After River (7 page)

O
N A
S
EPTEMBER
afternoon, when I was eight, I came into the kitchen after digging potatoes to find my mother and father at the table with a young man I'd never seen before.

I placed the bowl of dirt-covered spuds in the sink, rinsed my hands, then dried them while I stood behind my mother peering over her shoulder. An array of black-and-white photographs, all about the size of my school scribblers, was spread out on the table in front of her. The enlarged photographs were overhead shots of our farm, and one of the entire town of Atwood, taken from an airplane.

As I looked closer at the pictures I experienced a twinge of vertigo. I sat down beside Mom and studied the photographs. I could make out the landmark stone and brick buildings: the post office, the courthouse, even Our Lady of Compassion, School for Girls, next door to the hospital. The town looked neat and orderly from this birds-eye view. It looked nothing like the hodgepodge menagerie of steep-roofed houses that hung on the hillsides.

I was surprised by how flat everything looked. The mountains and forests, the steep winding roads and streets, were rendered harmless by the camera's overhead eye. How perfectly nestled into the valley our home site appeared, as if my grandfather had been guided by a divine plan when he carved out the four hundred acres.

The eager-eyed young salesman watched as we scrutinized the pictures. ‘The finished portrait will be hand painted by a water-colourist,' he said as he reached for a huckleberry tart from the full plate in front of him.

No one ever entered our kitchen without staying for the next meal, or at least sitting down for tea and whatever baked goodies sat on top of the large wooden sideboard in the corner of the kitchen. I think my mother would have been horrified if ever anyone left her home without something made by her hand sloshing around in his belly. Family, friends, or strays, they were all treated the same. Hikers and huckleberry pickers, priests and Jehovah's Witnesses, would be invited in to break bread if they showed up at our door. Even the members of the small Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment often stopped by on evening patrols to share one of my mother's late-night snacks. Travelling salesmen: the Fuller Brush man, the Watkin's man, and the Avon lady, all choked back my mother's black-as-tar tea–‘panther-piss', Morgan and Carl called it–if they wanted a chance at a sale.

Not many went away without at least a small order. There was always some ointment, creme, brush, or bottle of fruit syrup that was just as easy to buy from these wandering mail-order catalogues. Of course, it helped if Mother liked them. And how she liked a good talker. I think this dying breed of door-to-door peddlers entertained her as much as the black-and-white television set in the corner of the living room.

The young salesman at the end of the table that day did not measure up. But it didn't matter. I could see in my mother's eyes that she would have one of these painted aerial portraits no matter how bad the sales pitch. My father too was intrigued, but I could tell by the way his cigarette migrated back and forth, from one corner
of his mouth to the other, that he was going to play a bartering game.

At the end of the table the salesman took a slurp of tea, then looked over the porcelain mug and asked, ‘Ever seen your home from the air?' A smear of purple huckleberry tart hung at the corner of his mouth.

Certainly neither of my parents had ever been in an aeroplane, but both–though father was trying hard not to show it–were fascinated by the pictures spread out on the table. Mom leaned over them; she ran her fingers slowly, lightly, almost reverently, down the roads, over the fields, without touching the paper. She held her other hand to her chest as if she were having trouble breathing.

‘It looks so beautiful,' she crooned. ‘So beautiful.' Her fingers found the house, the barn, and the dairy. ‘Everything seems so close. Oh, look Natalie, you can see the lake, the old miner's cabin.'

My father leaned forward for a quick glance, trying hard to put on his stern, in-control face. Even to my young scrutinizing eyes, he failed.

‘So. How much?' he asked.

‘Well,' said the salesman, with the confidence of someone who knew that a sale was in the bag. ‘That all depends on size and framing. The portrait size—'

‘How long?' my mother blurted.

‘Pardon, ma'am?'

‘How long will it take to paint, frame, and deliver the large portrait size?'

My father coughed, ‘Now wait a minute, Nettie,' he said. ‘We haven't decided anything yet. Let's just hear the prices first. Probably cost an arm and a leg.'

Mom was the most patient person I know, but when she made up
her mind on something she expected action. She was a worker, a doer, and she thrived on concrete results. Still, she seldom went against Dad, and certainly never in front of a stranger. But she had made up her mind to have this portrait and in that made-up mind I imagined she could already see it hanging in a place of honour above the piano. I saw the determination in the way she sat up and squared her shoulders.

The salesman looked helplessly from Dad to Mom.

Then I saw it in her eyes. The briefest flicker, a movement, a flash, there, then gone. In that fraction of a second she told him, without saying a word, where the sale rested.

