Who by Fire

by Fred Stenson

  A passing librarian said, “Don’t worry. I’ll help him.”

  A different librarian in charge of newspapers listened to Tom’s request and suggested he go at it one town at a time. It was a tedious business, looking through newspapers, and he was finding nothing. Half his time was suddenly gone. Seeing his frustration, the librarian led him to a map on the wall. It came from the government and showed Alberta’s petroleum resources and facilities. Staple-shaped marks were wells. A red dot was a gas plant. A black dot was an oil refinery.

  In southern Alberta there were lots of staples but not many dots. Tom showed the librarian where Aladdin Hatfield was. It was easy to see which plants were closest. She went off and returned with an article in a recent Lethbridge Herald about a gas plant and community controversy in Dry Fork. Tom knew Dry Fork. It was not a town but a community, about two hours’ drive from Haultain.

  The librarian left the newspaper, and he read the article twice. Hot prickling spread across his face and scalp. This was it. A couple of farmers were quoted about problems with their plant that were exactly the same as at home: newborn pigs dying, reduced rate of gain in beef animals. It was a different oil company, not Aladdin.

  One of the farmers, John Darby, referred to a government health study, clearly the same study that had put the Titrilog and weather trailer at Ryders’. The farmer said he didn’t know when the results would come but had been told it would be soon.

  There was even a mention of Tom’s plant. “A government representative admits there have been complaints from other communities. Pressed for an example, he named the Aladdin Hatfield plant near the town of Haultain.”

  The only things Tom had written down were “Dry Fork” and the names of the two farmers. He believed it was enough.

  On the ride home, Billy chattered non-stop. “I found a book about kinds of machines that build roads.” “I found a book about how birds fly.” “I found a book with pictures somebody drew of the insides of houses.”

  Tom leaned sideways and asked Donna what she had found. She said she’d looked at books about tropical islands and European castles. He wished she would ask what he’d found but she did not. He told her about Dry Fork anyway. He said he would look for someone local who knew people down there, then he’d arrange a visit.

  “Does that interest you at all? Would you be interested in going there, if I made the trip on a weekend?”

  “I’m busy with school, Dad. I got behind. I want to do well.”

  “That’s okay. Good to get school under control.”

  “I’ll go, Dad,” Billy yelled from the back.

  “I’m sorry,” Donna said, staring out the side window.

  “Nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I’ll go, Dad! I’ll go!”

  “Okay, Billy. I hear you.”

  A week after Tom’s trip to the Lethbridge library, Ella told him she had to go to Lethbridge too. She invented a story about needing a kind of pill, woman trouble, that could not be had in Haultain. She hinted it would be better if she went without Billy, but Tom said she would have to take the boy. His plan for the day was to take apart the old baler, which involved heavy parts put up on jacks. He couldn’t work under there and keep an eye on Billy too.

  For an entire year, Ella had been carrying around the sin of Lance Evert, the coveting of him while married to Tom. She had not taken communion since then, because that would be an even greater sin than what had happened. Luckily, Tom was a convert to Catholicism and casual about religion. A born Catholic would have wondered what she’d done that made her go from taking communion regularly to never taking it at all. Ella was sure the neighbours had noticed, but not Tom.

  Catholicism affected Tom mainly in the stomach. He took communion because he felt it was part of the deal, but hated the fasting beforehand. Worse were meatless Fridays. “A bunch of men who never worked a day in their lives deciding that working men have to go without meat.”

  Ella was not going to confess to Father Frustig at St. Bruno’s. She needed to find a church where she was not known, a priest she had not met. Luckily, Billy did not yet understand communion or confession, or religion at all. He accepted it calmly when she left him in a pew of the Lethbridge church and went to the back. “I’ll just be a minute. Stay right here.”

  When the priest slid the panel back and asked her to confess, she could only see a trace of his profile. She guessed by his voice that he was old, and this increased her anxiety.

  She made herself say the words in a straightforward way. There was no sense being vague with God. But His representative, the priest, was either genuinely confused or an old snoop.

  “Now, wait a minute, child, are you saying you had sexual relations with this man who was not your husband?”

  “I did not.”

  “Was there anything of a sexual nature?”

  “I wouldn’t say so, no.”

  “But there was touching by the sounds of it. Please be clear.”

  “We hugged. I kissed him.”

  “And no one else was present? No one saw?”

  “No one else was present.”

  “On the cheek or on the mouth?”

  “On the mouth.”

  “How many times?”

  “Twice or three times.”

  “Either it was twice or three times.”

  “Three times.”

  “And all on the mouth?”

  “Yes.”

  “My, my. Is this ongoing?”

  “No. It is not.”

  “You and the man had a falling out. Did you tell him to go away and leave you alone?”

  “He moved away. There was no discussion.”

  “Was there a farewell? More kissing?”

  “There was no farewell.”

  “Do you give yourself sexual gratification while thinking of this man?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. No, I do not!”

  “Don’t be cross with me. You know this is a very serious matter in a Catholic marriage. These are questions I must ask.”

  “I understand the seriousness, Father. That’s why I’m confessing to you.”

  “And you are truly sorry for your sins?”

