After River

by Donna Milner

  ‘Well, Nettie,’ my father finally said. ‘I think this one might do.’

  My mother smiled, ‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ she said. ‘And the mahogany frame will go nicely above the piano.’

  Father handed the sheet back to the salesman. ‘All right then, that’s the one we’ll have.’ He flashed a smile and a wink at Mom. ‘Now, how long before you deliver it?’

  The salesman began writing the order. ‘Let’s see, large portrait size, thirty inches by forty-two inches, hand-painted watercolour, mahogany frame. Hmmm.’

  Forty-two inches wide? The picture would be much larger than any other in our home. It would cover most of the flocked wallpaper above the piano, dwarfing the photographs scattered over the long lace doily on the piano top.

  ‘That should not take more than a few months,’ the salesman said directing his words to Mom now. ‘You should surely have it by Christmas.’

  My mother’s mouth opened, her shoulders sagged as if air were escaping and deflating her body. ‘Christmas?’

  ‘Let’s just put a rush on that,’ the salesman said quickly and wrote a note on the invoice. Even strangers could not stand to disappoint my mother. Sometimes I believe she relied on that.

  ‘It won’t cost any more,’ he hurried to inform my father. He finished writing and tore the sheet from his order book. He gave the carbon copy to my father, who glanced at it then folded it and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

  ‘That will be half now and half when it is delivered,’ the salesman said. ‘Will that be a cheque or cash?’ He pulled out a receipt book. ‘That’s an even eighty-five dollars for the first payment.’

  My father’s mouth opened briefly and then clamped shut. I could see his jaw muscles working as he started to rise. ‘I’ll get my wallet,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Mom placed her hand on his arm. ‘The egg money is going to pay for this.’

  Dad started to protest then sat back down.

  ‘Just a moment,’ my mother said to the salesman. She rose and walked out of the kitchen. I heard her go into her bedroom and open the doors to her wardrobe. She returned carrying a folded white envelope. She counted out a stack of one and two-dollar bills while the salesman made up a receipt.

  I’d never seen Mom dip into her egg money before. I knew how much she wanted this portrait when I saw those wrinkled bills hit the table. She’d earned them, along with rolls and jars of quarters and silver half-dollars, selling chicken eggs at fifty cents a dozen. It was her dream money. Her dream that one of her sons would go to university. It was not a dream she shared with Dad. His dream was that his boys would take over the farm when it was time. I knew he’d quit school before he finished grade eight to work alongside of his father. So, although the egg money was my mother’s, he had no sympathy for its final destination. When she offered to pay for the picture that day, my father let her.

  I expect she had her own reasons for paying. I watched the silent messages pass between my parents and realized that somehow Mom had tricked him into buying the most expensive portrait. As my father tried to hide his shock at the price it dawned on me how she had manipulated him. I was stunned to realize their shared secret. My father could not read.

  The hand-painted aerial portrait arrived in less than a month. Mother proudly directed Dad as he hung it above the piano in the parlour. I can still see her through the years as she sat at the piano, her fingers deftly finding the keys, her eyes focused on the painting above. She seemed to disappear, become lost in it.

  The painting probably still hangs there over her piano. I wonder if Boyer ever looks at it. I wonder if he ever glances up and remembers a time when our lives were as simple, as neat and tidy, as the farm looks in that picture.

  Does he look closely? Does he ever think about that old miner’s cabin by the lake? Does he ever wonder how different things might have been if he could change what happened in the place that now exists only as a darkened image beneath the faded watercolour?

  And does he ever pause to consider the life he may have led if only our father had been a literate man.

  Chapter Twelve

  WHEN I WAS nine, Boyer left school. Quit. And just like that, on a snowy November day in the middle of his final year, Mom’s vision of one of her sons going to university began to fade around the edges.

  I never heard my father directly ask any of my brothers to quit school. But it was always there, unspoken. The first time I sensed it was during the days following Boyer’s sixteenth birthday.

