Road to Thunder Hill

by Connie Barnes Rose

  “I am a failure as a hermit because of how much I need people, like you two, for example.”

  “Us?” Alana said.

  “Me and Alana?” I said to make sure I heard that right.

  “What’s wrong with needing us?” Alana said, “We’re your best friends.”

  “Hermits shouldn’t need anybody,” he growled. Then he pointed to the bag of corn out on the back steps. Would we girls mind shucking it?

  Of course we wouldn’t, we said; we were his willing slaves. He once joked that unless he found someone like Alana or me, he’d stay alone forever. Of course, we were flattered. And, he added, if it ever came to pass that Danny or Ray dumped us for younger, firmer women, he’d be there for either of us. Thanks a lot, we told him, adding that he probably should have shut up a line or two back.

  There were times when he got so lonely that he took to advertising in the city paper. His ad read, “Wanted: Female cabin mate. No electricity/phone. Must like woods.” If he thought they were nice, or hot, he’d invite them to “try it out,” meaning the hermit life. Danny and Ray thought this was a great scam, but Alana and I said we hoped he’d find someone to share his life. We advised him not to make a big deal of the fact that the outhouse was a two-seater, although he seemed to think this was a selling point.

  All sorts of women came to try out the hermit life with Bear back then, just because of this ad. Two were artists. One was there to oversee the installation of the gas pipeline over in North Harbour. A few were simply looking for an escape from something. He ended up living with about half of them for a couple of months until he began to miss that lonesome feeling and he’d ask them to leave so that he could continue his hermit work. This is what he would tell us.

  These women adored him. They raved about what a great guy he was, how sensitive, how considerate. If they were lovers, they might add something about how generous he was in bed, how attentive, blah, blah, blah. Alana and I would offer them more tea, or beer, or whatever, and before long, it would come out.

  “Say, do either of you guys have any idea just how big of a guy he is?”

  “Big?” we’d say, innocently peering over our tea mugs. “How do you mean, big?”

  “I mean, gigantic!” the pipeliner had said, illustrating with her hands.

  Unfortunately, by the time this sort of talk came out, they were days or even moments away from parting company with Bear. When we ganged up on him for an explanation (we had particularly liked the pipeliner), he shook his head and said, “One thing I’ve learned is that two hermits are one too many.”

  Bear may love Alana and me equally, but I think he trusts me the most. We’ve always been able to talk about most everything, from the sense of spirituality he feels whenever he’s in the woods to roadkill. Around here there’s lots of roadkill, with everything from deer to porcupines wandering down off Thunder Hill onto the highway that runs between the hill and the strait. It’s likely due to the cottages built between the road and the shore. The cottagers want to feel like they’re spending their summers in the country, so almost every plywood shack has its own tidy vegetable garden. And that’s why you can’t drive down this stretch of road in the summer without passing a mound of mangled fur that used to house a hungry animal. One year, Bear brought this to the attention of the county and found himself in charge of cleaning up roadkill. He’d tell us about it, listing off the numbers of fawns and raccoons he’d had to pick up. Once, he’d even had to remove a moose.

  “And there’s no such thing as a car hitting a deer. What usually happens is the deer attacks the car.”

  I still can’t drive at night without expecting an ambush from a light-crazed deer.

  I’m even comfortable talking to him about his love life. I’m one of the first to know how lonely he gets. He just can’t picture ever settling down with one woman is what he usually tells me. One night, we’d all been sitting out on his porch watching shooting stars. Everyone had gone inside because of the dew, but Bear and I hadn’t gotten our fill of comet tails. So after a blue streak scratched the sky he suddenly blurted right out,

  “Yeah, that Sharon was nice.”

  “She really liked you too. So what happened?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Good,” he laughed. “So can I.” Then he got all serious and said, “Okay, okay, if you must know, it’s because of the size of my … my size.”

  I laughed then because I figured he was still joking around. One would think a large penis might be an asset. But then I didn’t know what to think when he said that women found sex with him painful. Everything else about their relationship might be great, but the whole thing was doomed because of his size.

  “How do you know?” I said, “You’re always the one to break up with them!”

  He winced and said, “Because I see it coming. It’s okay for a time, but then they start tensing up when, you know, it’s coming at them and soon sex becomes painful or even impossible for us both.”

  We stood there awhile, listening to the dew dripping off the trees. I guess he thought I was uncomfortable with this information, and he was probably right, because he dropped the serious voice and started joking around again, asking me if I thought it would be a good idea if the next time he ran his ads to ask that only women with roomy vaginas need apply.

  I laughed then, but was surprised to feel this tug happen all the way up to my womb at the thought of Bear pushing into me. I mumbled something about it being time to get home, and I hurried inside the cabin to find Ray.

