Patterns of Swallows

by Connie Cook

  * * *

  A person doesn't ever really get over something like that. A person doesn't soon recover from committing murder.

  She knew the truth of the words from the Bible now. Now she understood them. The murder she'd committed had nothing to do with the moment she had watched the cliff crumble away and Joshua fall with it. The murder had already happened. The murder was in the last words she'd ever said to him. Joshua's death only made his murder irreversible.

  Alone, she carried the burden of the knowledge that she was a murderer around with her everywhere she went. For years and years, she had no one to help support its insupportable weight.

  Not until years later did she realize that someone else had died to carry that weight, and not until then did she understand forgiveness. Not until then could she go on living.

  * * *

  It was one of the first things she knew she had to do as soon as she came back to Arrowhead. First, she forced herself to walk across the trestle, feeling as though she might faint at the sight of the river below, visible through the spaces between the ties of the track. Then she sat trembling on the edge of the cliff and made herself look down to where the trail to the cave had been and to the river below. The trail was gone now, and the cave was closed in. A landslide had changed the face of the cliff. There was some comfort in that.

  The next step was to go and see the Bellas and tell them the whole story.

  That was harder than the trestle and the sitting on the cliff, but it had to be done, and she did it, holding nothing back. There in the Bellas' living room, they first learned the truth behind their son's death. And there she first learned the truth behind the weight she carried and the one who could carry it for her. There she learned to know, in a new way, another who had given his life for hers, even after her rejection of him. And there she first began to understand forgiveness. There life began again for her.

  Chapter 8

  Marriage wasn't quite the proposition that Ruth had expected. She hadn't expected anything in particular, really. But in spite of having no expectations of marriage, it still wasn't what she expected. Any long-imagined event, or even a non-imagined event, has the power to startle just by its occurrence. By its very reality, nothing is as surprising as reality.

  After her marriage, Ruth continued to work at the Morning Glory for a few more weeks and then handed in her notice. In two more weeks, she entered the ranks of the full-time housewives.

  Then her days grew long. At first, there was enough to do to keep her time well-occupied with the running of the old farm house and the acre or two that Ruth had retained when the rest of her land was leased. But Graham didn't want to stay on the farm. It was too old-fashioned, he said. It was too much work for her, he said. It was too far out of town, he said. He needed to be closer to the mill, he said.

  Buying a place in town was beyond their means right away unless they sold the farm, but that was the thing that Ruth was determined not to do in spite of Graham's reasoning and bargaining.

  She compromised on agreeing to rent out the farm house. They found a place to rent in town and made the move.

  Then her days grew longer.

  The small bungalow in town practically ran itself. True, there was cleaning to be done and Graham's meals to cook and his suits to press. But Ruth was quick at her tasks, and with a kitchen equipped with all the modern conveniences, her tasks didn't go a long way toward filling up her days.

  If Ruth was the type to enjoy all the usual things – bridge parties and afternoon teas and shopping and getting her hair done – time would have passed quickly, but as it was ...

  "You should get out more," Graham told her. "The church ladies have all kinds of things going on. I'm sure you could find something to join."

  But Ruth wasn't a joiner. And wouldn't it look funny for her to start joining things at the church when they never went to church?

  "Why don't you call up Wynn sometime?" Graham asked. "Or go and see Glo and Jim more. You can go in and have your lunches at the cafe just to say hi. You should be grateful that I can earn enough for you not to have to work. You can do anything you want to with your time."

  It was too bad that all Ruth knew how to do with her time was work.

  She did call Wynn from time to time, but they'd both outgrown treasure maps. Neither could remember where they'd left off, but wherever it was, they wouldn't have been able to pick right back up there even if they'd tried. Which they didn't. Ruth would have been willing to work at it, but she sensed Wynn's disinterest, whenever there was anything better going, in pursuing the old friendship, and Ruth wasn't one to force herself on anyone.

  She lunched often at the Morning Glory just to see everyone. But it wasn't the same at all. Everyone was hard at work while she ate. They'd stop by her table and chat when they had time, but she missed the working camaraderie. She knew Jim and Glo still considered her the closest thing they had to family in Arrowhead, but she couldn't help feeling like a mere customer when she ate her lunches at the cafe, watching the others in action.

  Gradually, she started the habit of taking long walks or, before the snow flew, of hopping on her bicycle and going back to the farm just to see it. She couldn't get too close to the old house; the renters would wonder if they saw her skulking around their back door or by their front porch. They might feel she was spying on them, not realizing it was just the house she was there to see. So she wandered in the fields or up in the back pasture by the old giant firs, drinking deeply of it all, slaking her thirst, to make it last until her next visit.

  We'd been friends for years, but those were the days when we truly got to know each other – to see through the same eyes, almost, at times. She knew I loved to walk and also had time on my hands, so more and more often Ruth asked me to accompany her on her walks. Those walks became lifeblood for both of us.

  We wouldn't go out to the farm usually when I was with her. We'd often walk along paths branching off from the back roads or by the train tracks that gave onto a view of the canyon.

