Cool Water

by Dianne Warren

  Lee urges the horse to the top of the nearest dune and feels chunks of sand breaking away as the animal propels himself upward. From the crest, he can see the panorama of the Little Snake Hills. To the north and east, the miles and miles of rolling pasture. To the south and west, a patchwork of grass and sand. The tall metal frame of a gas well in the distance announces modernization when everything else looks more or less as it must have a hundred years ago.

  There’s a controversy brewing over the oil and gas interests. The ranchers fear that the rough access roads will break up the network of shallow roots holding the sand in place and cause the pasture grasses to lose way to the force of wind. Lee’s been to several meetings in town, although he sat at the back of the room and didn’t say anything because the government officials and environmentalists and representatives of the oil and gas companies were all terrifyingly good at talking. A few local ranchers had prepared statements about the importance of preserving their pastures and were brave enough to read them, and Lee was moved by their heartfelt presentations. He wished he’d had the confidence to present a statement himself, do Lester’s memory proud.

  Without really making a conscious decision to go farther west, Lee guides the horse down the western slope of the dune. The horse’s ears are forward as though he’s curious about what is ahead. The sun warms Lee’s back and he notes the spectacular colour of the morning sky, the intricate designs everywhere around him in the sand. He feels the steady cadence of the horse moving under him and it seems right that he continue on, hardly gives it a thought.

  “Atta boy,” he says aloud for no reason other than to say something to the horse, who turns one ear in his direction.

  As the day begins to heat up, Lee imagines the silhouette the two of them would make for anyone gazing east toward the sun—a man and a distinctively Arab-looking horse in a distinctively desert-like landscape. A photograph, he thinks, for his childhood scrapbook. He almost wishes someone were around to snap the picture, but then again not, because he likes the idea of being alone out here with only a horse for company. He just hopes that Lester isn’t watching from above. Watching him waste time on a workday.

  Scandal

  When Vicki pulls up in front of Karla Norman’s house she says, “Okay, kids, behave yourselves,” and then all six of them pile out and head up the walk toward Karla’s front door. They pass three polished and gleaming muscle cars lined up in the drive, all of them belonging to Karla’s dad, whose name is Walter but he’s known around town as TNT. He lives with Karla because he’s had a stroke and is in a wheelchair. Karla is often seen in front of her house with the garden hose and chamois cloths and Turtle Wax as she shines the cars while her father watches from the shade. “And don’t stare at Mr. Norman,” Vicki says.

  The rooster from next door is sitting on Karla’s bottom step and he flaps out of the way and onto the lawn as they approach.

  “Sorry to show up without an appointment,” Vicki says when Karla opens the door, “but I was wondering if you could give Lucille’s hair a quick cut? She’s got gum in it and she’ll scream blue murder if I try to comb it out.”

  Karla holds the door for them to troop inside. “Someone’s coming in half an hour for colour,” she says, “but I should have time.” She invites the kids to watch TV with her father, who sits small and crumpled-looking in an armchair facing the television. You’d never guess in a million years that he’d somehow earned his nickname. His wheelchair is beside the armchair and Daisy heads right for it and sits in it.

  “Hi, mister,” she says.

  “That’s Mr. Norman to you,” Vicki says, “and you should ask him if you can sit in his chair. It’s not a play toy, you know.”

  “Dad won’t mind,” Karla says. “Will you, Dad?”

  Daisy is looking at him, waiting for an answer. He nods and she settles back, her small hands on the wheels as though she might wheel herself around the room. The other kids line up on the couch, all but Lucille, who has taken Karla’s hand. Mr. Norman stares at the twins as though he thinks he might be seeing double.

  “What’s he watching?” Martin asks Karla.

  “I’m not sure,” Karla says. The channel appears to be set on a game show of some kind. “We can switch it maybe. Dad, can we find something the kids will like?”

  Her father indicates with his shaky hand that the kids can have the remote control. Shiloh reaches over and picks it up from the arm of Mr. Norman’s chair and finds a cartoon channel.

  “Will that be all right?” Vicki asks.