  And here I thought I’d gotten over these feelings for Bear. Back when we all lived on the farm, Bear had built a tree house in the big old maple by the barn. It was a very impressive tree house complete with a sleeping shelter and a cooking area. He had a rope ladder he could throw over for visitors but he and I were the only ones who could climb up the tree without it. One lazy summer day I went up for a visit and we’d gotten sleepy after smoking a joint and drinking the beer I’d brought up in a backpack. We crawled under the little tent he’d rigged up for a nap. It was that innocent, really. Somehow in our sleep we’d moved closer to each other and were now face to face and I fairly squirmed under his hand that was pressing me even closer to what felt like a big zucchini in his pants, I realized that I was not the only one pretending to be asleep through it all. I bet we could have fully done the deed and later woken up to yawn or stretch and look at each other as if nothing had ever taken place. That’s if Ray’s voice from below hadn’t interrupted our dreams and made us jump apart like we were on fire. Which we were, but you’d never know it by how coolly we reacted.

  “Hold on there buddy,” Bear said. “Ladder coming down.”

  “Did you remember to pick that lettuce for the salad?” I called down to Ray.

  I don’t think Bear and I dared to look at each other for a whole week after that.

  A flash of lightning causes Bear and me to crash back into the pool table.

  “Whoa!” says Bear.

  “That was freaky,” I say. “Lightning in a snowstorm.”

  “Only it’s more like freezing rain at this point,” Bear says. We can hear it clicking on the window.

  A low roll of thunder causes Suzie to tremble and she paces around our chairs. The lights start flickering, so that doesn’t help matters much.

  “Poor, poor Suzie,” I say, smoothing my hand over her worried face. “Scared of thunder.”

  “Me too, me too,” says Bear. So I reach out and pat him on the head too.

  The cards lie scattered across the table where Perry had flung them. Clayton Card is passed out on the couch over by the fridge and everybody else left some time ago.

  When Bear and I came through the door a few hours ago, the place had been far livelier. There was Mary-Lyn Carty and her siste
r and her sister’s year-old baby taking up the couch. And there was Clayton Card lurching in front of them. He was rambling on, as he’s known to do, about absolutely nothing that anyone can understand. When he’s drunk, which is almost always, it’s like a wire in his brain short circuits and he babbles about things he may or may not have done.

  “…That time me and Bugger Larch took a taxi all the ways up to Moncton to hear Pink Floyd. Best concert I ever saw.”

  “You mean the best concert you never saw,” Perry called over from where he was loading the fridge with beer. “Pink Floyd never played in Moncton.”

  Clayton froze for a minute, his hand high in the air, before saying to Perry, “You’re just jealous because you missed that concert.” Then, clenching up his face, he started playing air guitar for the girls on the couch. All this time they’d been twiddling their hair and not paying attention to anything. In fact, the baby was the only one who looked our way when Bear and I walked through the door.

  I must say I didn’t think Mary-Lyn Carty would go so far as to bring her sister and her baby to a place like this. It was obvious she’d been into the beer fridge a few times herself, because not long after we came in she stood up and started slow dancing with herself to Shania Twain and Clayton Card joined her, throwing his arms over her shoulders. Then she threw her own over his until their heads were touching and they were really just holding each other up. You’d think they’d discovered each other for the first time, instead of having known each other since kindergarten. Meanwhile, Mary-Lyn’s top had ridden up over her leggings and, let me tell you, she has one serious butt. I wouldn’t think that dancing with Clayton Card could be any great thrill either. He’s one of those stubble-faced types who think all women want him.

  Mary-Lyn hollered over to her sister, who was getting hit up on by Perry.

  “You keepin’ an eye on him over there?”

  Perry had given the baby a case of empty beer bottles to play with, and so far he hadn’t broken any. In fact, he seemed pretty happy to suck away at them. Ronnie tossed beer caps at the sister’s chest. The sister blushed every time a cap landed down the front of her blouse, but then she’d make a big show of pulling it out from between her breasts. I got to watch all this, which was a thrill a minute. Eventually, Mary-Lyn came to her senses, or maybe sobered up enough to see who she was dancing with, because she pushed Clayton onto the couch, where he must have given up on any idea of romance or life, because so far, since then, he hasn’t moved. Mary-Lyn wasn’t about to let her sister get romanced by Perry Card either, because just as Perry was in the act of fetching his own bottle cap from down her sister’s chest, Mary-Lyn yanked on her arm so hard that Perry almost got jerked right off his feet. They left after that, roaring down Perry’s lane in Mary-Lyn’s pick-up.

  One of the windows out back began rattling even louder than before and the lights continued to flicker on and off. Just before Perry left, he’d tried to phone his buddy down in Diligent Brook, but then he slammed the receiver down. “Just my fucking luck! Now the phone lines are down too,” he’d said, kicking the door open into the night.

  His luck? Think of the mess my luck was in. The phone lines were down, Bear was in no shape to drive out there in the storm, and even if I did get home I had no kitchen stove to keep me warm, let alone a man. It looked like we’d be stuck in Hog Holler this Saturday night, with nothing to do except to ride out the storm.

  9. Road to Hog Holler

  SOON AFTER THE FLUE fire, and right after Ray had called earlier today to tell me he wasn’t going to make it home, I phoned Alana to tell her we wouldn’t be coming over for cards. She told me to come over anyway, and I said I’d probably just stay put since I didn’t have the car.