‘Well, Mr Ward sir, let's see,' the salesman said as he pulled out a letter-size sheet of paper from a flat leather folder. ‘Here we are.' He passed it down to my father. ‘The price list. The sizes, descriptions, all the prices are there.'

My father crushed out his cigarette and put on his reading glasses. He picked up the paper and leaned back, the chair creaking in protest as the front legs lifted off the floor. The clock over the stove ticked into the silence as my father pondered. After a few moments he laid the paper flat on the table and smoothed it with his hands. Mom's eyes followed his fingers down the list. As he touched each description, I saw her shrug her shoulders as if indifferent to the selection. When he reached the last line, she gave the briefest of nods.

‘Well, Nettie,' my father finally said. ‘I think this one might do.'

My mother smiled, ‘Yes, I think you're right,' she said. ‘And the mahogany frame will go nicely above the piano.'

Father handed the sheet back to the salesman. ‘All right then, that's the one we'll have.' He flashed a smile and a wink at Mom. ‘Now, how long before you deliver it?'

The salesman began writing the order. ‘Let's see, large portrait size, thirty inches by forty-two inches, hand-painted watercolour, mahogany frame. Hmmm.'

Forty-two inches wide
? The picture would be much larger than any other in our home. It would cover most of the flocked wallpaper above the piano, dwarfing the photographs scattered over the long lace doily on the piano top.

‘That should not take more than a few months,' the salesman said directing his words to Mom now. ‘You should surely have it by Christmas.'

My mother's mouth opened, her shoulders sagged as if air were escaping and deflating her body. ‘Christmas?'

‘Let's just put a rush on that,' the salesman said quickly and wrote a note on the invoice. Even strangers could not stand to disappoint my mother. Sometimes I believe she relied on that.

‘It won't cost any more,' he hurried to inform my father. He finished writing and tore the sheet from his order book. He gave the carbon copy to my father, who glanced at it then folded it and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

‘That will be half now and half when it is delivered,' the salesman said. ‘Will that be a cheque or cash?' He pulled out a receipt book. ‘That's an even eighty-five dollars for the first payment.'

My father's mouth opened briefly and then clamped shut. I could see his jaw muscles working as he started to rise. ‘I'll get my wallet,' he said.

‘No.' Mom placed her hand on his arm. ‘The egg money is going to pay for this.'

Dad started to protest then sat back down.

‘Just a moment,' my mother said to the salesman. She rose and walked out of the kitchen. I heard her go into her bedroom and
open the doors to her wardrobe. She returned carrying a folded white envelope. She counted out a stack of one and two-dollar bills while the salesman made up a receipt.

I'd never seen Mom dip into her egg money before. I knew how much she wanted this portrait when I saw those wrinkled bills hit the table. She'd earned them, along with rolls and jars of quarters and silver half-dollars, selling chicken eggs at fifty cents a dozen. It was her dream money. Her dream that one of her sons would go to university. It was not a dream she shared with Dad. His dream was that his boys would take over the farm when it was time. I knew he'd quit school before he finished grade eight to work alongside of his father. So, although the egg money was my mother's, he had no sympathy for its final destination. When she offered to pay for the picture that day, my father let her.

I expect she had her own reasons for paying. I watched the silent messages pass between my parents and realized that somehow Mom had tricked him into buying the most expensive portrait. As my father tried to hide his shock at the price it dawned on me how she had manipulated him. I was stunned to realize their shared secret. My father could not read.

The hand-painted aerial portrait arrived in less than a month. Mother proudly directed Dad as he hung it above the piano in the parlour. I can still see her through the years as she sat at the piano, her fingers deftly finding the keys, her eyes focused on the painting above. She seemed to disappear, become lost in it.

The painting probably still hangs there over her piano. I wonder if Boyer ever looks at it. I wonder if he ever glances up and remembers a time when our lives were as simple, as neat and tidy, as the farm looks in that picture.

Does he look closely? Does he ever think about that old miner's
cabin by the lake? Does he ever wonder how different things might have been if he could change what happened in the place that now exists only as a darkened image beneath the faded watercolour?

And does he ever pause to consider the life he may have led if only our father had been a literate man.

W
HEN
I
WAS
nine, Boyer left school. Quit. And just like that, on a snowy November day in the middle of his final year, Mom's vision of one of her sons going to university began to fade around the edges.

I never heard my father directly ask any of my brothers to quit school. But it was always there, unspoken. The first time I sensed it was during the days following Boyer's sixteenth birthday.