  “He doesn’t really care what he watches,” says Karla. “Except football. He loves football.”

  Karla takes Vicki and little Lucille down the hall to the bedroom that has been converted to her salon and lays a board across the arms of the chair for Lucille to sit on.

  “Up you go,” she says as she lifts the child onto the seat.

  Vicki can see Karla is trying to find a place to start.

  Lucille is busy looking at herself in the big round mirror. She scrunches up her face and then sticks her tongue out.

  “How short?” Karla asks Vicki.

  “I think you’ll have to go pretty short,” Vicki says. “Maybe we should just shave her head.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to go that far,” Karla says. “Okay then, Lucille, what do you say we make you look like a pixie?”

  Lucille nods.

  As Karla begins to cut, she points out the goldfish bowl in front of the mirror to keep Lucille occupied. “How’d you do this, anyway?” she asks. “There’s gum everywhere.”

  “I chewed it up first,” says Lucille.

  “Well, that makes sense, I guess,” says Karla. “It always helps to have a plan.”

  She runs her fingers through Lucille’s fine hair, trying to find all the bits of sticky gum.

  “So who’s up next?” Vicki asks just to make conversation. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “Lila Birch,” Karla says. “You know her daughter, Rachelle, is getting married? Lila wants me to do the wedding, which is good, I guess, a nice chunk of change, but I’m getting sick of hearing about it. You’d think it was a royal wedding. She wants me to come to the house for styling in the morning—or perhaps the girls will need to come here if they want colour, she’s getting back to me on that—and then to the church for last-minute touch-ups before everyone walks down the aisle. And then she wants me to travel into Swift Current with the wedding party for the photo session. That will be at four o’clock, and then I might be needed before the dinner and dance as well, if the ’dos are getting tired. That’s what she calls them—the ’dos. Anyway, not to complain. Like I said, nice chunk of cash. I’ll have to hire someone to sit with Dad all day, though.”

  The phone rings. Karla ignores it, but after seven or eight rings Daisy appears in the doorway and says, “Your phone’s ringing.”

  “I know,” says Karla. “I’m ignoring it.”

  “But the man wants someone to answer it.”

  “Dad, you mean? Oh. Well, how would you like to answer it for me, then,” says Karla. “Find out who it is and say I’ll call back.”

  Daisy leaves, and then returns. “It’s someone named Lou,” she says. “You can’t call her back because she’s going out. She says she needs to talk to you right now.”

  “She’s going out. Wouldn’t you know it. Sorry,” Karla says to Vicki. “I’d better take it.”

  While Karla is out of the room, Vicki plays “I Spy” with Lucille to keep her in the chair. As Lucille argues with her that the goldfish must be yellow and not orange because gold is yellow, Vicki thinks about all the Norman family scandals. She shouldn’t—Karla is really nice and good with the kids—but when you know things about a person you can’t help it. Like when Karla’s cousin Billy went crazy and stabbed his own mother and killed her. How can you not think about that? And Karla’s father was an alcoholic and got his nickname TNT because of the time he was helping someone blow a g
ranite boulder out of his new dugout and they blew out the side of the barn with the debris, lucky no one was killed. In spite of the picture of the barn demolition on the front page of the paper, people kept asking him for help with their blasting projects because he’d worked on the pipeline for years and actually knew what he was doing as long as he wasn’t too drunk. Since the stroke, he couldn’t drink any more, but this was after a lifetime of spending all his money on booze and cars and making life hard for his wife until her death several years ago. After he had the stroke, Karla’s older sister, Lou, refused to take him in with her, and Karla changed her plan to move to Calgary so that he wouldn’t get sent to a nursing home in whatever small town had a bed for him because the one in Juliet had a two-year waiting list. Karla’s planned move to Calgary had been to recover from being engaged to Dale Patterson three times—another scandal, or at least a subject for gossip. Vicki has heard that all the old ladies in town are secretly thankful for the stroke because they like the way Karla does their perms, and she’ll even make house calls if they really need her to. And Vicki supposes that Karla’s looking after her dad the way she does gives them hope that if they were to suffer a debilitating illness, someone would come out of the woodwork to care for them.

