A Rhinestone Button

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  “Now it’s like chewing on grass … Now it’s bitter, like old spinach.”

  “And it’s got an aftertaste, like when you eat fresh chives.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The yellow ones are sweeter.” He picked up the pace. “I’ve got an idea. Something I used to do when I was a kid.” And just the month before, but he felt silly admitting to it.

  He slid through the barbed-wire fence of the adjacent pasture, where his cows grazed, held the wires apart for Liv. Chose a clean patch of grass and lay down. Liv lay beside him.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Wait.”

  They stared at the blue sky. “What am I waiting for?”

  “You’ll see.”

  One of the cows came towards them, and then they all came, bringing with them the flies that landed on Liv’s and Job’s faces, their arms. The soft thud of hooves hitting grassy earth, the click of their knuckles popping as they put their hooves down. Their snorts and sideways chewing, calves suckling, the rush of urine. The month before, the sounds had produced a flickering show of colour as if on a screen just in front of Job: lozenges of sage green, splotches the orange-red of mountain-ash berries, tongues of deep purple the colour of ripe saskatoons, streaks of steely blue, spirals the pebbled orange of a Christmas mandarin. Colours and shapes that overlapped, blended with each new sound. He had lain listening to it for hours when he was a boy. Better than TV. Now, nothing. He put a finger in each ear, wiggled them, pulled his fingers out. Still nothing.

  A daddy-long-legs crawled up Liv’s arm but she didn’t brush it away. Earlier in the week Job had heard Lilith shriek when a spider scuttled across the kitchen floor. She’d fled the room and wouldn’t come back in until Jacob assured her he’d caught the spider and taken it outside. A grasshopper leapt on Liv’s belly and hopped away. The smell of cow shit, grass burps, urine and the incomparable smell of the cows themselves. Hot. Animal. “They smell something like horses,” she whispered. “I can smell their breath. It’s grassy.”

  “Fermenting grass.”

  The cows moved forward, all at once, until Job and Liv were completely surrounded by a circle of cows. “They’ll step on us!” said Liv, but they didn’t. From this angle, with their bodies against blue sky, the cows were giants, each of them Paul Bunyan’s ox. They ran their muzzles along Job’s and Liv’s bodies, sniffing them. “They have such big lashes,” she said. “That one looks like she’s crying.” A long stream of water ran from the cow’s eye down her muzzle.

  “You have to watch that. Sometimes it’s an early sign of pink eye.”

  “See the light coming through the fine hairs on their ears,” said Liv. “And the water drops on their noses.”

  One of the cows licked the bottom of Liv’s sandals. Job sat up suddenly and waved his arms. The herd scattered.

  “What did you do that for?” Liv said.

  “Watch.”

  One by one the cows came back again, sniffing, sizing them up, until the herd had again formed a circle around them.

  “I can do that again and they’ll come back. And a third time. After that they kind of lose interest. Most people think they’re stupid. But if there’s anything new in their pasture, they’ve got to check it out.”

  Liv touched the skin at Job’s collar and ran her fingers down his neck and along his lips. Leaned to kiss his cheek. Job turned to face her. Her hazel eyes. Her breath a mix of oranges and sweet coffee. Her lips on his, at first ticklish, then pressing. He felt her tongue on his lips, then in his mouth. Found his hands exploring on their own, the soft folds of Liv’s blouse, the skin at her waistband, her back. He wondered if he knew how to unhook a bra with one hand and was surprised when he found that his hand did.

  A car spitting gravel along the road came to a stop and started up again. Then the sound of the trike, buzzing in their direction. They sat, scattering the cows. Liv rearranged her shirt, her bra. Job shifted himself to a safe distance. They said nothing as the boys drove up on the trike. “A bunch of kids are driving their car in the field,” said Jason. “They were heading towards the crop circle, then turned around when they saw us coming.”

  Job stood up, watched with Liv as a white Rambler hopped through the field, its back end kicking up like the hind end of a jackass, before coming to an abrupt stop in the mud of one of the many sloughs that dotted the field. Kids hoping for a field party in the crop circle. A Godsfinger tradition, though Job had never been to one when he was a kid; he’d never been part of the crowd.