  “I am.”

  “And how are relations with your husband now?”

  “They are better.”

  “Are there sexual relations with your husband?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm. That is part of a marriage, you know.”

  “I know, Father.”

  Finally, finally, the priest moved on to absolution.

  Billy was on his knees on the bench looking backward when she returned. She sat beside him and said she was sorry she had taken so long.

  “You’re all red.”

  “It was hot in there.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I have to say some prayers now. I have to kneel.”

  “Do I have to kneel too?”

  “No, you can sit. But you mustn’t interrupt.”

  It felt wonderful the following Sunday to take communion, to feel at peace with the Lord after the stormy year. That she continued to argue against Tom’s interest in the community of Dry Fork was another sin, she supposed, but not one that demanded immediate confession. She could confess the sin of her impatience to the local priest.

  Ella did not quite understand herself when it came to Dry Fork. Tom’s point when he spoke about it—and he spoke a lot—was that teaming up with another community might make their own community strong enough to go after the oil companies.

  “Go after them? What does that mean?”

  “We’ve lost livestock and land value. If someone took bales out of our field, we could get the courts involved. Why should this be different?”

  “Go to court?”

  “I don’t know if we’d go to court. That’s the sort of thing I want to find out at Dry Fork.”

  Why be so against this? Why could she not see it as hope for their safety, for getting money back that th
ey had lost?

  “Why not wait for the health study results? Maybe the government will do what you’re hoping the courts would do?”

  She could see him fighting down his temper, the desire, almost a need, to curse and denounce the government and her idea of waiting. To contain it, he rolled a cigarette and went outside to smoke.

  All Tom was asking from her at this stage was to talk on the phone to people she knew, to see if any of them had acquaintances in Dry Fork. She thought this an old-fashioned way of doing things. She was sure you could ask the telephone operator and be connected to the farmers he wanted to meet. She did not say so, because she didn’t want Tom to make these connections at all.

  After going to confession, truly and finally putting Lance away, Ella immediately began to fear that she had lost Tom too, or might do so soon. Even though he didn’t know about Lance, there was such a thing as balance. She found herself considering him as another woman might, or as she had long ago when he came courting. He’d always had strength, not just brawn but strength of character. What made that more attractive was a bit of uncertainty, a trace that kept him from being just another overly certain man, a type Ella had seen too many of. And he was nice looking, Tom, nicely proportioned. Light brown eyes that could speak both kindness and anger.

  As to the many flaws she had seen in him over the past year, she wondered if she had been seeing them clearly. He was certainly angry, but he had a lot to be angry about, with a sick boy and dying farm animals, the whole destiny of the farm wrenched from his control. But she had hated to look at it, and the more she felt for Lance the more hateful Tom’s tirades and anger became. Wasn’t that natural too, to see nothing but flaws in a man who stands between you and the one you think you love?

  The question was: what if he had given up on her? If so, what had happened to Ella could happen to him. He could meet a woman, in Dry Fork, whose anger against the oil companies was as strongly felt as his.

  Not long ago, such ideas would only have irritated Ella. Go, then! she might have said. Now she felt sad and afraid. She wanted to go toward Tom slowly. She wanted them to knit back together, without any spoken recognition that they had ever been asunder.

  Tom found his connection to Dry Fork without Ella’s help. Though he usually approached the telephone as if it was a rattlesnake on the wall, he phoned two ranching families he had worked for in his youth. The second call was to an elderly ranch woman, widowed and boarding in town. Ella could tell the old woman was delighted to hear from Tom by how long it took him to ask his question.

  After he’d hung up, he said, “Mrs. Turner has a younger brother who married a woman with a ranch at Dry Fork.” Mrs. Turner phoned back when Tom was out and told Ella that her brother, Donald, and sister-in-law, Abigail, were looking forward to meeting Tom. He should go down in person, because Donald was hard of hearing and would not get a hearing aid. Talking to him on the phone was hopeless. Abigail was shy and he would have to encourage her or she wouldn’t speak.

  “But they’ll be so happy to have his company. Come see me sometime, Ella, and bring Tommy. He’s such a nice fellow.”

  Tom’s trip to meet these people worried Ella, but she refused when he asked her to go along.

  “I have to look after Billy,” she reminded him.

  “No, you don’t,” the boy said. “Take me, Dad.”

  The drive was enjoyable. He’d left Billy at home and so was free to study the country. He was fairly sure he had gone through this area during the Depression. But he had been in a boxcar then, hoping to find work in a coal mine near Medicine Hat.

  The directions were good and he found Smith-Archibald’s ranch without having to backtrack or ask around. A fine old spread of slightly rolling native grass, never ploughed. The buildings were near a shallow lake covered in ducks. The visit began slowly, as Donald and Abigail both took a lot of time to listen, hear, understand, and respond. The house smelled of old wood and varnish, not unlike Mrs. Turner’s home in the Hatfield hills, where Tom had worked. It had the same kind of big oak table and glass chandelier above. A black bottle of port on a sideboard.

  During the tea ritual, he got across that he was interested in the Dry Fork sulphur plant.

  “We’re upwind!” Donald shouted at him.