  After the milking each morning Boyer changed into his school clothes as usual and squeezed into the cab of the truck with the rest of us. Every day Dad raised his eyebrows and heaved an exaggerated sigh, but said nothing as we drove into town. He didn’t need to speak. The words hung there in the air. The farm needs you.

  Then there was Jake, the hired man. Whatever Dad wasn’t saying, Jake was.

  I don’t know how Jake ended up at our farm, but he had lived in the room above the dairy for as long as I could remember. Anyone could see he was not part of the Ward family. He looked nothing like any of us. He was all knobby and gnarly, as grey as his personality. His bristled face carried a perpetual scowl. What little he had to say was blunt, sarcastic, or teasing. But unlike Morgan and Carl’s good-natured, elbow-in-the-ribs, wink-wink, kind of teasing, Jake’s was sharp, cutting. Sort of like trying to tickle a person with a pointed stick. And his teasing always had a point. Behind his back Morgan and Carl called him the Anti-Dad. He was so much the opposite of our father.

  Jake was fiercely loyal to Dad. His devotion did not extend to the Ward family. He tolerated us. I stayed out of his way. Mom said his bark was worse than his bite, but I didn’t want to test it.

  Morgan and Carl held no such fears. Even old Jake wasn’t immune to their good-natured taunts. They learned early though that some subjects were taboo.

  Jake was a confirmed bachelor. I couldn’t imagine him living with a woman, or there being one who would consider living with him. Sometimes Morgan and Carl joked about finding him a lady friend. One evening after milking, they went too far and offered to fix him up with Widow Beckett. As they followed him out of the barn Carl said something about how the Widow ‘must be pining for a man to warm up her bed.’ Jake’s face darkened. He turned around and grabbed Morgan and Carl by the backs of their collars, lifting them off the ground.

  ‘You two little buggers better keep your filthy gobs shut!’ He held them up in the air; their arms and legs flailed, gumboots fell into the dust. ‘Any more dirty talk like that and I’ll tan your asses so hard they’ll blister for a year.’ He released them. They thudded to the ground, grabbed their boots, and scrambled away.

  Neither of our parents had ever ‘tanned’, spanked, or hit any of us. The idea that anyone would was as insulting as it was frightening. It took Morgan and Carl a while to resume their teasing ways, but in all the time Jake was with us, I never heard them mention women to him again.

  Between Jake and Boyer there was a civil respect. Boyer treated him with the courteous regard of a youth for his elder. And Jake seemed to hold a grudging admiration for Boyer’s devotion to his family and the farm. At least until after Boyer turned sixteen.

  When Boyer seemed in no hurry to leave school, Jake saw it as his duty to start prodding him. He made grumbling remarks at the supper table each night. ‘Sure could use an extra hand around here,’ he muttered to no one in particular; or, ‘I won’t be around forever, yer know.’

  ‘You’ll not learn anything about dairy farming in those books,’ he said whenever he saw Boyer with a novel in his hands.

  ‘The mine is hiring,’ I heard him remark one afternoon when Boyer was seventeen. ‘With this year’s price of hay going crazy your folks could use the extra income.’

  The mine? Boyer working at the mine? I looked at Boyer as he opened the door to the stairway with an armload of books. He hesitated for only a second before he started up the steps.

  Jake called after h
im, ‘Hey, book-boy, got any girlie magazines in your stash up there?’

  Boyer stopped on the first step, turned, and held up the books. ‘Would you like them, Jake?’ he asked. ‘They’re my school books. I won’t be needing them any more.’

  For the first time I could remember, dinner was eaten in silence that night. After the milking, Mom came up from the dairy, went straight to her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Morgan and Carl washed up without their usual jousting and then, without a word, went into the living room. As I finished the dishes I heard the familiar whip-crack of the Rawhide theme coming from the television. I made my way up to the attic where Boyer sat on his bed reading. He looked over the top of his book as I entered.

  ‘What are you reading?’ I asked and plunked myself down at his desk.

  ‘The Catcher in the Rye, he said and held up the book so I could see the title.

  ‘Can I read it when you’re finished?’

  Boyer placed a bookmark in the pages. ‘I don’t think this would hold your interest right now.’ He threw his legs over the bed. ‘Let’s find you a better one.’

