Authors: Sharon Butala
Beside her, Jason was close to sleep. He had thrown back his hood and both cheeks were a bright, unnatural red. He kept sniffing.
“Want to drive?” she asked him. He shook his head.
“Naww.” He kept moving his feet and she knew that his toes were hurting as the circulation came back. She said nothing. He would have to learn to take it like a man, like I do, she thought, and she laughed at herself again.
Peering through the frosted windshield, trying to find the trail, checking around for the right direction, worrying, she couldn’t help but think that it would be nice to live a life where they didn’t have to do things like this. Like in the city, she thought, people just catch the bus to work every day, stay inside warm buildings all the time, never really feel the cold, never really have to be afraid of the weather. People in the city have never known what it’s like to have that thrill of fear that if you get careless, let your guard down, or have some bad luck like getting caught in an unexpected blizzard, you might actually die, right then and there.
She looked up at the sky again, leaning forward and scraping at the frost high up on the windshield. As high as she was able to see the sky was a deep blue, the indigo of a winter night. They were heading just about straight east. Behind them, she knew, the sky would be lighter toward the horizon. Far ahead of them in the dimness, sat their house and safety. Behind them were twenty or so miles of empty, open prairie, where nobody else lived, or even went very often.
A gust of wind swirled snow over the hood, blocking her vision. It could start to blizzard, she thought—right now—and we’d be caught out here, you can get lost in just minutes in a blizzard, there’s nothing out here for landmarks, and it’s so damn cold …
There it was. That thrill of fear, cutting down her backbone, for an instant stilling her heart, making her cold hands sweat against the steering wheel. She glanced at Jason. He was leaning forward, too.
“I sure hope it don’t storm,” he said, frowning, and he seemed like her child again, her youngest, her baby.
“It isn’t going to storm,” she said, her voice confident. “Anyway, we’ll be home before we know it.” She wondered how far they still had to go.
After a while Kent sent Mark back to the truck and she got out to let him get in. The tip of his nose looked too pale to her, and as he handed her the reins, she saw that he was shivering inside his heavy clothes.
“Quick, get in,” she said, fumbling to pull her own mitts back on and to flip her parka hood back up. “Let Jason drive till you get warm.” She said this firmly, into the open window, winding her scarf around her hood again. Mark didn’t argue. Jason got out and came around to the driver’s side while Mark slid over. Selena stood for a moment in the wind, feeling it reach like a knife inside her parka. She was studying Mark. He had bent over in the seat and was stamping his feet, shaking his bluish hands. “Take your boots off,” she told him. “Put your feet under Jason, or sit on them. Get them warm.”
She was afraid he had gotten too cold, that he wouldn’t be able to warm up under these conditions—the drafty truck cab, the uncertain heat from the heater, a long distance to go yet—that he would be sick. Any concern for Jason left her, knowing that his cold was only the kind that strikes children, easily dispelled, leaing behind a pleasurable, sleepy warmth.
“Jason, there’s an extra parka behind the seat. Get it out and put it over him.” Mark was shaking uncontrollably now. Jason unfastened the latch, pulled the seat forward far enough so that he could reach behind it, and pulled out an old ragged parka of his father’s. While Selena watched, beginning to shiver now herself from standing still too long, Jason threw it over Mark, then pulled it up so that it covered him from his knees to his shoulders. Selena was getting too cold to stand still any
longer, and there was nothing more she could do anyway. Reluctantly, she struggled up onto Mark’s horse.
And that was another thing. It was far too cold for the horses. They were restless, angry, hard to manage. Mark’s horse kept stepping away from her as she tried to mount. She looked around for Kent, wanting to say, do something, it’s too cold, things are happening, there’s danger here. When she had finally settled into the saddle, she turned the horse—who kept tossing his head angrily, his ears back—and started back to the end of the herd. Kent was coming toward her, leading Jason’s horse.
