Patterns of Swallows (28 page)

Bohusz was the oldest of the
young Weavers. He hadn't yet reached school-age when the family
moved from Poland. The two girls that came after him were both born
in Poland, but they were tiny when the family immigrated, and the
other three children were all born in Canada.

Being bright children, the
little Weavers, when they entered school, all took to learning
English as naturally as ducklings take to water, but Jozef's wife,
Rahel, had never had the opportunity or the need to learn a great
deal of the unreasonable language. Only Polish was spoken in the
home, and she had her children or her husband to speak for her when
she wasn't at home.

Jozef was a thinking and
resourceful man with excellent foresight (as evidenced by the prompt
name change). Those characteristics were also evidenced by the
Weaver family's timely departure from Poland. Before the rest of the
world was sitting up and taking notice of Hitler and his plans for
invading (at least, before those members of the rest of the world
that had their heads in the sand), Jozef understood the encroaching
danger.

Jozef was a well-educated man.
In Poland, he'd been an architect. But his knowledge of English was
only moderate when he first arrived in Canada, and after settling on
Arrowhead as the family's new home, he'd been grateful just to find a
job on the metaphorical bottom rung of the metaphorical ladder of A.
A. Turnbull Enterprises, feeding the scrap lumber and chips into the
"wigwam" chip burner. And that was as far up the
metaphorical ladder as he got – though he was often much higher
than the bottom rung of the literal ladder on the "wigwam."
And that ladder was an unsafe one.

After his death, Rahel, having a
poor command of English and five children (plus one more whose
presence was, as then, unrealized), found herself helpless. She was
reasonably young for a widow with six children. She'd been an
attractive woman, and she still was. She resorted to the means of
supporting herself and her six children that many a destitute woman
before her had resorted to – though, being that she was living
in Arrowhead, perhaps not as blatantly as many of those other
destitute women.

Her means of support largely
consisted of several series of "men friends" who looked
after her and the children by seeing they had money for necessities.
These "men friends" often overlapped in their tenures.

But blatant
or not, it wasn't how women in Arrowhead behaved. At least, if they
did, it wasn't for the sake of supporting themselves or their
children. So Rahel Weaver had become
persona
non grata
in Arrowhead society.

*
* *

Ruth started her new job at A.A.
Turnbull Enterprises with sweating palms and a knot in her insides.

Monday morning, walking into the
outer office a little before nine, she tried to smile at Marcie as
they hung their rain jackets on the coat rack together, but she
received only a cool glance from icy blue, unsmiling eyes in return.

Gus came from the inner sanctum
to greet her. His greeting seemed a little forced.

"Good, Ruth. Glad to have
you on board at Turnbulls'. I'll leave you in Marcie's capable
hands. She can take you around, show you the ropes, tell you the
sort of work you'll be doing here. The end of the week is payday, so
there'll be plenty for you to do right off the bat."

"Good," Ruth said. "I
like to be kept busy."

"Well, we'll aim to please,
then," Gus said, laughing heartily.

Marcie didn't bother to laugh.
Ruth wondered if she could.

"First I'll show you all
the offices and where we keep all the files and the employment
records," Marcie said without preamble. "Oh, and here's
the powder room. You'll need to know that, of course. The lunchroom
is through that door. You should get Skip, the foreman, to show you
around the yard one day. It's good to know all the different pieces
of the operation. Comes in handy sometimes."

Ruth tagged along at Marcie's
heels. She had to hustle to keep up. Marcie wasn't slowing down for
any new kid on the block.

"How long have you worked
here?" Ruth asked when there was a lull in Marcie's tour-guide
patter. If they had to work together, it would be nice to get to
know the girl a little. And she was curious.

"Almost two years,"
Marcie answered shortly.

"You must have started
right out of college. If you're younger than me, that is," Ruth
said.

"How old are you?"
Marcie asked.

"Twenty-three."

"Well, I'm older than I
look. I'm twenty-five. I worked for a firm in Camille before, but
this is a better position. All I did at the firm was answer phones
and book appointments and bill the customers. The work's more
interesting here. And the pay's better."

Ruth was surprised that Marcie
volunteered that much information. Maybe she was thawing.

*
* *

By the end of the week, Ruth had
decided that Marcie wasn't unfriendly so much as she was all-business
and no-nonsense. It didn't bother Ruth to work with someone
businesslike. She was there to work, too. It would've been nice if
Marcie had owned a sense of humour, but as long as she wasn't
downright unfriendly, Ruth decided they'd manage nicely.

And she saw very little of Gus
Turnbull who dealt largely with Marcie. Ruth's instructions came
mostly through Marcie, and that suited her very well. Gus seemed as
uncomfortable with Ruth as she was with him. Her strongest instincts
(and general opinion) told her he wasn't a man to be trusted. But if
she seldom came into contact with him, maybe she had no reason to be
nervous about this venture. So far, things seemed to be turning out
fine.

One person she saw more of than
she really wanted to was Mars Mitchum. Seeing he delivered his loads
of logs to the mill regularly and always had to go to the office to
do the paperwork for them, she saw more of him at Turnbulls' than she
had at the Morning Glory.

In cowardly fashion, Ruth found
excuses to vacate the office when she saw him coming, but it was to
no avail. If she wasn't the one to deal with him directly, he
stalled until he managed to see her one way or the other.

She was sure a moment of truth
was coming, and after a month on her new job, it did come.