  The weather didn't matter to us. We never let it keep us from a planned outing.

  The season didn't matter, either. To us, the valley was beautiful in all its seasons. Even the in-between almost-seasons carry their own glory.

  In my memory's eye, I can see those days – those late winter, not-quite spring days, when we first started walking together.

  At first glance, the scene is set against a backdrop of white – white sky and white fields – but on closer observation, the white conceals a multitude of touches of colour: the blue tints hiding in the snow shadows, the dark hues of the evergreens, the golden browns of the dead weeds and grasses lifting their heads above the ageing snow, and all the subtle reds – the deep red of the elderberry branches and the brighter red of the rose hips and the most startling red of all from the slender wands of willow growing all around the ditches.

  The snow berries on otherwise bare, brown bushes covering the hillsides make the dead February landscape almost festive and bride-like. The diamond drops of melting snow suspended like pendants from every branch catch the light and transform it.

  The greyness of the bare cottonwoods stretches for miles along the river bottom below; tree-ghosts made visible.

  From a neighbouring field comes the raucous cry of a pheasant.

  I remember one day especially, a day of unusual beauty – unusual even for Arrowhead. The sun was out, and there was blue to be seen in the sky – always a welcome sight in February. A bank of clouds hid the mountains to the east, all but their white, craggy tops which rose up out of the clouds, looking for all the world like islands floating on a sea of sky that had somehow slipped down from heaven, misplaced in our domain.

  Ruth and I never talked about the scenery. What our eyes could take in was not something our mouths needed to discuss. It needed no analyzing. It needed only experiencing. I mention the pictures I have now only to hold them fast in my mind and to plant them in yours.

&n
bsp; We talked instead about books, a subject we were both passionate about. We agreed that the only books worth reading were the ones that were about beauty in some way.

  That day, the day I'm remembering, I told her the thing I'd told to no one else – my dream of writing. I told her that I wanted to write about Arrowhead and its people. I didn't tell her I wanted to write about her. I didn't know it then.

  * * *

  I read to experience the beauty of worlds that aren't mine. I write to share the beauty of my own. My life has been small, but there's great beauty in small things.

  I've told you I didn't want to tell you more about myself – at least, not just then. I didn't mean I would never tell you anything more about myself. There is the longing to be understood buried deep in every heart. Perhaps that longing is the reason anyone writes. I write now to be understood, and I write to help someone understand the beauty of my world.

  Those views – the views of the Arrowhead valley and the views in our minds – were the views that Ruth and I shared on the particular day I'm remembering. It was that day that I knew we understood each other. At least, in our limited, human way. I think that's why my walks with Ruth became life's blood to me. We understood.

  * * *

  As is the way of the world ever since the time of the Great Flood (even before my time), in that year – the first year of married life for Graham and Ruth – as in all other years before it, winter turned into spring, and spring turned into summer.

  Ruth and Graham ceased to be newlyweds, or at least new newlyweds, and marriage ceased to be a strange proposition for Ruth, like new clothes that lose their novelty when worn day in and day out. But what they lack in novelty, they make up in comfort.

  If happiness could be totted up and graphed on a chart, Ruth and Graham were likely as happy that first year as fifty percent of all young married couples. They were certainly happier than the bottom forty percent. They might even have been in the top forty percent for happiness in their first year of marriage. But then, that's hard to say. No one has ever found a reliable measuring stick for happiness.

  And that's talking of their combined happiness. The equation becomes more complicated when the fact is taken into consideration that both parties in a marriage may not be equally happy.

  If one was more happy than the other in Ruth and Graham's first year of marriage, that is information I'm not privy to. Then again, that's information no one can be privy to, not even Ruth or Graham. No one can know – really know, I mean – the standard of measurement for anyone else's happiness.

  One may guess, with fair certainty, that she feels some deeper emotion than some other one, but I'm not sure that deeper emotion has any relation to happiness. Happiness skims only the surface of the heart, after all. The deeper emotions lie below that surface where happiness may never delve. But for the possessor of those deeper emotions, happiness is of small consideration, and the one would not be traded for the other at any price.

  Nevertheless, to all outward appearances, Graham and Ruth were equally happy with each other, and they were averagely, or perhaps above averagely, happy.

  Not that their first year was without bumps in the road.

  One sticking point between them was Ruth's relationship with Graham's mother. There was a definite distance between the two women.

  Graham had assumed that once he and Ruth were an unalterable reality, inseparable by the bonds of marriage, his parents would resign themselves to Ruth's not being Lily Turnbull and soon come to see her worth.

  As far as he could tell, his mother was willing to like Ruth, but Ruth wasn't giving her much opportunity. The problems stemmed from ... well, who knows what the real stem of the problems was, but there was one early occasion when the stem of the problem budded out into a full-blown "incident."

  The younger MacKellums were still living in the old farm house at the time. It was the first time Ruth had invited her in-laws for supper, dreading it mildly, but feeling it to be her duty to her husband.

  Mrs. MacKellum went to make herself useful in the kitchen as is the way with women, leaving the men to "talk shop."

