“Mother, I really do have to get going. I’ll—”
“Oh. Well, of course dear. I just thought you’d like to know about poor old Mr. Dempsey.”
“Mm-huh. Well, thank you. I’ll be sure to tell Bobby.”
“Yes, please do. He’ll want to know about that. He drank it you know.”
“Drank what?”
“Why, the cleaning fluid.”
“Who drank cleaning fluid?”
“Well, Mr. Dempsey, dear. I told you that already.”
“He drank cleaning fluid?”
“Yes, he sure did. Drank the whole jar straight up.”
“Why would he have done that? Why would anyone do that?”
“Well, I suppose because he was thirsty.”
“But to drink cleaning fluid? That’s awful.”
“Tsk. Well, of course he didn’t know it was cleaning fluid. Probably thought it was alcohol. Sara Friesen said he had quite a problem that way and she would know because he was her cousin. Sara said if that nurse doesn’t lose her job she’s gonna raise some cain and believe me when oara raises cain, God himself stands up and listens.”
“Hmm,” Victoria murmured, grabbing a pen out of a drawer and making a note to check on things at the home. “Well, I really am sorry to hear about Mr. Dempsey, mother. I’ve never heard you mention him before, did he just come in?”
“Oh my, no. Joe had been in the home for quite some time before it happened.”
“Really? I don’t think I ever met him. Did you know him well?”
“Oh, no no. Goodness me dear, I didn’t know him at all. He lived out on the prairies somewhere. Anyhow, Sara told me all about it when we signed the petition. She’s gonna send it off to the home where it happened. Now, darn my silly head, why can’t I think of the name of that place?”
Victoria held the phone at arms’ length to ensure the thoughts going through her head did not find their way into her mother-in-law’s ear. The incident, which she vaguely recalled reading about two years earlier, was beginning to resurface in her mind.
“Did this not happen a long time ago?”
“Well, yes. It’s a bit ago now, I suppose.”
“Quite a bit ago, actually. Like two years ago.”
“Two years already? Tsk, tsk. Isn’t it just a marvel how time flies?”
“Just a marvel.” She looked at the clock and ticked off how late she was already going to be. “Well, I really must run.” A weighted silence hung on the line followed by a tiny, pained breath.
“Yes, well I really should be running along myself. Babs’s daughter comes by to read this morning and they usually don’t mind too much if I listen as well. Berty sometimes comes too but half the time he just falls asleep and snores so then I can’t hear. Sara thinks —”
Failing a peaceful end to an impossible situation, Victoria set the babbling telephone onto the table and pulled open a drawer. Pulling a wire whisk and a grate out she proceeded to rub them together loudly right in front of the receiver then picked the telephone back up.
“Good heavens, dear. What on earth was that racket?”
“Oh, it’s just this phone. We’ve been having some trouble with it. Sometimes it just cuts right out.”
“Oh. Well, you’d better get it fixed. I thought my hearing aid plumb exploded in my ear. Babs said that happened to her once and I’ve been a little nervous to wear mine ever since. You never can be too sure with Babs, though. Sometimes she lies. And a minister’s wife, too. Ain’t that just a dandy? Sara Friesen says we should —”
With one fluid, agitated motion Victoria grated the whisk hard, yanked loose the cord and silenced the telephone. Feeling a bit like a fugitive she grabbed up her purse and bolted through the door.
Shielding her eyes from the stabbing sun, she descended the rickety board stairs to the derelict Ford Galaxie that was her car. An archaic heap, it struggled through the same protest of noises each time she tried to start it. She’d inherited it from her father, her mother having no use for it as she’d never learned to drive. The few times her mother had gone anywhere she couldn’t walk to, her husband had taken her, and of course he was in the driver’s seat then.