He caught her unguarded when she
hadn't realized he was there and had no chance to hide. She was
coming down the hallway unsuspectingly, just on her way to her noon
break in the lunchroom.

"Oh hi, Ruth," Mars
said, appearing from out of the washroom, smoothing down his hair.

She jumped. She'd been thinking
her own thoughts, and they hadn't included Mars.

"Mars!" she said.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to
startle you. You jumped about a foot, I think."

"No wonder. The way you
popped out of the washroom, right in front of me."

"Sorry," he said
again. Then he matched his steps to hers. "Just on your way to
lunch?" he asked, nodding at her lunch pail.

"Yes," she said,
resenting the invasiveness of his presence into her thoughts.

"I guess it is that time,
isn't it?"

"It's my lunch time,
anyways."

"Well, guess it could be my
lunch time, too. Kinda nice working on my own schedule. I get to
take my breaks whenever I feel like it."

"That would be nice,"
Ruth agreed. Nice for him, maybe. Not so nice for her at the
moment. She couldn't think of any way to get rid of him, and she
knew full well she was going to have an unwanted lunch companion.

"Is there any rule about
employees only eating in the lunchroom?" Mars asked.

"Not that I've heard of,"
Ruth said, her tone leaving some room for the possibility of such a
rule existing.

"Mind if I join you, then?
Nicer than eating alone."

"Okay," she said
weakly. There didn't seem to be any other answer.

Neither one had much to say
while they munched sandwiches and cookies and apples out of their
lunch pails.

"Would you like some hot
cocoa?" Mars asked, offering her his thermos.

"No thanks. Too sweet for
me. I've got coffee here. Would you like some coffee?"

"No thanks. I like the
sweet stuff. Sweeter the better." He looked at her with a
gleam that she knew was meant to be flirtatious and her stomach
turned.

Finally, as they finished their
lunches, he came to the point.

"Look, Ruth. We could do
this again sometime."

"I suppose. The next time
you show up on my lunch break," she said, making a mental note
to switch her break time with Marcie.

"Well, it doesn't have to
be at work, does it?"

"What're you getting at,
Mars?"

"I mean, we could go out
sometime, if you like."

Ruth said quickly, "I'm
still married, Mars."

"Oh yeah, officially.
Obviously, it doesn't make much difference to your husband."

"It doesn't matter what he
does. It's not going to change what I do. And I'm still a married
woman. I'm not planning on going out with other fellows. At all."

"It could just be for a
friendly dinner. Or even just a cup a coffee. I'm sure you must
need someone to talk to sometimes. And I'd like someone to talk to
occasionally, too."

Ruth's heart hurt for the
loneliness in his last statement. But she wasn't about to let her
soft heart turn her head soft and get her into a situation she knew
she shouldn't be in and didn't want to be in.

"I do have people to talk
to, Mars. I'm sorry if you don't. Don't you have friends you talk
to?"

"Oh, sure, my old buddies.
Fellows to laugh it up with. No one to talk to. Really talk to, I
mean."

"Well, I'm sorry, Mars.
But I just can't be that person for you. You understand, don't you?"

"Yeah, I understand. I
understand you're putting your life on ice and hanging around,
waiting on a guy who isn't coming back and who isn't fit for you to
wipe your feet on. You've got to start living again, Ruth. Just
accept the fact that he's gone and isn't coming back."

Mars had a way of changing her
mood from sympathetic to furious in under five seconds flat.

"Mars, I'm sorry, but it's
not really any of your business how I live my life. I can make those
decisions for myself, thanks. Now, if you'll excuse me. I've got to
get back to work."

She snapped her lunch pail
closed and started walking without a backward glance.

Mars was right on her heels.

"Look, Ruth, don't be mad,
'kay? I know I always say the wrong thing, but it just gets under my
skin to see the way he treated you and see you just taking it and
coming back for more. Even now that he's gone, hanging on to a dead
marriage. You know I only say what I say because I care, don't you?"

Ruth stopped in her tracks, her
defences down.

"I know you're trying to be
kind. I'm not mad. Or if I do get mad, I don't stay mad."

"Well, will you think about
it then? Will you think about maybe getting together sometime? Just
for coffee? Just to talk?"

Ruth hesitated. It would be so
much easier to tell him yes, she'd think about it, and then avoid him
later. But she tried not to say things she didn't mean. Besides, in
the long run, it was always simpler to be honest.

"I can't, Mars. I just
can't. I'm sorry. There's no point starting something that would be
leading nowhere."

Mars didn't say good-bye. He
turned and found the nearest exit.

She was hoping to avoid Mars
from then on when he brought in his loads of wood, but she didn't
need to. He avoided her. When they couldn't avoid each other, it
was strictly business. Nothing was said between them that didn't
involve the buying and selling of trees.

*
* *

Other than the unpleasantness
with Mars, working at A.A. Turnbull Enterprises was turning out much
better than Ruth had dared to hope when she'd started. She saw very
little of her boss, the rest of the workers seemed to like her well
enough to get by with, and the work was congenial to her.

It wasn't challenging. It was
largely filing and stuffing envelopes as Gus had warned her. But it
was straightforward and orderly, and when she went home after a day's
work, she had the satisfaction of knowing she was doing all that was
asked of her.

Her mother-in-law said no more
about leaving to go and live with Pat and Earl. She seemed content
to stay where she was, and life settled into a routine.

The very regularity of her days
caused Ruth unease, however. She was saddened to realize that she'd
become suspicious of respite. Calm left her wondering when the storm
would break.