  ‘Did you really quit school?’ I asked as he scanned the shelves.

  ‘Yes, I did.’ He reached up and pulled a couple of books from the top shelf.

  ‘Why?’ I fought back the tears welling up in my eyes. ‘Are you going away?’

  ‘No, nothing’s going to change,’ he said and turned to face me. ‘I’ll still be here every night.’ I could hear the false cheerfulness in his voice.

  ‘It’s Dad, isn’t it?’ I blurted. ‘Just because he hated school he expects everyone to.’ An anger surfaced with my words that surprised me.

  Boyer sat down across from me. He placed the books on the desk. ‘No, this was my decision, Natalie. It’s just the right thing to do.’

  ‘He can’t read! Do you know he can’t read? That’s why. He doesn’t want you to be smart either!’ The words rushed out of my mouth as if they could argue him into staying in school.

  ‘What makes you say he can’t read?’ Boyer asked then handed me a tissue.

  As I blew my nose I told him what had happened in the kitchen between Mom and Dad the day they bought the watercolour portrait of the farm.

  Boyer sighed. ‘Look, first of all, not being able to read doesn’t mean a person isn’t smart. Dad just never experienced school in the same way as you and I. Things were different then. Farming was all Dad ever wanted to do.

  ‘Secondly,’ he said, ‘he’s a proud man. Promise me, Natalie, you won’t say anything to him about the reading. Try to understand how it is for him. Imagine not being able to read.’

  I understood now why Boyer’s scholastic achievements were not something Mom shared with Dad. All of our report cards were read and signed by her. I remember her joy at my own grades, but her enthusiasm was tempered when she read the yellow report cards out loud to Dad at the table. My father would smile and say, ‘Well done, Natalie.’ And that was the extent of his interest in my schoolwork.

  I don’t remember her ever sharing Boyer’s report cards with him. Was it because she felt the perfect grades and glowing comments would be too much for him to hear? Or that the pride – a pride I could see in her blushing face as she silently read the teacher’s remarks – was hers to cherish, and to bear. I’m sure she confessed this pride with humble reverence each Sunday.

  ‘Promise?’ Boyer said again.

  Of course I promised.

  The next morning, Boyer’s English teacher showed up at our door. I heard the insistent knock as Mom and I pushed the wringer washer back into the corner of the enclosed porch. Above our heads, Saturday’s wash hung from wooden racks. I opened the porch door.

  Mrs Gooding wasn’t much taller than I was. Grey hair poked out from beneath her brown felt hat. Her slight frame made her appear frail at first glance, but I shrunk back from the steely determination in her eyes as if I was once again in primary school. The teacher stood on the top step with an air of indignation that seemed to melt the snowflakes on her long woollen coat. Behind her I could see where her resolute footprints marked a path in the snow leading from her car to the house. The fact that she had braved driving to our farm on a day like this was a testimony to the seriousness of her visit. Mom ushered her into the porch where she wasted little time stamping the snow from her boots.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ Mom said once we were inside the kitchen.

  ‘No, I won’t be staying long,’ Mrs Gooding replied as she placed a package on the counter. ‘I promised Boyer I would not speak to his father. So I want to be gone before Mr Ward returns from his milk deliveries.’ She sat down on the chair my mother pulled out from the table and held her gloves primly on her lap. ‘I doubt that Boyer has told you how I reacted to his announcement yesterday,’ she said in her clipped no-nonsense teacher’s voice. ‘But I don’t mind telling you that I am mortified by this waste of a brilliant intellect.’

  Mom’s mouth opened but before she could form a response Mrs Gooding continued.

  ‘After I got over the initial shock, I made a few phone calls. First I called Stanley Atwood. I swore that if he let that boy go underground I would report him to the child welfare. Apparently my threat was not necessary,’ she sniffed. ‘Mr Atwood is chairman of the school board and if Boyer wants it, there’s a job for him in the bus maintenance yard starting Monday.’ A small smile of triumph lifted the corners of her mouth. Mom and I both stood mute by the sink as she went on.

