Garden of Eden (15 page)

“Where’s this money coming from, if it isn’t yours?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“I don’t understand,” she says. “Markets are so — the competition’s so stiff and it’s getting tougher every year and you want to go into growing grain in a big way? It sounds crazy.”

“You have to see the big picture,” he explains, leaning toward her. His pale eyes have grown dark with some vision he sees that he’s determined to impart to her. “Do you realize how many bushels of grain you can grow in an average year on sixty-four thousand acres? One point six million bushels. We own oil-seed crushing plants, we’ve got flour mills, we make pasta for a flourishing — I mean
burgeoning
— near and far East market. Our people are at this moment drawing up the plans for a doughnut franchise with who knows how many outlets around North America.” He lifts his head, not looking at her now, and goes on. “We’ll almost certainly build a feedlot to use the by-products. We’ll make ethanol. The ethanol byproducts feed cattle too …” He’s still talking, but she has stopped listening. A feedlot means a slaughterhouse and a packing plant and that means jobs.

“Our little river would never provide enough water for all that,” she points out.

“There are ways to enhance what’s here,” he says, calm again. “And solar power and wind power will work here.”

“If they will, why haven’t they already been established?”

“Capital,” he says simply, and she’s silenced because she’s pretty sure he’s right. She asks again, “And this capital? It’s what — Hong Kong money, I bet.” He doesn’t answer her. Suddenly it’s all too much for her, everything changing so drastically and so fast, she can’t get a grip on it. Did Barney have some inkling of how things were going when he bought his ranch? Is that why he did it? She feels abruptly that she might burst into tears. And she’s tired, God, she’s tired. If only Barney were here — but he’s not, she reminds herself wearily.

“No,” she says. “No, no, no.” She means, no, stop bothering me, go away. She sees the rising waters of her dream, and makes a pushing motion with her hand, as if to shove it away.

“Don’t be too hasty, Mrs. Christie. We’re not in a rush. I’d like to talk to you again in a few days, after you’ve had a chance to reconsider —” But she’s standing, conscious that her face must be flushed it feels so warm, that her knees may give way.

“Please go,” she says. Sell this place? What would her father say? What would Barney say? She looks around the living room of the house where she has spent most of her life and she’s suddenly wondering if maybe this stranger is crazy? No, no, she’s the one who’s crazy without Barney. He’s standing now.

“I’m sorry if I’ve distressed you,” he says, looking genuinely penitent. “I’ll drop out again in a few days,” he adds as he goes into the hall. “I’ll let myself out.” And he’s gone, the front door clicking shut quietly behind him, before she can move or speak.

For a long moment she stands motionless in the centre of the room, one hand resting against her throat. Then she hears a car door slam. This mobilizes her and she goes to the big window and sees him drive away in his plain white Buick.

She’s still staring out the window when a small red car comes slowly up the driveway. It stops where the Buick did, and Iris is thinking, go away, when the driver’s door opens and Henry Swan gets out. Sylvia, his wife, is sitting in the passenger seat. They’ve paid her a couple of duty calls already, Iris doesn’t think she can face another one. But now Henry is pulling his seat forward and waiting while somebody climbs out of the back seat to stand on the gravel as Henry gets back in. It’s Jay Anselm.

She steps back from the window hurriedly, pushing her hair back from her face, then fluffing it with her fingers as the front doorbell rings. When she opens the door, he seems bigger than he did a couple of days earlier. She thinks again that his hair is too long and notices he has changed his black jacket for a warmer-looking brown leather windbreaker.

“Remember me?” he asks. “Is this a good time?” Behind him Sylvia rolls down her window and calls, “Sorry we can’t stop. Henry has calls to make.”

“That’s okay,” Iris calls back. “I’ll see you at church.” Jay is examining the long, wide deck that’s painted a dark brown, the big front window, craning his neck to look up at the second floor as if he’s a workman come to estimate a job. She can hear the gravel crunching under the car’s tires as the Swans drive away.

“Of course it’s a good time,” she says.

“It was such a great day,” he remarks, following her down the hall to the kitchen, “that I just couldn’t stand to stay in town. Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m looking for is there.” Uncertainly he adds, “I suppose I should have phoned.” They’re in the kitchen now and Iris stops and faces him.

