by Eric Wright
Pickett said, “You mean you’ve got someone coming?”
Charlotte burst out laughing, and Eliza, though embarrassed, giggled along with her.
Pickett, totally confused, said, “Why didn’t you say so?”
“At what point? To whom?” Eliza asked.
Charlotte said, “Come on, Mel.” To Eliza, she said, “Come up to the house for supper anyway, both of you. No? Good. The chicken’s too small. Otherwise, you’d be welcome.”
“Can I bring him for breakfast tomorrow?”
“We get up too early for that. No, make it some other weekend. Come on, Mel.”
Outside, Pickett asked, “Why didn’t you let her come for breakfast?”
“Because she didn’t mean it. She was just saying she would like to, other things being equal, and she also wanted to say ‘he’ or, rather, ‘him’ out loud.”
“Huh?”
“For Heaven’s sake, she wanted to be sure you heard right. She spends her weekends up here with a boyfriend.”
“I thought she came up here to write a book. How did you know, by the way?”
“The bedroom door was shut, and she was making sure you didn’t get past her to open it.”
5
Sergeant Wilkie had been born and raised in Toronto, and he joined the Ontario Provincial Police after a spell in the Toronto force because his idea of small-town life, derived from sentimental accounts of rural childhoods he had seen on television, had led him to believe that the simple world of the small town had to be preferable to the gritty squalor he coped with on the night shift in Toronto’s Fifty-third Division. He had not found it to be so.
It was true that most of Sweetwater’s violence was domestic, but he soon forgot the jungle he had left and began to miss the city. He missed the anonymity when he was off duty; half the population of Sweetwater knew him by sight, so that to take a day off, to have a meal out, like a civilian, he had to drive to Lindsay. Even there, he bumped into people who knew him from Sweetwater, so to be really anonymous, he had to go back to his starting point, Toronto.
And in Sweetwater, he was always being reminded that he was an outsider. Everybody else, including most of his colleagues, knew things, country things, that he didn’t. They could tell at a glance when a woodstove was burning too hot, when a dog was rabid, how to cook venison, how much one of the local wooden houses was worth, stuff like that. And they would know, driving out toward Donnington to the place where Norbert Thompson used to live, what a chicken farm looked like, while Wilkie, certain he was wrong, nevertheless kept his eyes open for several acres of fluffy yellow chicks pecking corn that had been distributed from a giantess’s apron.
What he found seemed to him to be a miniature concentration camp: a gate in a chain-link fence around rows of low metal buildings, without a human in sight. The road through the farm led past these buildings to the original farmhouse, made of brick with freshly painted trim, surrounded by well-kept grass, and at the back, a vegetable patch. And just beyond the farmhouse stood a fine old barn, now a garage and storage building, in nearly as good condition as it had been a hundred years before. These two buildings, the house and the barn, had an antique, preserved air in contrast to the chicken sheds, which were sided with aluminum.
Wilkie pulled up in front of the house, and two dogs appeared from the barn, barking hard. One of the things Wilkie could not yet do was to recognize when a farm dog was trained to tear the throat out of a stranger and when it was just saying hello, so he stayed where he was. The door of the house opened and a woman appeared. Wilkie opened his car door an inch and waited while she called to the dogs, who moved back a foot, just enough to allow him to get down.
“Come on up,” she said. “They won’t bother you while I’m here.”
Wilkie crossed the yard and climbed the steps to the porch, avoiding any sudden movement. The dogs stayed with him all the way, an inch away from his calves, then turned and took off after another perceived intruder across the field. The woman led him inside and pointed to a chair, taking one herself.
Very little had been done to bring the house into the last half of the twentieth century. Wilkie noted that most of the furnishings dated from before his time, although they looked merely old rather than antique. A rail-backed bench with a padded seat filled the space along one wall. Wilkie and Mrs. Sproat sat opposite each other in wooden armchairs with thin corduroy pads on the seats; three straight-backed chairs were positioned, one on each wall, ready to be brought into service when company called. A braided rug filled the center of the floor, which was made of wide planking rubbed to a high polish.
There were no side tables of any kind. All of the chairs were within reach of the only raised surface in the room: a large pine table on stubby, two-foot legs, obviously cut down from its original dining height. On this, a bunch of bulrushes made the only purely decorative object in the room, except for some views of Scotland on the walls, framed like religious texts in quarter-inch pine trim that crossed at the corners.
They had entered the house through the kitchen. Wilkie surmised that the front door and the room they were sitting in were used only for funerals and festivities. A huge yellow refrigerator dominated the kitchen they had passed through, but everything else in the room looked like pioneer equipment, made of chipped enamel, scrubbed pine, and iron. Wilkie assumed at first sight that he was in a typical Ontario farmhouse, but as the detail of his surroundings pressed itself on him, he realized that the few farmhouses he had been inside were nothing like this, that farmers today knew about dishwashers and freezers and microwaves, and that most of them had replaced the old heavy wooden storm windows with aluminum.
