Fortunately, he ignored Bridget, who was leaning into the backs of my legs so heavily that I had to step closer to him to avoid falling.
“And you must be the renter.”
Looking him over again, I was suddenly conscious of my own appearance. Since moving to the farm I had washed my hair only twice. My natural curl was taking over and my hair was bundled into a messy clump. I hadn’t applied a lick of makeup since leaving Arizona. I was wearing my black cotton pullover, now forever ruined with holes at the elbows, and a pair of black jeans, scuffed at the knees from kneeling on the floor. Fortunately, their colour disguised the Black Silk polish liberally smeared over my body.
“Yeah, I’m in partnership with my parents. That was my mother driving the truck. My father leased these two sections from your great-aunt back in 1980, and I took over the lease when I started farming with them five years ago.”
“This is all new to me,” I said awkwardly. “I’ve never been on a farm before.”
His brows pulled together in a deeper frown. “Well, that’s a first for both of us. I’ve never met anyone who’s never been on a farm before.”
I didn’t know what else to say. “How’s the harvest coming along?”
“Pretty good, if we can get the crop off before the first frost. I’ll finish this section tonight, and then move to the south section tomorrow. We only have a short window before freeze-up, so I’d better get back to work.”
He put his cap back on and pulled it down firmly, gave a curt nod, and turned away. His cap had an elastic band across the back, and through the opening, a clump of hair stuck out like a rooster tail. He vaulted up the metal steps into the cab, and a few minutes later the engine roared, the paddlewheel began to turn, and the combine moved away.
That evening after Bridget was asleep, I sat on the window seat and watched the combine move around the field. The concentric circles were growing smaller as the grain fell to the blade. It was dusk, and the coral sky along the horizon faded into a deep blue overhead. The stars popped their heads out even as I watched, and the Milky Way appeared like a smear of white paint across the indigo heavens.
The powerful lights from the combine shone into the darkness like the beacon from a lighthouse. I wondered how late he would work, whether he would be at it all night. The evening air was thick with the smell of freshly cut wheat. I breathed deeply, inhaling the sweetness into my lungs.
Suddenly it occurred to me that it was my field being harvested, my crop being drawn into the combine and separated into golden grain and straw. My grain.
August 30, 1924
My working life has begun in earnest, and I have the callouses to show for it! George says farming is not unlike going into battle, with every resource of muscle and nerve brought to bear on the outcome. I sleep so soundly at night that I am in the same position when I open my eyes as when I close them.
My first task was to help George “stook” the wheat sheaves. He cut the wheat with a horse-drawn machine called a binder, which bundled the stalks into sheaves and tied them with twine. We then picked up the sheaves by hand and stacked them in such a way that rain will not penetrate until the threshing crew arrives. The best method is to pair two sheaves, and cap them with another two sheaves, heads against heads, spread rooster-back fashion. No matter how I try, I cannot make my stooks as watertight as George’s.
We have only fifty acres in crop, and the remaining 270 are yet untouched. The next order of importance is to clear more land, and hence begins our battle with the bush. (Bush is a very humdrum name for this vast forest, thousands of square miles of glorious yet menacing wilderness.)
For the past two weeks we have been “stumping” from dawn to dusk. The trees are not overly large, mainly willow and poplar that the locals call “popple.” First George chops the tree down to its very roots, and then we hitch the team to the “dead man,” as the stump is called, and pull it out. The stumps cling like back molars. The horses must lean into their collars and give a hard steady pull before the root finally emerges with a tearing sound. Sally gives up too easily, but King will pull until you tell him it’s time for supper! The poor beast has developed painful-looking sores on his shoulders, which I bathe each night with water and vinegar.
Once the root is out, we knock off as much soil as we can and fill the hole that is left behind. I have never seen such soil, black as coal, and so thick and moist that one can squeeze it into a firm ball with one’s fist.
