Luna (12 page)

The breakfast dishes were still sitting on the table, one untouched glass of orange juice and plates sticky with jam, eggs, and crumbs. Selena had forgotten to turn off one burner and the air was heavy with the smell of it, above the lingering odour of toast and the last of the morning pot of coffee. The chairs stood back from the kitchen table where Jason and Mark had shoved them in their rush to catch the bus. It was the first day of school.

Selena was standing where she had cleared a space to work at the table. She was cutting kernels of corn off their cobs with a heavy, sharp knife. Her hands had kernels sticking to them, there were a few on the front of her blouse and by the feel of it, on one cheek, too. The pail on the floor beside her was full of denuded cobs, in front of her sat a basin filled with kernels, and to her left, a pile of cobs still to be husked.

The door opened and Kent hurried in, letting the door slam shut behind him. He glanced at the mess on the table, but said nothing.

“I have to get the corn done while it’s fresh,” Selena said over her shoulder, embarrassed that he had caught her with her work undone. “Phoebe will clean up the dishes.”

“Where is she?” Kent asked. He was scrabbling through the mess in the cupboard drawer they used for keeping odds and ends.

“What are you looking for?” Selena asked. “She’s sleeping late.”

“Christ! It’s almost ten o’clock,” Kent said.

“I know,” Selena replied. “But she’ll be off to university in another week and this is her last chance to sleep in. After all, she just finished twelve years of school. She deserves a break.”

“Where the hell are those extra needles?” Kent asked. She set her knife down, hastily wiping her hands on the damp cloth that lay on the table beside her, and went to the cupboard to help him look.

“You doing some branding or something?”

“Have to doctor that sick steer. You spoil that girl. What the hell kind of a wife is she going to make if she sleeps in till ten o’clock?”

“I don’t spoil her!” Selena said, surprised by her own vehemence. “She works hard around here, she does her share, and she’s still only a girl. Soon enough she’ll be running after kids and catering to some man …” She stopped herself. “Here they are.” She took the small box of needles for the syringe out of the drawer and set it hard on the counter instead of handing it to Kent. Then she turned her back on him and went to the table. She picked up the knife and wiped the blade with her damp cloth. She was surprised to see that her hand was trembling.

She knew Kent was standing uncertainly by the door, but she began to slice the corn again, balancing the cob against the tabletop. She knew Kent wanted
to say something to her but didn’t know how, and she didn’t know why his remark had made her so angry. It was late after all, and there was a pile of work to be done with Diane and Tony and the kids coming for the long weekend—the corn to be finished, the cucumbers and tomatoes still to be done.

She set the knife down and turned to him. As they looked at each other across the distance of the kitchen, she saw how he had aged. He was the same age she was and yet he was beginning to look old. She suddenly wanted to hold him, to put his head against her breasts and stroke his light-coloured hair as if he were one of her children. To work so hard year after year, and never get anywhere.

“I’ll get her up right away,” she said. “There’s lots to be done.” She picked the knife up again, holding its wooden handle, warm from her touch, balanced in her palm. He half smiled, dropping his gaze to the door frame as he turned away, opened the door and stepped out into the still, damp fall morning. The door shut behind him. He hadn’t even asked her to come and help him get the steer into the squeeze.

Abruptly she set the knife down, hurried to the stairs and called up, “Phoebe, time to get up.” She waited, listening. There was a faint sound from Phoebe’s room. “I need your help,” she called again. “Come on down. I’m on my way out to the corral.”

Selena pulled her jacket from its peg, walked back to the kitchen, past the unfinished corn, the unwashed breakfast dishes, past the basket of ripening tomatoes and another of cucumbers, and out the back door. Phoebe is a good kid. She’ll have the dishes done by the time I get back. She was proud of Phoebe, of how well she had turned out. And now she’s actually going to be a university student, Selena thought, her spirits rising. Imagine that!

