Seasons of Bliss

by Ruth Glover

  “Jake? Is it you, Jake Finnery?”

  The craggy face of old Sister Finnery’s son, raised to Parker Jones, was twisted with pain and runneled with tears.

  It seemed forever before anyone came to the door. Tierney, having knocked, stood by with numerous things in her arms—paraphernalia that Lydia had suggested she bring for the canning process at the Hoy home—feeling more strange by the minute. Quinn was heading toward the barn to unhitch the horse. He would find numerous things to do there, or so it was assumed, and would stand by to give Tierney a hand if she needed it, another suggestion of Lydia’s.

  The lace curtain stirred at a window, catching Tierney’s attention. She recognized the small face that appeared, chin just higher than the sill. The child—Billy, Tierney recalled—gazed at her solemnly.

  Tierney smiled. The small boy blinked, but his expression remained unchanged.

  “Can you let me in?” Tierney asked, raising her voice.

  Billy continued to gaze at her soberly, silently.

  “H’lo.”

  The door had opened, and Barney, the older child, stood in the opening, as solemn as his brother if not as speechless.

  “Hello, Barney. Remember me?”

  The boy nodded. “Mama’s sick,” he said.

  “May I come in?” Tierney asked, already stepping forward, gently pushing open the door that had been ajar just enough for Barney to be seen and heard. Willingly enough, he stepped back.

  “She’s over there,” and the boy pointed across the room.

  Struggling to sit up, Alice Hoy was the picture of disarray. Clutching a robe about her with one hand, with the other she pushed at the back of the sofa on which she had been lying, attempting to come erect. The sofa’s mix of vivid colors offered a startling background for Alice’s frail, pale outline. In a room that was well furnished, the tufted sofa was one of three pieces in an overstuffed parlor “suit”; it was ornamented with fringes and featured tassel valances around the bottom and arms. At another time Tierney might have admired it. The material, she knew, was called “crushed plush,” and if it hadn’t been crushed before, it was now: Alice had slept there.

  The boys, standing to the side and watching Tierney, were big-eyed and still. They were dressed, but carelessly, as if they had put on the same clothes they had removed the night before. Or perhaps they had slept in them.

  On the table were two bowls with the remains of what had been servings of oatmeal. The pot in which it had been cooked was on the back of the stove, dribblings of oatmeal drying down its side. A breakfast made by a man, Tierney deduced promptly—a woman would have filled the pot with water. A woman would have dressed the boys more capably, would have combed their hair.

  So thinking, Tierney felt a sadness tinge what was a grudging admiration for Robbie’s efforts. She felt certain his had been the only attention given, on this morning, to the boys and their needs. He was keeping his part of the bargain.

  As of course he would. Having given his word, Robbie was bound. Though the cords used by the sick woman were as fragile as spiderwebs, they were as binding as chains.

  “Wha . . . who is it?” Alice asked now, making an effort to focus her gaze toward the light coming in the open door.

  Tierney closed the door behind her, laid the kettle and other canning materials on the table, and approached the woman who was struggling to rise.

  “Dinna get up,” she said kindly. “It’s me—Tierney Caulder.”

  “Scotch,” Alice murmured. “Robbie’s friend . . .”

  “Aye. I’ve coom to help wi’ the cannin’ of the day.”

  Alice put her face, momentarily, in her hands. “I’ll . . . I’ll be all right . . . in a minute. Sometimes I have trouble . . . getting going . . .”

  “I’ll make you a cuppa tea,” Tierney said, speaking cheerily. “Me mither always said a cuppa tea would put the curl in your hair, the light in your eyes, and the bounce in your step.”

  Alice attempted a wan smile, putting a hand to her own head of hair and combing it with shaking fingers.

  “Now, let’s see,” Tierney said, at a loss in a strange kitchen, tea-making escaping her for the moment. “Laddies, hae you had enough to eat?”

  They nodded, sidling over to their mother. Alice pulled them to her, a child on each side. Burying her face in Billy’s hair, she grimaced faintly. Apparently it had been too long since heads had been washed.