“It’s only about a half-mile to that coulee of Albert’s,” he said to her before she could speak. “Can you hold out till then?” Fifteen, twenty minutes. She nodded. The rim of his parka hood was thick with frost and his collar, held tight around his face, had icicles hanging from it. His thin moustache and beard, which he had just begun to grow for protection during the winter, were both ice-covered. The lines in his cheeks and around his eyes had deepened so dramatically that he had taken on an eerie, frightening appearance. She was startled by this, for a second she couldn’t find the man she knew, under this steely countenance.
“Are you all right?” she asked him, although these were only words. Their eyes met and then they turned their heads straight ahead again, and began to ride side by side through the gathering darkness, the cattle now only a line of dark spots in front of them, their outlines barely distinguishable from the shadows growing along the snow-covered slopes and valleys.
“I’ll take your horse,” he said. “You get into the truck.” Surprised, she looked at him, pulling the edge of her parka hood back so she could see him.
“No,” she said. What could he be thinking
of?
His hands would freeze, leading two horses. Jason’s horse trotted up between them, blowing steamy air through its frosted muzzle. Icicles hung down from its halter and muzzle and she was tempted to lean forward and break them off, but refrained for fear of hurting him.
“Go on,” Kent urged her, but she stubbornly shook her head no again. If he can hold out, so can I, she was thinking. I won’t let him down.
A few minutes passed and he rode away, to the other side of the long, steadily plodding line of cows. She got down and began to walk again,
leading the horse. If she walked on the lee side of him, he took the brunt of the wind and she got a little protection. Trudging along, her hood pulled well around her face, flexing her fingers inside her mitts, not looking up beyond the next footstep, she began to think of Diane. Or rather, she saw Diane in front of her, moving through the city with her brilliant eyes, her face flushed, trailing behind her an abandoned home, a lost husband. Not for Diane this kind of life. Struggling through the elements for a dubious cause. (But if we don’t move them, they’ll die.) Not for Diane a simple life like this, a life you could see and touch and hold onto. Who knows, Selena thought, pulling her scarf up over her nose, maybe she’s right. For at this moment, it seemed, to her that this was almost more than anybody ought to have to do.
Still, she had her family with her. This was a joint enterprise, not a fragmented, personal one like Diane’s. She couldn’t imagine Kent gone all day, doing things she wouldn’t even know about, meeting people she would never know, involved in a life completely separate from her now.
No wonder there were so many divorces and broken homes in the city. At least things haven’t come to that out here, she thought. At least out here families are still families.
The cold she felt had reached the point where it was merely pain, and it combined with a growing sense of urgency. It was nothing so trivial as a mere desire to run to the truck, get in and get warm. It was some underlying, barely controllable edge of emotion that she didn’t dare examine, which she had to keep forcing back so as not to let it take over. She knew what it was: it was a life instinct, they all had it.
Mark had held out as long as he could against his, she admired him for that and was a little in awe of him for what she saw as that masculine thing, whatever it was, taking over in her child, making a man of him. In Kent that control was immovable. He would ride till he fell off his horse, a frozen block of ice, his expression wouldn’t even change. Men are like that, she thought again, humbly.
She lifted her head from the footprints she was stumbling through, and looked ahead, surprised to find that she was climbing a hill. She made a mental adjustment, and the walking grew easier. Ten minutes. Five minutes. She wished she had a man’s strength. She wished she lived in the city and
had an easy life. No, she didn’t wish that. At least here you know you are alive, she told herself, and was surprised at this, then, thinking about it, felt the utter, undeniable truth of it settle into her.
But wasn’t that exactly what Diane had claimed for her new life in the city? Wasn’t that what she had said was wrong with the way she and Kent and their neighbours lived? That it was mindless? Mindless … and dull … and disconnected from everything that matters. If she weren’t so frighteningly cold, she would laugh.
She had been struggling forward, holding her head down like the cattle, watching her feet, when a shout brought her to a stop. She realized then that there had been more than one, and she looked up, startled. Ahead of her, the herd was bunching as it gathered and moved down into Albert’s coulee bottom. The truck idled on the edge of the coulee beside them and there was Jason, on the back of the truck, helping his father break bales.
