Cool Water

by Dianne Warren

  “I’ve got calves to gather,” Hank says, starting toward his truck. “No sense asking you for help with that gimpy arm, whatever you did to it.”

  “Why is everybody so interested in my damned arm?” Dale says. “It’s none of your business.”

  Hank shakes his head and gets in the truck and slams the door. The coffee that he’d spilled on the floor the night before is not smelling so good and he rolls down the window before he turns the key.

  “Have a good day there, Dale,” he calls through the open window, taking the opportunity to grab the last word as Dale puts his phone to his ear.

  Hank remembers that he was planning to drop something off for Lee Torgeson, some of Lynn’s baking. He knows Lynn would send muffins or a pie—maybe even one of the key lime pies—but he decides to leave that for another day. Best to wait, he thinks—after years of experience—for whatever has put her in such a temper to pass. As it always does.

  The Manager

  On Norval’s desk at the bank, between two decorative horse-head bookends purchased by Lila, are a half-dozen historical texts on the area in which Juliet is situated. When Norval first moved to Juliet to assume the role of bank manager, he read these books in an effort to understand his new mercantile parish. He read, for example, that in the nineteenth century, before the area was opened up for settlement, it was declared to be unsuitable for crops by a geographical adviser to the British Parliament. The man’s advice was not heeded, and sometimes when Norval looks out his office window and the air is the colour of sand, he thinks perhaps it should have been. On such days—and today is one of them—he wonders how he ended up here, and if what had been described as a promotion had actually been a punishment for some corporate mistake he was not aware he’d committed. With the oppressive heat building already, Norval is thankful for the air conditioner installed in the window behind him even though it’s noisy.

  He checks his calendar and sees that his only official appointment is the late-afternoon teacher interview at the school, and his morning is free and clear for dealing with the farm loan payments coming due. He turns on his computer and generates his client list, and at the top of that list is Blaine Dolson’s name.

  In spite of all the ads on TV that tell you a financial institution holds your ticket to a prosperous future, Norval cannot think of any way for his bank to help Blaine Dolson get back on his feet, let alone prosper. Blaine’s just got in too deep. He’s working on the highway crew to make ends meet, and still there’s barely enough money coming in to pay the interest on his remaining loans. What will happen when the new highway’s done? Blaine has half a dozen kids. Norval recently saw a documentary on American TV about families living in their cars. How can that be happening in one of the most affluent countries in the world? And how will Norval live with himself if it comes to that for the Dolsons, when the same institution that pulled the rug out from under Blaine is going to provide Norval with a comfortable, if not extravagant, retirement?

  Then Norval feels a little flash of anger on his own behalf as he thinks about how hard this job is, and how he agonizes over clients like the Dolsons and is not just sitting in here playing solitaire. He spends a good portion of every day worrying about families who have fallen on hard times, and what will happen to them, and what will happen to the whole town if the farm economy plummets again, or tanks completely. He cares about these things. If it were up to him, he would bail Blaine Dolson out in a minute, open up the safe and hand over a bag full of money, but that’s not the way it works. Well, there is one thing he can do. It’s not much, but he decides to ignore Blaine’s name and take it off his priority list, for a few days at least.

  He turns his attention to the Pattersons. They are not in a dire state, but there’s a quarterly payment due and he hasn’t heard from them. The senior Patterson, Andy, is a reasonable man to deal with, but the son is an unpredictable hothead. Norval is not sure what will happen when Andy decides to retire and let Dale take over. Norval just hopes that Andy keeps himself in the picture for a while. At least he’s willing to listen when Norval presents the bank’s perspective on his options.

  He clicks to open the file, and picks up the phone and punches in Andy’s phone number. No one answers, but after three rings a man’s voice—it sounds like Dale—asks the caller to leave a message, and so Norval does. Just wondering if Andy is available to come in to the bank as soon as possible; hope things are well with yourself and the wife, hope to hear from you soon. A pleasant-sounding goodbye, and Norval hangs up. Then he double-checks the phone numbers and realizes that he’s accidentally called Dale’s cell phone. He calls again, Andy’s number this time, and leaves the same message.

