Anton is friendly enough, but is not known for his social graces. At the reception, which took place in Mrs. Scherfig’s garden, he mostly stood at the outskirts of the party, with a quiet smile on his face. For a while I stood beside him. I sensed some affinity, or I wanted to, as we looked on. We both drank Scotch over ice, except he took his in a small barrel.
Emma looked wonderful, as always. Even more so than usual, I have to admit, in her ivory bridal gown.
Relatives and people were hanging around her all evening, of course. There was hardly time for the two of us to talk. But I had in mind what I wanted to say, if the right moment came along. And if ever it does, I will say:
Emma, I know you can take care of yourself. And I know, if you did require a man’s company or assistance, you’ve got a giant for a father, and now Larry Knight, to build your goat-sheds and so on. But if ever they’re not handy, if ever they’re out of reach for any reason, and I can maybe help, just call. I also love you, Emma. I will be there.
Caretaker
Ice cubes clink and glisten as I sip from my glass mug of rosehip wine, brewed from a family recipe and best served cold. My dog, big Zoot, pants and drools a bit on the weathered porch planks. Snaps at a fly. Young Will fidgets with the webbing of his chair, fixated on the pattern with a vacant gaze. He takes solace in a cold can of Miller, which he presses to the side of his neck for a moment, soothing the muscle and tendon there.
Oh, he’s involved with another woman, I suspect. Waiting patiently, I listen to Coleman hum and blow his reed, same mellow jazz that lured Will here the first time, one evening at the edge of summer. From my raised wrist comes a whiff of citronella I wear like perfume to fend off mosquitoes. He'd just come from feeding the horses, and a bit of hay chaff clung to his shirttail. Will had started working for McGuire a few weeks before, over at the barns, tending the rental stalls if the horse owners pay the extra. I am the caretaker here at the Stampede Grounds, and the job comes with this trailer parked behind the corrals. Yet Will and I had not met until that evening. As he walked by he’d peered over the gate at Zoot and me, clearly uncertain what to make of such a tiny woman with a giant dog, sitting on her porch grooving to slow sax music, I believe it was Hawkins’s “Body & Soul.”
I roll a smoke and pass him the makings, our mutual Dutch tobacco smudge. Playing cards lie face up where they fell, after the best of three games of cribbage. He’s fixed on the high cards and fives, too often throws six through nine to my crib, and that’s why I win more times than not.
Erratic bats launch raids from their colony in the old log shavings shed, weaving between the arcs of tall halogen floodlights, feasting on insects. We’ve sat like this for hours now, exchanging only cards and smokes. He cocks his chin, scratches the reddish stubble on his neck. Hopping on this sign of male life, this opening, I prompt him.
“Will, who is she?” Bluebird eyes dart at me, brimming with pained wonder. He suffers such torment in the hands of others, bedevilled by his own charms. Lanky Will, rusty whiskers, cleft chin, an uneven appealing bloom to his lips, with the slow smile and tender sneer of a young king. Blessed with charm to burn. Even charmed Zoot, and that’s not easily accomplished. Especially just strolling out of the dark up to the gate like he did that night. The dog might have bit the arm off anyone else, but Will calmly talked him to ease.
“Ah Gwynn,” he says, shakes his head.
“Good evening,” was all he said that first evening, sometime back. On a clear night such as this the stars still overpower the lights of town, and we can behold Orion and the Milky Way, and remember we are truly tiny specks in the universe. Sax music and the smell of sage anchor me to the Stampede Grounds. And we are always surrounded by traffic, on Highway 20 rising to meet 97 at the junction, headlights and diesel exhaust, Oliver Street leading through town, Seventh Avenue, and the bypass along McKenzie with big trucks pummelling the asphalt into ruts and potholes. These grounds are an amphitheatre, and I am the caretaker who lives at the centre, with a big dog, in a faded trailer.
“Hello,” I replied. That was that. Charm or no I wasn’t inviting him farther than the gate, not at first. Chatted over the fence for a time, with Coleman playing, and Will leaned into the fence and listened like he’d never really heard a saxophone before. Country picker, he called himself, and might have lost me then, given all the corruption of that sad genre, had he not mentioned Tyson, Nelson and Prine. Had his voice not carried a true bit of banjo and harmonica, where would we be but alone?