Victoria had always been ashamed of the car. Even when her father had first bought it, it had looked worn out and tired, somebody else having already consumed its best years. In the years since, Bobby had managed to resuscitate the car more times than she cared to remember. It still embarrassed her to drive the car through town, but Bobby wouldn’t let her take his truck and leave him stranded without a vehicle. So it boiled down to either swallowing her pride or staying home; that’s how Bobby saw it. She’d long ago decided it would be far easier to swallow what little was left of her pride than to be dependent on Bobby like her mother had been on her father. Although, with Bobby being adamant that no wife of his was going to work, she’d pretty much ended up that way, anyhow.
Thanks to her mother-in-law she was now hopelessly late. She felt grateful when the car finally settled into an agitated cadence as she steered it down the long, washboard driveway that connected them to the main road. As the car rattled along, Victoria looked out to where Bobby’s tractor rose like a metal monument from the partially mown field. Her heart softened. Poor Bobby. It must have broken down again. He tried hard to make the farm pay. She had to give him that much. But at times it seemed God himself was against it. Or maybe the land was just tired of giving. Maybe it had nothing left to give. Bobby’s family had worked it for three generations, and while he had experienced some good years, they all paled in comparison to his father’s. Or at least that’s the way Bobby remembered them, his own success remaining a distant falling star far beyond his reach.
The weather seemed intent on frustrating his efforts. If spring rains didn’t drown his chances of a good crop, then he could be sure the heavens would split loose just after cutting time. There had been summers when the land had burst into a luxurious green carpet, and Bobby had spent jubilant hours stamping the field into thousands of perfect rectangular bales. “My old man never had a crop like this. Ain’t never ’bin so much hay on this here land,” he’d boast, giving himself a verbal pat on the back. With the arrival of fall sales, however, prices had invariably plummeted as everyone flooded the market with their unexpected bounty.
The soil itself was a sickly gray, an unproductive pallor, but Bobby didn’t seem to notice. Year after year he’d joggled around and around on his tractor, forcing the field to yield up its meager blessing. Around and around. Year after year after year. Always going but never getting anywhere. It struck Victoria as absurd, almost humorous in a tragic sort of way. But the futility was lost on him. He was driven by an inner compulsion to succeed, to do well and gain his dead father’s approval. Desperate to leave the world with a bigger shadow than when he’d entered, he coveted something tangible to testify to his existence.
She turned her signal light on then quickly flipped it back off. An old habit it refused to die, but it was uncalled for. She’d easily have detected a vehicle coming even if it were a mile in the distance. And of course there was no one coming. She knew there wouldn’t be; there never was. As she stepped on the gas, the car stumbled forward, dragging a tail of blue smoke behind it. The valley ran forever, flanked by fortress walls of rocks and trees. She suspected most people felt secure living in the lap of the valley’s walls, but she resented their constant presence, the way they loomed over her like an overpowering gatekeeper. Drifting along in a bored stupor for ten or fifteen minutes, she was rudely awakened by a violent jolt that seized the wheel from her hands. The car staggered like a drunk, bouncing angrily through deep ruts. She wrestled with the wheel, but the car ignored her frantic maneuvering until she slammed both feet onto the brake, causing it to stop, then stall.
“You stupid damn son-of-a-bitch. You stupid, useless piece of crap. Shit!”
She pressed her head against the seat and closed her eyes. Maybe this time, if luck was with her, the crippled heap would die beyond even Bobby’s capabilities, and she could at long last relieve herself of it. But, as much as she relished the thought, she knew better. It had stranded her many times on this road, and nothing would prevent it from doing so again. She stared out the window. A menagerie of cracks, collected over too many years of driving down gravel roads, spread out in every direction like dozens of streets in a bustling city.
The summer sun had dried the spring mud into cement, and the road still held perfect record of the lives that had passed by there four months earlier, bearing silent witness to all that happened in the valley. She was struck by the sameness of it all. The field on the left side reflected back in the field on the right, the road carefully dividing them like a dutiful sentry. She strained into the distance to see further, but the gray and the green slipped into one another, merging into a tight fist that obliterated any glimpse beyond it.
