Road to Thunder Hill

by Connie Barnes Rose

  “Don’t be silly, it was no big deal. By the way, your grandmother doesn’t know I was at Hog Holler last night, does she?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s leave it like that. You know how much she worries about silly things.”

  Gayl laughed. “Yeah, okay, responsible adult, but you owe me big time.”

  Okay, I told myself, maintain the calm that’s supposed to come with maturity. Resist the urge to blurt out, I owe you? Why, you owe me so much that you’ll never know how much you owe until you have kids of your own. And believe me, I hoped to be around to see that day because revenge was surely the greatest reward for any parent. Instead, I said something like, “And how are you doing, dear? You think you can handle your grandmother alright? You could make her some tea. She likes that when she’s … off her oats.”

  “Way ahead of you, Ma. You know, I was thinking. Maybe I should move here into town. That way I could look after Gran, and then you wouldn’t worry about her so much.” Typical Gayl. Picks the worst time to throw something huge into the arena.

  Before I can answer, she adds, “So can I? I already talked to Dad and he said it was okay.”

  He did, did he? Typical fucking Ray. Telling Gayl whatever it was she wanted to hear just so he wouldn’t have to deal with her nagging him about it. Let me be the bad guy.

  “Look, could we talk about this later?”

  “Like when?”

  “Like when we get the power back and the road gets cleared and you can bring my car home. How’s that?”

  “Think about it, okay Ma? You know how lonely Gran gets.”

  I got off the phone thinking that Gayl was like a bulldog, the way she grabbed onto something and hung there until she got exactly what she wanted. Sometimes I admire that quality in her and I tell her so. That sort of persistence, I told her, is how her grandfather did so well in the blueberry business. Now, if only we could get her to channel it into something besides bullying her mother.

  I remind myself it was the promise of a hot bath that put me here at Olive’s house. I’m sitting at her big oak table in the kitchen listening to her go on about the wood stove that my parents hauled out of this kitchen forty years ago in order to install the avocado-coloured electric range, and about how Olive had happened upon its rusty cast-iron self in the back of the barn, and had it restored and reinstated into the kitchen, and to think how fortunate we are to have it at this moment.

  Maybe she’s right but what I remember is feeling sad when I spotted the avocado stove at the dump. It hadn’t even been placed by the side of the road for someone to adopt. Like most of the stuff left in my parents’ house, Olive had tossed the stove out on its ear.

  “I’m just so amazed at how it practically heats the entire house,” she says.

  I’m wishing I’d stayed on Alana’s couch at the Four Reasons so I wouldn’t have to hear anymore about the stove. The twins clear the dishes off the table and Olive spreads out some newspapers. Looks like she has an after-lunch activity planned.

  “I’m sorry, Patricia,” Olive says as she sets a large bowl of water in front of me. “Given your present predicament, that must have sounded terribly insensitive.”

  “What predicament?” I say, trying to remember what she’d been saying.

  “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “What’s to talk about?” I say, trying not to shift my eyes away from hers. “It was cold at Hog Holler, the pool table was the only place to lie on and … that’s what happened.”

  Olive looks over her glasses. “I meant the predicament of not having a stove.”

  “That can be fixed,” I say, my face flushing. I stare down at Olive’s new Weimaraner pups who are finally dozing around our feet. Ever since we arrived they’ve been pestering poor old Suzie to the point where she’d snarled and nipped at them both.

  “Of course the stove can be fixed,” Olive says. “But can the other?”

  I say, “There is no other predicament.”

  She leans close and whispers, “You know you can always talk to me, Patricia. It must be hard for you these past few weekends with Ray not making it home. I mean, you must wonder what he’s up to down there in Newville.”

  Wonder? Now there’s a key word. I’ve only been wondering about Ray this entire past year, wondering if he’s eating okay, wondering if his back is bothering him. I doubt he thinks about me a fraction of the amount of time I think about him.