  “Stupid kids,” said Ben. “Now they’re stuck.”

  “I should help them,” said Job.

  “You still want to help them after the mess they made in your field?” said Liv.

  Job shrugged. He jogged back to the yard to get the tractor and drove down Correction Line Road and around to the far gate. As he glanced back to see how close the rear tire was to the ditch, the chug of the tractor and the rumble of gravel hitting its undercarriage produced a tumble of blue balls much like the sound he heard as his truck drove the gravel roads, but faded now, much more transparent. The tire spun, threw up gravel. A stream of motion that suddenly came to a halt. Job’s tumbling blue balls and each pebble the tractor wheel churned up hung suspended in mid-air. Each tread was clearly defined, as if the tire were motionless. A moment that stood still.

  Then the honk of a truck. The blur of tire, spit of dirt. Job felt a jolt, a sudden awareness of self, as if he had been driving the prairie roads in a daze and was shaken awake by rumble strips. He rubbed the steering wheel, leaving sweaty thumbprints, as he was passed by a Chev pickup pulling another Chev with a chain. The kid driving the lead vehicle gave him the finger and yelled in protest as the Chevs sped past.

  In the field, three boys were standing shin-deep in mud, trying to push the Rambler out of the slough. A fourth was in the car, stomping the gas pedal to the floor, going nowhere. Job didn’t recognize any of them and guessed they were teens from Leduc or down from Edmonton who had seen the interview. He drove the tractor into position. Said nothing to them as he fashioned a chain to the undercarriage of the car, pulled it free. Once he removed the chain, the boys sped away without saying thanks or apologizing, embarrassment hot in their faces. Job drove the tractor back to the yard before walking out to the field. He met Liv following the cow path, heading towards the yard, carrying the grocery bag.

  “Where are the boys?” he asked her.

  “They went back to the house. Jason lit up when Ben said he had an amp for his guitar.” She waved a hand at the slough where the car full of boys had been stuck. “It was nice, what you did. Pulling that car out. Most farmers around here would have left them in the mud. Or charged them a fee for pulling them out.”

  Job laughed. “I thought about it. But they’re just kids.”

  Liv took the elastic out of her hair, pulled her mane free of the braid and pushed it back over her shoulders; it rippled down her back. A killdeer cried out and flew in front of them, tripping along, dragging its wings as if injured, to gain their attention and lure them away from its nest.

  Liv shifted the grocery bag to her left hand and reached for Job’s. He gave hers a squeeze and let go. “Did I move too fast?” asked Liv. “Or is it because I’m still married?”

  “No.” Though it was that. “I’d like to spend some time with you again, really.”

  Job plucked the heads of the timothy grass and chewed off the soft ends as he walked, trying to think of something to say. He thought of how, as children, he and Jacob had put the heads of that grass into their mouths, pretending to smoke cigarettes. “You ever have time sort of stop on you?” he asked finally.

  “All the time. Every afternoon at the café. You’ve seen it. It’s deadly.”

  “No. I mean, like, say you’re watching something that’s moving and it just sort of stops.”

  “Like when you look at a fan?”

  “A fan?”

  “A ceiling fan. Like at the café? Someti
mes I can see the individual wings of the fan, not just the blur of it going around. A trick of perception, I guess.”

  “I guess.” But the moment on the tractor hadn’t felt that way. He’d lost himself. Felt that time had actually stopped.

  They walked on, saying nothing. Liv stopped as Job took a few paces. She said, “I’ve really got to take a piss. You mind?”

  Before he’d comprehended what she was asking, she stepped a few feet away, lifted her skirt and squatted in the grass. Job turned away. It was a thing a man did, pissed in the field or behind the barn to save going back to the house. Job saw men standing beside the open doors of their trucks along the highway, trying to look like they were just taking in the expanse of prairie, while their stance and the puddle forming at their feet gave them away. He’d heard old Harry Kuss tell Jerry he kept a toilet roll in his truck in case he “got caught up short” and had to find a lonely field in which to deposit his night-soil. But this, thought Job, was not something a woman did. Yet here was Liv, peeing, when she’d been embarrassed that the wind had exposed her thighs.

