On 15 June, while Chris was off on a baseball tour, Helen and Ed went into the timbered slopes to herd sheep for two weeks with a wagon full of groceries, opening fence line gates on the rutted tracks leading up into the mountains, feeling the coolness of shade which could not be found in the valley.
The wagon sat high on the spoked wheels and the leather reins were soft in Helen’s hand from years of use. She propped her foot up on the weatherboard and smiled at Ed, feeling the lurch of the wagon over roots and stones, hearing the yap of the herd dogs as they ran round and round the wagon as it moved along, so slowly.
‘I’m looking forward to this sheep herding your mom’s been talking about.’
He smiled and his mouth was lazy. ‘I guess I am too.’
They looked back down into the valley. Smoke rose from the farmhouse chimney and the creek moved sluggishly through dried banks. They could see the shimmer of the heat and Helen relaxed in their shaded cool, bringing out her camera, taking shots of the valley, the mountains, the darkness of the pines.
‘It’s a bit more like England up here,’ she murmured, leaning over and kissing him.
‘I guess so, honey. Do you miss it so much?’ His hands caught at hers and held them loosely and he watched the horse as it picked its way along the track.
‘No, not at all,’ Helen said but she did. She still did, though not with the sharp pain of the first days of strangeness. She looked up picking out the sky through the branches. It was a dull ache which never left her. But she loved him so much that it filled every other part of her and it was this that she tried to think of each day.
They stopped beneath sun-splashed pine boughs before the day ended, knowing that the sheep were all around, hearing their bleats and the whine of the dogs. They unhitched their horses from the tailboard and rode out; checking, laughing, listening and just sitting with their hands on the saddle, looking together up at the mountains, breathing in the pure air, hearing nothing of the world beyond the timber and it was a touch of heaven. A soundless time which they each sucked in after the screams of the last few years.
That night they lay together on the soft pine needles and loved beneath a sky filled with the smell of jackpines and clear mountain air, and Helen felt that this was what she had been waiting for all her life and the ache for England would subside with each day that passed for this was her home, here in the cool of the mountains, in the silence of its skies.
She kissed his mouth and told him this; that here they were together and there was no past and no future, just their love and he held her then and told her of the dreams he had when the war still roared and crashed across the world. He told of the blood on his face, on his body, of Joe, and she held him as he told her it was not his guilt for Joe that made him scream but his guilt for those beneath his bombs. He told her of London that day, of the crosses in the rubble and she kissed him and said that war asked strange things of people and that it was all over now. He held her.
‘Dear God, I hope so,’ he murmured.
They followed the sheep along the range for the next two weeks and Helen grew to love the wagon, its storage bins which doubled as seats, a table which hinged down from the wall. There was a bunk bed which fitted across the end of the wagon but they lay beneath the stars or used a canvas tent which they folded each morning and set up again at a new site every evening.
They sat in the wagon with the Dutch door half open watching the sheep, listening to coyotes and Helen thought of Ed as a child, coming up here with his father, shooting grouse as big as hen turkeys, eating half at night, putting the other half in a jar, dangling it in the stream and having it for breakfast.
He told her of the small cabin which he loved to camp in, the winter he had spent guarding the sheep and just existing and how it had honed him as a man.
They talked of the child they would have when their own house was finished and Helen called it their home and said that maybe they’d have to divide the larger bedroom into two.
She learned to balance a cup of water on the table at each night stop to check that the wagon was level and to dig beneath the wheels if it wasn’t, and for those two weeks there was nothing and no one in the world but them, and there were no words left unsaid, no thoughts and fears left unspoken, and Helen prayed that the darkness had left Ed for ever. But sometimes his hands still trembled and tightness gathered round his eyes.
CHAPTER 21
In late June they were back in the valley, joining in the heaving and raking of the late wild hay after Helen had fed the chickens and checked the seed potatoes which she had bought from the store and set behind the unfinished house, digging in the cool of the evening, and after Ed had ridden round the cattle, checking the fences, repairing wire where it had sagged and posts which had loosened.
They set half the bunkhouse on one of the fields and took two other men, sending the others out to the pasture to guard and move the cattle. Helen laughed because Pop wouldn’t use ‘new fangled machinery’ for harvesting when he had good horses and idle men. She tossed loads up to Ed who pulled his hat down hard and worked to keep up. His back and leg were looser now and his stride was almost easy.
The smell of the hay filled the air and midges danced along with the seeds which scattered and blew on the wind, and as Helen drove the wagon through the field she thought of all the young men who had helped in East Anglia and whose parents would never again see the sun on their backs as she was seeing it on Ed’s. They worked with the men for two days transporting the hay to stacks which looked like loaves and on the third she dragged the stetson which had been Ed’s when he was young well down, grateful for the shade across her face, feeling the heat beating down on to the ground and then rising in waves from the parched earth. The creek was almost dried out and the willows rattled in the slight breeze which gave no relief because it too was dry and hot. The dampness of England seemed a miracle, one which she could almost no longer imagine.