  Sometimes I picture him working in the mine. I was so surprised the time he took me to see it how big and bright it was, kind of like a giant snow fort. The walls were the colour of dirty snow, yet they shone like blocks of ice under all the lights. There was lots of heavy machinery moving around. Ray had proudly showed me the Payloader he was learning to operate. His job was to pick up blocks of salt and move them outside to awaiting trucks.

  This is what he does all day. It’s at night that I start to wonder if he’s working some other woman’s mine.

  Not today though. Today, Ray has hardly crossed my mind. So I say, “No, I don’t wonder that much about Ray. He’ll get home when he can. By the way, I thought Arthur was supposed to get back from Toronto yesterday.”

  “His flight was cancelled because of the storm.”

  I can’t resist saying, “Don’t you ever wonder about Arthur when he’s away?”

  On her way to the pantry Olive laughs like that’s the most ridiculous question she’s ever been asked. She returns with a large bag of flour that she plunks onto the table. Apparently, we’ll be spending this stormy afternoon making papier-mâché masks.

  15. The Big Red Monstrosity

  SOON AFTER OLIVE MOVED to Thunder Hill, she invited my mother and me over to Kyle House for what she called “a family meeting.” She wouldn’t tell me what it was about over the phone, only that it had to do with “our” father. I gritted my teeth and said we’d be there.

  Once we were seated in the parlour, a room my mother hadn’t entered since the day we moved out, Olive brought in a tray of tea and homemade biscuits along with a drawing of what looked like a large red penis. This drawing was pasted to cardboard, and she had propped it up on a straight-backed chair. I looked at my mother who seemed to be more interested in looking around the room that had once belonged to her. Since Olive wasn’t saying anything about the drawing, I decided I wouldn’t either. So we munched and sipped like it wasn’t sitting there and Olive told my mother she should pursue her painting talents more seriously. My mother said, “Thank you for saying that, Olive but I haven’t done much painting since Bernie died. And besides, you are the one who is so talented. What’s this you’ve been working on?”

  “Oh this,” said Olive, as if she’d never noticed it before. “I drew it myself.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, why is it on the chair?”

  “I, um, called you both here to ask you about an idea I had.” She laid her hand on mine. “It has to do with our father, Patricia.”

  I felt like making a joke, like, “No! Don’t tell me he’s dead!” But I held my tongue while she ranted about how a man of Bernie Kyle’s stature should have a more impressive monument than what he now lay under. That this is what the drawing represented. She felt this would be a way to feel closer to a father she’d never met. Then she added that she and Arthur would handle the arrangements.

  “Well, we would certainly want to share the cost of the stone,” said my mother, as if this was all okay.

  “Whoa! Wait a minute,” I said, wondering if Olive had managed to spike my mother’s tea when I wasn’t looking. “Don’t I have a say in this?”

  “Of course, Patricia,” Olive had said cheerfully. “After all, he was your father too.”

  Was she actually serious? I said, “Thank you, Olive, for pointing that out. But the stone
my mother chose for my father will stay exactly where it is.”

  Had that sounded so harsh that my mother was forced to draw her breath in sharply? Olive, I noticed, had cast her eyes down to her folded hands.

  I tried to explain. “It’s just that my mother and I actually knew my father and we were the ones who watched him die. And maybe that’s why I feel we have a right to the headstone we chose for him.”

  “Of course you do, of course,” said Olive, looking thoughtful. “Believe me, I worried that I might be stepping on toes here. And if you feel so strongly about this, we’ll forget I ever brought it up.”

  “Okay, great,” I said. I started to get up from my chair but my mother’s hand on my arm brought me back down.

  Olive said, “I have to confess something to you, Patricia. I spoke to your mother about this beforehand.”

  “Oh, really,” I said. The sun had chosen that moment to come streaming in through the small paned windows. I felt a buzzing in my head. My mother continued to look at Olive as if I wasn’t even in the room.