  “I’ll go get dressed,” she said, and it was obvious she had regained enough of her poise to feel a certain embarrassment, perhaps humiliation, over having been found in a state of disorder. She got unsteadily to her feet, and as she did, a bottle fell with a thump from the folds of the blanket to the floor.

  “My medicine,” she said quickly. “Barney, pick that up for Mother; that’s a good boy. It’s empty . . . toss it into the wood box.”

  Tierney was clearing the table, putting the bowls aside to be washed later, getting a dishpan of hot water from the reservoir, adding soap, making a suds, and preparing to wash, then sterilize, the jars that would be needed for today’s canning. In a large kettle of water, she put the clean jars on the stove to boil.

  “I understand,” she said to Alice, “Mrs. Dinwoody was here yesterday and left things ready for piccalilli, reet? Lydia said she would hae chopped up the green tomatoes an’—”

  “Yes . . . they’re in that big pan. Have you made piccalilli before? You have, with Lydia, of course. We . . . all of us, I guess . . . have such an abundance of tomatoes this year. Somebody picked those—I think it was Hazel Trumbell—oh, I don’t remember—”

  On the verge of leaving for her room and the task of fixing herself up, Alice hesitated, troubled over her faulty memory.

  “Aye,” Tierney reported, looking in the kettle, “they’re all ready—one peck of green tomatoes, eight large onions, all chopped fine, with one cuppa salt stirred in. I’ll jist build up the fire, and as soon as it’s hot I’ll get to the boilin’ part—twenty minutes, the first time.”

  With Alice gone and Billy with her, Barney staying behind, kneeling on a chair, elbows on the table, watching her, Tierney went about the job of draining the “liquor” from the green tomato mixture, breathing a sigh of relief when that was accomplished with no mishap.

  “Add two quarts of water,” she murmured aloud, checking the notes she had placed on the table, “and one of vinegar. Now where in the world would she keep vinegar?”

  Gravely the small boy climbed down, marched across the room, and pointed to a corner cupboard. Sure enough, just inside—a gallon jug of vinegar.

  “What a smart lad! Thank you, Barney!”

  The small boy looked modestly pleased with himself.

  “Once Robbie made some chips and put vinegar on them,” he said, speaking up suddenly. “A little vinegar goes a long way, Robbie says. Robbie isn’t a very good cook.”

  In spite of herself, Tierney laughed at the picture of Robbie Dunbar trying to cook. Indeed he was taking on many tasks and responsibilities here in the new land that he had never tackled in the old. If only she were at his side to help.

  Fighting down a lump in her throat that she thought to have conquered weeks ago, she turned to timing the boiling process. It didn’t take long, this first boiling. Before the next step—draining the entire batch once again through a colander, a touchy undertaking because it was so hot—Quinn stepped into the house.

  “How are you doing?” he asked. “Need any help?”

  “Aye, and I’m happy to see you aboot now—”

  At that moment Alice reappeared, Billy in tow. Both had been cleaned up, and Alice was in a fresh dress, with her fair hair restrained in a thick knot at the nape of her neck. Blue was her color. If only her eyes had been alive, full of sparkle! But they were dead, dead. And her hands, as she took an apron from a nail and cinched it around her slender waist, shook badly.

  “Good morning, Mr. Archer,” she said. “It’s so nice of you to come today. You and Tierney.”r />
  “Quinn, please, ma’am.”

  “Quinn, if you’ll drop the ma’am,” she responded with what passed for a smile. And almost, almost a cheek dimpled.

  “Now where are we?” Alice asked in as businesslike a tone as she ever used, for she was a person of gentle speech.

  “I was aboot to drain the piccalilli again,” Tierney explained, “and Quinn is jist in time.”

  “Then we’ll need—let’s see,” and Alice bent over the recipe, not certain of the measurements where the spices were concerned.

  Standing at the side of the table in her clean gown, her fair hair neat, her exposed neck slender and somehow vulnerable, Alice appeared fragile indeed. As the eyes of Tierney and Quinn were turned on her, and into the silence that fell, perhaps the thoughts of the man, as well as of Tierney who knew the story, were What a shame that one so young, so . . . delectable, should be so obviously fading away.