“Grubbing” is the term for removing smaller trees and bushes. I grab a young poplar and pull it toward me so George can chop it off at the base with one blow. All too often I go over backward with the tree! However, “many strokes fell heavy oaks,” as the English say.
The stumps and roots are piled beside the cleared area for burning later, when it’s cool and the risk of fire is not so great. Fire is a terrible prospect here, as we are surrounded by forest with no means of protection. Last fall one settler started a forest fire by knocking out his pipe embers on the sole of his boot. Although everyone in the area was ready to lynch him, they congregated to replace his barn! Such is our sense of community here, the strongest helping the weakest and least fortunate.
The work is so dirty that we wait until mid-afternoon, when the sunshine has warmed the creek, then remove our clothing and soap ourselves all over before plunging into the water. It is dashed cold but we feel invigorated afterward. It is so refreshing to be fully submersed after washing “around the edges” in our tin basin.
Begorra, but I’m glad no one from home can see me now! My skirts hampered my movements until I looped them around my waist with a belt. To protect my hands, George gave me the leather gauntlets that formed part of his army uniform. He wears a pair of thick buckskin gloves decorated with fringes that were a gift from his Indian friends. A wide-brimmed hat to keep off the sun and the wind and the flies completes my ensemble!
We have two varieties of flies here and they are perfect brutes. The bulldog fly is the size of a wasp and takes a chunk of flesh when he bites. The deer fly is the size of a housefly and his bite leaves a poison behind. I wear a piece of netting draped over my hat and fastened tightly around my neck.
At least we don’t have to concern ourselves with mosquitoes until next summer. George claims that of all the wild animals, mosquitoes are the most ferocious. They can kill a small child lost in the bush. The livestock must stand in clouds of smoke from smudges during the day, or they would be driven mad. George says he has seen mosquitoes clustered so thickly on the hide of a horse that they obscured its colour!
My pale skin never turns brown, but George is as dark as any Cree. Darker, in fact, because when Sam Bearspaw came over one day, he compared his hand to George’s and laughed mightily because George’s was the blacker of the two!
My husband is very thin from hard work. I worry about him because he has a touch of “chest” resulting from his exposure to mustard gas at Flanders. When I mentioned it, he laughed and said, “What about you, old girl? You are as slender as a whip!” But fragile though I may appear, I am all muscle. My upper arms are like firewood!
Tonight after supper, which was “moose à la Cree” (moose meat boiled with rice and onions), we walked to the beaver dam. In front there is a large pool about six feet deep that will make a good swimming hole next summer.
The beavers are modest little things. From time to time we hear the muffled crash of a falling tree, but generally before we reach the dam there is a “plop,” and all that remains are widening circles of water. Several neighbours have urged us to trap them, but that would be too cruel. The creatures are so industrious that one can only admire them. Mr. Wilson tried to frighten them away by leaving a lantern burning nearby all night, and the next morning he discovered that they had worked twice as hard by the light of the lantern!
We are experiencing the heady days called Indian summer. The rolling woodlands of green and crimson and gold are simply magnificent. The natural meadows are dotted wit
h clumps of trees called bluffs, while small ponds are azure gems set into this bright tapestry. In the early morning, the fog hangs over the creek like a snowy cashmere shawl.
We must light the lamp now in the evenings. If we leave the house, it is delightful to see our own windows shining out from the darkness of the wildwood all around.
I pulled on my flannel nightgown and crawled into bed beside Bridget. Lying awake, I considered the months and years of hard manual labour, of stumping and grubbing and stooking. If I needed any reminder of how much work it had taken to clear this land, all I had to do was cast my eyes toward the dark forest behind us. I wondered whether Colin McKay recalled the efforts of the early settlers when he was roaring around the field on his gigantic combine.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I had a thought: I must venture out to the barn and find the storm windows. But surely that could wait. I had weeks yet before winter, I thought.