They had made it. They were still about three miles from home and it was almost fully dark, but they had made it to a place where the cattle would be safe for the night, and she could get into the truck. She started to back up to go around the end of the herd as it plodded toward the coulee, the more quickly to get to the truck’s warmth, then changed her mind. Kent is still outside, she thought. If he can stay outside all day in this weather, I can stay out a little longer, till the job is done, and so she walked behind the last of the cows and hurried them up, so that they went faster down into the coulee bottom.
With the snow so hard and slippery from the extreme cold, it was impossible to drive the truck down into the coulee bottom to feed the cows in the usual way. They would never get it back up again. She gave the reins to Mark to hold through the open window—he wasn’t shivering so hard anymore—and clambered up onto the back of the truck with Jason and Kent. There really wasn’t room for the three of them, but it felt good up there, and she began to help them break the bales and throw the chunks over the edge of the coulee down to the starving cattle.
“They’ll be only too glad to stay there till morning,’ Kent said, when they had finished and there was nothing but wisps of hay left on the truck deck. “We’ll be back here at first light and bring them the rest of the way
home.” They got down gratefully out of the wind and Jason got into the truck while Selena stood looking up at Kent.
“You can’t lead the horses home,” she said. “It’s too cold. Why don’t you just chase them down into the coulee with the cattle and pick them up in the morning? Then you can ride home with us in the truck.”
“No,” he said. “They’ll only disturb the cows and they need the shelter at home. I can make it home easy in another twenty, thirty minutes.” She knew better than to argue with him. She got into the truck on the pasenger side, with Jason in the middle and Mark, who seemed all right now, driving, and waited while Kent unclipped Jason’s horse’s haltershank and tied his own horse’s tail through the halter and under the chin of Jason’s horse, then changed the bridle of Mark’s horse for a halter, and fastened the tail of Jason’s horse in a knot in Mark’s horse’s halter, so that the three horses were tied in a string, tails to halters. Then he mounted his own horse, and kicking him hard to get him to go, set out at a lope, the other horses following closely behind.
“Should I go ahead home?” Mark asked her.
“No,” she said. “Follow him. You never know.”
All the way home in the dark, Kent and the horses throwing unwieldy black, jagged shadows across the headlights, she and the boys kept their eyes on Kent, as if at any moment he might ride out of the sweep of their lights into that awful, frozen blackness.
By the time they drove into the ranchyard, the wind had died, the sky had cleared and the moon risen, showing the familiar buildings in clear, sharp outlines against the sparkling, unbroken field of snow. The silhouette of Phoebe’s head appeared at the kitchen window. So she had been worrying about them.
Silently they got out of the truck. The two boys went to the barn to help Kent with their horses and Selena gathered the remains of their lunch and the empty thermoses into her arms and started toward the house.
Her footsteps crackled on the packed snow of the path, and she could hear her own breathing in her ears, sounding ragged and forced in the silence of the winter night. She stopped in the middle of the path and turned slowly in a circle. The stars were brilliant, silver flames in the black
night sky behind them. To the north the northern lights tilled the sky, an eerie greenish colour waving, fading, growing brighter, dissolving, reforming, spreading, shrinking.
The lights had gone on in the barn. She thought she could detect the faint smell of roast chicken coming from the house, and imagined the cheery warmth of her kitchen. Yet she felt totally detached from all these small, homely things. We live our little lives down here, she thought, while up there, some mystery that none of us understands, is going on.
Diane’s inexplicable selfishness, her private vision that was so incomprehensible, Phoebe’s small tragedy and her struggle to understand what had happened to her, the strangling cosiness of her own family, her own failure to understand anything at all, stood in sharp relief. Yet under the dancing northern lights, the winter stars shining through them with a steady, flashing brilliance, all of this seemed trivial.
Behind her the barn door was being dragged open, screeching on its frozen iron runners. She turned and hurried to the house.
When Tony had phoned yesterday to say that he was going to the city to pick up his family to bring them home for Christmas, Selena had felt a weight lifted from her. She had been worried, imagining her small nieces deprived of a family Christmas for the first time in their lives, imagining Tony spending Christmas with them (since he had refused to go with his parents to his younger sister’s in Edmonton), morose and lonely, imagining, with Diane not present, a confusion and sadness thrown over their own celebrations.
