It is raining again; the second week of endless mist interrupted by occasional bursts of rain pouring down. Eldon paces between his chair and the kitchen window overlooking the yard. The oats, cut but not yet combined, are getting soaked in the rain and he is convinced the swaths will sprout once the sun comes back out. Each morning he dresses in his slicker and heads out to the barn to check the rain gauge, coming back in a mood worse than before. His shoulder aches from the damp chill and Caroline spends an hour each evening rubbing it with liniment so he can sleep. She does what she can, trying to cheer him, but he snaps at her whenever she opens her mouth, so once her chores are done, she withdraws to her sewing room and keeps to herself.
She hasn’t seen Nick since the day Elvina came for the vase. She misses the touch of his skin and the gentle look in his eyes with a pain so intense there is no balm to soothe it. The next time she and Nick were to meet, Eldon came stomping into the house, dripping water all over the floor, at the exact time Caroline was due at the tree, and he stayed in the house for the rest of the day. She pictured Nick waiting for hours, rain sluicing over his face, drenched to the skin. She had no way of communicating with him. The dreary grey-blue days plodded by and she had no idea when she’d see him again.
Yesterday, when the sun tried to break through the clouds, she escaped to the tree, slogging along the muddy grass trail, hoping Nick would read the sun’s brief appearance as some sort of cosmic sign to meet her, but he wasn’t there. She sank into the hollow, soaking her skirt through to her undergarments, while tears of disappointment coursed down her cheeks.
Sport’s ears perk up and he looks to the door then barks as someone drives down the lane. Caroline’s heart pitches forward, thinking perhaps Nick has decided to drop by, Eldon be damned; he, too, is dying without her. But, of course it’s not him, only her father, and he walks right in with his muddy boots and sits down at the table.
“You talk to Howard today?” he asks Eldon, stirring three teaspoons of sugar into his cup once Caroline has filled it.
“I haven’t seen him. I wasn’t out today, except to check the gauge. If this damn rain doesn’t quit soon, we won’t get the fall work done at all.”
“There’ll be a good stretch of weather yet, there always is.”
“October third, it snowed and stayed, that one year,” Eldon says. “What’s going on with Howard?”
“He lost a calf, same as Walter Nychuk. Dead in the pen. It was Betty who heard the calves bawling when she got up in the middle of the night. She woke Howard and he went out with his twenty-two. Shot it into the air and scared them off. Luckily, though, he was able to get a good look at them.”
“Coyotes?” Eldon reaches for a muffin Caroline has set out on the table.
Caroline’s father shakes his head. “Dogs. It was a shepherd — quite possibly the Bilyks’ — leading the pack, and Howard’s own dog, Jip, among them. Guess that’s why he didn’t bark. He was up to no good with the rest of them.”
“I can’t believe it,” Caroline says quickly. “Jip’s such a gentle soul. He wouldn’t hurt anything, let alone calves in his own yard.”
“They say a dog gets turned once he has a taste of it. The chase, the hunt, the kill. It’s instinct, they can’t help themselves, no matter how gentle they are,” her father continues. “Once they start to pack, there’s no going back. It happened to a dog we had when I was a boy. My mother feared for the little ones so we had to put him down.”
Sport pads up to Caroline, plants his muzzle in her lap. She strokes his head and he sweeps the floor with his tail.
“I still don’t believe it,” Caroline says. “Jip’s so old and he has that bad hip. I can’t imagine him chasing down a calf.”
“Believe it,” Eldon says. “There’s a primitive need in every living creature. A mother’s need to protect her young, for instance, or man’s urge to survive.”
“The rain’s let up,” Caroline’s father says, clapping his hand against the table. “Time to get going. Would you come out and take a look under my hood? The carburetor’s been acting up.”
After the men leave, Caroline cleans up the kitchen and wanders upstairs, fingering the carmine gabardine she’s laid out on her sewing table with the pattern pinned on. The stack of library books she picked up last week sits on her bedside table, untouched. She’s been planning to start a new skirt but she has no desire to sew, no interest in reading; there’s nothing to do but sit in her rocker and think about Nick. There’s a need she has, and the last two weeks of confinement have made her realize what lies beneath it. She’s tasted the sweetness of desire and it is growing inside her. It is love that she craves — to love and be loved — and she can’t live without it; that soft, endless falling.
Caroline looks up from the garden as a gusty wind scatters the swaths of thin clouds, making way for a honking flock of Canada geese to pass over. She is digging muddy potatoes, the size of pint jars, and tossing them into the furrow to lie in the sun. They will have to be washed then spread out to dry before they can be collected in burlap sacks and carried to the cellar. Extra work, she knows, but there’s no guarantee the soil will dry up this late in the season and who knows when winter will arrive after this late surge of Indian summer.