  “Yes,” Olive said. “You know I’ve tried to talk to you several times about our father. So I just felt … that this would help me to connect with him somehow. You see, I know you spent a lifetime with him, but all I have are a few snapshots.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Maybe I sounded kind of shrill here. “We have a whole slew of home movies. I’ll lend them to you so you can feel closer to my fath … Bernie.”

  My mother jumped in then. “What a good idea, Trish. What do you say we go home now and think about the headstone, and then we’ll get together next week to watch the movies.”

  “Excellent!” said Olive.

  “You’re forgetting I work all week?” I said.

  My mother smiled at me the same way she used to smile at my father when he was being difficult. “You’re forgetting you don’t work on Saturdays?”

  So Olive got her headstone. All I had to do was imagine giving up a Saturday to sit in a dark room with Olive watching my private family life. I got my way with one thing though. Olive’s fancy headstone would sit next to ours rather than replace it. That was fine with Olive. The headstone was a symbolic gesture. That’s all she really wanted.

  “Sure, purely symbolic,” I muttered to Ray, a week after the thing was installed and we had all gathered for the unveiling of said gesture. Looming huge over our simple stone was a massive red marble obelisk inscribed with the words: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” There would be no missing Bernie Kyle’s grave now. In the winter you can actually see it all the way from Thunder Hill Road.

  It turned out that Olive had more in store for us. Apparently it would be truly symbolic, as well as healing, if Bernie Kyle’s progeny held hands in a united circle around his grave. So there we were, Olive and me, the twins, and Gayl and Biz, with our heads bowed, observing a long moment of silence.

  “Father,” Olive spoke, addressing the ground. “We are joining you today to show you the fruits of your life. Standing before you are all three granddaughters, along with your only grandson, each of them special, each of them a part of you.”

  She bowed her head again. Above our heads the aspen leaves shimmered and sighed.

  Beside me, Gayl tapped her shoe against mine. “Can we go now?” she whispered.

  “Probably not,” I whispered back.

  Olive continued to address the headstone. “Your two daughters are also present, father. It is because of your generosity that we are able to stand united here, each of us filled with the shared honour of being your children. We hope in our hearts that you can, in some way, be a witness to this moment, and that you find yourself as pleased as we are, to have found each other.”

  As Olive squeezed my hand, I couldn’t help but picture my father reeling in his grave. Here was Olive, making us all go along with the story of her being his child and leaving Kyle House to her out of love, when everyone knew it was an act of revenge for me turning it down all those years ago.

  On the other side of me I could feel Gayl squeezing my hand too, like she knew exactly what I was thinking. I squeezed hers back and there we all stood, holding hands in the dappled sunlight filtering through the aspens for as long as Olive seemed to feel we should.

  From where I now sit, at Olive’s window, I can almost make out that big red monstrosity through the aspens. It’s the only thing out there in the gloom that has any colour. The snow has been switching from sleet to rain this entire afternoon. A dirty day, my father would have said.

  After lunch, Olive hauled out flour and bowls and newspaper and paints. The four of us sat down and got to work. So now, three hours later, four very ugly papier-mâché masks sit on the table. Three of them wear cheerful smiles, while one wears a mouth in the shape of an O and looks like it’s terrified.

  I guess I’ll be staying here, at least for tonight. I’m feeling hungry so I offer to make some scrambled eggs for supper. Olive won’t hear of it and when I tell her I don’t want to be a mooch, she says I can take care of the clean-up. In the meantime, perhaps I could entertain the twins?

  I take them up the front stairs to introduce them to my old banister horse. I get a pillow from the linen closet and drape it over the railing like a saddle just as I had as a kid. I ask them if they have a skipping rope, and when they fetch one, I slip it around the newel post to use as reins. They stare at me as I mount the old banister I used to call, “Thunder.” I pick up the reins and pretend to break into a trot. Kira asks if my parents allowed me to play on something so high off the ground. It’s only a three-stair drop to the landing, I tell her, but they keep looking at me like I’m batty, especially when I dismount and pat Thunder’s head, which is, of course, the newel post. Then they run off to play with the cut-out dolls Olive made from cereal boxes.

