by Patrick Lane
When Myrna had seen him at the station in his wrinkled shirt she’d smiled.
She wasn’t sad like girls were in China. He wondered if Wang Po would make a picture of her for him so he could hang it in their new house and then he thought he couldn’t do that because someone like Reiner would come and tear it down or make a joke of it.
As Joel walked along the path the shadows grew deeper. Far off he saw the front of the store, its lights off. The only light on the road was the one from the Hall. The windows there were lit up and he could see women moving around getting the last things ready. The double doors in front were open. A few men stood together in the shadows just beyond the doorway. Their cigarettes danced like fireflies in the dark. Two of them stepped aside when a woman walked by holding a platter of food. One of the men said something and the others laughed.
The dance wouldn’t start for another half-hour. There would be drinking out back where the trucks were parked. People would come from Clearwater and Blue River and from the gyppo mills, the ten-acre farms, and the two-cow ranches along the way. The real dance didn’t get really going until midnight.
Joel wondered what it would be like to live far away from someone you cared about. He thought then of Alice and wondered if she was in the lean-to at the back of the store. Claude had said he would let her out to go to the dance. Joel was sure she was in there waiting for Claude to unlock the door. He wondered what she’d be wearing. He didn’t think she’d have much, just the stuff she’d brought from the residential school. Anyway, it didn’t matter what she wore, he thought. She’d be beautiful no matter what. And she wouldn’t be sad either like in Wang Po’s poem about the man on the endless sea. She’d be happy to be out of that room.
“She’ll be dancing with me,” he said out loud. And then he felt guilty because of Myrna and the baby, because Myrna would be at the dance too and she’d see him dancing with Alice after he danced with her and maybe she’d know he liked Alice, he liked her a lot. But he liked Myrna too. He really did. She was having his baby and later she’d be at the old church. It’s where he was going to be living too. He’d be looking after her now she was having a baby, his baby. And he wondered what they’d call the baby, what kind of name they’d give it. And for a moment it seemed impossible to deal with any of it.
And there was Myrna’s mother too. If Isabel saw him dancing with Alice tonight she’d know. She’d know for sure, he thought, because she had some kind of special powers. He kicked a rock into the ditch and watched it carom off into the darkness. He didn’t care. He was going to dance with Alice anyway. It’d just be the one time he’d be able to.
He hadn’t been able to talk to Art about it because Art was drunk and there was Irene McAllister to find and then Emerson cutting McAllister’s truck tires. Joel stepped over the narrow ditch and cut through the cedar trees at the back of the lot behind the store. Just up the road and around the corner was the driveway Jim McAllister had cut into the bush to hide his trailer and his wife. It was driving Art crazy not knowing what happened to her. At least Joel getting Emerson to cut the tires gave Art time to find out where she was. And where was McAllister anyway? For sure he must know his truck tires were flat. He should be raging around, Joel thought, but he’s not. And what about Reiner? And he thought again of walking down to his bunk while Reiner was sleeping and cutting his throat. He could do it easily. And no one would know it was him because he’d be down at the church with Myrna, and he could see the blood filling Reiner’s throat.
He looked up and down the road from the darkness of the cedar trees behind the cookhouse lot. A couple of cars and a pickup truck came down from the high road, their headlights cutting into the night. The guy in the truck beeped the horn and Joel could hear a woman laughing. There was something beautiful about the laughter and he waited for it to end. When it stopped he stepped out from the trees and went over to where the Rotmensens’ dog was tethered. It whined when he squatted beside it. Its water bucket was full, and the pan had a few bones in it Joel didn’t recognize. It leaned its shoulder against his leg and whined. He scratched its ears and then took the tether off the dog’s collar. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the dance made him do it.
There was a pale light shining from the high window in the lean-to. Joel knew it came from Alice’s small lamp. She kept it by her mattress plugged into a cord that ran under the door. It meant Alice was in the room. He imagined her lying back on her mattress resting before Claude came and let her out. Maybe reading the Bible they’d let her have. It was her only book.
