Dance of the Happy Shades (17 page)

That meant she was in the long L-shaped field that ran up by the house. If she got around the center, heading towards the lane, the gate was open; the truck had been driven into the field this morning. My father shouted to me, because I was on the other side of the fence, nearest the lane, “Go shut the gate!”

I could run very fast. I ran across the garden, past the tree where our swing was hung, and jumped across a ditch into the lane. There was the open gate. She had not got out, I could not see her up on the road; she must have run to the other end of the field. The gate was heavy. I lifted it out of the gravel and carried it across the roadway. I had it halfway across
when she came in sight, galloping straight towards me. There was just time to get the chain on. Laird came scrambling through the ditch to help me.

Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did. Flora never slowed down; she galloped straight past me, and Laird jumped up and down, yelling, “Shut it, shut it!” even after it was too late. My father and Henry appeared in the field a moment too late to see what I had done. They only saw Flora heading for the township road. They would think I had not got there in time.

They did not waste any time asking about it. They went back to the barn and got the gun and the knives they used, and put these in the truck; then they turned the truck around and came bouncing up the field toward us. Laird called to them, “Let me go too, let me go too!” and Henry stopped the truck and they took him in. I shut the gate after they were all gone.

I supposed Laird would tell. I wondered what would happen to me. I had never disobeyed my father before, and I could not understand why I had done it. Flora would not really get away. They would catch up with her in the truck. Or if they did not catch her this morning somebody would see her and telephone us this afternoon or tomorrow. There was no wild country here for her to run to, only farms. What was more, my father had paid for her, we needed the meat to feed the foxes, we needed the foxes to make our living. All I had done was make more work for my father who worked hard enough already. And when my father found out about it he was not going to trust me any more; he would know that I was not entirely on his side. I was on Flora’s side, and that made me no use to anybody, not even to her. Just the same, I did not regret it; when she came running at me and I held the gate open, that was the only thing I could do.

I went back to the house, and my mother said, “What’s all the commotion?” I told her that Flora had kicked down the
fence and got away. “Your poor father,” she said, “now he’ll have to go chasing over the countryside. Well, there isn’t any use planning dinner before one.” She put up the ironing board. I wanted to tell her, but thought better of it and went upstairs and sat on my bed.

Lately I had been trying to make my part of the room fancy, spreading the bed with old lace curtains, and fixing myself a dressing-table with some leftovers of cretonne for a skirt. I planned to put up some kind of barricade between my bed and Laird’s, to keep my section separate from his. In the sunlight, the lace curtains were just dusty rags. We did not sing at night any more. One night when I was singing Laird said, “You sound silly,” and I went right on but the next night I did not start. There was not so much need to anyway, we were no longer afraid. We knew it was just old furniture over there, old jumble and confusion. We did not keep to the rules. I still stayed awake after Laird was asleep and told myself stories, but even in these stories something different was happening, mysterious alterations took place. A story might start off in the old way, with a spectacular danger, a fire or wild animals, and for a while I might rescue people; then things would change around, and instead, somebody would be rescuing me. It might be a boy from our class at school, or even Mr. Campbell, our teacher, who tickled girls under the arms. And at this point the story concerned itself at great length with what I looked like—how long my hair was, and what kind of dress I had on; by the time I had these details worked out the real excitement of the story was lost.

It was later than one o’clock when the truck came back. The tarpaulin was over the back, which meant there was meat in it. My mother had to heat dinner up all over again. Henry and my father had changed from their bloody overalls into ordinary working overalls in the barn, and they washed their arms and necks and faces at the sink, and splashed water on their hair and combed it. Laird lifted his arm to show off a streak of
blood. “We shot old Flora,” he said, “and cut her up in fifty pieces.”

“Well I don’t want to hear about it,” my mother said. “And don’t come to my table like that.”

My father made him go and wash the blood off.

We sat down and my father said grace and Henry pasted his chewing-gum on the end of his fork, the way he always did; when he took it off he would have us admire the pattern. We began to pass the bowls of steaming, overcooked vegetables. Laird looked across the table at me and said proudly, distinctly, “Anyway it was her fault Flora got away.”

“What?” my father said.

“She could of shut the gate and she didn’t. She just open’ it up and Flora run out.”

“Is that right?” my father said.

Everybody at the table was looking at me. I nodded, swallowing food with great difficulty. To my shame, tears flooded my eyes.

My father made a curt sound of disgust. “What did you do that for?”

I did not answer. I put down my fork and waited to be sent from the table, still not looking up.

But this did not happen. For some time nobody said anything, then Laird said matter-of-factly, “She’s crying.”

“Never mind,” my father said. He spoke with resignation, even good humour, the words which absolved and dismissed me for good. “She’s only a girl,” he said.

I didn’t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.

Yesterday afternoon, yesterday, I was going along the street to the Post Office, thinking how sick I was of snow, sore throats, the whole dragged-out tail-end of winter, and I wished I could pack off to Florida, like Clare. It was Wednesday afternoon, my half-day. I work in King’s Department Store, which is nothing but a ready-to-wear and dry goods, in spite of the name. They used to have groceries, but I can just barely recall that. Momma used to take me in and set me on the high stool and old Mr. King would give me a handful of raisins and say, I only give them to the pretty girls. They took the groceries out when he died, old Mr. King, and it isn’t even King’s Department Store any more, it belongs to somebody named Kruberg. They never come near it themselves, just send Mr. Hawes in for manager. I run the upstairs, Children’s Wear, and put in the Toyland at Christmas. I’ve been there fourteen years and Hawes doesn’t pick on me, knowing I wouldn’t take it if he did.

