After River (9 page)

A few of the other girls smiled and said, ‘Hey, Natalie,' then went back to their magazines.

‘Come and put your stuff over here.' Elizabeth-Ann indicated a sleeping bag next to the bed she sat on.

I stepped around the air mattresses on the floor, feeling self-conscious and clumsy.

‘Listen to this,' Sherry Campbell shrieked. Sitting cross-legged on the other twin bed, she was wearing pink baby-doll pyjamas and had matching giant pink rollers in her hair. She held a copy of
True Confessions
magazine. An illustration of a movie-star-handsome man, and an equally perfect young woman, her long hair flowing behind her as he held her in his arms, adorned the cover. ‘I was a teenage love slave,' Sherry read, her voice an exaggerated stage whisper. The other girls leaned closer and listened, sometimes giggling behind their hands. I sat on the sleeping bag, feeling awkward, fat and separate. But as Sherry read on I was surprised by the effect the unfolding story had on me.

‘I felt his hands on my tender breasts, harsh and demanding, as he forced his tongue in my mouth,' she read. There was something deliciously wicked about hearing the forbidden words, something sinful about the warmth spreading through my abdomen, the unexpected tingling. When she finished, Sherry held the magazine to her chest and breathed, ‘Oh, that poor girl!'

‘Oh, that lucky girl!' Someone else laughed.

‘Those stories aren't real,' another scoffed.

‘They are so,' Sherry retorted. She held the magazine up. ‘See, it says
true
confessions.'

‘I want to be someone's love slave,' Bonnie sighed and threw herself back on the bed.

‘I want to be Morgan Ward's love slave,' someone cried. I whirled around to see who it was, when another voice said, ‘No, Carl's!'

‘Yes, yes, Carl's.'

‘Is Carl going with anyone?' someone asked.

‘What about Morgan? Does he have a girlfriend?'

Everyone's eyes were on me. I was the centre of attention. I turned from one to the other. So it was true. My brothers were the reason I had been invited. I was not surprised. I was surprised, though, at how I felt about all the eager faces waiting for my words. I found I liked the feeling.

I straightened up. ‘Morgan and Carl have lots of friends,' I said. It was true. Lately it seemed our sunroom was always full of kids from town who came over to listen to records and dance.

The questions kept coming.

‘Do you ride horses?'

‘Do Carl and Morgan have their own horses?'

‘Of course they do,' I said. Stupid girls, how did they think we went after the cows when they wandered off?

Some of the girls began changing into their pyjamas as the chatter continued. I pulled out my flannelette nightgown, trying not to look at the half-naked bodies, unable to stop myself. The room became a blur of baby-doll pyjamas, bikini panties, and bras. Bras! The only one in the room who needed a bra was me. I had not even considered one until that moment. As the other girls flung their clothes around, I turned my back and stripped down to my cotton briefs and vest, then quickly yanked my nightgown over my head.

‘Oh, a granny gown,' Elizabeth-Ann said. ‘You look cosy.' She sounded sincere, but at thirteen, who can tell?

The giggling and chatter continued into the night. Once Mrs Ryan called out, ‘That's it girls. Lights out.'

Later Mr Ryan's slurred, singsong voice called up from the bottom of the stairs, ‘If I hear any more giggling up there, I'll have to come and paddle some pretty little bottoms.'

My stomach lurched. Elizabeth-Ann groaned. She leaned over and switched off the lamp. Much later, when I thought everyone was asleep, I heard her whisper in the dark, ‘Natalie, does Boyer have a girlfriend?'

Boyer
? Every muscle in my body stiffened. Why would she ask about Boyer? Until that moment I had never imagined him with a girlfriend. The thought of someone else besides our family as part of his life had never occurred to me.

‘No, my brother's too busy with his job and the farm.' My voice was tight, protective, possessive, and jealous. Even I could hear it. ‘He doesn't have time for girls.'

‘Oh,' she sighed.

And he won't have time for you, either, I thought. Besides he doesn't need anyone else. He has us.

The next morning I dressed before anyone was awake. I stood at the top of the stairs and listened before I crept down in the silence and slipped out of the house. I walked to the corner of the street and sat down on the kerb. I pulled out my book and in the half-light under the street lamp I tried to read while I waited for my father. When he finally pulled up to the kerb I breathed a sigh of relief and jumped into the milk truck. The welcome odour of cigarette smoke, barn, and Old Spice gathered me in.