When she told Kent about Tony’s call, he had laughed, a sort of snort, and said, “That’s some separation—she gets to run around doing God-knows-what by herself, and then when she wants him, he comes running.”
Selena had replied, “I know it looks that way, Kent, but I don’t think that’s really how it is.” He had only snorted again and gone back to his paperwork. She hadn’t even bothered to try to explain.
She knew he didn’t want to know differently. He’s so simple about things like that, she told herself, but without rancour, even with affection. He can’t handle too many shades of meaning. Like he hasn’t got the capacity for it. You have to keep things simple for him, so he can understand. And, of course, there were still those moments when she doubted that she was the one who was right.
Now she stood in the doorway to the living room, giving it one last check to make sure there wasn’t a speck of dust on the windowsills or the television set, that the few pictures and the curtains were straight, the extra cushions on the couch plumped up and neatly arranged, the undeniably worn-out rug at least spotless and fresh. Mark and Jason were spread-eagled on the rug, their shoes off, propped on their elbows while they watched some loud Christmas special, and Kent, watching too, had stretched out on the couch, shoving all the extra cushions under his head. Phoebe, sitting across from them in the armchair, met Selena’s despairing glance and smiled a little, the sight of which gladdened Selena. When the little kids arrive, the neatness won’t last five minutes anyway, she thought, and was about to go back to the kitchen.
A commercial came on and Mark rolled onto his side, his long arm stretched out under his head, his hand flat on the floor. His sleeve slid up a fraction of an inch and she saw the fine, light-coloured hair growing on his forearm, and the unexpected width of his hand at the knuckles. His hand was shaped like Kent’s, it was a hand she loved. Suddenly she thought, how would that hand, her son’s hand, how would it touch a woman? She glanced at Phoebe, but Phoebe was still looking at the tv. She didn’t want to think about it. She turned away and went to the kitchen.
She took the eggs and cream from the fridge, lifted her blender out from the cupboard, and set it on the counter. And when she had managed to get Diane on the phone to ask her where she wanted to stay, Diane had laughed that new, breathless, pealing laugh, and had said, your place, Selena dear. So the kids won’t be disrupted so much, and they can have Christmas morning with your kids. But … Selena had said, dubiously, and Diane had interrupted. Yes, Tony and I will be sleeping together. Selena, embarrassed, hadn’t known what to say. We still love
each other, Diane had said, gently, into the silence, as if Selena were a child being initiated into adult mysteries.
She broke the eggs into the blender and reached for the sugar canister, hesitating, wondering if Kent had remembered to buy rum for the eggnog she was making, but there it was sitting on the counter in front of her. She had to laugh at herself and her distraction, pausing before she switched on the blender. What else do I need? Vanilla, salt.
She leaned against the counter, staring out the window above the sink, but it was dark outside, and the light from the ceiling cast a reflection against the glass so that instead of seeing the glistening indigo of the snowy yard spread out before her, and the inky, star-sprinkled sky above the silhouette of the old barn, she saw only her own face staring back at her.
Shadowy, vague, almost a silhouette, her long hair hanging loose on her shoulders for once instead of pulled back in a low pony-tail, and the puffed sleeves of the new dress she had made herself standing up pertly against the background of the brightly-lit kitchen. She saw her mouth, the lower lip full and curving, and the eagerness of her expression. I’m not old yet, she told her reflection, pleased, and smiled at herself. The woman in the glass smiled back, slowly, a puzzled look in her eyes, an innocence to the smooth curve of her eyebrowns. Selena frowned then, and looked back to the blender.
But still she didn’t press the button. She was listening to the muffled laughter, both mechanical and human, coming from the living room. Had she heard Phoebe laugh too? Kent’s deep rumble lay below Jason’s childish giggle and Mark’s higher-pitched hoot.
