Crow Lake

by Mary Lawson

  Sunday November 15th

  Dear Aunt Annie,

  How are you? I hope you are well. We are all well. Bo is well. Mr. Turtle brok his leg he fell off the school roof there was a ded crow in the chimny and he klimed up to get it out. Mrs. Stanovich came she brot rice puding she said Miss Carrington said Laurie had to come back to school and Mr. Pye was rood. Mrs. Lucas came she brot pikles and beens. Last night it snowed.

  Love, Kate

  With regard to all the food: I don’t know if the church women had established a rota or if it was just left to each individual conscience, but every few days a major meal would arrive. Either we would find it sitting on the doorstep in the morning or a farm truck would come bounding down the driveway and any one of a dozen farmers’ wives would climb out with a stewpot tucked under her arm. “Here you are, dear, just passing. Put it on the stove for twenty minutes, it should do two meals. How is everyone? My goodness, look at Bo! How she’s grown!”

  They didn’t linger long. I think they didn’t know quite how to deal with Luke. Had he been a girl, or younger, or less obviously determined to manage everything himself, they might have sat down for a chat and in the chatting have passed on much useful advice. But Luke was Luke, so they would hand over their offerings, tactfully not looking around them at the chaos, and leave.

  There was one exception to the tact. Mrs. Stanovich arrived at least twice a week, heaving her bulk out from behind the steering wheel of her husband’s battered truck and puffing up the steps to the front door with two loaves of bread balancing on the top of a bushel basket of corn, or a leg of pork tucked under one arm and a sack of potatoes under the other. She would stand amidst the chaos of the kitchen, legs planted wide, bosoms heaving together under her cardigan in a great round agitated mass, hair raked back into a bun as if she knew Jesus didn’t care what she looked like, and gaze around her, chins wobbling with distress.

  She couldn’t actually bring herself to say anything to Luke, she had enough sensitivity for that, but her face said it for her. And if she caught sight of Bo or myself, the distress welled up and spilled over.

  “My darling, my sweetie,” (dragging me to her bosoms. Only me—after the first time she knew better than to try to smother Bo). “We must try to accept the will of our blessed Lord, but it is hard sometimes, it is hard to see the sense in it, it is hard to see the point.”

  Sometimes I thought I detected an edge to her voice, as if she were actually speaking not to me but to someone out of sight but within earshot. She aimed the words at me, but she intended the Lord to get the message. She was angry with Him. She thought that in taking our parents away from us, especially our mother, whom I think she had truly loved, He’d been guilty of a quite disgraceful error of judgment.

  “How long’s it going to go on?” Matt asked. “Forever? Week in, week out, for the next thirty years?”

  Luke looked at a half-demolished ham from the Tadworths’ pigs sitting on the counter. “It’s damn good ham,” he said thoughtfully. “You gotta admit it.”

  We’d finished dinner, and he’d put Bo to bed. I was sitting at the kitchen table, theoretically learning my spellings.

  “That’s not the point, is it?” Matt said. “The point is we can’t go on taking this stuff.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come on, Luke! We can’t live off charity all our lives! You can’t go on expecting other people to look after us. They’ve got families of their own. They’re not exactly rich, you know, the people around here.”

  “They’re not exactly poor,” Luke said.

  “Where’d that pike come from last week? You telling me the Sumacks aren’t poor?”

  “They can only eat so many fish,” Luke said, “‘specially pike.”

  “They sell the rest, Luke. They sell the rest because they need the money!”

  “Yeah, well, what am I supposed to say? Hey, Jim, thanks buddy, but I can’t accept it ‘cause you guys are poor’? He came for a chat, for God’s sake, and he’d been fishing so he gave me a fish! You go on about it like it’s going to be forever! It’s just until we get ourselves sorted out. Get ourselves some proper work. Then they’ll stop because they’ll see we don’t need it any more.”

  “Yeah, well when’s that going to be? When’s this proper job going to appear?”