After the milking each morning Boyer changed into his school clothes as usual and squeezed into the cab of the truck with the rest of us. Every day Dad raised his eyebrows and heaved an exaggerated sigh, but said nothing as we drove into town. He didn't need to speak. The words hung there in the air.
The farm needs you
.

Then there was Jake, the hired man. Whatever Dad wasn't saying, Jake was.

I don't know how Jake ended up at our farm, but he had lived in the room above the dairy for as long as I could remember. Anyone could see he was not part of the Ward family. He looked nothing like any of us. He was all knobby and gnarly, as grey as his personality. His bristled face carried a perpetual scowl. What little he had to say was blunt, sarcastic, or teasing. But unlike Morgan and Carl's good-natured, elbow-in-the-ribs, wink-wink, kind of teasing, Jake's was sharp, cutting. Sort of like trying to tickle a person with a pointed
stick. And his teasing always had a point. Behind his back Morgan and Carl called him the Anti-Dad. He was so much the opposite of our father.

Jake was fiercely loyal to Dad. His devotion did not extend to the Ward family. He tolerated us. I stayed out of his way. Mom said his bark was worse than his bite, but I didn't want to test it.

Morgan and Carl held no such fears. Even old Jake wasn't immune to their good-natured taunts. They learned early though that some subjects were taboo.

Jake was a confirmed bachelor. I couldn't imagine him living with a woman, or there being one who would consider living with him. Sometimes Morgan and Carl joked about finding him a lady friend. One evening after milking, they went too far and offered to fix him up with Widow Beckett. As they followed him out of the barn Carl said something about how the Widow ‘must be pining for a man to warm up her bed.' Jake's face darkened. He turned around and grabbed Morgan and Carl by the backs of their collars, lifting them off the ground.

‘You two little buggers better keep your filthy gobs shut!' He held them up in the air; their arms and legs flailed, gumboots fell into the dust. ‘Any more dirty talk like that and I'll tan your asses so hard they'll blister for a year.' He released them. They thudded to the ground, grabbed their boots, and scrambled away.

Neither of our parents had ever ‘tanned', spanked, or hit any of us. The idea that anyone would was as insulting as it was frightening. It took Morgan and Carl a while to resume their teasing ways, but in all the time Jake was with us, I never heard them mention women to him again.

Between Jake and Boyer there was a civil respect. Boyer treated him with the courteous regard of a youth for his elder. And Jake
seemed to hold a grudging admiration for Boyer's devotion to his family and the farm. At least until after Boyer turned sixteen.

When Boyer seemed in no hurry to leave school, Jake saw it as his duty to start prodding him. He made grumbling remarks at the supper table each night. ‘Sure could use an extra hand around here,' he muttered to no one in particular; or, ‘I won't be around forever, yer know.'

‘You'll not learn anything about dairy farming in those books,' he said whenever he saw Boyer with a novel in his hands.

‘The mine is hiring,' I heard him remark one afternoon when Boyer was seventeen. ‘With this year's price of hay going crazy your folks could use the extra income.'

The mine? Boyer working at the mine
? I looked at Boyer as he opened the door to the stairway with an armload of books. He hesitated for only a second before he started up the steps.

Jake called after him, ‘Hey, book-boy, got any girlie magazines in your stash up there?'

Boyer stopped on the first step, turned, and held up the books. ‘Would you like them, Jake?' he asked. ‘They're my school books. I won't be needing them any more.'

For the first time I could remember, dinner was eaten in silence that night. After the milking, Mom came up from the dairy, went straight to her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Morgan and Carl washed up without their usual jousting and then, without a word, went into the living room. As I finished the dishes I heard the familiar whip-crack of the
Rawhide
theme coming from the television. I made my way up to the attic where Boyer sat on his bed reading. He looked over the top of his book as I entered.

‘What are you reading?' I asked and plunked myself down at his desk.

‘
The Catcher in the Rye
,' he said and held up the book so I could see the title.

‘Can I read it when you're finished?'

Boyer placed a bookmark in the pages. ‘I don't think this would hold your interest right now.' He threw his legs over the bed. ‘Let's find you a better one.'

‘Did you really quit school?' I asked as he scanned the shelves.

‘Yes, I did.' He reached up and pulled a couple of books from the top shelf.

‘Why?' I fought back the tears welling up in my eyes. ‘Are you going away?'

‘No, nothing's going to change,' he said and turned to face me. ‘I'll still be here every night.' I could hear the false cheerfulness in his voice.