Sometimes he brings his guitar by, such as tonight, even leaves it in my care, which I appreciate. It’s a mahogany Martin from the nineteen sixties, with finger grooves worn through the varnish, the most precious thing he owns. He’ll pick it up all of a sudden and play a song, or a passage over and over, working out the chords.
He rents a room by the month in the old Trailhead Hotel, concrete painted blue, down by the tracks. Some nights he plays in the bar there. About twice a week he stops in here after his evening chores, and we play crib and share the music. He has even grown protective. That’s new to me, yet easy to get used to. I’ve a hunch he feels safe as well, being here. Will bears the scars of many women’s talons. Those who heard his songs and stalked him, those who haunt him still. And tonight one has him spooked, I’m sure.
“She must have a name, what’s her name?”
“That don’t matter, does it Gwynn, not to you. … She’s married, I should respect her privacy.”
“In this town?!” I laugh. “Well, let’s make up a name — ”
“No,” he says, not amused. And whispers so I barely catch it, “Paula.”
“Hmm. And wherever did you meet her, young man?”
“The real estate place on Third, Western Realty.”
He frowns at me, as if he just now recalled how this drama began. He shuffles the cards.
“I go by there sometimes to look at the places advertised in the window. As if I have any money,” he huffs, “but if I ever do I’d sure like a few acres out west somewhere, build a cabin, you know.”
Isn’t he something? What woman would not share his cabin?
“The property listings fill most of the window, but not all. I couldn’t help but notice this woman inside the front office, behind her big white desk. And she noticed my routine I guess, began to greet me with a wave. Once she mouthed something through the glass I could not make out. There is this one property that caught my eye, out toward Laughing Mountain. … Two weeks back, when I stopped by to look at it, this woman got up from her desk right away. She came outside and stood on the agency welcome mat and smiled, and said, ‘Hello, my name is Paula Owen, can I help you? What are you interested in?’”
Owen! Click goes a connection in my head. That’s the reason his mention of her first name irked me. Her face is pasted in the Tribune every week, blond hair and lipstick, beside her pitch: A realtor who cares! Swoops around town in her Escalade, her power get-ups and hairspray.
She drove in here one day. Parked her chrome grill square with my gate, buzzed her window down, displeased by Zoot growling with his front paws up on the fence. He didn’t take to her, and I trust his instincts. Her blond head leaned out the window, red lips compressed, impatient.
I studied her between the slats of the gate before I stepped out. And when I did she was taken aback, put both her hands on the steering wheel, looked like she might drive off. Even wearing cowboy boots my face was barely level with her open window. I’m a woman, undersized, and older. That’s three strikes against me in this realtor’s book or business agenda.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “My name is Paula Owen, and I have just joined the Stampede Society. I was told I might find our president here, Ron McGuire. Do you know if he is around?”
“He was this morning, but he left about twenty minutes ago.”
“I see,” she frowned, lifted her cellphone to check some signal or message, or maybe just catch a glimmer of her own face in the glass. “You wouldn’t h
ave any idea where he went?”
“Nope,” I said. Although every morning at eleven McGuire is a regular at Tim Hortons for coffee, no way I’d give her more than necessary. She left.
“When I pointed at the photo of the cabin in the trees,” Will goes on, “she gave me the three-minute spiel, and said we should go take a look at it. I told her I got no savings to invest, but she hardly listened. And it was the next afternoon she drove me out to view that property.”
And now he picks up the guitar, thumbs the strings and runs his fingers up and down the frets.
Zoot and I exchange a look, him drooling on the porch step, me draining my mug, feeling for a moment the soothing ice against my lips. The music puts me nearly in flight. This night in July we smell the lake as though it simmers, algae curdling on its surface, the trout below grown sluggish; transports growl, turning north or south or west at the junction; black cattle graze the bunchgrass range; tall, tanned school kids couple in outlying pastures, or the beds of trucks, linked in darkness and bloodfire; out in the corral, star broncs and bulls stand impassive as bronze statues; seven contestants for Stampede Queen straddle the prize palomino in dream parades; and again bats flit past the porch.
