by Ruth Glover
“Now then,” Lydia said fussily, tucking a portion of Tierney’s serge skirt up and away from the wheel, “you have the list . . . the money? All’s well, then. Remember, if you see something you know we need or are out of, and I haven’t thought to put it on the list, get it. Within reason, that is.” And Lydia smiled, calling her last few words after the buggy as Quinn slapped the reins on the horse’s broad bay back, chirruping a signal that the horse well understood and obeyed.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Tierney offered, looking around as they rode along, her tone hushed, and her words inadequate of course, for she hadn’t the ability to express the effect the bush had on her. Not only the green shroud but the blossoms it harbored and the fragrance it exuded. Not only the sky but the clouds that graced it, moving lazily to a rhythm of their own. Not only the countryside but the rough fence posts that bordered the fields, with meadowlarks perched on them here and there, the vivid green sprouts of grain laced across the black soil of the fields like stitches in a crazy quilt, the many sloughs that rippled and sparkled in the morning sun and frisky breeze.
“At home,” she explained, “we’d say it was all too muckle—much—to take in, to experience. Already,” she added softly, “I love it.”
“It’s easy to do,” Quinn agreed, settling himself more comfortably. “Especially at this time of year.”
“Lydia says it’s just as beautiful, in another way, at every season.”
“Yes, but it depends on your circumstances, whether you can bring yourself to appreciate it or not. If you’re freezing, for instance, with the cold whipping in under the door and around the windows, and you have to go out in the storm to chop wood, or milk cows, or feed chickens, you might have trouble celebrating the beauty of the snow. If your back is tired and your neck sunburned, you might not see the beauty of a big garden, at least at the moment you’re hoeing it.”
“I know,” Tierney admitted. “I haven’t gone through all the seasons yet, at least not here. I lived through a winter on the prairie, though. And winter on the prairie is worse than here, I ken.”
“We’re protected some, of course, by the very bush that frustrates us when it comes to clearing our land. But I haven’t lived through a Bliss winter, either. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to it. Still, I’ve chosen this area and plan to stick it out. One of these days I’ll have my own place; it’ll be home.”
“Our nearest neighbor, on the prairie, was aboot eight miles away. We dinna see anyone for days, maybe weeks, at a time.”
“Well, then,” Quinn said, quirking Tierney a small smile, “when you get ready to settle down—‘doon’ to you—it’ll be here in the bush, right?”
Tierney was quickly serious, her face gone still. “I dinna ken,” she answered quietly. “I don’t know. It would be hard, loving Bliss as I do, to leave. But—who knows where God will lead, or how He’ll work things oot.”
“Yes, who knows,” Quinn agreed. “It’s like that hymn said Sunday, remember—?”
“Lead on, O King Eternal,” Tierney quoted instantly,
“We follow—not with fears!
For gladness breaks like morning
Wher-e’er Thy face appears . . .”
“Aye,” she said, “I’m glad you reminded me of that. If I were a singer, like that bird over there warblin’ his heart out, I’d sing it for ye. But it’s true . . .”
Tierney’s thoughts were interrupted as a buggy appeared on a side road. The driver, a woman, was engrossed in handling the reins and barely had time to give them a nod before she, the horse and buggy, and two small boys made the turn onto the road ahead of Tierney and Quinn.
“Who lives doon that road?” Tierney asked. “I dinna remember seein’ her at church, do you?”
“No; and I think I’d remember. Wouldn’t you?”
And she would have. For the woman’s hair, spilling out a little from beneath a small hat, was thick and fair, her face was distinctively fine featured, well-molded in sharp but quite lovely lines, her form was slim and her movements graceful.
And the two little boys, as fair as their mother, as fine featured. Tierney could see them clearly over the ears of the horse. One was seated beside the woman, nothing but his blond thatch showing over the buggy back, and the other, bigger and older, was sitting in the box at the rear of the buggy, looking back, his feet dangling, his cap pushed on the back of his head, his eyes studying the Bloom buggy and Quinn and Tierney in particular.