I was wrong. That night there was a hard frost, and our short, sweet summer ended. We had been at Wildwood for twenty-four days.
Only 341 days to go.
8
September
As we walked into the lawyer’s office on the first day of September, I cringed inwardly at the sight of Lisette’s hair. The elaborate tower of curls on her head was as high as Marge Simpson’s hairdo. She set aside the book she was reading: The Maverick and the Maiden. The cover image showed a man on a rearing black stallion and a woman in a lacy blouse with a ripped bodice.
“Molly! I’m so glad to see you!” Her smile was as warm as an embrace. “I have your money right here.” She reached into her desk and handed me a sealed envelope. “Can you stay and chat for a few minutes?”
“If you aren’t too busy.”
“Oh, no.” She lowered her voice and looked furtive, although there was no one else in the room. “Franklin, that is, Mr. Jones, only comes by this office once a month. The rest of the time I’m here on my own, and there isn’t really much work to do. I keep telling him that I don’t know what he’s paying me for!” A flush rose into her cheeks. “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee!”
Without looking at Bridget, who was hiding behind my legs, she winked at me. “Maybe there’s a little girl around here who would like to do some colouring.” Wordlessly, Bridget disengaged herself and went to the table in the corner.
“Now, let’s sit down and get acquainted.” We settled ourselves on the handsome leather couch in the waiting area, and Lisette told me about herself. After finishing high school, she had served tables in the local coffee shop while finishing an online course in office management. She started working for Franklin Jones two years ago.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me. There aren’t many desk jobs around here. But my boss is so good to me. He has offices in five different locations! He’s on the road all the time. I keep telling him he works too hard!”
I listened to her chatter away without saying much. I had met plenty of businessmen in Arizona, and I didn’t think Mr. Jones was anything special. In fact, I found him slightly repulsive, with his styled hair and his gold pinkie ring.
“So, what about you? Do you think you’ll make it through the winter?” Lisette finally changed the subject.
“I sincerely hope so. It’s just a lot more work than I expected.” I glanced down at my hands. My palms had blistered, then calloused, but I was secretly proud of these strange rough hands. They looked as if they belonged to someone else.
“But don’t you miss the city?” Lisette asked fervently. “All those shopping malls? The only dress shop here is Styles by Myrna. And you have the most gorgeous clothes, just like Princess Kate.”
I was wearing my black pants and black double-breasted woollen overcoat, the one I wore during the coldest month in Phoenix — almost the same temperature as it was here today. I didn’t think I resembled royalty in the slightest.
Lisette, in contrast, was sporting eggplant-coloured pants, and a garish purple-and-yellow-printed blouse with brass buttons and square shoulder pads. I hadn’t seen shoulder pads since the old TV series Dallas.
“So far I haven’t missed the city,” I said truthfully. “I haven’t had time to think about it. I just wish the neighbours lived a little closer.”
“There used to be a farmhouse every mile, but since the farms have gotten so big, most people have moved into town.”
“I suppose they can’t make a living on their farms anymore.”
Lisette’s dark eyes widened. “Oh, the farmers around here are doing very well! They used to get weathered out because the growing season is so short, but with today’s technology they can harvest the grain when it’s still damp and then dry it with those big grain dryers. They’re making a killing, believe me!”
That was odd. Mr. Jones had told me that farming was a dodgy enterprise. “I met my renter the other day. How far away does he live?”
“The McKays are your closest neighbours, and they live twelve kilometres from your place — that’s about eight miles. There’s nobody else down your road except the Cree, but they keep to themselves. Colin lives with his parents on the old McKay homestead. They were just thrilled when he decided to take over the farm. A lot of the young guys would rather move into the city now or work in the oil patch.”
“Lisette, I can’t help feeling that everyone knows what I’m doing out there.”
“Well, the moccasin telegraph has been at work. You can’t keep a secret in a small town, and northern towns are the worst of all.”
“Do they all think I’m crazy?”
