“With threshing machines,” I chime in. “And steam-powered tractors. Horse power without horses.”
“Improvements sure to eliminate the uncertainties of living.”
Alex has started to falter. “And here I am working longer and harder than my great-grandfather ever did, more in debt than he ever was. He had a big family, a wife and six kids. I bought the pesticides, I bought the fertilizer. I bought the horsepower. Now, I’m lucky if I can support myself on four times as much land.”
“My great-grandfather warned my grandfather.” Buster speaks up, “This won’t come to no good. All this machinery, all this technology. People are excited by their own greatness. If a machine can do it, there’s no more need of family, of community. It’s a lonely life living with machines. A machine don’t match a veritable human being.”
“I’ve been farming some thirty years now and I seem to be feeding everyone but myself. The bank, the fertilizer companies, the seed corporations, the grain trade.” The circle turns its gaze on me.
“I’ve been so busy feeding the planet, I haven’t had the luxury of my own laying hens. All our milk comes from the store. Our vegetables. Even the old apple tree in the yard. Vera and I haven’t had the time to pick it for years. We just let the fruit fall.
“That’s how I came to painting.”
Alex smiles at me from across the room. Bob’s stops the camera. Buster jerks his head up so quickly he almost throws the coffee out of the mug in his hand.
Jack asks, “What have you been painting?”
“What it was like. You know, as a kid growing up, how bright everything seemed. The fair days. The gymkhana. The stores in town. The rail station. When we had passenger service twice a day.” I can hear myself breathing fast. I clasp and unclasp my hands not sure where to put them suddenly.
“I think Annie knew from the parcels. She winked at me one day after the first dozen deliveries or so. ‘Looks like you have your own rose project going there, Mike.’”
“How long?” Jack asks now.
“Two winters. I go out to my barn early after Vera is off to the hospital and after I feed the cattle. I hole myself up for the day.”
“Now, isn’t that something,” Buster says.
“During summers I take photographs or make sketches.”
Just then Father Pat interrupts the group. He’s only just arrived and Buster whispers in Bob’s ear, “Remember the History Project?
“Change of plans, boy. Carpe diem.” Buster winks. “Watch me; watch the padre.”
“Yes, that History Project has had a change of schedule,” Jack says loudly. Heads nod. Even the priest looks pleased to hear the word “history” and smiles in the group’s direction. “Everything moves up a couple of days,” Jack says in a normal voice, and then more quietly, “Negotiations start tonight.”
BUSTER
The truth is I’d be visiting the Emerg if it weren’t for Daisy. I’m a total fumble fingers when it comes to making things, cloth or otherwise, (animals are my thing), but if I could wield a pair of scissors I’d be down in the basement helping her. As it is I try to help out in other ways, but she’s the only reason right now that our enterprise is staying afloat. We have another income stream, and I can write my losses off against her gains.
I’m only half-joking when I talk about a game park. Not one with pens or cages. I wouldn’t bother with fences either. Put out a few bales of hay in the winter, sew the cultivated parts to wild grasses and then leave it.
Unlike Alex, I just want to sit on my horse, so to speak, and live out the rest of my days in peace. Running cattle worked well enough while it lasted, but times change and like they say, you have to adapt or die. Now, if only I can talk Daisy into it. Shouldn’t be too hard. Hah! It does give me a chuckle to see Alex screw up his face when I tease. That guy’s got to lighten up or he’s gonna die premature.
ALEX
I have to admit I could use a rose or two in my life and by that I mean some female companionship. Annie hinted as much when she was alive. Saved the Personals for me from the weekend paper. Put them in my mailbox.
I’ve been living too much in my own head these past few years. I told Buster this past winter, I’m starting to talk to the calves.
“Watch yourself! Next you’ll be having relations of an unnatural kind.”
Sometimes I have Sunday supper with him and Daisy. Sometimes it’s Mike and Vera.
“But who’s a match around here?” I ask them.
Buster says, at these auction sales I attend, I should hang out at the food stations, chat up the servers. Get second and third cups of coffee.
“Cripes, I’ll be spending all my time in the toilets that way.”
Daisy says I should get on the internet, find a widow, someone who likes the rural life, grew up with it or was married to it. “Farm life requires a woman with a certain amount of independence.” She’s probably right.
Buster teases. “Yup, even at forty-eight you’ve still got some life left in you.”