Quinn raised his hand in a salute of sorts, and the boy quickly grinned and waved, saying something to his mother and to the other, smaller boy. That child turned himself around on the seat, climbed up onto his knees, and leaned on the back of the buggy seat, watching solemnly.
Even without catching a glimpse of the thin blue-veined hands on the reins, Tierney had no doubt about who was driving the buggy, two small boys accompanying her and the family dog trotting alongside.
Alice Hoy.
Pulling up in front of the general store and leaping out with characteristic vigor, Tierney turned to see Alice Hoy working her way off the buggy seat, between the wheels, stretching a foot to the iron step, and almost staggering when she made contact with the ground.
“Quinn,” Tierney said quickly as Alice reached a hand that could be seen—even at this distance—to tremble, toward the small boy standing in the buggy and holding out his arms to be lifted from the rig. “Quinn, could you help? I think that woman needs help getting that child down.”
“Of course,” Quinn answered quickly, after a glance in the direction of the other buggy, suiting action to words.
Quinn’s long legs took him to the Hoy rig in a matter of four or five strides.
“Here, let me help. C’mon, young ’un,” he said jovially and swung the tot up and over the wheels to the ground, where he immediately clutched his mother’s skirt with one hand, the thumb of the other going into his mouth and his big eyes staring up at the stranger.
“Thank you,” the woman said, a little breathlessly. “That was very . . . kind of you.”
“Glad to help,” Quinn said, only then removing his hat and giving his quaint and gentlemanly half-bow.
“Name’s Quinn Archer,” he said.
“I’m Alice Hoy,” the woman said, two bright pink spots on her cheeks adding considerable attraction to her face, unhealthy though they were.
Now, Tierney thought, if her eyes would sparkle, she’d be quite a beauty. And she felt her heart pang even as she thought it.
But there was no sparkle in the eyes. The woman turned toward Tierney, waiting at the side of the Bloom buggy. “Your wife?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” Quinn said, “though she’ll make someone a good one someday. This is,” and he included Tierney in his glance, and she could do nothing but move closer, smiling a tentative greeting, “Tierney Caulder—”
If Tierney had any doubts about the identity of the thin young woman, they were dispelled when Alice Hoy acknowledged the introduction with, “Robbie Dunbar’s friend from Scotland.”
“Reet . . . right,” Tierney murmured and wondered why it hurt to have that dear name casually spoken on the lips of this woman.
“These are my boys,” Alice Hoy said. “Barnabas—Barney, and Billy. Say hello, boys.”
“Hello”—brightly from the older boy Barney.
“Hewwo”—shyly from the little, half-hidden boy, not much more than a baby.
Together the three adults and two children moved toward the store. Alice hesitated at the step to the porch, and Quinn’s keen eye noticed, and his strong arm came out to help.
“Thank you,” she said again simply, her light blue eyes glancing up appreciatively, though perhaps with a little embarrassment. “I’m just fine, really. I haven’t been very well since the death of my husband, but I’m sure I’ll gain in strength any day now.”
It was a gallant, optimistic thing to say. Quinn’s eyes filled with sympathy.
While Tierney presented
Lydia’s list to the man behind the counter, eventually taking a few turns around the store and the fascinating array of goods, Quinn loaded the sacks of flour, keeping an eye on the frail form of Alice Hoy the entire time. Medlin Stover, new proprietor of the Bliss store, and postmaster, talked all the time, getting acquainted with his customers, both Alice and Tierney, and offering the boys each a lemon drop.
“Mr. Stover,” Alice said finally, delicately, “would you be kind enough to check and see if I have any mail . . . especially packages?”
“Well, ma’am, I know right well you do,” the garrulous shopkeeper boomed, and Alice winced.
“I been keepin’ them for you for several days now,” he continued. “Faithful as you’ve been to send for ’em, I knew they was mighty important.”