It was closer to full dark when he crossed the lot, the dog following him. More cars and trucks were arriving, people talking and laughing. Folks were walking along the road as they came from the bunkhouses, the cabins, and small bungalows between the mill and the Hall. Couples were coming from the river shacks by the station. There were kids yelling and carrying on, parents telling them to stop running, the kids ignoring them.
Most of the people coming along the road had flashlights, thin streams of light picking out this family or that, a child fallen into a ditch, a boy and a girl trying to slip away into the bushes, a mother calling her daughter back, a couple arguing, another couple laughing. One old couple from a farm up Aspen Flats carried a coal-oil lamp, its yellow flame fluttering through the smoky glass. Joel recognized Judy and Sam Newly by the light, Sam hobbling along with his cane.
No one was lonely tonight.
Joel climbed the slope behind the store and resettled the cedar block under the window, a line from Wang Po’s poem on his lips, Your hands were small birds. He could see Alice’s hands combing her hair, her fingers like little nuthatches appearing and disappearing in dark river moss.
He was only going to look this one last time. His boot set on the block, he pulled himself up, his belly and chest flat against the wall, his arms outstretched for balance. The block was too close to the wall. He was going to get down and set it back six or eight inches, but he couldn’t resist looking. Holding himself as still as possible he placed his fingertips on the ragged wire that closed off the window, and looked down into her room.
She wasn’t there.
The door was wide open, the store beyond it dark. Her bed was made like it always was, but there were things missing, the stuff she kept on the little table by her bed, the Bible he thought she’d be reading, her soap and toothbrush, the rags she washed herself with. Her clothes were gone from the box where she kept them and so was her suitcase, the one she’d carried up from the station when she got off the train with Imma. There was a strange bag in the corner, but he didn’t know what was in it. He’d never seen it before.
Joel hung there from the wall like a midnight moth, his arms flattened against the bare boards. It had to be Claude, Joel thought. Claude was the one going to let her out.
Alice was going to the dance, but if that’s where she was then why were all her things gone? None of it made any sense. Alice was gone, with Claude or without him. But where would she go by herself where she wouldn’t be found?
The breeze picked up, a wind coming soft from the south. It touched his bare arms, the back of his neck. He slid down the wall so he could get his feet on the ground. When he did he kicked the cedar block down the slope onto the gravel and looked around, unsure of what to do.
A voice came out of the shadows by the corner of the shack. “They went down to the siding.”
“Emerson? That you?”
“Yup.”
“Who’s at the siding?”
“Cliff and her went there.”
“Why the siding?”
Emerson got up and stood against the wall looking out over the empty lot to the road. A woman, already drunk, yelled, “You bastard.” The man beside her cursed her back as she staggered in the light from his torch. He held the light away from her so she couldn’t see where she was going, laughing as she stumbled.
The dog got up from the dirt beside Joel and went over to Emerson. The boy reached down and sc
ratched behind its ear, his eyes still on the road. “How come you let him loose?” Emerson asked.
“The dog?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” Joel said. “You been feeding him?”
Emerson squatted down and put his lean arm over the dog’s back. It snuffled at his chest, its tongue lagging. “He gets hungry,” he said. “Needs water too.”
“I know,” said Joel. “I feed him too sometimes.” And he shook his head. “Jesus, Emerson,” he said. “Why did they go to the siding?”
“They got in a boxcar,” said Emerson.
“You mean the night freight?”
“Yup.”
It was the freight Joel heard leaving earlier.
Emerson sank back into the shadows, his hand on the dog’s collar, his breathing stilled. Joel hunkered down on his heels. They both stilled as they heard Claude’s voice raging inside Alice’s room, the walls shaking. Something, a fist, struck the wall above Joel’s head, the boards rattling.