Helen wiped her parched mouth. Ed threw down a leather flask from the wagon where he was stacking the hay, outside first moving inwards as John had shown her.
‘Drink this, honey, you’ll be losing a heap of moisture.’
She lifted it to her mouth. The water was warm but she needed it. God, how she needed it. She looked across to the other field seeing it fragmented by the blazing heat. She drew up her leather gloves so that they met her cuffs, unbuttoned to allow a draught. Her arms had burnt on the first day and now she kept them covered and her hands too.
The letter from Claus crackled in her pocket. He had sent bulbs for the fall and three rose bushes which he said she must bury deep down beneath the earth for the winter and then dig up for next spring. A little bit of England, he had said, and Ed had promised that he would help. They would plant them round the new house and even if they were still not in by then, at least it was as though their souls were there.
She smiled up at him. His hair had bleached under the searing heat and his moustache too. His skin was burnt dark brown and he was beautiful. They sent the two men back to the range in the afternoon for they were almost through with the field and they wanted to be alone, lifting, heaving, throwing, hearing the breaths they each drew, speaking words which only they should hear. Helen leaned on her rake as Ed stretched back his shoulders, standing above her on the wagon, ankle deep in hay, balancing, then falling, sinking into the green grass and laughing deep down in his body.
It was darker now, though it was only four o’clock and Helen raised her arm, shading her eyes as she looked towards the mountains to the west. Dark clouds were forming, tumbling on top of one another, grey, then black, and she shouted to Ed to look. He did, then stopped, his head lifted. He jumped down, picking up the tools throwing them on top of the load, calling to her to do likewise.
‘There’s a storm coming.’ His voice was tight and his movements quick. ‘Get up on the wagon, Helen, let’s get this load back.’ He took the reins and shook them out and now it was humid, heavy and wet, and
just as hot as before.
Helen saw his hands trembling as the thunder rumbled in over the mountains, coming before the rain, before any lightning that they could see.
He shouted at the horse now. ‘Get your goddamn butt moving.’
She looked at him and then back at the storm, swirling in, filling the valley with darkness and noise and now the lightning flashed, tearing jagged through the clouds and the thunder clapped above them, rolling round and round, trapped within the mountain range, and then the rain, heavy and hot. So hot.
The horse was nervous, edgy, side-stepping within the traces. Ed clutched the reins with white-knuckled hands, shouting above the storm.
Helen gripped the sides of the seat, water running off her stetson, crouching as the lightning sliced through the air again and the thunder rolled and banged.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ she heard Ed say as the roan staggered and side-stepped. ‘For Christ’s sake.’
Helen looked ahead, knowing the farm was along the road, but she could not see through the steam and the rain and the darkness. The noise went on and on and the lightning was like the searchlights seeking and the gunfire probing and the noise was the noise of bombs.
The lightning ripped the skies apart again and Helen gripped Ed’s arm, rising as he was doing as he slapped his reins on the horse, shouting at him. She felt the roughness of his shirt, it was full of water. There was water everywhere, in her face, her mouth and in his too.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said again tightening the reins as the horse moved faster, balancing as the wagon shifted from side to side.
‘Hang on to these,’ he shouted, passing them to her, leaping down from the wagon, running to the horse’s head, dragging him forward as he side-stepped again and Helen could hardly see him through the torrent and was afraid.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she cried and he looked up at her, his arms pulling at the horse, effort stretched across his face and then the lightning seared again, close, too close, and thunder crashed, cruel and consuming, and she screamed as the horse reared in the traces, striking out at Ed who was knocked to the side. Helen saw the roan’s ears flatten as lightning again and again stabbed across the blackness and then he ran; his legs fully stretched, his head wrenching at his bit and she heard Ed’s cry.
‘Helen. Helen.’
But she could hear nothing but the rain and the thunder and she thought of the raven and the gods and knew that the wagon was tipping, lurching, straightening and rushing forward again. And then it hit the boulder and flew high and sideways. She heard the wood tearing and the thunder and it was as though bombs were coming down and crushing her into the ground and there would be dust and bricks and death and she screamed into the darkness of the cupboard.
She wasn’t hurt, she kept telling him. Not hurt, as he pushed the broken wagon from her legs but he was crying and holding her and that night, after they struggled home he went into the bedroom and drank whisky until he passed out and then he screamed all night as the darkness closed in on him because he had nearly killed Helen as he had killed so many others.
As summer turned to fall and the leaves shone orange, red and gold, he saw none of it, only the shadows of his mind and at night he could not scrape off the dried blood which belonged to Joe and the rest of the people he had killed. Helen lay and listened and wept because she could not reach him, could not help him any more. But could the whisky either?
He would not let Helen drive the wagon again and so she rode her horse out across the valley, taking photographs of the trees, the creek, and the men as they cut out the calves from the mothers, and stooped and wrestled in the bright air, their chaps dust covered, their hats sodden with sweat. She used black and white, and created clear true images and sent them off to Claus who sold them, ploughing the money back into the agency for her and sending her the half-yearly statement of accounts. Business was good.