  She joined him again, patting down her skirt. “You didn’t mind me taking a pee, did you?”

  “No. Not at all.” But he walked a little ahead of Liv until he felt stupid for it and slowed his pace. Tried to salvage things. “So, you ever go to church?” he said, thinking he might ask her to the revival.

  “Not since I was a kid.”

  He carried the disappointment a few feet. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come to our revival this weekend,” he said. “Pastor Divine is leading the service tomorrow night.”

  “Who?”

  “Pastor Jack Divine? He’s got a radio show. It’s a healing service.”

  “Like, miracle healings?” she said.

  “I could stop by your house. We could walk over together. So you don’t have to walk in alone.” A fear Job imagined in others, harboured in himself.

  “Yeah, maybe. I’ve never been to one of those things.”

  As they neared the yard, a mouse skittered out from under a round bale and ran in front of them. With the instinct of habit, Job took one stride to step on the mouse, killing it. The mouse was crushed under his boot without the crunch one might expect. It was the same feeling he experienced stepping on a fresh cow patty: revulsion, regret. Then he realized that if Liv hadn’t liked the way he blew his nose, she likely hadn’t been impressed by this display of his mouse-killing skills.

  “Can’t you let the barn cats kill them?” she asked. She walked on ahead of Job to the yard, chucked the grocery bag in the burn can.

  As they reached the house, Jason charged out onto the front stoop. Lilith pushed open the screen behind him. “I won’t have that kind of behaviour in my house!” she yelled. Ben in the doorway behind her.

  Jason ignored her, strode across the yard towards Liv and Job. “What did you do now?” said Liv.

  “Nothing.”

  “He threw a chair across the kitchen,” said Lilith. “Nearly broke the glass in the cabinet.”

  Jason pointed at Ben. “He punched me.”

  “I punched him in the arm,” said Ben. “We were just horsing around.”

  Liv scowled down at Jason. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Jason waved a hand at the house. “He wouldn’t let me play his guitar.”

  “It’s his guitar.”

  “But he said I could. Then he wouldn’t let me.”

  “So you threw a chair?”

  Jason said nothing. He looked as perplexed about his actions as Liv did.

  “I won’t have violence in my house,” said Lilith. “I’ll have to ask you not to bring your son around again.”

  Liv put her hands to her hips, pressed her lips together and looked as if she might lash into Lilith, but said nothing. She took Jason’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Lilith slammed back into the house, pulling Ben inside with her.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” Job called after Liv.

  Liv lifted a hand, but didn’t look back. “We’ll just hoof it back to town. It’s not much of a walk.”

  “Really, I don’t mind.”

  “It’s fine,” she said over her shoulder. “We could both use the exercise. Jason needs to cool down.”

  “So I’ll pick you up for the healing service tomorrow? About quarter to seven?”

  “Miracle healings?” said Jason. “Like when they fall down and get cured?”

  Job nodded.

  Liv turned. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll pass. It’s not my bag.”

  “Can’t we go, Mom?”

  “No.” She waved and was on Correction Line Road, walking Jason down the line of Barbara Stubblefield’s fence posts with their caps and faces. The row of clowns.

  “If you change your mind,” Job called after her.

  She lifted a hand, but didn’t turn.

  Hands dangling, he watched her figure grow smaller down the road. He stood there long enough that a woodpecker flitted over, landed on his boot, pecked at the shining shoelace holes and shat on his toe.

  Eight

  Job turned into the gravel parking lot of the church and parked the truck. The church sat smack in the middle of God’s acre, a cemetery the original church board had laid out in alphabetical order to avoid conflicts. Each of the five Steinke graves was covered in a blanket of cement, a row of neatly made beds. Before, this tidy plot had been a mess of whirligigs that Dithy Spitzer had mounted on the graves of her husband and children: angels her deceased husband, Herb, had made using the mermaid pattern he’d found in a book at the Wetaskiwin library, but instead of tails he’d given them skirts, and painted their bosoms white. They did the butterfly stroke each time the wind caught them, arms twirling like windmills.