  “Something will turn up,” Luke said equably.

  “Well I’m glad you’re so sure of that, Luke. It must be useful, having inside knowledge.”

  Luke said, “You like to worry, don’t you? You’ve always just loved worrying.”

  Matt sighed and started unloading his schoolbag onto the table.

  “They like bringing us things,” Luke said, pressing his point. “Makes them feel holy. Anyway, you’re not the one who has to thank them. You’re off at school. I’m the one who has to think up what to say for the millionth time, one lady after another standing at the door. Some days there’s a steady stream of ladies all day long.”

  Matt looked at him. You could see him considering something in his mind. He sat down at the table beside me and selected one of the books from the stack he’d brought home. The arrangement was that I could sit across from him and learn my spellings, and he’d test me in between doing bits of his own homework. When I’d learned them to his satisfaction (or more likely when he’d given up hope), I was allowed to sit on beside him and draw pictures while he worked.

  Now though, he didn’t get down to work straight away. He unzipped his pencil case and spilled out the contents onto the table and then, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, said in a loud whisper, “Do you think Luke’s good-looking, Kate? Give me your honest opinion. I need a woman’s view.”

  He was teasing, and I was glad because it meant he’d dropped the argument. I hated it when they argued.

  Luke snorted. He was scraping scraps off the plates into the garbage pail. He didn’t empty it often enough and it smelled. His housekeeping was on the basic side. All the vegetables were cooked in one pot and banged out onto our plates in a heap to save washing up. Clothes were washed only when they reached Luke’s definition of dirty. My school lunches consisted of an apple and a couple of slices of bread with a hunk of cheese between them. But I don’t remember him ever failing to make me a lunch and you could always find something to wear if you looked hard enough. We didn’t go without anything important.

  “I mean, he has a point,” Matt said, still whispering. “Something must bring all those women to our door. Is it Luke himself, d’you think? His beautiful body?”

  Luke thumped him. In the old days, when everything was normal, he used to thump Matt a lot—whenever, in fact, he couldn’t think of a reply to one of his smart remarks. There was no heat behind it, it wasn’t like one of their rare but terrifying fights. It was just his way of saying, “Watch it, little brother, or I’ll wipe you out.” Matt never retaliated, which was his way of saying that it would be beneath him to stoop so low. He just rubbed whatever bit of him had been thumped and carried on.

  “All day long, you see, there’s this queue of fabulous, sexy women: Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Tadworth, Mrs. Stanovich. All lined up at the door, panting, tongues hanging out, tails wagging.”

  “Piss off,” Luke said. He’d started washing the dishes in a haphazard sort of way. Matt’s chair was right behind him, so they had their backs to each other.

  “Don’t talk like him, okay?” Matt said, still whispering. “Only inarticulate people use language like that. Like the way they resort to physical violence when they see they’re losing an argument.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re about to resort to it again,” Luke said. “Any minute now.”

  I was giggling. I hadn’t giggled in a long time. Matt was looking deadly earnest.

  “The thing is,” he said, frowning gravely at me, “rumour has it that several women and one in particular, I could name names but I won’t, but she has red hair, find Luke absolutely irresistible. So irresistible that they just can’t leave him
alone. Seems crazy to me, but then I’m a man. You’re a woman. What do you think? Is Luke irresistible?”

  “Matt?” Luke said. “Shut up.”

  He still had his hands in the sink, but he’d stopped washing things and had gone still.

  “I really want to know,” Matt said. “Whadya think? Do you think he’s irresistible?”

  “No,” I said, still giggling.

  “Matt,” Luke said quietly.

  “That’s what I thought. So why is it that a certain redhead—Ow! Hey! What’s up with you!”

  He swung around in his chair, clutching his shoulder. Luke’s punch had nearly flattened him. Luke wasn’t smiling. He was standing with his hands by his sides, dripping dishwater.