In this moment Phoebe’s pregnancy no longer seemed a tragedy, a sorrow that they had to learn to bear. Tonight she could believe they would welcome her child among them, a baby, another member for their family. She sniffed, and all the Christmas scents rushed into her nostrils: the spice cookies she and Phoebe had baked, the chocolate in the candy they had made, the mandarin oranges, the mixed alcohol and fruit smell of the Christmas cake, the peppermint in the candy canes she had bought for her nieces, the buttery odour that came from the plate of shortbread sitting on the counter to her right, and who knew what the other smells
were? The smell of other Christmases, of gifts and unopened surprises, affection and of hope.
She pushed the button on the blender, reaching with her left hand for the punch bowl that had been her mother’s. I’d better use milk, she thought, that cream’s too rich.
She felt a rush of cold air and somebody’s arms in a scratchy wool coat go around her. She reached to shut off the blender, spun around, and there was Diane, her arms open, smelling of perfume and cosmetics, her long, dark hair gleaming, her red coat blazing with colour. Tony entered the kitchen and Tammy squeezed past him to run to Selena and hug her around the waist. Kent stood behind Tony, holding Cathy in his arms, and then Selena was hugging Diane, kissing Tammy, planting a kiss on Tony’s cheek.
The boys squeezed past the men into the kitchen, shaking hands and accepting and giving embarrassed kisses, and there were cries of “Merry Christmas,” all around.
“You’d think we’d been gone twenty years!” Diane said, laughing, pushing her hair back from her face. Kent gave Cathy to Selena, who kissed her, while he helped Diane take off her coat.
“Into the living room, boys,” he said cheerfully. “There isn’t room for everybody in here. I’ll pour us some drinks,” he said to Tony, who was following the boys.
“Where’s Phoebe?” Tammy asked, as Phoebe, having stood aside for the males, came out of the living room and stopped just inside the kitchen doorway. Tammy ran to her, her arms out, and, striking her in the abdomen, bounced back. Diane turned away from Selena and went, without a second’s hesitation, straight to Phoebe and put her arms around her. Of course, Selena thought, Tony told her. If only I could have brought myself to tell her.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
Diane turned back to her, one arm still around Phoebe, and said, “Before we left the city Tony took us out for a meal.”
“That was hours ago,” Selena said. “You must be starved. Give me a hand here, Phoebe,” she said over her shoulder, opening the fridge. She
had gone over in her mind at least four times what she would serve them for lunch when they arrived, but found herself confused now anyway.
“Make way,” Kent called, coming past Phoebe into the kitchen again. Then, in a rare, joking moment, “Us men are thirsty.”
“But I’m making eggnog,” Selena protested as he started to open the cupboard door where they kept the bottle of rye.
“Well, hurry up then, Mother,” he said, and gave her a light pat on the bottom as he turned. Diane laughed.
“Here,” she said, all efficiency, “I’ll help Phoebe with the lunch and you finish the eggnog.”
It was as if Diane had never left, as if Phoebe was still the innocent and faintly recalcitrant teenager she had been a few months before. While they worked, Selena and Diane talked, the words tumbling out, spilling over each other’s voices, while Phoebe worked in silence.
“Where’s Kent’s mom and dad?”
“They went to Vancouver to spend Christmas with Janice and Bob and the kids. They’ll be back for New Year’s with us. How’s your job?”
“Oh, it’s okay. Where’s Rhea?”
“She said, ‘Spare me the racket, please,’”—they both laughed at this—“She’ll be here for Christmas Day. Rhoda and Gus are coming too and bringing Sandy.”
“Poor Sandy. Hand me the mustard.” Poor Sandy was what everybody said whenever Sandy, Kent’s retarded older sister, was mentioned. She lived in a special care home in the city, had for more than twenty years, and only came out for the occasional holiday.
“Eggnog’s ready,” Selena said. She lifted the bowl carefully and made her way slowly into the living room with Diane following with the cups. She set them on the coffee table in front of the men, as Selena, with Kent’s help, lowered the big bowl of eggnog beside them. Diane went back to the kitchen and returned with the rum.
“Be sure to dip some out for the kids first,” Selena warned Kent. She handed him the ladle. “We’ll get the rest of the lunch.” Together, she and Diane returned to the kitchen.