Here, he was sitting in a time warp, a museum, and once he had found that word, it made sense of everything he saw, because the place was perfectly maintained. The fences, the paintwork on the buildings, the gravel road, and the grassed areas were all closely attended to. The house inside smelled of laundry soap and of wax, though underneath there was a mild Granny’s-apron smell of ancient fabric, as though the air was not changed often enough.
“Nice place,” Wilkie said, taking out his notebook and a pencil.
“My great-great-grandfather built it. He came out from Scotland in eighteen eighty-seven with enough money to build this house and, later on, six farm buildings. Only the barn and house are left. It was a mixed farm then; my grandfather moved it over to chickens. Now, what do you want?” She pulled her cardigan around her shoulders and sniffled, shivering. The tour was now complete, she was saying.
Wilkie said, “I can come back.”
“You do what you have to do, then maybe I can get some peace.”
“Norbert Thompson,” Wilkie said, playing with the notebook. “I’m sorry to tell you—”
“That he’s dead,” she interrupted. “I heard about it this morning. Three people came by to tell me. Different times.”
“You heard how it happened?”
“Somebody hit him last night, they say.”
Wilkie nodded.
“Strangers?” She sniffled hard.
“We don’t know. I can come back tomorrow,” he repeated as she sniffled again.
“If you think I’m upset, I’m not; it’s because I’ve got a bad cold. I’m sorry Norbert’s dead, of course. I’ll pray for him, and I’ll pay for his funeral if he didn’t leave enough, but I wasn’t that close to him, so I can’t grieve a lot.”
“He did work here, though?”
“He did. For about four years. But that don’t make him close. He was a necessity, and a servant, if you like, not a friend. We had respect for each other, though.”
“What did he do here?”
“Everything I couldn’t. He was the hired man.”
Wilkie thought, my first “hired man.” “Why did he leave?” he asked.
“Because we didn’t need him anymore.”
“You let him go?”
“He wanted to go. My husband thought it was best.”
> “Maybe I should be talking to your husband.” Wilkie looked around the room with a where-is-he? air.
“He’s in Lindsay, selling the eggs. It doesn’t matter. This is my farm. Norbert Thompson was my hired man. Wives should submit to their husbands, but Norbert Thompson goes back to before Mr. Sproat was here. So I’ll answer for those days.”
“How was it you didn’t need him anymore? Did you close down some part of the operation?”
“I got married again, to Mr. Sproat, and I, that is we, my husband and I, didn’t need Norbert anymore. Norbert could see that himself, but he waited until Aaron raised the matter.”
“Aaron?”
“Mr. Sproat. My husband. Norbert needed to know that he should give up his job.”
Wilkie began to feel a stubbornness in her. He was not sure if he should trust his feelings, though. Maybe disgorging tiny pieces of information instead of telling the whole story at once was typical of country ways. If so, he could wait.
“When did you and Mr. Sproat get married?”
“Just before Christmas.”
“Was Thompson surprised?”
“Oh, he was surprised all right. It was none of his business, of course, but I can see that some surprise would be natural from his point of view.”
“He did live here?”
“He did. In the back room. Downstairs.”
“Did you cook for him?”
“Of course I did. He was the hired man.”
“You said he was here for four years. What did you do before he came?”
“He didn’t come until we finally needed him. Before that, Mr. Maguire, my first husband, did all the work.”
While he waited for her to expand her response, Wilkie tried to guess her age and character. Somewhere between forty and seventy was as close as he could come. Her slightly weathered look—the local equivalent of a Florida tan—made it hard to guess any closer. She wore no lipstick or any other makeup, and her hair, grayish-brown, was netted up in a kind of snood. She wore the sort of dress meant to be worked in, coarse brown stockings, and carpet slippers. Two gold rings, one on the third finger of each hand, were her only ornaments. Wilkie wondered what kind of wife she was—the house was spotless, but there was no lingering smell of cooking.
“So, there was a time when you and your first husband lived here with Norbert Thompson, the hired man. Why did you start four years ago to need a hired man?” He had not forgotten what Charlotte had said about Maguire’s illness, but he was trying to find the right note to strike.
“Because my first husband got cancer. I needed Norbert to do the chores and help me, in looking after Mr. Maguire.”
“Who?”
“My first husband.”
“Ah. Right. So Norbert Thompson ran the farm while your husband was sick, and then your husband died, but your second husband didn’t need Thompson’s help.”
She said nothing.
“Where did you find Thompson?”
“Mr. Maguire sent for him.”
“Sent to where?”
“To the family he lived with in New Brunswick.”
Was that a glint in her eye? Was she enjoying fucking around like this? “What was the connection between your first husband and Norbert Thompson that your husband could just send for him?”
“They was brothers. Didn’t I say?”
“No. But Maguire? Thompson? Who changed his name?”
“Mr. Maguire came from a big family. When his mother died, the children was split up among whoever would take them in. Mr. Maguire’s brother, Norbert, got adopted by a couple down in New Brunswick name of Thompson, who had his name changed. But he always knew who he was really, and the couple did right by making sure he knew where the rest of his family was. We got and sent a Christmas card every year. He made a trip once to see us, about ten years ago.”
“When did your husband die? What month?”
“October, it was.”
“And you were married again by Christmas?”
