by Kurt Palka
* * *
—
In the morning there was still no electricity, and she boiled her coffee water on the camp stove and poured it through the hand filter into the Thermos. The fridge was still cold inside, but it would not be so for much longer. Then in her slicker and boots she walked down to inspect her forest.
It had suffered badly. Trees had been uprooted and broken, remnants standing to heights beyond reach and long white scars running down where bark had been peeled. Root balls six feet across had been levered up from the soil put there by her father’s eighty-eight trucks, soil settled for three generations but not a hundred, and the root system not deep enough to withstand yesterday’s onslaught.
It took that day and part of the next before the road into town and the shore road were cleared by workers with chainsaws, and on the way to Telford Herman’s boatyard she drove past several repair crews mending power lines. But at the yard itself there was hardly any damage. Telford said it had to do with the way the coastline curved where they were and gave them shelter. Like a natural harbour, he said. They were lucky that way.
She explained about her forest, and Telford and his son stood and listened.
“Quite a few tamaracks down in there,” she said. “And white pines and Norway pines. And hardwoods too.”
When she made her offer, they listened and nodded and talked about it. Then they all climbed into the Buick and drove there. They studied her forest and then they walked it, estimating the cost of the cleanup against the value of salvageable wood.
In the end she and Telford shook hands, and the next day they came with horses and flatbed carriages and a crew with chains and hydraulic gear and a tractor winch. It took three days, and when all the logs and root balls had been hauled away and the ground more or less levelled, her forest was much thinned, thinned by one-quarter perhaps.
“But look on the bright side, Margaret,” said Telford. “It needed a bit of clearing anyway, and you might never have had the heart to do it.”
From the house she could now see the ocean through the trees. She could see daylight on the ground, and at night she’d be able to walk it without safety glasses. And on a clear day there would be sunlight where there hadn’t been any in years. Forest flowers might grow, new seeds take root.
* * *
—
In the morning the telephone was still down, as was the power, but around noon a uniformed postal clerk on a bicycle brought her a telegram. She ripped it open. It said,
COMING OUT FOR THANKSGIVING—STOP—CP AIR 2:15 PM HALIFAX FRIDAY—JACK.
She gave the postie a generous tip and hurried over the rock to tell Aileen.
The power and the telephone came back on that evening. Her refrigerator hummed obligingly and the red pilot light on the water heater glowed.
She slept well that night, and in the morning she luxuriated in a hot shower and washed her hair and blow-dried it. She put on makeup and then stood in front of her open closet and chose her clothes for the day. She spent three hours at her desk and after lunch got into the Buick and drove north along the coast to pick him up at the airport.
In the evening they had dinner at the Outrigger. They were careful with words, careful even looking at each other. Tammy had picked that up as soon as she’d seen them, and she was extra-attentive. She showed them to a good table by a waterside window. Strings of electric lights shone on fishing boats and on the dock planking and on old bollards worn down and polished by hawsers for years.
“I’ll get you a drink on the house,” Tammy said. “And then I’ll come and take your orders. Wasn’t that blow something?”
* * *
—
That night in dreams she was in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa, standing by Andrew’s headstone with the black cross and his unit insignia and his name on it. A white stone, one among so many in vanishing lines this way and that. So very many of them, in such silence, such enormous peace and so much fine company. She kissed her fingers and put them to his stone, and at the touch she woke and saw the pale square window and Jack asleep on the other side of the bed.
* * *
—
Part of her house had yet to dry out, and to help it along she kept the cookstove going, and the fireplace, and she opened all the windows wide. Because of that, Aileen said she would host the annual Thanksgiving dinner at her house, even though it wasn’t her turn.
The plan for dinner was turkey and Brussels sprouts and yellow beans and squash and mashed potatoes, all fresh from the Annapolis Valley, and a pumpkin pie with blueberries and whipped cream for dessert.
While Margaret and Aileen were busy in the kitchen, Jack and Danny worked at replacing her window and patching plaster. Franklin strained the new blueberry wine through a filter.
As was often the case a few days after a storm, the sky had cleared and the weather was beautiful. Sunny and cold and no wind at all. Flaming leaves adrift and cold water lapping on cold, smooth stone. A chance of flurries in the forecast.