Phoebe had filled the last cake plate with Christmas cake, shortbread
and candy, and had sat down in a chair that, in the commotion, had been pushed well away from the table. She looked up as they entered.
Diane paused in the doorway and looked at Phoebe as if she were finally seeing her. She looked for a long, searching moment, then moved silently past her and turned to face her, her eyes softening, a different light appearing in them. She went to Phoebe, touched her lightly on the shoulder, then stroked her hair gently back from her face. Selena saw that Diane was no longer wearing her wedding rings.
Phoebe was sitting very still, her plump, short-nailed hands folded quietly on her lap, her head tipped forward.
“Poor Phoebe,” Diane said, smoothing Phoebe’s fine, light-coloured hair. “I’m so sorry.” Still Phoebe didn’t speak, only sat without moving, while tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Diane stopped stroking her hair and stood motionless, one hand on Phoebe’s shoulder, the other resting on the crown of her head. Selena went to them, put her hand out and rested it on Phoebe’s warm, round cheek, feeling Phoebe’s tears dampen her palm, feeling Phoebe’s sorrow seep into her palm and move in a slow wave into her chest. Her breasts that had nursed three children suddenly began to ache. She thought briefly of Kent’s touch on them, so remote from whatever it was she was feeling, thought of nursing each of her babies, how could she have known they would bring her such pain? She thought of the heads of all the people she had comforted, pressing them one by one against her breasts.
Something hung in the air, quivered around them, something powerful, perhaps it was the blending of the emotions each of them was feeling, their mutual sorrow and pain building and rising around them. It overrode the Christmas scents, the Christmas feelings, it overrode family and tradition, place and time, it connected with some current beyond all these things.
Diane lifted her hand from Phoebe’s hair and put it around Selena’s shoulders, and Phoebe, in an unusual gesture, lifted one of her hands from her lap and took in it her mother’s hand that rested against her cheek. They remained this way, a silent circle of women, joined, each to the other.
In the morning as soon as the presents had been opened, the mess cleared away, breakfast cooked and eaten, Kent and Tony drove to Rhea’s and brought her back to the house. Then they took all the children except Phoebe outside, where they hitched horses to an old sleigh Kent had restored, and took them for rides.
“Aren’t you going to church?” Diane asked, as Selena and Phoebe finished the dishes. She and Rhea sat at opposite ends of the kitchen table.
“No,” Selena said, fighting down the uneasy feeling that struck her whenever she thought about church. She hadn’t been as faithful about going lately as she used to be. She could sense Diane waiting for an explanation. “Don’t ask me to explain,” she said finally. “I can’t. I just don’t like going as much as I used to.”
As soon as they had finished tidying the kitchen, stuffed the turkey and put it into the oven, Selena went to the living room and gathered all of Rhea’s presents from under the tree. She set them on the kitchen table in front of Rhea. With an air of bemused patience, Rhea unwrapped them one by one and remarked on them. While she sat quietly, they removed her shoes and put her new slippers onto her large, strong feet, they fastened the fine, gold chain around her wrinkled brown neck while they combed out her hair in order to place the shiny new combs in the thick, white tresses, and brushed her neck and wrists with her new cologne.
The three of them worked around her, brushing, arranging, bejewelling and scenting her as if they were her handmaidens. None of them resented this, and Rhea seemed to accept it as if this were the way things should be.
Rhea never brought gifts. This ought to have annoyed or hurt them, but it did not—not even the kids seemed to find this strange. Selena wondered why it should be that they all brought presents for Rhea, which she accepted, albeit with faint amusement rather than gratitude, yet seemed to feel no need to respond in kind. But when she thought about it, Selena realized that if Rhea ever entered the house on Christmas Day, her arms full of brightly-wrapped packages, the whole household would have been uncomfortable and puzzled, it wouldn’t seem right at all. It was as if they
all knew that Rhea’s connection with them had nothing to do with that kind of giving and receiving.
It’s because she’s had such a hard life, Selena thought, that we treat her like this. It’s because she’s a pioneer, one of the last living ones, and she’s old. But although this was true, it seemed to Selena an explanation that failed to touch on the heart of the matter, although what that might be, she had no idea.