  “We’ve had no difficulties,” said Abigail in a whisper.

  Tom asked about Darby and Arsenault, and the old couple knew them and were more than happy to put Tom in touch. It was clear, though, that they wanted no further involvement themselves.

  Donald yelled, “They’re just wasting their money trying to fight an oil company!”

  “It’s not for us to say,” said Abigail.

  “There are two Arsenaults, but it must be Eddy if it’s the plant!”

  Donald gave good directions, and Tom found the Darby farm within a half-hour. He passed the gas plant just before he got there, and it was like seeing their own plant with the mountains peeled off the horizon.

  Joan Darby was expecting Tom. They drove together to where John was shovelling chop over a canvas into his feedlot bin. There was an extra shovel, and Tom helped him finish. To the west Tom could see the plant stack and smell it too. They went back to the house, and John Darby offered a shot of rye whisky that Tom accepted.

  Over the drink, Tom laid out his plant problems. He did not want to take a lot of their time, so it was a quick litany. “I’ve been thinking I need to get out and talk to other people who are going through the same thing.”

  Tom had brought the pages Ella and he had written, what Donna called the Stink Diary. He read a few entries, and the Darbys laughed. Joan got a scribbler down from above the fridge and read some things that were close to identical.

  “The worst,” said Joan, “is our daughter Edna has asthma. We don’t know if it’s caused by the plant, but the gas certainly makes it worse. She’s in high school now and boards in town. It feels like we’ve lost her.” She dabbed her eyes with the tail of her apron.

  Tom told them about Billy’s troubles with anemia. Same thing: a person couldn’t know for sure if the plant caused it, but no one in their family had ever had it before.

  “Have you thought of leaving?” Tom asked them, and wished he hadn’t. The expression on their faces was different enough to suggest a disagreement. But they were a jolly pair, and the cloud passed quickly.

  “I’ll tell you,” said John, “I hate to let them win. Drive us all away. We were here first, don’t you think?”

  What a pleasure all this was for Tom, to talk to people who knew what he meant and what he’d experienced. When they talked about pigs, Tom knew right away that their community was ahead of his own, more organized by far.

  “We’re out of pigs now, all of us,” John said. “On the downwind side of the plant, you won’t find a pig for fifteen miles. We all lost litters, and what’s the sense of keeping on?”

  When it came to how the plant treated them, it sounded worse than Tom and Ella’s experience with Dietz, but there was a man from head office in Darbys’ story who sounded much like Comstock. “We’re enemies is what we are,” Joan said. “As soon as we told them we were thinking of talking to a lawyer, they cut us dead.”

  “You’ve started your lawsuit?” asked Tom.

  “We have,” said John. “It’s taken time and some doing. Lot of folks were scared of the cost, and you can’t blame anybody for that. We talked about it for months, and then we had phone calls with the lawyer. But it was the health study that turned the key. Two weeks ago when we heard the news on it, we had a meeting. That’s when we phoned the lawyer and said we’d go with him.”

  “I’m not getting this,” said Tom. “You know the results of the health study?”

  “You bet. Over two weeks ago. Government said there were no significant problems. No danger to the people living here. I heard that and I said to Joan, ‘That’s it, then. We gotta take this thing into our own hands.’ She agreed with me.”

  Tom felt like a fool. How co
uld the health study results be out, and no one in his own community knew? He also felt a surge of anger toward the Haultain Herald. He read it every week, front to back, and the only thing they’d ever said about the study was a mention when it started. Nor did their ignoring the news make sense. Like the town’s businessmen, the newspaper was all in favour of the plant and the money it brought. If the health study said there were no problems, no basis to the farmers’ complaints, you’d think the paper would want to carry the story.

  Joan leaned toward Tom. “I take it your community isn’t the same? Not as committed?”

  “No,” Tom said. “Some are too cheap. Some are scared. Some hope their sons’ll get jobs at the plant. There’s two of us who are trying hard, and a couple more we might convince.” Only half the community had signed the letter they sent to the government. A few of those wouldn’t talk about it any more once the health study was announced.

  It was getting late and, since the whisky had kept pouring, Tom was in a bind. He didn’t feel he could drive home. He also wanted to meet the Arsenaults. The Darbys said they had a guest room all made up and would be happy to have him stay. He asked to make a phone call. Ella answered, and he told her he was staying. Their cows were out on grass now and didn’t need him. If she could give the pigs some water and chop, that would take care of things until tomorrow evening.

  She asked if he’d been drinking, and he said he had. She said something about Jeannie, some problem, but he said they could talk when he was home.

  When Tom came back to the table, John Darby said, “Since nobody’s driving …” and poured more whisky.

  Next morning, with an aching head, Tom went to the Arsenaults’. They were fine people too, ranchers who’d had a couple of cows abort when the sulphur gas was strong. They were very interested in Tom’s story of the club calf. They read Doc Moore’s autopsy notes several times.

  “Too bad you don’t live down here,” said Kelly, the wife. “We could use your help.”

  Tom was wishing it too: that he lived here and was part of their fight. He really did want what the Arsenaults and Darbys had. The pride in what they were doing; the confidence that they would get it done.