‘It's Dad, isn't it?' I blurted. ‘Just because he hated school he expects everyone to.' An anger surfaced with my words that surprised me.

Boyer sat down across from me. He placed the books on the desk. ‘No, this was my decision, Natalie. It's just the right thing to do.'

‘He can't read! Do you know he can't read? That's why. He doesn't want you to be smart either!' The words rushed out of my mouth as if they could argue him into staying in school.

‘What makes you say he can't read?' Boyer asked then handed me a tissue.

As I blew my nose I told him what had happened in the kitchen between Mom and Dad the day they bought the watercolour portrait of the farm.

Boyer sighed. ‘Look, first of all, not being able to read doesn't mean a person isn't smart. Dad just never experienced school in the
same way as you and I. Things were different then. Farming was all Dad ever wanted to do.

‘Secondly,' he said, ‘he's a proud man. Promise me, Natalie, you won't say anything to him about the reading. Try to understand how it is for him. Imagine not being able to read.'

I understood now why Boyer's scholastic achievements were not something Mom shared with Dad. All of our report cards were read and signed by her. I remember her joy at my own grades, but her enthusiasm was tempered when she read the yellow report cards out loud to Dad at the table. My father would smile and say, ‘Well done, Natalie.' And that was the extent of his interest in my schoolwork.

I don't remember her ever sharing Boyer's report cards with him. Was it because she felt the perfect grades and glowing comments would be too much for him to hear? Or that the pride–a pride I could see in her blushing face as she silently read the teacher's remarks–was hers to cherish, and to bear. I'm sure she confessed this pride with humble reverence each Sunday.

‘Promise?' Boyer said again.

Of course I promised.

The next morning, Boyer's English teacher showed up at our door. I heard the insistent knock as Mom and I pushed the wringer washer back into the corner of the enclosed porch. Above our heads, Saturday's wash hung from wooden racks. I opened the porch door.

Mrs Gooding wasn't much taller than I was. Grey hair poked out from beneath her brown felt hat. Her slight frame made her appear frail at first glance, but I shrunk back from the steely determination in her eyes as if I was once again in primary school. The teacher stood on the top step with an air of indignation that seemed to melt the snowflakes on her long woollen coat. Behind her I could see
where her resolute footprints marked a path in the snow leading from her car to the house. The fact that she had braved driving to our farm on a day like this was a testimony to the seriousness of her visit. Mom ushered her into the porch where she wasted little time stamping the snow from her boots.

‘Let me take your coat,' Mom said once we were inside the kitchen.

‘No, I won't be staying long,' Mrs Gooding replied as she placed a package on the counter. ‘I promised Boyer I would not speak to his father. So I want to be gone before Mr Ward returns from his milk deliveries.' She sat down on the chair my mother pulled out from the table and held her gloves primly on her lap. ‘I doubt that Boyer has told you how I reacted to his announcement yesterday,' she said in her clipped no-nonsense teacher's voice. ‘But I don't mind telling you that I am mortified by this waste of a brilliant intellect.'

Mom's mouth opened but before she could form a response Mrs Gooding continued.

‘After I got over the initial shock, I made a few phone calls. First I called Stanley Atwood. I swore that if he let that boy go underground I would report him to the child welfare. Apparently my threat was not necessary,' she sniffed. ‘Mr Atwood is chairman of the school board and if Boyer wants it, there's a job for him in the bus maintenance yard starting Monday.' A small smile of triumph lifted the corners of her mouth. Mom and I both stood mute by the sink as she went on.

‘Then I talked to Boyer's other teachers.' She patted the package on the table. ‘These are the text books for the final semester. If Boyer picks up the lessons once a week, we see no reason why he cannot write the exams at the end of the year like everyone else.' She added,

‘There's no reason for his name to come off the school roster.'

I heard my mother's intake of breath and knew her dream had been rekindled.

Mrs Gooding stood. ‘Although I gave my word not to confront his father,' she said, ‘unlike Mr Ward, I refuse to give up on Boyer.'

Mom finally found her voice. ‘I'm grateful for what you've done, Mrs Gooding,' she said. ‘But I want you to understand that, while it's no secret that we can use the extra income, my husband did not make Boyer quit school. That decision was Boyer's.'

The teacher's raised eyebrows betrayed her disbelief.

‘My husband's a good man,' Mom insisted. ‘But he's first and foremost a farmer. Dairy farming is all he knows. It's who he is.'

‘Yes,' Mrs Gooding replied as she opened the door, ‘but it's not who Boyer is.'