‘Well, how was the party, sunshine?' my father asked as he shifted gears.

‘It was okay,' I mumbled.

I didn't tell him I had lain awake all night listening to the angry voices downstairs and the strange noises of the unfamiliar house. I kept silent about how I had cringed inside my sleeping bag, pretending to be asleep, when in the middle of the night the bedroom door opened. I peered out from the tiny opening in my bag as Mr Ryan slipped into the room. I thought Elizabeth-Ann was asleep until I heard her hiss, ‘Go away, Daddy,' as he leaned over her bed.

I didn't tell my father about the fear I felt as Mr Ryan backed out of the room, the moonlight exposing the gaping front of his pyjama bottoms.

As my father and I finished delivering milk that morning it dawned on me how silly I had been to feel ashamed of him because he couldn't read. I had just found out that some fathers have far worse secrets.

D
URING THOSE TEENAGE
years, extra bodies often crowded in at our table at mealtimes. Town kids. Morgan and Carl's friends. They were all willing to carry milk buckets, chase cows or throw hay bales in exchange for the privilege of spending time ‘out at the ranch'. They showed up regularly on weekends and summer holidays. It seemed everyone wanted to be at our place during those blameless years. Our table was so full sometimes that, when Jake was still with us, he refused to sit down for dinner. He would slink into the kitchen and scowl at anyone sitting at, or near, his spot at the end of the table.

After I started high school our home was suddenly filled with the twittering noises of young female voices. My new-found friends. They never seemed to know when to go home. During summer months it got so bad that Dad threatened to change the Ward's Dairy Farm sign over our gate to Ward's Home For Wayward Girls. Carl joked, ‘Last stop on the way to Our Lady of Compassion.' Dad told him to watch his mouth.

Elizabeth-Ann was the most frequent visitor. The first time she phoned and whispered, ‘Natalie, my dad's drunk. Can I come out?' I was unable to turn her down. Before long she stopped asking and just showed up, sometimes even on school nights.

Since the slumber party, I hadn't returned to the Ryan house.
Besides not wanting to run into Mr Ryan, I had no interest in town life. I believed that my family, my home, was far better than anything those neat houses stacked on the hillsides of Atwood had to offer. When she pursued my friendship, I allowed Elizabeth-Ann into my life because I believed that my world was perfect and hers was not.

We became close, I suppose, in the way friends do who need something from each other. Even though I knew Boyer had been the attraction at first, my friendship with Elizabeth-Ann grew, and I began to look forward to her company.

I'm certain that she, like the other girls, thought it was a fair exchange. They got to spend time at the same table as the Ward boys. They got to act coquettish and flirty and pretend they were grown up, away from their parents' eyes. In exchange they gave me their friendship. They tried to teach me the latest beauty tricks; they loaned or gave me the latest style short skirts and sweater sets. If it seemed a fair exchange in their minds, to me at first, it was nothing more than an indulgence, a curiosity. I stubbornly hung onto my tomboyish looks.

Our hayloft became a favourite hangout once we convinced Mom that no one smoked. I followed as they climbed the ladder on the side of the barn and scrambled over the loose hay to the open overhead doors. From this vantage point they spied on my brothers working below, then fell into fits of giggling at the slightest glance their way. Of course my brothers were aware of all this. Morgan and Carl strutted around during those days, posturing like bantam roosters, pretending even to themselves that our little farm was a ‘ranch' and as romantic as those mesmerized young girls saw it to be. I watched closely as Elizabeth-Ann tried her wiles on Boyer. At mealtimes she jockeyed her position at the table to sit close to him.
She used every excuse to ask him to pass her something, shamelessly batting her eyes every time she spoke to him.

Boyer was immune to her obvious flirting, treating her with the polite indulgence he showed anyone but family. And every time he winked or smiled at me I felt a smug superiority knowing I was still ‘his girl'.