  At this point, Marsha—Norval’s jack-of-all-trades bank employee—brings him a dozen letters to sign, and he gets himself a cup of instant coffee before settling back behind his desk to check them over. He sets his mug down next to a framed photograph of Rachelle in her graduation cap and gown, which he’d installed to remind himself that she’d at least completed her grade twelve before she carelessly tossed away her future. In the photograph she looks poised and mature, ready for a career as a teacher or a journalist or an engineer, anything was possible just a few months ago. He sighs audibly, then turns to the letters.

  Before he’s finished reading the first one, he hears a pounding on the front door of the bank, which is not yet open to the public, and when Marsha unlocks the door, Norval hears the younger Patterson’s angry voice. Norval listens, regretting now the mistake of the phone numbers.

  “I want to see that Norval Birch,” Dale says.

  “The bank’s not open for another ten minutes,” Norval hears Marsha say. “Do you have to see him right now?”

  “Right this damn minute,” Dale says, and then Norval hears his boots stomping across the insubstantial floor, he can almost feel the floor giving under Dale’s weight, and there he is, in Norval’s office doorway, with his left arm in a sling.

  “Sorry, Norval,” Marsha says from behind Dale.

  “You might as well come in, Dale. I can see you’ve got something pressing on your mind.”

  “I’ll just keep the door open, shall I,” Marsha says, and leaves, although Norval is pretty sure she’s going to stay close enough to hear what’s going on. All of ninety-five pounds, and she doesn’t seem to be the least rattled by the Dale Pattersons of the world. Maybe she should be the bank manager.

  Dale enters the office and instead of taking the chair placed across the desk from Norval, he pushes it out of the way with his good arm and leans over Norval to better make his point. But before Dale can speak, he grimaces and straightens up, obviously in agony, and as he does so his good arm knocks a bookend and a couple of Norval’s books to the floor. The remaining books teeter, and then they fall too, leaving only one flat-sided plaster horse-head behind. Dale ignores the books, takes a moment to recover from the pain and then picks up the photograph of Rachelle. Norval can see beads of sweat on Dale’s forehead.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Norval says.

  “I wonder,” says Dale, ignoring the invitation to sit, still staring at the picture, “if you called to give me a personal invitation to your daughter’s wedding.” Then he looks at Norval, waiting for a response, and Norval actually thinks he might be serious.

  “I’d have to check with the wife on that,” he says. “She’s got a list as long as your arm.” He wishes he hadn’t said the word arm. He tries to look Dale in the eye and stay calm and say what he has to say. He wishes Dale had brought Andy with him.

  “I meant to call your father’s number, Dale,” Norval says. “It’s your father I’d like to talk to, about the loan. I’d feel more comfortable if he were here.”

  “I could give a rat’s ass about your comfort,” says Dale.

  Norval takes a deep breath. “Fair enough,” he says.

  Dale begins to tap Norval’s desk with Rachelle’s photograph. “So, Birchbark,” he asks, “when is this fancy
wedding anyway?”

  Birchbark. The disrespect is unbelievable.

  “I’d prefer Norval,” he says. “October, after harvest.” He pauses, then says, “Dale, tell your father that I’d like to talk to him. There’s a payment coming due at the end of—” but Dale raises his good arm, still holding the photograph and aiming it for emphasis in Norval’s direction, and says, “Stop.”

  “There’s not necessarily a problem, I just need to know—” but again Dale says, “Stop.”

  Norval stops. The two of them stare at each other, Dale aiming at Norval with the photograph of Rachelle. When it’s clear that Norval is not going to try to use bankers’ words or talk loan payments, Dale lowers his arm and sets the photograph down.

  “You think you’ve got it made, don’t you, Birchbark.”

  “Not really,” Norval says.

  “I know who that daughter of yours is marrying. We’ll see how she does, eh, see how her finances look in a couple of years.”

  That almost makes Norval laugh. The idea that he, a banker, would not have thought that one through. Norval clears his throat and says, “The loan is in your father’s name, so he’s the one I need to speak with.”