  “I spy with my little eye something that is puce,” Vicki says.

  “What the heck is puce?” asks Lucille. That makes Vicki laugh.

  She can now hear what Karla is saying on the phone because she’s raised her voice. Vicki moves closer to the doorway so she can hear better.

  “So a friggin’ candle party is a priority for you, is it?” Karla says. Then after a pause, “That is not true. I hardly ever ask. I can’t believe you said that.” Karla slams the phone down so hard it crashes to the floor, and she says, “Pretend you didn’t hear that, kids,” and comes back up the hall to her salon.

  “God damn that Lou,” she says to Vicki, then, “Pretend you didn’t hear that,” to Lucille.

  Lucille puts her hands over her ears.

  “She’s sharp as a tack, isn’t she,” Karla says.

  “I can still hear you,” says Lucille.

  “I’d better watch my language, then,” says Karla, picking up her scissors again. “So you know my sister, Lou,” she says. Vicki nods. “Just once in a while—hardly ever—I ask her to watch Dad for a few hours so I can go out and have . . . you know . . . a bit of fun, for God’s sake, so I can convince myself I’m not living in an old folks’ home. And every time—every friggin’ time—she gives me the third degree about where I’m going and who with, as though I’m asking for something unreasonable. He’s her father too, like she’s forgotten that. So today is my birthday—no need for happy birthday, that’s not why I’m telling you this—and I thought she would call and offer to take Dad, but no, so I call her, and she says she has to check something, and she calls me back just now and says she can’t take Dad because she’s going to Debbie Wells’s candle party. Can you believe that? It’s an obligation, she says. As though Dad isn’t.”

  Karla finally stops talking and remembers that she’s supposed to be cutting Lucille’s hair. Snip. A long lock of hair tumbles to the floor. Now Lucille is short on one side and long on the other. She studies herself intently in the mirror and when Karla goes to snip the other side Lucille grabs the remaining locks of long hair and squirms away from Karla’s scissors.

  “What?” Karla asks her. “You want to leave that side long?”

  Lucille nods.

  “Lucille,” Vicki says, “don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It’s cool,” Lucille says.

  “Oh my God, she turned into a teenager while I was on the phone,” Karla says.

  “Have you got the gum out?” Vicki asks.

  “I think so. Honey, take your hand away so I can look for gum. I won’t cut. Promise.”

  Lucille takes her hand away and Karla does a quick check. “I think we got it,” she says. “Lucille, how about I snip that side off and even it up. Remember the pixie? Don’t you want to look like a pixie?”

  Lucille says no and grabs her hair again, all the while watching herself in the mirror.

  Karla looks to Vicki for direction. “Never mind,” Vicki says. “I can try to fix it myself later.” She lifts Lucille down from the chair. “Okay, sweet pea,” she says. “Good enough for now, I guess. Thanks, Karla.” Then she says, “You know, I could sit with your dad sometime. I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Absolutely not. Not when Lou is just down the block and this is her father too we’re talking about. But thanks anyway. That’s really nice of you to offer.”

  Vicki opens her purse so she can pay Karla and remembers that she has only a twenty and she’d better save that for the swimming pool and whatever else comes up over the course of the day. She’ll have to write a cheque and hope it doesn’t bounce like the last one did. That had been embarrassing but luckily Blaine had just been paid and she was able to give Karla cash before Blaine found out about the bounced cheque. Blaine thinks Vicki should just cut the kids’ hair herself like his mother used to do, and she’s had to set him straight on kids’ expectations for trendy haircuts these days. “Get used to it, Blaine,” she says. “When the girls get to high school, look out.” Even Shiloh asked recently if he could get his hair dyed blond. Vicki didn’t tell Blaine about that. Anyway, she thought Shiloh was just testing her since he hasn’t mentioned it since.

  She gets her cheque book out of her purse and says, “How much?” but Karla says, “That’s okay. I didn’t really do enough of a job to charge you.”

  “No really,” Vicki says, her cheque book poised and ready. “How much?”

  “You don’t want to write a cheque for five bucks,” she says. “How about I keep track and add it on next time you come?”