There have been four consecutive days of sunny weather with temperatures soaring and hot, eager winds. Combines once again lumber through the fields, collecting the last of the grain. Eldon’s been in and out of the yard, hauling the oats instead of running the combine like he usually does. She had only one brief chance to walk to the tree but Nick wasn’t there. She wants to hang on to this last bit of summer, knowing that soon her trips to the tree will end and she might go weeks, if not months, without seeing him. She doesn’t know how she will survive the emptiness of her mundane life all winter; waking up each morning to the monotony of everyday chores and Eldon’s dark moods.
He came to her bed last night, his hard lips prodding and tugging, and she hiked up her nightgown to allow him his pleasure. She bit her lip in the darkness until she tasted the sharp tang of blood. His visits are getting harder and harder to bear.
Sport barks at a squirrel he’s chased up one of the spruce trees. The squirrel scolds back and Sport circles, yapping and digging his front claws into the trunk, trying to scale the tree.
“I don’t know which of them has the upper hand but young Sport seems to be living up to his name,” Betty Cornforth says. She is standing at the edge of the garden, dressed for town, wearing summer shoes. Through the trees, Caroline sees Howard’s truck parked by Eldon’s workshop.
“I’m leaving mine for another few days,” she says, referring to the potatoes. “Maybe this heat will dry things up.”
“I thought it best to get them off as soon as I could.” Four curious hens are scratching for worms where Caroline’s dug up the soil and they scatter when she spears her fork in the ground.
“Are you sure you should be doing that? The garden’s still so wet and it must be hard work, fighting with that mud. I surely hope Eldon is going to carry the potatoes into the cellar for you.”
“Would you like to come inside for a glass of something cold to drink? I know I could use something,” Caroline says, remembering her manners.
“Oh, no. We’re just on our way to town. Howard just had to return some tool he borrowed from Eldon.”
Caroline pulls out a hankie she’s tucked under the sleeve of her blouse and pats the sweat from her brow. “Can you believe this heat for mid-September? It was eighty-three degrees yesterday afternoon.”
Sport has stopped tormenting the squirrel and comes over to sniff Betty’s hem and nose the heels of her shoes.
“You’ve heard about the dogs, have you?” Betty asks, leaning down to scratch Sport behind the ears.
“Yes. I was sorry to hear about Jip.”
“Howard didn’t have the heart to put him down so we’ve been keeping him chained, though that’s no way for an old dog like Jip to spend the last of his days.” There is a sudden honk from Howard’s truck horn, two short toots. “That’s my signal,” Betty says. “Take care in this heat and don’t do more than you should.” She looks Caroline over then nods her head and makes her way back through the trees.
The open screen does nothing to stir the sultry air and it settles on Caroline like a counterpane, weighing down her limbs. Her legs swim restlessly against the damp sheets and she bunches the top sheet into a ball with her toes and slides it to the foot of the bed. ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both …’ Outside her window, she hears the crickets. One, two, three — she counts their frenzied song, calculating the temperature outside using a trick her mother once taught her. Seventy-two degrees, even though it’s 2:00 a.m.
She remembers what Nick told her about escaping to the veranda to sleep on hot, humid nights like this and she pictures him there, less than a mile away, asleep on his mother’s screened-in porch. Considering her own porch an improvement to the airless bedroom, she takes her pillow and steps into the hallway, listening for the rhythmic sound of Eldon’s snoring from his room, and creeps down the stairs.
Sport rises from his rug and brushes her leg with his tail. A hint of a breeze through the screen on this side of the house slides over her body like silk and she thinks about Nick again, imagining his hands on her skin. She misses him so much she feels the ache of it deep in her bones. If only she could see him tonight. She brushes her lips with her fingers. All she needs is one kiss.
A frisson of excitement shudders down her spine. What’s stopping her from going to him? She’ll take a chance he’s asleep on the porch and, if he’s not, she’ll toss a pebble at his window like some lovesick teenager in a movie. Eldon sleeps like the dead; if she’s back before dawn he’ll never know she’s been gone.
She opens the closet, steps into her garden shoes and slips out the screen door. Dew soaks the grass like heavy rain and her canvas shoes are soaked by the time she gets to the lane. The weak light from the yard post is no help at all in illuminating the road past the mailbox so she follows the gravel road by putting one wet foot in front of the other. There is only a sliver of moon and few stars in the deep, black sky. The ditch is alive with a chorus of crickets and indistinguishable rustlings and Caroline shivers, reminded suddenly of the roaming pack of dogs. Sport bounds to the side, pouncing at something he hears in the grass.
Sport. She’d forgotten all about him. “Home, Sport. Go home.” He whines and circles her legs. She rubs him reassuringly behind the ears. “It’s all right, boy. You have to go back.” He whines again, as if he’s telling her he disapproves of her risky plan. He trots a few steps back down the road, stops then tilts his head. “Get!” Caroline turns and continues walking. After a minute she looks back. Obediently, Sport has done as she said.