They heard Claude curse and then he said, “Who the fuck let her out?”
Joel thought of Cliff and Alice heading south in the freight and then he heard people laughing from the road. “Mystery Train” began to play at the dance, Junior Parker singing. He wished she was there and hadn’t gone with Cliff. If she was he’d be dancing with her, maybe a last dance, but he’d be holding her and all at least once before he started living with Myrna and the baby.
“It’s that fucking Cliff,” Claude muttered from behind the wall. “He took a bar and pried the lock right off the door. God damn him.”
The lean-to door slammed, and Joel could hear Claude stomping back through the store, his boots pounding the floor.
It was quiet for a moment, the song at the Hall over, and then voices got louder again, Wally Yaztremski putting on Little Richard, kicking things off again with “Tutti Frutti,” the beat of his piano crazy, the night retreating.
The two of them waited until the song ended.
“I’m glad she’s gone,” said Emerson.
Joel stood, his thumbs hooked into his belt, his hat pulled down over his eyes. Emerson nudged the dog with his boot and it went over to Joel and licked his hand. Emerson called the dog back. It came back to him and leaned against his knee. “Myrna,” he said. “She’ll be looking for you.”
“I know,” said Joel.
“They got the church fixed up good,” Emerson said. “There’s a couple of windows need doing and other stuff.” He took a breath and said, “Myrna’s told everyone she’s moved in there.” When Joel didn’t say anything Emerson picked at a sprung knot in the wall.
Joel looked out over the river to the dark shape of the mountains beyond and he put Alice in a place where he knew if he searched he might never find her again. It was a good place for her to be now. The only way she could come back from there was if she decided to, not him. There were other people he’d put there, his father for one. So far none of them had ever come back to haunt him. Just before he left her there in the place he closed his eyes and saw again her sleeping in the lean-to, the curve of her shoulder and the single lock of black hair upon her warm skin. He closed his eyes and breathed the thought of her in. When he opened them Emerson was hunched down, the dog under his arm, both looking at him.
“I don’t care.”
It was all Joel knew how to say to what he was already working at forgetting. He took off his hat and slapped it against the wall, dust flaring out from the brim.
“Quiet,” said Emerson as he pointed across the lot.
Someone was walking through the far cedars with a rifle, the torch in his hand dimmed. What light there was he kept aimed at his feet. Metal clicked on stone, the man’s boots moving with care, for no other sound came to them but that one.
“Who’s that?”
The man passed behind the wrecked car where Piet leashed the dog. “That’s a Winchester he’s got,” said Emerson.
“I know,” said Joel, wondering as he slipped down the slope how the kid knew what the rifle was in the dark. “It’s Art.”
“Where you going?” Emerson said as Joel moved down the slope and into the dark.
“Where he’s going,” said Joel. He stopped and looked up at Emerson, the boy waiting for him to decide. “You might as well come,” he said. “It helps you can see in the dark.”
Emerson grinned.
“What the heck,” Joel said. “You’re going to follow me anyway.” As Emerson took a step, Joel said, “You better put the leash back on the dog if he’s coming along.”
“He’s been with me other nights. Now’s no different,” said Emerson as he slid down beside Joel. “He’s a good dog. Like my mother says, he abides.”
“If you come I don’t want you talking about Alice or about Cliff either. They don’t matter to me anymore. Okay?”
“Yup.”
“I mean it.”
“Yup.”
They watched in silence as Art waited until there was a gap between people going to the dance before crossing the road in the dark. His faint light seemed to pull him down into the ditch and up again into the trees.
“The dump,” said Emerson. “He’s going to the dump.”
A LIGHT FLICKERED IN THE SHACK on the dump road, the glass shade of a coal-oil lamp casting a warm glow in the room where three women sat at a table drinking tea. Gerda Dunkle faced the window, the scoop of cotton hanging around her neck and shoulder. The baby was a small bulge in the cloth’s curve. Beate was supported by her arm, Gerda’s fingers splayed against her baby’s body, the skin and bones and breathing of her child.