  A smirk crosses Dale’s face. He says, “Not for long, Birchbark. The old man’s retiring. Haven’t you heard? It’s me you’ll be dealing with from now on.”

  And at that moment Norval understands why Dale came to the bank and pounded on the door, unable to wait for an appointment or even the regular hours of operation. He’d been bursting to deliver this news and let Norval know there’ll be no more Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to dealing with the Pattersons.

  Dale tips his cap and then kicks at the books on his way out of Norval’s office. In the doorway he stops and says, “You’ll be hearing from the lawyer about the transfer, but you talk to me from now on. Mister Birch. There. Does that suit you better?”

  “Yes,” Norval says. “Mr. Birch is definitely an improvement.”

  As soon as Dale is gone from his office, Norval realizes that his heart is pounding. He doesn’t know why, he’s not afraid of Dale and he’s experienced at dealing with this sort of behaviour. He looks at his hands—shaking like a palsied old man’s. He’s disgusted with himself. Maybe he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a bank manager any more. If he were a boxer or a race-car driver, he’d have to say he’s lost his nerve. What if there were a real threat? What if someone—one of his several frustrated and unhappy clients—decided to walk through the front door with a shotgun and wave it in his face? It could happen, there’s no shortage of guns out there.

  He gives himself a talking-to. Most of his clients are dignified and ever-optimistic people who keep their frustration in check even when they have good reason to boil over. Their ancestors survived the thirties when blowing dust drifted against the doors of their houses, creating a people who believe you can survive anything if you just hang in there long enough, who believe bad times are cyclical. Next year we’ll get rain. We’re due for it. How many times has he heard that? No, if he’s going to worry about danger in the bank he should worry about robbery, which is always a possibility.

  In fact, there had been a robbery five years ago, a real one with guns. The RCMP had caught the bank robbers in no time by following them with a helicopter through the sand hills northwest to the ferry crossing, and they’d had the operator hold the ferry on the other side of the river and there was no place for the robbers to go, nowhere to hide in such wide-open country. Norval remembers the two men with balaclavas ordering him and Marsha—the only two people in the bank at the time—to lie face down on the floor with their arms and legs spread. He doesn’t remember his hands shaking then, the way they are now. If it weren’t so early in the day, he’d have a drink. Noon, even, but ten o’clock—sadly, far too early.

  Norval walks around to the front of his desk and picks up the fallen bookend. One of the horse’s ears is chipped off. This makes the horse look sad, defeated. Like some of his clients, he thinks. And then a picture of the Dolson family pops into his head. A man, his wife, a bunch of kids, all lined up, sad, defeated and humiliated. Norval blinks, trying to rid himself of the sorry image. What is wrong with him? Not all of his clients are in the red, for Christ sake. Look at young Lee Torgeson. Norval had worried about what might happen with the old pair gone, but Lee appears to be doing fine. Why can’t he think more about the Lee Torgesons in the community, and less about clients like the Dolsons? And Juliet certainly has its share of prosperous business people. It’s not like the whole town is on a fast track to destitution.

  He calls to Marsha, rather more abruptly than he ever speaks to his staff, and when she comes to the door, he says, “Clean up this mess. I’m going to the café for coffee.” Then he adds the word please, ashamed of himself.

  He steps outside and walks toward the entrance of the Maple Leaf Café, which used to be the Double Happiness before the Chinese family that owned it moved on. As he passes the street-level window he looks inside and sees a cap that might be Dale’s. And even if it isn’t Dale’s, he thinks, it’s likely the cap of someone else whose finances he knows intimately. He passes the restaurant by. Even though he would love a cup of fresh coffee, he doesn’t want to see any of his clients, no matter what their financial situation.

  He decides to walk around the block before returning to the bank, grab some air, even though it’s already hot. As he passes the garbage stand behind the hotel, a stray dog trying to break into a trash can lifts his head and stares at him. He doesn’t recognize the dog, wonders where it came from.

  By the time he gets back, the bank is open and Belinda, the part-time teller—or more officially, customer care representative—is in place behind the counter. From the look she gives Norval he knows that Marsha has filled her in on the morning so far. He apologizes to Marsha for being less than polite when he asked her to pick up the books.