  ‘Then I talked to Boyer’s other teachers.’ She patted the package on the table. ‘These are the text books for the final semester. If Boyer picks up the lessons once a week, we see no reason why he cannot write the exams at the end of the year like everyone else.’ She added, ‘There’s no reason for his name to come off the school roster.’

  I heard my mother’s intake of breath and knew her dream had been rekindled.

  Mrs Gooding stood. ‘Although I gave my word not to confront his father,’ she said, ‘unlike Mr Ward, I refuse to give up on Boyer.’

  Mom finally found her voice. ‘I’m grateful for what you’ve done, Mrs Gooding,’ she said. ‘But I want you to understand that, while it’s no secret that we can use the extra income, my husband did not make Boyer quit school. That decision was Boyer’s.’

  The teacher’s raised eyebrows betrayed her disbelief.

  ‘My husband’s a good man,’ Mom insisted. ‘But he’s first and foremost a farmer. Dairy farming is all he knows. It’s who he is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Gooding replied as she opened the door, ‘but it’s not who Boyer is.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  MY FATHER WAS not a complex man. Everything he was could be read on his face. The essence of his personality was etched into those permanent laugh lines at the sides of his mouth, into the V furrow between his eyes.

  When my father smiled, his right brow lifted higher than the left. That along with the widow’s peak on his forehead gave him a devilish or rakish look, depending on whom he was looking at.

  Whenever I try to visualize my father I have difficulty seeing him as the still, sometimes serious-looking man in the posed images of old photographs. I have to imagine him doing something. My father was always moving.

  I can picture him, wearing coveralls and gumboots, walking to the barn in the evening twilight, or waving from the cab of his milk truck, his handsome face a flash of teeth and tan beneath his snapbrim hat. I can see him steering the tractor through a field of freshly mown hay, or tinkering on equipment in the machine shed. He seemed to spend half his waking hours with his feet protruding from beneath a tractor or mower.

  Mostly, I can visualize him at our kitchen table. Even there he was animate. His arms and hands waved and poked at the air while he ate, or directed the constant table talk. And I see him smoking.

  My father always seemed to have a roll-up in his mouth, the thin cigarette moving across his lips as if on its own. The ashtray in the milk truck was always full-to-spil
ling with butts. Every afternoon he sat in the kitchen with a tin of Export tobacco and Zig Zag papers, his ‘fixens’, on the table before him. He picked up a piece of the thin translucent paper with a licked finger. Then holding it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he sprinkled on the dry, wormy-looking tobacco. He loaded the paper without even looking, and deftly squeezed and rolled the paper back and forth, back and forth, until, as if by magic, a thin, neat, tube appeared beneath his thick fingers. He ran his tongue across the top of the paper above his thumb – an almost feminine gesture – then laid the finished product on the table. He lined the rolls up, twenty, thirty, at a time and let the spittle dry before he placed them neatly in a small flat silver case.

  The cigarette case was a wedding gift from my mother. It was tarnished and worn, but always in my father’s left-hand breast pocket. Even while he was rolling, my father had a cigarette in his mouth. When he inhaled, his dark eyes squinted and tightened as grey-yellow smoke drifted into them. I still remember his expression as he sucked in what I thought must be delicious smoke. Except now I know that while this smoke was swirling around it was searching out places to invade, to blacken, and to infest with the cancer that would eventually eat its way from the inside out. But when I was young I saw only that my father looked even more handsome when he smoked.

  As I grew older, I noticed that his female customers found him handsome as well. I could tell by the way they looked at him.

  On weekends and holidays Morgan, Carl, and I took turns delivering milk with Dad. At many of the houses, women suddenly appeared on their front porches when he arrived, as if they had been waiting behind their doors. They leaned over and picked up the milk bottles, their nightgown or dress fronts often falling open. Or they held a quart bottle in one hand and waved with the other, while the tops of their dressing gowns hung loose against bare flesh. My father would wave back, flashing his famous smile, calling out, ‘Good morning darlin’.’ Then he would wink at me as he climbed back into the truck and lit another cigarette.