Both of them say I should come out to community dances again, even if there’s no one here in Majestic I want to settle down with. Women all like to dance. “Besides, you’re rusty.” Buster arches his brow at me, old cagey eyes. “You’ll need it if you want to go courting again.”
Daisy says something similar. “Maybe sign up for one of those cooking classes in Victoire in winter. It would get you out. Plus lots of women go to those classes. If nothing else you’ll learn how to make a couple of dishes. Women these days expect their husbands
to be able to cook something, you know.” That’s when Buster laughs.
“Even if it’s only breakfast,” she adds. “But aside from that, you’ll eat better. Buster starts supper for me all the time.” She smiles over the table at him. “Sometimes, if I’ve got a lot of orders to get out, like at Christmas, Buster’ll just say, ‘What’s on the menu?’ and do the whole show. He can peel potatoes as good as I can.”
Buster winks at me. “Darn’d if she isn’t giving away all the secrets of her fair sex.”
I don’t tell anyone that Annie was the only one I ever spoke to about my divorce. I would go to town the middle of the afternoon, every other week, no one else around, and she would pour me coffee and say, “How you doing, Alex?” And we would go from there.
9
FLORENCE
The good father looks startled when he arrives at the wake early Friday evening. He says nothing at first. There is a crowd packed into this old public house: everyone whom Annie has ever helped, whom her grandmother had ever healed. Afflictions, blights, tangled births, droughts, poor crops. There is talk of capturing her likeness, making a memorial card of her face, of the special wounds on her neck. A small group of women in the corner are praying the rosary. In another corner, people are taking turns with the scissors and the iron, cutting strips of pattern and colour. Daisy is urging them on, saying “The brighter the better.” Some are stitching with Daisy, old-fashioned-like, by hand, satin stitches. It’s a crazy quilt. Kelsey is making a magpie for the centre block, from solid black and white and polka dot scraps. Just like a magpie to be surrounded by shiny things, I think. The young Mueller boy, Kristian, is still sitting in the same corner off by himself, his shoulders hunched now, head in hands, rocking back and forth. Daisy says it’s a good sign that he’s here, that maybe he wants to mend things, but the young miss is pretty much ignoring him. And I can’t blame her.
“Mike,” says one of the old men, “are you getting this down?” Mike has brought his video camera. He’s recording the whole thing. Sandwiches and squares are being passed around. Egg salad and tuna fish. Nanaimo bars and date squares.
I glance back at Annie laid out on the table, and I give a little start. Father Pat has put down his case near her and opened it, rummaging for something inside. And I swear can see her trying to rise and hear her in my mind wanting to pray her own service.
FATHER PAT
They are all talking farming when I get to there to do the vigil service. Roses and crops and drought. Beef prices depressed and pork futures down. The money they owe the banks, the mortgages on their land. The weather.
Someone has put a yellow and orange banner over the dart board: Sing Hallelujah! Someone else is videotaping the whole carnival. The body has been on display all day. Lucky it isn’t hot outside, but they’ve got the air conditioner going in here too. No smell yet. Florence has roses set around the room, sticks of incense burning on some windowsills. Daisy is just setting out fresh candles by Annie’s head and her feet and is about to light them.
I put down my carrying case, take out more votive candles, ask the women to put them around the place. Pull out my crucifix, set it at the head of the body.
I throw my prayer stole over my black cassock, turn around, measure the two ends, make sure they fall even, turn back to the room. Take out my book of funeral rites, turn to the section on Funeral Vigils or wakes as they are traditionally called. That’s when I interrupt the visiting, tell them it’s in poor taste.
“But father, we’re doing what we always do around Annie.”
“Just like old times.”
“Mornings at the post office.”
“Annie would put on the coffee,” one of the old codgers assures me. “We’d get the mail, shoot the breeze.”
“She’d sit in her wicket there and listen. She could talk farming as good as any of us.”
It’s well past coffee time I remind them. They seem surprised. I gather some of them have been at it all day and haven’t noticed the time passing. I ask everyone to clear the space around her, allow people to approach with their last respects. They pile the small round tables against the wall and start to arrange the chairs in a series of concentric circles, till it looks like any other public space, except for the cabinet behind the bar with liquor stacked to the ceiling. The hotel is all finished inside in the style of the thirties. The bar itself is solid mahogany, probably made from a single tree, the grain lines up so well. Between here and the church, this is the fairer building by far. It’s easy to see that.