“Crazy, no. Eccentric, maybe. But there are a lot of, shall we say, unconventional people in this part of the world. Northern communities attract all the oddballs from down south.” She laughed merrily, exposing her perfect teeth. “We have a whole collection of characters. One of the rig pigs — that’s what they call the guys who work on the oil rigs — dyes his beard blue with food colouring. Bill Flint is a lumberjack who carves pornographic sculptures with a chainsaw. He uses the knots and twigs for the X-rated bits. And Stan Kowalski, he claims to this day that he found a thunderbolt in the bush ten years ago, but it was too heavy to carry home!”
“Good heavens,” I said faintly.
“Everybody talks about everybody around here. It’s our form of entertainment, I guess. But after the talking is over, we just go about our business. People are accepted for who they are, no matter how weird and wonderful.”
The next day, I drained my third cup of coffee with relish. I was practically addicted to coffee, and this was the best I had ever tasted, better than any of the expensive brews served in Scottsdale. I’d bought some Tim Hortons coffee, named after a famous Canadian hockey player, and I was perking it on the stove in a battered aluminum pot that I’d found in one of the cupboards.
“Mama, the coffee pot is burping!” Bridget said that first day, fascinated by the way the coffee burbled through the glass bubble on the top of the pot.
As I carried my cup over to the sink, I gazed out the kitchen window. The sky was still a vivid blue, but early this morning there had been a skiff of white frost on the green grass. The poplar leaves trembled in the cool breeze, and the faraway hills were tinged with gold.
I could see the tips of the weeds moving along the edge of the yard as Fizzy stalked something there, and I decided to take a closer look at our surroundings. Until now I had mostly avoided leaving the security of the house. Even dashing to the toilet and back felt like an excursion into the great unknown.
I called to Bridget that I was going outside, then pulled on my hiking boots and headed for the overgrown garden. I was thankful that we didn’t have rattlesnakes around here. Occasionally a few deer did trip daintily through the yard, but Bridget had lost her fear of them. This old yard was apparently something of a wildlife sanctuary.
The garden itself was a mass of perennials, some so tall they tugged at my hair. A patch of tall, spiky purple flowers in the corner raised their heads above t
he jungle. A gigantic patch of rhubarb looked more like a shrub than a fruit, with bright red stalks and leaves like elephant ears.
At the far end of the garden was a rough-hewn log bench and a cluster of fruit trees. A couple of them were laden with tiny russet apples. I waded through the weeds, plucked one of the jewel-like fruit, polished it on my jacket, and took a bite. The thin juice spurted into my mouth. It was delicious, bitingly sweet. I wished I knew how to make applesauce.
I dropped the apple core and attacked a few of the longest weeds, tossing them to one side. The earth attached to their roots was rich and black. I felt an urge to tackle the whole garden, see what was under there, but then I checked myself. That would take days, and what was the point?
Reluctantly I left the garden and walked around to the front of the house. From here the shingled structure looked as solid as a humpback whale rising from a sea of lilacs. I knew they were lilacs because I had seen a hand-tinted photograph hanging in the hall. The house had once been handsome, with fresh red and cream paint, the lilacs bursting with royal purple and lavender and snowy-white blossoms.
I continued across the yard to the log barn and pulled open the doors. Old Joe told me that when my great-aunt rented the farmland, she sold all the newer farm equipment to an auctioneer. What remained was a century’s worth of odds and ends.
The daylight illuminated a collection of ancient machinery and implements. Near the entrance was a rickety wagon with faded red metal wheels and spokes, looking like a pioneer’s covered wagon without the cover. There was even a sleigh — an actual sleigh like something out of Dr. Zhivago — with metal runners and two poles where the horse had been harnessed.
Beside it was a walking plough with three-cornered blades. Surely that must be the same plough that George had used to break the sod. I walked over and gripped the wooden handles. They felt warm, as if his hands had left them only minutes ago.
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