“December fifteen. Our minister said there was no need to wait.”
“Were you all three here for Christmas?”
“Yes. Norbert left after New Year’s. I paid him an extra month’s wages.”
“Tell me about him. What kind of a man was he? Did he drink?”
“Saturday afternoons he used to go in to Sweetwater, to do some errands for the farm and take his laundry to the Laundromat there. I looked after the sheets and stuff, but he did his own laundry, and I don’t have a machine. Afterward, he would spend time in the beer parlor. He was never what they call drunk—I wouldn’t allow that, I’m Gospel—but you could smell it on him. The minister said it wasn’t my affair so long as he didn’t bring it in the house, which he didn’t.”
“Did he have any friends?”
“In the beer parlor, p’raps. None came to the house.”
“What about enemies?”
“Where would he make enemies? He was from New Brunswick. He didn’t know anyone around here except the people we dealt with, and the mailman. Whoever did for him was a stranger, I reckon, one of those breaking into houses. That’s what they say.”
“Did he have any money, do you know?”
She took her time to respond. “He could have saved quite a bit over the time he was here. And he might have brought some with him from New Brunswick. He got his board and room free, and he never bought anything. Mr. Maguire was bedridden when he came, so Norbert gradually wore out all his clothes which I gave him. I believe he might have had a fair bit.”
Wilkie nodded, making a note to search the cabin properly for Thompson’s stash.
“What’s your second husband’s name, again, Mrs. Sproat? His first name?”
“Aaron.”
“Aaron Sproat. What was his trade?”
“He drove the truck for the feed supplier.”
“That how you met him?”
“No. He didn’t supply us. I met him in church. We belonged to the same congregation, the First Gospel Church on River Street. Mr. Maguire’s family was one of those that broke away when the Evangelicals split, and the Gospel congregation was formed. I switched over when the Evangelicals started to hold services with other congregations. Mixed faith is no faith, to my way of thinking. If you believe in something, you believe in it and everyone else is wrong. Isn’t that sense? I don’t hold with persecution—I think we should be tolerant while they are in error, let God punish them—but you have to believe your way is right. And once you figure out what’s true and what isn’t, and what the Lord wants from you, then everything you need is in the Book.”
“Was Norbert Thompson a member of your church?”
“Norbert didn’t have no religion. At least he never spoke of any to me. I never pursued it with him. We do hold with conversion, but after being cooped up with him all week, I didn’t want to spend my Sundays with him, too.”
“So he never met Mr. Sproat until after your husband died?”
“That’s correct.”
“Did he know about him?”
“Know what, mister? Know what? There was nothing to know. I had a husband living. Mr. Sproat respected that. We strictly passed the time of day after church, until Mr. Maguire died. I used to stay over for an hour, and pretty soon Mr. Sproat and I understood each other. We got to know each other pretty good after three or four years. He was a good friend during that time, and he’s been a worthy husband since. So then I was free and so was he.”
“And he would know about chicken farming, of course.”
“He’s a strong man, a bit past his prime, but he’s lifted sacks of feed all his life, so he doesn’t find this work heavy.”
“Did you stay friendly with Thompson when he moved out?”
“I was civil. He was the hired man, just. My husband’s brother, true, but we never was friends, no. He didn’t live enough in the Lord’s way for me, though he respected my ways in the house. And he did the work all right. But he wasn’t in the right stat
e.”
Two beers a week and you’re doomed, thought Wilkie. No—damned. “Did he never come back for a visit?”
“A couple of times to sort out some things. He didn’t have any transportation. Not that it would be that far to walk, but he wasn’t interested in us, or us in him. Not to socialize.”
Wilkie wondered how Thompson had amused himself in the house. “Could I have a glass of water?” he asked, meaning tea or coffee, hoping to find a way to get her to chat a little further.
“Are we finished?”
“For the moment. I’ll need to talk to your husband.”
“He’ll be back around suppertime. But he’ll have a lot of work to do when he gets in.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Make it in the afternoon. I suppose all days are the same in your work, but tomorrow’s Sunday.” She stood up and walked out to the kitchen.
Wilkie heard the tap run, and then she called to him, “Here’s your water.” She was standing by the kitchen door, holding a jelly glass of water. Wilkie drank half of it and handed the glass back. It was good water but too cold, and he had never much liked the stuff.
She opened the door and stood back to let him out, closing it on his heels.
6
“He came to Charlotte to see if he could put up a notice in the coffee shop inquiring if anyone had a room for rent. He was also looking for work. Harlan, who owns the coffee shop, and the gas pump, and the motel, and most of the rest of Larch River, took him on, at below the minimum of course, to give the motel a coat of paint and to do some maintenance work. I think what Harlan paid him just about covered his groceries, and Charlotte felt sorry for him—he seemed like a bit of an innocent for a man his age—and she suggested to me that I might let him have the cabin free until the spring. I didn’t know anything about the guy except that he was out of a job and had no place to stay, but I drove out toward Donnington to see the farm and I figured anyone who has run a chicken farm and kept up a farmhouse the way he had was a good bet for a tenant. So I said yes, and he moved in.”