Beate wasn’t dead.
Art breathed a breath and then another as he sat down on a rock by the side of the road, his rifle resting across his thighs, his forearms on the stock and barrel. Seeing the four women gave him an interlude of comfort, a brief respite of hope before going on to the dump.
Molly and Isabel sat quietly talking as Raaka listened and it looked to Art that whatever they’d done for the baby had been good. He was glad Molly got Isabel to come and help. And maybe the penicillin had made a difference after all. He was gladdened by that.
Molly knew kids. It’s why he’d asked her to see what she could do. She’d had three of her own and she’d delivered half a dozen others in the past couple of years, women calling on her from village and farm when their time came. The last baby was Anne Steiner’s back in April, an easy birth for an unhappy woman according to Molly.
He wondered for a moment if Jaswant had come back from the mill, but knew if he had he wouldn’t be around with two strange women visiting no matter their purpose, no matter their helping the child. He’d be in one of the shacks up the road talking with other men or gone to a quiet place where he could be alone to cry or pray or both. Art thought maybe Jaswant was one of those men who could cry. He’d seen men like that in the war. What he didn’t know was who or what Sikhs prayed to. Some kind of god, he guessed. Whatever kind it was it had to be a fierce one. Jaswant carried a special kind of knife on him a lot of the time.
“Knives and gods,” he whispered.
He saw Molly smile as she looked out the window into the dark, Raaka’s hand touching her arm, Isabel pouring tea. Gerda adjusted the baby in the shawl, shifting her across her chest. He imagined the child’s tiny breaths and the breathing of the mother too, rocking the baby in her sleep.
Seeing them together made him feel good, but it was a goodness he didn’t understand. He barely recognized it for what it was. He had always felt he lived far off from all that happened around him. All he’d ever been was a watcher. Ever since the war he’d lived alone. It was as if goodness was a stranger he’d met along the road, someone he could see but never know. He knew what evil was, but goodness had escaped him.
Art flicked on his torch, its light lying among the stones at his feet. He got up and looked a last time at the house. He turned his flashlight off as the shack door opened and Molly came out on the porch. The ligh
t from the room created a glow around her as she called out to him. “Art,” she cried. “Is that you out there?”
He stood up, rifle in hand, but didn’t answer, unsure of what to say or do. The gravel road before him led up into the mountain. He had to go. Ahead was the dump and the bear. The grizzly was waiting for him.
He took a step and Molly called to him to wait as she stepped down off the porch and made her way across the grass and stones to the ditch beside the road. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“The dump,” he said.
“At this hour?”
He didn’t want to talk, to ask, but he did, his hand gripping the rifle to keep from trembling, the drugs and alcohol alive in him still helping him to forget, helping him to remember. He was beginning to feel things even as he wanted to stay numb.
“How’s that baby?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.
“She’s going to be okay, I think,” Molly said. “I wanted to thank you for asking me to come up. Gerda’s a good mother in spite of it all. Sometimes when you’re alone you don’t know what to do. She’s had a hard time of it what with her man deserting her and the baby sick. But she’s going to be all right now the baby’s taken a turn to get better.”
“I know,” said Art as he turned his head and looked up the road. “I got to go,” he said.
“To the dump? That’s crazy,” she said. “Come in and have a cup of tea. I know Gerda wants to thank you.”
“What?”
“You helped her, Art. Don’t you know that? And Isabel helped too. She gave the baby something and it perked up a bit. Isabel and me are going to raise some money along the river tomorrow and send her and the baby down on the train to Kamloops on Monday. There’s a doctor there who knows about kids.”
“The baby’s going to be okay then, is she?”
“A bit stronger than she was a while back. She started crying an hour ago and that’s good. The baby feels some pain and it’s telling her she wants to live. She even took a little milk from Gerda and kept it down.”