I think each of the girls who came out to our farm had her own dreams of romantic encounters in the hayloft with one of my brothers. I'm sure that for some, it eventually happened. In those early summers though, they had to be content with each other, pretending the thin white arms that held them were tanned and muscled. I watched with an amused curiosity as they rolled around in the loose hay, budding breasts rubbing against each other, in pretence of preparation for the real thing. I even felt something, a small igniting of a spark of interest, when they practised French kissing. Certainly more than any spark I could imagine feeling for the pale-faced boys at school, or any of my brothers' friends. When we started having campfires out by the lake behind the back field and playing spin-the-bottle I prayed that the bottle top would not point to me. Whenever it did I would retreat into the darkness with an equally reluctant partner and whisper, ‘Let's not and say we did.' And when I was challenged to act I felt a nauseating shudder as a wet tongue touched my lips. Secretly, I began to believe that I might never feel even a small tingle of excitement or attraction to the opposite sex.

But all that changed after River arrived.

R
IVER
J
ORDAN.
H
E
flowed into our lives as easily as water finding its course. And like water, in time, he would erode the jagged edges of resistance.

Morgan and Carl were the first to yield. They didn't crumble right away. It took them at least a day.

Before supper River came back to the house. He rapped lightly on the side of the screen door as he peered in.

‘No need to knock here,' Mom called out from the sideboard where she was cutting bread.

‘Just like home,' River answered and stepped into the kitchen.

Mom looked up, her face still flushed from the day's heat. ‘Good,' she said with a smile. ‘I hope you will come to feel as comfortable here.'

‘I'm certain I will,' he said then hurried over and took the stack of dinner plates I was reaching for in the cupboard. ‘Here, let me get that, Natalie.'

‘Thanks,' I mumbled, sure my face was as flushed as Mom's.

‘My pleasure,' he said, his blue eyes crinkling with a smile. He helped me set the table for supper while he and Mom chatted as easily as two old friends. As we pulled the table away from the wall I heard Morgan and Carl out on the porch with Dad.

At the kitchen stove Mom lifted the cast-iron stewpot off the element. She turned at the creak of the screen door hinges. ‘Come and meet River before you wash up,' she called out as she leaned over to place the heavy pot on hot pads in the middle of the table. She straightened up and smoothed down her apron. ‘Everyone, this is River Jordan,' she said.

I thought I heard a hint of anxiety in her voice as she introduced him to Dad. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was the only one who was apprehensive about how my father would react to this stranger. But I don't think so.

Dad's right eyebrow lifted, either in response to the unusual name, or to the sight of the shoulder-length hair and flowing Indian cotton shirt.

To say River looked out of place in our kitchen would be an understatement. The contrast between his hippie attire and my father and brother's work clothes was glaring. Dad's checkered shirt was sweat-stained, his striped coveralls covered in a film of dirt. Hay dust clung to his hair and darkened every crease and wrinkle of exposed skin. My brothers, in similar dust-covered denim shirts and jeans, reeked of the morning's labour in the fields.

On the other hand, even though River had walked out to our farm in the heat of the day, he smelled and looked as if he had just climbed out of the shower. His clothes, so different from anything we were used to, seemed freshly laundered and crisp. And yet, as he stepped forward and offered his hand, he seemed oblivious to any difference.

‘How do you do, sir?' he said. And I wondered if the velvet drawl of that voice sounded as wondrous to everyone else as is did to me.

My father didn't seem to notice. He took the offered hand and gave it a single, firm shake. I thought I saw a quick wince behind River's smile.

‘River?' Dad let go of his hand. ‘Can't say I've ever heard of anyone called River before.'

‘It's not my real name,' River answered. ‘Just a nickname. My given name is Richard.'

‘Well, Richard,' Dad said, ‘these guys here,' he nodded at Morgan and Carl as he headed into the washroom, ‘are big on nicknames. This'll save 'em from figuring one out for you.'

‘Oh, I'm sure we'll think of something,' Carl said as he took River's outstretched hand. I caught the smirk that passed between him and Morgan and knew that River would not escape the razzing that every new person at our table endured.

‘Whew,' River laughed and gave a mock shaking of his hand after Morgan released his grip.

Just then the screen door screeched open once more and Boyer came into the kitchen. While Mom introduced River, I was struck again with the thought I'd had earlier when I'd watched him walk across the farmyard. Even though River was shorter, his features finer than Boyer's, and his eyes much bluer, as their tanned hands came together in a handshake I couldn't help thinking again that they were somehow similar. Seeing them together I realized the resemblance was more than just the colour of their hair. Perhaps it was the reserved nods they exchanged as they acknowledged each other. I knew Boyer was never quick to judge anyone, and something told me River was the same.