  Matt stared at him, and after a minute Luke said seriously, “I said, shut up.”

  I know why now. I pieced it together years later. Something had taken place that Matt didn’t know about, and it made the subject of Sally McLean a touchy one as far as Luke was concerned, and definitely not a good one for jokes.

  It had happened the previous Saturday afternoon while Matt was doing his stint at the Pyes’ farm. The fall ploughing was long over, but there were fences to repair and Calvin Pye wanted the floor of a shed concreted, so Matt was out and Luke and Bo and I were at home—we were outside, working on the woodpile.

  It had snowed on and off in the previous weeks and though the snow hadn’t settled, winter was definitely on its way. There was a stillness in the air that you don’t get at any other time of year. The lake was still, too. There was a rim of ice along the shore, thin and lacy and gritty with sand; sometimes it melted in the afternoon but it was always back the next morning, and it was thicker every day.

  So the woodpile had become a priority, and that afternoon we were all working on it. Luke was splitting logs, I was gathering kindling, and Bo was busily taking off the pile everything that Luke put on it and putting it down somewhere else. It was fairly late, about four o’clock, and the light was starting to fade. I went off into the woods to where an old tree had blown down to get some more branches to break up for kindling, and when I got back, dragging the branches behind me, Sally McLean was leaning against the woodpile talking to Luke.

  She was wearing a dark green heavy-knitted sweater which made her skin seem even paler than usual and her hair even redder, and she had painted a line of black stuff around her eyes, which made them look huge. She kept toying with her hair as she talked to Luke, winding it around her fingers. Now and then she’d put a tail of it in her mouth and draw it smoothly through her lips.

  Luke was fiddling with the axe. First he’d drop it head down on the ground, holding on to the end of the haft; then he’d swing it upright again and rub his thumb across the blade as if testing its sharpness. Then he’d drop it down again and thump it thoughtfully up and down.

  Sally had been saying something, but she stopped when I came up. For a moment she looked irritated, but then she recovered herself and smiled at me. She turned to Luke and said, “Your little sisters are so cute. You’re really good with them, you know. Everybody says so.”

  “Yeah?” Luke said. He automatically looked across at Bo. She’d started making a woodpile of her own about ten feet from the real one. She kept dumping bits of wood on top of one another and they kept rolling off. You could tell she was starting to get mad; she was saying, “Dat one, an’ dat one, an’ dat one,” and the dat was getting louder every time.

  “Yes,” Sally said. “Everyone thinks it’s really amazing. You do everything for them, don’t you?”

  “Most things, I guess,” Luke said, still watching Bo.

  Sally watched her for a moment too, her head tipped to one side, her mouth curving in a smile. There was something odd about the smile. It was as if she were trying it on in front of a mirror, like a dress.

  Still smiling, she said, “She’s just adorable, isn’t she?”

  “Bo?” Luke said. He thought she must mean someone else.

  “Dat one,” Bo said severely, dropping a log as big as she was on top of her woodpile. The whole thing collapsed.

  “Bad stick!” Bo yelled. “Bad bad stick!”

  “Here,” Luke said. He leaned the axe up against the woodpile and went over to her. “Stack them like this, okay? Put a big one at each end, then lay the little ones in between, like this.” Bo stuck her thumb in her mouth and leaned against his leg.

  “Do you even give them their baths and everything?” Sally asked. She looked shyly at Luke under her eyelashes.

  “Me or Matt,” Luke said. “Are you tired, Bo? Do you want a nap?”

  Bo nodded.

  Luke looked around and saw me with my branch. He said, “Take her in, okay, Kate? Bo, you go with Kate. I’ve got to finish here.”

  Bo stomped over to me and we walked up to the house together. I waited to hear the whack of the axe but I didn’t hear anything. When we got to the door I turned around and looked back. Luke was just standing there, talking to Sally.

  Bo and I went in and I took her coat off for her. You had to unplug her thumb to get it off and it made a popping sound, which made her smile, though she stuck it back in right away.