  Vicki puts her cheque book back in her purse. “Okay,” she says. “That’s fair, I guess. As long as you remember.”

  “I’ll write it down,” Karla promises.

  In the living room, everyone looks contented, sitting in front of the TV and watching cartoons, even Mr. Norman. Except for Shiloh, who has moved to the floor and isn’t really watching. Maybe he’s getting too old for cartoons, Vicki thinks. Maybe his thoughts have turned to a young man’s thoughts.

  “Do we have to go?” asks Daisy. “We’re right in the middle.”

  “Of course we have to go,” Vicki says. “Karla has other people coming for haircuts. Besides, we’ve got work to do, remember. Let’s go. Toot sweet.”

  “What are you up to?” Karla asks as the kids line up behind their mother like a small brigade, all but Shiloh, who goes to the door and walks out without a word.

  Vicki rolls her eyes at Karla, See what I have to put up with, trying not to look worried. Then she says, “What are we up to?” to the rest of the kids.

  “Beans,” they say in unison.

  Karla laughs. “I can see you’re full of beans, every one of you.”

  “Not that kind of beans,” says Lucille, still playing with her lopsided hair. “Green beans.”

  “Oh, I see,” says Karla, although she doesn’t.

  Just as they’re about to file out the door, the phone rings again and Vicki hears Karla answer and say, “Oh, it’s you,” and then, “I said I would. Okay. Later.” Then she hangs up.

  When they get outside, Vicki sees Dale Patterson’s red truck round the corner. Well, well, maybe that had been Dale on the phone, calling Karla from in front of her house. And maybe they’re heading for a fourth engagement. She has no real opinion on Dale Patterson and Karla Norman. Well, actually, she does. She thinks Karla is too good for Dale, but then what does her opinion or anyone else’s matter when it comes to love?

  As they walk by the three shiny cars, she notices a scratch on the hood of the black one, the Trans Am, a fresh shiny scratch. The rooster is pecking at Mrs. Baxter’s lawn nearby and Vicki wonders if he is responsible. She’s pretty sure he would lose his head if he were caught in the act of damaging one of old TNT’s
prized possessions. Why in the world do they keep three cars? She’s heard a story that Lou and Karla had a big fight over the cars, that Lou thought they should all be sold and the money used for their father’s care, but then Karla said the cars were his only pleasure and she went out and sold her own car and now drives one of her father’s when she needs a vehicle, a different one every time she goes out. Imagine the cost of keeping the three of them licensed, Vicki thinks. She looks down the walk to her own rusty old Cutlass, expecting to see Shiloh, but he isn’t there.

  “Shotgun,” shouts one of the twins when he sees that Shiloh isn’t in the car. He races to the street and yanks the passenger door open and gets in before his luck runs out and Shiloh appears to take control of the front seat. But then Martin says, “I’m older,” and tells him to get out and in the back, and he dutifully does.

  Vicki notices that Shiloh’s backpack is not in the car where he left it.

  “Darn him anyway,” she says. “Well, get in, kids, I guess we have to go looking for your brother. Funny thing, when the oldest gets to be the most trouble.”

  “Will Shiloh catch heck?” Daisy asks.

  “I’m not sure,” Vicki says. “Probably not. He’s likely walked over to Main Street. Although he should have said something.”

  They drive the few blocks to Main, and Vicki looks up and down but can’t see Shiloh. She angle parks in front of the post office and tells the kids to stay in the car while she goes to collect the mail.

  The mailboxes are open at the back to the inner workings of the post office, and as soon as Vicki has her box open, Mrs. Bulin, the postmistress, says, “Hi, Vicki. How’s the day treating you so far?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she says, “I guess hell must be freezing over. They say it might rain.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Vicki says. “Doesn’t look much like rain.” She can’t see Mrs. Bulin, but she speaks to the voice. Mrs. Bulin talks to everyone who comes in for mail, but the whole town knows not to say too much back. Mrs. Bulin is approaching sixty-five and has expressed no interest in retiring. She likes her access to information too much, so the story goes.