“No need,” she says brightly, not wanting him to know how peculiar she’s suddenly feeling. “I’m pleased to see you. Coffee?” She sees his eyes which she remembers as black are really a rich brown, and today she detects a puffiness under them that she wonders about. Maybe he can’t sleep either; maybe he too has dreams that make him thrash in bed and lie awake.

“I’d like to go for that walk you promised me.” Promised? she thinks, and is for a second irritated. “I mean, if it’s okay …” His
voice trails off and he looks down at his feet. She sees he’s wearing stiff new tan cowboy boots.

“Those boots won’t be easy to walk in,” she says, and hears a girlish note in her voice. He grins and she feels her heart speed up, gives a quick, embarrassed laugh and goes to pull on the jacket she keeps at the back door. He’s there instantly, opening the door onto the deck.

The unfettered light and the feel and scent of the spring air take her breath away. How could she have stayed inside and missed this brilliance, this exquisitely scented air? Impulsively she puts her hand on Jay’s arm.

“I’m glad you came,” she says, but what she’s really saying is, I’m glad it’s spring. I’m glad I’m out of the house. Maybe life is possible after all. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even smile, and she drops her hand quickly, embarrassed again, and leads the way down the steps and across the lawn, through the hedge, and out onto the prairie grass. They don’t speak as they walk, and Iris, glancing at him, sees that his expression is clouded, it’s that look of unease again. Catching her studying him, he smiles.

“You okay?” he asks. She nods. They walk on in silence and by the way he’s holding his head she knows he’s listening to the birdsong, trying to find the birds singing in the long grass or on the wing. She thinks briefly of Jim Schiff and his money and feels a quick rush of excitement in the pit of her stomach, then realizes: it wouldn’t bring Barney back. And I’d have to give up this place. But I may have to give it up anyway, and her joy deserts her.

The grass lies ahead of them, a smooth, creamy yellow patch beside the neat rows of stubble that stretch off to the left and far beyond. The old barn and the sheds are like three old men, all warped and twisted, leaning patiently into the weather, their window-glass long since gone, shingles split and torn and blown to the four winds. She likes their greyness, their emptiness, their air of history; they speak of things she has always known. In their presence even her bad dreams pale.

“Here we are,” she says, and draws a deep breath because it has always seemed to her — perhaps her mother said so? — that the air over native grass is fresher, more highly scented than elsewhere. Jay has stopped and is staring down at the stone circles.

“What are these?”

“Stone circles left by the Indians a long time ago, to hold down their tepees in the wind, they say.”

“And these?” He’s pointing one after the other, to four half-buried piles of lichen-coated rocks embedded at opposing points in one of the circles. “There’s a pile in each direction.”

“The Plains Indians prayed to the four directions, I’ve heard, and so I suppose …” She trails off, shrugging.

“They’re ceremonial then,” he says.

“There used to be a whole lot more circles, my mother said. Grandpa ploughed them up and used the stones to make a dam west of here.” She points. “My dad tore the dam out and levelled that hollow. Got a little more land that way.” Her parents had quarrelled, not raising their voices, but the air so cold around them, and her mother furious in that rigid, disdainful way of hers that Iris came to know as she grew up, her father red-faced with exasperation, stomping out, her mother saying to her brusquely when she noticed Iris standing in the doorway,
You go and play.
The abrupt recollection shocks her; she doesn’t know where it’s been hiding all these years. She goes on quickly, “Of course, that drove away the birds. Swans, pelicans, ducks, geese.”

“And over here, what’s this?” He’s walking toward the lip of the coulee where there’s another pile of rocks.

“Grandpa could have piled them,” she says, not sure.

“They look pretty old to me,” he says, and she has to agree.

“So it’s Indian, for some other kind of ceremony.” She doesn’t say anything, suddenly irritated at his trying to teach her about her own land. “Look!” he says suddenly. “It’s not a pile, it’s a circle. But it’s way too small for a tepee.” He squats, puts his hands on the rock, touching the vivid lichen grown over their surface with his palms. Patches are cream, russet, black, gold, green. But he’s looking out over the coulee to the high beige cliffs across the valley with their dashes of white brilliant against the blue of the sky.

