Runaway (37 page)

The butter came. Nancy jumped up to take a look at it, and called on him to do the same. He was surprised at the pale color of it, hardly yellow at all, but he didn’t say anything, supposing Nancy would chide him for ignorance. Then the two girls set the sticky pale lump on a cloth on the table and beat it down with wooden paddles and wrapped the cloth all around it. Tessa lifted a door in the floor and the two of them carried it down some cellar steps he wouldn’t have known were there. Nancy gave a shriek as she almost lost her footing. He had an idea that Tessa could have managed better by herself but that she did not mind giving Nancy some privileges, such as you would give to a pesky, charming child. She let Nancy tidy up the papers on the floor while she herself opened the bottles of lemonade she
brought up from the cellar. She got a chunk of ice from a corner icebox, washed some sawdust off it and bashed it up with a hammer, in the sink, so that she could drop some into their glasses. There again he didn’t try to help.

“Now Tessa,” said Nancy, after a gulp of lemonade. “Now it’s time. Do me a favor. Please do.”

Tessa drank her lemonade.

“Tell Ollie,” Nancy said. “Tell him what he’s got in his pockets. Start with the right one.”

Tessa said, without looking up, “Well, I expect he’s got his wallet.”

“Oh, go on,” said Nancy.

“Well, she’s right,” said Ollie. “I’ve got my wallet. Now does she have to guess what’s in it? Because there isn’t much.”

“Never mind that,” said Nancy. “Tell him what else, Tessa. In his right pocket.”

“What is this, anyway?” said Ollie.

“Tessa,” said Nancy sweetly. “Come on, Tessa, you know me. Remember we’re old friends, we’re friends since the first room of school. Just do it for me.”

“Is this some game?” said Ollie. “Is this some game you thought up between the two of you?”

Nancy laughed at him.

“What’s the matter,” she said. “What have you got that you’re ashamed of? Have you a smelly old sock?”

“A pencil,” said Tessa, very quietly. “Some money. Coins. I can’t tell what value. A piece of paper with some writing on it? Some printing?”

“Clean it out, Ollie,” cried Nancy. “Clean it out.”

“Oh, and a stick of gum,” said Tessa. “I think a stick of gum. That’s all.”

The gum was unwrapped and covered with lint.

“I’d forgotten that was there,” said Ollie, though he hadn’t. Out came the stub of a pencil, some nickels and coppers, a folded-up, worn clipping from a newspaper.

“Somebody gave me that,” he said, as Nancy snatched it up and unfolded it.

“
We are in the market for original manuscripts of superior quality, both poetry and prose
,” she read aloud. “
Serious consideration will be given
—”

Ollie had grabbed it out of her hand.

“Somebody
gave
me that. They wanted my opinion, whether I thought it was a valid outfit.”

“Oh, Ollie.”

“I didn’t even know it was still there. Same with the gum.”

“Aren’t you surprised?”

“Of course I am. I’d forgotten.”

“Aren’t you surprised at Tessa? What she
knew?
”

Ollie managed a smile for Tessa, though he was hotly disturbed. It was not her fault.

“It’s what a lot of fellows would have in their pockets,” he said. “Coins? Naturally. Pencil—”

“Gum?” said Nancy.

“Possible.”

“And the paper with the printing. She said
printing.
”

“She said a piece of paper. She didn’t know what was on it. You didn’t, did you?” he said to Tessa.

She shook her head. She looked towards the door, listening.

“I think there’s a car in the lane.”

She was right. They all heard it now. Nancy went to peek through the curtain and at that moment Tessa gave Ollie an unexpected smile. It was not a smile of complicity or apology or the usual coquetry. It might have been a smile of welcome, but without any explicit invitation. It was just the offering of some warmth, some easy spirit in her. And at the same time there was
a movement of her wide shoulders, a peaceable settling there, as if the smile was spreading through her whole self.

“Oh, shoot,” said Nancy. But she had to get control of her excitement and Ollie of his off-kilter attraction and surprise.