A story like this calls for another drink. Will can use a third beer to lubricate his tongue, so I get up and open the screen door to my burrow. First let’s tuck Coleman in, lay on another album, say soulful Stan Turrentine. I am developing an interest in newer jazz artists, but I’m so very fond of the older ones. Now clutching the beer I’m back outside, and above the corrals and arena the rim of my vision is all neon signs: Chevron, Overlander Inn, A&W. I pass Will the beer. And a bit like a trick roper I coil my attention, kindly hang it on the horn of my sidekick’s lawn chair, give ear to his tale.
“That rig she drives has got every option, leather seats and all. It’s got a computer and she pecked in the location of the property and it displayed a map right to the gate. We didn’t need it, mind you, but there it was. Made me feel more important than I am, you know, and I guess a lot of customers might like that.
“She told me the place had been owned by a city couple, it was their dream getaway. But it’s for sale now. When we pulled in she dangled the key and winked at me.
“It’s a log cabin with a steep shake roof that extends over the front deck, with a handrail and bench made from pine poles. The windows are framed with thick planks, and well finished. Someone put a lot of work and care into the place,” he says sadly, because after their dream went to hell, now it’s just another property with marginal appeal in a heartless market — and he can’t afford it himself. “Inside there’s a big antique cookstove, edged with chrome, a beautiful thing. The living space is all open, with a pole ladder to the sleeping loft above, and a stained glass window set into the gable end. It’s something else, Gwynn, can you picture it?”
“I can, Will, yes indeed,” I sigh. And I can picture something else he evidently doesn’t know, because of course that greedy glamour queen has not told him: it’s said there was a murder in that cabin. Blood at the scene. But no body was ever found, the couple disappeared. Happened about three years ago; I recall the article in the Tribune, and not surprisingly the place has been vacant ever since. Will only moved to town last winter.
“It was spotless clean, but had been closed up for months, a few moths and flies on the window sills. And it was stuffy, Paula said stifling, and after a while she went back outside. I saw her sidestepping down toward the creek in her boots. Me buying this place was out of the question, much as I might like to, I’d told her already several times. But I enjoyed seeing it, dreaming a bit,” Will exhales a heavy sigh, and takes a swig of beer.
“Then after a few minutes I followed her down to the creek. First thing I see is her purple boots in the grass, and her jeans and top. She was standing up to her thighs in the eddy, wearing just one of them thongs.”
He continues, slow enough that I anticipate his words. His voice lulls me like a summer haze. In his song, chords ring with pleasure, treacherous joy rears like a young bronc, yet hard upon this his fingers stumble into forlorn or bitter endings. Will still holds the guitar in his hands.
I’m past forty, that halfway point in life. I am four feet four inches tall in bare feet, which is mainly why I started wearing cowboy boots at a young age, haven’t grown a smidge since I was twelve — and my teen years were not easy, let me tell you. My body is well proportioned, I’m told, but I’m small, let’s face it. I did have a real boyfriend in my thirties, for a year or so. And then another few men not worth a word. My mother said, if you have nothing nice to say, you know. You were named for an actress, Gwynn, Mother said, the one true love of a king long, long ago. In the dark my mind draws closed its petals, my senses, the name she gave me rings a simple pure note. The pollen or particles of Spirit are compressed, transform to a bodiless power. You see, my soul is truly buoyant, and often at night I float in the big sagebrush bowl of these rodeo grounds, like a child in a favourite swimming hole, or our own Williams Lake on an August afternoon. And some nights I take flight.
The first time it happened, years ago, I just recall thinking: phew, I need a drink of water, to feel that link to the elements, and maybe a moment to reconsider, but already I’d left my body behind.
Will sighs, takes another sip of beer. Sounds unnerved as he relives it. Memory of his own arousal, or so I fancy. Was it inevitable? With the woman there swaying in the water, Will surrounded by the heat of day, the dry woods, the cabin of his dreams. Paula in the water, enticing him with her free breasts and white haunch. Only for that moment in the stream, under Will’s eyes, I do covet the woman’s proportions. They did it standing up in the pool, wrapped in the current. I imagine her flushed skin submerging.