  Ruth bore with the first three or four gentle suggestions on how better to drain the potatoes and how better to get the lumps out while mashing them and how better to thicken the gravy and how better to season it, but when her new mother-in-law also had a suggestion on how better to slice the tomatoes for the tossed salad, Ruth turned on her.

  "That may be how you do it in your kitchen," she said to the older woman, with a look in her eyes that Graham would have recognized instantly, having aroused it a time or several, "but right now, we're in my kitchen, and that's not how I do it!"

  Mrs. MacKellum said not a word in reply. Her lips primmed and her shoulders slightly hunched, she finished mixing the sugar into the lemonade in silence. Fortunately, it was the last job to be done before the meal was ready.

  Ruth called the men to the table, and the meal was eaten with a cool breeze blowing between the two women. Ruth wasn't one for small talk at any time, but it should have been obvious to the men that Mrs. MacKellum was not herself. It normally devolved on her to keep meal-time conversation running smoothly. That night, the men, engrossed in some problem at the mill in need of a quick solution, kept the table-talk humming and didn't notice the silence of the two women.

  Mrs. MacKellum returned the dinner invitation several weeks later (a long time for her to wait without having her son at her table) and lightly refused Ruth's offer of help when the younger couple arrived on the appointed night.

  Ruth was prepared to do as she was told and submit meekly to instructions in the older woman's kitchen as a tacit attempt to repair the breach, but her mother-in-law didn't give her the chance.

  "Don't you worry about it! It's all done, just about ready to put on the table. We're just having a simple supper, so there wasn't much to do. You just sit right down there with Graham and keep the men in line. See if you can keep them from talking shop all evening. I'm sorry I wasn't able to teach Graham better manners than that."

  The words were light, and the men didn't observe anything out of the ordinary – though Graham's mother never normally refused a little feminine company in the kitchen.

  But even Graham couldn't help discovering that something was awry when the younger couple had Graham's parents over for dinner again a week later.

  This time, his mother didn't offer her help in getting the meal ready. Graham looked at her strangely as she sat down on the chesterfield in the living room with the men.

  "You could probably help Ruth in the kitchen if you want to, Mom. You'll just be bored by Dad and I. We'll just end up 'talking shop' as you call it, and you know how much you love to listen to mill talk."

  "Oh, no," Mrs. MacKellum said with the air of one who's been waiting a considerable time to say a thing, "Ruth doesn't need my help."

  The emphasis on the pronoun couldn't escape even Graham's notice. He quizzed his mother out of the corner of his eye but turned to his father with a different topic. He made a mental note to ask Ruth about it after his parents had gone home.

  "I'm afraid I lost my temper and snapped at her when she was trying to help me in the kitchen the first time we had them over for dinner," Ruth told him when he broached the subject with her.

  "Well, why? Why'd you do something like that?"

  "You should know me by now, Graham. You know I speak my thoughts before I'm even aware that I have any."

  "That's no excuse. It's a habit you need to get out of. Why did you snap at Mom?"

  "She was bossing me. I hate to be bossed. Especially when it's my house and my kitchen and my way of doing things. There's more than one way to do things, you know, but I don't think your mother realizes it."

  "Well, you'll just have to apologize to her. You can't let this build and build till it's all blown out of proportion and neither of you are speaking to each other."

  "Don't worry! We're perfectly polite to each other, and we
always will be. Your mother's too well-bred to feud openly. That would be bad manners."

  "I don't think I like you taking that tone about my mother."

  "I don't think I like you taking that tone about your wife. Why do you instantly assume that your mother's in the right, and I'm the one who needs to apologize?"

  "Well, from what you told me, you were in the wrong, and you are the one who needs to apologize."

  Ruth pulled the reins back on her temper before it ran off with her again.

  "Look, Graham, I'd like to. Only ... how do I do that now? I mean, what do I say? 'Mrs. MacKellum, I'm sorry I was rude to you a month ago.' That is just the kind of thing I might say, but that's not how your mother operates. Believe me, I know that about her. It would just embarrass her and make things more uncomfortable between us. It'll just have to blow over in its own time."

  "I just don't like the two of you being on the outs."

  "We're not on the outs, exactly. Like I say, we'll always be perfectly polite to each other. It's just ... I mean, well ... there wasn't much hope she was exactly going to 'take me to her bosom,' anyways, was there?"

  "You didn't give her a chance. You got prickly right away and didn't even make the effort to get to know her."

  Ruth decided conciliation was her best approach whether or not she agreed completely and said, "Maybe you're right, Graham. I'll try harder with her. I really will."

  "And you should apologize. She's obviously still feeling hurt."

  "I think that one will just have to go away on its own. I just can't! It's too silly! I'd feel too stupid, and we'd both end up feeling stupid."

  "Well, just see if you can't be a little nicer to her, then, can't you? Work at it."

  "Yes, Graham. I really will try."

  And Ruth did try. But trying too hard to work at certain things only makes them feel like too much work. There were some types of work Ruth enjoyed very much and some she didn't enjoy at all.