  “Oh, you never mind, Norval,” Marsha says. “Dale Patterson can do that to a person. You’re entitled. What happened to him anyway? He looked like the lion with a thorn in his paw, that one from the Bible. Was it Daniel who took the thorn out?”

  “Saint Jerome,” says Norval. “Daniel got thrown to the lions. None of them had thorns that I know of.”

  “Don’t you just know your Bible inside out,”says Marsha.

  “Not really,” says Norval. “Just the lion parts.”

  “So what did he do to his arm?” Marsha asks.

  “I have no idea. He doesn’t tell me his secrets. I’m only his banker.”

  At that moment, a woman he doesn’t recognize and her young son come into the bank. Norval tries to switch on his most affable bank manager persona.

  “Good morning,” he says. “Welcome. Nice summer day, isn’t it.”

  The woman looks at Norval, suspicious of his friendly manner. He directs her to Belinda and returns to his office and sits at his desk, on which the books are once again neatly ordered. He sees that Marsha has even glued the horse’s ear back on. He wipes Rachelle’s photograph with a tissue and then puts it in its proper spot.

  Through his open door Norval can hear the woman telling Belinda at the teller’s window that her son has seven dollars in pennies and he’d like to open a bank account.

  “Seven hundred pennies,” Belinda says to the boy. “What a lot of money. I wonder if you’d like to take your pennies home and wrap them for me in these paper wrappers. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  “If it’s all the same to you,” the mother says, “we’d rather not.”

  “But I really can’t take all those pennies if they’re not wrapped,” Belinda says. “I’m sorry, but that’s our policy.”

  “Well, then,” the woman says, “I’d like to speak to the manager about that policy.”

  The manager. That’s him, Norval Birch. Norval sighs so loudly he worries that Marsha and Belinda and the woman and her son can hear him. What is wrong with him, he wonders, this feeling that he’s not handlin
g things? He’d blame it on Dale Patterson, or Kyle passed out in the backyard, or Lila and her list, except that this feeling has been here from the moment he woke up in the dark with thoughts of a tree falling on the house.

  Or maybe it began five years ago when he and Marsha were spread-eagled on the bank floor, the smell of floor wax in his nostrils, his eye fixed on a toothpick that someone had dropped, and he’d marvelled at the workmanship, the smooth surface and the perfect points on each end, all that work for something you get free from the counter of any coffee shop. What a crazy thing to think about while you’re being robbed.

  Or maybe the feeling set in before that—long before— when he stood with Lila in a parking lot in the city, his chest swelling with the thought of himself as her saviour. He’d brazenly led her to believe that he was capable, that he had a road map to their future, and that he knew how to read it. Twenty-five years ago that was. Such foolish confidence. Now long gone—and what has replaced it? Nothing. A gaping hole for the wind and sand to blow through.

  She’s in his doorway now, the woman with the penny complaint. She doesn’t wait for an invitation to speak.

  “We have a problem, Mr. Birch,” she says.

  Crush

  Through the waves of heat rising from the surface of the packed roadbed, Blaine Dolson studies Justine, the flag girl. He sees her scan down the road for traffic, and when none appears to be coming, she heads for the portable johnny-on-the-spot. She’s supposed to wait for the scheduled breaks, but the foreman appears to be dozing in the cab of his truck. Blaine watches as she leans her flag against the blue plastic biffy and steps inside and closes the door.

  It’s ridiculous, this obsession he has with Justine, but he tells himself it’s a fatherly kind of concern. She’s the only female on the crew. The other flagman is a boy so shy you can hardly get a word out of him. Blaine doesn’t know which of the two gets it worse: Justine because she’s a girl, or the other kid because he’s so timid. He doesn’t care about the boy’s whereabouts though, just Justine’s. He watches her all the time. When the packer is facing east, she’s there in front of him, and when he has to go the other direction, he anticipates the end of the stretch so he can turn his rig around and get her in his line of sight again, her white T-shirt catching the sun. It’s as though he’s thirteen years old with a crush, only she’s not much older than Shiloh and he’s definitely old enough to know better.