Frustrated, she pounded the steering wheel, seized the worn silver blinker control and yanked at it until it yielded to her rage and was dismembered. Falling back into the seat with white-knuckled, trembling hands, she held up the mortally wounded piece of chrome, its impotent wires dangling loosely. A triumphant grin marched across her face as adrenaline fired through her body. Feeling exalted, she closed her eyes and savored the moment. Experiencing each nerve that stood screaming for recognition, she felt totally alive. Happy.
She didn’t know how long she had sat there, but when she opened her eyes again, the trail of dust that had followed her was gone. Settled back to the ground to await her return trip when, like some demented dog, it would insanely leap up again and chase her back home. A sound floated to her, barely discernible. Sitting up, she searched her rearview mirror. Far off she could just make out a plume of gray rising like a feather into the blue sky. She kept her eyes riveted to it, curious to see who would be her savior today.
A little kick of nerves darted through her as the vehicle steadfastly made its way closer, closing the gap between them. A white truck charged forward before a wall of dust. A white truck. Only one person in all of Hinckly dared to own a white truck and, of all the people in the valley, he was one of the few she barely knew.
Elliot Spencer wasn’t a local. He’d moved into the valley about a year earlier, buying a rundown farm on Johnson Road and, local gossip had it, paid cash. It had surprised her to hear someone had actually chosen to move to Hinckly but apparently that’s what Elliot had done. He was an artist. Successful as well, the town said; and they watched his life, fascinated.
The white truck pulled up right behind her, filling her rearview mirror with its chrome bumper as she stiffened against the impact that she was sure would come. Elliot Spencer was definitely a city boy. People who grew up in the country didn’t crowd each other the way city people did. Used to having lots of space around them, they appreciated people who kept that in mind. She leapt quickly from her car and started back toward him, not wanting him any closer than he already was to her disheveled wreck.
“Hi there. Looks like you’re having a little car trouble,” he said, leaning out his partially opened door.
“Yeah, I am.” She squinted into the sun, trying to make out his face. “Guess it’s about time I bury this relic and buy a new one.” She laughed lightly, as if it would be nothing for her to toss the car away and replace it, a worn pair of slippers.
“Hey, funny you should say that. My neighbor was just saying yesterday he might sell his Impala. Maybe you should give him a call. You must know Benson Ferguson, hey?”
“Oh, yeah. Of course. Went to school with his son. And his wife is Bobby’s cousin.” She stopped, embarrassed by the brush she was painting herself with. “Sort of like that here. Pretty much tangled up with everyone in a small town.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Must be nice, though. Growing up where everyone knows your name.”
Victoria smiled ambiguously. Outsiders always saw it that way.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if that’s all they knew.”
He eyed her a question.
“People around here like to make it their business to know everyone else’s business. And not just your own business, but the business of your family for generations back. So you’re always kind of judged on the reputation of your forefathers, so to speak.”
“Hmm. Doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.”
“Depends on your forefathers,” she quipped and they shared a laugh.
“Yeah, guess that’s true enough. Benson was telling me about this one old character they found strung up in the kitchen wearing nothing but his wife’s knickerbockers round his neck. Story like that has to be pretty hard for a family to live down.”
“I’d imagine,” Victoria agreed as she looked out over the field. She wondered if Benson Ferguson had bothered to tell him that the ‘old character’ had also been reputed to be a good, honest man his whole life, the loving pastor of a small congregation which had abruptly fired him over some long-forgotten misunderstanding. She wondered if he had mentioned that the ‘old character’ had been Bobby’s own great-grandfather.
“Come on. Jump in and I’ll give you a ride to town. I’d offer to fix your car but I’m a lousy mechanic.”
He laughed at himself and she laughed as well, but the remark sounded odd to her, strange coming from the mouth of a man. Hinckly’s men, the men who had formed her molds and impressions of masculinity, would not have laughed at such a deficiency, much less admit it. To do so would have been a slight against himself, a cause for ridicule. In the valley where farming and logging were the primary sources of income and most men did a little of each in order to survive, a pair of hands skilled enough to revive an engine or repair a break often meant the difference between the black line and the red.