At one time she and Aileen were up in the blueberries, picking the last of them for the dessert. Once in a while they stood and straightened their backs, and they ate a sweet berry or two, looking down at the rocks and trees, at their wooden houses and the ocean, everything swept clean and sparkling, and far out, nearly at the horizon, the white shape of a large sailing ship.
* * *
—
In the late afternoon she and Jack began dressing for dinner. The Thanksgiving get-togethers were the one event in the year they had all agreed to dress up for, just to make a difference. She’d wear the dark green dress, and Aileen would probably be wearing a tartan skirt with a blouse and her black cashmere cardigan with the silver thistle pin from her grandmother.
At one point, when Margaret came out of the bathroom with her head cocked, struggling with an earring, she saw Jack sitting on the side of the bed like a man lost, with his hands on his trouser knees the way she’d seen another father sit not long ago.
Since his arrival they had not once spoken about Andrew, even though it was always as if their boy were in the room with them. They hadn’t spoken much at all, but then not much could be said, nor were any new thoughts ready to be committed to words.
But now, when she saw him sitting like that, something welled up in her and she put the earring on the dresser and walked over to the bed and sat down next to him. She put her arm in his and sat very close. And after a while she moved closer still.
They sat like this for minutes while the orange sunspot from the window moved across the floor, from the hardwood onto the edge of the carpet. From over on the other rock they could hear Aileen calling for Danny, and Danny answering. They could hear seabirds and the wind and the ocean. And once or twice in those minutes she reached up and with the fingertips of her free hand wiped her eyes.
Thirty-One
TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS she was on an airplane back to Paris. Thérèse was launching a book—perhaps her last, she’d said, one never knew—and Margaret was able to combine the event with an important client visit that Hugh wanted her to make. Jack was in Sweden, and he might be able to join her in time, or he might not. They had once again recognized and accepted that about each other, that his work rescued him as much as hers did her.
In Toronto she had moved back into the main house. Jack tried to be home more often, and she tried not to put in such long hours. It worked some of the time. When they were both home they had candlelit dinners, not at the long table but at the smaller pinewood table by the window.
Most important, they were beginning to be able to smile at each other again. To smile and to talk, because words were beginning to lose their danger.
She still dreamt about Andrew, and at times she saw him in fleeting day visions, and she hoped she always would. Once from a streetcar she saw him raking leaves in a city park, and one night coming home in a taxi she saw him in a passing car.
Sweetheart, she said to him, and turned to watch his lights recede.
For some reason, tonight she did not mind being on this airplane. Perhaps because it was an overnight flight and it was half empty. Calm and not so bright. It had left Toronto in the evening and would be in Paris in the morning. Now the movie had finished and the lights were turned low. She eased up the window blind and looked out. A quarter moon and a bright star nearby. Their reflections on the long metal of the airplane wing.
She thought back to the first time she met Thérèse at the school, to the Women’s Stories sessions in the lounge. To their last talk under palm trees at the residence. She was beginning to believe that what Thérèse had said that night about loss might in fact be possible; that her sorrow and the way she might learn to live with it would in time become something like a friend. In good moments such as now, she could see the shape of thoughts and emotions that might permit it.
If so, it would probably happen in the cottage in Toronto. Some evenings and weekends when Jack was away, she still walked down there to spend quiet time in the kitchen, since that was where for some reason she could connect most easily with the boy. The corner with the padded bench and the table was where he came to meet her. Where they could sit and communicate without words now, just the two of them. She knew it was all just imaginings in her heart, but in some way it was also real, and slowly, slowly in this way she might be able to let him go.
She reclined the seat a bit and pulled up the blanket. Tucked it in around her chin and closed her eyes. A deep breath in and out.
Thank you, she said.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For all their support with The Hour of the Fox I wish to thank the team at McClelland & Stewart led by Jared Bland, publisher, and Kelly Joseph, publishing manager, and including Erin Kelly, Scott Loomer, Max Arambulo, Bonnie Maitland, Ashley Dunn, Kimberlee Hesas, Rachel Cooper, Valentina Capuani, and Terra Page. My thanks also go out to Lara Hinchberger, my editor, to Ellen Levine my agent, and to you, Heather, always my first reader.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Hour of the Fox is KURT PALKA’s seventh novel. His previous work includes Clara, which was published in hardcover as Patient Number 7 and was a finalist for the Hammett Prize, and The Piano Maker, a national bestseller. Kurt Palka lives near Toronto.