  The church itself was little more than a peaked roof on a white box resting on a basement foundation. It might have been mistaken for a community hall if it weren’t for the sign on the lawn that read Godsfinger First Baptist Church and listed the times of worship, Bible classes, ladies’ auxiliary meetings, prayer meetings and the exhortation Plan Your Week With God. There was a kitchen in the basement, just beside the cement cold room that members of the ladies’ auxiliary filled with their canning and the sacks of potatoes and carrots they grew themselves. Foodstuffs they used to make a bit of money, catering the weddings and funeral receptions that were held in the church basement. Junior church rooms skirted the reception room, the kitchen. Each of these rooms was windowless and filled with tiny chairs and miniature tables. Their cement walls were covered with pictures of Jesus, Noah’s Ark and lambs.

  Job laid his tray of almond squares on the table set up in the foyer outside the sanctuary along with other offerings from the ladies of the church. He’d had to pull a frozen batch from the freezer, as Lilith was making it increasingly clear that she didn’t want him in the kitchen. Missing his time at the stove, he’d offered to make dinners now and again, but Lilith had only responded, “My cooking isn’t good enough for you?”

  In the church foyer, the smell of coffee, canned milk. A few of the women hovered over the table, arranging plates and adding more cookies and squares. Something in Job, his prettiness, his eagerness to please, made them offer him hand-knitted socks and recipes they hid from other women. Job was aware of his effect and soaked in their affections, the delicate sheen of their voices so like his mother’s. He felt at home with them in a way he never felt with the men. Though tonight their voices held no sheen, showed no colour at all.

  “I see Jacob’s got us a holy roller tonight,” said Annie Carlson. She wore her hair long and held back with a white plastic band; her face was hardened and lined by the sun.

  “Pastor Divine,” said Job.

  “He’s not going to make us speak in tongues, is he?” said Mrs. Schultz. “I went to one of those services in Edmonton with my daughter last winter. Her idea, not mine. All that babbling and not one person there to interpret. Where’s the sense i
n that?” She had a fringe of white hair, black button eyes set in folds of skin. Face like an apple doll’s.

  “And they get them falling into the arms of catchers,” said Annie. “If it really was the Holy Spirit making them fall over, what would they need catchers for? The Holy Spirit would make them fall light as a feather.”

  Job said nothing. They all knew Job’s father had been given to charismatic outbursts in church: at times, moved by the Spirit, he stood up in the middle of the sermon, raised his hands and spouted gobbledegook. This in a prairie Baptist church that frowned on glossolalia as embarrassing theatrics, not God’s attempt to communicate. The congregation had expected that sort of thing from the likes of Job’s father, who was, after all, a reformed sheep man and Lutheran, not born to cattle farming, much less the life of a German Baptist. Or from Barbara Stubblefield, whose occasional convert stayed a month or two before disappearing, never to return. She’d married into the church, been raised a Pentecostal. Couldn’t be expected to act properly. Even so, Abe’s loud, emotional testimonials had been frowned on, just as evangelizing was not, in practice at least, encouraged; it seemed impolite, presumptuous, embarrassing at best. After several warnings, Abe had been asked to step down from the church board.

  Ruth strolled over and wrapped an arm around Job, tucking him under her armpit. “So, Job, how’d that date go?”

  Job bit into one of Annie’s sugar cookies.

  “That good, eh?” said Ruth.

  “What’s this about a date?” asked Annie.

  “It wasn’t a date,” said Job. “We had coffee, that’s all.”

  “Who with?” asked Mrs. Schultz, “Liv? From the café? I heard she and Darren split.”

  “No. I mean, I’ve had coffee with her. But we’re just friends.”

  Will wandered to the table along with Jerry and Wade. Will’s beard was newly trimmed, showing the square of his jaw. Wade was without his NAPA cap, his greasy hair patted down but not combed. All three men carried coffee cups in their hands and looked uncomfortable in their Sunday shirts and clean jeans. They wore no ties. The younger men of the church only wore ties and suit jackets for weddings and funerals.