It had frozen the night before, the leaves of the squash in her garden were blackened and wilting and the yellow grass left dampness on her runners from the melted frost. Crows were flocking on the corrals by the barn, but the sky was a deep, even blue. By noon it would be too hot to wear a jacket. As she came up to the main corral, she saw that on the far side Kent was walking the steer up the alley toward the chute and squeeze. The dog was standing outside the fence, his legs braced, fiercely yapping at the steer, but from a safe distance.

“Shut up, Blackie!” Kent snapped. The dog gave a couple of disheartened barks, then lapsed into a trembling silence.

“I’ll walk him up,” Selena said. She climbed the pole fence and dropped into the alley, then started up the chute behind the steer while Kent leaped the fence and hurried up the side of the chute to the squeeze where, using a lever, he opened the headgate and waited.

“Okay,” he called.

“Blackie,” Selena commanded. The dog squeezed under the bottom rail and nipped the steer’s heel. It kicked backward angrily, but then moved forward, the dog pursuing it, barking, nipping at the steer’s leg, then quickly retreating to avoid being kicked. Selena picked up the heavy fencepost leaning against the outside of the chute, brought it in between the railings and quickly slid it across the chute, resting it there, between her and the steer, so that the steer couldn’t back up.

“Blackie,” she said again and the dog moved in to bite the steer one more time while she gave it a poke on the haunch with a stick she had picked up. It lunged forward to what looked like freedom at the other end of the squeeze, got its head through the headgate and before it could make the move that would free it, Kent slammed the headgate shut, the iron closing around the steer’s neck, trapping it. Quickly he grabbed for another lever and pulled down hard. The side of the squeeze drew in, immobilizing the animal. Selena climbed back over the pole fence and walked around the squeeze to where Kent was filling his syringe with antibiotic from a small brown bottle.

“I’m pretty sure it’s diptheria,” he said. Selena studied the steer. There was a swelling under its chin and in its neck, and its eyes were runny. But it was the way that its breath whistled as it laboured to breathe, that told the tale. If it wasn’t diptheria it was at least pneumonia, and maybe emphysema.

“I want this one to go with the load when we sell,” he said. “He’s not too sick. I think he’ll be okay.” They had only thirty yearlings and their calf crop to keep the family going for another year. And with Phoebe in university, money would be even tighter than usual. The steer moved in the squeeze so that the iron groaned and the wooden floor thudded under its hooves. “If this stupid bastard dies …” Kent said.

“He won’t die,” Selena said. A few goldenrod had grown up around the edges of the chute and she poked at their golden heads with her foot. They looked pretty there, a pleasant change from the ineradicable kochia weed they were all so sick of looking at. She watched Kent while he reached in between the squeeze bars and thumped the animal high on the hip, twice, not hard, with his fist, then inserted the needle in the same spot, and slowly pushed in the fluid. The steer tried to pull away, but was held too tightly. He moved his feet then, his hooves stamping on the floor, not catching, and almost fell.

“Okay, fella, that’s all,” Kent said, and gave the animal a couple of commiserating slaps on its dark red back.

Selena touched Kent on the shoulder, then, and looking toward the house, said, “I’ve got to get back to the house if you don’t need me anymore.” He nodded without speaking, pulling down on the lever that opened the headgate, standing back while the steer lunged out into the corral.

Selena crossed the yard again, noticing that the day still hadn’t warmed enough for more than a few grasshoppers to have ventured out. She took off her jacket and hung it up and when she turned back to the table, yesterday’s letter from Diane, which she had thrust into her back pocket, crackled and she couldn’t help pulling it out and reading it again:

Selena felt herself frowning. Really, she thought. She could have gotten a terrible job with bad pay in Chinook, she didn’t have to go to the city for that.