I still felt unsettled by my initial reaction to River and I watched closely as Boyer shook his hand.

‘Never rely on first impressions,' Boyer once told me. ‘One way or another, only time will prove who people really are.' Yet, as he released River's hand I saw a brief smile cross Boyer's face. A smile mirrored in the aquamarine eyes looking back at him.

After everyone washed up, River slid onto the bench at the back of the table beside Morgan and Carl. With the final Amen of the mealtime prayer, Mom reached over to the middle of the table and lifted the lid from the cast-iron pot. She picked up the ladle and began spooning out the soupy mixture.

‘Thank you, ma'am,' River said to Mom as she placed the first steaming serving in front of him.

‘Ma'am?' Carl and Morgan parroted River's accent. Their laughs were cut short as Mom frowned at them.

‘Nettie,' Mom reminded River as she continued serving.

‘Yes, ma'am,' River said, ‘Nettie.' And he nodded to Mom with a smile so genuine that even Carl and Morgan could not have doubted his sincerity.

After Mom set a plate of stew down in front of Morgan he leaned over and rubbed his hands together. ‘Mmmmm,' he said as he breathed in the aroma, ‘stewed brains, my favourite.'

Our mother was not a great cook, but she was good enough. Her hamburger stew was hearty and tasty, if not colourful. Other victims of this worn-out joke usually turned pale as they were handed a plateful of the pinkish-grey concoction.

‘You like brains, River?' Carl asked as Mom passed along another serving.

River didn't miss a beat. He tucked his hair behind his ears, picked up his fork, and dug in. ‘Sure do,' he said after swallowing the first mouthful. ‘I especially like them for breakfast, fried up with onions and hot sauce.' He retrieved a thick slice of bread from the platter Mom offered. ‘I'll cook up a batch for you guys sometime.' He flashed a conspirator's smile across the table at me as he buttered his bread.

Morgan and Carl's smirks began to fade. A hint of a grin played at the corners of my father's lips, and then disappeared, leaving me to
wonder if I had imagined it. Dad was the only one in our family who liked brains. He ate every organ, every part of a cow Mom would cook: the heart, liver, kidneys, and even the tongue. My brothers would never touch ‘innards'. Whenever Mom served up these delicacies to our father, they ate leftovers, or sandwiches.

‘I have to say, Nettie,' River said, dunking his bread in the anaemic gravy, ‘this tastes exactly the same as my momma's stew. She mixes the cow brains with hamburger just like this. If you didn't know, you could never tell they were in there.'

Morgan and Carl looked down at their plates, then back up at Mom. She raised her shoulders in an innocent shrug. The corners of Boyer's mouth twitched. Morgan and Carl poked suspiciously at their stew.

Then Dad began his interrogation. There was no other word for it. Whether he was still annoyed at Mom's taking it upon herself to hire River, or whether he felt a true dislike for this young man, I didn't know. But he began to fire questions like accusations. ‘So, how come ya left the States?' he asked.

River swallowed, then wiped his mouth with his napkin. He looked directly at my father. ‘Well, sir,' he said, ‘I left because I don't believe in the war in Vietnam.'

‘A draft dodger,' my father said and took a mouthful of stew.

‘Gus!' Mom cried.

‘I prefer war-resister,' River said. ‘But I guess you're right, draft dodger is probably the label I'll have to live with.'

During dinner conversations, my father had a habit of punctuating his words by pointing his fork as he spoke. He lifted his fork, then thought better of it, and dug into the stew before he spoke again. ‘I'll say one thing straight out right now,' he said, ‘I believe a man should fight for his country when he is called to.'

I thought I saw an expression of sorrow fill River's eyes as he looked down the table at my father. ‘And I respect that, sir,' he answered quietly, ‘but I don't see where this war in Asia is my country's war.'

From the calm determination in his voice I guessed that River must have debated this controversy many times before he arrived at our table. I watched his face as he contemplated my father's questions. He thought each through with patience and respect, before he replied without apology. He told Dad he was neither a crusader nor an anarchist. To him it was simple: he could not take part in an immoral war.

‘Those are just words,' Dad said. ‘Excuses you young people make to avoid your duty.'