  “Do you want a drink or anything?” I said.

  A shake of the head.

  “Do you want me to read to you for a minute?”

  A nod.

  She led the way to our bedroom. I cleared a space in the piles of our clothes that no one ever got around to putting away and sat on the floor beside her cot and started reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff, but before we even got to the First Billy Goat going trippity-trop, trippity-trop across the bridge she was asleep. I stopped reading and just turned the pages, looking at the pictures, but I’d seen them too many times. I closed the book and put on my coat again and went back outside.

  Luke and Sally had vanished. I wandered back to the woodpile, looking for them. The axe was still there. The ground all around was very soft and spongy from absorbing years and years of sawdust and my feet didn’t make a sound. It was getting dark, and the cold was creeping in with the night. Matt had told me that cold was just the absence of heat, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like a presence. It felt stealthy, like a thief. You had to wrap your clothes tight around you or it would steal your warmth, and when all your warmth was gone you’d just be a shell, empty and brittle as a dead beetle.

  I went around the end of the woodpile, wondering if Sally had gone home and Luke had gone to the shed for something, and then I saw them. Sally was leaning against a tree and Luke was standing in front of her, very close. It was dark under the trees and I could barely make out their faces. I could tell Sally was smiling though—I could see her teeth.

  Luke had his arms either side of her, hands resting on the trunk of the tree, but as I watched she took hold of one wrist and then took his hand in hers. She made an exclamation—his hand must have been cold—and rubbed it for a moment between both of hers. Then she smiled at him again, and took his hand, and slid it up under her sweater. I saw the white gleam of her bare skin, and she gave a sort of gasp and then laughed and pushed his hand farther up.

  Luke went very still. It seemed to me he wasn’t even breathing. He dropped his head, and I got the impression that his eyes were closed. He stayed like that for about a minute; Sally was watching him, her eyes wide. Then, very slowly, he withdrew his hand. For a minute he didn’t move any other part of him; he stayed as he was, head down, one arm braced against the tree. And then—the thing was, even in that light I could see the effort in it, as if a huge magnetic force were drawing him toward Sally and it took every ounce of strength he had to withstand it—he pushed himself away.

  I saw the effort. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, of course, but later, when I had reason to think of such things again, I remembered it clearly. The hand that had touched her breast was hanging down at his side as if it were useless, and the other arm did all the work. It braced itself against the rough, dark bark of the tree and
pushed.

  And then he was upright, free-standing, both arms at his sides. He looked at Sally, but he didn’t say anything. He just turned around and walked away.

  That was what I saw, and what Matt didn’t know. That was why Luke found Matt’s teasing so unfunny. Because Sally McLean wasn’t just any girl, she was the daughter of his employers, and Luke was scared. He was afraid that if Sally decided that she was offended, if she felt herself to be a woman scorned, she would see to it that he lost his job.

  part

  THREE

  chapter

  THIRTEEN

  I don’t understand people. I don’t mean that in an arrogant sense—I’m not saying people are incomprehensible because they don’t act as I do. I mean it as a statement of fact. I know that no one can truly claim to understand anyone else, but it’s a matter of degree. Many people are a complete mystery to me. I just can’t see how their minds work at all. It’s a fault, I guess.

  Daniel said once in his mild way, “Does the word empathy mean anything to you, Kate?”

  We’d been discussing a colleague who had conducted a highly unprofessional piece of research. He hadn’t exactly falsified the data but he’d been, shall we say, selective in the way he’d reported it. That sort of thing doesn’t do the reputation of the department any good, and his contract was not renewed the following year. I thought that was entirely appropriate. Daniel did as well, I was sure, but he seemed reluctant to say so, which annoyed me.

  “I’m not trying to justify it,” he said. “I’m just saying you can understand the temptation.”

  I said I couldn’t understand how anyone could want glory which they knew they’d gained under false pretences.