“Mom?” Phoebe’s voice startled her, she hadn’t even noticed her standing by the sink. Phoebe had already cleared away the dishes and
wiped the table clean around Selena’s mess. “Do you want me to start skinning the tomatoes?” Seeing Phoebe leaning against the sink wringing out the dishcloth, Selena felt a wave of love for her daughter, then she noticed for the first time that a little curve of plumpness was developing under Phoebe’s chin and that her flat stomach was curving a little too.

“You’re putting on a little weight there,” she teased, before she’d thought. “It looks good on you.”

Phoebe turned back toward the sink.

“Or I could just do the vacuuming and dusting,” Phoebe offered, her voice muffled. Selena could hear her draw in a deep breath, her hands hanging in the dishwater, and for a moment Selena stood watching her, puzzled. But Phoebe didn’t turn to took at her, nor did she say anything more, and the half-finished corn, the grit underfoot, the unmade beds upstairs, the unbaked pies, the thought of company coming all pulled at Selena, distracting her.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’d be best. I’ll finish this corn. I don’t know what to do about the tomatoes. I suppose they can wait till Monday, and those cukes too.”

“When are they coming?” Phoebe asked as Selena picked up the knife again and reached for another cob of corn.

“About noon tomorrow. Diane has to work tonight, so she’ll be pretty tired, but Tony’s anxious to get back and close the deal on the farm. I think they must need the money.” Phoebe was rattling dishes in the sink, scrubbing at the egg stuck to the plates. “It costs a lot more to live in the city than it does out here.” Phoebe didn’t reply.

It worried her to think of her sister, alone in that shop at night, waiting on such people—people she could not imagine, so that all she could feel about it was a heavy, nameless dread. She threw the cob she was working on into the pail by her feet.

“What’s Brian up to today?” she asked Phoebe.

“I think he’s … doing something with his dad. I don’t know what.” Phoebe shrugged her shoulders, not turning around.

“You two have a fight?” Selena asked, after debating whether she should say anything or not. She sensed that something in their relationship had changed in the last month or two. There was nothing she could put her finger on, but Phoebe’s attitude toward Brian seemed different. When she thought about it, Selena couldn’t say she cared very much. Phoebe would find a husband, one way or another, sooner or later. She was the kind of girl who would marry. At least she’ll get a year or two away before she settles down for good, Selena thought. That’s more than I did. For an instant that loss opened before her, and it took a second before she could push it away.

“Would you be really mad if I didn’t go to university?” Phoebe asked. Selena set down the knife and turned to Phoebe, who was draining the water out of the sink.

When she had finished, Phoebe stood looking at her mother, a kind of pleading in her expression. Staring at her in surprise, Selena saw something in her daughter’s eyes that seemed new and deep, as though Phoebe had looked at something she had never seen before and the sight had changed her.

When did that happen? And how did it happen and I didn’t notice it? she wondered. Seconds passed while Selena was seeing the little girl, her mouth smeared purple with the juice of the saskatoons they were picking, looking up at her, mutely asking for forgiveness for having eaten hers. She blinked.

“What?” Selena asked, dumbly. Phoebe flushed, her expression had turned both wary and intense, now there was no trace of girlishness in her eyes or around her full pink mouth. Selena could only stare.

“Are you … thinking of getting married?” she asked, finally. She was flushed by such a rush of emotion she could hardly control it. Married! She drew in a deep breath. Phoebe turned back to the sink and began to scrub at it with the dishcloth.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice barely audible.

“Oh, Phoebe …” Selena began.

“I said maybe,” Phoebe warned her. “I didn’t say for sure.” Selena’s stomach tightened, she found she was a little nauseated and weak-kneed.

“We borrowed the money …” she began, “but that doesn’t matter … but you’d better decide pretty quick. You’re supposed to leave in ten days.”

“Oh, forget I said anything.” Phoebe kept her back to her mother. “I probably won’t anyway.” She kept scrubbing at the sink as if the conversation she and her mother were having wasn’t important. Selena knew it would do no good to say anything more now, Phoebe would only get angry.