The people start a procession to view the body. At least a hundred people, more than actually live in the town. The line keeps growing. I recognize some of the faces from the parish, but many not.
KRISTIAN
I see the tone of the light before I see the body laid out on a table. I hesitate at first, but then I decide to walk up to it just like everyone else, pretend I see like everyone else.
She is smiling. There are no tire tracks on her face. I have to hold myself back from getting closer, from touching her; something makes me want to touch the field of light around her. I keep holding myself a little distant from the foot of the table, squeezing my arms around myself I realize, trying to stop them from shaking.
“But I saw her face—” I start to say to the lady by the coffin and she grabs her gut like I’ve just punched her. I want to say, I saw her face go under, she was smiling, just like she is here.
Instead I ask, “Did they change how she looked or did she come in this way?” doubting again.
The lady studies me for a minute, kind of puzzled and nutty-looking, like she’s off somewhere in her head, and I had woken her.
“No, Krisitan. I helped with the body.” That’s when she gives a little whimper and I recognize her — Miss Florence from Grade 1.
“She was like that when she was found; we didn’t use any make-up on her.”
“Thanks,” I say, “I’m really sorry for my questions.” I untwist my arms, stuff my hands in my pant pockets, and start to back away.
People are splashing themselves, crossing themselves with water that was set out in a bowl at the foot of the table where they’ve laid her. I just follow along and cross myself too. I turn back to get one last look. That’s when I think I see her peeking over the edge of her casket, smiling. I think, it must be a trick of the light, all of it, then and now. Somehow her body got twisted and if I could see the back of her, I’d find the tire tracks, the evidence. The sun is coming in hard through the back window. Yes, a trick of the light.
I start to get choked up again and this big old gruff guy with a gimped leg, gives me a slap on the back, and says she was one of the good ones and it was too bad. The greater the gift the greater the loss. The greater the love . . . and a few other things. I keep wiping the tears from my eyes.
FATHER PAT
Finally the line snakes back to where it began, and half the participants find seats, while the other half, mostly the men, remain standing. Time to start.
“My dear people, I welcome you to this vigil for our friend and neighbour, Anna Marie Gallagher.” Conversation stops, chairs shuffle and scrape.
Mrs. Cummins plays the piano in the corner. I’m sure it hasn’t been tuned in decades. She and Florence lead the congregation in a very slow rendition of Holy Holy Holy. One verse.
Lord God Almighty. Indeed.
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.
Early in the evening perhaps. . . . At least nobody needs to look at the hymnbooks. They all know it. Second verse.
“My dear people—” I start, but I’m cut off. Mrs. Cummins frowns, bends towards Florence, bends towards the piano, third verse.
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee.
Really now, this is a bit much. We never sing the third verse for the opening unless it’s Christmas!
Mrs. Cummins takes her hands off the piano when she sees me glaring, and she and the congregation comes to a jagged halt on the last
note of the last verse: be Be BE bee beez.
“My dear people, let us pray for the repose of the soul of Anna Marie Gallagher. Heavenly Father we ask for your gentle light to shine on our sister. We pray that you will greet her with open arms and take her home to you.”
Florence and Vera and Daisy chorus “Amen.” Everyone else nods. It’s like Catholics forget what to bloody do when they’ve got Protestants in the room.
Florence Enders gets up to do the first reading.
But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.
Yes, there is always a “but” with God.
ANNIE
No torment shall reach me here. My affliction is over. I am worthy. Proved like gold. Proved in a fire hotter than the kiln I grew up with.
My tears have been my food day and night.
So they have. So they have.
Touch has been my suffering and my redemption. Nothing more to touch, no more to be touched in this body.
After the institution, after the city, when I came home again to my father’s house, I saw his thick hands as if for the first time, muscled, scarred, so many tiny flecks of white skin where the coals had sent up sparks and burned through. Some, where skin had grown over, where it was jagged, ruptured. I saw his bloated face, his veined nose, his handkerchiefs filled with black from the kilns even though he hadn’t worked them for years.
Kristian sees the air above him white as light through a fog. Sees the aura of peace on the ceiling. Doesn’t know what it is. But your heart calms, doesn’t it? From here on the ceiling I can see you grip the seat, look up, listen.
They seemed, in view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are at peace.
Is it true what they say about the dead? Kristian’s thinking. That their eyes can see through mass? That they can see into your very soul?
A wonder he can’t hear me laughing.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself. Someone is saying.
The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning Page 10