Medlin was pawing through numerous items just behind the small glass partition sectioning off the post office from the store. “Yep, here they are!” And he produced and held up three identical packages. “The first one came a few days ago, then this ’un, then the last one. Looks like they are all in good shape. Nothin’ broken, I’m proud to say.”
The pink spots brighter on her cheeks than before, Alice Hoy took the small packages and quickly stuffed them in the string bag hanging on her arm. Turning away, she called in a shaky voice, “Come, boys, it’s time to go.”
“Aw . . .” they each resisted, loving the strangeness of the place and enjoying wandering around the piles and stacks of goods, sucking their candy.
“Have you forgotten that Robbie will be over for supper? All right, then!”
Stricken, Tierney saw the pleasure leap into the eyes of the boys, and they turned, happily enough now, to leave. Going home—to Robbie Dunbar.
A nation, a democracy, was being born from a sense of adventure. It was in the very air. The pioneers—those who trekked across country by prairie schooner, Red River cart, bumboat, wagon, or on foot—breathed free and found it exhilarating.
The population—growing slowly at first, then with greater impetus—was made up almost entirely of people whose causes had been lost elsewhere. Most had faced injustice, degradation, hopelessness; almost all bore wounds of bitterness and scars of despair. These wanderers—of widely differing nationalities, with strongly held religious convictions and greatly divergent ideologies but bonded at heart by experience and understanding—were slowly but strongly being welded into a united people.
These people knew that the real tragedy of life was not in living where men differed sharply but rather to dwell where differences of opinion were forbidden. In Canada there was room enough to absorb the differences—the backgrounds, the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, the ideas of all; enough room to fulfill the dreams and the desires of all, and sympathy enough to know that your neighbor had suffered even as you had, dreamed as you do, and both of you need tolerance and brotherhood.
Their very northern-ness was significant, settling them a long way from ease and warmth and softness. It made them tough; it made them tenacious; it caused them to work hard. It made them know their need of each other.
Their satisfaction came from rare experiences: biting a plow through sod that had lain virgin ever since time began; clearing away bush whose tangled resistance gave ground reluctantly but promised much; throwing up living quarters from sod or logs that were captured in their nativeness and tamed or tussled into obedience and usefulness; building their own churches . . . electing their own school boards . . . educating their children.
For them all—their Canadian beginnings were full of harsh suffering and adversity; it was what they had in common. It welded them into a people unique—proud of what they were accomplishing, proud of what their children would become.
For all of them, the church was central, vital. Usually it began in a home that was a simple soddy or cabin—people gathering together for worship, for fellowship, for the strength they needed, and received—from the Word and from each other.
The church was the one institution that gave hope when, to all appearances, there was no hope. It gave encouragement where there was sheer, almost insurmountable discouragement as people struggled to keep body and soul together. The body might know great deprivation, but the soul—thank God!—would be fed. And weary shoulders, having come bent and bowed into God’s house, would be lifted; faltering feet would turn back, with renewed strength, to the seeming impossibilities of the task.
Most of their social life was within the church—all-day meetings, revivals, church suppers, Sunday school picnics, youth programs, children’s Bible-memorization competitions, quilting bees.
Song fests! Was ever singing heard to compare with the sounds—musical or tuneless, tremulous or sepulchral, harmonious or strident—that swelled within the sanctuary of God? Be it log or sod or green lumber, it reverberated to the lifted voices of the people of the prairie and bush as they gave vent, in song, to their joy, their pain, their longings, their strivings, their victory.
In the community of Bliss, as in many other districts, the schoolhouse did double duty—it was both the place of learning and the place of worship. A white frame building, it had four windows down each side, placed high to discourage the daydreaming of children seated at desks but yearning to run free. The entire front wall was blackboard. In front of it stood the teacher’s battered desk, the children’s scarred desks. The entrance area was an open space; here the young ones donned and removed cumbersome wraps and bunglesome pacs or overshoes, here was a cupboard for lunch pails—syrup pails with their names scratched on them; just inside the door was a wood box, and on a shelf nearby sat a water pail with a communal dipper hanging beside it.