  “I heard about the flue fire,” she said. What a surprise. Of course she would have heard the news by then. The Four Reasons Gas n’ Stop is the gossip hot spot of the entire community. The biggest news of the day would be my flue fire and the storm. Unless, of course, someone had driven off the road somewhere.

  Thinking about that reminded me again about Gayl. She still hadn’t phoned. But then again, she often forgets. Knowing this has probably kept me from falling over the panic cliff on many occasions. It’s a kind of insurance, thinking she probably forgot to call. Instead of lying broken in a ditch, she was likely rooting around in my mother’s freezer hoping to find some frozen gingersnaps. I sure hoped so. I didn’t want to call and worry my mother in case Gayl got sidetracked there in town.

  “Want Danny to come get you on the snowmobile?” Alana was saying.

  I looked out my kitchen window. The frozen buds on the maple tree by the barn looked like Christmas ornaments. It was still light at six o’clock. Normally, in April, we’d be hearing the frantic mating calls of songbirds, but it seemed as though they’d given up on the day as well. Tonight, the clocks would spring ahead.

  I said, “No, I’ll call you later.”

  Alana’s voice had barely left my ear when the phone rang again and it was Gayl, calling from town. “Yeah, I don’t think I should drive back today.”

  “You mean tonight,” I said. “You were supposed to call hours ago.” I pointed out the fact that if she’d picked up the dog food and groceries and phoned me like she was supposed to, I would have told her to head back then.

  “You were right about the road. It was real bad.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”

  “But I did it, Ma. I drove slow and I survived. Aren’t you proud of me?”

  “Sure, but now I’m stuck here alone with no car and a hungry dog.” I stuck the phone under my chin and opened the fridge which was pretty much empty except for a bit of the roast beef

  “Ma, tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it, okay?” Gayl was saying into my ear. “Like, I could leave now and go off the road, or Biz and I could stay here at Gran’s tonight and come home first thing in the morning. It’s up to you, Ma, because of course your judgment is always right.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. I scraped the leftovers into Suzie’s dish and watched her savour it slowly in the way of old dogs. “I guess I should speak to your grandmother.”

  “Um, she’s having a nap.”

  The clock over my sink read six-fifteen.

  “What do you mean she’s having a nap?”

  “She was tired.”

  “You mean she was drunk.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Ma?” In her sigh I could hear her thoughts. She was trying to protect us both.

  “Your Gran is lucky to have you there,” I said as I reached behind the fridge for my bottle of rum. “I wish I had someone to tuck me into bed tonight.”

  “Where’s Dad? Isn’t he home yet?”

  “Seems like the road’s too bad for him to drive home too.”

  “Oh.” Another sigh. “Well, I’m sure he would have come if he could.”

  Poor Gayl. Protecting her father too.

  She said, “Why don’t you go over to Alana and Danny’s, and not worry about Dad or Gran or me. It’s not like you can do anything about anything anyways.”

  “Maybe, I’ll see.”

  She’s got it right that there’s nothing I can do about it, I thought, as I hung up. I poured some rum and coke and leaned against the doorway between the living room and dining room. What happened to that family who lived here just minutes ago? I wandered upstairs to my bedroom, and then to Gayl’s disaster zone. From the doorways I searched each room for a clue as to how things could have all changed without me even noticing. The only thing I found was what looked like my mother’s sad face in the hallway mirror. “Now how the hell did you get here?” I said out loud.

  I used to think of my life as time divided by two. Time before Gayl and time after. That’s why I remember our farm so clearly, because that’s when Gayl came to lif
e and a couple of years later was when the farm died. Danny and Alana went on to buy the store, Bear built his log cabin up on Thunder Hill, and then it was just Ray and me and Gayl. We took out a loan and the house we used to call the farm was ours. After that, all that mattered was Gayl. All those summers filled with respectable vegetable gardens, with not a single pot plant peeking above the corn. Then there were all those winters of Gayl hopping onto the school bus that her own Daddy drove. I’d go feed the dogs and do the dishes, all before starting up the Toyota so I could go to work at Foghorn Pewter. Winter night after winter night, Ray and I would lie under the weight of half a dozen quilts, our child safe in the next room, the dogs on the floor beside the bed. I must have felt pretty content back then because I thought those years would last forever. That life now seems like one big blur.

  Suzie’s fur was so full of ice it sounded like the beaded curtains we used to have hanging in every doorway of the farm. I hoped her arthritis wouldn’t get any worse because of all this.

  Ice pellets stung my face. It was the kind of storm that leaves some fields bare, but will pile a ten-foot drift right across a road, just like the one ahead of me at the top of the lane. It’s because of the spruce trees we planted almost fifteen years ago. Ray and I argued about those trees. He wanted to cut them down to prevent these drifts, but I wanted privacy from everyone who drove along the highway.

  Today, when I finally reached the drift I figured I’d either have to climb over, or go around it, which meant tramping through swampy ditches. So, over the top I went, and got soaked anyway because I sank up to my hips in the snow and ended up feeling like I was swimming through the thing. At one point I didn’t think I’d be able to pull myself out, but after one good fortification of rum I managed to slip out.