I felt an urge to join in the conversation, to say something, anything, to somehow defend this stranger sitting across from me, but I knew next to nothing about the issue and so I held my tongue. Mom felt no such reluctance. ‘What if it were our sons?' she asked Dad.

‘Alls I'm saying is a man has a responsibility to his country,' my father muttered without looking up from his plate. ‘Freedom comes at a cost.'

Boyer, who'd watched the exchange in silence, spoke up. ‘I doubt if America's freedom is at stake in Vietnam,' he said, looking straight at Dad. ‘Any more than ours is.'

‘A man has a duty to his country,' my father responded.

‘To his country, yes,' River said. ‘But I don't believe that blindly following the orders of corrupt politicians is my duty to my country. I would die for my country, sir. That would be easy. Living with killing people who have done us no harm would not be.'

Dad grunted and continued eating. After a moment he asked, ‘And what do your parents think of all this, of you leaving your home, maybe never being allowed to go back again?'

River didn't answer right away. He placed his knife and fork at the top of his plate and nodded across at my mother. ‘Thank you Nettie,' he said. ‘That was delicious.' Then he turned his full attention to Dad.

‘My father's dead,' he told him. ‘My mother doesn't believe in this war either. And my grandfather, well, he doesn't agree with my decision to defy the draft. And he never understood my choice to leave university in the first place.'

‘University?' Boyer's voice betrayed his surprise. ‘If you were in university, weren't you safe from the draft?'

River turned and directed his attention to Boyer at the other end of the table. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘that's true, if I had stayed. But I couldn't sit back while the war and the bombing was escalating and not stand up against it. I joined the peace movement. When I received my draft card, burning it, leaving, was my only way to protest the actions of a government I no longer believe in.'

‘Well, I guess Canada's not as bad as prison,' Dad snorted.

‘Being in exile is its own prison,' River said.

There was a silence at the table. Like me, Morgan and Carl had watched the conversation without joining in. I wondered then what they, and Boyer, would do if they had to face the same decisions. I wondered if they too were thinking that it was only an accident of birth, of being a few thousand feet from an invisible line, that made their choices so simple compared to this young American, who in the end, was not so different from themselves. It was Dad who changed the subject. ‘So why'd ya choose here?' he asked. ‘I understand there's a whole community of your kind in the East Kootenays. Call themselves “The New Family”.'

‘I didn't come here to live in a little America. Or a commune. When I saw your ad in the paper I thought it was a good opportunity to
take some time to think out my next move. And to get to know Canada. Canadians.'

My father glanced at Mom then back to River. ‘Have ya ever worked on a dairy farm?'

‘I grew up on my grandfather's farm in Montana,' River told him. He didn't tell him the size of that farm, or that it was a modern automated operation that shipped milk out each day in gleaming stainless steel tanker trucks. We would learn that much later.

Dad's chair scraped on the kitchen floor. ‘Better grab a pair of rubber boots from the porch,' he said as he headed to the door. ‘Those moccasins are about as useless in the barn as socks in a bath tub.'

River smiled. ‘Yes, I expect so,' he said and slid out from behind the table.

After I finished clearing up and washing the supper dishes, I went upstairs. My bedroom window looked out over the enclosed porch. Sometimes, when I was alone, I took a book and climbed out the window to sit on the sloped porch roof. From there I could see the entire farmyard, the dairy, and the barn.

That evening I sat with my back against the faded whitewashed siding and gazed down the dirt road that wound past the fenced pasture and disappeared around the bend beyond our gate. The road that had brought this intriguing stranger to us.

Sitting in the shade of the house I listened to the familiar sounds of the evening milking carrying up from the barn: the scraping of bovine hooves on slippery concrete floors; the bawls of protest from the cows locked into their stanchions; the murmur of calming voices, and the suction of milking machines. Before long, Morgan and Carl began carrying the full stainless steel milking machines from the barn to the dairy. Inside the dairy, Mom and Boyer would run the warm milk through the cooler and cream separator. Then
they filled the sterilized milk bottles to be stored in the walk-in cooler for the next day's delivery.

From the way Morgan and Carl were hustling it was easy to see that Dad and River were supplying milk much faster than Dad and Jake ever had. Neither Morgan nor Carl had time to notice me watching from the porch roof as they rushed back and forth across the yard.