Big Zoot begins his labour of rising. His lineage is a mystery, his size commands attention. But once up he simply stretches his shoulders with his rump in the air, then flops over on his other side, back hair in a ruff, his loose black gums wet with slobber. A dog’s life, not sure I wouldn’t trade sometimes. Being human weighs me down.
So Will wonders what to make of the affair; yes, we’ve been through this before. But his voice carries an unfamiliar fear. What has she done to him?
“You’ve been back to the cabin since then, I take it?”
“Yeah, a few times. Dunno why. Some strange things happened. … Yesterday was the last though, she flipped out at me in her car on the way back to town. She pulled over and told me to get out. I had to hitchhike from there.”
“What else, Will? What did she do?”
He shakes his head. The queen of diamonds tops the deck, but he’s lost track of the game. “It’s nothing she did, Gwynn, at all. It’s what she didn’t. She didn’t hear — ”
“Ah Will, you’re best off free of her, you know, she — ”
“I do know,” he interrupts me. He shakes his head again. “She didn’t believe what I told her, that I heard something in the cabin, that’s what set her off. Then she said I was crazy. Get out, get out of the car! … Maybe you won’t believe me either?”
His eyes meet mine, and I smile. The jazz is subtly defiant. From these rodeo grounds, out of my small body my mind unfolds its wings and I have journeyed to distant, ancient cities, circled sun-baked plazas and bazaars. A long thread of longing always guides me back, and I soar homeward over the ocean, mountains, the Chilcotin Plateau. I have swooped past his hotel room on my way, glimpsed his sleeping face. Finally back through the night breeze to these grounds with the barn lights and grandstand, the corrals and creatures, big Zoot guarding my trailer, and I slip by even him unseen, back into my own bed. So what can it be that I will not believe?
“One time Paula took me out there a wind was blowing, so she wanted to do it inside, on a built-in bed in the loft. She was the hungriest woman I’ve ever been with, I can’t even tell you. After an hour or so that afternoon we both just flaked out. You know how sleep feels on a hot afternoon, when dreams take hold as
soon as you drift off. Well, at first I was sure that the voices were from a dream and woke me up, or it was the wind, or that Paula had said something. But she was sound asleep the first time, snoring a bit actually. And I was wide awake, Gwynn, I tell you, and those voices were right there, somewhere in that cabin.”
He takes a swallow from his beer and looks at me, expecting doubt. But I meet his nervous bluebird eyes, and simply nod.
“A woman and a man. Mostly their words were too rushed to make sense of, blurred with anger and sounds of the woman crying. … Then Paula’s cellphone rang, scared the hell out of me, she woke up. I didn’t mention anything the first time. … But on our next visit the same thing happened. The voices screamed: Love? and Lies! and What the fuck do you want from me?
“Paula had only been dozing this time.
“‘Did you hear that?’ I asked her.
“‘Hear what?’ she answered. She had not heard a thing, and had a home viewing in about an hour, so she got dressed, did her lipstick and jingled her keys. When I tried to describe what I had heard, now on two occasions, she laughed at first. Then she stared at me, and got very nervous.
“I can tell you, Gywnn, I do not like her laugh. And then she just snapped in the car, screamed and dumped me out on Highway 20 in the middle of a hot afternoon, like some pervert,” he takes a drink and shakes his tousled head. “A woman’s laugh is a sure sign, I should have known.”
So I offer him a soft chuckle of my own. That’s another thing that throws people about me, my voice being deeper than they expect.
“But I don’t know what to make of those voices, their awful cries, the man sobbing. I can’t get them out my head. … Do you believe me, Gwynn?”
“Yes, I do, Will.”
What is not to believe, again I wonder? But he is still too young to understand that, to accept all that one can believe. Or maybe to hear that I travel out of body on an irregular night flight schedule.
He eases back in his chair, fears unresolved, but off his chest for now.
All Those Drawn to Me Page 6