As she nears the Bilyks’ lane, a frenzied barking starts up from somewhere near Anton and Anna’s house. Caroline stops, frozen in her tracks. Why hadn’t she thought about the Bilyks’ dog? As she draws nearer, she sees him, a shadowy blur on the steps leading up to the porch, barking furiously, straining at the end of a chain. The porch light comes on, the door opens, and Anton steps out on the porch holding a rifle. Caroline leaps into a hedge lining the lane.
She hears another door slam then Nick shouts, “Duke! Easy!” And gradually the dog stops barking and, afterward, she hears the sound of raised voices.
“For Christ’s sake, there’s nothing out there,” Nick is saying.
“Like hell there isn’t,” Anton says. “It’s those damn dogs.”
“It’s likely a fox or a skunk and it’s sure to be scared off by now. Leave me the gun and go back to bed. I’ll take a walk and look things over.”
Caroline’s heart is racing; she’s lucky she wasn’t shot at or discovered by Anton, lurking in the bushes. She hears the crunch of footsteps on gravel and, through the low branches, she sees Nick standing on the lane with the gun propped on his shoulder. She is weak with relief to see him and creeps out of her hiding place. Her nightgown is soaked from the hem to her knees and spiny caragana stems are stuck in her hair.
“Caroline? Is that you? What are you doing here?” He pulls her into the warm haven of his arms. “We’re damn lucky Anton didn’t fire a shot into the dark over this way. You took an awful chance coming here.”
“Don’t be mad,” Caroline says, her voice husky from the lump pinching her throat. “I just needed to see you so badly I didn’t think of the danger.”
Nick leads her to his mother’s small house, under a sheltering maple tree on the far side of the yard, and ushers her onto the porch. A cot, washed in yellow light from a kitchen window, is set up at one end of the long veranda next to a small table. Taking her hand, Nick directs her to sit down then wraps a tattered patchwork quilt, still warm from his body, around her shoulders.
“I was at the tree every day this week,” he says. “You were never there.”
“I tried once, but you weren’t there, either. And, after that, I couldn’t get away. I might as well be chained to the porch. You’d think after two weeks of rain Eldon would have something to do but he never leaves the yard! It’s as though he’s staying home to spite me. I can’t stand the sight of him or the sound of his voice, telling me what to think and say and do every waking moment.” Crying softly, she leans into his shoulder.
He wipes the tears from her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs and brushes aside a lock of her hair. “I’ve been thinking about it … and I’ve decided I’m going to take you away.”
“Take me away? Where?”
“Alberta. Anywhere. I’ve thought it all through. We can leave right after harvest.”
“He’ll never let me go.” Caroline can’t even look at him. He looks so hopeful.
“We’ll run if we have to, go somewhere he’ll never find us.”
“He won’t stop looking until he does.”
“Then we’ll keep moving.” He tips up her chin and kisses her. “We’re going to be together and no one is going to stop us. I love you, Caroline, more than you know.”
His words stir a need like blue flames in her belly. “I love you, too,” she whispers, surrendering, finally, to the voicing of this undeniable truth. She unties the satin ribbon at her neck and slips her thin nightgown from her shoulders while Nick peels off his shirt. Her hands roam over the smooth, hot skin on his back while he enters her gently, rocking in a measured, patient way. He takes her to a sweet and glorious place Eldon has never shown her and she surrenders, again, to a pleasure she never knew existed before him. Nick is close to release himself; she can tell by his shuddering breath, but, this time, she doesn’t want him to leave her. “Stay,” she urges.
“Are you sure?” Nick groans. She holds her hands tight to the small of his back.
“I want every part of you inside me,” she whispers, and he arches his back and moans.
Afterward, she lies folded in his arms, motionless, unable to move, the only sound in the cooling night air the rustle of leaves on the maple.
“Caroline? Are you awake?”
She murmurs and snuggles deeper into the shelter of his arms.
“Baby, you have to go.” He reaches for her discarded nightgown and picks his jeans off the floor. After they dress, Nick draws her into one last embrace.
“When will I see you again?”
“How about Thursday?” Caroline sits on the cot and ties her shoes. “I’ll try to be at the tree at ten o’clock.”
Nick walks her along the lane and down the road until they are almost at Caroline’s lane, then kisses her one last time before letting her go.
As Caroline heads down the lane, a night creature on the hunt cuts through the damp air above her with a ponderous flap of wings so close Caroline feels the hair stir on her head.
In the distance, a singular, ear-splitting gunshot shatters the still night air. Someone is shooting, quite likely at the wandering pack of dogs. Sport bounds down the lane, his coat a dull silver in the scanty moonlight. Rounding behind her, he nudges the back of her knee with his nose, urging her on.
“I know, boy. It was risky. But all this sneaking around will come to an end soon enough.”
The porch light glows like a beacon over the screen door. Caroline gives Sport a quick rub then slips inside.