  Alice sighed, and the spell of the moment was broken. Quinn, with masterful hand, lifted the heavy, steaming pot, and poured the piccalilli through the colander and into another large kettle.

  “Now we add,” Alice read from Lydia’s recipe, “two quarts of vinegar, one pound of sugar, half a pound of white mustard seed . . . I hope I have that . . . two tablespoons of ground pepper, two of cinnamon, one of cloves, two of ginger, one of allspice, and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.”

  “If you’ll locate them, I’ll add ’em,” Tierney offered, looking helplessly at the unfamiliar cabinets, and together the spices were soon measured and added, mustard seed and all, and the mix put to boil again.

  Quinn was filling the wood box, drawing out and holding in his big hand the small, dark bottle.

  Neutralizing Cordial.

  Composed of Rhubarb, Peppermint,

  Golden Seal, Cassia, Brandy, etc.

  With his back turned to the others, Quinn uncorked the bottle, put it to his nose, sniffed, and grimaced. Whew! his lips formed soundlessly.

  “Stir often to prevent scorching,” Tierney was reciting, suiting action to words.

  Already the day was hot, and Tierney’s upper lip was beading, and her hair, which had been fastened up snugly, was escaping in small, curling tendrils. Turning to her with the bottle in his hand, gesturing toward it, shrugging his shoulders, Quinn would have been blind indeed had he not recognized the womanliness, the grace. And if he recalled his first glimpse of her, hanging something on the clothesline, trim and slim and pert, he may be excused if he slipped the bottle in his pocket without further reference to it and the one who had emptied it, and said, “Here, let me. I’ve had enough experience with cooking in my life to keep piccalilli from scorching. You sit yourself down for a few minutes.”

  Tierney, surprised, turned over the big wooden spoon with which she had been stirring the contents of the kettle, and said, “I promised tea. The kettle’s boilin’, and Alice hasn’t had any breakfast, near as I can tell. At home in Binkiebrae t’would be porridge for sure, but I’ve an idea she’s had her fill o’ that. Maybe scones, while the oven’s hot.”

  While Quinn stirred the stringent green tomato mixture, Tierney put together the ingredients for scones, and Alice languished at the side of the table, lackadaisically removing jars from the scalding hot-water bath, lining them up, preparing them for filling and sealing. Little Billy knelt on a chair at his mother’s side. Barney had gone outdoors, possibly to feed the chickens, for a cacophony of cackles broke loose from the direction of the hen house.

  Tierney’s chief thoughts—rather than dismay, disgust, or derision, all reactions she had felt previously for Alice—were, rather, those of pity. Pity for the young woman who, obviously, was in grief from her recent bereavement and yet felt compelled to make arrangements for her land and her children, pity for the broken figure she presented—both in body and spirit. For her form drooped, and it seemed her thoughts were not on the task at hand. Life, for Alice Hoy, had lost its savor.

  Tierney looked down at her own healthy young body, thought of her future, as bright and big as the Saskatchewan sky, considered her trust in the goodness and guidance of her loving heavenly Father, and could not find it in her heart to hate—no, not even dislike—Alice Hoy.

  “Thank You, Father. Oh, thank You!” she breathed, tears starting into her eyes, needing to be brushed quickly away lest they be noted and misunderstood.

  Tierney was about to put the scones in the oven to bake, Quinn was about to ask if the boiling process was completed, when Barney returned to the house, a pet chicken in his hands.

  Stepping inside, both hands engaged in keeping the squirming hen steady against his body, the little boy allowed the screen door to slam shut behind him. Bang!

  Startled from her thoughts and her lethargy, Alice screamed and jumped. In the act of withdrawing a jar from the near-boiling water with a pair of tongs, her hand jerked. The bottle, full of piping-hot liquid, slipped from the tongs, hit the table, broke, splashed.

  Splashed on the arm of the small boy at her side. Splashed up into his face, into his eye.

  Alice’s startled cry had been nothing compared to the sound that shrieked from the throat of the child.

  Somewhere, afar off in the wide blue Saskatchewan sky, a meadowlark trilled its spontaneous song. But as Parker Jones looked down at the face raised to his—a picture of misery—the sweeter sound was lost in the broken cry of the man seated on the edge of the parsonage porch, his feet dangling, his gnarled hands hanging, empty and somehow pathetic. It was as though those hands, accustomed to grappling with tough emergencies and bitter hardships, were helpless in the grip of grief.