Tessa opened the door just as a man was getting out of the car. He waited by the gate for Nancy and Ollie to come down the path. He was probably in his sixties, thick-shouldered, serious-faced, wearing a pale summer suit and a Christie hat. His car was a new-model coupe. He nodded to Nancy and Ollie with the brief respect and deliberate lack of curiosity he might have shown if he was holding the door for them as they came out of a doctor’s office.

Tessa’s door was not long shut behind him when another car appeared at the far end of the lane.

“Lineup,” Nancy said. “Sunday afternoon is busy. In summer, anyway. People come from miles away to see her.”

“So she can tell them what they’ve got in their pockets?”

Nancy let that pass.

“Mostly asking her about things that are lost. Valuable things. Anyway, to them valuable.”

“Does she charge?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She must.”

“Why must she?”

“Isn’t she poor?”

“She’s not starving.”

“Maybe she doesn’t very often get it right.”

“Well, I think she must, or people wouldn’t keep coming to see her, would they?”

The tone of their conversation changed as they walked along between the rosebushes in the bright airless tunnel. They wiped sweat from their faces, and lost the energy to snipe at each other.

Ollie said, “I don’t understand it.”

Nancy said, “I don’t know if anybody does. It isn’t just things that people lose, either. She has located bodies.”

“
Bodies?
”

“There was a man who they thought walked out the railway track and was caught in a snowstorm and froze to death and they couldn’t find him, and she told them, look down by the lake at the bottom of the cliff. And sure enough. Not the railway track at all. And once a cow that had gone missing, she told them it was drowned.”

“So?” said Ollie. “If that’s true, why hasn’t anybody investigated? I mean, scientifically?”

“It’s perfectly true.”

“I don’t mean I don’t trust her. But I want to know how she does it. Didn’t you ever ask her?”

Nancy surprised him. “Wouldn’t that be rude?” she said.

Now she was the one who seemed to have had enough of the conversation.

“So,” he insisted, “was she seeing things when she was a kid at school?”

“No. I don’t know. Not that she ever let on.”

“Was she just like everybody else?”

“She wasn’t exactly like everybody else. But who is? I mean, I never thought
I
was. Or Ginny didn’t think
she
was. With Tessa it was just that she lived out where she did and she had to milk the cow before she came to school in the morning, which none of the rest of us did. I always tried to be friends with her.”

“I’m sure,” said Ollie mildly.

She went on as if she hadn’t heard.

“I think it started, though—I think it must have started when she was sick. Our second year in high school she got sick, she had seizures. She quit school and she never came back, and that’s when she sort of fell out of things.”

“Seizures,” said Ollie. “Epileptic fits?”

“I never heard that. Oh”—she turned away from him—“I’ve been really disgusting.”

Ollie stopped walking. He said, “Why?”

Nancy stopped too.

“I took you out there on purpose to show you we had something special here. Her. Tessa. I mean, to show you Tessa.”

“Yes. Well?”

“Because you don’t think we have anything here worth noticing. You think we’re only worth making fun of. All of us around here. So I was going to show her to you. Like a freak.”

“
Freak
is not a word I would use about her.”

“That was my intention, though. I should have my head kicked in.”

“Not quite.”

“I should go and beg her pardon.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No.”

That evening Ollie helped Nancy set out a cold supper. Mrs. Box had left a cooked chicken and jellied salads in the fridge, and Nancy had made an angel food cake on Saturday, to be served with strawberries. They set everything out on the verandah that got the afternoon shade. Between the main course and the dessert Ollie carried the plates and salad dishes back to the kitchen.

Out of the blue he said, “I wonder if any of them think to bring her some treat or other? Like chicken or strawberries?”

Nancy was dipping the best-looking berries in fruit sugar. After a moment she said, “Sorry?”

“That girl. Tessa.”

“Oh,” said Nancy. “She’s got chickens, she could kill one if
she wanted to. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got a berry patch too. They mostly do, in the country.”

Her burst of contrition on the way back had done her good, and now it was over.

“It’s not just that she isn’t a freak,” said Ollie. “It’s that she doesn’t think of herself as a freak.”

“Well of course not.”

“She’s content to be whatever she is. She has remarkable eyes.”