And then Ed slapped her one night with a drink-clumsy hand because he said she was going to leave him here while she ran away to New York. She put her camera away and held him and said she would never go. Never ever go. But it did not stop her from viewing her world with a photographer’s eye because, when all this was past, she would work again.
She told Chris that Ed was not well but he knew that already. He had heard the words which tracked from Helen to Ed’s parents as evening followed evening and seen the strength which had been Ed become sodden and fumbling. But sometimes Ed laughed for a moment like he used to, and Chris would sit with him then because he loved him and he had saved him from the bullies all that time ago.
But as October became November there were no more smiles, just shouts. No kindness, just tension and he knew that somehow the war was not going to leave Ed again as it had done, briefly, for the summer. Each night he would listen for the stumbling feet on the stairs and grieve for the man who had pitched at him and his hate for the Germans was fuelled.
Mr McDonald sold a hundred head of cattle in the first week of November, and Helen worked with him and the men, driving them to the shipping pastures where they milled and worried until the train came in, and then she and the hands pushed the shoulders of their horses at the cattle, moving them forward, feeling their heat, breathing in their dust until finally they were on board. Ed did not come. She did not look at Wilton’s Bar as they passed and neither did Pop but all the way back they talked about the man she loved. But their words did no good. Pop’s son, her husband, did not want a clear mind.
At the ranch she manhandled the sheep up the chutes into the trucks, gripping their fleeces; her fingers thick with their oil, not feeling the chill of the autumn until she stood back and watched the truck leave. She drove the pick-up into town, following on, Mr McDonald at her side guiding her with the gear shift, praising her until they reached the railroad shipping pens, and she wondered if her husband would ever be sixty with hands as calm and eyes as clear as this dear old man’s for he was becoming the father she had hoped for.
Again she wrangled the sheep up into the boxcars when the train came in, cursing as the men did, but not loudly, coughing too and falling, grazing her arm but rising and smiling, bearing Ed’s share of the family labour. The days passed, busy, empty, because Ed was not with her but a million years away, fighting the war again, drinking until he could no longer stand and somehow she must stop it, but did not know how.
Mr McDonald told her as the chill wind blew across the valley that soon she must take her driving test and she nodded but said to Ed the next morning as he lay in bed, his breath sour and his skin too, that she must dig a trench for the roses before the winter froze the ground.
‘You promised to help, my darling,’ she said.
He looked at her with eyes grown dull and dark, then turned away and so she bent and kissed his head, his cheek, and thought of his hands which never stroked her now.
‘It will pass,’ she whispered. ‘This is just a fragment of time.’
She rode her mare to the house which would one day be theirs and dug the trench, wrapping the rose roots in sacking, covering the plants with layers of newspaper and earth. She then sliced the spade into the ground around the house, digging once, twice. Counting as she struck stones, rocks and thick clay but never stopping until the sun was low and the beds were finished.
She looked up as Chris rode along the track towards her, halting, his arms folded on the saddle horn.
‘Why, Mum?’ he said pointing to the ground.
Helen looked up at him, seeing the man he was becoming, hearing the voice beginning to crack and deepen.
‘Because it’s going to be our home and I’m staking my claim.’ She straightened her shoulders, passing the spade up to her son. I’m staking my claim to my husband’s life, she thought, staring up into the sky, seeing ravens where there were none. The gods are not going to get him, somehow I shall make sure of that, but she couldn’t speak the words because if she did, the pain would flow from her in a torrent which would drown them all.
On 1 December Chris was fourteen and Mr McDonald drove him and his friends to a movie in Rider’s Halt, the first big town, and she sat and joked beside him, listening to Ed’s father laugh with his son’s laugh.
They ate hamburgers thick with a relish which could still not wipe out the memory of the English sauces and the boys were happy and whistled ‘Little Brown Jug’ all the way home.
Helen and Mr McDonald checked the sheep in the lower pastures in the early evening and Pop said that there would be snow that night, he could smell it on the air, and Helen remembered all that Ed had said of the Montana winters and pulled her padded jacket closer around her body.
When they returned to the house Mom sat by the stove, her face worn into deeper lines.
‘Ed took Chris into town,’ she said. ‘Because it’s his birthday.’
Helen stood with her hand on the door, listening to the wind rising, seeing the first big flakes come down beyond the window, thickening until there was almost no darkness between them. He couldn’t have taken her son there, Heine’s son there? Surely not. But he had. For God’s sake, he had. She made herself smile at Mom and Pop who did not smile back, their shoulders tense as they sat, legs crossed before the stove. There was only the crackle of burning wood, the wailing of the wind to fill each minute until the clock on the shelf struck eleven and then she could bear it no longer.
She took the truck, driving in along a whitened road which was indistinguishable from the meadows, the headlights probing the falling snow. There was nothing to hear but the straining of the wipers, silting up with snow and then free again. The only thing which indicated her path was the fence, snowed up four inches and it was like the German winter with the trees and shrubs foreshortened and she felt Heine with her again. She drove into the skids as Pop had said she must, not afraid though he had been, as he watched her from the door, wanting to come. But this was her job.
Somewhere Over England Page 35