  “Jake,” Parker said, “what’s wrong? Can you tell me?”

  The anguish on the face of the middle-aged man seemed to lessen, and as he looked up into the face of his pastor, the light of reason returned to eyes that had been glazed, seeing nothing, lost in their private pain.

  “It’s Ma,” he managed.

  “Your mother? What’s wrong with her, Jake?”

  “She’s dead. She’s dead!” And again the head bowed, and the massive shoulders, accustomed to heavy burdens but finding this one more than they could bear, shook uncontrollably.

  Helplessly Parker Jones watched. Until Jake Finnery gained control, there was little he could do but wait. But his heart had lurched and was now beating heavily.

  Parker Jones had left his responsibilities for an afternoon of frivolity, or so it seemed now, remembering the frothy and vapid conversation and laughter he had engaged in with the young woman still seated in the buggy and watching the proceedings on the parsonage porch. He had filled his troubled heart, for a time, with talk and thoughts far removed from the momentous decision he was struggling with, he had fed his dissatisfied spirit with Vivian’s attention, and had, in return, done nothing to minister to her, or to anyone, nothing at all. It had been an afternoon wasted.

  And still she sat in the buggy—a part of the little drama unfolding on the porch, yet apart from it—an onlooker.

  Parker Jones left the side of Jake Finnery for the moment. Stepping to the buggy, he spoke to Vivian.

  “There’s no need to stay—”

  “What’s wrong? Who is that?”

  “It’s Sister Finnery’s son. Jake Finnery. He says his mother has . . . died.”

  It seemed such a cold word, such a final word. Dead! Dead, and he not at the bedside. Another death, and once again he, Parker Jones, pastor, had been derelict in his duty.

  At the very root of the questions that burned in his heart about his call, was the death of another parishioner soon after his arrival in Bliss.

  After Henley Baldwin’s death, when Parker began to realize the problems that had existed in the Baldwin home and the silent humiliation and belittlement the dead man had endured across many years, Parker blamed himself sorely for having been too detached from the lives of his people, this troubled family in particular. He might have helped! He could have counseled! He could have prayed, had he but take
n time to get involved.

  Now here was another parishioner, bowed, broken, hurting. And where had he, Parker Jones, pastor, been? Gallivanting.

  Parker took hold of the bridle, about to turn the horse and rig toward the road.

  “Hadn’t you better wait?” Vivian asked pointedly, glancing at Jake Finnery. “You don’t have any way to get to the Finnery place, do you? Isn’t it possible that you might need to go?”

  Parker’s hands dropped uselessly to his side. She was right, of course.

  “Thank you,” he muttered, turning back toward the cabin, “if you’ll just be so kind as to wait a bit—”

  “I’ll wait,” she answered smoothly. “I’ll get down and come in—if I can help.”

  “No, no,” Parker said quickly. “There’s no need—”

  At that moment the clip-clop of a horse was heard, and a rider turned in toward the parsonage—Herkimer Pinkard.

  Herkimer pulled up beside the buggy and looked down at the rather intimate little scene—the pastor, the young woman, engaged in close conversation. Eyes less shrewd than Herkimer’s could see the distress on the face of the pastor and the smooth satisfaction on the face of the girl. Tongues less controlled than Herkimer’s might have asked, “What’s going on here?”

  As it was, Herkimer politely doffed his cap for a second and offered, “Herkimer Pinkard, at your service, ma’am.

  “Hey, Parker,” he said, settling the disreputable, shapeless cap on his mop of hair and turning to his pastor.

  Parker Jones made a wordless gesture toward Jake Finnery, but before he could make explanations, Herkimer spoke up. “I’ve just come from the Finnery place. Came to see what’s keepin’ ol’ Jake. See if he’s doin’ all right.”

  “I just got here myself,” Parker Jones said in a low voice, as though every word hurt, as indeed it did. “I need to get back to Jake—”

  “I’ll wait,” Herkimer said imperturbably.