Nancy called to Wilf to ask if he wanted to play the piano while she was fussing around getting the dessert out.

“I have to whip the cream, and in this weather it will take forever.”

Wilf said they could wait, he was tired.

He did play, though, later when the dishes were done and it was getting dark. Nancy’s father did not go to the evening church service—he thought it was too much to ask—but he did not allow any sort of card game or board game on Sunday. He looked through the
Post
again, while Wilf played. Nancy sat on the verandah steps, out of his sight, and smoked a cigarette which she hoped her father would not smell.

“When I’m married—,” she said to Ollie, who was leaning against the railing, “when I am married I’ll smoke whenever I like.”

Ollie, of course, was not smoking, because of his lungs.

He laughed. He said, “Now now. Is that a good enough reason?”

Wilf was playing, by ear,
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
.

“He’s good,” said Ollie. “He’s got good hands. But the girls used to say they were cold.”

He was not thinking, however, of Wilf or Nancy or their sort of marriage. He was thinking of Tessa, of her oddity and composure. Wondering what she was doing on this long hot evening
at the end of her wild-rose lane. Did she still have callers, was she still busy solving the problems of people’s lives? Or did she go out and sit on the swing, and creak back and forth, with no company but the rising moon?

He was to discover, in a little while, that she spent the evenings carrying pails of water from the pump to her tomato plants, and hilling up the beans and potatoes, and that if he wanted to get any chance of talking to her, this would have to be his occupation as well.

During that time Nancy would get more and more wrapped up in the wedding preparations, without a thought to spare for Tessa, and hardly any for him, except to remark once or twice that he never seemed to be around now, when she needed him.

April 29. Dear Ollie,

I have been thinking we would hear from you ever since we got back from Quebec City, and was surprised that we didn’t (not even at Christmas!), but then I guess I could say I found out why—I have started several times to write but had to delay till I got my feelings in order. I could say I suppose that the article or story or whatever you call it in Saturday Night was well-written and it is a feather in your cap I am sure to get into a magazine. Father does not like the reference to a “little” lake port and would like to remind you that this is the best and busiest harbour on this side of Lake Huron and I am not sure I like the word “prosaic.” I don’t know if this is any more a prosaic place than anywhere else and what do you expect it to be—poetic?

The main problem however is Tessa and what this will do to her life. I don’t imagine you thought of that. I have not been able to get her on the phone and I cannot get behind the wheel of a car too comfortably (reasons I will leave to your imagination) to go out and see her. Anyway from what I hear she is swamped
with people coming and it is the worst possible time for cars to get in where she lives and the wreckers have been hauling people out of the ditch (for which they don’t get any thanks, just a lecture on our backward conditions). The road is an awful mess, getting chewed up past repair. The wild roses will certainly be a thing of the past. Already the township council is in an uproar as to how much this will end up costing and a lot of people are very mad because they think Tessa was behind all the publicity and is raking in the money. They don’t believe she is doing it all for nothing and if anybody made money out of this it is you. I am quoting Father when I say that—I know you are not a mercenary-minded person. For you it is all the glory of getting into print. Forgive me if that strikes you as sarcastic. It is fine to be ambitious but what about other people?

Well maybe you were expecting a letter of congratulations but I hope you will excuse me, I just had to get this off my chest.

Just one additional thing though. I want to ask you, were you thinking the whole time about writing that? Now I hear you were back and forth there to Tessa’s several times on your own. You never mentioned that to me or asked me to go with you. You never indicated that you were getting Material (I believe that is how you would refer to it), and as far as I can recall you tossed off the whole experience in quite a snippy way. And in your whole piece there is not one word about how I took you there or introduced you to Tessa. There is no recognition of that at all, any more than there has been any private recognition or thanks. And I wonder how honest you were to Tessa about your intentions or if you asked her permission to exercise—I am quoting you now—your Scientific Curiosity? Did you explain what you were doing to her? Or did you just come and go and make use of us Prosaic People here to embark on your Career as a Writer?

Well good luck Ollie, I don’t expect to hear from you again. (Not that we ever had the honour of hearing from you once.)