Between the open cloakroom area and the school proper, a black and nickel monster reigned—the massive Radiant Sunshine heater. “By closing the upper sliding mica doors,” the catalog advised, “the stove can be used as an airtight surface burner.” This was important, because in the winter, large kettles of milk were heated there and either canned tomatoes were added to make soup for the children to have with their noon lunches or a mix of cocoa and sugar for the favorite drink of all—hot cocoa.
The engineering that had gone into this stove was a marvel: “Thoroughly mounted. Elaborately ornamented. It has full nickeled skirting and nickeled swing dome, an elegant and expensive urn, nickeled and tile door ornaments, nickel foot rails, nickel nameplate, two check dampers in feed doors and one in collar. Vibrating grate with draw center, and sheet iron ash pan.” This burning, belching, wood-guzzling blast furnace stood on a “Crystallized Stove Board,” made of wood, lined with asbestos, and covered with tin. Here the children, in winter, spread their wet mittens to dry, and the room reeked with the combined odors of barn and wet wool.
When fed with poplar and roaring its pleasure, the Radiant Sunshine parboiled those seated nearest to it while, on the coldest of days, children in the far corners of the room rubbed chilblained hands together and attempted, with stiffened fingers, to sensibly record the day’s lesson in their scribblers.
An hour before church or schooltime, someone had to start the fire, shaking down the grate, perhaps emptying yesterday’s ashes, crumpling paper, striking a match to it, and blowing on the first few flickers, carefully feeding in the kindling, chunking in ever larger sizes of wood, adjusting the drafts for proper draw and a minimum of smoke. This task fell to the teacher during the week and to the pastor on Sundays.
Accustomed to going early—even though it was summer and no fire was needed—Parker Jones found himself arriving at the schoolhouse long before his parishioners; it was a fine time to meditate and pray, to go over his sermon, to make any last-minute changes, to wipe the road’s dust from his shoes, his coin-toed shoes. In summer, between rains, it was easy to see why foot-washing had been a practice in the Lord’s day, and a blessing.
Parker Jones had no trouble with the concept. In all honesty he could think of no one in the Bliss congregation or in the entire area whose feet he would not willingly have washed, should he be
called upon to do so. Parker Jones felt, essentially, humbled by the task set before him.
Was it possible to be too humble? And was humble the term? Was he, instead, uncertain?
Now, with this thought presenting itself, Parker Jones had new fuel for his doubts. Standing in the center of the room, he spent a long time gazing out the window at the motionless treetops surrounding the school yard, his mind full of conflict and his heart wrestling heavily with the same old problem: Was he worthy of the responsibility charged to him? Was he, indeed, called?
The Mudges were the first through the door. With a start Parker came to himself, turned, and greeted Kay and Woody. Woody was shiny of face and slick of hair, and his Sunday suit strained over his big arms with their hardworking muscles, and his shoes (no coin toes here) squeaked on the oiled floor. Kay was self-conscious in what seemed to be a new floral-patterned dress, which sported, Parker Jones noted, a strange train, of sorts, down the back, from neck to floor. The Mudge boys—all three of them—could be heard outside shouting and tussling over the teeter-totter. Momentarily Parker harked back to the month spent in the Mudge home and the close quarters with these same rowdy boys and was able, from this distance, to smile at the memory of the constant hubbub in the small house.
Sister Finnery tottered in, quarterly in hand and Bible under her arm, her creased old face softened in anticipation of the blessed experience that awaited her, and all of God’s children: Parker Jones’s sermon.
The Popkinses arrived, and the Zumwalts, finding their favorite seats and settling down happily, glad it was Sunday and the day of rest—there was very little arguing, on Bliss homesteads, with the Scripture advising a workweek of six days.
With the arrival of the Dinwoodys, their organist had appeared. Florence Dinwoody looked at the list of hymns Parker Jones had prepared and frowned or smiled as the difficulty or ease of each became known to her.