It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blonde creature, lit up
with neon I suppose at night. She was saying
Sleep at my place—
that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read,
I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare
. The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word is irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that
we’re
as good as
them
.

I used to say to Clare, write me a
letter
while you’re away, and he would say, what do you want me to write about? So I told him to describe the scenery and the people he met, anything would be a pleasure for me to hear about, since I had never been further away from home than Buffalo, for pleasure (I won’t count that train trip when I took Momma to Winnipeg to see relatives). But Clare said, I can tell you just as well when I get back. He never did, though. When I saw him again I would say, well, tell me all about your trip and he would say, what do you want me to tell? That just aggravated me, because how would
I
know?

I saw Momma waiting for me, watching through the little window in the front door. She opened the door when I turned in our walk and called out, “Watch yourself, its slippery. The milkman nearly took a header this morning.”

“There’s days when I think I wouldn’t mind breaking a leg,” I said, and she said, “Don’t
say
things like that, its just asking for punishment.”

“Clare sent you a postcard,” I said.

“Oh, he did not!” She turned it over and said, “Addressed to you, just as I thought.” But she was smiling away. “I don’t care for the picture he picked but maybe you don’t get much choice down there.”

Clare was probably a favourite with old ladies from the time he could walk. To them he was still a nice fat boy, so mannerly, not stuck-up in spite of being a MacQuarrie, and with a way of teasing that perked them up and turned them pink. They had a dozen games going, Momma and Clare, that I could never keep up with. One was him knocking at the door and saying something like, “Good-evening, ma’am, I just wondered if I could interest you in a course in body development I’m selling to put myself through college.” And Momma would swallow and put on a stern face and say, “Look here, young man do I look like I need a course in body development?” Or he would look doleful and say, “Ma’am, I’m here because I’m concerned about your soul.” Momma would roar laughing. “You be concerned about your own,” she said, and fed him chicken dumplings and lemon meringue pie, all his favourites. He told her jokes at the table I never thought she’d listen to. “Did you hear about this old gentleman married a young wife and he went to the doctor? Doctor he says I’m having a bit of trouble—” “Stop it,” Momma said—but she waited till he was through—“you are just embarrassing Helen Louise.” I have got rid of the Louise on the end of my name everywhere but at home. Clare picked it up from Momma and I told him I didn’t care for it but he went right on. Sometimes I felt like their child, sitting between him and Momma with both of them joking and enjoying their food and telling me I smoked too much and if I didn’t straighten up I’d get permanent round shoulders. Clare
was—is—twelve years older than I am and I don’t ever remember him except as a grown-up man.

I used to see him on the street and he seemed old to me then, at least old the way almost everybody grown-up did. He is one of those people who look older than they are when they’re young and younger than they are when they’re old. He was always around the Queen’s Hotel. Being a MacQuarrie he never had to work too hard and he had a little office and did some work as a notary public and a bit of insurance and real estate. He still has the same place, and the front window is always bleary and dusty and there’s a light burning in the back, winter and summer, where a lady about eighty years old, Miss Maitland, does his typing or whatever he gives her to do. If he’s not in the Queen’s Hotel he has one or two of his friends sitting around the space heater doing a little card playing, a little quiet drinking, mostly just talking. There’s a certain kind of men in Jubilee and I guess every small town that you might call public men. I don’t mean public
figures
, important enough to run for Parliament or even for mayor (though Clare could do that if he wanted to be serious), just men who are always around on the main street and you get to know their faces. Clare and those friends of his are like that.

“He down there with his sister?” Momma said, as if I hadn’t told her. A lot of my conversations with Momma are replays. “What is that name they call her?”

“Porky,” I said.

“Yes, I remember thinking, that’s some name for a grown woman. And I remember her being baptized and her name was Isabelle. Way back before I was married, I was still singing in the choir. They had one of these long, fangle-dangle christening robes on her, you know them.” Momma had a soft spot for Clare but not for the MacQuarrie family. She thought they were being stuck-up when they just breathed. I remember a year or two ago, us going past their place, and
she said something about being careful not to step on the grass of the
Mansion
, and I told her, “Momma, in a few years’ time I am going to be living here, this is going to be
my house
, so you better stop calling it the Mansion in that tone of voice.” She and I both looked up at the house with all its dark green awnings decorated with big, white, old-English Ms, and all the verandahs and the stained-glass window set in the side wall, like in a church. No sign of life, but upstairs old Mrs. MacQuarrie was lying, and is still, paralyzed down one side and not able to speak, Willa Montgomery tending her by day and Clare by night. Strange voices in the house upset her, and every time Clare took me in we could only whisper so she wouldn’t hear me and throw some kind of paralytic fit. After her long look Momma said, “It’s a funny thing but I can’t imagine your name MacQuarrie.”

“I thought you were so fond of Clare.”

“Well I am, but I just think of him coming to get you Saturday night, him coming to dinner Sunday night, I don’t think of you and him married.”