  Back in the kitchen, Olive had whipped up some oriental noodle dish. It’s loaded with peas and the skinniest mushrooms I’ve ever seen. She even made what she calls miso soup, which feels pretty great on my stomach. When I ask where she ever found this, she says she always has it on hand, that the twins practically live on miso soup. I think I remember this soup from way back in Toronto, but this is the first time I’ve had it since.

  It’s time to clean up, and what a chore this turns out to be. The water has to be pumped from the summer kitchen, brought into the kitchen, and poured into the water reservoir on the stove, where it gets heated and hauled in here to the bathtub. Why the bathtub and not the kitchen sink? She tells me the sink is blocked because her fancy garburator can’t function without power. So, as soon as the water gets hot enough, I take the dishpan into the bathroom and get to work. The twins help by bringing me all the dishes and pots, plus all the little sauce dishes and chopsticks, and here I am, on my knees, scrubbing and rinsing while out there in the kitchen Olive is setting up a chess set on the table for the twins. It’s almost nine o’clock at night and I have a mountain of dishes to get through before I can collapse up in my old bedroom. Looks as though I’m Olive’s new cleaning lady. I wonder what my father would think if only he could see me now.

  16. The Blueberry King

  EVERY SUNDAY MORNING MY father drove his Oldsmobile across the county to view his blueberry fields. Sometimes my mother made him take me with him. If there happened to be a fog sitting on top of Thunder Hill and if he was in the mood, we’d stop and watch thin blades of sunlight slice through the trees and the fog. The scene reminded me of the pictures of heaven hanging on the walls in Sunday school. And if my father remembered to bring along some empty jugs, we’d fill them with spring water gurgling from a pipe at the top of the hill. I loved going on these drives.

  The other side of Thunder Hill is a whole different world from our side. Where we have red sand and loamy soil and fields full of clover or crops, this land is hilly and rocky and perfect for blueberries. Wh
ile we drove, my father would say things like, “In the spring you can’t drive by this hill without seeing a deer,” or, “There’s the first field I ever bought. It was nothing but alders then, but it sure has shaped up since.”

  In that part of the county there were many villages. They all had churches on Main Street and a cenotaph at the busiest intersection. Best of all, they had diners. We’d stop for lunch and sit at the counter, and I’d order a grilled cheese sandwich with chocolate milk. My father would joke around with the waitresses who called me sweetheart.

  The last time I went on one of these trips I would have been about ten. We were having our lunch when my father suddenly rose from his counter stool to go outside to speak to some woman he had noticed walking by the window. Through the window I watched the top of his hat as it bobbed and nodded at the woman who seemed to be all upset about something. But then she must have said something funny because I saw him laugh before they moved out of sight.

  The waitress who my father had been joking with just before he went outside was busy talking to another customer at the other end of the counter, but I noticed she kept looking out the window too. I didn’t like the way her lipstick made her mouth look like it was only pretending to be a mouth. My father still hadn’t come back by the time I finished my crusts and I wondered if he’d forgotten about me. Then I got bored, so I started spinning around on my stool. Faster and faster, I spun, like I was on a carnival ride. How fun seeing the flash of green walls, shiny counter, hat through the window, and glasses lined in front of the mirror; then green wall, shiny counter, hat, glasses; and green wall, counter, hat, glasses…. The waitress’s voice sounded like a slowed-down record when I heard her say, “Catch that little girl, will you Carl? Before she hits the floor?”

  He must have been too late, because the next thing I knew I was looking up at the waitress and smelling her coffee breath as she fanned my face with a place mat.

  “Can you hear me sweetheart?”