“Those things are everywhere,” she says, not trying to hide her annoyance. “If the land’s not ploughed up, it’s got Indian circles and Lord knows what all on it.” She starts down the sloping side of the
coulee, ignoring him. In a minute she can hear his boots slipping on the crumbling clay side, and little stones and small lumps of yellow soil roll down to where she’s descending more carefully.

“Don’t you care,” he calls down to her, “that all that history got lost when people turned up the land?” She has reached the coulee bottom now and is standing beside the slough. She looks up at him where he’s squatting a few feet down the hillside, squinting against the light, and speaking over her head, as if he’s quizzing all those old farmers who are dead and gone, and not her.

“I made sure the ones that are left didn’t get ploughed up, didn’t I?” Yet, forced to think about it, she’s not sure why she has been so adamant about the stone circles. A wind comes lapping down on her from nowhere; it brushes her face, rushes around her, tugging at her jacket, whipping her hair, then leaves her as suddenly as it has arrived. “We drove them off their own land. They deserve at least a memorial,” she says, but this last is said wonderingly, softly, as if she’s only speaking to herself.

He comes down the hillside fast, sideways, his boots making the dirt spurt out behind him, then follows her as she turns and climbs through the barbed-wire fence onto the Normans’ side of the coulee. But when he’s through the fence he stops her by putting his hands on her upper arms. It’s a light touch, but it shocks her.

“I love this place,” he says clearly. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life.” He says it with such intensity, direct to her face; her mouth and throat have gone tremulous from his touch.

She stamps her feet in last year’s faded grass to get the clay off her shoes, and he smiles, staring down at his dirty new boots, making no attempt to clean them, then looks around at the pale hillsides, the hawk circling above them. “I’ve been working on this novel — it must be six years now. It fills a suitcase, I’ve done so many drafts. Nobody will publish it. Everybody says it’s good, that I’m incredibly talented, that —” He’s growing visibly angrier. “They just want me to change this, or change that, or drop out this character or that one, or write a new one, or —” Now he stops and breathes loudly through his nose. “But
I
think” — he looks down at her — “I think that maybe what they all dislike, or feel as an
absence
of something,
is really caused by a kind of inauthenticity in it, that God knows I’ve felt myself — You know what I mean?” She shakes her head, no, slowly, meeting his gaze which is once again so intense she’s taken aback.

“I’ve got the characters and the story and the ideas and the narrative drive, but I don’t have …”

“Stop,” she cries out, laughing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about
writing,”
he says, leaning close to her so that she sees the thickness of his eyelashes and the whiteness of his teeth. “I’m talking about authenticity, about being who you are — about
knowing
who you are,” he corrects himself, looking away, “and writing out of that.” She wonders whether she knows who she is? And answers, Of course I do: Barney’s wife. But that thought confuses her, stops her from going any further. Besides, she doesn’t think that’s quite what he means.

He has gone on ahead, runs a few steps, stops, then stands gazing out across the wide expanse of sky and land, as if he can’t get enough of it. She catches up to him and they stand together looking up the sloping coulee walls here at the narrow end, and down to the first bend where the coulee widens and levels out for a long stretch before it continues its descent. A meadowlark calls its liquid, melodic line and it fills her with happiness.

“What has all that got to do with your coming here to live?” she asks him.

“I didn’t say I was coming
here
to live.” His voice is sharp.

“Excuse me,” she says. “Why are you considering moving to a small town?”

“It’s cheaper to live,” he says, looking away now. “It’s —” he shrugs. “It’s maybe a better place to … find yourself. Solitude, and all that.”

“Oh, you mean like Christ’s forty days and forty nights in the desert, or wherever it was.” She’s teasing him.

“And my main character is a small-town boy,” he goes on as if she hasn’t spoken. “The first third of the novel is set in a little town a long way from the city, and I guess maybe I don’t know enough
about small-town life. I thought I did, but I realize I don’t. So I’ve come here to start over again. A year or so, that ought to do it.”